Andrew Huberman
Appearances
Huberman Lab
Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. As some of you may know, our Huberman Lab team recently launched a new podcast called Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin.
Huberman Lab
Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries
Andy is a professor of kinesiology at Cal State Fullerton and is a world expert in exercise physiology and human performance.
Huberman Lab
Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries
this new podcast perform with dr andy galpin explores all aspects of human performance it shares the latest science and gives practical tools on things such as how to improve cardiovascular health how to build strength and muscle mass how to maximize recovery with nutrition and supplementation and much more what follows is the final episode of season one of perform with dr andy galpin
Huberman Lab
Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries
If you enjoy it, I encourage you to go and subscribe to it wherever you're listening now and to listen to the other nine episodes of season one. I'm certain you'll really enjoy this first season from Dr. Andy Galpin. And now, episode 10 of Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin.
Huberman Lab
Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries
I hope you enjoyed this episode of Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin. I encourage you to listen to the other episodes of season one wherever you're listening now. And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
So I add hot water and sip on that thing and I'll have some cold brews throughout the morning and early afternoon. I find it gives me terrific energy all day long and I'm able to fall asleep perfectly well at night, no problems. If you'd like to try Matina, you can go to drinkmatina.com slash Huberman.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Right now, Matina is offering a free one pound bag of loose leaf yerba mate tea and free shipping with the purchase of two cases of their cold brew yerba mate. Again, that's drinkmatina.com slash Huberman to get a free bag of yerba mate loose leaf tea and free shipping.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
We can distinguish between dopamine, which is really about pleasure, and dopamine, which is really about motivation to pursue more in order to relieve or exclude future pain. Let me repeat that. Dopamine isn't as much about pleasure as much as it is about motivation and desire to pursue more in order to reduce the amount of pain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
And you can actually control the schedule of dopamine release, but it requires the appropriate knowledge. This is one of those cases where understanding the way the dopamine system works will allow you to leverage it to your benefit. Let's get a few basic facts on the table.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
And we are now talking about pain as a psychological pain and a craving, although people that miss a lover very badly, or that really crave a food very badly, or that are addicted to a drug and can't access it, experience that as a physical craving and a mental craving. The body and brain are linked in this way. It's almost, they'll describe it as painful. They yearn for it.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
And I think the word yearning is one that's very valuable in this context because yearning seems to include a whole body experience more than just wanting, which could just be up in the mind. So your desire for something is proportional to how
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
pleasureful it is to indulge in that thing but also how much pain you experience when you don't have it and you can now start to let your mind wander into all sorts of examples of addictions or things that you happen to like i'll use the example that i sometimes use on here which is my love of croissants the taste of that croissant makes me want to eat more croissants
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Now, eventually blood sugar goes up, satiety is reached, et cetera. What happens then? What is satisfaction and satiety about? Well, that's a separate neuromodulator. That's about the neuromodulator serotonin. It's about oxytocin. It's about a hormone system that involves something called prolactin. So we're going to talk about all of those in the book, The Molecule of More, wonderful book.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
those were described as the here and now molecules, the ones that allow you to experience your sensations and pleasure in the present and for which the brain stops projecting into the future.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
So now let's talk about craving and these so-called here and now molecules and how those engage in a kind of push-pull balance that will allow you to not just feel more motivated, but also to enjoy the things in life that you are pursuing to a much greater degree. We have neurons in an area of our brain called the raphe, R-A-P-H-E. The raphe releases serotonin at different places in the brain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Serotonin is the molecule of bliss and contentment for what you already have. I've talked before about exteroception. Exteroception is a focus on the outside world, everything beyond the confines of your skin. I've also talked about interoception, a focus on things that are happening internally within the confines of your skin. Dopamine and serotonin can be thought of as related to exteroception.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Dopamine was discovered in the late 1950s, and it was discovered as the precursor, meaning the thing from which epinephrine or adrenaline is made. Epinephrine is the same thing as adrenaline, except in the brain we call it epinephrine. Epinephrine allows us to get into action.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Dopamine makes us focused on things outside us that are beyond what we call our personal space, where we actually have to move and take action in order to achieve things. And serotonin in general has to do with the things that are in our immediate here and now, hence the description of these as the here and now molecules.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
So it's interesting to point out that the body and the brain can direct its attention towards things outside us or inside us, or split our attention between those. Just understand that dopamine biases us toward thinking about what we don't have.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Whereas serotonin and some of the related molecules like the endocannabinoids, if you picked up on the word cannabinoid, yes, it's like cannabis because cannabis attaches to endocannabinoid receptors.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
And the endocannabinoids are receptors and chemicals that the cannabinoids that you naturally make that are involved in things like forgetting, but you make these molecules that bind to these receptors that make you feel kind of blissed out and content in the present. So you've got these two systems, they're kind of like a push pull.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
And if you were to say, do the, you know, in the book, wherever you go, there you are. Jon Kabat-Zinn talks about this meditation practice that's different than most meditation practices where you eat one almond and you focus all of your attention on the almond, the taste of the almond, the texture of the almond.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
That's really a mindfulness practice that's geared towards trying to take a behavior, which is normally about pursuit. Normally feeding is we're going, we engage in feeding because of dopamine. We pursue more of a food because of that pleasure pain relationship I talked about before.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
The focus on the one almond or becoming very present in any behavior that normally would be a kind of extra receptive pursuit behavior and bring it into the here and now. That's a mental... or a mental task that the mindfulness community has really embraced in order to try and create increased pleasure for what you already have.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
It's really trying to accomplish a shift from dopamine being released to serotonin and the cannabinoid system being involved in that behavior. Dopamine has the quality of making people kind of rabidly in pursuit of things. Drugs like marijuana, the opioids, anything that really hits the serotonin system hard tend to make people rather lethargic and content to stay exactly where they are.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
They don't want to pursue much at all. So you've got these molecules like dopamine that make you focused on the things you want and the things you crave. And then you've got the molecules that make you content with what you have. So the most important thing perhaps in creating a healthy emotional landscape is to have a balance between these two neuromodulator systems.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
So at about this point in the podcast, I'm guessing that some of you are thinking, okay, great. I want more dopamine. I want to be more motivated. I don't want to procrastinate as much. And I want to be able to experience life. I want these here and now molecules to be released as well. Well, there is a way to do that, but you have to understand the source of procrastination is not one thing.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
There are basically two kinds of procrastinators, or so says the research. The first kind are people that actually really enjoy the stress of the impending deadlines. It's the only way they can get into action. There are other procrastinators for which they simply are not releasing enough dopamine. For those people, there are a variety of things that can increase dopamine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
It stimulates changes in the blood vessels, in the heart, in the organs and tissues of the body that bias us for movement. Dopamine was initially thought to be just the building block for epinephrine. However, dopamine does a lot of things on its own. It's not always converted to epinephrine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
I do suggest you talk to a psychiatrist or doctor. I've talked about mucuna purines, which is 99.9% L-DOPA, the precursor to dopamine. There are antidepressants like Welbutrin, buprenorphine is the other name for it, which increase dopamine and epinephrine. However, if you think back to our earlier discussion about dopamine,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Dopamine, if it's very high, creates a sense of pleasure and the desire for more. So you can also become a person for which enough is never enough. The only thing that dopamine really wants is more of the thing that releases dopamine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
And so one of the things that you can do in order to generally just be a happier person, especially if you're a person in pursuit of long-term goals of any kind, is the longer that you can that positive phase of the dopamine release. And the more that you can blunt the pain response to that, the better. And you can actually do this cognitively.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
I used to joke with my lab that when we'd publish a paper, I would get really excited, but I wouldn't allow myself to get too excited. What I wanted to do instead and what I've still tried to do is try and extend the arc of that positive experience as long as I possibly can, simply by thinking back like, oh, that was really cool. I really enjoyed doing that work. I really enjoyed the discovery.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
I really enjoyed doing that with the people that I was working with at the time. What a pleasure that was. So you can extend pleasure without having to engage in the behavior over and over. That's extending the arc of that dopamine release. As well, it offsets some of the pain of not having that experience occur over and over and over again.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Now for the high performers out there, you're probably familiar with this. Many people who have a big achievement, their first thoughts are, well, now what? What am I going to do next? How am I ever going to exceed that? And indeed, many people who are very high on this kind of dopamine sensation and novelty seeking scale, are prone to addiction.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
They're prone to the rabid pursuit of external goals, of exteroception, to the neglect of these internal mechanisms that allow them to feel calm and happy. So for people that are very driven, very motivated,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
adopting a practice of being able to engage in the here and now, the sort of almond type practices we talked about earlier of learning how to achieve a really good night's sleep on a regular basis through tools and mechanisms I talked about in previous podcasts, gives us sort of balance to the pleasure seeking and offsetting of pain and the pleasure in the here and now.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Dopamine is released from several sites in the brain and body, but perhaps the most important one for today's discussion about motivation and reward is something that's sometimes just called the reward pathway. For the aficionados, it's sometimes called the mesolimbic reward pathway. but it's fundamentally important to your desire to engage in action.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
So pleasure is really two things. It's a joy in pursuit, but it's also the joy in what you have. The cool thing is you can actually regulate this whole system in a way that will steer you or lean you towards more positive anticipation of things in life and less disappointment. It's simply a matter of adjusting what we call the dopamine schedule.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. We should all know that proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
In fact, even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance to a considerable degree. It's also important that you're not just hydrated, but that you get adequate amounts of electrolytes in the right ratios. Drinking a packet of Element dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate amounts of hydration and electrolytes.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of both, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I'll also drink a packet of Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
There are a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. I like the watermelon. I like the raspberry. I like the citrus. Basically, I like all of them. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim an Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement spelled L-M-N-T. So it's drinkelement.com slash Huberman
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
In order to understand how to control the dopamine system, how to leverage it for a better life, you need to understand the results of a very important experiment. This experiment was able to separate pleasure from motivation. It's a very simple, but like many simple experiments, a very elegant experiment. What they did, and this has now been done in animals and in humans, they offered rats food.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
It was a food that they particularly liked. And the animals would lever press for a pellet of food, kind of classic experiment. They'd eat the food and they presumably liked the food because they were motivated to press the lever and eat it, great. They took other rats, They eliminated the dopamine neurons. You can do this by injection of a neurotoxin that destroys these neurons.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Today, we're going to talk about an extremely important topic that's central to our daily life, and that's motivation. We're going to talk about pleasure and reward. What underlies our sense of pleasure or reward? We're going to talk about addictions as well. We're going to talk about the neurochemistry of drive and mindset.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
So they actually had no dopamine in their brain. They have no ability to release dopamine. And they gave them a lever, the rats would sit there and they'd hit the lever and they'd eat the food. They still enjoyed the food. So you say, well, okay, so dopamine isn't involved in motivation and it isn't involved in pleasure. No, it absolutely is.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
They could still enjoy the food, but if they moved the rat literally one body length away from the lever, what they found was the animals that had dopamine would move over to the lever, press it and eat. And the ones, the rats that did not have dopamine available to them wouldn't even move one body length, one rat length to the lever in order to press it and get the food.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Dopamine therefore is not about the ability to experience pleasure. It is about motivation for pleasure. And so many of you are probably thinking, wow, I'm not a very motivated person. Like you talked about the one kind of procrastination earlier. What about when I just feel kind of meh about life? Now, for some of you, there may be a real clinical depression and you should talk to a professional.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
And it's fundamentally important for people getting addicted to substances or behaviors. So how does this work? Well, you've got a structure in the deep part of your brain called the VTA. The VTA or ventral tegmental area contains neurons that send what we call axons, little wires that spit out dopamine at a different structure called the nucleus accumbens.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
There are very good prescription drugs. that can really help people. There's also great non-drug treatments of psychotherapy and other treatments that are being developed in addition to psychotherapy and the various kinds of psychoanalysis, et cetera, that one can use. I think the data really point to the fact that a combination of pharmacology and talk therapies are generally best.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
And there are a huge range of these things. I know many of you are in these professions. We're not going to talk about that right now. There is a compound that's kind of interesting in the supplement space that isn't mucunipurine's L-DOPA. It's not L-tyrosine that isn't, promoting massive releases of dopamine or even dopamine alone, but a combination of dopamine and serotonin.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
And it's an intriguing molecule. It's sold over the counter. Again, you have to check with your healthcare provider before you would take anything or remove anything. That's very important. But it's phenylethylamine or PEA. PEA or beta phenylethylamine releases dopamine at low levels, but also serotonin at low levels.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
So it's kind of a cocktail of the motivation molecules, as well as the quote unquote here and now molecules. And people's response to this varies widely, but many people report feeling heightened sense of mental acuity, wellbeing, et cetera. It is a bit of a stimulant, like anything that triggers activation of the dopamine and norepinephrine pathway, but it is an interesting supplement.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
So now let's talk about what is a dopamine schedule and how you can leverage this in order to have heightened levels of motivation, but not get so much dopamine that you're experiencing a crash afterwards. And also so that you can experience heightened pleasure from the various pursuits that you are engaged in in life. And here's the key principle.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Dopamine is very subjective, meaning you can either allow yourself to experience the pleasure of reaching a milestone of achieving or some craving or not. It's actually pretty powerful what one can do with the subjective system. In fact, I'm going to describe you an experiment that highlights just how powerful
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
the subjective readout or the subjective interpretation of a given experience really can be even at the level of pharmacology. And the title of the experiment is expectation for stimulant type modifies caffeine's effects on mood and cognition. And this was done in college students. And it's a fascinating study. What they did is they gave
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
either placebo, essentially nothing, or 200 milligrams of caffeine. 200 milligrams of caffeine is about what's in a typical coffee, like a medium coffee that you would buy, a drip coffee. So they took 65 undergraduate students in college, they randomized them to either placebo or caffeine, and they told them that they were either getting caffeine or Adderall.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Now, Adderall cognitively carries a very different expectation. College students know Adderall to be a much stronger stimulant than caffeine. They know it to create a sort of high. This is the way the students described it. And they thought that it would increase their level of focus and their ability to perform work.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
So what's really interesting is there was definitely an effect of placebo versus caffeine. That's not surprising, however, right? You take a placebo, you may or may not feel more alert, but you take 200 milligrams of caffeine, very likely you're going to feel very alert. But there was also an effect of whether or not the students thought they were getting caffeine or Adderall.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
The subjects receiving caffeine reported feeling more stimulated, anxious, and motivated than the subjects that received the placebo. Okay. But the ones that expected Adderall reported stronger amphetamine effects. They performed better on a working memory test.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
And those two structures, VTA and nucleus accumbens, form really the core machinery of the reward pathway and the pathway that controls your motivation for anything. You can think of them like an accelerator. They bias you for action. However, within the reward pathway, there's also a break.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
And in general, they had all the increased cognitive effects that would have been seen with Adderall, but they were only ingesting caffeine. So it led to heightened performance simply because the students thought they were getting Adderall.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
And I think this is very important because I think that it points to the fact that the top down, the kind of higher level cognitive processes are impacting even the most basic fundamental aspects of say dopamine release or adrenaline release or epinephrine release in ways that can positively impact performance. In this case, it was a positive improvement in working memory and focus.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
So today we've talked a lot about the dopamine system and those kinds of schedules that will allow craving or addiction. But what's the schedule of dopamine that's going to allow you to maximize on your pursuit of pleasure and your elimination of pain? And we get the answer to that from our good friend gambling.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
The reason gambling works, the reason why people will throw their lives away, the reason why people go back again and again and again to places like Las Vegas and Atlantic City is because of the hope and anticipation. Those are cities and places built on dopamine. They are leveraging your dopamine system.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
And as a friend of mine, who's a certified addiction treatment specialist tells me that gambling addiction is a particularly sinister because the next time really could be everything. Unlike other addictions, the next time really could change everything. And that's embedded in the mind of the gambling addict.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
And rarely does it work out in favor of the wellbeing of the gambling addict and their family. However, the intermittent reinforcement schedule was discovered long ago by scientific researchers. So this is the slot machine that every once in a while gives you a win to keep you playing. This is the
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
the probability of winning on the craps table or the roulette table or at blackjack, just often enough that you're willing to buy tickets, head out there, play again, go downstairs again from your room, even though you swore you were done for the night. Intermittent reinforcement is the most powerful form of dopamine reward schedule to keep you doing something. So we can export that.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
We can use it for good. If there's something that you're pursuing in life, whether or not it's an academic goal or a financial goal or relationship goal,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
One of the things that you can do to ensure that you will remain on the path to that goal for a very long time, and that you will continue to exceed your previous performance, as well as continue to enjoy the dopamine release that occurs when you hit the milestones that you want to achieve is to occasionally remove rewards subjectively.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Let's say you set out a goal of making, I'm going to make this quantitative with respect to finances, because it just is an easy description, but this could also be in sport. This could be in school. This could be in music, could be in anything, creative endeavors.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
But let's say you set out a certain financial goal, or let's say you want to get a certain number of followers on whatever social media platform. As you reach each one of those goals, you should know now that the amount of dopamine is not going to peak. It's actually going to diminish and make you crave more.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
The break or restriction on that dopamine, which controls when it's released and how much it's released, is the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is the neural real estate right behind your forehead. You hear about it for decision-making, executive function, for planning, et cetera. And indeed it's responsible for a lot of those.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
The key to avoiding that crash, but to still keep it in healthy levels that will allow you to continue your pursuit is as you are staircasing toward your goal, you actually want to blunt the reward response for some of those intermediate goals. Now, I'm not telling you you shouldn't celebrate your wins, but I'm telling you not to celebrate all of them.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Or as a good friend of mine who recently, fortunately for him, had a great financial success, he asked me and somebody else, a good friend of mine who's very tuned into dopamine reward schedules, understands how they work at a really deep level. And he said, I don't know what to do next. And we said, oh, well, that's simple. You should just give most of it away.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
And this wasn't a ploy to receive any of the money ourselves. This was really about reducing the impact of that reward. Now, hopefully giving them money away if you already have enough of it would be something that was rewarding in and of itself.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
But if you're a student who's pursuing goals in university, or you're an athlete who's pursuing goals, it actually makes sense from a rational perspective. Once you understand these mechanisms,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
to hit a new high point of performance or to get that A plus or for you, if it's an A minus, et cetera, and to tell yourself, okay, that was good, but to actually actively blunt the reward, to not go and celebrate too intensely, because in doing that, you keep your dopamine system in check and you ensure that you're going to stay on the path of continued pursuit, not just for that thing, but for all things.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Big increases in dopamine lead to big crashes in dopamine and big increases in dopamine up the ante. So you can lift what Las Vegas and Atlantic City and other gambling mechanisms and places have known for a long time. They lifted it from the scientists. You can now take it back and you can start to leverage that and you just make it intermittent. You reward yourself.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
not on a predictable schedule. So not every other time or every third time or every 10th time, but sometimes it's three in a row, then not at all for 10 days. So reward is important. Self-reward is critically important, but make sure that you're not doing it on such a predictable schedule that you burn out these dopamine circuits or that you undercut your own ability to strive and achieve.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Hopefully you now know far more about the dopamine system, reward and motivation than you did at the beginning of this podcast.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Hopefully you also understand the other side of dopamine and reward, which is pain and the balance of this pleasure pain system, as well as the molecules that we call or that were described in the molecule of more book, I should say, as the here and now molecules, things like serotonin and the endocannabinoids. Finally, I want to thank you for your time and attention today.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
I hope you learned a lot and that you learned a lot of possible tools that you could incorporate into your life as it relates to motivation and emotions. Thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
It's this really unique real estate that we were all endowed with as humans. Other animals don't have much of it. We have a lot of it. And that prefrontal cortex acts as a brake on the dopamine system. And that brings us to the important feature of motivation, which is that motivation is a two-part process, which is about balancing pleasure and pain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
So when you're just sitting around, not doing much of anything, this reward pathway is releasing dopamine at a rate of about three or four times per second. It's kind of firing at a low level. If suddenly you get excited about something, you anticipate something, Not receive an award, but you get excited in an anticipatory way.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
then the rate of firing, the rate of activity in this reward pathway suddenly increases to like 30 or 40 times. And it has the effect of creating a sense of action or desire to move in the direction of the thing that you're craving. In fact, it's fair to say that dopamine is responsible for wanting and for craving.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
And that's distinctly different from the way that you hear it talked about normally, which is that it's involved in pleasure. So yes, dopamine is released in response to sex. It's released in response to food. It's released in response to a lot of things, but it's mostly released in anticipation and craving for a particular thing.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
It has the effect of narrowing our focus for the thing that we crave. And that thing could be as simple as a cup of coffee. It could be as important as a big board meeting. It could be a big final exam. It could be the person that we're excited to meet or see. Dopamine doesn't care about what you're craving. It just releases at a particular rate.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. As somebody who's been involved in research science for almost three decades and in health and fitness for equally as long, I'm constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental health, physical health, and performance.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
I discovered AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast or even knew what a podcast was, and I've been taking it every day since. I find that AG1 greatly improves all aspects of my health. I simply feel much better when I take it. AG1 uses the highest quality ingredients in the right combinations, and they're constantly improving their formulas without increasing the cost.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
But for now, let's just talk about the neuroscience of motivation and reward, of pleasure and pain, because those are central to what we think of as emotions, whether or not we feel good, whether or not we feel we're on track in life, whether or not we feel we're falling behind. So motivation is fundamental to our daily life. It's what allows us to get out of bed in the morning.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Whenever I'm asked if I could take just one supplement, what would that supplement be? I always say AG1. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. For this month only, January 2025, AG1 is giving away 10 free travel packs and a year supply of vitamin D3K2.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim the 10 free travel packs and a year supply of vitamin D3K2. If we just take a step back and we look at the scientific data on... how much the dopamine firing increases in response to different things, you get a pretty interesting window into how your brain works and why you might be motivated or not motivated.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Let's say you're hungry or you're looking forward to a cup of coffee. or you're going to see your partner. Well, your dopamine neurons are firing at a low rate until you start thinking about the thing that you want or the thing that you're looking forward to. When you eat that food, the amount of dopamine that's released in this reward pathway goes up about 50% above baseline.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Sex, which is fundamental to our species continuation and reproduction, sex does release dopamine and it increases dopamine levels about 100%. So it basically doubles them. Nicotine increases the amount of dopamine about 150% above baseline. Cocaine and amphetamine increase the amount of dopamine that's released a thousand fold within about 10 seconds of consuming the drug.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
However, just thinking about food, about sex, about nicotine, if you like nicotine or cocaine or amphetamine can increase the amount of dopamine that's released to the same degree as actually consuming the drug.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Now it depends in some cases, for instance, the cocaine user, the addict that wants cocaine, can't just think about cocaine and increase the amount of that's released about a thousand fold. It's actually much lower, but it's just enough to put them on the motivation track for it to crave that particular thing. Now, there are reasons why you would have brain circuitry like this.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
I mean, brain circuitry like this didn't evolve to get you addicted. Brain circuitry like this evolved in order to motivate behaviors toward particular goals. Water when you're thirsty, sex in order to reproduce. These things and these brain areas and neurons were part of the evolutionary history that led to the continuation of our species.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Things like cocaine and amphetamine are disastrous for most people because they release so much dopamine and they create these closed loops where people then only crave the particular thing, cocaine and amphetamine, that leads to those massive amounts of dopamine release. Most things don't release that level of dopamine. And nowadays there's a ton of interest in social media and in video games.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
And there have been some measurements of the amount of dopamine released. Video games, especially video games that have a very high update speed where there's novel territory all the time, novelty is a big stimulus of dopamine. Those can release dopamine somewhere between nicotine and cocaine. So very high levels of dopamine release.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Social media is an interesting one because the amount of dopamine that's released in response to logging onto social media initially could be quite high, but it seems likely that there's a taper in the amount of dopamine, and yet people still get addicted. So why? Why is it that we can get addicted to things that fail to elicit the same massive amount of pleasure that they initially did?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
It's what allows us to pursue long-term goals or short-term goals. Motivation and the chemistry of motivation is tightly wound in with the neurochemistry of movement. In fact, the same single molecule, dopamine, is responsible for our sense of motivation and motivation for movement. It's a fascinating molecule and it lies at the center of so many great things in life.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
being addicted to something isn't just about the fact that it feels so good that you want to do it over and over again. And that's because of this pleasure-pain balance that underlies motivation.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
So let's look a little bit closer at the pleasure-pain balance because therein lies the tools for you to be able to control motivation toward healthy things and avoid motivated behaviors towards things that are destructive for you.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
There are a lot of reasons why people try novel behaviors, whether or not those are drugs or whether or not those are adventure thrill-seeking things, or they take a new class. As you'll notice, I'm not placing any judgment or value on these different behaviors. Although I think it's fair to point out that for most people, addictive drugs like cocaine and amphetamine are very destructive.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
actually we know that about 15 to 20% of people have a genetic bias towards addiction that you sometimes hear that the first time that you use a drug, you can become addicted to it. That's actually not been shown to be true for most things and most people, but for some people that actually is true. But in any case, the way that addiction works
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
and the way that motivation works generally in the non-addictive setting is that when you anticipate something, a little bit of dopamine is released. And then when you reach that thing, you're engaged in that thing, the amount of dopamine goes up even further.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
But as you repeatedly pursue a behavior and you repeatedly engage with a particular thing, let's say you love running or you love chocolate, as you eat a piece of chocolate, Believe it or not, it tastes good. And then there's a shift away from activation of dopamine. And there are other chemicals that are released that trigger a low level sense of pain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Now you might not feel it as physical pain, but the craving that you feel is both one part dopamine and one part, the mirror image of dopamine, which is the pain or the craving for yet another piece of chocolate. And this is a very important and subtle feature of the dopamine system that's not often discussed. People always talk about just as pleasure.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
You love social media, so it gives you dopamine, and so you engage in that. You like chocolate, it releases dopamine, so you do that. But for every bit of dopamine that's released, there's another circuit in the brain that creates, you can think of it as kind of like a downward deflection in pleasure. So you engage in something you really want, and there's an increase in pleasure.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
without you doing anything there's a mirror image of that which is a downward deflection in pleasure which we're calling pain so for every bit of pleasure there is a mirror image experience of pain and they overlap in time very closely so it's sometimes hard to sense this but try it the next time you eat something really delicious you'll take a bite it tastes delicious and part of the experience is to want more of that thing this is true for any pleasurable experience
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Now, the diabolical part about dopamine is that because it didn't evolve in order to get you to indulge in more and more and more of something, what happens is that initially you experience an increase in pleasure and you also experience this increase in pain shortly after or woven in with the pleasure. that makes you want more of that thing.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
But with each subsequent time that you encounter that thing, the experience of dopamine release and pleasure is diminished a little bit. And the diabolical thing is that the pain response is increased a little bit. And this is best observed in the context of drug seeking behavior.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
The first time someone decides to take cocaine or amphetamine, they will experience a huge dopamine release and they will feel likely very good. However, the next time they take it, it won't feel quite as good. And it won't feel even as good the third time or the next time. But the amount of pain, the amount of craving that they experienced for the drug will increase over time.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
So much of our pursuit of pleasure is simply to reduce the pain of craving. So the next time you experience something you really like, I don't want to take you out of that experience, but it's really important that you notice this, that if there's something you really enjoy, part of that enjoyment is about the anticipation and wanting of more of that thing. And that's the pain system in action.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
And it lies at the center of so many terrible aspects of life, namely addiction and certain forms of mental disease. So if ever there was a double-edged blade in the world of neuroscience, it's dopamine. there's a fundamental relationship between dopamine released in your brain and your desire to exert effort.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Eight Sleep makes it very easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to program the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation of the Pod Cover called the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity. I find that very useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night. warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
It also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring. If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, you can go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to access their Black Friday offer right now. With this Black Friday discount, you can save up to $600 on their Pod 4 Ultra. This is Eight Sleep's biggest sale of the year.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Eight Sleep currently ships to the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Matina. Matina makes loose leaf and ready-to-drink yerba mate.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
Now, I've often discussed yerba mate's benefits, such as regulating blood sugar, its high antioxidant content, the ways it can improve digestion, and its possible neuroprotective effects. It's for all those reasons that yerba mate is my preferred source of caffeine. I also drink yerba mate because I simply love the taste.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
And while there are a lot of different choices out there of yerba mate drinks, my personal favorite far and away is Matina. It's made of the highest quality ingredients, which gives it a really rich, but also a really clean taste. So none of that tannic aftertaste.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Increase Motivation & Drive
In fact, given how amazing Matina tastes and their commitment to quality, I decided to become a part owner in the company earlier this year. In particular, I love the taste of Matina's canned zero sugar cold brew yerba mate, which I personally helped develop. I drink at least three cans of those a day now. I also love their loose leaf matina, which I drink every morning from the gourd.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. And now my conversation with Dr. Lex Friedman. We meet again. We meet again. I have a question that I think is on a lot of people's minds or ought to be on a lot of people's minds.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
Given Maui Nui's exceptional protein to calorie ratio, this protein target is achievable without having to eat too many calories. Their venison delivers 21 grams of protein with only 107 grams per serving, which is an ideal ratio for those of us concerned with maintaining or increasing muscle mass while supporting metabolic health. They have venison steaks, ground venison, and venison bone broth.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
I personally love all of them. In fact, I probably eat a Maui Nui venison burger pretty much every day. And if I don't do that, I eat one of their steaks. And sometimes I also consume their bone broth. And if you're on the go, they have Maui Nui venison sticks, which have 10 grams of protein per stick with just 55 calories. I eat at least one of those a day to meet my protein requirements.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
Right now, Maui Nui is offering Huberman podcast listeners a limited collection of my favorite cuts and products. It's perfect for anyone looking to improve their diet with delicious, high-quality protein. Supplies are limited, so go to mauinuivenison.com slash huberman to get access to this high-quality meat today. Again, that's mauinuivenison.com slash huberman.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
does interacting with a robot change you? Does it, in other words, do we develop relationships to robots?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
So when I think about human relationships, I don't always break them down into variables, but we could explore a few of those variables and see how they map to human robot relationships. One is just time, right? If you spend zero time with another person at all in cyberspace or on the phone or in person, you essentially have no relationship to them.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
If you spend a lot of time, you have a relationship. This is obvious, but I guess one variable would be time. How much time you spend with the other entity, robot or human. The other would be wins and successes. You enjoy successes together. The other would be failures. When you struggle with somebody, you know, when you struggle with somebody, you grow closer.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
So I've never conceptualized robot human interactions this way. So tell me more about how this might look. Are we thinking about a human appearing robot? What is the ideal human robot relationship?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
There may be relationships that are far better than the sorts of relationships that we can conceive in our minds right now based on what these machine relationship interactions could teach us. Do I have that right? Yeah, I think so.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
I love this desire to share the delight of an interaction with a robot. And as you describe it, I actually, I find myself starting to crave that because we all have those elements from childhood where or from adulthood where we experience something, we want other people to feel that. And I think that you're right. I think a lot of people are scared of AI.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
I think a lot of people are scared of robots. My only experience of a robotic like thing is my Roomba vacuum. where it goes about actually was pretty good at picking up Costello's hair when he was shed. And then, and I was grateful for it.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
But then when it would, when I was on a call or something and it would get caught on a wire or something, I would find myself getting upset with the Roomba in that moment. I'm like, what are you doing? And obviously it's just doing what it does. But that's a kind of mostly positive, but slightly negative interaction.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
But what you're describing has so much more richness and layers of detail that I can only imagine what those relationships are like. Well, there's a few, just a quick comment.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
Yeah, so probably seven or eight. That's a lot of Roombas. So you have these seven or so Roombas. You deploy all seven at once?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
So along the lines of this, the different sorts of relationships that one could have with robots and the fear, but also some of the positive relationships that one could have. There's so much dimensionality. There's so much to explore. Yeah.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
but uh power dynamics in relationships are very interesting because the the obvious ones that um the unsophisticated view of this is you know one there's a master and a servant right but there's also manipulation there's benevolent manipulation you know children do this with parents puppies do this puppies turn their head and look cute and maybe give out a little little noise kids coo
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
And parents always think that they're doing this because they love the parent. But in many ways, studies show that those coups are ways to extract the sorts of behaviors and expressions from the parent that they want. The child doesn't know it's doing this. It's completely subconscious, but it's benevolent manipulation.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
So there's one version of fear of robots that I hear a lot about that I think most people can relate to where the robots take over and they become the masters and we become the servants. But there could be another version that, you know, in certain communities that I'm certainly not a part of, but they call topping from the bottom, where the robot is actually manipulating you into doing things.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
But you are under the belief that you are in charge, but actually they're in charge. And so I think that's one that... If we could explore that for a second, you could imagine it wouldn't necessarily be bad, although it could lead to bad things.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
The reason I want to explore this is I think people always default to the extreme, like the robots take over and we're in little jail cells and they're out having fun and ruling the universe. What sorts of manipulation can a robot potentially carry out, good or bad?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function. Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient levels, and much more. They've also recently added tests for toxins such as BPA exposure from harmful plastics and tests for PFASs or forever chemicals.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
Function not only provides testing of over a hundred biomarkers key to your physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors who are expert in the relevant areas. For example, in one of my first tests with function, I learned that I had elevated levels of mercury in my blood.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
Function not only helped me detect that, but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, I'd been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification. And I should say, by taking a second function test,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
that approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by function simplicity and at the level of cost. It is very affordable.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. Today's episode is also brought to us by David. David makes a protein bar unlike any other. It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. That's right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from protein. This is 50% higher than the next closest protein bar.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
David protein bars also taste amazing. Even the texture is amazing. My favorite bar is the chocolate chip cookie dough. But then again, I also like the new chocolate peanut butter flavor and the chocolate brownie flavored. Basically, I like all the flavors a lot. They're all incredibly delicious. In fact, the toughest challenge is knowing which ones to eat on which days and how many times per day.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
I limit myself to two per day, but I absolutely love them. With David, I'm able to get 28 grams of protein in the calories of a snack, which makes it easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight per day, and it allows me to do so without ingesting too many calories.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
I'll eat a David protein bar most afternoons as a snack, and I always keep one with me when I'm out of the house or traveling. They're incredibly delicious. And given that they have 28 grams of protein, they're really satisfying for having just 150 calories. If you'd like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, that's davidprotein.com slash Huberman.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
We can't and nor should we do whatever we want with animals. We have a USDA. We have departments of agriculture that deal with animal care and use committees for research, for farming and ranching and all that. So when you first said it, I thought, wait, why would there be a bill of robotic rights? But it absolutely makes sense in the context of everything we've been talking about up until now.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
Let's – If you're willing, I'd love to talk about dogs because you've mentioned dogs a couple times, a robot dog. You had a biological dog.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
Yeah. And you've been going. And as you're saying this, I'm definitely fighting back the tears.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
i uh thank you for sharing that that uh i guess we're about to both cry over our dead dogs that it was that it was bound to happen just given when this is when this is happening um yeah it's uh how long how long did you know that costello was not doing well um well let's see a year ago during the start of
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
What is artificial intelligence and how is it different from things like machine learning and robotics?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
About six months into the pandemic, he started getting abscesses and he was not his behavior changed and something really changed. And then I put him on testosterone because which helped a lot of things. It certainly didn't cure everything, but it helped a lot of things. He was dealing with joint pain, sleep issues, and then it just became a very slow decline.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
to the point where two, three weeks ago, he had a closet full of medication. I mean, this dog was, it was like a pharmacy. It's amazing to me when I looked at it the other day, I still haven't cleaned up and removed all his things, because I can't quite bring myself to do it. But- Do you think he was suffering?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
Well, so what happened was about a week ago, it was really just about a week ago, it's amazing. He was going up the stairs, I saw him slip. And he was a big dog. He wasn't 200 pounds, but he was about 90 pounds. He's a bulldog. That's pretty big. And he was fit. And then I noticed that he wasn't carrying a foot in the back like it was injured. It had no feeling at all.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
He never liked me to touch his hind paws. And I could do that thing was just flopping there. And then the vet found some spinal degeneration. And I was told that the next one would go. Did he suffer? I sure hope not. But something changed in his eyes. Yeah. It's the eyes again.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
I know you and I spend long hours on the phone and talking about like the eyes and what they convey and what they mean about internal states and for sake of robots and biology of other kinds. But... Do you think something about him was gone in his eyes? I... I think he was real. Here I am anthropomorphizing.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
I think he was realizing that one of his great joys in life, which was to walk and sniff and pee on things, this dog, the fundamental loved
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
to pee on things it was amazing i wondered where he put it he was like a reservoir of urine it was incredible i think oh that's it he's just he put like one drop on the 50 millionth plant and then we get to the 50 millionth and one plan and he just have you know leave a puddle and here i am talking about costello peeing um he was losing that ability to stand up and do that he was falling down while he was doing that and i i do think
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
He started to realize and the passage was easy and peaceful. But, you know, I'll say this. I'm not ashamed to say it. I mean, I wake up every morning since then. Just I don't even make the conscious decision to allow myself to cry. I wake up crying. And I'm fortunately able to make it through the day thanks to the great support of my friends and you and my family. But I miss him, man.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
You miss him? Yeah, I miss him. And I feel like he, you know, Homer Costello, you know, the relationship to One's Dog is so specific. So that party is gone. That's the hard thing. You know, yeah. What I think is different is that I made the mistake, I think.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
I hope it was a good decision, but sometimes I think I made the mistake of I brought Costello a little bit to the world through the podcast, through posting about him. I anthropomorphized about him in public. Let's be honest, I have no idea what his mental life was or his relationship to me.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
And I'm just exploring all this for the first time because he was my first dog, but I raised him since he was seven weeks. Yeah, you got to hold it together.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
He's going to be gone for a lot of people too. Well, this is what I'm struggling with. I know how to take care of myself pretty well. Yeah. Not perfectly, but pretty well. And I have good support. I do worry a little bit about how it's going to land and how people will feel. I'm concerned about their internalization. So that's something I'm still iterating on.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
And they have to watch you struggle, which is fascinating. Right. And I've mostly been shielding them from this, but what would make me happiest is if people would internalize some of Costello's best traits. And his best traits were that he was incredibly tough. I mean, he was a 22-inch neck, bulldog, the whole thing. He was just born that way.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
But what was so beautiful is that his toughness is never what he rolled forward. It was just how sweet and kind he was. And so if people can take that, then then there's a win in there someplace.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
Yeah, in time. You're hitting on all the key buttons here. I want that to, we're thinking about, you know, ways to kind of immortalize Costello in a way that's real, not just, you know, creating some little logo or something silly.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
you know costello much like david goggins is a a person but goggins also has grown into kind of a verb you're gonna goggins this or you're and there's an adjective like that's extreme like it um i think that for me costello was all those things he was a he was a being he was his own being he was a noun uh a verb and an adjective so and he had this amazing superpower that i wish i could get which is this ability to get everyone else to do things for you without doing a damn thing which
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
The Costello effect, as I call it. So as an idea, I hope he lives on. There's a saying that I heard when I was a graduate student that that's just been ringing in my mind throughout this conversation in such a, I think, appropriate way, which is that, Lex, you are in a minority of one. You are truly one.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
extraordinary in your ability to encapsulate so many aspects of science, engineering, public communication about so many topics, martial arts, and the emotional depth that you bring to it, and just the purposefulness. And I think if it's not clear to people, it absolutely should be stated, but I think it's abundantly clear that just the amount of time and thinking that you put into things is...
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
It is the ultimate mark of respect. So I'm just extraordinarily grateful for your friendship and for this conversation.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
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Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
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Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
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Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
As someone who's been involved in research science for more than three decades and in health and fitness for equally as long, I'm constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental health, physical health, and performance. I discovered and started taking AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast, and I've been taking it every day since.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
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Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
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Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
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Huberman Lab
Essentials: Machines, Creativity & Love | Dr. Lex Fridman
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Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today is episode three of the podcast, and it is office hours.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
There's plasticity that we can access in sleep to improve rates of learning and depth of learning from the previous day or so. And there's this NSDR, non-sleep deep rest, that can be done without sleeping to improve rates of learning and depth of retention, et cetera. So let's consider those both, and you can incorporate these protocols if you like.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
Again, these are based on quality peer-reviewed studies. First, let's talk about learning in sleep. This is based on some work that I'll provide the reference for that was published in the journal Science.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
excellent journal matt walker also talks about some of these studies done by others in his book why we sleep these studies just to remind you are structured the following way an individual is brought into a laboratory look does a spatial memory task so there tends to be a screen with a bunch of different objects popping up on the screen in different locations so it might be a bulldog
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
but those cells adjust their sensitivity such that they will not activate the triggers in the brain that convey daytime signals when they view moonlight, even a full moon, a really bright moon or fire, because we talked about just how crucial it is to avoid bright lights between the hours of about 10 PM and 4 AM, except when you need to view things for sake of safety or work and so forth.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
there might be a cat, then it might be an apple, then it might be a pen in different locations. And that sounds trivially easy, but with time you can imagine it gets pretty tough to come back a day later and remember if something presented in a given location was something you've seen before and whether or not it was presented in that location or a different location.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
If you had enough objects and change the locations enough, this can actually be quite difficult. In this study, the subjects either just went through the experiment or a particular odor was released into the room while they were learning, or a tone was played in the room while they were learning.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
And then during the sleep of those subjects, the following night and the following night, this was done repeatedly for several nights, the same odor or tone was played while the subjects were sleeping. They did this in different stages of sleep, non-REM sleep and rapid eye movement sleep, REM sleep. They did this with just the tone in sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
If the subjects had the odor, but not the tone, they did it with putting the tone. if they had had the odor while learning. So basically all the controls, all the things you'd want to see done to make sure that it wasn't some indirect effect, some modulatory effect, okay?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
And what they found was that providing the same stimulus, the odor if they smelled an odor or a tone, if the subjects heard a tone while learning, If they just delivered that odor or tone while the subject slept, rates of learning and retention of information was significantly greater. This is pretty cool.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
What this means is that you can cue the subconscious brain, the asleep brain, to learn particular things better. So how might you implement this? Well, you could play with this if you want. I don't see any real challenge to this, provided the odor is a safe one and it doesn't wake you up, and the tone is a safe one and doesn't wake you up.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
You could do this by having a metronome, for instance, while learning something, playing in the background or particular music, and then have that very faintly while you sleep. So you could apply this if you like and try this. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that includes prebiotics and adaptogens.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
I've been drinking AG1 since 2012, and I started doing it at a time when my budget was really limited. In fact, I only had enough money to purchase one supplement, and I'm so glad that I made that supplement AG1.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
The reason for that is even though I strive to eat whole foods and unprocessed foods, it's very difficult to get enough vitamins and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from diet alone in order to make sure that I'm at my best, meaning have enough energy for all the activities I participate in from morning until night, sleeping well at night, and keeping my immune system strong.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
When I take AG1 daily, I find that all aspects of my health, my physical health, my mental health, my performance, recovery from exercise, all of those improve. And I know that because I've had lapses when I didn't take my AG1 and I certainly felt the difference.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
I also noticed, and this makes perfect sense given the relationship between the gut microbiome and the brain, that when I regularly take AG1, that I have more mental clarity and more mental energy. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
For this month only, November 2024, AG1 is giving away a free one-month supply of omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil in addition to their usual welcome kit of five free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. As I've discussed many times before on this podcast, omega-3 fatty acids are critical for brain health, mood, cognition, and more.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim this special offer. The other form of neuroplasticity is not the neuroplasticity that you're amplifying by listening to tones or smelling odors in sleep, but the neuroplasticity that you can access with non-sleep deep rest. So NSDR, non-sleep deep rest,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
as well as short 20 minute naps, which are very close to non-sleep deep rest because people rarely drop into deep states of sleep during short naps, unless they're very sleep deprived. NSDR has been shown to increase rates of learning when done for 20 minute bouts to match an approximately 90 minute bout of learning. So what am I talking about? 90 minute...
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
are these ultradian cycles that I've talked about previously. And we tend to learn very well by taking a 90 minute cycle, transitioning into some focus mode early in the cycle when it's hard to focus and then deep focus and learning feels almost like agitation and strain. And then by the end of that 90 minute cycle, it becomes very hard to maintain focus and learn more information.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
I also received a lot of questions about red light. In principle, red light will not stimulate the melanopsin retinal neurons that wake up the brain and circadian clock and signal daytime. However, most of the red lights, in particular, the red lights that come on these sheets of these products that people are supposed to view them in order to
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
There's a study published in Cell Reports last year, great journal, excellent paper showing that 20 minute naps or light sleep of the sort of non-sleep deep rest taken immediately after or close to, it doesn't have to be immediately after you finish the last sentence of learning or whatever it is, or bar of music.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
But a couple minutes after transitioning to a period of non-sleep deep rest where you're turning off the analysis of duration, path and outcome has been shown to accelerate learning to a significant degree, both the amount of information and the retention of that information.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
So that's pretty cool because this is a cost-free, drug-free way of accelerating learning without having to get more sleep, but simply by introducing these 20 minute bouts.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
I would encourage people if they want to try this to consider the 20 minutes per every 90 minutes of ultradian learning cycle, which brings us to the next thing about learning and plasticity, which is nootropics, AKA smart drugs. This is a big topic. That sigh was a sigh of concern about how to address nootropics in a thorough enough but thoughtful enough way.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
There are elements to learning that we've discussed here before that are very concrete. Things like the ability to focus and put the blinders on to everything else that's happening around you and in your head mainly. right, distractions about things you should be doing, could be doing, or might be doing, and focus on what you need to do.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
And then that's required for triggering the acetylcholine neuromodulator that will then allow you to highlight the particular synapses that will then later change in sleep. So no nootropic allows you to bypass the need for sleep and deep rest. That's important to understand. Right now, most nootropics tend to bundle a bunch of things together. Most of them include some form of stimulant, caffeine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
You can't just ingest more stimulant to be more focused. It doesn't work that way. Most nootropics also include things that increase or are designed to increase acetylcholine, things like alpha-GPC and other things of that sort. And indeed, there's some evidence that they can increase acetylcholine. So we need the focus component. We need the alertness component.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
The alertness component comes from epinephrine, traditionally from caffeine stimulation. The acetylcholine stimulation traditionally comes from choline donors or alpha-GPC, things of that sort.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
And then you would want to have some sort of off switch because anything that's going to really stimulate your alertness that then provides a crash, that crash is not a crash into the deep kind of restful slumber that you would want for learning.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
It's a crash into the kind of, let's just call it lopsided sleep, meaning it's deep sleep, but it lacks certain spindles and other elements of the physiology sleep spindles that really engage the learning process and the reconfiguration of synapses. So right now, my stance on nootropics is that maybe, maybe for occasional use
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
provided it's safe for you, I'm not recommending it, but in general, it tends to use more of a shotgun approach than is probably going to be useful for learning and memory in the long run. Okay, I'd like to continue by talking about the role of temperature in sleep, accessing sleep, staying asleep and wakefulness.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
access a number of health effects, those are way too bright and would definitely wake up your body and brain. So if you're thinking about red light for sake of avoiding the negative effects of light later in the day and at night, then you want that red light to be very, very dim, certainly much dimmer than is on most of those commercial products. Now, do you need red lights?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
Temperature is super interesting as it relates to circadian rhythms and wakefulness and sleep. First, let's take a look at what's happening to our body temperature across each 24-hour cycle. In general, our temperature tends to be lowest right around 4 a.m. and starts creeping up around 6 a.m., 8 a.m. and peaks sometime between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
There's also an important way in which temperature matches day length. In general, as days get longer, it tends to be hotter out. Not always, but in general, that's the way it is. And as days get shorter, it tends to be colder outside. So temperature and day length are also linked. Metabolically, they're linked. Biologically, they're linked, excuse me.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
And atmospherically, they're linked for the reasons that we talked about before about duration of day length and other climate features and so forth. So one of the most powerful things about setting your circadian rhythm properly is that your temperature will start to fall into a regular rhythm.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
And that temperature has a very strong effect on things like metabolism and when you will feel most willing and interested in exercising. Typically, the willingness to exercise and engage in any kind of activity, mental or physical, is going to be when that rise in temperature is steepest, when the slope of that line is greatest.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
That's why 30 minutes after waking is one of those key windows, as well as three hours after waking, and then when temperature actually peaks, which is generally about 11 hours after waking. This is why we say that temperature and circadian rhythm are linked, but they're actually even more linked than that.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
We've talked before about how light enters the eye, triggers activation of these melanopsin cells, which then triggers activation of the suprachiasmatic nucleus, the master circadian clock. And then I always say the master circadian clock informs all the cells and tissues of your body and puts them into a nice cohesive rhythm.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
But what I've never answered was how it actually puts them into that rhythm. And it does it two ways. One is it secretes a peptide. A peptide is just a little protein that floats through the bloodstream and signals to the cells. But the other way is it synchronizes the temperature under which those cells exist. So temperature is actually the effector of the circadian rhythm.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
Nowadays, there's some interest in cold showers and ice baths. Getting into an ice bath is very interesting because you have a rebound increase in thermogenesis.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
Now you should know from the previous episode that as that temperature increases, it will shift your circadian rhythm and which direction it shifts your circadian rhythm will depend on whether or not you're doing it during the daytime or late in the day. If you do it after 8 p.m., it's going to make your day longer, right? Because your body and your central clocks are used to temperature going up
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
early in the day and throughout the day and peaking in the afternoon. If you then increase that further, or you simply increase it over its baseline at 8 p.m.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
after temperature was already falling, even if it's just by a half a degree or a couple of degrees, or you do that with exercise, doesn't have to be with the ice bath, you are extending, you are shifting forward, you're phase delaying your clock, you're convincing your clock and therefore the rest of your body that the day is still going, right?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
You're giving it the perception, the cellular and physiological perception that the day is getting longer and you will want to naturally stay up later and wake up later.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
No, although red lights are rather convenient because you can see pretty well with them on, but if they're dim, they won't wake up the circadian clock. They won't have this dopamine disrupting thing that we talked about in the previous podcast. Okay, a huge number of people asked me about light through windows.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
So for those of you that are having trouble getting up, and this is going to almost sound laughable, but a cold shower first thing in the morning will wake you up, but that's waking you up in the short term because of a different mechanism, which I'll talk about in a moment, but it also is shifting your clock. It's phase advancing your clock.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
in a way that makes you more likely to get up earlier the next day, it's going to make you want to wake up about half hour to an hour earlier the next day than you normally would. Whereas if you do it while your temperature is falling, it will tend to delay and make your body perceive as if the day is getting longer.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
Temperature is again, it's not just one tool to manipulate wake up time and circadian rhythm and metabolism. It is the effector. It is the way that the central circadian clock impacts all the cells and tissues of your body. Light is the trigger. The suprachiasmatic nucleus is the master circadian clock that mediates all these changes.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
Also influenced by non-photic influence like exercise and feeding and things of that sort. But temperature is the effector. Now you can also shift your circadian rhythm with eating. When you travel and you land in a new location and your schedule is inverted 12 hours, one way that we know you can shift your rhythm more quickly is to get onto the local meal schedule.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
Now that probably has to do with two effects. One are changes in temperature and eating induced increases in body temperature. Now you should understand why that would work as well as eating has this anticipatory secretion of hypocretinorexin that I talked about earlier. I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, David. David makes a protein bar unlike any other.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. That's right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from protein. These bars from David also taste amazing. My favorite flavor is chocolate chip cookie dough, but then again, I also like the chocolate fudge flavored one. and I also like the cake flavored one. Basically, I like all the flavors.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
They're incredibly delicious. For me personally, I strive to eat mostly whole foods. However, when I'm in a rush or I'm away from home, or I'm just looking for a quick afternoon snack, I often find that I'm looking for a high quality protein source.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
With David, I'm able to get 28 grams of protein with the calories of a snack, which makes it very easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight each day. And it allows me to do that without taking in excess calories. I typically eat a David Barr in the early afternoon or even mid-afternoon if I want to bridge that gap between lunch and dinner.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
I like that it's a little bit sweet, so it tastes like a tasty snack, but it's also giving me that 28 grams of very high quality protein with just 150 calories. If you would like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, the link is davidprotein.com slash Huberman.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
Setting your circadian clock with sunlight coming through a window is going to take 50 to 100 times longer. You can download the free app, Light Meter, You can have a bright day outside or some sunlight, hold up that app, take a picture. It'll tell you how many Lux are in that environment. Now close the window. And if you want, close the screen or don't open the screen.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
Many people asked questions about food and neurotransmitters and how those relate to sleep, wakefulness, and mood, which is essentially 25 hours of content for me to cover. But I'm going to try and distill out the most common questions. We've talked a lot about neuromodulators like dopamine, acetylcholine, and norepinephrine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
You may notice in those discussions that the precursors to say serotonin is tryptophan. Tryptophan actually comes from the diet. It comes from the foods that we eat. Tyrosine is the precursor to dopamine. It comes from the foods that we eat. And then once we ingest them, those compounds circulate to a variety of different cells and tissues.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
But it is true that our food and the particular foods we eat can influence things like neuromodulator levels to some extent. Nuts and meats, in particular red meats, tend to be rich in things like tyrosine, right?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
That tells you right there that because tyrosine is the precursor of dopamine and dopamine is the precursor of norepinephrine and epinephrine, that those foods tend to lend themselves toward the production of dopamine and epinephrine and the sorts of things that are associated with wakefulness. Now, of course, the volume of food that we eat also impacts our wakefulness.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
If we eat a lot of anything, whether or not it's ribeye steaks, rice, or cardboard, please don't eat cardboard, your stomach, if it's very distended, will draw a lot of blood into your gut and you will divert blood from other tissues and you'll become sleepy. So it's not just about food content, it's also about food volume, all right?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
Fasting states generally are associated with more alertness, epinephrine and so forth. And fed states are generally associated with more quiescence and relaxation, serotonin and the kind of things that lend themselves more towards sleep and less toward alertness. And fed states are generally associated with more quiescence and relaxation,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
and the kind of things that lend themselves more towards sleep and less toward alertness. There are a couple effects of food that are independent, or I should say a couple effects of eating, because the food won't do it when it's sitting across the table, but of eating that are powerful for modulating circadian rhythm, wakefulness, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
Office hours, as many of you know, is where students come to the office of the professor, sit down and ask questions, requesting clarification about things that were confusing, or to simply go down the route of exploring a topic with more depth and detail. Somebody asked, What is the role of moonlight and fire? I'm presuming they mean fireplace or candle or things of that sort.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
And that's because every time we eat, we get eating-induced thermogenesis regardless of what we eat. And now you know from the discussion about temperature that if you're eating early in the day, you're tending to shift your rhythm earlier so that you'll want to wake up earlier the next day.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
If you're eating very late in the day, even if you can fall asleep after that, there's a tendency for you to want to sleep later the next day. So as we finish up, I just want to offer you the opportunity to do an experiment. It might be interesting, just a suggestion, to write down for each day when you went outside to get sunlight and when you did that relative to waking.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
And then you might just take note of when you exercised and you might note when you might've felt chilled or cold, if you do, or you might've felt particularly hot. or if you woke up in the middle of the night when you felt particularly hot.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
You can do all sorts of experiments and you'll see that it will at least half the amount of Lux. And it doesn't scale linearly. Meaning let's say I get 10,000 Lux outside, 5,000 looking out through an open window. And then I close the window and it's 2,500 Lux. it does not mean that you just need to view that sunlight for twice as long if it's half as many lux, okay?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
And then the last thing you might want to do is just write down if and when you did a non-sleep deep rest protocol, an SDR protocol, anything that you're using to deliberately teach your nervous system how to go from more alertness to more calmness in the waking state. By doing this, you can start to reveal some really interesting patterns.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
It's really about taking the patterns of behaviors of waking and light viewing and eating and exercise and superimposing that on what you're learning in this podcast and elsewhere, of course, and what you already know, and trying to see where certain problems or pain points might be arising.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
Maybe you start to find that using cold exposure early in the day is great for you, but using it late, if it's too late in the day, that's not great. Or if you're into the sauna or even like some people, including myself, if I take a hot shower or sit in a hot tub or a sauna late at night, well then,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
And I get a compensatory decrease in body temperature and I sleep great provided I hydrate well enough, because that can be kind of a dehydrating thing to sit in hot conditions.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
But if I do the sauna early in the day, unless I exercise immediately afterward, then I tend to get the temperature drop, which makes sense because we can get in the sauna, you get vasodilation, you throw off a lot of heat, and then you generally get a compensatory drop in temperature.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
If you do that early in the day, that's right about the time that that temperature is trying to entrain the circadian clocks of your body. So I just encourage you to start becoming scientists of your own physiology, of your own brain and body, and seeing how the various tools that you may or may not be using are affecting your patterns of sleep, your patterns of attention and wakefulness.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
It's vitally important that if you do this, that you know that it's not about trying to get onto an extremely rigid schedule. It's really about trying to identify variables that are most powerful for you and that push you in the direction that you want to go. changing the variables that are pushing your body and your mind in the directions that you don't want to go.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
Self-experimentation is something that should be done slowly, carefully. You don't want to be reckless about this. And this is where I would say manipulating one or two variables at a time is really going to be best as opposed to changing a dozen things all at once to really identify what it is that's most powerful for you. And above all, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
It's not like 2,500 lux means you need to look for 10 minutes and 5,000 lux means you look for five minutes. It doesn't scale that way just because the biology doesn't work that way. Best thing to do is to get outside if you can. If you can't, next best thing to do is to keep that window open. It is perfectly fine to wear prescription lenses and contacts.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
Why is it okay to wear prescription lenses and contacts when those are glass also, but looking through a window diminishes the effect? Well, we should think about this. The lenses that you wear in front of your eyes by prescription or on your eyes are designed to focus the light onto your neural retina.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
So let's think about why I'm making some of these recommendations, because I think it can really empower you with the ability to change your behavior in terms of light viewing and other things. depending on time of year, depending on other lifestyle factors.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
The important point to understand is that early in the day, your central circadian clocks and all these mechanisms are looking for a lot of light. Okay, I want to talk about seasonal changes in all these things as they relate to mood and metabolism. So as all of you know, the earth spins once every 24 hours on its axis.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
So part of that day we're bathed in sunlight, depending on where we are, the other half of the day or part of the day we're in darkness. The earth also travels around the sun. 365 days is the time that it takes, one year, to travel around that sun. The earth is tilted. It's not perfectly upright. So the earth is tilted on its axis.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
So depending on where we are in that 365 day journey, and depending on where we are in terms of hemisphere, Northern hemisphere, Southern hemisphere, some days of the year are longer than others. Some are very short, some are very long. If you're at the equator, you experience less variation in day length and therefore night length.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
And if you're closer to the poles, you're going to experience some very long days. And you're also going to experience some very short days, depending on which pole you're at and what time of year it is. The simple way to put this is depending on time of year, the days are either getting shorter or getting longer.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
Now, every cell in your body adjusts its biology according to day length, except your brain body and cells don't actually know anything about day length. It only knows night length. And here's how it works. Light inhibits melatonin powerfully. If days are long and getting longer, that means melatonin is reduced. If days are getting shorter, that melatonin signal is getting longer.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
So every cell in your body actually knows external day length and therefore time of year by way of the duration of the melatonin signal.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
By understanding that light and extended day length inhibit melatonin, and melatonin tends to be associated with a more depressed or reduced functioning of these kind of activity driving and mood elevating signals, and understanding that you have some control over melatonin by way of light, including sunlight, but also artificial light, that should empower you, I believe, to make the adjustments that if you're feeling low, you might ask, how much light am I getting?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
When am I getting that light? because sleep is also important for restoring mood, right? So you need sleep. You can't just crush melatonin across the board and expect to feel good because then you're not going to fall asleep and stay asleep. Melatonin, not incidentally, comes from, is synthesized from serotonin.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that is associated with feelings of wellbeing provided it's at proper levels. but wellbeing of a particular kind, wellbeing associated with quiescence and calm and the feeling that we have enough resources in our immediate kind of conditions.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
In setting circadian rhythms, is it okay to view moonlight at night or will that wake me up? Will a fire in my fireplace or using candlelight be too much light? Great question. Turns out that moonlight, candlelight, and even a fireplace, if you have one of these roaring fires going in the fireplace, do not reset your circadian clock at night and trick your brain into thinking that it's morning.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
It's the kind of thing that comes from a good meal or sitting down with friends or holding a loved one or conversing with somebody that you really bond with. Serotonin does not stimulate action. It tends to stimulate stillness. Very different than the neuromodulator dopamine, which is a reward, feel good neuromodulator that stimulates action and actually,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
Dopamine is the precursor to epinephrine, to adrenaline, which actually puts us into action. It's actually made from dopamine, right? So you can start to think about light as a signal that is very powerful for modulating things like sleep and wakefulness, but also serotonin levels, melatonin levels.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
And I talked about this previously, but I'll mention once more that light in the middle of the night reduces dopamine levels to the point where it can start causing problems with learning and memory and mood. That's one powerful reason to avoid bright light in the middle of the night. I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Element.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. We should all know that proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. In fact, even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance to a considerable degree.
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Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
It's also important that you're not just hydrated, but that you get adequate amounts of electrolytes in the right ratios. Drinking a packet of Element dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate amounts of hydration and electrolytes.
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Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of both, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I'll also drink a packet of Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
There are a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. I like the watermelon, I like the raspberry, I like the citrus. Basically, I like all of them. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim an Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement spelled L-M-N-T.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
So it's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
Now one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
Eight Sleep makes it very easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to program the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation of the Pod Cover called the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity. I find that very useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night. warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, you can go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to access their Black Friday offer right now. With this Black Friday discount, you can save up to $600 on their Pod 4 Ultra. This is Eight Sleep's biggest sale of the year. Eight Sleep currently ships to the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman. Throughout this podcast and in previous episodes, I've been mentioning neuromodulators, things like serotonin and dopamine, which tend to bias certain brain circuits and things in our body to happen and certain brain circuits and things in our body not to happen.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
One of the ones I've mentioned numerous times is epinephrine, which is a neuromodulator that tends to put us into action, make us want to move. In fact, when it's released in high amounts in our brain and body, it can lead to what we call stress or the feeling of being stressed. Several people ask me, what's the difference between epinephrine and adrenaline?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
Even though if you've ever sat close to a fireplace or even a candle, that light seems very bright. And there are two reasons for that that are very important. The first one, is that these neurons in your eye that I discussed in the previous episode, these melanopsin ganglion cells, also called intrinsically photosensitive ganglion cells, those cells adjust their sensitivity across the day.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
Adrenaline is secreted from the adrenal glands, which sit right above our kidneys. Epinephrine is the exact same molecule, except that it's released within the brain. Epinephrine and adrenaline are basically the same thing, and they tend to stimulate agitation and the desire to move. Got a lot of questions about exercise. What forms of exercise are best
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
for sleeping well, when should I exercise, et cetera. There are basically two forms of exercise that we can talk about. Although of course, I realize there are many different forms of exercise. There's much more nuance to this, but we can talk about cardiovascular exercise where the idea is to repeat a movement over and over and over continuously.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
So that'd be like running, biking, rowing, cycling, this kind of thing. or there's a resistance exercise where you're moving, lifting, presumably putting down also, things of progressively heavier and heavier weight that you couldn't do continuously for 30 minutes. Now you will see some places aerobic exercise is best done in the morning and weight training is best done in the afternoon.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
I think there's far more individual variation than that. I think there are, however, a couple of windows that the exercise science literature and the circadian literature points to as windows related to body temperature in which performance injury, in which performance is optimized, injury is reduced and so on. And those tend to be 30 minutes after waking.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
three hours after waking and the later afternoon, usually 11 hours after waking, which is when temperature tends to peak. A note about working out first thing in the morning. Last time we talked about non-photic phase shifts. If you... exercise first thing in the morning, your body will start to develop an anticipatory circuit.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
There's actually plasticity in these circadian circuits that will lead you to want to wake up at the particular time that you exercised the previous three or four days. So that can be a powerful tool, but you still want to get light exposure because it turns out that light and exercise converge to give an even bigger wake up signal to the brain and body. So you might want to think about that.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
Some people find if they exercise late in the day, they have trouble sleeping. In general, intense exercise does that, whereas the kind of lower intensity exercise doesn't. Many of your questions were about neural plasticity, which is the brain and nervous system's ability to change in response to experience.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
There was a question that asked whether or not these really deep biological mechanisms around wakefulness, time of waking, sleep, et cetera, were subject to neuroplasticity. And indeed they are. Some of that plasticity is short-term and some of it is more long-term.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
There's a really good analogy here, which is if you happen to eat on a very tight schedule where every day, say at 8 a.m., noon, and 7 p.m. is when you eat your food, not suggesting you do this, but let's say you were to do that for a couple of days,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
After a few days, you would start to anticipate those meal times where no matter where you were in the world, no matter what was going on in your life, about five to 10 minutes before those meal times, you would start to feel hungry and even a little agitated, which is your body's way of trying to get you to forage for food.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
And that's because of some peptide signals that come from the periphery from your body. Things like hypocretinorexin that signal to the hypothalamus and brainstem to make you active and alert and look for food and feel hungry. So there's kind of an anticipatory circuit
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
that's a chemical circuit, but eventually over time, the neurons, the neural circuits that control hypocretinorexin would get tuned to the neural circuits that are involved in eating and maybe even smell and taste to create a kind of eating circuit that's unique to your pattern, to your rhythms.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
The same thing is true for these waking and exercise and other schedules, including ultradian schedules.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
And those cells respond best to the blue-yellow contrast present in the rising and setting sun, so-called low solar angle sun, also discussed in the previous episode.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
If you wake up in the morning and start getting your sunlight, you start exercising in the morning, or you exercise in the afternoon, pretty soon your body will start to anticipate that and start to secrete hormones and other signals that prepare your body for the ensuing activity of waking up or going to sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
So if you get onto a pattern or a rhythm, even if that rhythm isn't down to the minute, you'll find that there's plasticity in these circuits and it becomes easier to wake up early if that's your thing or exercise at a particular day if that's your thing. That's the beauty of neuroplasticity. a number of people asked, what can I do to increase plasticity? And that really comes in two forms.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
So you have this basic learning session and then a period of time afterwards in which the brain can rehearse what it just did at the beginning of learning any skill. And as we approach from uncertain to skilled to mastery, we want to reduce uncertainty. And that's really what the nervous system is doing. It's trying to eliminate errors and hone in on the correct trajectories.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
If you perform a lot of repetitions and then you use a period immediately after, we don't really have a name for this post-learning kind of idle time for the brain. The brain isn't idle at all. It's actually scripting all these things in reverse that allow for deeper learning and more quick learning.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
But if we fill that time with other things, if we are focused on our phones or we're focused on learning something else, we're focusing on our performance, that's not going to serve us well. At least it's not going to serve the skill learning well. So please, if you're interested in more rapid skill learning, try introducing these sessions. They can be quite powerful.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
But once you're familiar with something and you're performing it well every once in a while, you're accomplishing it better every once in a while, then you can start to cue your attention in very deliberate ways. And so we hear a lot about chunking, about breaking things down into their component parts. But one of the biggest challenges for skill learning is knowing where to place your attention.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
So to dial out again, we're building a protocol across this episode, early sessions. Maybe it's the first one, maybe it's the first 10. But during those initial sessions, the key is to make many errors, to let the reward process govern the plasticity, let the errors open the plasticity, and then after the learning sessions to let the brain go idle.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
at least for a short period of time, and of course, to maximize sleep. As you start incorporating more sessions, you start to gain some skill level, learning to harness and focus your attention on particular features of the movement, independent of the rewards and the feedback, right?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
So the reward is no longer whether or not you struck the target correctly, but simply the motor movement, focusing your, for instance, in a dart throw on the action of your arm, that is embedding the plasticity in the motor pattern most deeply. That's what's been shown by the scientific literature. So we're breaking the learning process down into its component parts.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
as we get more and more skilled, meaning as we make fewer and fewer errors per a given session per unit time, that's when attention can start to migrate from one feature such as the motor sequence to another feature, which is perhaps one's stance and another sequence component of the sequence, which would be the result that's one getting on a trial to trial basis.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
Some of you may be wondering about speed of movement. There are some data, meaning some decent papers out there showing that ultra slow movements, performing a movement essentially in slow motion can be beneficial for enhancing the rate of skill learning. However,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
So let's say you're a runner and you're starting to do some speed work and some sprints and you're running and you can kind of feel whether or not you're running correctly or maybe even have a coach
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
at least from my read of the literature, it appears that ultra slow movements should be performed after some degree of proficiency has already been gained in that particular movement. Now that's not the way I would have thought about it.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
I would have thought, well, you know, if you're learning how to do a proper kick or a punch in martial arts or something that ultra slow movements at first are going to be the way that one can, you know, best learn how to perform a movement. And then you just gradually increase the speed. And it turns out that's not the case. And I probably should have known that.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
And you should probably know that because it turns out that when you do ultra slow movements, two things aren't available to you. One is the proprioceptive feedback is not accurate because fast movements of limbs are very different than slow movements of limbs. So you don't get the opportunity to build in the proprioceptive feedback.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
But the other reason why it doesn't work is that it's too accurate. You don't generate errors. And so the data that I was able to find showed that very slow movements can be beneficial if one is already proficient in a practice. When should you start to introduce slow learning?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
Well, it appears that once you're hitting success rates of about 25 or 30%, that's where the super slow movements can start to be beneficial. But if you're still performing things at a rate of, you know, five or 10% correct and the rest are errors, then the super slow movements are probably not going to benefit you that much. Also super slow movements are not really applicable to a lot of things.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
For instance, you could imagine throwing a dart super slow motion, but if you actually try and throw an actual dart, the dart's just going to fall to the floor, obviously. Some of you already have a fair degree of proficiency of skill in a given practice or sport or instrument. And if you're in this sort of advanced intermediate or advanced levels of proficiency for something,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
and they're correcting your stride, that's closed loop because as you go, you can adjust your behavior and you can adjust the distance of your steps or you can adjust your speed or you can adjust your posture. You're getting feedback on a moment to moment basis. There are essentially three components of any skill that involves motor movement. And those are,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
There is a practice that you can find interesting data for in the literature, which involves metronoming. So this you'll realize relates to generating repetitions. You can use a metronome to set the cadence of your repetitions. And if you do that, what athletes find is they can perform more repetitions. They can generate more output. You can increase speed.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
a number of really interesting things that are being done with auditory metronoming. There are actually some wild experiments out there. You know, there's a world championship of cup stacking. There's a young lady who I saw could take all these cups spread out on a table and basically just stack them into the perfect pyramid. And the least amount of times all the kids go wild.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
This is something I'd never thought to pursue and frankly never will pursue unless my life depends on it for some reason, but it's really impressive. And if you look at the sequence, because these have been recorded, you can look this up on YouTube.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
what you'll find is that these expert cup stackers, it's just all about error elimination, but there too, metronoming and auditory cues can actually cue them to pick up the cups faster than they would ordinarily and to learn to do that. Now, what's interesting about this and is cool is that your attention is now
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
harnessed to the tone, to the metronome, not necessarily to what you're doing in terms of the motor movement. And so really you need a bit of proficiency. Again, this is for people who are intermediate or advanced, intermediate or advanced. But what you're essentially doing is you're creating an outside pressure, a contingency, so that you generate, again, more errors.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
So it's all about the errors that you get. And if you harness your attention to this outside contingency, this metronome that's firing off and saying, now, go, now, go, now, go.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
not only can you increase the number of repetitions, errors, and successes, but for some reason, and we don't know why, the regular cadence of the tone, of the metronome, and the fact that you are anchoring your movements to some external force, to some external pressure or cue, seems to accelerate the plasticity and the changes and the acquisition of skills beyond what it would be if you just did the same number of repetitions without that outside pressure.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Metina. Metina makes loose leaf and ready to drink yerba mate. Now, I've often discussed yerba mate's benefits, such as regulating blood sugar, its high antioxidant content, the ways it can improve digestion, and its possible neuroprotective effects. It's for all those reasons that yerba mate is my preferred source of caffeine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
I also drink yerba mate because I simply love the taste. And while there are a lot of different choices out there of yerba mate drinks, my personal favorite far and away is Matina. It's made of the highest quality ingredients, which gives it a really rich, but also a really clean taste. So none of that tannic aftertaste.
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Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
In fact, given how absolutely amazing Matina tastes and their commitment to quality, I decided to become a part owner in the company last year. In particular, I love the taste of Matina's canned zero sugar cold brew yerba mate, which I personally helped develop. I drink at least three cans of those a day now. I also love their loose leaf matina, which I drink every morning from the gourd.
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Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
So I add hot water and sip on that thing, and I'll have some cold brews throughout the morning and early afternoon. I find it gives me terrific energy all day long, and I'm able to fall asleep perfectly well at night, no problems. If you'd like to try Matina, you can go to drinkmatina.com slash Huberman.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
Right now, Matina is offering a free one pound bag of loose leaf yerba mate tea and free shipping with the purchase of two cases of their cold brew yerba mate. Again, that's drinkmatina.com slash Huberman to get a free bag of yerba mate loose leaf tea and free shipping. Let's talk about visualization and mental rehearsal.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
sensory perception actually perceiving what you are doing and what's happening around you then there are the actual movements and then there's something called proprioception and proprioception is often discussed as kind of a sixth sense of knowing where your limbs are in relation to your body now skill learning has a lot of other dimensions too
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
Been asked about this a lot and I think it relates back to that kind of a matrix Hollywood idea that we can just be embedded with a skill. But the question we're going to deal with today is, does it help? Does it let you learn things faster? And indeed the answer appears to be yes. However, despite what you've heard, it is not as good.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
It is not a total replacement for physical performance itself. Okay, so I'm going to be really concrete about this. I hear all the time that just imagining contracting a muscle can lead to the same gains as actually contracting that muscle. Just imagining a skill can lead to the same increases in performance as actually executing that skill. And that's simply not the case.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
However, it can supplement or support physical training and skill learning in ways that are quite powerful. Mental rehearsal, closing one's eyes typically, and thinking about a particular sequence of movement and visualizing it in one's quote unquote mind's eye creates activation of the upper motor neurons that's very similar, if not the same as the actual movement.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
And that makes sense because the upper motor neurons are all about the command for movement. They are not the ones that actually execute the movement, okay? Remember, upper motor neurons are the ones that generate the command for movement, not the actual movement. The ones that generate the actual movement are the lower motor neurons and the central pattern generators.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
So the point is, if you want to use visualization training, great, but forget the idea that visualization training is as good as the actual behavior. You hear this all the time. People say, do you know that if you imagine an experience to your brain and to your body, it's exactly the same as the actual experience? Absolutely not. This is not the way the nervous system works. I'm sorry.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
I don't mean to burst anybody's bubble, but your bubble is made of myths. And the fact of the matter is that the brain when it executes movement is generating proprioceptive feedback. And that proprioceptive feedback is critically involved in generating our sense of the experience and in things like learning. So I don't say this because I don't like the idea that visualization couldn't work.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
In fact, visualization does work, but it doesn't work as well. It doesn't create the same milieu, the same chemical milieu, the same environment as actual physically engaging in the behavior, the skill, the resistance training, et cetera. Many of you are probably asking, what can I take in order to accelerate skill learning? Well, the conditions are going to vary, but motivation is key.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
You have to show up to the training session motivated enough to focus your attention and to perform a lot of repetitions in the training sequence. That's just a prerequisite, right? There's no pill that's going to allow you to do fewer repetitions and extract more learning out of fewer repetitions. It's actually more a question of what are the conditions that you can create for yourself
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
such that you can generate more repetitions per unit time. I think that's the right way to think about it. What are the conditions that you can create for yourself in your mind and in your body that are going to allow you to focus?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
There are a few compounds that I think are worth mentioning because of their ability to improve the actual physical performance, the actual execution of certain types of movements. And some of these have also been shown to improve cognitive function, especially in older populations. So I'd be remiss if I didn't at least mention them. I'm only going to mention one today, in fact.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
The one that's particularly interesting and for which there really are a lot of data is alpha-GPC. And I'm going to attempt to pronounce what alpha-GPC actually is. It's alpha-glycerophosphocholine, right? Alpha-GPC, alpha-glycerophosphocholine. See, if I keep doing it over and over, repetitions, alpha-glycerophosphate choline. There, I made an error.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
But those are the main ones that we're going to focus on. So anytime we learn something, we have to decide, is it open loop or closed loop? The second question should be, what should I focus my attention on? Auditory attention, visual attention, or Should I focus on where my limbs are relative to my body or should I focus on the outcome? Okay, this is a critical distinction.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
Okay, so the point is that alpha-GPC, which is at least in the United States is sold over the counter, typically is taken in dosages of about 300 to 600 milligrams. That's a single dose or have been shown to do a number of things that for some of you might be beneficial. One is to enhance power output.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
So if you're engaging in something like resistance training or sprinting or something where you have to generate a lot of power, well then in theory, alpha GPC could be beneficial to you. A study noted a 14% increase in power output. That's pretty substantial, you know, 14%, if you think about it, but it wasn't like a doubling or something of that sort. So as you can see,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
Things like alpha GPC in particular, when they are combined with low levels of caffeine can have these effects of improving power output, can improve growth hormone release, can improve fat oxidation. All these things in theory can support skill learning, but what they're really doing is they're adjusting the foundation upon which you are going to execute these many, many repetitions, okay?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
The same thing would be said for caffeine itself. If that's something that motivates you and gets you out of a chair to actually do the physical training, then that's something that can perhaps improve or enhance the rate of skill learning and how well you retain those skills. Now on a previous episode, I talked about, and this was the episode on epinephrine, on adrenaline.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
I talked about how for mental, for cognitive learning, it makes sense to spike epinephrine, to bump epinephrine levels up, adrenaline levels up after cognitive learning. For physical learning, it appears to be the opposite. That if you are, if caffeine is in your practice, or if you decide to try alpha GPC, that you would want to do that before the training, take it before the training,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
Its effect should extend into the training, presumably throughout. A lot of the questions I get are about how different protocols and things that I described start to collide with one another. So let's say for instance, you go to bed at 1030 and you're going to do your skill training at 930.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
Well, taking a lot of caffeine then is not going to be a good idea because it's going to compromise your sleep. So I'm not here to design the perfect schedule for you because everyone's situations vary.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
So the things to optimize are repetitions, failures, more repetitions, more failures, at the offset of training, having some idle time that could be straight into sleep, or it could be simply letting the brain just go idle
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
five to 10 minutes, not focusing on anything, not scrolling social media, not emailing, ideally not even talking to somebody, just lying down or sitting quietly with your eyes closed, letting those motor sequences replay. Use things like metronoming, where you're cuing your attention to some external cue
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
some stimulus in this case, an auditory stimulus, most likely, and trying to generate more repetitions per unit time. So you now are armed with a lot of information about how you generate movement. And I like to think that you're also armed with a lot of information about how to design protocols that are optimized for you, or if you're a coach for your,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
for your trainees in order to optimize their learning of skills of various kinds. And I should say that for those of you that are short on time or have limited amounts of time, 10 minutes of maximum repetitions, maximum focus, skill learning work is going to be very beneficial. It's really about the density of training inside of a session.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
So I think you should work toward maximal or near maximal density of repetitions and failures, provided they're failures you can perform safely. in order to accelerate skill learning. And don't let some arbitrary, or in this case, the ultradian constraint prevent you from engaging in that practice. In other words, get the work in, get as much work done as you can per unit time.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
You can decide to learn how to do a golf swing or a dance tango and decide that you are going to focus on the
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
And based on the science, based on things that I've seen, based on things that I'm now involved in with various communities, you will see the skill improve vastly at various stages. Sometimes it's a little bit stutter start. It's not always a linear improvement, but you will see incredible improvement in skill. Today we talked all about skill learning. I hope that you'll consider the information.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
You might even decide to try some of these tools. If you do, please let us know your results with them. Give us feedback in the comments. And as always, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
movements of your partner or the positions of your feet or maybe you're going to sense the position and posture of your body which is more proprioceptive okay so you have to allocate your attention and i'm going to tell you how to allocate your attention best in order to learn faster so these are the sorts of decisions that you have to make so we can really simplify things now i've given you a lot of information but we can simplify it basically open loop or closed loop that's one question and what am i going to focus on and then your neurology will take care of the rest
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. Today, we're going to talk about and focus on skill learning. We are going to focus on how to learn skills more quickly, in particular motor skills.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. We should all know that proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
In fact, even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance to a considerable degree. It's also important that you're not just hydrated, but that you get adequate amounts of electrolytes in in the right ratios. Drinking a packet of Element dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate amounts of hydration and electrolytes.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of both, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I'll also drink a packet of Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
There are a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. I like the watermelon. I like the raspberry. I like the citrus. Basically, I like all of them. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim an Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement spelled L-M-N-T.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
pack so now I want to talk about realistic expectations somewhere in Hollywood presumably it got embedded in somebody's mind that instant skill acquisition was possible that you could take a particular pill and you would suddenly have a skill and I love movies but it simply doesn't exist Then the self-help literature created another rule called the 10,000 hours rule.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
And frankly, that doesn't really match the literature, at least the scientific literature either. I like it because it implies that learning takes time, but the 10,000 hours rule overlooks something crucial, which is that it's not about hours, it's about repetitions.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
Now, of course, there's a relationship between time and repetitions, but there are some beautiful experiments that point to the fact that by simple adjustment, of what you are focused on as you attempt to learn a new skill, you can adjust the number of repetitions that you do, you adjust your motivation for learning, and you can vastly accelerate learning.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
So if you're interested in how to perform better, whether or not it's dance or yoga, or even something that's just very repetitive like running or swimming, this podcast episode is for you.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
Some of you may recognize this by its internet name, which is not a scientific term, which is the Super Mario Effect. The Super Mario Effect relates to the game Super Mario Brothers, but you'll see why at the end.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
But basically what they did was they had 50,000 subjects, which is a enormous number of subjects, learn a program, essentially taking words from a computer program or the commands for a computer program that were kind of clustered in a column on the right,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
and those commands are essentially they essentially translate to things like you know go forward and then if it's a right hand turn in the maze then go right and continue until you hit a choice point etc so it's a bunch of instructions but the job of the subjects in these experiments were to organize those instructions in a particular way that would allow a little cursor to move through the maze successfully
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
It takes some skill. You have to know what commands to give in what particular order. And they made that very easy. You could just assemble them in a list over onto the right. Now, there were two groups and some one half of the subjects, if they got it wrong, meaning they entered a command and the cursor would move and it was the wrong command for this little cursor to move through the maze.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
they saw a signal jump up on their screen that said, that did not work, please try again. The subjects would reorganize the instructions and then the little cursor would continue. And if they got it wrong again, it would say that did not work, please try again, okay? The other half of the subjects, if they got something wrong, were told, you just lost five points, please continue.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
So that's the only difference in the feedback that they got. Now I have to confess, I would have predicted based on my knowledge of dopamine circuitry and reward contingency, people will work much harder to prevent losing something than they will to gain something. And it turns out that that's not at all what happened.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
We're going to go deep into the science of skill learning, and we are going to talk about very specific protocols that the science points to and has verified allow you to learn more quickly, to embed that learning so that you remember it, and to be able to build up skills more quickly than you would otherwise. Let's talk about the acquisition of new skills.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
if they looked at the success rate of the subjects, what they found was that the subjects that were told that did not work, please try again, had a 68% success rate. 68% of them went on to successfully program this cursor moving through the maze. Whereas the ones that were told you lost five points had a 52% success rate, which is a significant difference.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
But the source of the success or the lack of success is really interesting. The subjects that were told that did not work, please try again, tried many, many more times per unit time. In other words, they made more attempts at programming this thing to allow this cursor to move through the maze. Whereas the people that were told you lost five points gave up earlier or gave up entirely.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
To me, this was very surprising. It violates a lot of things that I had heard in the kind of popular or the self-help literature that people will work much harder to avoid losing something than they will to gain something. But it did fit well with another set of experiments that I'm very familiar with from the neuroscience literature.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
So the experiment that I want to tell you about is called the tube test. Here's the experiment. You take two rats, you put them in a tube, or two mice, you put them in a tube. And mice and rats, they don't like to share the same tube. So what they'll do is they'll start pushing each other back and forth, back and forth. Sooner or later, one of the rats or mice pushes the other one out.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
Now you take the winner, you give it a new competitor, and what you find is that the mouse or rat that won previously has a much higher than chance probability of winning the second time. In other words, winning before leads to winning again. Three years ago, there was a paper published that examined the brain area that's involved in this.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
Turns out it's a particular area of the frontal cortex, for those of you that want to know. And they did a simple experiment where the experimenters increased or decreased the activity of this brain area in the prefrontal cortex, a little sub region of the prefrontal cortex. And what they found is if they stimulated this brain area,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
a mouse or rat, regardless of whether or not it had been a winner or loser before, became a winner every single time. So what is this magic brain area? What is it doing? Well, the reason I'm bringing this up today and the reason I'm bringing it up on the heels of the Super Mario effect is that stimulation of this brain area had a very simple,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
and very important effect, which was it led to more forward steps, more repetitions, more effort, but not in terms of sheer might and will, not digging deeper, just more repetitions per unit time. And the losers had fewer repetitions per unit time.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
So the Super Mario Effect, this online experiment, and the tube test, which has been done by various labs and repeated again and again, point to a simple but very important rule, which is neither the 10,000 hours rule nor the magic wand Hollywood version of learning.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
but rather the neurobiological explanation for learning a skill is you want to perform as many repetitions per unit time as you possibly can, at least when you're first trying to learn a skill. The winners are always generating more repetitions per unit time. It's just a repeat of performance, repeat of performance, even if there are errors. And that points to something vitally important, which is
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
These could be skills such as a golf swing or a tennis swing, or you're shooting free throws, or you're learning to dance, or you're learning an instrument. I'm mainly going to focus on athletic performance. There are basically two types of skills, open loop and closed loop.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
Reps are important, but making error reps is also important. In fact, it might be the most important factor. So let's talk about errors and why those solve the problem of what to focus on. Because as I said earlier, if you want to learn something, you need to know if it's open loop or closed loop, and you need to know what to focus on, where to place your perception.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
And that seems like a tough task, but errors will tell you exactly what to focus on. And the reason is that the errors actually cue your nervous system to two things. One, to error correction, And the other is it opens the door or the window for neuroplasticity. Errors tell your nervous system that something needs to change.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
So if you are performing a task or a skill, like you're learning how to dance and you're stepping on the other person's toes or you're fumbling or you're not getting it right, those errors are opening the possibility for plasticity. If you walk away at that point, you've made the exact wrong choice. Without errors, the brain is not in a position to change itself.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
Errors actually cue the frontal cortex networks, what we call top-down processing, and the neuromodulators, things like dopamine and acetylcholine and epinephrine, that will allow for plasticity. So these... cue the brain that something was wrong and they open up the possibility for plasticity. It's what's sometimes called the framing effect. It frames what's important, right?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
This isn't about motivation to learn. This is about how you actually learn. So the key is designate a particular block of time that you are going to perform repetitions. Work for time and then try and perform the maximum number of repetitions that you can do safely That's going to be the best way to approach learning for most sessions.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
I will talk about other things that one can do, but making errors is key. And this isn't a motivational speech. I'm not saying, oh, go make errors. Errors are good for you. You have to fail in order to win. No, you have to fail in order to open up the possibility of plasticity, but you have to fail many times within the same session.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
And those failures will cue your attention to the appropriate sensory events. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
As somebody who's been involved in research science for almost three decades and in health and fitness for equally as long, I'm constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental health, physical health, and performance. I discovered AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast or even knew what a podcast was, and I've been taking it every day since.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
I find that AG1 greatly improves all aspects of my health. I simply feel much better when I take it. AG1 uses the highest quality ingredients in the right combinations, and they're constantly improving their formulas without increasing the cost. Whenever I'm asked if I could take just one supplement, what would that supplement be? I always say AG1.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
So science points to the fact that there's a particular sequencing of learning sessions that will allow you to learn faster and to retain the skill learning. And it involves doing exactly as I just described, which is getting as many repetitions as you can in the learning session, paying attention to the errors that you make,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
And then the rewards that will be generated, again, these are neurochemical rewards, from the successful performance of a movement. And then after the session, you need to do something very specific, which is nothing. That's right. After a skill learning session, there's a replay of the motor sequence that you performed correctly
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
Open loop skills are skills where you perform some sort of motor action and then you wait and you get immediate feedback as to whether or not it was done correctly or not. A good example would be throwing darts at a dart board. So if you throw the dart, you get feedback about whether or not you hit the bullseye, that's open loop. Closed loop would be something that's more continuous.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
And there's an elimination of the motor sequences that you performed incorrectly, okay?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Skills Faster
So to be very clear about this, after I finished the training session, if I do nothing, if I just sit there and close my eyes for five to 10 minutes, even one minute, the brain starts to replay the motor sequence in a way that appears important for the more rapid consolidation of the motor sequence of the pattern. and to accelerated learning.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
and fatty acids in those foods as accurately, you've actually done structural damage at a micro level, but structural damage, excuse me, to the mucosal lining of the gut. Now this can all be repaired if you stay away from highly processed foods for some period of time, but the negative effects of these emulsifiers are quite real. So to make it really clean and simple,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
Emulsifiers from highly processed foods are limiting your guts ability to detect what's in the foods you eat and therefore to deploy the satiety signals, the signals that shut down hunger.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
In addition to that, there's a parallel mechanism at play that I talked about in a previous episode, but I'll remind you again that you have neurons in your gut that are sensing sugar and are sending a subconscious signal up to the brain via the vagus nerve. And those neurons trigger the release of dopamine, which makes you crave more of that food.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
So now you've got parallel signals making you want to eat more sugar, making you unaware of how much sugar you've eaten and that are disrupting the inputs to the nervous system that signal to the rest of your brain and body that you've obtained enough fatty acids and you've obtained enough amino acids. So these highly processed foods are really terrible.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
And I'm not out here to say, never enjoy a processed food of any kind. I'd be a hypocrite because I do eat processed foods from time to time. Although the ones that I tend to eat, I try and make of the healthier variety. But eating whole foods has tremendous value and eating highly processed food has tremendous negative impact on the gut and on the gut brain axis.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
The bottom line is that highly processed foods are just bad for you. They increase weight gain. They disrupt the lining of your gut in a way that disrupts things like CCK and proper satiety signals. So there's just so many reasons why these highly processed foods are terrible.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
And they can explain a lot of the ill health effects that we've seen in the last 50 years, not just in the United States, but all over the world. The enormous increase in diabetes, juvenile diabetes. It's just remarkable how far down the path of bad we've gone. And it's clear, it's almost a smoking gun what the cause of this is.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
If you'd like to learn more about that, please refer to the Lustig lecture. He also spells out why non-processed foods is far more economical in terms of just at the level of the household or individual, as well as at the societal level. Really interesting stuff. I highly recommend you check it out. So now let's move on to some other hormones that regulate hunger and satiety.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
in particular insulin. Now you've probably heard of insulin before. Insulin is the thing that's lacking in type one diabetics. That's why they have to inject insulin whenever they eat. The reason they have to do that is because when they eat, their foods are broken down into glucose.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
And in order to shuttle glucose to the appropriate tissues in the body, and also to keep glucose levels in check, you need insulin. So the simplest way to think about insulin and glucose is that when you eat, that food is broken down into sugars. That's true whether or not it's fats or it's sugars, or eventually if it's proteins, they are oxidized into fuels, as we say.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
It turns out that there are multiple populations of neurons in there. Some are promoting feeding and some are promoting not feeding or not eating. Now, the other neural component of all this that you need to know about actually has to do with your mouth. So there's an area of your cortex, so that's a little bit further up in your brain called the insular cortex.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
Your blood sugar needs to be kept in a particular range. Hypoglycemic means too low, hyperglycemic means too high, and what they called euglycemic, E-U glycemic, is the healthy range. Now, what those healthy ranges are, in general, the healthy range, the euglycemic range is about 70 to 100 nanograms per deciliter. Why is it important that glucose be kept at a particular level?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
Once you understand that, keeping glucose in check starts to have a rationale behind it, and the ways to do that start to make a lot more sense. So the reason is, If glucose levels get too high because of the way that our cells, in particular neurons, interact with glucose, high levels of glucose can damage neurons. It can actually kill them.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
You can start getting what are called peripheral, excuse me, neuropathies. One of the symptoms of some forms of diabetes is that people start losing the sensation of touch in their fingers or their hands or their feet, and they can start going blind. There's diabetic retinopathies. So it's very important that insulin manage your glucose levels.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
Now there's also type two diabetes where there's insulin secreted from the pancreas, but people are insulin insensitive. There's a disruption in the receptors and insulin insensitivity isn't quite the same as having no insulin at all, but it parallels some of the same mechanisms. Now type one diabetes is often picked up because someone has a sudden,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
because they're not processing blood sugar the same way they were before. Type 2 diabetes is often, although not always, associated with being overweight and with obesity. Both of them are challenging conditions. Type 2 diabetes almost always can be managed by managing one's weight. And of course there are prescription drugs and supplements that can help manage those.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
We're going to talk about all of that. But for most people that don't have diabetes, the important thing is to manage glucose, to keep it in that euglycemic range. And there are a number of different ways to do that. Some of them are behavioral, some of them are diet-based, and some of them are based on supplements or prescription drugs. So let's talk about those now.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Matina. Matina makes loose leaf and ready to drink yerba mate. Now, I've often discussed yerba mate's benefits, such as regulating blood sugar, its high antioxidant content, the ways it can improve digestion and its possible neuroprotective effects. It's for all those reasons that yerba mate is my preferred source of caffeine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
I also drink yerba mate because I simply love the taste. And while there are a lot of different choices out there of yerba mate drinks, my personal favorite far and away is Matina. It's made of the highest quality ingredients, which gives it a really rich, but also a really clean taste. So none of that tannic aftertaste.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
And it processes a lot of different kinds of information, mostly information about what's going on inside you, so-called interoception. The insular cortex has neurons that get input from your mouth, from the touch receptors in your mouth.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
In fact, given how absolutely amazing Matina tastes and their commitment to quality, I decided to become a part owner in the company last year. In particular, I love the taste of Matina's canned zero sugar cold brew yerba mate, which I personally helped develop. I drink at least three cans of those a day now. I also love their loose leaf matina, which I drink every morning from the gourd.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
So I add hot water and sip on that thing and I'll have some cold brews throughout the morning and early afternoon. I find it gives me terrific energy all day long and I'm able to fall asleep perfectly well at night, no problems. If you'd like to try Matina, you can go to drinkmatina.com slash Huberman.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
Right now, Matina is offering a free one pound bag of loose leaf yerba mate tea and free shipping with the purchase of two cases of their cold brew yerba mate. Again, that's drinkmatina.com slash Huberman to get a free bag of yerba mate loose leaf tea and free shipping. So if you eat, and in particular, if you eat carbohydrates, blood glucose goes up.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
If you eat fats, blood glucose goes up to a far less degree. And if you eat proteins, depending on the protein, it'll eventually be broken down for fuel or assembled into amino acid chains for protein synthesis and repair of other tissues and bodily functions. glucose goes up and then is kept in range. When you are hungry, you secrete a different hormone and that's called glucagon.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
And glucagon's main role is to pull stores of energy out of the liver and the muscles. And once those are depleted, you'll eventually tap into body fat. So the two kind of push and pull systems that we're going to think about now to keep this simple is that you have the insulin system managing glucose
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
and you've got the glucagon system pulling energy out of your liver and muscles for immediate fuel. And eventually you'll pull fuel out of body fat if you've been active for a very long time and all your glycogen stores are depleted or close to depleted. So what does this all mean? Let's say you had a meal and that meal consisted of rice, a carbohydrate,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
some meat or fish, let's say a piece of salmon, and some vegetable, some fibrous vegetable like asparagus or cabbage or something like that. If you were to eat all of that at once, you take a bite of one, a bite of the other, you mix it up, then you will experience an increase in insulin, an increase in blood glucose that's moderately fast. It's going to increase pretty quickly.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
An insular cortex has powerful control over whether or not you are enjoying what you're eating, whether or not you want to avoid what you're eating, whether or not you've had enough or whether or not you want to continue eating more. And that has to do, believe it or not, with the touch or sensation of eating.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
What's remarkable is that the order that you consume each macronutrient has a pretty profound influence on the rate of insulin and glucose secretion into the blood and how quickly those levels rise. If you were to eat the fibrous thing first, so a lot of chewing, but not a big rise in blood glucose, that will actually blunt the release of glucose until you eat the fish and the rice.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
But believe it or not, it will actually blunt the glucose increase that the rice would cause. Now, I'm not talking about neurotically eating each macronutrient separately in sequence. I'm just trying to give you a picture of what's happening ordinarily. So what does this all mean?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
It means that if you want a steep increase in glucose, you are very, very hungry, then you should eat the carbohydrate-laden food first, or you should eat a bunch of macronutrients combined. So that would be like the hamburger or the sandwich, the bread, whatever's in that sandwich all together. Usually that's protein and vegetables as well.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
if you want to have a kind of more modest increase in glucose, or you want to blunt the increase in glucose, then have the, at least some of the fibrous thing first, and then the protein, and then the carbohydrate, you will notice that your blood glucose will rise more steadily. and that you'll achieve satiety earlier in the meal.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
Basically what you're trying to avoid are steep increases in blood sugar. And the order that you eat foods has an enormous impact on that. The other thing that has an enormous impact on how long and shallow or how steep that curve of glucose is, depends on whether or not you recently were moving, are moving, or start moving after you eat.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
So it turns out that your blood glucose levels can be modulated very, very powerfully by movement. If you did any kind of intense exercise or even just walking or jogging or cycling, anything before you eat, your blood glucose levels will be dampened somewhat. And even just moving after a meal, even just a calm, easy walk can really adjust the ways for the better.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
The other thing I'd like to address for a moment is this notion of stable blood sugar versus labile blood sugar or unstable blood sugar. Some people just have stable blood sugar. They can go long periods of time without eating and feel fine. Other people get really shaky, really jittery and or when they do eat, they feel really keyed up.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
Sometimes they'll even sweat, but whether or not your blood sugar is all over the place or whether or not stable, can be impacted by a number of things. One of those things is exercise.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
But the key point right now is to know that you've got these two brain areas, the ventromedial hypothalamus, that's involved in hunger and lack of hunger. And you have this insular cortex that gets input from your mouth and cares about chewing and the consistency of foods and all sorts of interesting things that are just very tactile.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
So these days there's a lot of interest in what they call zone two cardio, which is that kind of steady state cardio where you can just nasal breathe, even at pretty high output, where you could maybe have a conversation. Zone two cardio that last anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour or sometimes more for you endurance athletes can create positive effects on blood sugar regulation such that
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
people can sit down and enjoy whatever it is, the hot fudge sundae or whatever the high sugar content food is, and blood glucose management is so good, your insulin sensitivity is so high, which is a good thing, that you can manage that blood glucose to the point where It doesn't really make you shaky. It doesn't disrupt you.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
Basically doing zone two cardio for 30 to 60 minutes, three to four times a week makes your blood sugar really stable. And that's an attractive thing for a variety of reasons. On the flip side, high intensity interval training or resistance training, AKA weight training, are very good at stimulating the various molecules that promote repackaging of glycogen.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
So sprints, heavy weightlifting, circuit type weightlifting, provided there's some reasonable degree of resistance, those are going to trigger all sorts of mechanisms that are going to to shuttle glucose back into glycogen, convert into glycogen into muscle tissue, restock the liver, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
And I should mention that one of the advantages of high intensity interval training or weightlifting of various kinds is that it also, it causes long standing increases in basal metabolic rate. Now I'd like to turn to prescription drugs that regulate the hormone systems, controlling feeding and satiety.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
There's a prescription drug, metformin, which was developed as a treatment for diabetes, and it works potently to reduce blood glucose. It has dramatic effects in lowering blood glucose. Metformin involves... changes to mitochondrial action in the liver. That's its main way of depleting or reducing blood glucose.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
And it does so through the so-called AMPK pathway, and it increases insulin sensitivity overall. Metformin is a powerful drug. In fact, I'm surprised that so many people have sought it out, given that most of the people that I'm aware of that sought it out are not diabetic. I do want to mention, because I'm sure some of you out there are curious about the ketogenic diet.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
I'm going to do an entire episode about ketosis and the brain and the body, but the ketogenic diet has been shown in 22 studies to have a notable decrease on blood glucose. And that is not surprising because you're the ketogenic of the ketogenic diet is that you're consuming very little or zero of the foods that promote big spikes in insulin and glucose.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
And I think most people think about the touch receptors on, excuse me, the taste receptors on the tongue, but we often don't think about the touch or tactile essence of food. Now let's get back to the ventromedial hypothalamus. Sometimes it makes animals or people want to eat more, sometimes less. So what's going on there?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
If you consume enough protein, some of that protein can be converted into glucose, of course, through gluconeogenesis. But the ketogenic diet has very strong support for its role in regulating blood sugar, which is glucose. But the specific effects of the ketogenic diet
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
And one particular effect that I'll address later, but I'll mention now, which is the ability of the ketogenic diet to adjust thyroid hormone levels in ways that make it such that if you return to eating carbohydrates after being in ketosis for too long, you don't manage thyroid and carbohydrates as well. That has been shown as well. So we're going to dive deep into ketosis in a future episode.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
So for you ketonistas out there, don't worry. I certainly have nothing against ketogenic diet. I actually don't have anything for or against any particular nutrition plan. I know what works for me, at least at this stage of my life, and I'll update it if I need to.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
I'm simply trying to get you as much information as I possibly can so that you can navigate through that landscape in a way that's in keeping with your particular goals. I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. We should all know that proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. In fact, even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance to a considerable degree.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
It's also important that you're not just hydrated, but that you get adequate amounts of electrolytes in the right ratios. Drinking a packet of Element dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate amounts of hydration and electrolytes.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of both, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I'll also drink a packet of Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
There are a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. I like the watermelon. I like the raspberry. I like the citrus. Basically, I like all of them. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim an Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement spelled L-M-N-T.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
So now you understand a lot about blood sugar and how it's managed and the ways that you can manage it better depending on your particular needs. This is also a good opportunity for us to look back at some of the medical literature because it really points to just how far we've come in terms of understanding these important mechanisms.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
There's a classic experiment that was done in which researchers took two rats and so-called parabios to them to each other.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
And it points us in the direction of some actionable protocols. So diabetes, which is these huge increases in blood glucose because there's no insulin was known about as early as 1500 BC, which is just incredible.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
And the way physicians then understood that certain people had high blood glucose without actually knowing what blood glucose was, is that they would take the urine of particular patients and they'd find that ants preferably move toward and consume the urine of certain patients and not others.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
And they understood that there was something in that urine that was correlated with a sudden weight loss and some of the other probably very unfortunate health symptoms that these people were experiencing. So they knew that there was something in blood and urine. Now this business of measuring blood sugar
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
from the urine has been something that lasted way beyond these early stages of, you know, 1500 BC. Turns out that as late as 1674, Physicians at Oxford University were figuring out who had pathologically high levels of blood glucose by analyzing their urine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
What that meant is that they did a little surgery and they linked their blood supply so that they were forever physically linked to one another and could exchange factors in the blood, but their brains were separate, their mouths were separate, and they essentially did everything separately, except that they were linked to one another.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
And again, they were measuring the sweetness of their urine, but, and this is medical fact, they would do this by taking urine samples from different patients and tasting them And they developed an intuitive sense of what excessively sweet urine was relative to the other urines that they had tasted.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. Today, we're going to talk about how hormones impact feeding and hunger, as well as satiety, the feeling that you don't want to eat or that you've eaten enough. Now it's important to understand that hormones don't work alone in this context.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
So for those of you that are in the medical profession or those of you that are seeking out the medical profession, do understand this is not done anymore.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
And you can also just reflect on how far we've come in terms of the medical profession itself in our ability to measure things from the blood and measure things from urine without having to ask ants which urine is sweeter or ask oneself which urine is sweeter. So indeed we are making progress as a species.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
Before we close out today, I want to talk about one more tool that many of you will probably find useful. I certainly have. I'm a big consumer of caffeine, although I don't consume a ton of it, I consume it very consistently. So I'm big on consuming mate, which is a strong caffeinated tea, and I generally do that early in the day.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
although I do delay about two hours after I wake up for reasons I've talked about in previous episode to maintain that nice arc of alertness and focus. Mate, also called yerba mate, is an interesting compound because unlike coffee, it has been shown to increase something called glucagon-like peptide, GLP-1. and increase leptin levels. Now we didn't talk a lot about glucagon today.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
Glucagon is really elevated in the fasting state. I mentioned that it's sort of the opposite of insulin in kind of rough terms. That's one way to think about it. But GLP-1 or glucagon-like peptide one is increased by ingesting mate and it acts as a pretty nice appetite suppressant. Now I'm not trying to suppress my appetite.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
I like to eat, as I mentioned before, but it works really well to stimulate the brain and to give you a level of alertness and to do a lot of the things that coffee does. It also contains electrolytes. We, meaning our neurons and our brain, run on a variety of factors, electrical activity and chemical transmission, et cetera, but they require adequate levels of sodium, potassium, and magnesium.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
So they had to walk together and go to the same places in order to do it. This parabiosis experiment revealed something really important. When they lesioned the ventromedial hypothalamus in one of the rats that was connected to the other rat, that rat got very, very fat. It's just really obese. The other one, however, got very thin. It actually lost weight. So what does this tell us?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
Actually, if you were to learn the biology or the physiology of the action potential, the firing of a neuron, something we teach every first year neuroscience student, and I'd be happy to teach you if you're interested, you'll hear about sodium rushing into cells and potassium entering and leaving cells in order to allow neurons to communicate.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
Electrolytes are critically important for the function of the nervous system. And many things that act as diuretics that promote excretion of water like caffeine can also take electrolytes out along with in particular sodium. And sometimes the lightheadedness or the brain fog that people experience isn't just because electrolytes are low, but because they're kind of out of balance.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
So I like mate because it has electrolytes, it has caffeine, it stimulates the release of this glucagon-like peptide, GLP-1, and it's been a big help to me in extending that early morning fasting window out to about noon or so when I eat my first meal. It also just tastes really good. And the fact that glucagon-like peptide one is enriched or is released more when you drink mate.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
And the fact that GLP-1 can regulate blood sugar in ways that keep your blood sugar in that we called euglycemic, not too high, not too low mode is one reason why ingesting mate is attractive to me. So Yerba Mate GLP-1 can manage in healthy ways, leptin levels, glucose levels, and glucagon levels in ways that if it serves you, you might want to try.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
So once again, we covered an enormous amount of material focused on how hormones regulate feeding, hunger, and when one feels they don't need to eat, so-called satiety, that you've had enough. We've just focused today mainly on things like ghrelin, on things like melanocyte-simulating hormone, incredible, powerful hormone that can suppress appetite,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
on things like cholecystokinin that comes from the gut and can suppress appetite, on things like food emulsifiers, on the fact that when you're eating, you are amino acid seeking, even though you might not realize it, that you are also seeking out particular fatty acids. So I've tried to give you a number of actionable tools
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
Again, always do what's best for your health and do that in company with a healthcare professional. I'm not a physician. I don't prescribe anything. I'm a professor. I profess a lot of things. If you know anyone that's interested in this topic or you think that someone could benefit from it, please suggest the podcast to them as well. And most of all, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
This tells us that there's something in the blood that's being exchanged between the two animals because it was their blood supply that was linked. And that tells us that there's hormone or endocrine signals that are involved in the desire to eat and hunger and appetite. And so next we're going to talk about what those endocrine signals are.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
And then I'm going to immediately point to some entry points that you can use. And you can use these even if you're not parabiosed to anything. and that can allow you to time your meal frequency and predict when you're going to be hungry or not. So let's talk about the endocrine factors that regulate feeding hunger and satiety. I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, David.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
David makes a protein bar unlike any other. It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. That's right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from protein. These bars from David also taste amazing. My favorite flavor is chocolate chip cookie dough, but then again, I also like the chocolate fudge flavored one. And I also like the cake flavored one.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
Basically, I like all the flavors. They're incredibly delicious. For me personally, I strive to eat mostly whole foods. However, when I'm in a rush or I'm away from home, or I'm just looking for a quick afternoon snack, I often find that I'm looking for a high quality protein source.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
With David, I'm able to get 28 grams of protein with the calories of a snack, which makes it very easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight each day. And it allows me to do that without taking in excess calories. I typically eat a David Barr in the early afternoon or even mid-afternoon if I want to bridge that gap between lunch and dinner.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
I like that it's a little bit sweet, so it tastes like a tasty snack, but it's also giving me that 28 grams of very high quality protein with just 150 calories. If you would like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, the link is davidprotein.com slash Huberman.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
One of the really exciting things to emerge in the science of feeding and appetite in the last 20 years is the discovery of another brain area, not just the ventromedial hypothalamus, but it's an area of the brain called the arcuate nucleus. And the arcuate nucleus has some really fascinating sets of neurons that release even more incredible molecules and chemicals into the blood.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
And these chemicals act as accelerators on feeding an appetite or breaks. So first of all, there are a set of neurons in this arcuate nucleus. It's the pro-opio-melanocortin system. Now, the POMC neurons make something called alpha-MSH. melanocyte stimulating hormone, alpha melanocyte stimulating hormone. MSH reduces appetite and it's a powerful molecule, all right?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
So just put that on the shelf, MSH reduces appetite. Now there's another population of neurons in the arcuate nucleus called the AGRP neurons. The AGRP neurons, The activity in these AGRP neurons goes way up when animals or people haven't eaten for a while. And the activity of MSH, the release of MSH goes up when we've eaten. Next, let's talk about a hormone peptide that activates hunger.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
Today I'm going to describe some hormones that have powerful effects on whether or not you want to eat more or less or stop eating altogether. But they don't do that on their own, they do that in cooperation with the nervous system.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
And this is a really interesting one because it relates to when you get hungry, in addition to the fact that you get hungry at all. and it's called ghrelin. It's spelled G-H-R-E-L-I-N. Ghrelin is released actually from the GI tract. And its main role is to increase your desire to eat. And it does that through a variety of mechanisms.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
Part of that is to stimulate some of the brain areas, the actual neurons that make you want to eat. In addition, it creates food anticipatory signals within your nervous system. So you start thinking about the things that you happen to like to eat at that particular time of day. And this is fascinating. Ghrelin is sort of like a clock
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
a hormonal clock that makes you want to eat at particular times. Now the signal for ghrelin is reduced glucose levels in the blood. If it drops too low, ghrelin is secreted from your gut. It activates neurons in your brain at various locations. And we all know about the famous Pavlovian
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
of Pavlov's dogs, you know, they start salivating to the bell after the bell was presented with food, you remove the food and then just the bell can stimulate the salivation. We become Pavlovian at times, but rarely is it ever discussed what the neural pathways for that are.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
And it turns out that these hormones that are secreted from the gut can stimulate the neurons to create a sensation and a desire for certain foods at certain times of day. You've done this experiment. If you are somebody who eats breakfast at more or less the same time each day, let's say 8 a.m., your ghrelin secretion will start to match when you typically eat.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
And it's able to override the low levels of glucose in your bloodstream because the ghrelin system also gets input from a clock in your liver that is linked to the clock in your hypothalamus in your brain. And what this means is if you eat at regular meal times, you will start to get hungry a few minutes before those meals times.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
The first thing that you need to know about the nervous system side, the neural control over feeding and hunger, is that there's an area of your brain called the hypothalamus. Now the hypothalamus contains lots of different kinds of neurons doing lots of different kinds of things. There's a particular area of the hypothalamus called the ventromedial hypothalamus.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
If you've ever wondered why your stomach kind of starts to growl because it's a particular time of day and you're like, oh, I must want to eat. Well, that's ghrelin. So ghrelin is secreted as a kind of food anticipatory signal to get you motivated to go eat at regular times.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
But what that means is that if you suddenly go from eating on a very regular schedule to skipping a meal or pushing your meal timing out or shifting at all, you're going to have ghrelin in your system, and that ghrelin is going to stimulate the desire to eat by acting at the level of your brain. So ghrelin stimulates the AGRP neurons, which makes you want to eat.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
Regularity of eating equals regularity of ghrelin secretion equals regularity of activity of these AGRP neurons, meaning you will be hungry at very regular intervals. So if MSH inhibits feeding, makes us want to eat less, and ghrelin makes us want to eat more, There's another hormone called CCK, cholecystokinin, that is potent in reducing our levels of hunger.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
Now, CCK is in the GI tract, it's released from the GI tract, and its release is governed by two things. One is a subset of very specialized neurons that detect what's in the gut, the specific contents of the gut. and by certain elements of the mucosa, of the mucus lining of the gut and the gut microbiome.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
So what's really interesting is that CCK is stimulated by fatty acids, amino acids, and particular amino acids that we'll talk about as well as by sugar. So which fatty acids in the gut stimulate the release of CCK? Omega-3 fatty acids and conjugated linoleic acid, CLA, either from food or from supplements, stimulate the release of CCK, which then reduces or at least blunts appetite.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
The other thing that stimulates CCK that I mentioned are amino acids. So when we eat, we have the ability to break down different macronutrients, you know, carbohydrates, or proteins into sugars and glucose that then we can convert to ATP and all that stuff from the Krebs cycle from high school. We're not going to go into that today. That's for a future episode.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
Amino acids both can be used as energy through a process called gluconeogenesis of converting proteins into energy, or those amino acids can be broken down and then rebuilt into things like repairing muscle tissue, as well as other forms of cellular repair. They're involved in all sorts of things related to protein synthesis. What does this mean?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
If we eat the proper amino acids at the proper levels, if we ingest omega-3s and CLAs, conjugated linoleic acids at the proper levels, or get them from supplements, there is a blunting of appetite. Appetite is kept clamped and we don't become hyperphagic. We don't overeat. We tend to eat within healthy or normal ranges.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
And it's one that researchers have been interested for a long time now in terms of its relationship to hunger and feeding. And the reason is it creates these paradoxical effects. What do I mean by that? What they found was that sometimes lesioning or disrupting the neurons in the ventromedial hypothalamus would make animals or people hyperphagic. They would want to eat like crazy.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
So this is very important because most people don't understand that when we're eating, we are basically fat foraging and amino acid foraging. In other words, even if it's not conscious, we are eating until we trigger the activation of CCK. Now, there are other reasons why we shut down eating too. The volume of food in our gut can be large and we can feel very distended.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
That's the physical reason, obviously. But At a subconscious level, the gut is informing the brain via CCK and other mechanisms when we've ingested enough of what we need. So as you can see, feeding is an interplay between brain and body, and it's some of the micronutrients and even the breakdown of particular nutrients that's putting the accelerator or the brake on the feeding process.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
You are essentially trying to eat to get these nutrients, and then a signal can be deployed up to your brain that you're not really interested in eating that much more. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
As somebody who's been involved in research science for almost three decades and in health and fitness for equally as long, I'm constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental health, physical health, and performance. I discovered AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast or even knew what a podcast was, and I've been taking it every day since.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
I find that AG1 greatly improves all aspects of my health. I simply feel much better when I take it. AG1 uses the highest quality ingredients in the right combinations, and they're constantly improving their formulas without increasing the cost. Whenever I'm asked if I could take just one supplement, what would that supplement be? I always say AG1.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3 K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer. There's one particular aspect of food that can powerfully impact CCK.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
And I think most people, I'm guessing 99.9% of people out there are not aware of this. and it has to do with highly processed foods. There's a lot of reasons why one would want to avoid highly processed foods.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
In fact, if you're interested in that topic and the history of whole foods transitioning to highly processed foods in this country, I highly recommend you listen to a YouTube video by Dr. Robert Lustig. He's at University of California, San Francisco.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
It gives a beautiful description of the history of this and why the food industry started packing in additional sugars and salts and turning foods into commodities. It's really fascinating. It has no conspiracy theory, it's just all scientific facts. It's really a wonderful lecture. It has millions of views, should be very easy to find.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
There's another reason to avoid highly processed foods, however, and that has to do with what's called emulsifiers. Now, many of you are familiar with emulsifiers, even though you don't know it. When you put detergent in the laundry, that contains emulsifiers.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
The goal of that detergent is to bring together fatty molecules with water molecules and be able to dissociate them and break them up to get the stains out of clothes and things of that sort. there are a lot of emulsifiers put into processed foods. And those emulsifiers allow certain chemical reactions to occur that extends the shelf life of those foods. Why are emulsifiers bad?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
Okay, there are a lot of reasons why they're bad, but the reason why they're bad for the mechanisms that we've been talking about today is that when you ingest those foods,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
And other lesions in other individuals or animals would make them anorexic, would make them not want to eat at all. It would make food aversive. So that means that the ventromedial hypothalamus is definitely an interesting control station for hunger and feeding and satiety, but it doesn't really tell you what's going on at a deeper level. In fact, it's a little bit confusing or paradoxical.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
you're bringing those emulsifiers into your gut and those emulsifiers strip away the mucosal lining of the gut and they actually cause the neurons that innervate the gut that extend those little processes we call axons into the gut to retract deeper into the gut. And as a consequence, you're ingesting a bunch of food and the signals like CCK never get deployed.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety
The signals that actually shut down hunger are never actually triggered. And so as a consequence, you want to eat far more of these highly processed foods. In addition, if you then go from eating a highly processed food to non-highly processed foods, you're not able to measure the amounts of amino acid sugars
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. My name is Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, we're going to talk about how to change your nervous system for the better.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
how badly we need or want the plasticity determines how fast that plasticity will arrive. This means that the importance of something, how important something is to us actually gates the rate of plasticity and the magnitude of plasticity.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
And this is why just passively going through most things, going through the motions, as we say, or just getting our reps in, quote unquote, is not sufficient to get the nervous system to change. if we actually have to accomplish something in order to eat or in order to get our ration of income, we will reshape our nervous system very, very quickly.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
And so I think that the studies that Knudsen did showing that incremental learning can create a huge degree of plasticity as an adult, as well as when the contingency is very high, meaning we need to eat or we need to make an income, or we need to do something that's vitally important for us, that plasticity can happen in these enormous leaps, just like they can in adolescence and young adulthood.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
that points to the fact that it has to be a neurochemical system. There has to be an underlying mechanism. All the chemicals that we're about to talk about are released from drug stores, if you will, chemical stores that already reside in all of our brains. And the key is how to tap into those stores.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
We know that, for instance, if I want to reach out and grab the pen in front of me, that I need to generate a certain amount of force, so I rarely overshoot. I rarely miss the pen, okay? So our maps of the motor world and our maps of the sensory world are merged. The way to create plasticity is to create mismatches or errors in how we perform things.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
And so we're going to next talk about what are the specific behaviors that liberate particular categories of chemicals that allow us to make the most of incremental learning and that set the stage for plasticity that is similar enough or mimics these high contingency states like the need to get food or really create a sense of internal urgency, chemical urgency, if you will.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, David. David makes a protein bar unlike any other. It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. That's right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from protein. These bars from David also taste amazing.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
My favorite flavor is chocolate chip cookie dough, but then again, I also like the chocolate fudge flavored one. And I also like the cake flavored one. Basically, I like all the flavors. They're incredibly delicious. For me personally, I strive to eat mostly whole foods.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
However, when I'm in a rush or I'm away from home, or I'm just looking for a quick afternoon snack, I often find that I'm looking for a high quality protein source. With David, I'm able to get 28 grams of protein with the calories of a snack, which makes it very easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight each day.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
And it allows me to do that without taking in excess calories. I typically eat a David Barr in the early afternoon or even mid-afternoon if I want to bridge that gap between lunch and dinner. I like that it's a little bit sweet, so it tastes like a tasty snack, but it's also giving me that 28 grams of very high quality protein with just 150 calories.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
If you would like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, the link is davidprotein.com slash Huberman. If you've heard previous episodes of this podcast, you may have heard me talk about ultradian rhythms, which are these 90 minute rhythms that break up our 24 hour day. They help break up our sleep into different cycles of sleep, like REM sleep and non-REM sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
And in waking states, they help us or I should say they break up our day in ways that allow us to learn best within 90 minute cycles, et cetera. Today we're really talking about how to tap into plasticity through the completion of a task or working towards something repetitively and making errors.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
The ultradian cycle says that for the first five to 10 minutes of doing that, your mind is going to drift and your focus will probably kick in provided that you're visually you're restricting your visual world to just the material in front of you, something we talked about last episode, somewhere around the 10 or 15 minute mark.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
And then at best, you're probably going to get about an hour of deliberate kind of tunnel vision learning in there. Your mind will drift. And then toward the end of that, what is now an hour and 10 or hour and 20 minute cycle, your brain will start to flicker in and out. You're trying your best to accomplish something and you're failing.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
You want to keep making errors for this period of time that I'm saying will last anywhere for about seven to 30 minutes. It is exceedingly frustrating, but that frustration, it liberates the chemical cues that signal that plasticity needs to happen. And it is the case that when we come back a day or two later in a learning bout after a nap or a night or two of deep rest,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
then what we find is that we can remember certain things and the motor pathways work and we don't always get it perfectly, but we get a lot of it right, whereas we got it wrong before. So that seven to 30 minute intense learning bout specifically about making errors. I want to really underscore that.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
And it's not about, as I mentioned before, coming up with some little hack or trick or something of that sort. It's really about trying to cue the nervous system that something needs to change because otherwise it simply won't change. I think everyone could stand to enhance the rate of learning by doing the following.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
And this I think is an amazing and important feature of neuroplasticity that is highly underappreciated. The way to create plasticity is to send signals to the brain that something is wrong, something is different, and something isn't being achieved, errors.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
to attach dopamine in a subjective way to this process of making errors, because that's really combining two modes of plasticity in ways that together can accelerate the plasticity. In other words, making failures, failing repetitively, provided we're engaged in a very specific set of behaviors when we do it, as well as telling ourselves that those failures are good for learning and good for us,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
creates an outsized effect on the rate of plasticity. It accelerates plasticity. Now, some of you might be asking, and I get asked a lot, well, how do I get dopamine to be released? Can I just tell myself that something is good when it's bad? Well, actually, yes, believe it or not, dopamine is one of these incredible molecules that both can be released
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
according to things that are hardwired in us to release dopamine. Again, things like food, sex, warmth when we're cold, cool environments when we're too warm, it's that kind of pleasure molecule overall, but it's also highly subjective what releases dopamine in one person versus the next.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
So everyone releases dopamine in response to those very basic kind of behaviors and activities, but dopamine is also released according to what we subjectively believe is good for us. And that's what's so powerful about it. In fact, a book that I highly recommend if you want to read more about dopamine, it's a book that frankly, I wish I had written. It's such a wonderful book.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
It's called The Molecule of More. And it really talks about dopamine, not just as a molecule associated with reward, but a molecule associated with motivation and pursuit and just how subjectively controlled dopamine can be. So make lots of errors, tell yourself that those errors are important and good for your overall learning goals.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
So learn to attach dopamine, meaning release dopamine in your brain when you start to make errors. Once you're attaching dopamine to this process of making errors, Then I start getting lots of questions that really are the right questions, which are, you know, how often should I do this? And when should I be doing this? And at what time?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
Well, I've talked a little bit about this in previous episodes, but as long as we're now kind of into the nitty gritty of tools and application, Each of us have some natural times throughout the day when we are going to be much better at tolerating these errors and much more focused on what it is that we're trying to do.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
Last episode was about focus, but chances are that you can't focus as well at 4 p.m. as you can at 10 a.m. It differs for everybody depending on when you're sleeping and your kind of natural chemistry and rhythms. but find the time or times of day when you naturally have the highest mental acuity. And that's really when you want to engage in these learning bouts.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
And then get to the point where you're making errors and then keep making errors for seven to 30 minutes. Just keep making those errors and drill through it. and you're almost seeking frustration. And if you can find some pleasure in the frustration, yes, that is a state that exists. You have created the optimal neurochemical milieu for learning that thing. But then here's the beauty of it.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
and making errors out of sync with what we would like to do is how our nervous system is cued through very distinct biological mechanisms that something isn't going right and therefore certain neurochemicals are deployed that'll signal the neural circuits that they have to change.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
You also have created the optimal milieu for learning other things afterward. at least for an hour or so, I would say, you're going to be in a state of heightened learning. Again, these aren't gimmicks, these tap into these basic mechanisms of plasticity. And the three that I'd like to talk about next are balance, meaning the vestibular system,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
as well as the two sides of what I call limbic friction or autonomic arousal. And if none of that makes sense, I'm going to put a fine point on each one of those and what it is and why it works for opening up neuroplasticity. I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice. It was a condition of being allowed to stay in school. But pretty soon I realized that therapy is an extremely important component to one's overall health. In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
Now, there are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First of all, it provides a good rapport with somebody that you can trust and talk to about essentially all issues that you want to. Second of all, great therapy provides support in the form of emotional support or simply directed guidance, what to do or what not to do in given areas of your life.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
And third, expert therapy can provide you useful insights that you would not have been able to arrive at on your own. BetterHelp makes it very easy to find an expert therapist who you really resonate with and that can provide you the benefits I just mentioned that come with effective therapy. If you'd like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman. Let's talk about limbic friction. Limbic friction, I realize, is not something you're going to find in any of the textbooks, but it is an important principle that captures a lot of information that is in textbooks, both neurobiology and psychology, and it has some really important implications.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
Limbic friction is my attempt to give a name to something that is more nuanced and mechanistic than stress. Because typically when we hear about stress, we think of heartbeat going too fast, breathing too fast, sweating, and not being in a state that we want. We're too alert and we want to be more calm.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
And indeed, that's one condition in which we have limbic friction, meaning our limbic system is taking control of a number of different aspects of our autonomic or automatic biology. And we are struggling to control that through what we call top-down mechanisms. We're trying to calm down in order to reduce that level of arousal. We're all familiar with this. It's called the stress response.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
However, there's another aspect of stress that's just as important, which is when we're tired and we're fatigued and we need to engage, we need to be more alert than we are.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
And so what I call limbic friction is really designed to describe the fact that when our autonomic nervous system isn't where we want it, meaning we're trying to be more alert or we're trying to be less alert, both of those feel stressful to people. But the reason I'm bringing this up is that in order to access neuroplasticity, you need these components of focus.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
So let's talk about errors and making errors and why and how that triggers the release of chemicals that then allow us to not just learn the thing that we're doing in the motor sense, play the piano, dance, et cetera, but it also creates an environment, a milieu within the brain that allows us to then go learn how to couple or uncouple a particular emotion to an experience or better language learning or better mathematical learning.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
You need the component of attaching subjective reward. You need to make errors, all this stuff. And a lot of people find it difficult to just get into the overall state to access those things. Here's the beauty of it. If you are too alert, meaning you're too anxious and you want to calm down in order to learn better, there are things that you can do.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
The two that I've spoken about previously on various podcasts, and I'll just review them really quickly, are the double inhale exhale. So inhaling twice through the nose and exhaling once through the mouth. This is what's called a physiological sigh. It offloads carbon dioxide from the lungs. The other thing is starting to remove your tunnel vision. When you use tunnel vision, you're very focused.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
That epinephrine is released by dilating your field of gaze, so-called panoramic vision. But the other side of limbic friction is important too. If you are too tired and you can't focus, well, then it's going to be impossible to even get to the starting line, so to speak, for engaging in neuroplasticity through incremental learning, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
So in that case, there are other methods that you can do to wake yourself up. The best thing you should do is get a good night's sleep, but that's not always possible, or use an NSDR, non-sleep deep rest protocol.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
If you've already done those things or you're simply exhausted for whatever other reason, then there are other things that I often get asked about, like sure, a cup of coffee or super oxygenation breathing, which means inhaling more than exhaling on average in a breathing bout. Now we're sort of getting toward the realm of like how you could trick your nervous system into waking up.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
And if you bring more oxygen in by making your inhales deeper and longer, you will become more alert. you'll start to actually deploy norepinephrine if you breathe very fast. So there are things that you can do to move up or down this so-called autonomic arousal arc. And what you want to ask before you undergo any learning bout is how much limbic friction am I experiencing?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
Am I too alert and I want to be calmer or am I too calm and too sleepy and I want to be more alert? You're going to need to engage in behaviors that bring you to the starting line in order to learn. There are other things that you can do in order to then learn better and faster besides incremental learning, and those center on the vestibular system.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
Why the vestibular system to access neuroplasticity? Well, we have a hardwired system for balance, and here's how it works in as simple terms as I can possibly come up with. as we move through space, or even if we're stationary, your brain doesn't really know where your body is, except through that proprioceptive feedback.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
The main way it knows is through three planes of movement that we call pitch, which is like nodding. So if I nod like this, that's pitch. Then there's yaw, which is like shaking my head no. And then there's roll from side to side, like when a puppy looks at you like, that kind of thing, okay? So pitch, yaw, and roll. Our ears have two main roles. One is to hear, right?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
To perceive sound waves or take in sound waves for perception. It's all called hearing. And the other is balance or vestibular function. So sitting in our ears are these semi-circular canals. And they're these little tubes where these little stones, they're actually little bits of calcium, roll back and forth like little marbles. When we roll this way, they roll this way.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
When we pitch, when we go from side to side, there's some that sit flat like this and they go . like marbles inside of a hula hoop. And then we have roll. There's some that are kind of at 45 degrees to those and it's kind of pitchy on roll. Okay, great. That sends signals to the rest of our brain and body that tell us how to compensate for shifts relative to gravity.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
And I say, okay, well, I thought we were talking about plasticity, but this is where it gets really, really cool. Errors in vestibular motor sensory experience, meaning when we are off balance and we have to compensate by looking at, thinking about, or responding to the world differently,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
cause an area of our brain called the cerebellum, it actually means mini brain, it looks like a little mini brain stuck, like tucked below our cortex in the back, cause the cerebellum to signal some of these deeper brain centers that release dopamine, norepinephrine, and acetylcholine. And that's because these circuits in the inner ear, et cetera,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
Last episode, we discussed some of the basic principles of neuroplasticity. If you didn't hear that episode, no problem. I'll just review it quickly, which is that it's a falsehood that everything that we do and experience changes our brain. The brain changes when certain neurochemicals, namely acetylcholine, epinephrine, and dopamine,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
and the cerebellum, they were designed to recalibrate our motor movements when our relationship to gravity changes, something fundamental to survival. We can't afford to be falling down all the time or missing things that we grab for or running in the wrong direction when something is pursuing us. These are hardwired circuits that tap right into these chemical pathways.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
And those chemical pathways are the gates to plasticity. So I really want to spell this out clearly because I've given a lot of information today. The first thing is how are you arriving to the learning bout? you need to make sure your level of autonomic arousal is correct.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
The ideal state is going to be clear, calm, and focused, maybe a little bit more on the arousal level, like heightened arousal. So understand limbic friction, understand that you can be too tired, in which case you're going to need to get yourself a little more alert, or you can be too alert and you're going to need to get yourself calmer.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
So the first gate is to arrive at learning at the appropriate level of autonomic arousal. clear and focused is best, but don't obsess over being right there. It's okay to be a little anxious or a little bit tired. Then you want to make errors. We talked about that. And this vestibular motor sensory relationship is absolutely key if you want to get heightened or accelerated plasticity.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
And we talked about another feature, which is setting a contingency. If there's a reason, an important reason for you to actually learn, even if you're making failures, the learning will be accelerated. So there's really four things that you really need to do for plasticity as an adult. And I would say that these also apply to young people.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
And there's an interesting kind of thought experiment there as well, which is if you look at children, they are moving a lot in different dimensions. Whatever sport the kids are playing, or even if they don't play a sport, they tend to move in a lot of different relationships to gravity, more dimensionality to their movements, I should say, than adult.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
As you recall, your nervous system includes your brain and your spinal cord, but also all the connections that your brain and spinal cord make with the organs of your body and all the connections that the organs of your body make with your brain and spinal cord. Now, this thing that we call the nervous system is responsible for everything we know,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
As we age, we get less good at engaging in neuroplasticity. Part of that is because as we get older, we tend to get more linear and more regular about specific kinds of movements. So you sort of have to wonder whether or not the lack of plasticity or the reduced plasticity
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
in older individuals which includes me would reflect the fact that those chemicals aren't being deployed because we're not engaging in certain behaviors as opposed to we can't engage in the behaviors because the chemicals aren't being deployed So I want to make sure that I underscore the fact that this vestibular thing that I've been describing is a way to really accentuate plasticity.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
It's tapping into an inborn biological mechanism where the cerebellum has outputs to these deep brain nuclei associated with dopamine, acetylcholine and norepinephrine. That's kind of an amplifier on plasticity, as is high contingency. If you really need to learn conversational French to save your relationship, chances are you're going to learn it. Now there are limits to this, of course, too.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
If someone puts a gun to my head and says, learn conversational French in the next 120 seconds, I think we would probably be my only response because I can't stuff in all the knowledge all at once. I mean, I think that's the dream of brain machine interface that one will be able to download a chip into their
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
are released in ways and in the specific time that allow for neural circuits to be marked for change, and then the change occurs later during sleep. Basically, you need a certain cocktail of chemicals released in the brain in order for a particular behavior to reshape the way that our brain works. So the question really is what allows those neurochemicals to be released?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
hippocampus or cortex or some other brain structure that would allow them to download conversational French. And someday we may get to that. And so my overall goal here in this episode and with this podcast is to give you some understanding of the mechanisms and the insights into the underlying biology that allow you to tailor what these
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
kind of foundational mechanisms are to suit your particular learning needs. So I very much thank you for your time and attention. I know it's a lot of information and it takes a bit of focus and attention and certainly will trigger plasticity. to learn all this information.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
I want to encourage you and just remind you that you don't have to grasp it all at once, that it is here archived, and that if you want to return to the information, it will still be here, and that I, most of all, really appreciate your interest in science. Thank you so much.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
And last episode, it talked all about focus. If you haven't seen or heard that episode, you might want to check it out about some specific tools and practices that can allow you to build up your capacity for focus and release certain chemicals in that cocktail. But today we're going to talk about the other chemicals in the cocktail, in particular dopamine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
And we're really going to center our discussion around this issue of making errors and why making errors is actually the signal that tells the brain, okay, it's time to change, or more generally, it's time to pay attention to things so that you change.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
And I really want to distinguish this point really clearly, which is that I'm going to talk today a lot about motor and vestibular, meaning balance programs, but not just for learning motor commands and balance, but also for setting a stage or a kind of condition in your brain where you can go learn other things as well.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
So let's talk about some classic experiments that really nail down what's most important in this discussion about plasticity. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. By now, many of you have heard me say that if I could take just one supplement, that supplement would be AG1.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
The reason for that is AG1 is the highest quality and most complete of the foundational nutritional supplements available. What that means is that it contains not just vitamins and minerals, but also probiotics, prebiotics, and adaptogens to cover any gaps you may have in your diet and provide support for a demanding life.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
For me, even if I eat mostly whole foods and minimally processed foods, which I do for most of my food intake, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits and vegetables, vitamins and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone. For that reason, I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012. When I do that, it clearly bolsters my energy, my immune system, and my gut microbiome.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
These are all critical to brain function, mood, physical performance, and much more. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim their special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
So I mentioned last episode and I'll just tell you right now, again, the brain is incredibly plastic from about birth until about age 25 and then somewhere about 25, it's not like the day after your 26th birthday plasticity closes, there's a kind of tapering off of plasticity and you need different mechanisms to engage plasticity as an adult. Knowing how to tap into these plasticity mechanisms
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
is very powerful. The simplest example is if I hear something off to my right, I look to my right. If I hear it on the left, I look to my left. If I hear it right in front of me, I keep looking right in front of me. And that's because our maps of visual space and our maps of auditory space and our maps of motor space are aligned to one another in perfect register.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
all our behavior, all our emotions, everything we feel about ourselves and the outside world, everything we think and believe, it's really at the center of our entire experience of life and who we are. Fortunately, in humans, unlike in other species, we can change our nervous system by taking some very specific and deliberate actions.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
It's an incredible feature of our nervous system. It takes place in a structure called the superior colliculus, although you don't need to know that name. Superior colliculus has layers, literally stacks of neurons, like in a sandwich where the zero point right in front of me, or maybe, you know, 10 or 15 degrees off to my right or 10 or 15 degrees off to my left,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
are aligned so that the auditory neurons, the ones that care about sounds at 15 degrees to my right, sit directly below the neurons that look at 15 degrees to my right in my visual system.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
And when I reach over to this direction, there's a signal that's sent down through those layers that says 15 degrees off to the right is the direction to look, it's the direction to listen, and it's the direction to move if I need to move. So there's an alignment. And this is really powerful. And this is what allows us to move through space and function in our lives in a really fluid way.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
It's set up during development, but there have been some important experiments that have revealed that these maps are plastic, meaning they can shift, they're subject to neuroplasticity, and there are specific rules that allow us to shift them. So here's the key experiment.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
The key experiment was done by a colleague of mine who's now retired, but whose work is absolutely fundamental in the field of neuroplasticity, Eric Knudson. The Knudsen lab and many of the Knudsen lab scientific offspring showed that if one is to wear prism glasses that shift the visual field that eventually there'll be a shift in the representation of the auditory and motor maps too.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
Now, what they initially did is they looked at young subjects and what they did is they moved the visual world by making them wear prism glasses. So that for instance, if my pen is out in front of me at five degrees off center, so just a little bit off center, if you're listening to this, this would be like just a little bit to my right.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
But in these prism glasses, I actually see that pen way over far on my right. So it's actually here, but I see it over there because I'm wearing prisms on my eyes. What happens is in the first day or so you ask people or you ask animal subjects or whatever to reach for this object and they reach to the wrong place because they're seeing it where it isn't.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
But what you find is that in young individuals within a day or two, they start adjusting their motor behavior in exactly the right way so that they always reach to the correct location. So they hear a sound at one location, they see the object that ought to make that sound at a different location, and they somehow are able to adjust their motor behavior to reach to the correct location.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
It's incredible. And what it tells us is that these maps that are aligned to one another can move and shift, and it happens best in young individuals. If you do this in older individuals, In most cases, it takes a very long time for the maps to shift, and in some cases they never shift.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
So this is a very experimental scenario, but it's an important one to understand because it really tamps down the fact that we have the capacity to create dramatic shifts in our representation of the outside world. So how can we get plasticity as adult that mimics the plasticity that we get when we are juveniles? Well, the Knudsen lab and other labs have looked at this and it's really interesting.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
And today we're really going to focus on the actions, the motor commands and the aspects of movement and balance that allow us to change our nervous system. It turns out that movement and balance actually provide windows or portals into our ability to change our nervous system the way we want, even if those changes are not about learning new movements or learning how to balance.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
The signal that generates the plasticity is the making of errors. It's the reaches and failures that signal to the nervous system that this is not working and therefore the shifts start to take place. And this is so fundamentally important because I think most people understandably get frustrated. Like they're trying to learn a piece on the piano and they don't know, they can't do it.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
Or they're trying to write a piece of code or they're trying to access some sort of motor behavior and they can't do it. And the frustration drives them crazy and like, I can't do it, I can't do it. When they don't realize that the errors themselves are signaling to the brain and nervous system, something's not working. And of course the brain doesn't understand the words, something isn't working.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
the brain doesn't even understand frustration as an emotional state. The brain understands the neurochemicals that are released, namely epinephrine and acetylcholine, but also, and we'll get into this, the molecule dopamine, when we start to approximate the correct behavior just a little bit, and we start getting a little bit right.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
So what happens is when we make errors, the nervous system starts releasing neurotransmitters and neuromodulators, that say we better change something in the circuitry. And so errors are the basis for neuroplasticity and for learning. And I wish that this was more prominent out there. I guess this is why I'm saying it. And humans do not like this feeling of frustration and making errors.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
The few that do, do exceedingly well in whatever pursuits they happen to be involved in. The ones that don't generally don't do well. They generally don't learn much. And if you think about it, why would your nervous system ever change? Why would it ever change?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
Unless there was something to be afraid of, something that made us feel awful will signal that the nervous system needs to change, or there's an error in our performance. So it turns out that the feedback of these errors The reaching to the wrong location starts to release a number of things. And now you've heard about them many times, but this would be epinephrine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
It increases alertness, acetylcholine focus, because if acetylcholine is released, it creates an opportunity to focus on the error margin, the distance between what it is that you're doing and what it is that you would like to do. And then the nervous system, starts to make changes almost immediately in order to try and get the behavior right.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
And when you start getting it even a little bit right, that third molecule comes online or is released, which is dopamine, which allows for the plastic changes to occur very fast. Now, this is what all happens very naturally in young brains, but in old brains, it tends to be pretty slow, except for in two conditions. So let me just pause and just say this.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
If you are uncomfortable making errors and you get frustrated easily, If you leverage that frustration toward drilling deeper into the endeavor, you are setting yourself up for a terrific set of plasticity mechanisms to engage.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
But if you take that frustration and you walk away from the endeavor, you are essentially setting up plasticity to rewire you according to what happens afterwards, which is generally feeling pretty miserable. So now you can kind of start to appreciate why it is that continuing to drill into a process to the point of frustration, but then staying with that process for a little bit longer.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
And I'll define exactly what I mean by a little bit is the, the most important thing for adult learning as well as childhood learning, but adult learning in particular. Now the Newton lab did two very important sets of experiments. The first one, which showed that juveniles can make these massive shifts in their map representations. They get a lot of plasticity all at once.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
And it happens very fast in the period of just a couple of days. In adults, it tends to be very slow and most individuals never actually accomplish the full map shift. They don't get the plasticity. Then what they did is they started making the increment of change smaller.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
And soon you'll understand why. So let's talk about the different kinds of plasticity that are available to us. because those will point directly towards the type of protocols that we should engage in to change ourselves for the better. there is something called representational plasticity. Representational plasticity is just your internal representation of the outside world.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
So instead of shifting the world a huge amount by putting prisms that shifted the visual world, you know, all the way over to the right, they did this incrementally. So first they put on prisms that shifted it just a little bit, you know, and just like seven degrees, I believe was the exact number. And then it was 14 degrees and then it was 28 degrees.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
And so what they found was that the adult nervous system can tolerate smaller and smaller errors over time, but that you can stack those errors so that you can get a lot of plasticity. Put simply, incremental learning as an adult is absolutely essential. You are not going to get massive shifts in your representations of the outside world. So how do you make small errors as opposed to big errors?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
Well, the key is, smaller bouts of focused learning for smaller bits of information. It's a mistake to try and learn a lot of information in one learning bout as an adult. Now, there is one way to get a lot of plasticity all at once as an adult. There is that kind of holy grail thing of getting massive plasticity as you would when you were a young person, but as an adult.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
And the Knudsen lab revealed this by setting a very serious contingency on the learning. What they did was they had a situation where subjects had to find food that was displaced in their visual world, again, by putting prisms and they had to find the food and the food made a noise. There was a noise set kind of the location of the food through an array of speakers.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance
Basically in order to eat at all, they needed plasticity. And then what happened was remarkable. What they, is that the plasticity as an adult can be as dramatic, as robust as it is in a young person or in a young animal subject, provided that there's a serious incentive for the plasticity to occur. And this is absolutely important to understand, which is that
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
Over the past 10 years, gut health has emerged as something that we realize is important not only for the health of our digestion, but also for our immune system and for the production of neurotransmitters and neuromodulators, things like dopamine and serotonin. In other words, gut health is critical for proper brain function.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
Now, of course, I strive to eat healthy whole foods from unprocessed sources for the majority of my nutritional intake, but there are a number of things in AG1, including specific micronutrients, that are hard or impossible to get from whole foods.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
So by taking AG1 daily, I get the vitamins and minerals that I need, along with the probiotics and prebiotics for gut health, and in turn, brain and immune system health, and the adaptogens and critical micronutrients that are essential for all organs and tissues of the body.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
So anytime somebody asks me if they were to only take one supplement, what that supplement should be, I always say AG1, because AG1 supports so many different systems in the brain and body that relate to our mental health, physical health, and performance. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
For this month only, April 2025, AG1 is giving away a free one month supply of omega-3 fish oil, along with a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2. As I've highlighted before in this podcast, omega-3 fish oil and vitamin D3 plus K2 have been shown to help with everything from mood and brain health to heart health and healthy hormone production and much more.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to get the free one month supply of omega-3 fish oil plus a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2 with your subscription. How can you improve your vision? How can you get better at seeing things? Well, one way is to make sure that you spend at least 10 minutes a day total, at least, viewing things off in the distance. So that would be well over half a mile or more.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
Try and see a horizon, try and get your vision out to a location that's beyond the four walls of your house or apartment or the doors of your car and the windshield of your car. I know that can be hard to do, but it's very valuable. So try and see at a distance because it's good for your eyesight. It'll keep this lens nice and elastic and the muscles nice and strong that move the lens.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
And it has this relaxing component to it. Now, our visual system is exquisitely tuned to motion, not just our self-generated motion, but the motion of things around us. And one of the things that it does is something called smooth pursuit. Smooth pursuit, is our ability to track individual objects moving, as the name suggests, smoothly through space. in various trajectories.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
You can actually train or improve your vision by looking at smooth pursuit stimuli. And that sounds really boring. Remember the brain follows the eye. It follows the movements of the eye. It has to deal with that. And the neural circuits within the brain have to cope with changes in smooth pursuit.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
So if you're doing a lot of reading up close, you're not viewing horizons, you're not getting a lot of smooth pursuit type stimulation from your life. or you're just getting it within the confines of a little box on your phone, your vision will get worse.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
There are also other pieces of the eye that are designed to keep the eye lubricated. You also have these things that we call eyelashes. Most people don't know this, but eyelashes are there to trigger the blink reflex. They aren't just aesthetically nice. Eyelashes are there so that if a piece of dust or something starts to head towards the cornea, the eye blinks very, very fast.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
The idea is that you want to use the visual system regularly for what it was designed for and smooth pursuit is a great way to keep the visual and motion tracking systems of the brain and the eye and the extraocular muscles working in a really nice coordinate fashion. So what does this mean? The tool is... Spend two to three minutes doing smooth pursuit. There's some programs on YouTube.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
You can just look up smooth pursuit stimulus. Practice accommodation for a few minutes, maybe every other day. Just bringing something in close. You'll feel the strain of your eyes. Doing that, move it out. You'll feel a relaxation point. Move it past that relaxation point where you will have to do what's called a vergence eye movement to maintain focus on that location as it moves out.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
Bring it back in. Practice that, practice accommodation, and then be sure to give your eyes some rest. get outside, look at a horizon or do nothing. Just kind of let your eyes go soft. I guess what the yogis would call soft gaze. Practice a little bit of smooth pursuit.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
You don't have to be neurotic about this, but if you do this often enough, meaning every other day, every third day or so, you can be the strange person on the plane or in the classroom doing this, that people might chuckle or look at you funny or tease you, but that's okay because you'll be able to see when they are losing their vision. so you'll get the last laugh.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
Let's talk about binocular vision and lazy eye. The young brain up until about age seven, but maybe even extending out until about age 12 is extremely vulnerable to differences in ocular input between the two eyes. My scientific great-grandparents won the Nobel Prize for discovering so-called critical periods, periods of time in which the brain is more plastic, more able to change.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
Those two guys, David Huebel and Torsten Wiesel, thank you, David and Torsten, forever changed the face of visual neuroscience and forever changed the way we think about of the young brain. It used to be thought that you wouldn't want to do a surgery on a young kid because of risk of anesthesia in young individuals.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
But we now know that you need to repair these imbalances that even a few hours of occluding one eye early in life can lead to permanent unless something's done. Permanent changes in the way that the brain perceives the outside world such that when that eye is opened up again, the brain actually can't make sense of anything that's coming through it. It shuts down that visual pathway somehow.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
So what does this all mean in terms of protocols? If you're a young person, do your best to get really good binocular vision, not just at level of your phone or your tablet, but also at distance. You will build strong binocular visual machinery in the brain and at the level of the eyes and the eye musculature.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
Now, if you're somebody who did have an occlusion, what's needed is to cover up the other eye, to create an imbalance so that the weak eye, the so-called lazy eye, that's sometimes referred to as amblyopia, that eye has to work harder. Now, you might ask, what happens if you cover both eyes early in life? There are some like retreats and stuff where people go into caves with absolutely no vision.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
It creates hallucinations. We'll talk about why that is in just a moment. But here's my suggestion. Try and get balanced visual input through the two eyes. Almost everybody has a dominant eye. It usually doesn't relate to your dominant hand, although it can. And so for me, if I cover up my right eye, I see much less well, much more poorly.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
It's the fastest reflex you own. We also have these things called eyelids. Now eyelids might seem like the most boring topic of all, but they are incredibly fascinating. Today we're going to talk about how you can actually use your visual system to increase your levels of alertness based on the neural circuits that link your brainstem with your eyelids. So,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
It's a little bit fuzzy and I have to work harder in order to see the camera, for instance, than if I cover up my left eye. And if you do have strong imbalances between the two eyes,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
which can be caused by cataract and lens issues, can be caused by neuromuscular issues, et cetera, to try and get those dealt with as early as possible by contacting a really good ophthalmologist and ideally a neuro-ophthalmologist. It's very common for young children, babies, to have an eye with strabismus that either deviates out or that deviates in.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
It is important to correct that if you would like to have balanced vision between the two eyes and for the brain to respond equally to the two eyes and to have, I would say, high fidelity quality vision. Hallucinations are a property of the visual system. And it was always thought that hallucinations arise because of over-activation or activation of certain aspects of the visual system.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
I just briefly want to mention a paper that was published by my good friend and phenomenal scientist and physicist for that matter, Chris Neil, who's up at the University of Oregon in Eugene. They studied LSD-like compounds and discovered that hallucinations actually occur because portions of your brain become underactive. The visual portions of your brain are under stimulated.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
This is probably why when people go into these cave retreats, something I've never done, I don't think I ever will do, where it's completely black, pretty soon they start hallucinating. They start seeing things even though there's nothing there. The visual system is desperate to make guesses about what's out in the world. It's like the eager beaver of your brain. It's like, what's out there?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
What's out there? What's out there? So it turns out that hallucinations are an under activation of the visual system and then a compensatory, a compensation by which the visual system creates activity and hallucinations. So if you're in the dark long enough, you start to hallucinate and see things. So that's a little note about hallucinations.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Roka. Roka makes eyeglasses and sunglasses that are the absolute highest quality. I've been wearing Roka readers and sunglasses for years now, and I absolutely love them. They're lightweight, they have superb optics, and they have lots of frames to choose from. Roka and I recently teamed up to create a new pair of red lens glasses.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
These red lens glasses are meant to be worn in the evening after the sun goes down. They filter out short wavelength light that comes from screens and from LED lights, which are the most common indoor lighting nowadays. I want to emphasize Roka red lens glasses are not traditional blue blockers. They do filter out blue light, but they filter out a lot more than just blue light.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
In fact, they filter out the full range of short wavelength light that suppresses the hormone melatonin. By the way, you want melatonin high in the evening and at night. It makes it easy to fall and stay asleep. And those short wavelengths trigger increases in cortisol.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
Increases in cortisol are great in the early part of the day, but you do not want increases in cortisol in the evening and at night. These Roka Red Lens glasses ensure normal, healthy increases in melatonin and that your cortisol levels stay low, which is, again, what you want in the evening and at night.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
In doing so, these Roka Red Lens glasses really help you calm down and improve your transition to sleep. Roka Red Lens glasses also look great. They have a ton of different frames to select from, and you can wear them out to dinner or concerts, and you can still see things.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
I don't recommend you wear them while driving just for safety purposes, but if you're out to dinner, you're at a concert, you're at a friend's house, or you're just at home, pop those Roka Red Lens glasses on, and you'll really notice the difference in terms of your levels of calm and all the sleep stuff I mentioned earlier. If you'd like to try Roka, go to Roka.com.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
That's R-O-K-A.com and enter the code Huberman to save 20% off your first order. Again, that's Roka.com and enter the code Huberman at checkout. One of the things that you can do to improve your vision, and it's also kind of fun, is to put a Snellen chart in your home. A Snellen chart is that list of letters.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
Let's talk about what the eyes do for vision. Basically, the entire job of the eyes is to collect light information and send it off to the rest of the brain in a form that the brain can understand. Remember, no light actually gets in past those neural retinas. It gets to the neural retina and we have specific cells in the eye called photoreceptors. They come in two different types, rods and cones.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
If you go to the dreaded Department of Motor Vehicles, have you cover up an eye, read the letters on the chart. The letters, of course, get smaller and smaller. They're trying to figure out roughly what your vision is. Cover up the other eye.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
This is something that's not often mentioned, but your performance on the Snellen chart will vary depending on time of day, because your level of fatigue and your ability to control that accommodation and other mechanisms of the eye muscles will vary. So you can take it as an average.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
It's also a good thing if you're going to get your vision tested for corrective lenses, or maybe you're going to do laser surgery or something of that sort, if you're thinking about any of that, to really get it measured by a professional. Get your vision tested by somebody who really understands vision, like an ophthalmologist or a really good optometrist.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
If you put a Snellen chart in your home, you can do that as part of your visual training. Now, this might seem excessively nerdy, but what is more important than your eyesight? Eyesight is so vital. It's right up there with movement and our ability to move, to generate, to get up out of chairs and to walk and to run and to take care of ourselves.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
Eyesight and movement are the main ways that we are able to take care of ourselves and take care of others. When you start having compromised eyesight or compromised movement, people need to take care of us and we become much more challenged in moving through our daily life. So while it might seem nerdy to have a Snellen chart in your home,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
or to do a smooth pursuit exercise a couple of times a week, or to get outside for a few hours a day and do your reading or your laptop work there. Preserving your eyesight and preserving your vision is one of the most life enhancing or quality of life enhancing things that you can do.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
Now, of course there are genetic factors and there are injury related factors that can compromise eyesight and our ability to see. And of course, the things I'm talking about today aren't going to solve all those issues, but they can have a tremendous positive impact if you're willing to do just a little bit of work. So I do want to talk about a few other things that can perhaps improve vision.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
I want to dispel a few myths about stuff to take to improve vision. So now you understand a lot about the biology of vision. You understand that light has to arrive at the retina and get converted into electrical signals. That process requires things like vitamin A, a fat soluble vitamin. It requires things like the carotenoids.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
That metabolic cascade, that biochemical cascade is essential for vision. And this is why you've been told that carrots help you see better because they're high in vitamin A. There are a few simple things you can do to support your vision.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
First of all, it is true that eating vegetables, the dark leafy vegetables and things like carrots that have vitamin A in abundance and eating them in close to their raw form. So naturally occurring foods that contain a lot of vitamin A in their raw form can help support vision.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
Now, does that mean that if you ingest super physiological amounts of that stuff, that it's going to make your vision that much better? No, but you do need a threshold level of vitamin A in order to see and in order to see well. Now, there's a lot of excitement nowadays about supplementation to help support the health of the visual system.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
But I want to talk about a molecule that's in a lot of supplements to support vision. And there are some really good data on, and that's lutein. What is this lutein stuff? Well, lutein is in the pathway that relates to vitamin A and the formation of
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
the opsin, the photopigment that captures light in the back of your eye, literally absorbs light pigment in your eye and converts that into electrical signals and allows you to see. And there is some evidence. I spoke to our chair of ophthalmology. There is some evidence through quality peer-reviewed studies that supplementing with lutein,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
can help offset some of the detrimental effects of age-related macular degeneration, but, I want to emphasize but, or emphasize however, only for individuals with moderate to severe macular degeneration. For people that have normal vision or with just a low degree of macular degeneration, these studies did not see a significant improvement of vision from supplementing with lutein.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
Cones are mainly responsible for daytime vision. and the rods are mainly responsible for vision at night or under low light conditions, generally speaking. These photoreceptors, the rods and cones, have chemical reactions inside them that involve things like vitamin A, and that chemical reaction converts the light into electricity.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
And the other one is A-S-T-A-X-A-N-T-H-I-N. What is Aztec Saxton? It's a really interesting compound. It's the red pink pigment found in various seafoods. I'm not a big seafood fan, but like certain fish, like you'll see at the fish market will have that red pink pigment. and it's also in the feathers of flamingos.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
It's structurally similar to beta-carotene, so it's very pro-vitamin A, but it has some chemical differences which may make it safer than vitamin A. Remember, vitamin A is a lipid-soluble vitamin, so it can be stored in our body for long periods of time. What is the deal with this astaxanthin? What are its drawbacks?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
Well, it has a number of different effects, but the most notable for sake of this episode is the one on ocular blood flow. It does seem to increase the amount of ocular blood flow, so the blood supply to the eyes. So that makes it an interesting compound.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
It's also been shown to have positive effects on things like skin elasticity, skin moisture, skin quality, et cetera, probably due to its effects on blood flow. So lutein, astaxan, A-S-T-A-X-A-N-T-H-I-N. So everything I've talked about today relates to studies that were done and published in quality peer reviewed journals.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
That doesn't necessarily mean you want to run out and start taking this stuff. that I've described, or even doing the protocols I've described, I've given you an array, a palette, a buffet, if you will, of things that you could do to try and enhance or support your vision, depending on how good your vision is, your family history of vision and vision loss, your occupational hazards,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
People that work with metal filings that are flying out of machines are going to have a higher degree of risk to their visual system than will people who just do office work. Although if you're doing a lot of office work, chances are you're not getting a lot of long view vision. Your accommodation mechanisms are going to start to suffer over time. I think we can reliably predict that.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
So I've tried to give you an array of behavioral tools and we did touch upon some supplementation tools.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
I'd be remiss if I didn't say that because blood flow is so critical for the neurons of the eye, remember these are the most metabolically active cells in your entire body, the cells within your retina, because blood flow is required to get them the energy and nutrients they need, having a healthy cardiovascular system.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
doing endurance work, doing strength training work regularly is going to support your eyes and your brain and your vision. It's indirect, but it's essential, right? It's necessary, but it's not going to be sufficient. You're going to have to do other things to support your eyesight as well.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
but having a healthy cardiovascular system because it's going to deliver blood and oxygen and nutrients to this incredible apparatus on the front of your face, these two pieces of brain, is going to support your overall brain health and vision over time.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
Last but not least, I want to thank you for your time and attention today, your willingness to learn about vision and the visual system and the various things that you can do to help support the health and functioning of your visual system. And of course, I want to thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
It is however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. Today's episode is going to be all about vision and eyesight, a topic that's very near and dear to my heart because it's the one that I've been focusing on for well over 25 years of my career.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
Within the eye, within the retina, there are then a series of stages of processing, and that information eventually gets sent into the brain by a very specific class of neurons. They're called retinal ganglion cells. Now, here's what's incredible. I just want you to ponder this for a second. This still blows my mind. Everything you see around you you're not actually seeing those objects directly.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
What you're doing is you're making a best guess about what's there based on the pattern of electricity that arrives in your brain. Now that might just seem totally wild and hard to wrap your head around, but think about it this way, because this is the way it actually works. Let's take an example of a color like green or blue.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
you have cones in your eye that respond best to the wavelength of light that is reflected off, say a green apple. So you don't actually see the green apple. What you see is the light bouncing off that green apple and it goes into your eye and you see it and perceive it as round and green, but not because you see anything green, no green light arrives in your brain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
what happens is your brain actually compares the amount of green reflection coming off that apple to the amount of red and blue around it. What the brain is receiving is a series of signals, electrical signals, and it's comparing electrical signals in order to come up with what we call these perceptions. Like I see something green, a green apple, or I see red.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
So that's what I'd like you to understand about the way the eye communicates with the brain. I would also like you to understand that the brain itself is making these guesses and that those guesses are largely right. How do I know that? Well, they're right because when you reach out to grab a glass, most of the time you grab the glass and you don't miss, right?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
Most of the time when you make judgments about the world around you based on your visual impression of them, it allows you to move functionally through the world. So the brain is doing these incredible things. It's also creating depth, a sense of depth, even though what arrives from the retina is essentially a readout of a two-dimensional flat image. Your eyes are slightly offset from one another.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
So that for instance, if I look at you, if you're standing right in front of me right now, and I were to look at you, the image of your face, the light bouncing off your face, to be more precise, lands on one eye in a slightly different location than it does in the other eye. And then the brain does math.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
It basically does the equivalent of geometry and trigonometry and essentially figures out how far away you are from me, which is just incredible. So the brain does all this very, very fast. And the brain uses about 40 to 50% of its total real estate for vision. That's how important vision is.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
When we hear the word vision, we most often think about eyesight or our ability to perceive shapes and objects and faces and colors. However, our eyes are responsible for much more than that, including our mood, our level of alertness, and all of that is included in what we call vision. What is vision? Well, vision starts with the eyes. we have no what's called extraocular light perception.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
Now I want to talk about the other aspect of vision, which is the stuff that you don't perceive, the subconscious stuff. And then we'll transition directly into how you can use light and eyesight to control this other stuff, because it's very important. And that other stuff is mood, sleep, and appetite.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
And there are ways in which you can use these same protocols that I will describe in order to preserve and even enhance your vision, your ability to see things and consciously perceive them. So the protocols we will describe have a lot of carry over to both conscious eyesight and to these subconscious aspects of vision.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
And I just want you to understand a little bit more about the science of seeing of eyesight and vision, and then all the protocols will make perfect sense. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each and every night. Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop about one to three degrees.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees. Eight Sleep automatically regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your unique needs.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
Now, I find that extremely useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night, and warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow-wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
And I know that because Eight Sleep has a great sleep tracker that tells me how well I've slept and the types of sleep that I'm getting throughout the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
Their latest model, the Pod 4 Ultra, also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees in order to improve your airflow and stop you from snoring. If you decide to try Eight Sleep, you have 30 days to try it at home, and you can return it if you don't like it, no questions asked, but I'm sure that you'll love it.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
Go to 8sleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra. 8sleep ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and the UAE. Again, that's 8sleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra. So as amazing as eyesight is, it actually did not evolve for us to see shapes and colors and motion and form.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
The most ancient cells in our eyes and the reason we have eyes is to communicate information about time of day to the rest of the brain and body. Remember, there's no extraocular photoreception. There's no way for light information to get to all the cells of your body, but every cell in your body needs to know if it's night or day.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
Now, I talked a little bit about this in the episodes on sleep, and this episode is not about sleep, but I want to emphasize that there is a particular category of retinal ganglion cell. Remember the neurons that connect the retina to the brain. These are so-called melanopsin retinal ganglion cells named after the opsin that they contain within them. They are essentially photoreceptors.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
Remember before I said there are photoreceptors and then these ganglion cells? Well, these melanopsin cells, as the name suggests, melanopsin, have their own photoreceptor built inside them. These cells, retinal ganglion cells, communicate to areas of the brain when particular qualities of light are present in your environment.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
and signal to the brain therefore that it's early day or late in the day. They regulate when you'll get sleepy, when you'll feel awake, how fast your metabolism is, excuse me, your blood sugar levels, your dopamine levels, and your pain threshold. These melanopsin ganglion cells have been shown to set the circadian clock and to respond best
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
to the contrast between blue and yellow light of the sort that lands on these cells when you view the sun when it's at so-called low solar angle, when it's low in the sky, either in the morning or in the evening. What does all this mean? The most central and important aspect of our biology and perhaps our psychology as well, is to anchor ourselves in time, to know when we exist.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
We know time at a biological level based on where the sun is. What does this mean for a protocol? It means see, get that light in your eyes early in the day, and anytime you want to be awake. So try and get as much sunlight in your eyes during the day as you safely can.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
You need a lot of this light in order to trigger these melanopsin cells, which would then trigger your circadian clock, which sits above the roof of your mouth, which will signal every cell in your body, including temperature rhythms, et cetera. So first things first, your visual system was not for seeing faces, motion, et cetera. The most ancient cells in your eye
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
While it feels good to have light on our skin, while it feels good to be outside in the sunlight for most people, the only way that light information can get to the cells of your body is through these two little goodies on the front of your face. And for those of you listening, I'm just pointing to my eyes.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
which are there right now as we speak, are there to inform your body and brain about time of day. So you want to get that bright light early in the day, absolutely essential, two to 10 minutes. Now, here's another reason to do this, getting two hours a day of outdoor time without sunglasses has a significant effect on reducing the probability that you will get myopia.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
Now myopia or nearsightedness has to do with the way that the lens focuses light onto the retina. So remember your eye is an optical device. You have lenses in your eyes and those lenses need to move. It's not a rigid lens like a glass lens, it's a dynamic lens.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
The eye can dynamically adjust where light lands by moving the lens and changing the shape of the lens in your eye through a process called accommodation. And if you understand this process of accommodation, you not only can enhance the health of your eyes in the immediate and long-term, but you also can work better. You'll be able to focus better on physical and mental work.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
You will be able to concentrate for longer. So much of our mental focus, whether or not it's for cognitive endeavors or physical endeavors, is grounded in where we place our visual focus. Okay, what we look at and our ability to hold our concentration there is critically determining how we think. Now, accommodation is our ability to accommodate to things that are up close here or further away.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
And the way this works is that the iris and the musculature in a structure called the ciliary body move the lens. So when you look far away, okay, when you see things far away, your lens actually relaxes. It can flatten out. And you'll notice that it actually is relaxing to look at a horizon.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
Whereas if I look at something up close to me, like this pen or my phone or a computer screen or this microphone, it takes effort. You'll sense the effort. Now, some of that effort is actually eye movements because you have muscles that can move your eyes within their sockets.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
but a lot of the work quote unquote is neural work of the muscles having to move and contract such that the lens actually gets thicker in order to bring the light to the retina and not to a location in front of it or behind it, so-called accommodation. Now you might say, why are you telling me about accommodation?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
As many of you have heard me say before on this and other podcasts, your eyes in particular, your neural retinas are part of your central nervous system. They are part of your brain. They're the only part of your brain that sits outside the cranial vault.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
These days, we're spending a lot of time looking at things, mainly our phones up close and computers up close, and we are indoors. In other words, you are not giving your lens the opportunity to flatten out and for these muscles to relieve themselves of this work, but you are also training your eyes to be good at looking at things up close and not far away.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
And as a consequence, you are reshaping the neural circuitry in your brain, and it is not good. You want to get outside, not just to lighten the load on your mind or to think about other things, but to maintain the health of your visual system. In other words, you want to exercise these muscles, and that involves both the lens moving and getting kind of thicker and relaxing that lens.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
And the relaxation of the lens is actually one of the best things you can do for the musculature of the inner eye. So what's the protocol? You might be surprised, but for every 30 minutes of focused work,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
you probably want to look up every once in a while and just try and relax your face and eye muscles, including your jaw muscles, because all these things are closely linked in the brainstem and allow your eyes to go into a so-called panoramic vision where you're just not really focusing on anything and then refocus on your work. If you are feeling tired,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
it actually can be beneficial to the wakefulness systems of the brain, including the locus coeruleus and these areas that release norepinephrine to actually look up, to actually look up toward the ceiling. You don't want your chin all the way back, but to look up and to raise your eyes toward the ceiling and to look up and try and hold that for 10 to 15 seconds.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
It actually triggers some of the areas of the brain that are involved in wakefulness. So if you're somebody who's falling asleep at your work, This can be very beneficial. When things are up, we tend to be alert. When everything's focused down, including our eyes, it tends to have a more suppressive or sedative type signaling to the deeper centers of the brain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also contains adaptogens. I started taking AG1 way back in 2012, long before I even knew what a podcast was.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
In other words, you have two pieces of your brain that deliberately got squeezed out of the skull during development and placed in these things we call eye sockets. Now the eyes have a lot of other goodies in them that are very important. And those are the goodies that we're going to focus on a lot today. There's a lens to focus light precisely to the retina.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight
I started taking it, and I still take it every single day because it ensures that I meet my quota for daily vitamins and minerals, and it helps make sure that I get enough prebiotics and probiotics to support my gut health.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. My name is Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
Not everyone responds well to them, as I'm sure you've all heard, and their side effect profile has effects like blunting affect. It can make people feel kind of flat, kind of meh. Many people adjust their serotonin by just eating more food, and carbohydrate-rich foods will increase serotonin.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
I eat a relatively high protein and moderate fat, zero carb or low carb meal at lunch and in the afternoon to stay alert because those foods tend to favor dopamine production, acetylcholine production, epinephrine production, and alertness. My mood is generally pretty good most of the time. And then as evening comes around and I'm concerned about sleep and a good night's sleep,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
or we smell something or we taste something that we like, there does tend to be a postural leaning in. We tend to inhale air at that time. We tend to bring in more of whatever chemical substance is there. So we tend to do these mm's and kind of lean in closer to things that are attractive to us. And when we see and experience things that we don't like, Sometimes it's a mild aversion.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
not concerned in an anxious way, but I want to get a good night's sleep, I will ingest foods that promote serotonin release because they contain a lot of tryptophan. So as you're seeing, this isn't really a discussion about nutrition per se.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
This is a discussion about food, which contains amino acids, amino acids being the precursors to neuromodulators and neuromodulators having a profound effect on your overall state of alertness or calmness, happiness, sadness, and wellbeing. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
AG1 is designed to cover all of your foundational nutritional needs, and it tastes great. Now, I've been drinking AG1 since 2012, and I started doing that at a time when my budget for supplements was really limited. In fact, I only had enough money back then to purchase one supplement, and I'm so glad that I made that supplement AG1.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
The reason for that is even though I strive to eat most of my foods from whole foods and minimally processed foods, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits, vegetables, vitamins, and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone. And I need to do that in order to ensure that I have enough energy throughout the day, I sleep well at night, and keep my immune system strong.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
But when I take AG1 daily, I find that all aspects of my health, my physical health, my mental health, and my performance, both cognitive and physical, are better. I know that because I've had lapses when I didn't take AG1 and I certainly felt the difference.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
I also notice, and this makes perfect sense given the relationship between the gut microbiome and the brain, that when I regularly take AG1, which for me means a serving in the morning or mid-morning and again later in the afternoon or evening, that I have more mental clarity and more mental energy. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
For this month only, January 2025, AG1 is giving away 10 free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3 K2. Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim the 10 free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3 K2. Now you understand the relationship, I hope, between foods and dopamine, foods and serotonin, and that they're both being communicated to the brain via the vagus, right?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
So let's talk a little bit more about things that we ingest in our body and then allow our body to inform our brain to shift our mood. But I don't think most people know this simple fact, which is that the omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acid ratio has a profound effect on depression. First of all, in an experiment done in animals, they found there's a model of learned helplessness in animals.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
It's not very kind to the animals, but they put rats or mice in a jar, they let them swim, and they'll swim, swim, swim to try and save their life, and eventually they give up. It's a learned helplessness. They don't let them drown, they take them out. adjusting the omega-3, omega-6 ratio so that the omega-3s are higher led to less learned helplessness, meaning these animals would swim longer.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
But that same study was essentially done in humans. What they did is they took people who were clinically depressed, major depression, okay? Major depression is severe maladaptive state, meaning it inhibits job, relationships, appetite, all sorts of negative health effects. And they did a comparison of a thousand milligrams a day of EPA.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
So EPA is one of the elements that contains high levels of omega-3s that's in things like fish oil, but it wasn't a thousand milligrams of fish oil. It was a thousand milligrams of EPA. compared that to 20 milligrams of fluoxetine, which is Prozac, they found that they were equally effective in reducing depressive symptoms. And what was really interesting
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
in addition to that is that the combination of a thousand milligrams of EPA and fluoxetine had a synergistic effect in lowering depressive symptoms. And now there are lots of studies. If you go into PubMed and you were to put EPA or fish oil and depression, you would find that there were a number of really impressive results showing that it's at least as effective as certain
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
We just kind of lean back or look away. Other times it's an intense aversion of disgust and we tend to cringe our face. We tend to avoid inhaling any of the chemicals. This probably has roots in ancient biological mechanisms that are to prevent us from ingesting things that are bad for us, chemical compounds and tastes that might be poisonous.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
antidepressants at these dosages, and it can amplify or improve the effect of low dosages of some of these SSRIs. You can discuss it with your doctor and family and make the choices that are right for you. Now, of course, I really want to emphasize something, which is that no one compound
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
or nutrient or supplement or drug or behavior for that matter is going to be the be all end all of shifting out of depression or improving one's mood or improving sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
You cannot expect to take a compound regardless of source or potency and have it completely shift your experience of life without having to continue to engage in the proper behaviors, all the things we know, proper sleep, exercise, social connection, food, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
Okay, so now let's turn to another aspect of the gut-brain relationship that will surprise you, in some cases might shock you, and that has some really cool and actionable biology. And that's the gut microbiome, probiotics, and prebiotics. So what's the deal with the gut microbiome and the gut-brain axis?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
Today, we've actually been talking a lot already about the gut brain axis that has nothing to do with microbiomes. We've been talking about this vagus nerve that connects providing sensory information from the body to the brain, and then the brain also sends in the same nerve motor information to control the motility, the gut, the heart rate, how fast we breathe and deployment of immune stuff.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
But oftentimes when we hear about the gut brain axis these days, it's a discussion about the gut microbiome. I'm very happy there's so much discussion about the gut microbiome. I am somewhat dismayed and concerned that most of what I hear out there is either false or partially false.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
So we're going to clear up some of the misconceptions, first by understanding the biology, and then we're going to talk about some of the actionable items. It is true that we have a lot of these little microorganisms living in our gut. They're not there because they want to help us. They don't have brains.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
They are adaptive, however, they try and find and create environments that make it easier for them to proliferate. So they don't care about you and me, but they are perfectly willing to exploit you and me in order to make more of themselves. The microbiota that live in us vary along the length of our digestive tract. So we are one long tube for digestion.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
And inside of that tube is a mucosal lining. And the conditions of that mucosal lining set a number of different things. It sets the rate of our digestion and the quality of our digestion. it sets, for instance, our immune system. We're ingesting things all the time. Think about air, bacteria, viruses, they're making their way into our gut. And some of those bacteria live in the gut.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
So much of the foundation of any discussion about emotion has to center around this kind of push pull of attraction to things or aversion from things. Now that's a very basic way of thinking about emotions. But if you think about it, it works for a lot of different circumstances.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
And some of those bacteria bias the mucosal lining in the gut, stomach and intestines, to be more acidic or more basic so that they can make more of themselves, so they can replicate. Now, some of those mucosal linings that they promote make us feel better. They make us feel more alert. They bolster our immune system and others make us feel worse. So first rule, The microbiome isn't good or bad.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
Some of these little bugs that live in us do bad things to us. They make us feel worse. They lower our immunity. They affect us in negative ways. Some of them make us feel better. And they do that mainly by changing the conditions of our gut environment. In addition to that, they do impact
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
the neurotransmitters and the neurons that live in the gut and that signal up to the brain to impact things like dopamine and serotonin that we've been talking about previously. So there's a vast world now devoted to trying to understand what sources of food, what kinds of foods are good or not good for the gut microbiome. Here's a few things that I think you might find surprising.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
First of all, supporting a healthy gut microbiome is good for mood, great for digestion, and great for immune system function. However, that does not mean maxing out or taking the most probiotic and prebiotic that you can possibly manage. As I mentioned many times before, I do believe in probiotics.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
I take probiotics, but there are studies that show that if you take lots and lots of certain probiotics like lactobacillus and you really ramp up the levels more, it is not a case of more is better. There are things like brain fog that can come from that. Brain fog is just this inability to focus. People feel really not well generally.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
Some of those studies are a little bit controversial, but I think it's fair to say that if people really increase the amount of probiotic that they're taking beyond a certain amount, then they start feeling foggy in the mind. The ingestion of fermented foods is one of the best ways to support healthy levels of gut microbiota without exceeding the threshold that would cause things like brain fog.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
So much so that some people report that when they start eating small bits, because it doesn't require a lot of fermented foods, that their overall mood is better. Not unlike the effects of EPA, although I don't think it's been looked at directly in the context of clinical depression yet. there are some things that you can do to really damage your gut microbiome.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
And in the brain, everywhere from the deep circuits of the brain to the more kind of what we call higher order revolve centers of the brain, we have this push-pull thing where either in a previous episode, I talked about go, the circuits that allow you to emphasize action and then no-go circuits, the circuits in the basal ganglia that allow you to de-emphasize action and prevent action.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
And this is where there's a huge misconception that I want to clear up. There was a study that showed that artificial sweeteners, but a particular artificial sweetener, which was saccharin, can disrupt the gut microbiome
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
in ways that is detrimental to a number of different health markers, increasing inflammatory cytokines and all the other bad things that happen when the gut microbiome is thrown off kilter. Saccharin is not the most typical artificial sweetener that's used.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
The most typical artificial sweeteners that are used are things like aspartame, so-called NutraSweet, or sucralose, or these days stevia, to my knowledge. the negative effects of artificial sweeteners on the gut microbiome were restricted to saccharin.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
So what happens is certain artificial sweeteners, in particular saccharin, disrupt the microbiome and make the environment within the gut, that mucosal lining, more favorable to bacteria microbiota that are not good for the organism. This is an important distinction. It's not just that a language thing where people say, oh, you know, it kills the microbiome.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
It doesn't kill the microbiome, it shifts the microbiome. And shifts in the microbiome can be good or they can be bad. And that takes us to another topic that's a bit of a hot button topic, but I'm willing to go there because I think it deserves conversation.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
which is nowadays, there are many examples out there where people have switched from a kind of standard diet or even a vegetarian diet or vegan diet to a keto diet. Now, keto doesn't necessarily have to mean the ingestion of meats, but it can. And they experience positive effects for themselves. But the ketogenic diet,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
is interesting because when one shifts to the ketogenic diet, there is a shift in the gut microbiome and some people end up feeling better. Some people end up feeling worse. Likewise, some people go from ingesting animal products, including meat, or they're vegetarian and they go to vegan, and they experience positive shifts in mood and affect.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
So the point of all this is that when I say you have to find what's right for you, that's not a throwaway statement. Some people's microbiome
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
and the mucosal lining of their of their throat of their gut of their nose everything is improved by diets that are heavily meat-based and don't have many plants other people do much better on a plant-based diet without many meat products or animal products it's highly individual and this probably has roots in genetic makeup this probably has roots in
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
what people were raised on, because remember, the nervous system, of course, is set up by your genes, your genetic program, but your nervous system, it adapts early in life to your conditions. That's what it's for. The reason you have a nervous system is to move your body appropriately towards things that are good for you and away from things that are not, but also,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
it was designed to adapt so that yes, indeed, some people may like certain foods and react to certain foods better than others because of the way that their nervous system was wired, this enteric, as it's called, nervous system that lines the gut and that communicates with the brain. So most of what I've talked about today is,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
black and white, these are things that are present in all of us, the sugar sensing neurons of the gut, the way the vagus is wired, the fact that omega-3, omega-6 tend to improve, the ratios tend to impact mood with high omega-3, omega-6 ratios improving mood. We talked about all sorts of things in the gut brain and body brain axis.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
But when it comes to the microbiome, the key thing is that we all have a microbiome. You want a microbiome, but you want to promote the microbiome that is right for you. And that can be shifted and steered by ingesting certain categories of foods and not others.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
And so we can break down the discussion about emotions into these simpler versions of themselves. But at the core of that, of attraction or aversion is an important theme that you might realize already, but most people tend to overlook, which is that there's an action there. you're either moving forward or you're moving away from something.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
It's very clear that these fermented foods support the microbiome, that we should be ingesting at least two servings per day, which is quite a lot. that supplementation at low levels can be good. Supplementation at high levels can create this brain fog. Even though some people say that result is controversial, I've experienced this myself and the data looked to me pretty darn solid.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
So that's one thing to think about as well. And The other thing about the gut microbiome is that it's highly contextual based on other things that you're doing. So even things like exercise and social wellbeing and connection, those things are also impacting the gut microbiome.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
So find the diet that's right for you and that works for you in the context of the other ethical and lifestyle choices that are important to you. That's my advice. I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. We should all know that proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. In fact, even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance to a considerable degree.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
It's also important that you're not just hydrated, but that you get adequate amounts of electrolytes in the right ratios. Drinking a packet of Element dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate amounts of hydration and electrolytes.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of both, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I'll also drink a packet of Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
There are a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. I like the watermelon. I like the raspberry. I like the citrus. Basically, I like all of them. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim an Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement spelled L-M-N-T.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
So as we round up, I want to share some results with you that without question will impact the way that you respond to food mentally and even physically. I have a colleague at Stanford, Aaliyah Crum, who's done some remarkable experiments on mindset.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
Two that are particularly interesting to me, I want to share with you now because they really emphasize how our beliefs can really impact the way that our brain and body work together. I think the most famous of these is an experiment they did where they had two groups of individuals. They were each given a milkshake
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
And they had some factors measured from their blood by an IV while they ingested the milkshake and then afterwards as well. And one of the factors that they were looking at was something called ghrelin, G-H-R-E-L-I-N. Ghrelin is a peptide that increases with hunger. So the longer you haven't eaten, the ghrelin goes up. One group got a shake that they were told was a low calorie, healthy shake.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
The other group got a milkshake that they were told was the very decadent high calorie shake. And what they found was that the high calorie shake had a much more robust effect on blunting ghrelin and reducing ghrelin. But the interesting thing you probably guessed already is that it was the exact same shake given to both groups. And this speaks to the so-called top-down
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
The brain has a body so that the organism can move, and the body has a brain so that the organism, you, can move toward or away from things that you deem to be good or bad for you. So there are circuits in the brain for aversion and for attraction toward things, and the body is governing a lot of that.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
Today, we're talking all about emotions. Emotions are central to our entire experience of life. Whether or not we're happy or sad or depressed or angry is our life experience. And yet I think with all the importance that we've placed on emotions, very few people actually understand how emotions arise in our brain and body.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
or modulation of our physiology. In a previous episode about pain, we talked about the effects of obsessive infatuation and love on pain responses and pain thresholds. This is yet another example where beliefs or subjective feelings can impact physiology at the level of the periphery because grealiness is released in the periphery in the body. And so, This is not just the placebo effect.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
This is an incredible set of findings that illustrate the extent to which whether or not we believe a food is going to be good for us or not good for us, these belief effects are not about lying to yourself. So in order for them to work, you have to be naive to the information, right? You can't simply lie to yourself and tell yourself what you want to believe.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
And that's important, but also important is that the mind and the body are in this fascinating interplay. And today we've talked mainly about how the body and things that we put inside this tube that runs from our mouth to the other end, to our rectum, basically is impacting all these cells, these neurons, microbiota in there,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
mucosal lining, heart, lungs, and how all that information is feeding up to the brain to impact how we feel up here, but also how we feel up here is impacting how our body reacts at levels of very core physiology that you couldn't just tell yourself that this was going to work, but what you believe about certain substances, certain foods, certain nutrients does have a profound effect on the magnitude of their impact, and sometimes even the quality and direction of that impact.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
So today's episode, we took a full journey into the brain-body relationship and discussed a lot of the mechanisms and the actionable items that you can approach if you want to explore this aspect of your biology and psychology further. Last, but certainly not least, I want to thank everybody for your time and attention today. And as always, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
And so immediately in this conversation, I want to raise an important point, which is about a nerve pathway that many, many people have heard of that gets discussed all the time. And that is one of the most kind of oversold for the wrong reasons and undersold, unfortunately, for its real power, which is the vagus nerve.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
So the vagus nerve is one, not the only, but one way in which our brain and body are connected and regulates our emotional states. So what is the vagus nerve? The vagus is the 10th cranial nerve, which basically means that the neurons, the control center of each of those neurons in the vagus lives just kind of near the neck, right? And a branch of the vagus goes into the brain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
The other branch goes into the periphery, but not just the gut. It goes into the stomach, the intestines, the heart, the lungs, and the immune system. So the way to think about the vagus is the same way I would think about the eyes. The eyes are looking at colors, they're looking at motion, they're looking how bright it is.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
And each one of those things, those features is telling the brain something different so the brain can decide when to be awake or asleep, whether or not it's looking at somebody attractive or unattractive. The vagus nerve is also analyzing many features within the body and informing the brain of how to feel about that and what to do.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
So a really good example that I think is an exciting one is as it relates to sugar. So we all know that sweet things generally taste good. So that makes sense, right? You eat something, it tastes sweet, you want more of it. Well, it turns out that it's much more interesting than that. When you eat something sweet,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
Within your stomach, you have cells, neurons, that sense the presence of sugary foods independent of their taste and signal to the brain. So those sensors, those neurons, send information up the vagus to your brain, goes through a series of stations, and then you release dopamine, this molecule that makes you want more of whatever it is that you just ingested.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
In fact, this pathway is so powerful that they've done experiments where they completely numb all the taste and feeling in somebody's mouth. They're blindfolded, so they don't know what they're eating. And they're eating a food that's either sugary or not sugary. And what they find is that even though people can't taste the sugary food, they crave more of the food
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
that contain sugar because of the sensors in the gut that sense sugar. And what it tells us is that we have circuits in our body that are driving us towards certain behaviors and making us feel good, even though we can't perceive them. I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Function.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
I recently became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
While I've long been a fan of blood testing, I really wanted to find a more in-depth program for analyzing blood, urine, and saliva to get a full picture of my heart health, my hormone status, my immune system regulation, my metabolic function, my vitamin and mineral status, and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors on your results. For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had two high levels of mercury in my blood. This was totally surprising to me. I had no idea prior to taking the test.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
And I mentioned brain and body because as you'll see today, emotions really capture the brain body relationship. We cannot say that emotions arise just from what happens in our head. The other thing about emotions is that there's no real agreement as to what's a good emotion or a bad emotion.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
Function not only helped me detect this, but offered medical doctor-informed insights on how to best reduce those mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, because I had been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification, and worked to reduce my mercury levels.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
Comprehensive lab testing like this is so important for health, and while I've been doing it for years, I've always found it to be overly complicated and expensive.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
I've been so impressed by Function, both at the level of ease of use, that is getting the test done, as well as how comprehensive and how actionable the tests are, that I recently joined their advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman Lab listeners. Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. Now, for those of you that are really interested in gut intuition and kind of gut feelings, this is a gut feeling, except this is a chemical gut feeling.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
This is a particular set of neurons detecting that something in your body has a particular feature, in this case, the presence of sugars, and sending information to the brain essentially to control your behavior. And I find this remarkable. I mean, this should completely reframe the way that we think about the so-called hidden sugars in foods.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
What this means is that even if a food is very savory, like a piece of pizza or a piece of bread, or even like a salad dressing, if there's sugar snuck into that, and you can't taste it, you will still crave more of that thing without knowing that you crave it because it has sugar. So I find this to be a fascinating aspect of our biology.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
A lot of how we feel while we eat and after we eat is because of this vagus sensing of what's in our gut. It's sending information all the time. Is there sugar? Are there fats? Are there contaminants? There are a lot of information, these so-called parallel pathways that are going up in our brain that regulate whether or not we want to eat more of something or not.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
And there are accelerators, things that make us want to eat more, like sugar and fats, because those are nutrient dense and they help generally, at least in the short term, support the survival of animals, but also amino acids. And this is very important.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
Today, we're going to talk about the biology of the chemicals and pathways that give rise to emotions in the context of food and nutrition. The discussion around emotions has a long and rich history going back to Darwin and even long before Darwin. You know, this is a conversation that philosophers and scientists have been having for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
There are a lot of data, but much of what comes from the data on what people eat and how much they eat is from a subconscious detection of how many amino acids and what the array, meaning the constellation of amino acids is in a given food.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
And it's fair to say that the sum total of these studies point in a direction where people will basically eat not until their stomach is full, but until the brain perceives that they have adequate intake of amino acids. It's amino acids of course are important because they are the building blocks of sure muscle and the other things in our body that need repair.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
But what most people don't realize is that amino acids are what the neurochemicals in the brain are made from. Now, this is vitally important, okay? So we've heard dopamine is this molecule that makes you feel good. Dopamine release is caused by surprise, excitement, events that you're looking forward to and that turn out well.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
It is inhibited by events you're looking forward to that don't work out. It's called reward prediction error. Your expectation of something releases dopamine and the actual event releases dopamine. And if the event related dopamine does not exceed the expectation or at least match it, there's a much higher tendency that you won't pursue that thing again.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
Dopamine is what's going to lead us to want to eat more of something or to not want more of something because dopamine really is about craving. It's about motivation and it's about desire. And as I mentioned, these amino acid sensors in our gut are detecting how many amino acids, but they're also detecting which amino acids.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
And there's a particular amino acid called L-tyrosine, which comes from food. It is in meats, it is in nuts, it is also in some plant-based foods. L-tyrosine is the precursor to a couple other molecules like L-DOPA, et cetera, that make dopamine. However, the dopamine neurons that give rise to these feelings of good or wanting more or desire and motivation, those reside in the brain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
So we don't want to get too confused. We want to respect and honor the power of the gut and this vagal pathway, but it's really neurons within your brain that drive the pursuit and decision-making. So what does this mean? Well, some people make too little dopamine. Some people make so little dopamine that they need prescription dopamine. They need L-Dopa.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
People with Parkinson's take L-Dopa and other compounds to increase dopamine because Parkinson's is associated with deficits in movement. Parkinson's is a... it's a blunting of motivation and mood and affect, and it's a tremor. And then eventually in severe conditions, it's challenges in speaking and walking.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
So that some famous examples would be Muhammad Ali, Michael J. Fox, the great boxing trainer, Freddie Roach, like these people have Parkinson's and they at least later in their life had challenges speaking. Now, some people immediately ask, well, should I supplement L-tyrosine? It does increase kind of mood and elevation and alertness. It is over the counter. You have to check with your doctor.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
I'm not responsible for your healthcare and I'm not a doctor whether or not it's safe for you. People with preexisting hyper dopaminergic conditions like mania should probably not take L-tyrosine. The other thing about taking L-tyrosine is there is a crash.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
It's not a massive crash if you take it at appropriate doses and it's right for you, but it can produce a crash and a lethargy and a kind of brain fog after the next day or so. And so, L-tyrosine, however, can be ingested through foods or through supplementation to increase dopamine levels. That's well known. Taken chronically, however, it can disrupt those dopamine pathways.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
You know, the idea that Darwin put forth and that was really attractive for about the last hundred years was that emotions are universal and that some of the facial expressions around emotion are universal and other people have, you know, capitalized on that idea. And to some extent it's true. I mean, I think that the two most robust examples of that would be when we see something
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
Let's just kind of take stock of where we're at. We have a brain-body connection. There are many of them, but one of the main ones is the vagus nerve. The vagus collects information about a lot of things, breathing, heart rate, stuff that's happening in the gut, et cetera. And gut, by the way, includes the stomach and the intestines, sends that information up to the brain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
The brain is using that information to decide one of two things, move towards something or move away. It can also pause, but essentially pausing is not moving toward. So that's the dopamine pathway and foods rich in L-tyrosine generally give us an elevated mood and make us want to do more of whatever it is that we happen to be doing as well as other things. Motivation generalizes to other things.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
It's not unique to just ingesting foods. but foods that give us a big pulse of dopamine will make us crave more of that food. It will make us crave more of the activity that led to the ingestion of that food. And as I mentioned earlier, a lot of that is happening at a subconscious level that you're not even aware of.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
So the other neuromodulator that's really interesting in the context of the vagus is serotonin. Serotonin, just to remind you, is a neuromodulator, therefore it creates a bias in which neural circuits, which neurons in the brain and body are going to be active, and it makes it less likely that other ones are going to be active.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
And serotonin, when it's elevated, tends to make us feel really comfortable and kind of blissed out wherever we are. And that contrast with dopamine and epinephrine, which mainly put us in pursuit of things, motivation is pursuit.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
The conversation around the brain-body relationship and mood in serotonin for many years was, well, you eat a big meal, the gut is distended, you've got all the nutrients you need, you rest and digest, and serotonin is released. That's sort of true, but there's a lot more going on and a lot more that's interesting and actionable that's going on.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
First of all, some of you, but perhaps not all have heard that more than 90% of the serotonin that we make is in our gut. And indeed we have a lot of serotonin in our gut, but here's the deal. Most of the serotonin that impacts our mood and our mental state is not in our gut. Most of it is in the neurons of the brain in an area called the raphe nucleus of the brain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
There are a few other locations too.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
You can't have a discussion about serotonin without having discussion about antidepressants because during the late 80s and early 90s, there was this explosion in the number of prescription drugs that were released, things like first one and most famous one is Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, a number of other ones that are so-called SSRI, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods
Basically those drugs work by preventing the gobbling up of serotonin or re-uptake of serotonin into neurons after it's been released, which leads to more serotonin overall, which means to elevate serotonin. And indeed those drugs were and can be very useful for certain people to feel better in cases of depression and some other clinical disorders as well.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. I decided that we would hold office hours.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
The data all point to the fact that working out hard for longer than an hour can actually be detrimental because of the way that it raises cortisol and cortisol can be a good thing if it's appropriately timed and in the appropriate low levels, but you don't want to have your cortisol levels up throughout the day or have big spikes of cortisol repeatedly.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
So keeping workouts relatively short can definitely help with that. Endurance work and strength training or hypertrophy training done in combination, meaning not necessarily in the same workout, but done across the week
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
is immensely beneficial for the production of things like brain-derived nootrophic factor, for limiting inflammatory cytokines like IL-6, for promoting anti-inflammatory cytokines like IL-10, provided that exercise is of the proper duration and that it's not so intense that you're actually creating damage to the various systems of the body. What about the structure of the actual workouts?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
Well, approximately 80% of the resistance training you do should be resistance training that doesn't go to what they call failure, where you can't actually move the resistance anymore. The other 20% can be of the higher intensity to failure type training.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
that 80-20 rule of less than failure and work to failure in the resistance exercise regime can be transported or translated to the endurance exercise portion by focusing on that thing that we're familiar with, which is the burn. When we're running hard or cycling hard, we'll experience a kind of burning of the muscles that's associated with the lactate system.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
I tend to wake up sometime around 6 a.m., 6.30. The first thing I do after I wake up is I take the pen that's on my nightstand and the pad of paper on my nightstand and I write down the time in which I woke up. The reason for writing down what time I wake up is because I want to know what's called my temperature minimum. I don't care what my actual temperature is.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
And actually the lactate system is its own form of fuel for the brain. And so there's increasing interest in generating the lactate or pushing past that lactate threshold for small portion, 20% or so of endurance work in order to support brain health and function. So on any given day, I finished that work block and I train, I do some sort of resistance or endurance training.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
I put those on alternate days or different days rather. As many of you know, I've been taking AG1 daily for more than 13 years. However, I've now found an even better vitamin mineral probiotic drink. That new and better drink is the new and improved AG1, which just launched this month.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
This next-gen formula from AG1 is a more advanced, clinically-backed version of the product that I've been taking daily for years. It includes new bioavailable nutrients and enhanced probiotics. The NextGen formula is based on exciting new research on the effects of probiotics on the gut microbiome.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
And it now includes several specific clinically studied probiotic strains that have been shown to support both digestive health and immune system health, as well as to improve bowel regularity and to reduce bloating.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
As someone who's been involved in research science for more than three decades and in health and fitness for equally as long, I'm constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental health, physical health, and performance. I discovered and started taking AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast, and I've been taking it every day since.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
I find that it greatly improves all aspects of my health. I just feel so much better when I take it, but with each passing year, and by the way, I'm turning 50 this September, I continue to feel better and better, and I attribute a lot of that to AG1. AG1 uses the highest quality ingredients in the right combinations, and they're constantly improving their formulas without increasing the cost.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
So I'm honored to have them as a sponsor of this podcast. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, AG1 is giving away an AG1 welcome kit with five free travel packs and a free bottle of vitamin D3 K2.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim the special welcome kit with five free travel packs and a free bottle of vitamin D3 K2. So we've now talked about the arc that spans all the way from waking to a morning bout of focused work to physical training. I have not mentioned ingesting anything or nutrients. One of the most common questions I get are what should I eat for my brain?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
Well, ironically enough, one of the best things you can do for your brain is do not eat, but of course we all have to eat sooner or later. So let's talk about food timing first. As I mentioned, I eat my first meal sometime around noon, plus or minus an hour. The volume of food is also important.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
If you eat a large volume of anything, because it diverts blood to your gut, you will feel lethargic and you will have less blood going to your brain. That seems like a simple and trivial fact, but if you want to be able to think, you can't ingest large volumes of anything into your gut.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
So for lunch, I do emphasize slightly lower carbohydrate or low carbohydrate intake for the simple reason that adrenaline and dopamine and their associated neuromodulators are going to support alertness. So for me, I fast up until about noon. Then I eat a lunch that consists of some sort of protein thing, like some meat or some chicken or some salmon. and some vegetables, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
And if I've exercised previously, which I do, as I mentioned, five days a week, then I will ingest some starches. I'll ingest some bread or bread, excuse me, or rice or oatmeal and butter and nuts and things like that. But I will keep the total amount of carbohydrate a little bit on the low side, or if I haven't trained, I won't have any carbohydrate at all.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
I care when my lowest temperature is. And I know that that lowest temperature is approximately two hours before my average wake up time. The second thing I do after I wake up is to get into forward ambulation, which is just nerd speak for taking a walk.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
not because I'm ketogenic, but because starches cause the release of serotonin in the brain and lend themselves to a state of sleepiness. Now, what about components of foods that are not about alertness, but are about mood?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
We did an entire episode on mood and food, and it's very clear based on now dozens of studies that ingesting sufficient levels of omega-3 fatty acids is going to support healthy mood and even can act as an antidepressant. ingesting at least 1000 milligrams per day of the EPA form of essential fatty acid is as effective as prescription antidepressants in relieving depression.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
And if you're somebody who requires prescription antidepressants, Prozac, Zoloft, et cetera, it can allow people to take lower doses of those medications. A key aspect to the midday meal, if you want that meal to benefit you, is to take a brief walk afterwards.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
It turns out that brief walks of five to 30 minutes after ingesting food can accelerate metabolism and actually can accelerate and improve nutrient utilization, which is essentially the same as metabolism. Nonetheless, that's something that I do after I finish my noon meal. I do force myself to stand up and go outside and take a brief walk. That also gets me again into optic flow.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
It also has another benefit, which is that I am giving my brain and thereby my body more information about light and time of day, which is always better than less information about light and time of day. a key protocol for sleep health and wakefulness and metabolism and hormone health is viewing light in the afternoon. So here's the reason for doing this.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
As we progress into the evening hours, there's a phenomenon where our retina, our eyes become very sensitive to light such that if we view bright lights or even not so bright lights between the hours of 10 PM and 4 AM, That is strongly disruptive, very disruptive for our dopamine production. It can really screw up our sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
But if you can get outside and see the sun as it arcs down, or if you can't see the sun directly, get some sunlight in your eyes in the afternoon hours, so maybe 4 p.m. ish. What it does is it lowers the sensitivity of your retina in the late evening hours, which allows you to buffer yourself against the negative effects of bright light later at night.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
Now we haven't talked too much about melatonin, but melatonin is a hormone that is inhibited by light. Melatonin is the hormone that allows you to fall asleep easily. Now I'm not talking about supplementing melatonin, I'm talking about melatonin that you naturally produce from your pineal. So the protocol is very simple.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
There's a phenomenon whereby when we generate our own forward motion, forward ambulation, visual images pass by us on our eyes, so-called optic flow. Experiencing visual flow has a powerful effect on the nervous system. The effect it has is essentially to quiet or reduce the amount of neural activity in this brain structure called the amygdala.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
Get outside in the afternoon or evening for 10 to 30 minutes, take your sunglasses off. So get that afternoon light. So what you'll probably notice is that the optimal protocols for optimizing your brain and body health and performance and sleep, et cetera, are actually really simple. But just because they're simple does not mean that they are not powerful.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
In fact, they are very powerful because they leverage the most powerful technology that exists, which is your nervous system. What we are talking about today are really basic things that we can all do that can steer our neurology and our biology in the directions that are going to support workflow, that are going to support hormones, that are going to support brain function.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
So at some point in the evening, I eat that thing that we call dinner. while it feels sort of strange to talk about my dinner, the reason I want to talk about my dinner and what I eat for dinner is that for me, dinner, of course, is about eating, but also about optimizing the transition to sleep. So my dinner generally is comprised of things that are going to support rest and deep sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
And that means starchy carbohydrates. It's absolutely clear that one of the major ways that we can increase serotonin, which helps in the transition to sleep, is by ingesting starchy carbohydrates. So my dinner is carbohydrates and some protein. So maybe some chicken or fish or something like that, maybe some eggs, or sometimes just pasta or just rice and vegetables.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
And that's because I enjoy those foods, but also because I want to increase the amount of serotonin in my brain so that I can actually fall asleep that night. Many people who are on low carbohydrate diets struggle with falling and staying asleep. And that's because it's hard to achieve heightened levels of serotonin, which are necessary to enter sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
I should also mention that melatonin and serotonin fall in the same pathway. They are related hormones and neuromodulators. Essentially what we're talking about is a system that's biasing us towards rest and relaxation as opposed to wakefulness. you might ask, well, can't I just take serotonin? Can't I just take 5-HTP or a precursor to serotonin or tryptophan? And indeed you can.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
However, many people, including myself, find that when they supplement with serotonin in the evening or at night, that can cause problems in the architecture or the structure of sleep. can cause a lot of people, including me, to fall asleep very fast, sleep very deeply for three or four hours, and then wake up and have a terrible time falling back asleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
And that effect, at least for me, can last several days. It's really disruptive. So I don't like to supplement with anything that is directly dopamine or a precursor to dopamine at any time or directly serotonin or a precursor to serotonin. Rather, there are other things that can enhance the transition to sleep safely, which we will talk about in a few minutes.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
but the evening meal consists largely of carbohydrates for that specific purpose of generating a sense of calm. And of course, carbohydrates are delicious.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
And because I'm doing some physical training, and presumably you are as well, or I hope you are, because it's so beneficial to one's health, that's also going to replenish my glycogen stores, which is one of the primary fuel sources for moving one's muscles and moving around and doing exercise, as well as for the brain and for cognitive function.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct amounts, but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are vital for functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or your nerve cells.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
Drinking Element dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes. To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I first wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
And many of you have probably heard about the amygdala for its role in anxiety and fear and threat detection. And indeed the amygdala is part of the network in the brain that generates feelings of fear and threat and anxiety. It does a bunch of other things too, but that's one of its primary functions.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
I'll also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes. Element has a bunch of great tasting flavors. I love the raspberry, I love the citrus flavor. Right now, Element has a limited edition lemonade flavor that is absolutely delicious.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
I hate to say that I love one more than all the others, but this lemonade flavor is right up there with my favorite other one, which is raspberry or watermelon. Again, I can't pick just one flavor, I love them all.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman, spelled drinkelement.com slash Huberman, to claim a free Element sample pack with a purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. So let's talk about sleep and how to access sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
One way to do that is to leverage the drop in temperature that's necessary to fall and stay asleep. So as I mentioned earlier, in the early parts of the day after waking, our body temperature is rising and that continues throughout the day. And then sometime late in the afternoon, our temperature peaks, and then it starts to drop.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
That drop in temperature of one to three degrees is vitally important for us to be able to fall asleep easily. One way that we can decrease our transition time into sleep is to accelerate that drop in temperature. And one way to accelerate that drop in temperature, somewhat counterintuitively, is to use hot baths, hot showers, or if you have access to one, a sauna.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
Now, this is counterintuitive, but actually, if you are to get into a sauna or a hot shower or a hot bath and then get out, your body is going to engage particular mechanisms for cooling itself off that are going to allow you to drop your temperature more quickly and fall asleep more easily. It is absolutely true that keeping the room very dark is beneficial.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
The other thing is keeping the room cool. The reason keeping the room cool is useful for getting into and staying asleep is that throughout the night, there are phases of sleep where you are paralyzed, so-called REM sleep. That's a healthy paralysis, presumably so you can't act out your dreams. But there are portions of the night where you can move.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
And one of the more important movements that you do in the middle of the night is put your hand out or your foot out, or you take your face out from under the covers as a means to cool yourself. You're actually allowing cooling of the body through what are called AVAs. Arteriovenous astimosis is the technical name that are in the palms, the upper half of the face and the bottoms of the feet.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
Now, there are things that one can take to enhance the transition to sleep. Three compounds that could be very beneficial for aiding the transition to sleep and for which there are wide safety margins, although please do check with your physician before taking anything, are specific forms of magnesium, something called apigenin and theanine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
Forward ambulation, walking or biking or running and generating optic flow in particular has this incredible property of lowering activity in the amygdala and thereby reducing levels of anxiety. That walk is a particularly important protocol each day because it really serves to push my neurology in the direction that I'd like it to go, which is alert, but not anxious.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
Magnesium comes in many forms, magnesium threonate, that's T-H-R-E-O-N-A-T-E, threonate and magnesium biglycinate. have transporters that allow them to cross the blood brain barrier more readily than other forms of magnesium. And there within the brain, they promote the release of a neurotransmitter called GABA, which is an inhibitory neurotransmitter, which shuts off the forebrain to some extent.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
It doesn't shut off completely, but it essentially shuts down thinking, rumination, planning, and what we call executive function. So for many people taking 300 to 400 milligrams of magnesium biglycinate or magnesium threonate 30 to 60 minutes before sleep can aid them in falling asleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
When coupled with apigenin and theanine provide a sort of synergy or a sleep cocktail that seems to be very effective in aiding the transition to sleep. So apigenin is the substance that's found in chamomile. And 50 milligrams of apigenin taken 30 minutes before sleep can act as another way to shut off the forebrain and reduce rumination, reduce anxiety, and allow people to fall and stay asleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
Office hours in the university setting are when students come to the professor's office or you meet outdoors on campus or in the classroom to review the material and questions from lecture in more detail. Now, unfortunately, we don't have the opportunity to meet face to face,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
And then the third compound is theanine, T-H-E-A-N-I-N-E. Theanine is a compound that can also increase GABA, but also increases activation of something called chloride channels. Chloride channels are another way in which neurons lower their levels of activity. So magnesium threonate or biglycinate, apigenin and theanine in combination can be very effective for aiding the transition to sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
Now, what if you wake up in the middle of the night This is a very common occurrence. And there are two general themes around waking up in the middle of the night that one can use tools to counteract. The first theme is if you're somebody who is tired in the evenings and you're kind of pushing yourself to stay awake. So you're going to the party or you're pushing yourself to study or work,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
when in fact you'd like to get into bed at 8.30 or 9, and then you're falling asleep around 10.30, 11, and waking up at 2.30 or 3 in the morning and you can't fall back asleep, chances are that your melatonin pulse was initiated early in the night. So that melatonin pulse started probably around 8.30 or 9, but you're staying up, you're battling that melatonin.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
You may not like this advice, but one of the things that you can do to offset that is to simply go to bed earlier. The other thing is many people wake up in the middle of the night because of anxiety or because they have to use the restroom. It's perfectly fine to flip on the lights, but keep the lights dim.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
But if you flip on those lights, try and flip them off as soon as possible and try and get back into bed. So now we've essentially traveled around the clock, so to speak, from the time where one wakes up until the time they get to sleep, maybe wake up, get back to sleep, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
I want to emphasize that although people's schedules vary, most people are doing more than one or two work bouts per day. And indeed I'm doing more than one or two work bouts per day.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
I really emphasize that morning 90 minute work block, because I think most people would agree that there's a portion of each day in which we need to do the hardest thing or the most important thing, or the thing that demands the most of our cognitive self.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
I position that early in the day and I position everything around that in order to ensure that it happens and that it happens with the highest degree of efficiency, even though that morning 90-minute work block is so vital. Of course, there's a second work block.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
So combined, that's just three hours of focused work, which may not seem like a lot, but if you were to dissect your day and kind of look at the arc and structure of your day, I'd be willing to bet that If we added up the total period of time in which you were in deep work, really focused, dedicated work, that it would probably amount to about three or four hours.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
I want to have a high degree of focus and alertness because I'm soon going to move into a bout of work. I need to lean into the day. So in order to do that, I make sure that the walking is done outdoors. I do it outdoors because I also want sunlight in my eyes. Getting sunlight in your eyes first thing in the morning is absolutely vital to mental and physical health.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
And of course, throughout the day, there are other things happening outside of those 90 minute work blocks. I'm checking my text messages. I'm checking my email. I'm responding to various demands. I'm working and tending to life. So while I've carved some boundaries or delineate some boundaries around those work blocks, and I'm certain that if you do too, you will benefit from them.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
Of course, please adapt and modify what I've described today in ways that best serve you and your schedule. What I've tried to do is provide you scientific support,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
specific protocols and regimens, because people are always asking me for more specificity and detail, and an example of one way, just one way in which these various tools and protocols that are grounded in science could be leveraged in one's own life. And last but not least, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
Even if there's cloud cover, more photons, light information, are coming through that cloud cover than would be coming from a very bright indoor bulb. So getting outside for a 10 minute walk or a 15 minute walk will basically ensure that you're getting adequate stimulation of these neurons in the eye that are called the melanopsin, intrinsically photosensitive ganglion cells.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
These are neurons that convey to the brain that it's daytime and it's time to be alert. And it sets in motion a huge number of biological cascades within every cell and organ of your body, from your liver to your gut, to your heart, to your brain. Early in the day, we experience a natural and healthy bump in a hormone called cortisol and promotes wakefulness.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
It actually promotes a healthy immune system. It's very important that that pulse of cortisol arrive early in the day. That pulse of cortisol is going to happen once every 24 hours, no matter what. It's going to happen and you get to time it. How do you time it? Primarily by when you view bright sunlight.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
You can combine it with the forward ambulation with the walk and the optic flow that I talked about before. And that's what I do each morning to generate a sense of alertness in my body and brain to generate a sense of calm yet alert So now we have a first protocol, which is to write down the time of day that you wake up. The second protocol is to take a walk first thing in the morning.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
And the third protocol is woven in with that walk, at least for me, which is to get that sunlight exposure. I'm a big believer based on quality peer review data that hydration is essential for mental performance. As many of you know, neurons require ionic flow. What that means is neurons need sodium, they need magnesium and they need potassium in order to function.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
We do tend to get dehydrated at night. I try and make sure that I'm hydrated early in the day before I begin any work. So I make myself drink this water with a little bit of sea salt. How much sea salt, if you really want to get detailed, I suppose it's about half a teaspoon. It's not much. At that point, I start craving caffeine, but I don't drink that caffeine yet.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
I purposely delay my caffeine intake to 90 minutes to 120 minutes after I wake up. The reason I delay caffeine is because one of the factors that induces a sense of sleepiness is the buildup of adenosine. The buildup of adenosine accumulates the longer we are awake. When you wake up in the morning, your adenosine levels are likely to be very low. However, caffeine is an adenosine blocker.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
in real life, but nonetheless, you've been sending your questions, putting them in the comment section on YouTube, et cetera, and I've prepared a number of answers to the questions that have shown up most frequently.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
It's actually a competitive antagonist for you aficionados. It sort of parks in the receptor that adenosine normally would park at and prevents adenosine from acting on that receptor. That's why you feel more alert. The reason for delaying caffeine intake 90 minutes to two hours after waking is I want to make sure that I don't have a late afternoon or even early afternoon crash from caffeine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
One of the best ways to ensure a caffeine crash is to drink a bunch of caffeine, block all those adenosine receptors, and then by early or late afternoon, when that caffeine starts to wear off and gets dislodged from the receptors, a lower level of adenosine is able to create a greater level of sleepiness.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
Delaying caffeine at 90 minutes to two hours optimizes this relationship between adenosine and wakefulness and sleepiness, in a way that really provides a nice consistent arc of energy throughout the day and brings energy down as I'm headed toward sleep and falling asleep. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Eight Sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. One of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to make sure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees. Eight Sleep automatically regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your unique needs. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for over four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
Eight Sleep has just launched their latest model, the Pod 5, and the Pod 5 has several new important features. One of these new features is called Autopilot. Autopilot is an AI engine that learns your sleep patterns to adjust the temperature of your sleeping environment across different sleep stages. It also elevates your head if you're snoring and it makes other shifts to optimize your sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
Now, in order to provide context and structure to the way that we will address these questions, I've arranged the science and science-based protocols that relate to various aspects of life, such as mood, exercise, sleep, waking, anxiety, creativity, et cetera, into the context of a day.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
The base on the Pod 5 also has an integrated speaker that syncs to the Eight Sleep app and can play audio to support relaxation and recovery. The audio catalog includes several NSDR, non-sleep deep rest scripts, that I worked on with Eight Sleep to record.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
If you're not familiar, NSDR involves listening to an audio script that walks you through a deep body relaxation combined with some very simple breathing exercises. And that combination has been shown in peer-reviewed studies to restore your mental and physical vigor.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
And this is great because while we would all like to get to bed on time and get up after a perfect night's sleep, oftentimes we get to bed a little late or later. Sometimes we have to get up early and charge into the day because we have our obligations. NSDR can help offset some of the negative effects of slight sleep deprivation.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
And NSDR gets you better at falling back asleep should you wake up in the middle of the night. It's an extremely powerful tool that anyone can benefit from the first time and every time. If you'd like to try Eight Sleep, go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to get up to $350 off the new Pod 5. Eight Sleep ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and the UAE.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350. My primary objective early in the day is to get into a mode of being focused yet alert so that I can get work done. I found that the best way for me to achieve that state is through fasting. So I don't eat anything until about 11 a.m. or 12 noon. Fasting increases levels of adrenaline, also called epinephrine in the brain and body.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
And when our levels of epinephrine and adrenaline are increased, we learn better, we can focus better. You don't want epinephrine, AKA adrenaline, too high. That feels like stress and panic. You get jittery, you can't focus. But in its optimal range, adrenaline really provides a heightened sense of focus and the ability to encode, meaning bring in and retain, remember information.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
Next, I want to talk about what I'm doing while I'm working. A couple of things for optimizing workspace that are grounded in neuroscience and physiology. I've talked before about the fact that when our eyes are directed upward, it creates a state of heightened alertness.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
And this has a relationship to the brainstem neurons that create alertness and their control over the muscles of the eye and believe it or not, the eyelids. The point here is that you can optimize your workstation in a physical way that leverages this aspect of the visual system and your level of alertness.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
Try and position your screen or your tablet, whatever device you happen to be working on, at least at eye level and ideally slightly higher. Most people are looking down at their computer or tablet or are angling their eyes at their screen at about 30 degrees.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
When we look down, when our eyelids are slightly closed, it tends to decrease our levels of alertness and increase our levels of sleepiness. We're now at the description of my day and these protocols in which I would do a 90 minute bout of work. Now, why 90 minutes? Well, the brain is going through these 90 minutes, so-called ultradian cycles throughout the entire day and night.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
Selecting the unit of a day in order to deliver this science information and protocols is not a haphazard decision on my part. it's actually the case that every cell in our body, every organ in our body and our brain is modulated or changes across the 24 hour day in a very regular and predictable rhythm.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
Every 90 minutes, we shift over from being very alert to being less alert and then back to alert again. Here's how it works. At the start of one of these 90 minute ultradian cycles,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
My brain is not quite engaged in whatever it is I'm trying to do, but I set a timer for 90 minutes and I try and get a strong bout of work done inside of that 90 minutes with the full understanding that the entire 90 minutes is not going to be uniform in terms of my ability of focus. So the goal is to get into what I call the tunnel, to really get into a tunnel of quality work.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
The brain loves that state, but it's very hard for many of us to access. My phone is absolutely off. It's not on airplane mode. It's absolutely off during this time. In addition, I use low level white noise.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
White noise, which is essentially all frequencies of sound, or all frequencies of sound that we can perceive, mixed up kind of randomly, there's no structure to it, turned on at a low volume, puts the brain into a state that's optimal for learning and workflow.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
So everything about this 90 minute block from the low levels of white noise to the position of my computer, how I'm standing and where my eyes are positioned is geared towards putting me in this tunnel of work. And I have to say that while it can be a challenge to try and achieve this state and this tunnel of work some days, you start to get kind of addicted to it. It feels really good.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
It's like a workout for the mind. And it is something that as you exit that 90 minutes, you really feel like you've accomplished a lot because often you have, and it's just feels deeply satisfying. And I'm convinced that that's because of the release of neuromodulators like dopamine and the norepinephrine that's circulating in your system.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
And I want to be clear that I'm not perfect about this 90 minutes. Occasionally I get drawn away, but I really try and achieve this most, if not every day that I'm alive, because for me, that work session is kind of holy. There's a powerful way in which you can place the timing of this 90 minute work bout in an optimal way.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
You have access to a very important piece of data that dictates when this bout should start more or less and when it should end. That piece of data is your temperature minimum. If you're somebody who wakes up on average at 7 a.m., well, then your temperature minimum is 5 a.m.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
You can be reasonably sure that your best work is going to be done anywhere from four to six hours after your temperature minimum. How do I know this? How do I know this relationship between temperature minimum and focused cognition? Well, temperature minimum defines the trough, the nadir, as they say, of your temperature across the 24-hour cycle.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
And immediately after that, your temperature will start to rise. That temperature rise is actually what triggers the initial cortisol release that you experience and wakes you up further. And then of course that sunlight that you're getting is going to further enhance that healthy release of cortisol. That cortisol will then provide fuel, if you will, for that increase in temperature.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
And your body will continue to increase in temperature throughout the day toward the afternoon. What you're trying to do in this idea of optimizing this 90 minute work bout to a particular time of day is catch the portion of the steepest slope of that temperature rise. So if you're somebody who wakes up at 8 a.m.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
And so selecting the unit of the day is not just a practical one, but it's one that's related to our deeper biology. So let's talk about how to apply quality peer reviewed science to your day. and how to optimize everything from sleep to learning, creativity, meal timing, et cetera. I'm going to do this in the context of my day and what I typically do.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
each morning, your temperature minimum is 6 a.m., chances are you're going to want to start this work bout somewhere around 10 a.m. or 11 a.m., Now, some people wake up and feel very alert first thing in the morning. They can really do their best work first thing in the morning. Please, if that's you, continue to do that. Leverage that time, use that time.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
But if you're somebody who struggles to find focus, definitely let your physiology and this rise in your body temperature support your efforts to focus rather than trying to do your best work at times of day when your physiology is actually directing your body and your brain toward defocus and towards being more lethargic.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
It just is setting yourself up for success when you try and capture this rising phase of your temperature. Data going back to the 1990s supports the idea that physical movement of particular kinds can support brain health and brain function, both in the immediate term and in the long term.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
So after I've finished a bout of work, this 90 minute bout of work, I force myself to do some sort of physical exercise that is going to be supportive of my brain health and brain function and organ health and bodily function in general. Now there are various forms of physical activity or what we call exercise. but those can generally be batched into two categories.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools
First is strength and hypertrophy work. So physical movements that are designed to make you stronger and or make your muscles larger. There's also endurance work. Physical exercise and movements that are designed to allow you to do more work over time or to extend the amount of time that you can do work of any kind, both physical and mental.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
They did it the very next day, which if you've ever trained a muscle the very next day, typically you wouldn't do as well in its training if it took any damage from the previous sessions, or you at least do as well, but you probably wouldn't do what they then observed, which was they started cooling after every other set.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
The person would just hold the cold tube, cool down the body after every other set, rest, everything else was kept the same. And they found that they went to 180 pull-ups, which is incredible. It's a near doubling. Now you may be asking, what about endurance? And with endurance, similar increases have been shown. And the way that they would do those tests are a little bit different.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
And they also point to a really important mechanism of why we stop doing work at all when we perceive that we are putting in too much effort. So it gets right to the heart of the relationship between temperature in muscles and your willpower. Those are directly related. body heat and your willpower are linked in a physiological way.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
Okay, so let's talk about willpower and heat and how heat shuts you down. In other words, if you are cool, if your body temperature is in a particular range, not only can you go further, but you will go further if you want to. Said differently, if you heat up too much, you will stop or you will die. But there's a reflex
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
that relates the body to the brain and the brain to the body that shuts off our effort when we get too hot. So what Craig and his colleagues and now others have done is to do a test in the laboratory where rather than ask people to run outside until they absolutely don't want to run anymore, you put them on a treadmill and you set the speed.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
Believe it or not, temperature is the most powerful variable for improving physical performance and for recovery. There are two aspects to temperature, of course. There's heat and there's cold. We are mainly going to focus on cold as a way to buffer heat. We're going to talk about cold from the standpoint of thermal physiology.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
So they have to keep up with the treadmill and at some point they quit. and you take groups and you do those in different temperature environments. So some people are running in a nice chilly laboratory, they get their heart rate up, so they're getting into a steady state cadence or rhythm and their heart is beating at more or less a steady state. People will continue
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
at that temperature and at that heart rate, unless you start turning up the temperature in the room. And at some point they will stop and they'll stop much earlier when it gets hot because of something called cardiac drift, okay? So let's say I'm running and I'm running at a steady cadence on this treadmill and my heart rate is 85 beats per minute or a hundred beats per minute, doesn't matter.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
Let's say a hundred, just for sake of example. Well, just making the room hotter is going to increase my heart rate further, even though I'm at the same output. And the brain does a computation. It somehow figures out that there's a heat component that's increasing heart rate, and there's an effort component from running that's driving heart rate.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
And if the heat component and the heart rate output from the effort get to hit a certain threshold, I stop. Increasing temperature increases the rate of quitting in part, not entirely, but in part because of this thing called cardiac drift. Heat increases heart rate, effort increases heart rate. At a steady effort, you'll have a steady heart rate.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
If you increase the heat in the environment that you're engaging in that steady heart rate, your heart rate will now go up due to cardiac drift and you will quit, okay? So Heller and colleagues, have done experiments where they do Palmer cooling under these environments. And that's wonderful because not only does it enable people to go further and faster
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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
for much longer, that's been shown, statistically significant every time, but it also protects the brain and body against hyperthermia, overheating, coma, nerve injury, nerve death, and actual death. So you can see why this is such a valuable tool. So how can you start to incorporate this? Well, first of all, I always get asked how cold should the water be? Should it be ice water?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
Should it be very cold water? The answer is no. If you want to experience some of this effect without a device, one thing you could do would be, for instance, to do, I don't know, I'll use the gym or the treadmill as an example. You could do your maximum number of pull-ups, stop, and then you could actually put your hands into or on the surface of,
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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
a sink that is presumably stopped up with cool water. So not ice water, not freezing cold, but cool water. Slightly cooler than body temperature before you started training would be a good place to start. You do that for 10 to 30 seconds, then you could go back and do your next set. You would repeat the cooling. You would want to extend the amount of cooling somewhat.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
So you might want to do that for 30 seconds to a minute. This is not going to be perfect. You're going to have to play with how cold to make it in order to get the optimal effect, but you ought to see an effect nonetheless. The same is true if you're running and you're fatiguing, obviously you don't want to become hyperthermic,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
cooling the hands or the bottoms of your feet or the face would be the ideal way to dump heat in order to be able to generate more output. Now, the face is something that we haven't talked a lot about. Everything I've told you up until now also says that if you are somebody who tends to get cold when you are outside, say in the winter or even in the fall, you tend to run cold,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
This is a literature that's rich in scientific information that goes back very deep into the last century. where physiologists and neuroscientists figured out that there are different compartments in your body that heat and cool you differently, and that you can leverage those in order to double, even triple or quadruple your work output, both strength, repetitions, and endurance.
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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
Warming your face is going to be the most important thing that you can do. Now you understand the principle and the locations at which to deliver heat and cold. So let's say that you are out for a run and you want to incorporate this cooling mechanism. I talked to Craig about this. I said, what would be the kind of a poor person's approach to this one?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
He said, well, you could take a frozen juice can, if you have one of those, or a very cold can of soda, and you would want to pass it back and forth between your two hands. The reason the passing back and forth is really important is because you, again, you don't want it to be so cold that you constrict those venous portals that will allow cold to go into the body.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
Now, there are certainly people that are working on bike handles and that can actually cool the hands. Here's what you don't want to do. You don't want to cool the core if you want to cool the body, right?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
If it's a very hot day and you're going to train, getting into an ice bath first, sure, it will cool you down, but that's not going to be as effective as cooling the palms, the bottoms of the feet and the face. The one that I've tried because in anticipation of this episode was the dips where then I would cool my hands.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
I actually decided to cool the bottoms of my feet as well because it just feels good and it's particularly hot out lately. So no shoes or socks on, put my feet into the bottoms of my feet, just kind of hovering about a centimeter or two below the surface of a bucket of water that was just slightly, it felt cool, slightly cooler than body temperature or so.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
It just basically what came out of the spigot after I let it run for a little bit. And indeed I saw a 60% increase in the number of dips I can do in a single session. So it's actually a quite significant effect and you don't have to be perfectly precise in order to do it. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function.
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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health. This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient levels, and much more.
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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
They've also recently added tests for toxins, such as BPA exposure from harmful plastics, and tests for PFASs, or forever chemicals. Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to your physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors who are expert in the relevant areas.
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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had elevated levels of mercury in my blood.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
Function not only helped me detect that, but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, I've been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
And I should say by taking a second function test, that approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by function simplicity and at the level of cost.
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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
It is very affordable. As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners.
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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. So up until now, we've been talking about how to use cold during a workout in order to improve performance. Now I want to talk about the use of temperature, in particular cold, to improve the speed and the depth of recovery. Recovery is obviously vital, right?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
During a weight training session or during an endurance session, that's just the stimulus for getting better the next time. And if you don't recover, you not only won't get better, but you'll get worse. There's a lot of interest in the use of cold in order to improve recovery in the short term.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
So this is not weak sauce as they say, this is the stuff that can really shift the needle quite a bit. And it's not just about performing well once, It's about being able to perform well and recover from that performance so that you do even better when you're not incorporating these tools. On days where, for instance, you can't access cold or an ice pack or an ice bath or things of that sort.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
We see this and probably the best example of this would be fighters in combat sports between rounds or athletes in between quarters or halftime. That's one form of recovery. The ability to go back into the sport very soon on an order of minutes, anywhere from like one minute in between rounds in typical combat sports or several minutes at a halftime, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
And then of course there's recovery that occurs from session to session. So outside of the game or the match or the exercise session. And many people are now relying on things like cryotherapy, which requires a lot of expensive equipment, big liquid nitrogen driven machine. Those aren't so common for most people or accessible for most people.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
But a lot of people are using cold baths or ice baths or cold showers. And again, that's not going to optimize recovery. In fact, it's going to have an additional effect that is going to potentially block the training stimulus. When you get into an ice bath, you are indeed blocking some of the inflammation that occurs because of the training session.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
But in doing so, you also are blocking pathways such as mTOR, mammalian targeted rapamycin, which are involved in the adaptation for a muscle to become stronger or bigger. Put simply, covering the body in cold or immersing the body in cold after training can short circuit or prevent the hypertrophy or muscle growth response. It has other effects that can be positive, right?
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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
It can induce thermogenesis, et cetera. It can reduce inflammation, but it can prevent some of the positive effects of exercise. Now it hasn't been examined so much for endurance work,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
But let's say you come back from a round of endurance work, a run or a bike or a swim, getting into a cool bath or cooling the palms, the bottoms of the feet or the face, in my opinion, based on the science would be better than completely immersing the body in the ice bath. If you can cool the body back to its resting temperature,
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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
and by resting temperature, I mean within the range that you would see at any time of waking day, but not in exercise. If you can do that, the sooner you can do that after a workout, the sooner that the muscle will recover, that the tendons will recover, and that the person, you, can get back into more endurance training, more weight training, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
So cold actually can be a very powerful tool for recovery, but to maximize return to baseline levels of temperature, just simply cooling the entire body by jumping into an ice bath or a cold shower is not the best way to go. You really want to rely on one of these three glabrous skin portals of the palms, the bottoms of the feet or the face.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
One of the more commonly used compounds that's sold over the counter are non-steroid anti-inflammatories. So things like Advil and other trade names and naproxen sodium, things of that sort. Almost all of those drop body temperature to some extent. And that's why it's often recommended that people take them when they have a fever.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
Now, a number of athletes, especially endurance athletes, will rely on these non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs specifically to keep body temperature lower during long bouts of exertion. This is a little bit of a pharmacologic version of dumping heat instead of using Palmer cooling or face ice pack cooling, they're relying on pharmacology to drop their core body temperature.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
That has certain obvious advantages. Lower temperature allows you to go further harder with more intensity. However, they do have effects on the liver and they can also have effects on the kidneys. And during long bouts of exercise or even short bouts of exercise, water balance and salt balance are also going to be vital to maintain in order to perform well
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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. As somebody who's been involved in research science for almost three decades and in health and fitness for equally as long, I'm constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental health, physical health, and performance.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
the best muscle contraction, stay mentally alert, and also to stay alive. You probably want to think carefully about whether or not you want to use non-steroid anti-inflammatories before any training session, just for the performance augmentation effect, unless you're working carefully with a coach. I personally am more a fan of,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
cooling of the palms, cooling of the bottoms of my feet, right, by placing them into a bucket or into a cool bath after training, or cooling the face after training, or sometimes even during training. It just seems like there's more of a margin to play with the variables, to heat up the water, cool it down a little bit, to include one palm or the other palm. There's just all sorts of,
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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
parameter space as we call it in science that you can play with and work with to find what works for you. Whereas when you pop a pill, sure, you can adjust the dose and you can adjust it next time. But once it's in you, it's in you. And there's going to be some period of time before you can modulate it.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
So it doesn't give you a lot of opportunity to play scientist, which is what I like to do, because what I'm always trying to do is trying to dial in the best protocols possible based on the mechanisms and data. And if you can do that moment to moment, that places you in a position of power. Once again, we've covered a lot of material.
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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
By now, after seeing this episode or listening to this episode, you should understand a lot about how your body heats and cools itself and the value of that for physical performance. I hope you'll also appreciate that you have tools at your disposal to vastly improve your physical performance.
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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
I've given you specific protocols and some direction, but I've also left it slightly vague because as I mentioned earlier, I don't know all the environmental conditions. I don't know how hot your yoga studio is or how cool your gym happens to be or your body temperature or time of day. Remember, your temperature will vary according to time of day.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
Going forward, we're going to talk more about temperature and other ways to improve physical performance and skill learning. We're going to talk about specific ways to accelerate fat loss, to improve muscle growth, to improve suppleness and flexibility.
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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
These approaches and mechanisms are anchored deeply in neuroscience and physiology and the relationship between our peripheral organs, which include our skin, and our brain and all the organs in between. And last but not least, I want to thank you for your time and attention. I realize this is a lot of information.
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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
I hope you'll find some of it to be actionable and useful for you and for people that you know. And as always, thank you for your interest in science.
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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
I discovered AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast or even knew what a podcast was, and I've been taking it every day since. I find that AG1 greatly improves all aspects of my health. I simply feel much better when I take it. AG1 uses the highest quality ingredients in the right combinations, and they're constantly improving their formulas without increasing the cost.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
It is however, part of my desire and effort to bring you zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. We just closed out the episodes on hormones. Now we are going to talk about how to optimize physical performance and skill learning. There are so many variables to physical performance.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
Whenever I'm asked if I could take just one supplement, what would that supplement be? I always say AG1. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
Let's start by talking about temperature. How does temperature impact the body and its ability to perform, including learn new skills? So everyone probably remembers or has at least heard of the word homeostasis, right? That the body wants to remain in a particular range of temperatures, that it doesn't like to be too hot or too cold. Heating up too much is just plain bad.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
It's not just bad for physical performance, it's bad for all tissue health. cells stop functioning, they stop being able to generate energy, they stop being able to digest things, you stop being able to think, and eventually those cells start dying off entirely. Now, you don't want to become hypothermic either. You can die from hypothermia just like you can die from hyperthermia.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
However, that you have a lot more range to be cold than you do to be too warm. And in general, the idea is to keep the body and brain in a particular range, but anytime we do anything, our body temperature can shift. So for instance, if you were to stand next to a campfire or you were outside on a hot day, various things would happen to dump heat from your body. Now, what are those things?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
Well, there are a huge category of them, but the simplest way to think about this process is that when we get cold, we tend to vasoconstrict. Our blood vessels tend to constrict and we tend to push energy toward the core of our body to preserve our core organs.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
So our periphery, our hands and our feet and our toes and our legs become colder and our core therefore can maintain blood to that area and we are insulating our core. Conversely, when we heat up our blood vessels vasodilate, they expand a bit and more blood flows to our periphery and more blood can move throughout the body generally. And we will perspire, we will sweat.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
Water will actually get pulled out of the blood to some extent, moved up through sweat glands and will be brought to the skin surface so that it can be dumped. We are dumping heat.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
So it's very important that if you want to understand how you can leverage temperature for physical performance, you have to understand that you have vasoconstriction to conserve heat, vasodilation to dump heat, that you have sweating to dump heat, and you have conservation of fluids in order to preserve heat.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
and we can manage physical performance and skill learning from a variety of contexts. I made just a short list of some of the things that come to mind that can powerfully impact physical performance and skill learning. Some of them are what I would consider foundational. They allow you to show up with your current ability. And if you were to disrupt those, you would perform less well.
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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
That's the most important thing in terms of understanding the mechanisms of maintaining and dumping heat. And now the most important thing to understand is that if you get too hot, your ability to contract your muscles stops, okay? I'm going to repeat this because it's vitally important. ATP, is involved in the process of generating muscle contractions.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
The range of temperatures within which ATP can function and muscles can contract is very narrow. Somewhere around 39 or 40 degrees Celsius, it drops off and you will not be able to generate more contractions. Now it's pretty hot, but that temperature can be generated locally really fast. Put simply, if you get too hot, you stop exercising.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
You may not even realize it, but your will to exercise further, your ability to push harder is entirely dependent on the heat of the muscle, both locally and your whole system. If you can keep temperature in range, however, in a proper range, you will be able to do more work. You will be able to create greater output.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
You'll be able to lift more weight, more sets, more reps, and you'll be able to run further. Now there are data that I'm going to talk about in a little bit that are absolutely striking that underscore that statement. There are data from my colleague, Craig Heller's lab in the department of biology at Stanford.
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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
Many, if not all the NFL teams are now using this technology as well as military uses it and not just for sports performance, but also firefighters, construction workers, other professions where elevated heat becomes a barrier to performance. And you can leverage this to really improve your workouts. So how do you dump heat in order to perform longer safely?
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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
Well, in order to understand that, you have to understand that the body has three main compartments for regulating temperature, okay? We don't just have a center and a periphery, we have three main compartments. And there's one compartment in particular that all of you, or most all of you, I have to assume have,
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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
and if you can understand how that works you can do tremendous things for your performance and for your recovery one is your core we already talked about that your core organs your heart your lungs your pancreas your liver the core of your body the other is your periphery which are obviously your arms and your legs and your feet and your hands but then there's a third component
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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
which is there are three locations on your body that are far better at passing heat out of the body and bringing cool into the body such that you can heat up or cool your body everywhere very quickly. Those three areas are your face, the palms of your hands, and the bottoms of your feet.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
Now the skin on your hands and on the bottoms of your feet and to some extent on your face are called glabrous skin. That's G-L-A-B-O-R-O-U-S, glabrous skin. And what's special about those areas of your body and the glabrous skin is that The arrangement of vasculature of blood vessels, capillaries, and arteries that serve those regions is very different than it is elsewhere in your body.
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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
In these three regions of your hands, your face, and the bottoms of your feet, we have what are called AVAs. AVAs are a very special pattern of vasculature. AVAs are arteriovenous astimoses, A-R-T-E-R-I-O, arteriovenous, V-E-N-O-U-S, arteriovenous anastomosis, A-N-A-S-T-O-M-O-S-E-S. Arteriovenous astomosis, okay? You want to know about arteriovenous astomosis, trust me.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
So things like getting a good night's sleep, things like being properly hydrated, things like being well-nourished, there are supplements, there are drugs, there are different ways to breathe. There are so many tools related to mindset visualization. It's just a vast space, but it's not infinite.
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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
AVAs are direct connections between the small arteries and the small veins. They bypass the capillaries to some extent. They're little short vessel segments. They have a big, large inner diameter, and they have this very thick muscular wall. and they get input from what are called adrenergic neurons.
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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
They get input from neurons that release norepinephrine and epinephrine, which allows them to contract or dilate. Now there's some rules of physics that talk about how the radius of a pipe and small changes in the radius of a pipe leads to massive increases in the rate and amount of stuff that can flow through that pipe.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
It's a rule of physics that says essentially that the radius is proportional to the amount of stuff that can flow through something to the fourth power. What you need to know, even if you don't want to know any of the underlying physics is that these AVAs allow more heat to leave the body more quickly and more cool to enter the body more quickly than other energy sources.
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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
arterial capillary beds throughout the body. In other words, you can heat up best at the face, the palms and the bottoms of the feet, and you can cool down best at the face, the palms and the bottoms of the feet than you can anywhere else on your body.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
These three compartments of your body, palms, bottoms of feet and face are your best leverage points for manipulating temperature to vastly improve physical performance. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
Now I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each and every night. Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop about one to three degrees.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees. Eight Sleep automatically regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your unique needs.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
Now I find that extremely useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night and warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.
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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
And I know that because Eight Sleep has a great sleep tracker that tells me how well I've slept and the types of sleep that I'm getting throughout the night. Their latest model, the Pod 4 Ultra, also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees in order to improve your airflow and stop you from snoring.
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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
If you decide to try Eight Sleep, you have 30 days to try it at home and you can return it if you don't like it. No questions asked, but I'm sure that you'll love it. Go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and the UAE.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
And there are a few things in the list of things that can impact and even optimize physical performance and skill learning that have an outsized effect that any of you can use. So today we are going to focus on what I believe to be one of the most powerful tools to improve physical performance and skill learning and recovery. And we'll talk about why that's important. And that's temperature.
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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra. So what Craig and his colleagues did really illustrates perfectly what these body surfaces can do and why. They were studying overheating in athletes and in military and in construction workers and trying to prevent it.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
What they essentially found was that cooling the palms, Palmer cooling allowed people, athletes and recreational athletes to run much further, to lift more weight and to do more sets and reps to a absolutely staggering degree. Let's talk for a second a bit more about why we stop, why we shut off effort when we get too hot. When muscle heats up,
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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
enzymes start getting disrupted and ATP and muscles can't work so well and those muscles can't contract. The enzyme that's involved here is something called pyruvate kinase and pyruvate kinase is essentially a rate limiting step. It's a critical step that you can't bypass if you want muscles to contract and it's very temperature sensitive.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
Therefore, if you can keep temperature lower, you can do more work per unit time. You can do more pull-ups. What they essentially did is they brought someone into their laboratory who could do 10 pull-ups on the first set, and they were able to get 10, rest two or three minutes, get another 10, rest two or three minutes.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
And if you've ever tried this, what you find is that you start dropping to eight, seven, six, et cetera. Now, the person might not necessarily feel like they're overheating, but the muscle is heating up.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
Then with their knowledge that these AVAs, that these portals in the palms are a great way to both heat the body, but also to dump heat from the body, they used a device, and I'll talk about what you can do at home, but a device where they had people hold on to what was essentially a cold tube. Now this is crucial.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
The tube can't be so cold that it causes vasoconstriction because then the cold won't pass from the tube to the hand and to the core. But if it's the right temperature, it's neither too hot nor too cold, that cool from the cold tube passes into the hand, these so-called palmar regions, and then cools the core.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling
And in theory, by lowering body temperature would allow the person or the athlete to do more work. And indeed that's what they saw. The actual data, the specific data showed that subjects could do, at least the subjects they worked with, on their first day with no cooling, about a hundred pull-ups across the timeframe that they had. Then they came back and did the cooling.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer. The second piece of behavioral advice relates to the viewing of light.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
And the enzymes that we're going to talk about today are the aromatases mainly. The aromatases convert testosterone into estrogen. So in a male, for instance, that has very high testosterone, some of that is going to be converted into estrogen by aromatase. The important thing to know is that prepubescent females make very little estrogen.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
And many of you have heard me talk about this before, and I'm not going to belabor the point that
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
viewing bright light within the first hour of waking whether or not it's from artificial light or ideally from sunlight has these powerful effects on sleep and wakefulness but we have to return to this if you want to understand how light can impact hormones because hormones light and dopamine have a very close-knit relationship so much so that your light viewing behavior can actually have a direct effect on hormone levels and fertility
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
And I think most people don't really understand how powerful this relationship is between light dopamine hormones.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
And when dopamine levels are high, as I mentioned before, there's a tendency for more gonadotropin releasing hormone, luteinizing hormone, follicle stimulating hormone, all the hormones that come from the hypothalamic pituitary axis and stimulate estrogen and testosterone release from the ovary and testes. So how does this translate to a protocol? If you want to optimize testosterone and estrogen,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
you need to get your light viewing behavior correct. It's not just about optimizing your sleep, which is also important. It's about getting sufficient amount of light in your eyes so you have sufficient levels of dopamine. So the simple protocols for that I've reviewed before, but it means getting anywhere from two to 10 minutes of bright light exposure in your eyes early in the day.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
It is not sufficient to do this with sunglasses, unless you have to do that for safety reasons. It's fine to wear prescription lenses and contacts.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
If you can't get sunlight for whatever reason, you want to use bright artificial light, but that is absolutely critical for timing the cortisol release properly, limiting cortisol release to the early part of the day, getting increases in dopamine that are going to promote the production of testosterone and estrogen to healthy levels.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
The other aspect of light viewing behavior that's extremely important is to avoid bright light exposure to your eyes in the middle of the night. If you're viewing bright light in the middle of the night, you are suppressing dopamine release. If you're suppressing dopamine release, you are suppressing testosterone levels.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
So you can't even begin to talk about supplements and other ways to optimize testosterone, diet and its effects on testosterone and estrogen and fertility and reproductive behavior, et cetera. until you get your breathing right, until you get things like your light viewing behavior right. So bright light early in the day and throughout the day is great.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
And avoiding bright light in the middle of the night is not just about not disrupting your sleep. It's also about optimizing the sex steroid hormones. Okay, so we've talked about breathing. We've talked about light.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
Let's talk about a third element that there seems to be some excitement about lately for other reasons, but that can actually have some pretty profound influences on hormone levels, and that's heat and cold.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
So as always, rather than just offer a tool, I'm going to tell you the underlying science as it relates to naturally occurring phenomenon, because in understanding that and understanding the mechanism, you're going to be in a far better position to understand the tools and mechanisms and how you might want to adjust them for your own life.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
So now you understand the relationship between light, day length, dopamine, and hormone levels. and everyone should realize that temperature and day length are linked. Temperature and day length and sunlight, those are all intimately related because of the systems that we evolved in, right? So nowadays there's a lot of interest in using cold as a way to stimulate testosterone.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
And when we talk about estrogen, we mainly talk about estradiol, which is the most active form of estrogen in both males and females. So prepubescent females, very low levels of estrogen. During puberty, levels of estrogen, AKA estradiol, basically skyrocket. And then across the lifespan, Estrogen is going to vary depending on the stage of the menstrual cycle.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
Sounds pretty crazy, but believe it or not, that and things like ice baths and cold showers can have positive effects on the sex steroid hormones. what happens is there's a rebound in vasodilation after cooling. So cooling causes vasoconstriction. And then after the cooling, there's a rebound vasodilation and there's more infusion of blood into the gonads.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
Put simply, we don't know whether or not cold and heat directly affect the production of testosterone and estrogen. We only know that cold and heat can modulate those probably through indirect mechanisms like controlling the amount of blood flow by way of shutting down or activating the neurons. Now let's talk about particular forms of exercise and how they modulate the steroid hormones.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
So what's interesting is when you start digging into the more mechanistic studies, what you find is that Heavy weight trainings, but not weight training to failure, where completion of a repetition is impossible, leads to the greatest increases in testosterone. So anywhere from one rep maximum to somewhere in the six to eight repetition range in males or females,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
increases testosterone significantly. And it does it for about a day, sometimes up to 48 hours. Now, many of you might be endurance athletes or also enjoy exercise besides heavy weight bearing exercise. And there are several studies exploring whether or not
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
endurance activity can increase or decrease androgen levels and whether or not you combine endurance activity and weight training, whether or not that has any effect if you do the endurance activity first or second. And the takeaway from all of this was that endurance activity, if performed first,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
leads to decreases in testosterone during the weight training session, as compared to the same weight training session done first, followed by endurance activity. In other words, if you want to optimize testosterone levels, it seems to be the case that weight training first and doing cardio type endurance activity afterward is the right order of business.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
Now, when these are done on separate days, it doesn't seem to have an effect. They showed no statistical interaction. But it seems that if you're going to do these in the same workout episode, that it's move heavy loads first, then do cardiovascular exercise. So there's a little bit of data looking specifically at how endurance exercise impacts testosterone and its derivatives.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
And it's very clear that high intensity interval training, sprinting, et cetera, which somewhat mimics the neural activity that occurs while moving heavy weight loads is going to increase testosterone. There's ample evidence for that in the literature.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
And that endurance exercise that extends beyond 75 minutes is going to start to lead to reductions in testosterone, presumably by increases in cortisol. So now let's switch over to talking about estrogen. So there are many people who are trying to optimize their estrogen levels. And one of the places where this shows up a lot, and I get a lot of questions about, is menopause.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
So menopause, as I mentioned earlier, is this fairly massive reduction in the amount of estrogen that is circulating in one's blood, mainly because the ovary is now depleted of some estrogen production of its own, the eggs are not being produced, they've been depleted, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
So menopause is characterized by a variety of symptoms, things like hot flashes, things like mood swings, things like headaches, in particular migraine headaches. There can be a lot of brain fog. It can be very, very disruptive for people. So what are the various things that one can do for menopause? Well, one of the most common ones is that physicians will prescribe supplemental estrogen.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
But as one heads into menopause, which typically takes place nowadays, somewhere between age 45 and 60, levels of estrogen are going to drop. And then post-menopause levels of estrogen are very low. As well, testosterone will fluctuate across the lifespan. Testosterone is going to be relatively low pre-puberty in males. During puberty, it's going to skyrocket.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
So this is hormone therapy where somebody takes either oral estrogen or they'll use a patch or a pellet, some way to secrete estradiol into the system. And that has varying success depending on the individual. Some people respond very well to it. Other people really have challenges with it. And there are a lot of side effects associated with it for some people, not others.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
In addition, there's a concern always about supplementing estrogen when there's a breast cancer background in the family, or there's concern about breast cancer for any reason, because a lot of those cancers are estrogen dependent. And that's why drugs like tamoxifen and anastrozole and drugs that block either aromatase or block, excuse me, estrogen receptors directly were initially developed.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function. Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient levels, and much more. They've also recently added tests for toxins such as BPA exposure from harmful plastics and tests for PFAS or forever chemicals.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to your physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors who are expert in the relevant areas. For example, in one of my first tests with function, I learned that I had elevated levels of mercury in my blood.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
Function not only helped me detect that, but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, I'd been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification. And I should say, by taking a second function test,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
that approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by function simplicity and at the level of cost. It is very affordable.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. Okay, so now let's talk about the role of specific compounds, some of which, many of which can be taken in supplementation form to optimize sex steroid hormones. It's very clear that certain collections of nutrients are useful for promoting testosterone and estrogen production in their proper ratios.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
And those things are what I would call the sort of usual suspects. Vitamin D, which is important for so many biological functions, including endocrine functions, zinc, magnesium, et cetera. One of the things that's been shown time and time again to have very negative effects on sex steroid hormones, testosterone mainly in men, estrogen mainly in women, is opioids. The opioids...
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
And then the current numbers are that it drops off at about a rate of 1% per year. So let's talk about other sources of these hormones. And then it will make clear what, you might want to take in order to optimize these hormones. The other glands and tissues in the body that make these hormones, testosterone and estrogen, as I mentioned briefly, are the adrenals.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
dramatically reduce levels of testosterone and estrogen. And they do that mainly by disrupting the receptors on gonadotropin-releasing hormone neurons, these neurons within the hypothalamus that communicate to the pituitary. And in fact, people that take large amounts of opioids or even take low levels of opioids for long periods of time will develop all sorts of endocrine syndromes.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
That's been shown over and over again, gynecomastia or male breast development in males, disruptions to the ovary in females. It's really a quite terrible situation. So excessive opioids are, very problematic for sex steroid hormones.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
Now there's an entire industry devoted to supplements and various things that people can take to increase testosterone, some of which have scientific data to support them, some of which do not, and some of which have anecdotal support and some of which do not. There are supplements, in particular Tongkat Ali, which has this other name. It's something I've called Tongkat Ali.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
Sometimes it's called, and forgive me that it's hard to pronounce, but uricoma longifolia jack. This has been shown in several studies, and you can find these on examine.com, or you can go to PubMed if you like. I've looked at these, that it does seem to have some pro-fertility, pro-free testosterone, and subtle aphrodisiac effects. It does also seem to be a slight anti-estrogen.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
So the reports of this are people take this anywhere from 400 to 800 milligrams a day. Again, I'm not suggesting you do that, but that's kind of what's out there. And there is some decent scientific literature to support the fact that it liberates some of the bound testosterone and allows more free testosterone to be available.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
Some of the reported quote unquote side effects are things like excessive alertness and insomnia if it's taken too late in the day and so forth. But I encourage you to explore that further if increasing free testosterone is something that you're interested in doing. People with different backgrounds and conditions, as we talked about for menopause and estrogen,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
You have to be careful because when you're starting to modulate hormones, you're starting to modulate not just the tissues that thrive on binding of those hormones, but remember, the reason why there's so much breast cancer and there's a reason why there's so much testicular cancer is that any tissue that undergoes rapid reproduction of particular cells, so there's a lot of reproduction of cells and shedding of uterine lining and the reproduction of cells and eggs in the ovary, and in the testes, there's the production of,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
and Sertoli cells, and there's this kind of ongoing production of sperm, that's why those tissues are particularly vulnerable to the development of cancers. And many of those cancers are androgen sensitive. That's why one of the major treatments for prostate overgrowth or prostate cancer is to give anti-androgenic drugs.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
It's really about trying to prevent testosterone from encouraging growth of tumors. So I want to really emphasize the caution there. because it is easy when thinking about optimizing estrogen and testosterone to just think, oh, more is better. More is definitely not better.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
Any tissue that recycles itself is prone to cancers and those tissues thrive on androgens and estrogens to create more tumors. So you have to be careful anytime you're modulating hormones, especially androgens and estrogens. And while we're talking about supplementation, the effects of supplementation
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
I would say in some individuals can be quite dramatic, but they're always, always, always, except in extreme cases, going to be far more subtle than would be, for instance, just injecting testosterone or injecting estrogen, et cetera. So I think we should just be honest and upfront about that. So thus far, in terms of talking about optimizing hormones and in the discussion of supplementation,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
So the adrenals right on top of the kidneys and the release of these steroid hormones from the adrenals in particular testosterone and some of its related derivatives are mainly activated by competition. Pretty interesting. There's a lot of evidence in animals and humans that competitive scenarios, at least short-lived competitive scenarios, can liberate testosterone from the adrenals.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
I haven't really talked about things that actually affect the brain directly that increase the pituitary output and things of that sort. We've mainly been talking about things that free up testosterone or that increase estrogen at the level of the periphery. But if you remember way back to the beginning of this episode, hormones are made in different locations in the body.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
And there are hormones that promote the release and the production of hormones from other tissues in the body. And one of the main hormones for that is luteinizing hormone. Luteinizing hormone, again, comes from the pituitary, circulates, and either goes to the,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
ovary to promote various aspects of egg maturation, as well as production of estrogen and to the testes to promote testosterone and sperm production. And the prescription version of increasing luteinizing hormone is something called HCG or human chorionic gonadotropin, which has been synthesized and is now available as a prescription drug.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
It's taken in various contexts for increasing fertility, both by males and by females. It can increase for all the reasons that now make sense. It can increase sperm production. It can produce ovulation frequency. It can produce the number of eggs even that are deployed in a given ovulation, although that's not always a good thing.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
It basically is pro-fertility, pro-testosterone, pro-estrogen, depending on your background. And what's interesting is HCG was initially synthesized, collected and synthesized from pregnant women's urine. And believe it or not, before it was synthetically made and sold as a prescription drug, there was actually a black market for pregnant women's urine where people would buy the urine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
I don't know, I'm guessing that they probably just consumed it, which is weird. But in any case, Human chorionic gonadotropin is now available as a prescription drug. And it's one of the things that many people use to increase testosterone or estrogen for increasing fertility.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
But there are certain supplements, not many, that apparently can increase luteinizing hormone and thereby can increase testosterone and estrogen. And one of the more well-documented ones is Fadogia agrestis, that's F-A-D-O-G-I-A, separate word A-G-R-E-S-T-I-S, which at least according to the literature that I was able to find,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
can increase levels of luteinizing hormone and thereby levels of testosterone or levels of estrogen. The side effect profile of Fidogea aggressive hasn't really been documented, so it's a little unclear. I just want to emphasize that anytime someone's going to start taking supplements or modifying sex steroid hormones, getting blood work done is extremely important.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
for safety reasons, and also just to know whether or not things are working. And because all of these things are subject to negative feedback, talked about this previously, previous episode, but if testosterone goes high or too high, it can feed back and shut down luteinizing hormone, which will then shut down further testosterone production.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
Likewise, if estrogens are going too high or they're going too high at various phases of the cycle, that can start to throw off various other hormones, including, FSH, progesterone, LH. The menstrual cycle itself is a just absolutely exquisite balance of feedback of luteinizing hormone kept low and constant, at least for the first 14 days of the cycle, then mid cycle, there's a peak.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
Before we begin today, just want to acknowledge that if you're watching this on YouTube, yes, I have a bandage on the left side of my face. I was trying to cook something for Costello and I, and I got burned, burned myself. It was a cooking accident. I'm fine. No need to dwell on it. We can move on. But I just wanted to let you know, everybody's going to be okay. He got a great meal.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
And that's typically when ovulation occurs. That's why pregnancy is most likely during the middle of the 28 day cycle.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
fsh kind of goes up and then down across the first 14 days so taking anything or really modifying one's estrogens or testosterone on that background of the menstrual cycle is really going to disrupt the way those things interact and it's just such an exquisite feedback loop so i'm not saying don't um do that but you definitely want to be aware of what you're doing and
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
Blood draws are one way to do that. Monitoring cycles for ovulating females is another way to do that. And in males, having a good window into what's going on with testosterone, DHT, aromatase, estradiol, LH, et cetera, is just vital.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night. Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
And it's really part and parcel with the practice of thinking about optimizing these incredible things that we call sex steroid hormones, estrogen and testosterone and their derivatives. So once again, we covered a tremendous amount of information.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
I hope that you'll come away from this with a deeper mechanistic understanding of how the brain and body are interacting to control the output and the ways in which these incredible things that we call sex steroid hormones work and influence us. I hope you'll also come away with some ideas of things that you can do in particular behavioral practices
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
that can improve sleep and your relationship to light, et cetera, because those things really set the foundation, not just for healthy steroid hormone output, but for all sorts of health effects and for both the psychology and the biology of your nervous system.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
In closing, I hope you'll leave today's episode with a much richer understanding of the mechanisms that control the endocrine and nervous system in the context of estrogen and testosterone, as well as take away various tools that you might choose to apply. And as always, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
Eight Sleep makes it very easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to program the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation of the Pod Cover called the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity. I find that very useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night, and warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
It also has a snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring. If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman. So let's talk about competition because it turns out that competition is a powerful influence on the sex steroid hormones and the sex steroid hormones powerfully influence competition. So most people don't realize this, but most males of a given mammalian species never get to reproduce. In fact, they never even get to have sex at all.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
And we don't often think about that, but testosterone plays a powerful role in determining which members of a given species will get to reproduce, which ones of that species will actually get access to females. And so here, I'm not talking about humans specifically,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
but it's well known in species like elephant seals, in species like antlered animals and rams, for instance, that the higher levels of testosterone correlate with access to females. Now, one interpretation of this is that the females are detecting which males have high testosterone and selecting them.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
They're more receptive to them, but it's actually more so that the males that have higher testosterone forage further and will fight harder for the females. And this is really interesting because there's very good evidence now that testosterone can reduce anxiety, promote novelty seeking and promote competitive interactions.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
And so before you leap too far with this in your mind and think about all these human behaviors, just stay with me because there's a little bit of biology here that makes it all make sense. And it turns out to be pretty simple. We have a brain region called the amygdala. In Latin, that just means almond, but the amygdala is most famous for its role in fear.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
I got a burn and a great meal. Today, we're going to be talking about hormone optimization, and we're mainly going to be focusing on estrogen and testosterone and their derivatives. Now, estrogen and testosterone and their derivatives are what we call sex steroids. But I just want to emphasize that estrogen and testosterone are present in everybody. It's their ratios that determine their effects.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
We hear a lot about fear and the amygdala, but the amygdala is really involved in threat detection. It sets our thresholds for anxiety and what we consider scary or too much. Testosterone secreted from the gonads and elsewhere in the body binds to the amygdala and changes the threshold for stress.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
So I've said before on previous versions of this podcast and on other podcasts that testosterone has this incredible effect of making effort feel good. But what I was really referring to is the fact that testosterone lowers stress and anxiety in particular in males of a given species.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
Testosterone increases generally lead to more foraging, more novelty seeking, increases in libido and increases in desire to mate. So it is the case that increases in testosterone promote competitive and foraging type behaviors in humans and in non-human mammals. But it's also true that competition itself can increase androgens such as testosterone.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
Now, some people have come to the conclusion that if you win, your testosterone goes up, and if you lose, your testosterone goes down. And to some extent that's true, but that's not a direct effect on the gonads. That's actually mediated by the neuromodulator dopamine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
We talked about dopamine in the episode on motivation and drive, and dopamine and testosterone have a remarkable interplay in the body. Dopamine is actually released in the brain in ways that has the pituitary, this gland that sits over the roof of your mouth, release certain hormones that then go on to promote the release of more testosterone.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
And indeed, winning promotes more dopamine and later more testosterone. However, in the short term, just competing increases testosterone independent of whether or not you win or lose. So testosterone is driving the seeking of sex and estrogen is promoting the actual act of sex from females, so-called receptivity, consensual receptivity.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
In males, it's interesting to point out that testosterone is promoting seeking of sex, but it's also estrogen in males that's important for libido. If estrogen levels are brought too low, then men will completely lose their libido. So it's not simply the case that high levels of testosterone produce a lot of sex and mating behavior and low levels of estrogen are good across the board.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
You actually need both in both males and females. It's just that in females, the testosterone levels are always going to be lower than the estrogen levels. And in males, the estrogen levels are always going to be lower than testosterone levels. So just as there are behaviors that can increase testosterone, there are behaviors that can decrease testosterone.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
And one of the most well-characterized ones in humans is becoming a parent. So expecting fathers, have an almost 50% decrease in testosterone levels, both free and bound testosterone. It turns out that these effects of reduced testosterone, increased estradiol and reduced cortisol can all be explained by an increase in prolactin.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
It is a well-known phenomenon that testosterone is going to drop, prolactin is going to increase, estradiol is going to increase in males and females that are expecting children. The other behavior that markedly reduces testosterone in both males and females and markedly reduces the desire for seeking sex and sex itself is illness.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
So today we're going to talk about how specific types of exercise, particular patterns of cold exposure, as well as particular patterns, believe it or not, of breathing can impact sex steroid hormones, both estrogen and testosterone. So one of the first things to understand if you want to optimize your hormones, is where they come from.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
And many of you might say, well, duh, when people feel sick, they don't feel like seeking out mates, they don't feel like having sex. But have you ever wondered why that actually is? Well, it turns out that it can be explained by the release of what are called inflammatory cytokines.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
So cytokines are related to the immune system, they travel in the lymph and in the blood, and they attack invader cells like bacteria and viruses. And under conditions of illness, we make a lot of different cytokines. Some of them are anti-inflammatory, but some of them are pro-inflammatory. And the best known example of a pro-inflammatory cytokine is IL-6.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
And it's known that IL-6, when injected into individuals, will decrease the desire for sex and eventually will reduce levels of testosterone and estrogen independent of feeling lousy. Now IL-6 doesn't just travel to the gonads and shut down the gonads.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
It actually has ways to interact with some of the receptors that the steroid hormones, estrogen and testosterone bind to and impact those receptors so that the sex steroid hormones can't have their effect. In short and put simply, inflammatory cytokines like IL-6 are bad for sex steroid hormones.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
One of the main behaviors that's been shown to be associated with poor levels of estrogen relative to age match controls for people with ovaries or lower levels of testosterone compared to age match controls for people with testes. is apnea. So what is apnea? Apnea is under breathing or mainly cessation of breathing during sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
So people are holding their breath and then they'll suddenly wake up. People who are dramatically overweight also suffer a lot from apnea during sleep. And it's well established that going into deep sleep and getting the proper patterns of slow wave sleep and REM sleep are important for hormone optimization.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
Breathing itself can be adjusted in the daytime waking hours in ways that can powerfully impact both sleep, reduce incidents of sleep apnea, and also help to optimize various hormones, even just by breathing in particular ways while awake. Believe it or not, being a nasal breather and avoiding being a mouth breather can actually positively impact hormones.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
And in particular, the hormones, testosterone and estrogen. Although the way that it does that is by making you a better sleeper, which allows you to produce more testosterone and the appropriate amounts of testosterone and estrogen.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
But it does that in part through indirect mechanisms because deep sleep supports the gonads, the ovaries and the testicles and the turnover of cells and the production of cells.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
Remember in the ovary particular cells and the egg follicles themselves make estrogen and in the testicle that the Sertoli cells and the Leydig cells are important for the formation of sperm and for testosterone respectively. So, What does this all mean?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
This means we have to be breathing properly to get your breathing and sleep right so that your sleep can actually be deep enough and you're not entering apnea states. Getting proper sleep can really offset all the reductions in testosterone and estrogen and reductions in fertility that occur if we don't get enough sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
There are a lot of different glands in the body that produce hormones. But when we're talking about the sex steroid hormones, estrogen and testosterone, the major sources are ovaries for estrogen and the testes for testosterone, although the adrenals can also make testosterone. Now, there are also some enzymes. Enzymes are things that can change chemical composition.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
But seldom is it discussed how sleep actually adjusts things like testosterone and estrogen. And it does it by modifying cortisol. So the molecule cholesterol can be into testosterone or estrogen, but there's a competition whereby the cholesterol will turn into cortisol and not testosterone, or it'll turn into cortisol and not estrogen if stress levels are too high.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
So the simple version of this is getting your breathing right, during the waking hours, meaning primarily, unless you're working out really hard or there's some other reason why you're maybe eating or speaking that you need to be breathing through your mouth, you should be a nose breather. There's really good evidence for that now.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
And in sleep, you also want to be a nose breather because that's going to increase the amount of oxygen that you're bringing into your system and the amount of carbon dioxide that you're offloading, okay? So the simple version of this is get your breathing right. So how do you do that? How do you get your breathing right? Well, for some people that have severe sleep apnea,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
they're going to need the CPAP machine. This is a machine that you actually put on your face and it helps you breathe properly and sleep. In the daytime, the best way to get good at nasal breathing is to dilate the nasal passages, because a lot of people have a hard time breathing through their nose. And one way to do this is to just breathe through your nose more.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
And one way to do that is that when you exercise, in particular cardiovascular exercise, most of the time, provided you're not in maximum effort, you should be nasal breathing. Now for a lot of people, nasal breathing during exercise is hard at first, but as you do it, because the sinuses have a capacity to dilate over time, you'll get better at it. So my advice would be,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
breathe through your nose while exercising unless you're in maximum effort. Pretty soon what you'll find is you actually can create more output than you would if you were breathing through your mouth. Learn to be a nasal breather, has positive cosmetic effects, it reduces apnea, it offloads more carbon dioxide, it increases lung capacity, it dilates the sinuses, and it prevents apnea in sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
So unless you have severe apnea and you need the CPAP, becoming a nasal breather can have all sorts of positive effects by reducing cortisol, reducing apnea, and indirectly raising testosterone and estrogen in the proper ratios. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin, mineral, probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
As somebody who's been involved in research science for almost three decades and in health and fitness for equally as long, I'm constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental health, physical health, and performance. I discovered AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast or even knew what a podcast was, and I've been taking it every day since.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen
I find that AG1 greatly improves all aspects of my health, I simply feel much better when I take it. AG1 uses the highest quality ingredients in the right combinations, and they're constantly improving their formulas without increasing the cost. Whenever I'm asked if I could take just one supplement, what would that supplement be? I always say AG1.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. My name is Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
So we have this area of the brain called the thalamus, and it is getting bombarded with all sorts of sensory input all the time. But when I pay attention to something, I create a cone of attention. What we call signal to noise goes up. So those of you with an engineering background will be familiar with signal to noise. Those of you who do not have an engineering background, don't worry about it.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
All it means is that one particular shout in the crowd comes through. Acetylcholine acts as a spotlight. But epinephrine for alertness, acetylcholine spotlighting these inputs, those two things alone are not enough to get plasticity. There needs to be this third component. And the third component is acetylcholine released from an area of the forebrain called nucleus basalis.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
If you really want to get technical, it's called nucleus basalis of minorit. For any of you that are budding physicians or going to medical school, you should know that. If you have acetylcholine released from the brainstem, acetylcholine released from nucleus basalis and epinephrine, you can change your brain. And this has been shown again and again and again in a variety of papers.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
And that through your experience, what you were exposed to by your parents or other caretakers, through your social interactions, through your thoughts, through the languages that you learn, through the places you traveled or didn't travel, your nervous system became customized to your unique experience.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
And it is now considered a fundamental principle of how the nervous system works. If you can access these three things of epinephrine, acetylcholine from these two sources, not only will the nervous system change, it has to change. It absolutely will change. And that is the most important thing for people to understand if they want to change their brain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
So now let's talk about how we would translate all the scientific information into some protocols that you can actually apply, because I think that's what many of you are interested in. What you do with your health and your medical care is up to you. You're responsible for your health and wellbeing. So I'm not going to tell you what to do or what to take.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
I'm going to describe what the literature tells us and suggests about ways to access plasticity. We know we need epinephrine, that means alertness. Most people accomplish this through a cup of coffee and a good night's sleep. So I will say you should master your sleep schedule and you should figure out how much sleep you need in order to achieve alertness when you sit down to learn.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
Once that's in place, the question then is, how do I access this alertness? Well, there are a number of ways. Some people use some pretty elaborate psychological gymnastics. They will tell people that they're going to do something and create some accountability. That could be really good.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
or they'll post a picture of themselves online and they'll commit to learning a certain amount, losing, excuse me, a certain amount of weight or something like this. So they can use either shame-based practices to potentially embarrass themselves if they don't follow through.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
They'll write checks to organizations that they hate and insist that they'll cash them if they don't actually follow through. Or they'll do it out of love. You know, they'll decide that they're going to run a marathon or learn a language or something because of somebody they love or they want to devote it to somebody.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
The truth is that from the standpoint of epinephrine and getting alert and activated, it doesn't really matter. Epinephrine is a chemical and your brain does not distinguish between doing things out of love or hate, anger or fear. It really doesn't. All of those promote autonomic arousal and the release of epinephrine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
For most people, if you're feeling not motivated to make these changes, the key thing is to identify not just one, but probably a kit of reasons, several reasons as to why you would want to make this particular change and being drawn toward a particular goal. that you're excited about can be one.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
Also being motivated to not be completely afraid, ashamed, or humiliated for not falling through on a goal is another. Come up with two or three things, fear-based perhaps, love-based perhaps, or perhaps several of those in order to ensure alertness, energy, and attention for the task. And that brings us to the attention part.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
Now that's true for certain parts of your brain that are involved in what we call representations of the outside world. A lot of your brain is designed to represent the visual world or represent the auditory world or represent the gallery of smells that are possible in the world. However, there are aspects of your nervous system that were designed not to be plastic.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
Now it's one thing to have an electrode embedded into your brain and increase the amount of acetylcholine. It's another to exist in the real world outside the laboratory and have trouble focusing, having trouble bringing your attention to a particular location in space for a particular event.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
And there's a lot of discussion nowadays about smartphones and devices creating a sort of attention deficit, almost at a clinical level for many people, including adults. I think that's largely true. And what it means, however, is that we all are responsible for learning how to create depth of focus. there are some important neuroscience principles to get depth of focus.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
I want to briefly talk about the pharmacology first, because I always get asked about this. People say, what can I take to increase my levels of acetylcholine? Well, there are things you can take. Nicotine is called nicotine because acetylcholine binds to the nicotinic receptor.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
There are two kinds of acetylcholine receptors, muscarinic and nicotinic, but the nicotinic ones are involved in attention and alertness. I have colleagues, these are not my kind of like bro science buddies, I have those friends too. This is a Nobel Prize winning colleague who chews Nicorette while he works. But when I asked him, why are you doing this?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
He said, well, increases my alertness and focus. Now I've tried chewing Nicorette, it makes me super jittery. I don't like it because I can't focus very well. It kind of takes me too far up the level of autonomic arousal. I've got friends that dip Nicorette all day.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
If you're going to go down that route, you want to be very careful how much you rely on those all the time, because the essence of plasticity is to create a window of attention and focus that's distinct from the rest of your day. So what are some ways that you can increase acetylcholine? How do you increase focus? The best way to get better at focusing
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
is to use the mechanisms of focus that you were born with. And the key principle here is that mental focus follows visual focus. We are all familiar with the fact that our visual system can be unfocused, blurry, or jumping around, or we can be very laser focused on one location in space.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
What's interesting and vitally important to understanding how to access neuroplasticity is that you can use your visual focus and you can increase your visual focus as a way of increasing your mental focus abilities more broadly. So I'm going to explain how to do that. I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Element.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. We should all know that proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. In fact, even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance to a considerable degree.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
It's also important that you're not just hydrated, but that you get adequate amounts of electrolytes in the right ratios. Drinking a packet of Element dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate amounts of hydration and electrolytes.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of both, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I'll also drink a packet of Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
There are a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. I like the watermelon, I like the raspberry, I like the citrus. Basically, I like all of them. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim an Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement spelled L-M-N-T.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
They were wired so that plasticity or changes in those circuits is very unlikely. Those circuits include things like the ones that control your heartbeat, the ones that control your breathing, the ones that control your digestion. And thank goodness that those circuits were set up that way because you want those circuits to be extremely reliable.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
So it's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. Plasticity starts with alertness. That alertness can come from a sense of love, a sense of joy, a sense of fear, doesn't matter. There are pharmacologic ways to access alertness too. The most common one is of course caffeine. Many people are now also using Adderall. Adderall will not increase focus, it increases alertness.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
It does not touch the acetylcholine system. The acetylcholine system and the focus that it brings is available, as I mentioned, through pharmacology, but also through these behavioral practices. And the behavioral practices that are anchored in visual focus are going to be the ones that are going to allow you to develop great depth and duration of focus.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
So let's think about visual focus for a second. When we focus on something visually, we have two options. We can either look at a very small region of space with a lot of detail and a lot of precision, or we can dilate our gaze and we can see big pieces of visual space with very little detail. It's a trade-off. We can't look at everything at high resolution.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
This is why we have these, the pupil more or less relates to the fovea of the eye, which is the area in which we have the most receptors, the highest density of receptors that perceive light. And so our acuity is much better in the center of our visual field than in our periphery. When we focus our eyes, we do a couple things. First of all,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
We tend to do that in the center of our visual field and our two eyes tend to align in what's called a vergence eye movement towards a common point. The other thing that happens is the lens of our eye moves so that our brain now no longer sees the entire visual world, but is seeing a small cone of visual imagery.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
That small cone of visual imagery or soda straw view of the world has much higher acuity, higher resolution than if I were to look at everything. Now you say, of course, this makes perfect sense, but that's about visual attention, not mental attention. Well, it turns out that focus in the brain is anchored to our visual system.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
I'll talk about blind people in a moment, but assuming that somebody is sighted, the key is to learn how to focus better visually if you want to bring about higher levels of cognitive or mental focus. When we move our eyes slightly inward, maybe you can tell that I'm doing it like this, basically shortening or making the interpupillary distance as it's called smaller, two things happen.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
Not only do we develop a smaller visual window into the world, but we activate a set of neurons in our brainstem that trigger the release of both norepinephrine, epinephrine, and acetylcholine. Norepinephrine is kind of similar to epinephrine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
So in other words, when our eyes are relaxed in our head, when we're just kind of looking at our entire visual environment, moving our head around, moving through space, we're in optic flow, things moving past us, or we're sitting still, we're looking broadly at our space, we're relaxed.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
When our eyes move slightly inward toward a particular visual target, our visual world shrinks, our level of visual focus goes up, and we know that this relates to the release of acetylcholine and epinephrine at the relevant sites in the brain for plasticity.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
So many nervous system features like digestion and breathing and heart rate are hard to change. Other aspects of our nervous system are actually quite easy to change. And one of the great gifts of childhood, adolescence and young adulthood is that we can learn through almost passive experience. We don't have to focus that hard in order to learn new things.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
Now, what this means is that if you have a hard time focusing your mind for sake of reading or for listening, you need to practice and you can practice focusing your visual system. Now this works best if you practice focusing your visual system at the precise distance from the work that you intend to do for sake of plasticity. So how would this look in the real world?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
Let's say I am trying to concentrate on something related to, I don't know, science. I'm reading a science paper and I'm having a hard time. It's not absorbing.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
Spending just 60 to 120 seconds, focusing my visual attention on a small window of my screen, meaning just on my screen with nothing on it, but bringing my eyes to that particular location increases not just my visual acuity for that location, but it brings about an increase in activity in a bunch of other brain areas that are associated with gathering information from this location.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
Today, we're talking about neural plasticity, which is this incredible feature of our nervous systems that allows it to change in response to experience. Neuroplasticity is arguably one of the most important aspects of our biology.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
So put simply, if you want to improve your ability to focus, practice visual focus. Now you may ask, well, what about the experiment where people were feeling this rotating drum or listening to the auditory cue? That doesn't involve vision at all. Ah, if you look at people who are learning things with their auditory system, they will often close their eyes. And that's not a coincidence.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
If somebody is listening very hard, please don't ask them to look you directly in the eye while also asking that they listen to you. That's actually one of the worst ways to get somebody to listen to you. If you say, now listen to me and look me in the eye, the visual system will take over and they'll see your mouth move, but they're going to hear their thoughts more.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
They're going to hear what you're saying. Closing the eyes is one of the best ways to create a cone of auditory attention. And this is what low vision or no vision folks do. They have tremendous capacity to focus their attention in particular locations. And for most people, vision is the primary way to train up this focus ability and these cones of attention.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
So you absolutely have to focus on the thing that you're trying to learn. And you will feel some agitation because of the epinephrine in your system. If you're feeling agitation and it's challenging to focus and you're feeling like you're not doing it right, chances are you're doing it right.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
So once you get this epinephrine, this alertness, you get the acetylcholine released and you can focus your attention, then the question is for how long? And in an earlier podcast, I talked about these ultradian cycles that last about 90 minutes. The typical learning bout should be about 90 minutes. I think that learning bout will no doubt include five to 10 minutes of warmup period.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
I think everyone should give themselves permission to not be fully focused in the early part of that bout, but that in the middle of that bout for the middle hour or so, you should be able to maintain focus for about an hour or so. So that for me means eliminating distractions. That means turning off the wifi. I put my phone in the other room.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
I encourage you to try experiencing what it is to be completely immersed in an activity where you feel the agitation that your attention is drifting, but you continually bring it back. And that's an important point, which is that attention drifts, but we have to re-anchor it. We have to keep grabbing it back. And the way to do that, if you're sighted, is with your eyes.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
And then after age 25, if we want to change those connections, those super highways of connectivity, we have to engage in some very specific processes And those processes, as we'll soon learn, are gated, meaning you can't just decide to change your brain. You actually have to go through a series of steps to change your internal state in ways that will allow you to change your brain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
That as your attention drifts and you look away, you want to try and literally maintain visual focus on the thing that you're trying to learn. That's the trigger for plasticity. But the real secret is that neuroplasticity doesn't occur during wakefulness. It occurs during sleep. We now know that if you focus very hard on something,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
for about 90 minutes or so, maybe you even do several bouts of that per day if you can do that. Some people can, some people can only do one focused bout of learning.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
That night and the following nights while you sleep, the neural circuits that were highlighted, if you will, with acetylcholine transmission will strengthen and other ones will be lost, which is wonderful because that's the essence of plasticity. And what it means is that when you eventually wake up
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
or a week later, you will have acquired the knowledge forever, unless you go through some process to actively unlearn it. So mastering sleep is key in order to reinforce the learning that occurs. But let's say you get a really poor night of sleep after a bout of learning. Chances are, if you sleep the next night or the following night, that learning will occur.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
There's a stamp in the brain where this acetylcholine was released. It actually marks those synapses neurochemically and metabolically so that those synapses are more biased to change. Now, if you don't ever get that deep sleep, then you probably won't get those changes.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
There's also a way in which you can bypass the need for deep sleep, at least partially, by engaging in what I call non-sleep deep rest, these NSDR protocols. But I just want to discuss the science of this. There was a paper that was published
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
in cell reports last year that shows that if people did, it was a spatial memory task, actually quite difficult one where they had to remember the sequence of lights lighting up. And if they're just two or three lights in a particular sequence, it's easy, but as you get up to 15 or 16 lights and numbers in the sequence, it actually gets quite challenging. If immediately after,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
and it was immediately after the learning, the actual performance of this task, people took a 20 minute non-sleep deep rest protocol or took a shallow nap, so lying down, feet slightly elevated perhaps, just closing their eyes, no sensory input. the rates of learning were significantly higher for that information than were to just had a good night's sleep the following night.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
So you can actually accelerate learning with these NSDR protocols or with brief naps, 90 minutes or less. For many people, letting the mind drift where it's not organized in thought after a period of very deliberate focused effort is the best way to accelerate learning and depth of learning. I want to synthesize some of the information that we've covered up until now.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
Today, I want to make sure that these key elements that form the backbone of neuroplasticity are really embedded in people's minds. First of all, plasticity occurs throughout the lifespan. If you want to learn as an adult, you have to be alert. It might seem so obvious, but I think a lot of people don't think about when in their 24 hour cycle they're most alert.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
Just ask yourself, when during the day do you typically tend to be most alert? That will afford you an advantage in learning specific things during that period of time. So don't give up that period of time for things that are meaningless, useless, or not aligned with your goals. That epinephrine released from your brainstem,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
is going to occur more readily at particular phases of your 24-hour cycle than others, during the waking phase, of course. You should know when those are. Increasing acetylcholine can be accomplished pharmacologically through nicotine. However, there are certain dangers for many people to do that, as well as a cost, a financial cost.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, David. David makes a protein bar unlike any other. It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. That's right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from protein. These bars from David also taste amazing.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
learning how to engage the cholinergic system through the use of the visual system, practicing how long can you maintain focus with blanks as you need them, but how long can you maintain visual focus on a target just on a piece of paper set a few feet away in the room or at the level of your computer screen?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
These are actually things that people do in communities where high levels of visual focus are necessary. What we're really talking about here is trying to harness the mechanisms of attention and get better at paying attention.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
You may want to do that with your auditory system, not with your visual system, either because you're low vision or no vision, or because you're trying to learn something that relates more to sounds. You should also ask yourself whether or not you're trying to focus too much for too long during the day. I know some very high performing individuals
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
very high performing in a variety of contexts, and none of them are focused all day long. Many of them take walks down the hallway, sometimes mumbling to themselves or not paying attention to anything else. They go for bike rides, they take walks. They are not trying to engage their mind at maximum focus all the time.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
Very few people do that because we learn best in these 90 minute bouts inside of one of these ultradian cycles. And I should repeat again that within that 90 minute cycle, you should not expect yourself to focus for the entire period of one 90 minute cycle. The beginning and end are going to be a little bit flickering in and out of focus. How do you know when one of these 90 minute cycles is
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
Well, typically when you wake up is the beginning of the first 90 minute cycle, but it's not down to the minute. You'll be able to tap into your sense of these 90 minute cycles as you start to engage in these learning practices, should you choose. And then of course, getting some non-sleep deep rest or just deliberate disengagement, such as walking or running or just sitting
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
eyes closed or eyes open kind of mindlessly, it might seem in a chair, just letting your thoughts move around after a learning about will accelerate the rate of plasticity. And then of course, deep sleep. Many of you have very graciously asked how you can help support the Huberman Lab podcast. Best way to do that is to subscribe on YouTube.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
You might want to also hit the notification button so that you don't miss any upcoming episodes. Leave a comment. As well, if you go to Apple, you can give us a five-star rating and there's a place there where also you can leave a comment. And if you prefer to listen on Spotify, subscribe and download on Spotify.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
In addition, it's always helpful if you recommend the podcast to your friends and family and others who you think might benefit from the information. And as well, please check out our sponsors. That's a great way to help us. Thanks so much for your time and attention. And as always, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
My favorite flavor is chocolate chip cookie dough, but then again, I also like the chocolate fudge flavored one And I also like the cake flavored one. Basically, I like all the flavors. They're incredibly delicious. For me personally, I strive to eat mostly whole foods.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
However, when I'm in a rush or I'm away from home, or I'm just looking for a quick afternoon snack, I often find that I'm looking for a high quality protein source. With David, I'm able to get 28 grams of protein with the calories of a snack, which makes it very easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight each day.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
And it allows me to do that without taking in excess calories. I typically eat a David Barr in the early afternoon or even mid-afternoon if I want to bridge that gap between lunch and dinner. I like that it's a little bit sweet, so it tastes like a tasty snack, but it's also giving me that 28 grams of very high quality protein with just 150 calories.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
If you would like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, the link is davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Many of us have been captivated by the stories in the popular press about the addition of new neurons, this idea, oh, if you go running or you exercise, your brain actually makes new neurons.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
Well, I'm going to give you the bad news, which is that after puberty, the human brain and nervous system adds very few, if any, new neurons.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
So even though we can't add new neurons throughout our lifespan, at least not in very great numbers, it's clear that we can change our nervous system, that the nervous system is available for change, that if we create the right set of circumstances in our brain, chemical circumstances, and if we create the right environmental circumstances around us, our nervous system will shift into a mode in which change isn't just possible, but it's probable.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
It holds the promise for each and all of us to think differently, to learn new things, to forget painful experiences, and to essentially adapt to anything that life brings us by becoming better. So let's get started. Most people are familiar with the word neural plasticity, which is the brain and nervous system's ability to change itself.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
As I mentioned before, The hallmark of the child nervous system is change. It wants to change. One of the ways in which we can all get plasticity at any stage throughout the lifespan is through deficits and impairments in what we call our sensory apparatus, our eyes, our ears, our nose, our mouth.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
In individuals that are blind from birth, the so-called occipital cortex, the visual cortex in the back, becomes overtaken by hearing. the neurons there will start to respond to sounds as well as braille touch. And actually there's a one particularly tragic incident where a woman who was blind since birth and because of neuroimaging studies, we knew her visual cortex was no longer visual.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
It was responsible for braille reading and for hearing. She had a stroke that actually took out most of the function of her visual cortex. So then she was blind. She couldn't braille read or hear. She did recover some aspect of function. Now, most people, they don't end up in that highly unfortunate situation. And what we know is that for instance, blind people,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
who use their visual cortex for braille reading and for hearing have much better auditory acuity and touch acuity, meaning they can sense things with their fingers and they can sense things with their hearing that typical sighted folks wouldn't be able to. In fact, you will find a much greater incidence of perfect pitch in people that are blind.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
And that tells us that the brain, and in particular, this area we call the neocortex, which is the outer part, is really designed to be a map of our own individual experience.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
So these, what I call experiments of impairment or loss, where somebody is blind from birth or deaf from birth, or maybe has a limb development impairment where they have a stump instead of an entire limb with a functioning hand, their brain will represent the body plan that they have, not some other body plan.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
But the beauty of the situation is that the real estate up in the skull, that neocortex, the essence of it is to be a customized map of experience. A few years ago, I was at a course and a woman came up to me and she said, you know, I wasn't teaching the course, I was in the course. And she said, I just have to tell you that every time you speak, it really stresses me out.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
And I said, well, I've heard that before, but do you want to be more specific? And she said, yeah, your tone of voice reminds me of somebody that I had a really terrible experience with. I said, well, okay, well, I can't change my voice, but I really appreciate that you acknowledge that. And it also will help explain why you seem to cringe every time I speak, which I hadn't noticed until then.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
But after that, I did notice she had a very immediate and kind of visceral response to my speech. But in any event, over the period of this two week course, she would come back every once in a while and say, you know what, I think just by telling you that your voice was really difficult for me to listen to, it's actually becoming more tolerable to me.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
And by the end, we actually became pretty good friends and we're still in touch. And so what this says is that the recognition
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
of something whether or not that's an emotional thing or a desire to learn something else is actually the first step in neural plasticity if i get up out of this chair and walk out of the door i don't think about each step that i'm taking and that's because i learned how to walk during development but when we decide that we're going to shift some sort of behavior or some reaction or some new piece of information that we want to learn is something that we want to bring into our consciousness that awareness
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
is a remarkable thing because it cues the brain and the rest of the nervous system that when we engage in those reflexive actions going forward, that those reflexive actions are no longer fated to be reflexive. Now, if this sounds a little bit abstract, we're going to talk about protocols for how to do this. The first step in neuroplasticity is recognizing that you want to change something.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
All of us were born with a nervous system that isn't just capable of change, but was designed to change. When we enter the world, Our nervous system is primed for learning. The brain and nervous system of a baby is wired very crudely. The connections are not precise. And we can see evidence of that in the fact that babies are kind of flopping there like a kind of a little potato bug with limbs.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
We have to know what it is exactly that we want to change. Or if we don't know exactly what it is that we want to change, we at least have to know that we want to change something about some specific experience. Now, there are specific protocols that science tells us we have to follow if we want those changes to occur. What it is is it's our forebrain, in particular, our prefrontal cortex signaling
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
the rest of our nervous system that something that we're about to do, hear, feel, or experience is worth paying attention to. So we'll pause there, and then I'm going to move forward. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. By now, many of you have heard me say that if I could take just one supplement, that supplement would be AG1.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
The reason for that is AG1 is the highest quality and most complete of the foundational nutritional supplements available. What that means is that it contains not just vitamins and minerals, but also probiotics, prebiotics, and adaptogens to cover any gaps you may have in your diet and provide support for a demanding life.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
For me, even if I eat mostly whole foods and minimally processed foods, which I do for most of my food intake, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits and vegetables, vitamins and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone. For that reason, I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012. When I do that, it clearly bolsters my energy, my immune system, and my gut microbiome.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
These are all critical to brain function, mood, physical performance, and much more. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim their special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
One of the biggest lies in the universe that seems quite prominent right now is that every experience you have changes your brain. People love to say this. They love to say, your brain is going to be different after this lecture or that your brain is going to be different after today's class than it was two days ago. And that's absolutely not true.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
The nervous system doesn't just change because you experienced something unless you're a very young child. The nervous system changes when certain neurochemicals are released and allow whatever neurons are active in the period in which those chemicals are swimming around to strengthen or weaken the connections of those neurons.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
So when people tell you, oh, at the end of today's lecture, at the end of something, your brain is going to be completely different. That's simply not true. If you're older than 25, your brain will not change unless there's a selective shift in your attention or a selective shift in your experience that tells the brain it's time to change.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
And those changes occur through strengthening and weakening of particular connections. The important thing to understand is that if we want something to change, we really need to bring an immense amount of attention to whatever it is that we want to change. This is very much linked to the statement I made earlier about the, it all starts with an awareness. Now, why is that attention important?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
In the early nineties, a graduate student by the name of Greg Reckenzone was in the laboratory of a guy named Mike Merzenich at UCSF. And they set out to test this idea that if one wants to change their brain, they need to do it early in life because the adult brain simply isn't plastic. It's not available for these changes. And they did a series of absolutely beautiful experiments
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
By now, I think we can say proving that the adult brain can change provided certain conditions are met. Now, the experiments they did are tough. They were tough on the experimenter and they were tough on the subject. I'll just describe one. Let's say you were a subject in one of their experiments.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
You would come into the lab and you'd sit down at a table and they would record from or image your brain and look at the representation of your fingers, the digits as we call them. and there would be a spinning drum, literally like a stone drum in front of you or metal drum that had little bumps. Some of the bumps were spaced close together, some of them were spaced far apart.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
And they would do these experiments where they would expect their subjects to, whenever, for instance, the bumps got closer together or further apart. And these were very subtle differences. So in order to do this, you really have to pay attention to the distance between the bumps. And these were not braille readers or anyone skilled in doing these kinds of experiments.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
What they found was that as people paid more and more attention to the distance between these bumps, and they would signal when there was a change by pressing a lever, As they did that, there was very rapid changes, plasticity in the representation of the fingers. And it could go in either direction.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
They can't really do much in terms of coordinated movement. They certainly can't speak. And they can't really do anything with precision. So I want you to imagine in your mind that when you were brought into this world, you were essentially a widely connected web of connections that was really poor at doing any one thing.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
You could get people very good at detecting the distance between bumps that the distance was getting smaller or the distance was getting greater. So people could get very good at these tasks that you're kind of hard to imagine how they would translate to the real world for a non-Braille reader. But what it told us is that these maps of touch were very much available for plasticity.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
And these were fully adult subjects. What it proved is that the adult brain is very plastic. And they did some beautiful control experiments that are important for everyone to understand, which is that sometimes they would bring people in and they would have them touch the on this spinning drum, but they would have the person pay attention to an auditory cue.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
Every time a tone would go off or there was a shift in the pitch of that tone, they would have to signal that. So the subject thought they were doing something related to touch and hearing. And all that showed was that it wasn't just the mere action of touching these bumps. they had to pay attention to the bumps themselves.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
If they were placing their attention on the auditory cue, on the tone, well, then there was plasticity in the auditory portion of the brain, but not on the touch portion of the brain. And this really spits in the face of this thing that you hear so often, which is every experience that you have is going to change the way your brain works. Absolutely not.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
The experiences that you pay super careful attention to are what open up plasticity. And it opens up plasticity to that specific experience. So the question then is why? And Merzenich and his graduate students and postdocs went on to address this question of why. And it turns out the answer is a very straightforward neurochemical answer. And the first neurochemical is epinephrine, also adrenaline.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
We call it adrenaline when it's released from the adrenal glands above our kidneys. That's in the body. We call it epinephrine in the brain, but they are chemically identical substances. Epinephrine is released from a region in the brainstem called locus coeruleus. Epinephrine is released when we pay attention. and when we are alert.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
But the most important thing for getting plasticity is that there'll be epinephrine, which equates to alertness, plus the release of this neuromodulator acetylcholine. Now, acetylcholine is released from two sites in the brain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain
One is also in the brainstem, and it's named different things in different animals, but in humans, the most rich site of acetylcholine neurons or neurons that make acetylcholine is the parabigeminal nucleus, or the parabrachial region. All you need to know is that you have an area in your brain stem, and that area sends wires, these axons, up into the area of the brain that filters sensory input.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
So this can support long runs. It can support long swims and it can build also It can build postural strength and endurance simultaneously. So now let's talk about the science briefly of why this works. Well, that takes us back to this issue of fuel utilization and what fails.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
So if we were to say, okay, let's say you do a plank and you're planking for, you know, maybe you're able to plank for a minute or two minutes or three minutes. At some point you will fail. You're not going to fail because the heart gives out. You're not going to fail because you can't get enough oxygen because you can breathe while you're doing that.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
You're going to fail because of local muscular failure, which means that as you do, if you choose to do this protocol of three to five sets, et cetera, et cetera, to build muscular endurance, mainly what you are going to be building is you're going to be building the ability of your mitochondria to use oxygen to generate energy locally.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
And that it's something called mitochondrial respiration, respiration because of the involvement of oxygen. And it's also going to be increasing the extent to which the neurons control the muscles and provide a stimulus for the muscles to contract. But this is independent of power and strength.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
Phosphocreatine is great for short, intense bouts of effort. Then you start to tap into things like glucose, which is literally just carbohydrate. It's just sugar that's in your blood. And then if you keep pushing, you start to tap into other fuel sources like glycogen. And you have fat stored in adipose tissue.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
Okay, so even though the low sets like three to five sets and the fact that you're doing repetitions and you're going to failure, even though it seems to resemble power and strength and hypertrophy type training, it is distinctly different. It's not going to generate strength, hypertrophy and power.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
It's going to mainly create this ability to endure, to continually contract muscles or repeatedly contract muscles. Okay, continually if you're using isometric holds, repeatedly, excuse me, if you're using repetition type exercise where there's a contraction and an extension of the muscle, essentially a concentric and an eccentric portion.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
But remember that you want the eccentric portion to be light and relatively fast, not so fast that you injure yourself, but certainly not deliberately slowed down. I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. We should all know that proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. In fact, even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance to a considerable degree.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
It's also important that you're not just hydrated, but that you get adequate amounts of electrolytes in the right ratios. Drinking a packet of Element dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate amounts of hydration and electrolytes.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of both, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I'll also drink a packet of Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
There are a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. I like the watermelon, I like the raspberry, I like the citrus. Basically, I like all of them. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim an Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement spelled L-M-N-T.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
So it's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each and every night.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
Eight Sleep automatically regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your unique needs. Now I find that extremely useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night and warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
And I know that because Eight Sleep has a great sleep tracker that tells me how well I've slept and the types of sleep that I'm getting throughout the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
Their latest model, the Pod 4 Ultra, also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees in order to improve your airflow and stop you from snoring. If you decide to try Eight Sleep, you have 30 days to try it at home, and you can return it if you don't like it, no questions asked. but I'm sure that you'll love it.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
Even if you have very, very low body fat percentage, you can extract lipids, fatty acids from that body fat. It's like a storage pack. It is a storage pack for energy that can be converted to ATP. Without going into any more detail,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
Go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and the UAE. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra. So now let's talk about the other extreme of endurance, which is long duration endurance.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
This is the type that people typically think about when they think about endurance. You're talking about a long run, a long swim, a long bike ride. Well, how long? Well, anywhere from 12 minutes to several hours, or maybe even an entire day, maybe eight or nine hours of hiking or running or biking. Some people are actually doing those kinds of really long events, marathons, for instance.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
You're getting into regular repeated effort and your ability to continue that effort is going to be dependent mainly on the efficiency of the movement, on your ability to strike a balance between the movement itself, the generation of the muscular movements that are required, and fuel utilization across the different sources of nerve, muscle, blood, heart, and lungs.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
So let's ask the question, why would you fail on a long run? Why would you quit? Well, your mind... is going to use more or less energy depending on how much willpower, how much of a fight you have to get into with yourself in order to generate the effort. I really want to underscore this. Willpower in part is the ability to devote resources to things.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
And part of that is making decisions to just either do it or not do it. I'm not of the just do it mindset. I think there's a right time and a place to train, but I also think that it is not good. In other words, it utilizes excessive resources to churn over decisions excessively.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
And you probably burn as much cognitive energy deciding about whether or not to do a given training or not as you do in the actual training. When you go out for a run that's 30 minutes, you are building the capacity to that performance the next time while being more efficient, actually burning less fuel.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
When I say today energy, or I say ATP, just remember that regardless of your diet, regardless of your nutritional plan, your body has the capacity to use creatine, glucose, glycogen, lipids, and if you're ketogenic, ketones in order to generate fuel, energy. Now, the other crucial point is that in order to complete that process of taking these fuels and converting them into energy,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
And that might seem a little bit counterintuitive, but every time you do that run, what you're doing is you're building up mitochondrial density. It's not so much about mitochondrial oxidation and respiration, you're building up mitochondrial density. You're actually increasing the amount of ATP that you can create for a given bout of effort. You're becoming more efficient, okay?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
You're burning less fuel overall doing the same thing. That's really what these long, slow distance or long bouts of effort are really all about. Now, why do this long duration effort? Why would you want to do it? Why is it good for you? Well, it does something very important, which is that it builds the capillary beds within muscles.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
So these are tiny little avenues, like little tiny streams and estuaries between the bigger arteries and veins. You can literally build new capillaries. You can create new little streams within your muscles.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
And the type of long duration effort that I was talking about before, 12 minutes or more of steady effort is very useful for doing that and is very useful for increasing the mitochondria, the energy producing elements of the cells, the actual muscle cells. And the reason is when mitochondria
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
blood arrives to muscles, it has oxygen, the muscles are going to use some of that oxygen, and then some of the deoxygenated blood is going to be sent back to the heart and to the lungs. Now, the more capillaries that you build into those muscles, the more oxygen available to those muscles.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
So this long duration work, unlike muscular endurance, like planks and everything that we were talking about before, is really about building the capillary systems and the mitochondria, the energy utilization systems within the muscles themselves.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
And then there are two kinds in between that in recent years have gotten a lot of attention and excitement, sometimes called high intensity interval training. One is anaerobic, so-called anaerobic endurance, so no oxygen, and the other is aerobic endurance, both of which qualify as HIIT, high intensity interval training. So let's talk about anaerobic endurance first.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
anaerobic endurance from a protocol perspective is going to be three to 12 sets, okay? And these are going to be performed at whatever speed allows you to complete the work in good, safe form, okay? So it could be fast, it could be slow. As the work continues, your repetitions may slow down or it may speed up. Chances are it's going to slow down. So what does this work?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
What do these sets look like? Remember long, slow distance is one set. Muscular endurance is three to five sets. High intensity anaerobic endurance is going to be somewhere between three and 12 sets. And it's going to have a ratio of work to rest of anywhere from three to one to one to five, okay? So what would a three to one ratio set look like?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
Well, it's going to be 30 seconds of hard pedaling on the bike, for instance, or running or on the rower. These are just examples. It could be in the pool swimming. It could be any number of things or air squats or, you know, or weighted squats, if you will, provided. You can manage that. 30 seconds on, 10 seconds off. That's a very brief rest.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
So three to one is just a good example would be 30 seconds on, 10 seconds off. The opposite extreme on that ratio would be one to five. So 20 seconds on, 100 seconds off. So you do the work for 20 seconds, then you rest 100 seconds. So let's just take a look at the three to one ratio. So in the three to one ratio,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
If you're going to do 30 seconds of hard pedaling on a bike followed by 10 seconds, so maybe one of these, what they call assault bikes, and then you stop for 10 seconds and then repeat, chances are you will be able to do one, two, three, four, maybe even as many as 12 sets if you're really in good condition.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
that you'll be able to do all those because pedaling on the bike doesn't require a ton of skill. And if you do it incorrectly, if your elbow flares out a little bit or something, it's very unlikely that you'll get injured unless it's really extreme. But the same movement done, for instance, with kettlebells, so 30 seconds on, 10 seconds off, The first set will probably be in good form.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
The second one will be in pretty good form, but let's say you're getting to the fifth and sixth set and you're going 30 seconds on, 10 seconds off, chances are the quality of your repetitions will degrade significantly and you increase the probability that you're going to get injured. If quality of form is important, So maybe this is using weights. Maybe you're doing squats.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
So you're going to do 20 seconds on and 100 seconds of rest. What you'll find is that the longer rest, even though it's 20 seconds of intense effort, followed by a longer rest of about 100 seconds will allow you to perform more quality repetitions safely over time. So it might be three sets of 20 seconds of hard effort followed by 100 seconds rest.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
Most of the time you need oxygen. You need air basically in your system. Now it's not actual air. You need oxygen molecules in your system, comes in through your mouth and your nose, goes to your lungs and distributes via the bloodstream. Oxygen is not a fuel, but like a fire that has no oxygen, you can't actually burn the logs. But when you blow a lot of,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
Then you repeat 20 seconds of hard effort, 100 seconds rest, 20 seconds of effort, 100 seconds rest. And you might do that twice a week. In doing that, you will build up what we call anaerobic endurance. Anaerobic endurance is going to be taking your system into greater than 100% of your VO2 max. It's going to be taking your heart rate up very high
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
and it's going to maximize your oxygen utilization systems. That is going to have effects that are going to lead to fatigue at some point in the workout, and that fatigue will trigger an adaptation. So let's ask what adaptation it's triggering.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
It's triggering both mitochondrial respiration, the ability of your mitochondria to generate more energy by using more oxygen, because you're bringing so much, you're maxing out, literally you're getting above your VO2 max. You're hitting that threshold of how much oxygen you can use in your system.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
One of the adaptations will be that your mitochondria will shift such that they can use more oxygen. and you're going to also increase the capillary beds, but not as much as you're going to be able to increase the amount of neuron engagement of muscle.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
So normally when we start to hit fatigue, when we're exhausted, when we're breathing really hard, because the systems of the body are linked and there's a mental component to this as well, a kind of motivational component,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
after that third or fourth or sixth set of 20 seconds on, 100 seconds off, or if you're at the other extreme, 30 seconds on and 10 seconds off, there's going to be a component of you want to stop and by pushing through and repeating another set safely, of course,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
what you're doing is you're training the neurons to be able to access more energy, literally convert that into ATP and for the muscles therefore to access more energy in ATP. And the adaptation is in the mitochondria's ability to use oxygen. And this has tremendous carryover effects for other types of exercise.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
This can be beneficial in competitive sports or team sports where there's a sprinting component, where the field opens up and you need to dribble the ball down the field, for instance, and shoot on goal, or where you're playing tennis and it's a long rally and then all of a sudden somebody really starts putting you back on your heels and you have to really make the maximum amount of effort to run to the net and to get the ball across the net, things of that sort, okay?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
There are a variety of places where there's carry over from this type of training, but it does support endurance. It's about muscle endurance. It's about these muscles ability to generate a lot of force in the short term, but repeatedly. Okay, so that's the way to conceptualize this. And it is different than maximum power.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
Even though it feels like maximum effort, it is not the same as building power and speed into muscles. Those are distinctly different protocols. So the key elements again, are that you're bringing your breathing and your oxygen utilization way up above your max.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
It's not quite hitting failure, but you're really pushing the system to the point where you are not ready to do another set and yet you begin another set. You're not necessarily psychologically ready. I want to make sure I touch on the fourth protocol, which is high intensity aerobic conditioning. So HIT has these two forms, anaerobic and aerobic, and you just heard about anaerobic.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
High intensity aerobic conditioning also involves about three to 12 sets. A one-to-one ratio is powerful for building, on average, most of the energy systems involving, remember, we had these nerve, muscle, blood, heart, and lungs. A one-to-one ratio might be you run a mile and however long that takes, you might run, first mile is let's say seven minutes, then you rest for seven minutes.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
Then you run a mile again and it might take eight minutes and you rest for eight minutes. And you continue that for a total of four miles of work, four miles of running work, I should say. You can build this up. Many people,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
find that using this type of training allows them to do things like go run half marathons and marathons, even though prior to the race date, they've never actually run a half marathon or marathon. Now that might seem incredible.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
It's like, how could it be that running a mile on and then resting for, running a mile and then resting for an equivalent amount of time, running a mile, resting for equivalent amount of time for seven miles allows you to run continuously for 13 miles or for 26 miles. It improves ATP and mitochondrial function in muscle. It allows the blood to deliver more oxygen to the muscle and to your brain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
basically onto logs with a flame there, then basically it will take fire, it will burn, okay? Oxygen allows you to burn fuel. So today we are going to ask the critical questions, What allows us to perform? What allows us to continue effort for long periods of time? Well, we think of things like willpower, but what's willpower? Willpower is neurons. It's neurons in our brain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
And it allows your heart to deliver more oxygen overall. And it builds a tremendous lung capacity. So what would this look like and when should you do this? Well, it's really a question for these workouts of asking how much work can one do in eight to 12 minutes, right? And then rest and then repeat. How much work can you do for eight to 12 minutes, then rest and then repeat?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
And how many times should you do this? Well, this is the sort of thing it's pretty intense. And so you would probably only want to do this two, maybe three times a week if you're not doing many other things. So we have four kinds of endurance, muscular endurance. We have long duration endurance. We have high intensity interval training of two kinds, anaerobic and aerobic.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
And this last type, the aerobic one works best it seems if you kind of do this one-to-one ratio. So how would you use these and what are they actually doing? Let's talk about the heart and the lungs and oxygen. because that's something that we can all benefit from understanding. The brain and the heart are probably the two most important systems that you need to take care of in your life.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. Today, I'd like to talk about endurance and how to build endurance and how to use endurance for the health of your entire body.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
Maintaining or enhancing a brain function and cardiovascular function, it's absolutely clear are key for health and longevity in the short and long term. And the sorts of training I talked about today has been shown again and again and again to be very useful for enhancing the strength of the mind, yes, I'll talk about that, as well as the health of the brain and the body.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function. I recently became a function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
While I've long been a fan of blood testing, I really wanted to find a more in-depth program for analyzing my blood, urine, and saliva to get a fuller picture of my heart health, my hormone status, my immune regulation status, my metabolic function, my vitamin and mineral status, and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors. For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had an elevated level of mercury in my blood.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
Function not only helped me detect that, but also offered insights on how to best reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, And frankly, I had been eating a lot of tuna at that time while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
And by the way, it worked. My mercury levels are now well within healthy range. Comprehensive lab testing like that is super important for health because basically a lot of things are going on in our blood and elsewhere in our body that we can't detect without a quality blood and urine test.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
And while I've strived to get those tests for many years, it's always been overly complicated and frankly, quite expensive. Function dramatically simplifies all of it and makes it very affordable. I've been so impressed by Function that I decided to join their scientific advisory board. And I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring this podcast.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. For this week only, April 14th to April 20th, 2025, Function is offering a $100 credit to the first 1,000 people to sign up for a Function membership. To get this $100 credit, use the code Huberman100 at checkout. Visit functionhealth.com slash Huberman to learn more and get started.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
So let's talk about the sorts of adaptations that are happening in your brain and body that are so beneficial in these different forms of training.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
If you are breathing hard and your heart is beating hard, so this would be certainly in the high intensity anaerobic and aerobic conditioning, because you're getting up near your VO2 max in high intensity aerobic conditioning, and you're exceeding your VO2 max in high intensity anaerobic conditioning.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
What's going to happen is as of course your heart beats faster, your blood is going to be circulating faster in principle. Oxygen utilization in muscles is going to go up.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
And over time, not long, very quickly, what will happen when those capillary beds start to expand, in addition, because of the amount of blood that's being returned to the heart when you engage in these really intense bouts of effort repeatedly, The amount of blood being returned to the heart actually causes an eccentric loading of one of the muscular walls of the heart.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
We have this thing called the central governor, which decides whether or not we should or could continue or whether or not we should stop, whether or not we should quit. So we have to ask the question, what is the limiting factor on performance? What prevents us from enduring? What prevents us from moving forward? What are the factors that say, you know what? No more.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
So your heart is muscle, it's cardiac muscle. We have skeletal muscle attached to our bones and we have cardiac muscle, which is our heart. When more blood is being returned to the heart because of the additional work that your muscles and nerves are doing, it actually has the effect of creating an eccentric loading, a kind of pushing of the wall, the left wall.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
I realize I'm not using the strict anatomy here, but I don't want to get into all the features of the structural features of the heart. the left ventricle essentially getting slammed back and then having to push back in a kind of eccentric loading of the cardiac muscle and the muscle thickens as more blood is returned to the heart.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
There's an adaptation where the heart muscle actually gets stronger and therefore can pump more blood per stroke, per beat. And as it does that, it delivers, because blood contains glucose and oxygen and other things, it delivers more fuel to your muscles, which allows you to do yet more work per unit time.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
If you do this high intensity type training where your heart is beating very hard, so maybe the one-to-one ratio mile run repeats that I described a minute ago, pretty soon, the stroke volume of your heart will really increase. And as a consequence, you can deliver more fuel to your muscles and to your brain. Your cognitive functioning will improve.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
This has been shown again and again, because there's an increase in vasculature, literally capillary beds within the brain, the hippocampus areas that support memory, but also areas of the brain that support respiration, that support focus, that support effort. Now, Weight training does have some positive effects on brain function also.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
However, it's very clear and you should now understand intuitively why the kind of standard strength and hypertrophy type workouts are not going to activate the blood oxygenation and the stroke volume increases for the heart that the sorts of training I'm talking about today will. It just doesn't have the same positive effects.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
The other thing that's really important to think about in terms of endurance type work is hydration. And I think hydration is important for all forms of physical work and exercise, not just endurance. Typically, we're going to lose anywhere from one to five pounds of water per hour of exercise. And that's going to vary tremendously. It's going to vary on weather.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
It's going to vary on intensity, probably more like five pounds. if it's hot day and you're exercising very intensely. So if you think about your weight in pounds, once you lose about one to 4% of your body weight in water, you're going to experience about a 20 to 30% reduction in work capacity and your ability to generate effort of any kind, strength, endurance, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
you are also going to experience a significant drop in your ability to think and perform mental operations so hydration is key potassium sodium and magnesium are really key yes it's true you can die from drinking too much water in particular because it forces you if you drink too much water you'll excrete too many electrolytes and your brain will shut off you'll actually your heart will stop functioning properly
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
So you don't want to over-consume water to the extreme either. A simple formula, what I call the Galpin equation, which is your body weight in pounds divided by the number 30. And that is how many ounces you should drink for every 15 minutes of exercise. Now, if you are sweating a lot, you may need more.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
If you're already very well hydrated, you may need less, but that's a good rule of thumb to begin and to start to understand the relationship between hydration and performance. We didn't talk about supplements much today. In the previous episodes, I talked about the phosphocreatine system and supplementing with creatine, talked about beta alanine for kind of moderate duration work.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
You know, really the only things that have been shown to really improve endurance work across the four varieties of endurance work I described today. They have essentially two forms. One are stimulants, so things like caffeine will definitely improve endurance work and power output.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
Certain forms of magnesium, in particular magnesium malate, M-A-L-A-T-E, have been shown to be useful for removing or reducing the amount of delayed onset muscle soreness. That form of magnesium is distinctly different than the sorts of magnesium that are good for getting us into sleep, things like magnesium threonate and biglycinate. In general, we focused mainly today on behavioral tools.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
And I hope I was able to illustrate for you that endurance isn't just one thing. It's not just the ability to go for long bouts of exercise of different kinds, that there's also this mental component because of the way that neurons work.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
I don't want to completely write off things like the immune system and other systems of the body, but nerve, muscle, blood, heart, and lungs are the five that I want to focus on today because that's where most of the data are. Let's talk about neurons and how they work, okay?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
And also that there are these different forms of endurance, of muscular endurance that where you're going to fail because of the muscles and muscle energy utilization and the nerves that innervate those muscles locally, not because of a failure to bring in oxygen or blood. Whereas long duration effort, it's going to be more about
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
you know, being below your VO2 max and your ability to be efficient for long bouts of more than 12 minutes of exercise. One set, as they say, of 12 minutes to maybe several hours. High intensity training will tap into yet other fuel sources and mechanisms as we learn today. And last but not least, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
But I want to tell you about an experiment that's going to make it very clear why quitting is a mental thing, not a physical thing. So why do we quit? Well, an experiment was done a couple of years ago and was published in the journal Cell, Cell Press Journal, excellent journal, showing that there's a class of neurons in our brainstem, in the back of our brain, that If they shut off, we quit.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
Now, these neurons release epinephrine. Epinephrine is adrenaline. And anytime we are engaged in effort of any kind, we are releasing epinephrine. Anytime we're awake, really, we are releasing epinephrine into our brain. In fact, this little group of neurons in the back of our brain, it's called the locus coeruleus if you like, is churning out epinephrine all the time.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
But if something stresses us out, it churns out more and then it acts as kind of an alertness signal for the whole brain. We also of course have adrenaline epinephrine released in our body, which makes our body ready for things. So think about epinephrine as a readiness signal. And when we are engaged in effort, this readiness signal is being churned into our brain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
When we're relaxed and we're falling asleep, epinephrine levels are low. So our desire to continue or put differently, our willingness to continue and our desire to quit is mediated by events between our two ears. Now that doesn't mean that the body's not involved, but it means that neurons are critically important. So we have two categories of neurons that are important.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
The ones in our head that tell us get up and go out and take that run. And the ones that allow us, encourage us to continue that run. And we have neurons that shut things off that say no more. And we of course have the neurons that connect to our muscles and control our muscles. But the reason we quit is rarely because our body quits, our mind quits.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
endurance as the name suggests is our ability to engage in continuous bouts of exercise or continuous movement or continuous effort of any kind it is clear that cardiovascular exercise exercise where you're getting your heart rate up continuously for a period of time is vital for tapping into and enhancing various aspects
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
So when people say, is it, I hear that, you know, sports or effort or fighting, or it's 90% mental, 10% physical. That whole discussion about how much is mental, how much is physical is absolutely silly. It's 100% nervous system. It's neurons. So when people say mental or physical, understand it's 100% neural. Now, what do nerves need in order to continue to fire?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
What do you need in order to get neurons to say, I will persist? Well, they need glucose. Unless you're a keto and ketogenic adapted, you need carbohydrate is glucose. That's what neurons run on. And you need electrolytes. Neurons have what's called a sodium potassium pump, blah, blah, blah, they generate electricity.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
In order to get nerve cells to fire, to contract muscle, to say, I'm going to continue, you need sufficient sodium salt because the action potential, the actual firing of neurons is driven by sodium entering the cell, rushing into the cell. And then there's a removal of potassium.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
And then there's a kind of resetting of those levels by something called the sodium potassium pump and the sodium potassium pump and sodium and action potentials. Even if you don't know anything about that is ATP dependent, it requires energy. So you need energy in order to get neurons to fire. And it is pH dependent.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
It depends on the conditions or the environment within the brain being of a certain pH or acidity. pH is about how acid or how basic the environment is. Nerves need salt, they need potassium, and it turns out they need magnesium, and you need glucose and carbohydrates in order to power those neurons unless you are running on ketones.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
Muscle is going to engage and generate energy first by using this phosphocreatine system. high bouts of effort, really intense effort, short-lived, seconds to minutes, but probably more like seconds is going to be this phosphocreatine, literally a fuel source in the muscle that you're going to burn, just like you would logs on a fire.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
And glycogen, which is stored carbohydrate in the muscle, they're converting that into ATP in order to generate that energy. And then there's stuff in our blood that's available as an energy source. And in blood, we've got glucose. So literally blood sugar that's floating around. So let's say you have fasted for three days, your blood glucose is going to be very low.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
So that's not going to be a great fuel source, but you will start to liberate fats from your adipose tissue, from your fat. Fatty acids will start to mobilize into the bloodstream and you can burn those for energy. Now, there are some other factors that are important and those are the heart, which is going to move blood.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
So the more that the heart can move blood and oxygen, well, the more fuel that's going to be available for you to engage in muscular effort and And as I've mentioned oxygen a few times, it should be obvious then that the lungs are very important.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
You need to bring oxygen in and distribute it to all these tissues because oxygen is critical for the conversion of carbohydrates and the conversion of fats. So when we ask the question, what's limiting for performance? what is going to allow us to endure, to engage in effort and endure long bouts of effort, or even moderately long bouts of effort.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
We need to ask which of those things, nerve, muscle, blood, heart, and lungs is limiting. Or put differently, we ask, what should we be doing with our neurons? What should we be doing with our muscles? What should we be doing with our blood? What should we be doing with our heart? And what should we be doing with our lungs?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
of our biology in the body and in the brain such that our brain can perform work for longer periods of time, focused work, learning, et cetera. The key thing to understand about energy production in the body is this thing that we call ATP. ATP is required for anything that requires energy, for anything that you do that requires effort.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
That's going to allow us to build endurance for mental and physical work and to be able to go longer, further with more intensity. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also contains adaptogens. I started taking AG1 way back in 2012, long before I even knew what a podcast was.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
I started taking it and I still take it every single day because it ensures that I meet my quota for daily vitamins and minerals, and it helps make sure that I get enough prebiotics and probiotics to support my gut health.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
Over the past 10 years, gut health has emerged as something that we realize is important not only for the health of our digestion, but also for our immune system and for the production of neurotransmitters and neuromodulators, things like dopamine and serotonin. In other words, gut health is critical for proper brain function.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
Now, of course, I strive to eat healthy whole foods from unprocessed sources for the majority of my nutritional intake, but there are a number of things in AG1, including specific micronutrients, that are hard or impossible to get from whole foods.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
So by taking AG1 daily, I get the vitamins and minerals that I need, along with the probiotics and prebiotics for gut health, and in turn, brain and immune system health, and the adaptogens and critical micronutrients that are essential for all organs and tissues of the body.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
So anytime somebody asks me if they were to only take one supplement, what that supplement should be, I always say AG1, because AG1 supports so many different systems in the brain and body that relate to our mental health, physical health, and performance. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
For this month only, April 2025, AG1 is giving away a free one month supply of omega-3 fish oil, along with a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2. As I've highlighted before in this podcast, omega-3 fish oil and vitamin D3 plus K2 have been shown to help with everything from mood and brain health to heart health and healthy hormone production and much more.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to get the free one month supply of omega-3 fish oil plus a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2 with your subscription. So let's talk about the four kinds of endurance and how to achieve those. So first of all, we have muscular endurance. Muscular endurance is the ability for our muscles to perform work over time
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
And our failure to continue to be able to perform that work is going to be due to muscular fatigue, not to cardiovascular fatigue. So not because we're breathing too hard or we can't get enough blood to the muscles or because we quit mentally, but because the muscles themselves give out.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
One good example of this would be if you had to pick up a stone in the yard and that stone is not extremely heavy for you and you needed to do that anywhere from 50 to 100 times and you were picking it up and putting it down and picking it up and putting it down and picking up and putting it down, at some point, your muscles will fatigue. Muscular endurance,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
is going to be something that you can perform for anywhere from 12 to 25 or even up to 100 repetitions. So a good example is pushups. It's actually no coincidence that a lot of military bootcamp style training is not done with weights.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
It's done with things like pushups, pull-ups, sit-ups, and running, because what they're really building is muscular endurance, the ability to perform work repeatedly over time for a given set of muscles and neurons. So a really good muscular endurance training protocol, according to the scientific literature would be three to five sets of anywhere from 12 to 100 repetitions. That's a huge range.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
Now, 12 to 25 repetitions is going to be more reasonable for most people. And the rest periods are going to be anywhere from 30 to 180 seconds of rest. So anywhere from half a minute to three minutes of rest. The one critical feature of building muscular endurance is that it has no major eccentric loading component.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
So our muscles and our neurons use different fuel sources to generate ATP. The ones that are used first for short bouts of intense activity are things like phosphocreatine. If you've only heard about creatine as a supplement, well, phosphocreatine actually exists on our muscles, and that's why people take creatine. You can load your muscles with more creatine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
I haven't talked much about eccentric and concentric loading, but concentric loading is when you are shortening the muscle typically or lifting a weight and eccentric movements are when you are lengthening a muscle typically or lowering a weight. So if you do a pull up and you get your chin over the bar or a chin up, that's the concentric portion of the effort.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
And then as you lower yourself, that's the eccentric portion. Eccentric portion of resistance training of any kind, whether or not it's for endurance or for strength is one of the major causes of soreness. Some people will be more susceptible to this, excuse me, than others, but it does create more damage in muscle fibers.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
Muscular endurance and building muscular endurance should not include any movements that include major eccentric loads. So if you're going to do pushups, it doesn't mean that you want to drop, you know, smash your chest into the floor. And by the way, your chest should touch the ground on every pushup. That's a real pushup.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
It's about pushing down until your chest touch the floor and straightening out. That's a proper pushup. and a pull-up is where you pull your chin above the bar. Neither of those should include a slow eccentric or lowering component if you are using those to train muscular endurance, the three to five sets of 12 to 25, and maybe even up to 100 repetitions with 30 to 180 seconds of rest in between.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
But if you want to build muscular endurance, you want to make your muscles able to do more work for longer, it's going to be this three to five sets of 12 to 100 reps, 30 to 180 seconds of mainly concentric movement, okay? Not a slow lowering phase or a heavy lowering phase. So that might be kettlebell swings and things of that sort.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Build Endurance
Isometrics, as I mentioned, things like plank and wall sits will work. Now what's interesting about this is that it doesn't seem at all like what people normally think of as endurance. And yet it's been shown in nice quality peer reviewed studies that muscular endurance can improve our ability to engage in long bouts of what we call long duration, low intensity endurance work.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today's episode is going to be all about the science of emotions.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
And as you may recall, the nervous system, which includes the brain and the eyes and the spinal cord, but also all the connections with the organs of the body includes the brain and body. And those organs of the body, gut and your liver and your spleen, they're also communicating with the brain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
And it relates to a particular tool that many of you ask about, but I don't often get the opportunity to talk about in such an appropriate context. It's not that it's ever inappropriate to talk about, but what I'm about to talk about now is the use of, again, respiration, breathing, to somewhat artificially activate the stress response, and that will accomplish two things, okay?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
I'll return to medium and long-term stress, but I want to say short-term stress is good because the dilation of the pupils, the changes in the optics of the eyes, the quickening of the heart rate, the sharpening of your cognition, and in fact, that short-term stress brings certain elements of the brain online that allow you to focus Now it narrows your focus.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
You're not good at seeing the so-called big picture, but it narrows your focus. It allows you to do these, what I call duration path outcome types of analysis. It allows you to evaluate your environment, evaluate what you need to do. It primes your whole system for better cognition. It primes your immune system to combat infection.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
And that all makes sense when you think about the fact that famine, thirst, bacterial infections, viral infections, invaders, all of this stuff liberates a response in the body that's designed to get you to fight back against whatever stressor that happens to be, psychological, physical, bacterial, viral. Again, the stress response is generic.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
The tool takes advantage of the fact that when adrenaline is released in the body, from the adrenals, it has the effect of also liberating a lot of these killer cells from the immune organs, in particular from the spleen, but from elsewhere as well, and interactions with the lymphatic system that combat infection.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
The way this works in the real world is best captured by a study that can be mapped back to so-called Wim Hof breathing. Now Wim Hof breathing is so named after the so-called Iceman Wim Hof. There are two components to a sort of breathing protocol that he developed. that was based also on what's called tummo breathing, T-U-M-M-O. So before WHIM, there was tummo breathing.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
And many people call this now super oxygenation breathing. So it's deliberate hyperventilation. Why would somebody want to do this? Well, deliberate hyperventilation done for maybe 25 cycles. So inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. That pattern of breathing, rapid movements of the diaphragm, will liberate adrenaline from the adrenals.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
When adrenaline is released in the body, you are in a better position to combat infections. And so whether or not you breathe very quickly in these cycles of 25 breaths, and regardless of what you call it, doesn't matter, adrenaline is released. If you take a cold shower, adrenaline is released. If you go into an ice bath deliberately, and even if you do it non-deliberately,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
adrenaline is released. You are mimicking the stress response. And that adrenaline serves to suppress or combat incoming infections. And this was beautifully shown in a study that was published in a very fine journal, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences for the US.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
So I look forward to a day, in fact, when we no longer think about neuroscience as just the brain and many neuroscientists now also think about the body, of course, the brain controls the body, but the body is also having a very profound and concrete influence on the brain. Today, we're going to talk about objective tools that match the brain body experience or separate
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Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
It's literally called Proceedings of the National Academy of USA to distinguish it from other proceedings of other national academies in other countries. The way the experiment went is that people were injected with endotoxin, or in some cases they were injected with a bacterial wall that mimics infection. It gives you a fever. It makes you feel nauseous. It makes you feel sick.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
It is not pleasant. half of the people did a particular pattern of breathing that looked very much like the pattern of breathing I described a moment ago of doing 25 deep inhales and exhales, followed by an exhale, holding their breath, then repeating 25 inhales, exhales, holding their breath. So this would look something like this, or if you're listening, it sounds like, ah,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
25, 30 times, you'll start feeling heated up. You'll start feeling the adrenaline response. You're liberating adrenaline in your body. Then exhale, hold your breath for 15 seconds, and then repeat. Now I want to emphasize, never, ever, ever do this anywhere near water. People have passed out. the so-called shallow water breakout, people have died.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
Please don't do it at all unless you get clearance to do it from your doctor, because there are some pulmonary effects and whatnot. And the breath holds should definitely not be done by anyone that has glaucoma or pressure concerns for the eyes. But these repeated cycles of breathing that liberate adrenaline allowed the group that did that protocol
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
to essentially experience zero symptoms from the injection of this E. coli, which is remarkable. They had much reduced or no symptoms.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
They didn't feel feverish, they didn't feel sick, they weren't vomiting, no diarrhea, which is remarkable, but makes total sense when you think about the fact that the short-term stress response that what's typically called the acute stress response is designed to combat all stressors.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
Many of us are familiar with the experience of work, work, work, work, work, or taking care of a loved one, or stress, stress, stress, stress, stress, and then we finally relax. Maybe we even go on vacation, like, oh, now I'm finally going to get the break, and then we get sick. And that's because the adrenaline response crashed and your immune system crashed with it. So please understand this.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
Now, many of you might say, well, how long? Is it two hours? Is it three hours? A lot of you out there that really like specificity. It will vary for everybody. I would just kind of use a rule of thumb. When you are no longer able to achieve good sleep, what good sleep means to you, and please see the episodes on sleep if you want more about tools to sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
When you are no longer able to achieve good sleep, you are now moving from acute stress to chronic stress. You need to be able to turn the stress response off. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens.
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Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
AG1 is designed to cover all of your foundational nutritional needs, and it tastes great. Now, I've been drinking AG1 since 2012, and I started doing that at a time when my budget for supplements was really limited. In fact, I only had enough money back then to purchase one supplement, and I'm so glad that I made that supplement AG1.
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Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
The reason for that is even though I strive to eat most of my foods from whole foods and minimally processed foods, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits, vegetables, vitamins, and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone. And I need to do that in order to ensure that I have enough energy throughout the day, I sleep well at night, and keep my immune system strong.
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Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
But when I take AG1 daily, I find that all aspects of my health, my physical health, my mental health, and my performance, both cognitive and physical, are better. I know that because I've had lapses when I didn't take AG1 and I certainly felt the difference.
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Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
the brain-body experience in ways that leverage your ability to lean into life better, to feel better, literally to just feel better about what you're experiencing, and believe it or not, to be able to control your emotions when that's appropriate. Okay, so what is stress? We hear all the time that stress is bad. We hear people saying they're really stressed out. What is stress?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
I also notice, and this makes perfect sense given the relationship between the gut microbiome and the brain, that when I regularly take AG1, which for me means a serving in the morning or mid-morning and again later in the afternoon or evening, that I have more mental clarity and more mental energy. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer.
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Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
For this month only, January 2025, AG1 is giving away 10 free travel packs and a year supply of vitamin D3 K2. Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim the 10 free travel packs and a year supply of vitamin D3 K2. Okay, so now let's talk about medium-term stress. Medium-term stress is going to be stress that lasts anywhere from several days to several weeks. What is stress threshold?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
Well, stress threshold is actually our ability to cognitively regulate what's going on in our body. A lot of stress inoculation, A lot of managing medium term stress on the timescale of weeks or maybe even a couple months. So we're not talking about years of stress. A lot of that has to do with raising our stress threshold. It's about capacity.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
And there are very simple tools, excellent tools that will allow us to modulate our capacity for stress. And they look a lot like the tools I just described. they involve placing oneself deliberately into a situation where our adrenaline is increased somewhat, not to the extreme.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
And then when we feel flooded with adrenaline, and normally we would panic, it's about cognitively, mentally, emotionally, calming ourselves and being comfortable with that response in our body. And what would this look like? You can use, the cyclic hyperoxygenation breathing to combat infection if you're feeling kind of run down.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
And there's also a way in which you can use things like cold showers, or if you exercise and you bring your heart rate up very high, you kind of go into that high intensity realm where your heart is beating a little bit harder than you're comfortable with. The key in those moments is to learn to relax the mind while the body is very activated.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
One way that you can do this, and this is kind of fun, if it's approved by your physician and you're able to do this, you can bring your heart rate up. You could do this through an ice bath, if that's your thing, or a cold shower or cyclic oxygenation breathing, or you could sprint, or you could go hard on the bike. whatever it is that brings your heart rate up.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
And then what you want to do is you want to actually try and calm the mind while your body is in this heightened state of activation. When we are stressed, our pupils dilate. The effect of that pupil dilation is to create tunnel vision. It literally narrows our view of the visual world. We no longer see in panorama.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
And there's some other effects as well, but that's because the visual system through this cranial nerve system that I described before is tethered and is part of this autonomic nervous system. By deliberately dilating your gaze, meaning not moving your head and eyes around, but by deliberately going from tunnel vision
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
to broader panoramic vision, literally seeing more of your environment all at once, it creates a calming effect on the mind because it releases a particular circuit in the brainstem that's associated with alertness, AKA stress. Now, this is very powerful.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
If you're running, for instance, and you're at max capacity, you're close to it, or you're kind of hitting like 80, 90% of maximum on the bike, and you dilate your gaze, what you'll find is the mind can relax while the body is in full output.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
And this relates to work that in various communities, people are working with this in the sports community, military communities, et cetera, but it's a form, not really of stress inoculation, it's more about raising stress threshold so that the body is going to continue to be in a high alertness, high reactivity mode, but the mind is calm. And so this isn't about unifying mind and body.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
Stress at its core is a generalized system. It wasn't designed for tigers attacking us or people attacking us. It's a system to mobilize other systems in the brain and body. It wasn't designed for one thing.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
This is actually about using body to bring up your level of activation, then dissociating, not the, clinical dissociation kind of disorders, but dissociating the mental or emotional response from what's going on in your body.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
And over time, so if you do this, you know, a couple of times, you don't have to do this every workout, but if you do this every, maybe once a week or so, you start being comfortable at these higher activation states. What once felt overwhelming and like a lot of work now is manageable, it feels tolerable. So that's for navigating medium term stress. And then there's long-term stress.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
Now, long-term stress is bad. You do not want adrenaline up in your system for a very long time. In fact, ideally, you would have your stress go up various times throughout the day, but it would never stay elevated and it would never prevent you from getting a good night's sleep. We know that chronic stress, elevated stress, and especially in the so-called type A personalities,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
creates heart disease, leading killer for in most every country, but in particular in the US. But by no means do you want to be stressed out all the time chronically for months and months and months and years on end. The best tools, the best mechanisms that we know to modulate long-term stress might surprise you a little bit.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
First of all, there are going to be the things that don't surprise you, which is everyone knows getting regular exercise, getting good sleep, using real-time tools to try and tamp down the stress response, et cetera, that's all going to be really useful.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
The data really point to the fact that social connection and certain types of social connection in particular are what are going to mitigate or reduce long-term stress. And this is a particularly important issue nowadays where we have all these proxies or surrogates for social connection. We're online and texting with people a lot. Everyone has this kind of need to stay connected to one another.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
Humans are incredibly social creatures. The way to think about social connection and how it can mitigate some of the long-term effects of stress is really through the systems of neuromodulation, like serotonin. Serotonin, again, is a neuromodulator. Neuromodulators are a little bit like playlists in the brain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
And that gives it a certain advantage in taking over the state of our brain and body, but it also gives you, all of us, an advantage in controlling it because it's based on hardwired biological mechanisms. And there are hardwired biological mechanisms, meaning cells and chemicals and pathways and tissues that exist in you right now
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
They tend to amplify or bias the likelihood that certain brain circuits and body circuits are going to be activated and that others will not. Serotonin generally gives us feelings of wellbeing at very high levels. It makes us feel blissed. And it tends to make us feel like we have enough in our immediate environment.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
When we see somebody that we recognize and trust, serotonin is released in the brain. And that has certain positive effects on the immune system and on other systems of neural repair and synapses and things that really reinforce connections in the brain and prevent that long-term withering of connections. So serotonin is tied to social connection. Now, social connection can take many forms.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
Some of those can be romantic attachments. Those could be familial attachments that are non-romantic, friendship, pets. even attachments to things that just delight us. Having a sense of delight, a sense of really enjoying something that you see and engage in, witness or participate in, that is associated with the serotonin system.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
And certainly play is one of those things, social connection of various forms. Those are things to invest in. I'll be the first to admit, social connection and friendship and relationships of all kinds to animals or humans or inanimate objects, takes work, it takes investment, it takes time in not needing everything to be exactly the way you want it to be.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
Social connection is something that we work for, but it is incredibly powerful. Finding just a few people, even one, or an animal, or something that you delight in, believe it or not, has very positive effects on mitigating this long-term stress, on improving various aspects of our life as it relates to stress and emotionality. Now, how do you know if you're making serotonin?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
You don't know in the moment, but you can learn if you pay attention to kind of recognize these feelings of comfort, trust, bliss, delight. And those are not weak terms. Those are not associated just with psychological terms. They are every bit as physiological as the movement of your muscles or the secretion of adrenaline. I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, Eight Sleep.
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Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night. Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees.
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Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
Eight Sleep makes it very easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to program the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.
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Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation of the Pod Cover called the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity. I find that very useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night. warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.
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Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
It also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring. If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman.
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Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
Now, there are a plethora of things that will also impact wellbeing and allow you to modulate your long-term stress, reduce the likelihood that you'll engage in long-term stress. There are compounds that are not prescription compounds that can modulate the stress system.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
that require no neural plasticity that allow you to put a brake on stress. And so we're going to talk about those. So let's talk about the stress response. And by doing that, you will understand exactly why the tools I'm going to give you work. For those of you that are saying, wait, I just want the tools, just give me a summary.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
And sometimes because of the way that life is, we just don't have the opportunity to control life and to control our response to stress. The three I want to focus on and one that I think you need to be cautious about that I've mentioned before, include ashwagandha, L-theanine, and melatonin. Let's talk about melatonin first.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
Melatonin is a hormone secreted from the pineal in direct relationship to how much darkness you are in, not emotional darkness, but light suppresses melatonin. Melatonin helps you fall asleep. It doesn't help you stay asleep. I personally do not recommend supplementing melatonin because it's supplemented typically at very high levels.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
you know, one to three milligrams or even more, that is an outrageously high dose. It also has a number of potentially negative effects on the reproductive axis and hormones there. The other is L-theanine. I've talked about L-theanine, which provided it's safe for you, can be taken 100 milligrams or 200 milligrams about 30 minutes or 60 minutes before sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
It can enhance the transition to sleep and depth of sleep for many people. it increases GABA, this inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain. It tends to turn off our forebrain a little bit or reduce the activity of our kind of thinking systems and ruminating systems help people fall asleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
But theanine has also been shown for people that are chronically anxious or chronically stressed to significantly increase relaxation. It is known to have a minor effect on anxiety, but eight studies have shown that. It definitely has a notable effect on stress. The other supplement that can be very useful is ashwagandha. Ashwagandha is known to lower anxiety and cortisol. This is great.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
I mean, the opportunity for me anyway, to be able to take something that can help me reduce my cortisol so that I don't get some of the long-term effects of stress. And I'm not going to take ashwagandha year round. I would only do this if I was feeling like I wasn't managing my short and medium term stress well. So I don't take it on a regular basis.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
I do take it when I'm in these times when things are particularly stressful. So social connection and some supplementation, of course, diet, exercise, sleep for long-term stress. So I hope today you were able to take
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
a slightly different view of this thing that we call stress, not just see it as evil, but see it as powerful and useful in certain contexts, great for us in certain contexts, and problematic in other contexts, and as well to think about the various tools that I've presented.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
that can allow you to adjust and modulate your internal levels of alertness or calmness so that you can lean more effectively into life, which includes sleep and social connection and the work you have to do. And of course, acknowledges that the events in the world are beyond our control. What's in our control is how we react to them.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
And today we're going to talk in particular about something that most often is called stress. And you might be thinking, wait, stress isn't an emotion, but stress really lies at the heart of whether or not our internal experience is matched well or not to our external experience or the events that are happening to us and around us.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
Something that's commonly said in the wellness and self-help and psychology but for which there often aren't as many concrete tools that we can really look to and trust in real time. As always, really appreciate your time and attention today. I hope you practice some of the tools if they're right for you. I hope you think hard about stress and how you can control your stress.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
And above all, as always, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
Trust me, if you understand mechanism, you are going to be in a far better position to incorporate these tools, to teach these tools to others, and to modify them as your life circumstances change. Let's be clear about what we already know, which is that Stressors can be psychological or they can be physical.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
If I put you outside on a cold day without a jacket for a very long time, that is stressful. If I have you prepare for too many exams at once and you can't balance it all with your sleep schedule and your other needs for comfort and wellbeing, like food, rest, sleep, and social connection, that is stressful. So what happens when the stress response hits?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
Let's talk about the immediate or what we call the acute stress response. We could also think of this as short-term stress. So you have a collection of neurons that start right about at your neck and run down to about your navel, a little bit lower, and those are called the sympathetic chain ganglia.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
When something stresses us out, either in our mind or because something enters our environment, that chain of neurons becomes activated like a bunch of dominoes falling all at once. It's very fast. When those neurons are activated, acetylcholine is released, but there are some other neurons for the aficionados out there. They're called the postganglionic neurons.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
Those ones respond to that acetylcholine, and then they release epinephrine, which is the equivalent to adrenaline. So we have this system where very fast, whenever we're stressed, the core of our body, these neurons down the middle of our body release these chemicals, and then there's adrenaline or epinephrine released at particular organs and acts in particular ways.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
Some things like the muscles of your legs and your heart and other things that need to be active when you're stressed, they have a certain kind of receptor, which is called the beta receptor, and that beta receptor responds to epinephrine and blood vessels dilate. They get bigger and blood rushes in to our legs. The heart rate speeds up. Lots of things happen that get activated.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
And at the same time, that epinephrine activates other receptors on certain tissues that we don't need, the ones involved in digestion, reproduction, and things of that sort that are luxuries for when things are going well, not things to pay attention to when we're stressed. So the stress response is two pronged. It's a yes for certain things and it's a no, you may not right now for other things.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
That's why you feel blood in certain organs and tissues of your body, but not in others. But basically you are activated in ways that support you moving. And that's because fundamentally the stress response is just this generic thing that says, You're going to feel agitated and that's because it was designed to move you.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
So this is important because if you want to control stress, you need to learn how to work with that agitation. I'd like to give you a tool at this point, because I think if we go any further with a lot more science, people are going to begin to wonder if this is just going to be a kind of standard university lecture about the stress response.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
If you want to reduce the magnitude of the stress response, the best thing you can do is activate the other system in the body, which is designed for calming and relaxation. And that system is called the parasympathetic nervous system. And the parasympathetic nervous system is really interesting because especially the cranial nerves, the ones that are up in the brainstem,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
and in the neck area, those have a direct line to various features of your face, in particular, the eyes. They control things like eye movements, pupil dilation, things of that sort, as well as the tongue, the facial muscles, et cetera. So I'm going to teach you the first tool now, so I don't overwhelm you with all this academic knowledge without giving you something useful.
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Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
And as you'll soon see, those converge or combine to create what we call emotions. I'd like you to come away from today's episode with what I call an organizational logic, a framework for thinking about these things that typically we just call happy or sad or depressed or anxious.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
And the tool that at least to my knowledge is the fastest and most thoroughly grounded in physiology and neuroscience for calming down in a self-directed way is what's called the physiological sigh, S-I-G-H. What I'm talking about when I refer to physiological sighs is the very real medical school textbook relationship between the brain, the body,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
and the body as it relates to the breathing apparatus, meaning the diaphragm and lungs, and the heart. Let's take the hallmark of the stress response. The heart starts beating faster. Blood is shuttled to the big muscles of the body to move you away from whatever it is the stressor is, or just make you feel like you need to move or talk, your face goes flushed, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
There is, however, a way in which you can breathe that directly controls your heart rate through the interactions between the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system. Here's how it works. When you inhale, so whether or not it's through the nose or through the mouth, this skeletal muscle that's inside your body called the diaphragm, it moves down.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
And that's because the lungs expand, the diaphragm moves down. your heart actually gets a little bit bigger in that expanded space. There's more space for the heart. And as a consequence, whatever blood is in there is now at a lower volume or moving a little bit more slowly in that larger volume than it was before you inhaled. So more space, heart gets bigger, blood moves more slowly.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
And there's a little group of neurons called the sinoatrial node in the heart. that registers, believe it or not, those neurons pay attention to the rate of blood flow through the heart and send a signal up to the brain that blood is moving more slowly through the heart. The brain then sends a signal back to the heart to speed the heart up.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
So what this means is if you want your heart to beat faster, inhale longer, inhale more vigorously than your exhales. Now the opposite is also true. If you want to slow your heart rate down, so stress response hits, you want to slow your heart rate down. What you want to do is again capitalize on this relationship between the body, meaning the diaphragm and the heart and the brain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
Here's how it works. When you exhale, the diaphragm moves up, which makes the heart a little bit smaller. It actually gets a little more compact. Blood flows more quickly through that compact space.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
The sinoatrial node registers that blood is going more quickly, sends a signal up to the brain and the parasympathetic nervous system, some neurons in your brainstem, send a signal back to the heart to slow the heart down. So if you want to calm down quickly, you need to make your exhales longer and or more vigorous than your inhales.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
Now, the reason this is so attractive as a tool for controlling stress is that It works in real time. This doesn't involve a practice that you have to go and sit there and do anything separate from life.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
And I'm going to make sure that you have tools that are grounded in physiology and neuroscience that will allow you to navigate this otherwise complex space that we call emotions, that will allow you to ground yourself better when you're feeling
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
The physiological sigh is something that people naturally start doing when they've been crying and they're trying to recover some air or calm down, when they've been sobbing very hard, or when they are in claustrophobic environments. However, The amazing thing about this thing that we call the diaphragm, the skeletal muscle, is that it's an internal organ that you can control voluntarily.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
So this incredible pathway that goes from brain to diaphragm through what's called the phrenic nerve, P-H-R-E-N-I-C, phrenic. The phrenic nerve innervates the diaphragm. You can control it anytime you want. You can double up your inhales or triple up your inhales. You can exhale more than your inhales, whatever you want to do. Such an incredible organ.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
And the physiological sigh is something that we do spontaneously, but when you're feeling stressed, you can do a double inhale. Now I just told you a minute ago that if you inhale more than you exhale, you're going to speed the heart rate up, which would promote more stress and activation. Now I'm telling you to do a double inhale exhale in order to calm down.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
And the reason is the double inhale exhale, which is the physiological sigh,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
takes advantage of the fact that when we do a double inhale, even if the second inhale is sneaking in just a tiny bit more air, because it's kind of hard to get two deep inhales back to back, you do big deep inhale and then another little one sneaking it in, the little sacks in your lungs, the avioli of the lungs, your lungs aren't just two big bags, but you've got millions of little sacks throughout the lungs that actually make the surface area of your lungs as big as a tennis court.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
It's amazing. If we were to just spread that out, those tend to collapse. as we get stressed. And carbon dioxide builds up in our bloodstream, and that's one of the reasons we feel agitated as well. But when you do the double inhale exhale, the double inhale reinflates those little sacks of the lungs.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
And then when you do the long exhale, that long exhale is now much more effective at ridding your body and bloodstream of carbon dioxide, which relaxes you very quickly. When you're feeling stressed, the physiological sigh done just one to three times, so it'd be double inhale, exhale, double inhale, exhale, maybe just two times, will bring down your level of stress very, very fast.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
And as far as I know, it's the fastest way to accomplish that. Be aware that if you're going to use the physiological sigh or exhale emphasize breathing to calm down, that your heart rate will take about 20 to 30 seconds to come down to baseline. And you may need to repeat the physiological sigh a few times. I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Function.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
like life is weighing on you or you're kind of being pulled by the currents of life, as well as to support other people, whether or not that's in a psychological practice, if you're a practitioner, or you have clients or children or spouses, really to be able to support other people in your environment better.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
I recently became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
While I've long been a fan of blood testing, I really wanted to find a more in-depth program for analyzing blood, urine, and saliva to get a full picture of my heart health, my hormone status, my immune system regulation, my metabolic function, my vitamin and mineral status, and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors on your results. For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had two high levels of mercury in my blood. This was totally surprising to me. I had no idea prior to taking the test.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
Function not only helped me detect this, but offered medical doctor informed insights on how to best reduce those mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, because I had been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification and worked to reduce my mercury levels.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
Comprehensive lab testing like this is so important for health, and while I've been doing it for years, I've always found it to be overly complicated and expensive.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
I've been so impressed by Function, both at the level of ease of use, that is getting the test done, as well as how comprehensive and how actionable the tests are, that I recently joined their advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman Lab listeners. Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. So let's think about something now.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
Let's think about stress from not whether or not it's acute or chronic, whether or not it's good for us or bad for us, but on three different timescales, because then we can arrive at what this is all about as it relates to emotions.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
But I really want you to understand the difference between the three kinds of stress on three different timescales, short-term, medium-term and long-term, and what it's good for and what it's bad for. I think we've all heard that stress is bad for us. We've seen these pictures intended to frighten us, and indeed they are frightening. You see the nice, really plump brain on the left.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
It says healthy or control, and then you see the brain that says stressed above it on the right, and it's like withered, or we see that the hippocampus, an area involved in memory, is smaller. People there are stressed. I think we've all heard now so many times that stress is bad,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
But in that conversation, unfortunately, it's eclipsed some of the really positive things that stress does for us in the short term. When the stress response hits, that is good for your immune system. I know that might be a tough pill to swallow, but it's absolutely true. In fact, stress often comes in the form of bacterial or viral infection, and the stress response
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
is in part organized to combat bacterial and viral infection. So short-term stress and the release of adrenaline in particular, or epinephrine, same thing, adrenaline, epinephrine, is good for combating infection. And this to me is just not discussed enough, so that's why I'm discussing it here.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. And now, my conversation with Dr. Karl Deisseroth. Well, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
We want to fix this key on the piano. I'm imagining a little tiny blue light emitting thing, object, that's a little bigger than a clump of cells or maybe about the size of a clump of cells. So we're talking about a little tiny stamp object Each edge half a millimeter in size. I can imagine that being put under my skin.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
And then I would, what I'd hit an app on my phone and I'd say, I'd say, Dr. Diceroth, I'm not feeling great today. Can I increase the stimulation? And you say, go for it. And then I ramp it up. Is that how it would go?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
You're holding the remote control essentially to their brain, although it's remote, remote control.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
That's very exciting. What are your thoughts about brain machine interface as something that's been happening for a long time now? Devices, little probes that are going to stimulate different patterns of activity in ensembles of neurons.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. One of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to make sure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees. Eight Sleep automatically regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your unique needs.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for over four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep. Eight Sleep has just launched their latest model, the Pod 5, and the Pod 5 has several new important features. One of these new features is called Autopilot.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
Autopilot is an AI engine that learns your sleep patterns to adjust the temperature of your sleeping environment across different sleep stages. It also elevates your head if you're snoring and it makes other shifts to optimize your sleep. The base on the Pod5 also has an integrated speaker that syncs to the Eight Sleep app and can play audio to support relaxation and recovery.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
The audio catalog includes several NSDR, non-sleep deep rest scripts, that I worked on with Eight Sleep to record. If you're not familiar, NSDR involves listening to an audio script that walks you through a deep body relaxation combined with some very simple breathing exercises. And that combination has been shown in peer reviewed studies to restore your mental and physical vigor.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
And this is great because while we would all like to get to bed on time and get up after a perfect night's sleep, oftentimes we get to bed a little late or later. Sometimes we have to get up early and charge into the day because we have our obligations.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
NSDR can help offset some of the negative effects of slight sleep deprivation and NSDR gets you better at falling back asleep should you wake up in the middle of the night. It's an extremely powerful tool that anyone can benefit from the first time and every time. If you'd like to try Eight Sleep, go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to get up to $350 off the new Pod 5.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
Eight Sleep ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and the UAE. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350. One of the questions I get asked a lot is about ADHD and attention deficit of I have the hunch that one reason I get asked so often is that people are feeling really distracted and challenged in funneling their attention and their behavior. But yeah.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
And there are a number of reasons for that, of course. But what is true ADHD and what does it look like? What can be done for it? And what, if any, role for channel options or these downstream technologies that you're developing, what do they offer for people that suffer from ADHD or have a family member that suffers from ADHD?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
So their body can be still, but their mind is darting around. That's right. Or they can be very hyperactive with their body. Yeah, it happens both ways. Probably rarely is somebody hyperactive with their body, but their mind is still.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
Do you think we will ever have a blood test for depression or schizophrenia or autism? And would that be a good or a bad thing?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
You're trying to structure your thoughts in that time.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
So skull cap with some electrodes that don't penetrate the skull. That's right. And this can be done in an hour or two hour session. Has to be done in the clinic, right?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
Amazing. I think one of the reasons I get asked about it so much is a lot of people wonder if they have ADHD. Do you think that some of the lifestyle factors that inhabit us all these days could induce a subclinical or a clinical like ADHD? Meaning if I look at people's phone use, including my own, and I don't think of it like addiction, it looks to me and feels to be more like OCD.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
And I'll come clean here by saying when I was younger, when I was a kid, I had a grunting I used to hide it. I actually used to hide in the closet because my dad would make me stop. And I used to, I couldn't feel any relief of my mind until I would do this. And actually now, if I get very tired, if I've been pushing long hours, it'll come back. I was not treated for it.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
But I will confess that I've had the experience of, I always liked sports where I involved a lot of impact, fortunately not football, because I went to a high school where the football team was terrible. Maybe that would have avoided more impact. but things like skateboarding, boxing, they bring relief.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
I feel clarity after a head hit, which I avoid, but I used to say that's the only time I feel truly clear for a long, and then eventually it dissipated. By about age 16, 17, it just disappeared. So I have great empathy for those that feel like there's something contained in them that won't allow them to focus on what they want to focus on.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
And these days with the phone and all these email, et cetera, I wonder and I empathize a bit when I hear people saying like, I think I might have ADHD or ADD. Do you think it's possible that our behaviors and our interaction with the sensory world, which is really what phones and email really are, could induce ADD or reactivate it?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
I'd love your thoughts on... putting them into patients and seeing tremendous positive effects, but also tremendous examples of induced psychiatric illness. In other words, many people lost their minds as a consequence of overuse of psychedelics. I'll probably lose a few people out there but I do want to talk about what is the state of these compounds?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
So for people that might not be so familiar with the fields of neuroscience, et cetera, what is the difference between neurology and psychiatry?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
And I realize it's a huge category of compounds, but LSD and psilocybin, as I understand trigger activation of particular serotonin receptor mechanisms may or may not lead to more widespread activation of the brain more that one wouldn't see otherwise.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
But when you look at the clinical and experimental literature, what is your sort of top contour sense of how effective these tools are going to be for treating depression
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
I mean, let's say that indeed their main effect is to create more connectivity, at least in the moment, between brain areas. So psychedelics seem to be a trajectory not too far off from the dream state, where space and time are essentially not as rigid. And there is this element of synesthesia, of blending of the senses, feeling colors and hearing light and things of that sort.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
You hear these reports anyway. Why would having that dreamlike experience somehow relieve depression long-term? Do we have any idea why that might be?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
I want to know, and I'm sure there are several, but what do you see as the biggest challenge facing psychiatry and the treatment of mental illness today?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
As many of you know, I've been taking AG1 daily for more than 13 years. However, I've now found an even better vitamin mineral probiotic drink. That new and better drink is the new and improved AG1, which just launched this month. This next gen formula from AG1 is a more advanced clinically backed version of the product that I've been taking daily for years.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
It includes new bioavailable nutrients and enhanced probiotics. The NextGen formula is based on exciting new research on the effects of probiotics on the gut microbiome, and it now includes several specific clinically studied probiotic strains that have been shown to support both digestive health and immune system health, as well as to improve bowel regularity and to reduce bloating.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
As someone who's been involved in research science for more than three decades and in health and fitness for equally as long, I'm constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental health, physical health, and performance. I discovered and started taking AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast, and I've been taking it every day since.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
I find that it greatly improves all aspects of my health. I just feel so much better when I take it, but with each passing year, and by the way, I'm turning 50 this September, I continue to feel better and better, and I attribute a lot of that to AG1. AG1 uses the highest quality ingredients in the right combinations, and they're constantly improving their formulas without increasing the cost.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
So I'm honored to have them as a sponsor of this podcast. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, AG1 is giving away an AG1 welcome kit with five free travel packs and a free bottle of vitamin D3 K2.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim the special welcome kit with five free travel packs and a free bottle of vitamin D3 K2. MDMA, ecstasy, is a unique compound in that it leads to big increases in brain levels of dopamine and serotonin simultaneously.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
And I realized that the neuromodulators like dopamine and serotonin often work in concert, not alone, the way they're commonly described in the more general popular discussions. However, it is a unique compound and it's different than the serotonergic compounds like LSD and psilocybin.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
And there are now data still emerging that it might be, and in some cases can be useful for the treatment of trauma, PTSD and similar things. Why would that work? And a larger question, perhaps the more important question is,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
psychedelics mdma lsu all those compounds they're to in my mind there are two components there's the experience you have while you're on them and then there's the effect they have after people are generating variations of these compounds that are non-hallucinatory variations but how crucial do you think it is to have the let's stay with mdma the experience of
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
huge levels of dopamine, huge levels of serotonin, atypical levels of dopamine and serotonin released, having this highly abnormal experience in order to be normal again. Yeah.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
And as you described that, that sounds a lot like what I understand to be the hallmark feature of really good psychoanalysis, that the relationship between patient and therapist hopefully evolves to the point where these kinds of tests can be run within the context of that relationship and then exported to other relations. Is that? Exactly right. Yeah.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
And that probably I'm assuming is still the goal of really good psychiatry also.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
One of the things that I took from reading your book, in addition to learning so much science and the future of psychiatry and brain science, was in many cases very tragic cases and sadness and a lot of the weight that that puts on the clinician, on you also, that there's a central cord of optimism that where we're headed is not just possible, but very likely and better. And are you an optimist?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
But it certainly did, and at least from this colleague, you did achieve both. And it's a wonderful, it's a masterful book, really, and one that, as a scientist and somebody who is a fellow brain explorer, hits all the marks. of rigor and is incredibly interesting. And there's a ton of storytelling. Definitely check out the book.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
There are other people in our community that of course are going to be reaching out on your behalf, but it's incredible that you juggle this enormous number of things. Perhaps even more,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
important however is that it's all in service to this larger thing of relieving suffering so thank you so much for your time today for the book and the work that went into the book i can't even imagine for the laboratory work and the development channel ops and clarity and all the related technologies and and for the clinical work you're doing and and for sharing with us well thank you for for all you're doing and reaching out i i i'm very impressed by it it's important and and uh it's it's so valuable and thank you for taking the time and for all your gracious words about the book thank you
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
That raises a question related to something I heard you say many years ago at a lecture, which was that this was a scientific lecture and you said, you know, we don't know how other people feel. Most of the time, we don't even really know how we feel. Maybe you could elaborate on that a little bit. And the dearth of ways that we have to talk about feelings. I mean, there's so many words.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
I don't know how many, but I'm guessing there are more than a dozen words to describe the state that I call sadness. But as far as I understand, we don't have any way of comparing that in a relationship. in a real objective sense. So how, as a psychiatrist, when your job is to use words to diagnose, words of the patient to diagnose, do you maneuver around that?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
And what is this landscape that we call feelings or emotions?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
Are there any very good treatments for psychiatric disease? Meaning, are there currently any pills, potions, forms of communication that reliably work every time? or work in most patients. And could you give a couple of examples of great successes of psychiatry if they exist? Yes.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, David. David makes a protein bar unlike any other. It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. That's right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from protein. This is 50% higher than the next closest protein bar. David protein bars also taste amazing. Even the texture is amazing.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
My favorite bar is the chocolate chip cookie dough. But then again, I also like the new chocolate peanut butter flavor and the chocolate brownie flavored. Basically, I like all the flavors a lot. They're all incredibly delicious. In fact, the toughest challenge is knowing which ones to eat on which days and how many times per day. I limit myself to two per day, but I absolutely love them.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
With David, I'm able to get 28 grams of protein in the calories of a snack, which makes it easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight per day, and it allows me to do so without ingesting too many calories. I'll eat a David protein bar most afternoons as a snack, and I always keep one with me when I'm out of the house or traveling. They're incredibly delicious.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
And given that they have 28 grams of protein, they're really satisfying for having just 150 calories. If you'd like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, that's davidprotein.com slash Huberman. what are the pieces that are gonna be required to cure autism, cure Parkinson's, cure schizophrenia?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
I would imagine there are several elements and bins here, understanding the natural biology, understanding what the activity patterns are, how to modify those. Maybe you could just tell us what you think, what is the bento box of the perfect cure?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
We need to know the circuits. We need to know the cells in the various brain regions and portions of the body and how they connect to one another and what the patterns of activity are under a normal, quote unquote, healthy interaction. Yeah. If we understand that, then it seems that the next step, which of course could be carried out in parallel, right?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
That work can be done alongside work where various elements within those circuits are tweaked just right. Like the tuning of a piano in the subtle way, or maybe even like the replacement of a whole set of keys if the piano is lacking keys, so to speak. In 2015, there was this, what I thought was a very nice article published in the New Yorker
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
describing your work and the current state of your work in the laboratory, in the clinic, and an interaction with a patient. So this was, as I recall, a woman who was severely depressed. And you reported in that article some of the discussion with this patient. And then in real time,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
increase the activation of the so-called vagus nerve, this 10th cranial nerve that extends out of the skull and innervates many of the viscera and body. What is the potential for channelrhodopsins or related types of algae engineering to be used to manipulate the vagus? Because I believe in that instance, it wasn't channelrhodopsin stimulation, it was electrical stimulation, right? Yeah.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
or to manipulate, for instance, a very small localized region of the brain. Let me frame it a little bit differently in light of what we were talking about a couple minutes ago.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
My understanding is that if somebody has severe depression and they take any number of the available pharmaceutical agents that are out there, SSRI, serotonergic agents, increased dopamine increase, whatever, that sometimes they experience relief, but there are often serious side effects. Sometimes they don't experience relief.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
But as I understand it, channel opsins and their related technology, in principle, would allow you to turn on or off the specific regions of the brain that lead to the depressive symptoms, or maybe you turn up a happiness circuit or a positive anticipation circuit. Where are we at now in terms of bringing this technology to the nervous system?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
And let's start with body and then move into the skull.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
And why the vagus? I mean, it's there and it's accessible. That's the reason. That's the reason?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
Yeah. You're not kidding. I'm not kidding. So stimulating the vagus to treat depression simply because it's accessible.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
So do you find that if a patient is very verbal or hyperverbal, that you have an easier time diagnosing them as opposed to somebody who's more quiet and reserved, or it's, I can imagine the opposite might be true as well.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
So there's a link to chemical systems in the brain that make it a rational choice.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understanding & Healing the Mind | Dr. Karl Deisseroth
I see. How do you think it's working when it does work? Is it triggering the activation of neurons that release more serotonin or dopamine?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
I discovered AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast or even knew what a podcast was, and I've been taking it every day since. I find that AG1 greatly improves all aspects of my health. I simply feel much better when I take it. AG1 uses the highest quality ingredients in the right combinations, and they're constantly improving their formulas without increasing the cost.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
Whenever I'm asked if I could take just one supplement, what would that supplement be? I always say AG1. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3 K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
So if all these protocols, all these activities are just equivalent, they're just stress, then how do we make them good for us? How do we actually benefit from them? Now, of course, the cold itself can have some health-promoting effects. It can increase brown fat thermogenesis and metabolism.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
So understand that cholesterol is a precursor molecule, meaning it's the substrate from which a lot of things like testosterone and estrogen are made. please also understand that cholesterol can be made into estrogen or testosterone or cortisol, and that cortisol is sort of the competitive partner to estrogen and testosterone.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
High-intensity interval training or other forms of exercise, of course, has cardiovascular effects that can be good for us, as does weight training, et cetera. But what we're talking about here are ways to increase energy and to teach our brain and body, to teach ourselves how to regulate the stress response.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
So in addition to the benefits of the actual practices, what we're talking about is building a system so that when you experience increases in epinephrine and cortisol from life events, you're able to better buffer those. And we are also talking about ways that you can increase energy overall, because that's what today's episode is all about, energy and the immune system.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
There's a biological mechanism that's very important if you want to do those things, increase energy and your immune system on demand, learn to buffer stress on demand in real time. And it means taking these protocols, these practices, whether or not it's cold water or ice bath or exercise or any of those and making one small but very powerful adjustment in how you perform them.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
But in order to make that adjustment, I can't just tell you the adjustment. I have to tell you the mechanism so that you know if you're doing it correctly or not. This is really a case where if you can understand a little bit of mechanism, you will be far better off than just adopting protocols. Cortisol, as I mentioned, is released from the adrenals.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
It can have action both in the body and in the brain. Cortisol can cross the blood brain barrier. Epinephrine cannot. That's one of the reasons why it's released both from the adrenals in your body and released from this brainstem area, the locus coeruleus in your brain. That's a powerful thing because what it means is that
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
The body can enter states of readiness and alertness while the mind remains calm. So I'm presuming at this point that you're getting your morning light to time your cortisol increase. I'm presuming that you want more energy or that you want to increase your immune system's function and its ability to combat infections of various kinds.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
Now, the simplest way to describe how to do that would be in the context of cold water or a breathing protocol. Let's presume cold water. So let's say you decide you're going to take a cold shower. You get into the cold shower, and if it's cold enough, that will be stressful. You will experience an increase in epinephrine. It will increase your alertness.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
Now you're using this as a practice, as a tool to build, you could call it resilience, but the ability to stay calm in the mind while being stressed in the body, epinephrine's in the body. And you do that by subjectively trying to calm yourself.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
Now you can do that by telling yourself it's good for you, by emphasizing your exhales, anything that you can do to try and stay calm, despite the fact that you are in a heightened state of alertness.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
You could do this with exercise, you could do this with music, pretty much anything that will give you a really heightened state of alertness offers you the opportunity to try and stay calm in the mind. What you're trying to do at a mechanistic level is to have adrenaline released from the adrenals, but not have adrenaline epinephrine released from the brainstem to the same degree.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
So you're not just trying to buffer this. You're not trying to say, oh, this is good for me. This is good for me. I'm going to grind this out. You're not trying to grind it out. You're trying to move through this calmly while maintaining alertness. In the immediate period following that practice, your system, your entire brain and body are different.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
What this means is no matter how much cholesterol you're eating or you produce, whether or not it's low or it's high, if you are stressed, more of that cholesterol is going to be devoted toward creating cortisol, which is indeed a stress hormone. However, the word stress shouldn't stress you out because you need cortisol. Cortisol is vital. You don't want your cortisol levels to be too low.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
your body is actually primed to resist infection when you have high levels of epinephrine in it for short periods of time. So the scientific study that explored how increasing adrenaline in the body can improve immune resistance is grounded in a well-known phenomenon that increases in stress actually protect you against infection in the short term.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
So I want to look at the classic data first, describe what was done, and then I want to talk about the more recent study, which is immediately actionable. There are classic set of studies that are really based mainly on the work of somebody named Bruce McEwen, who was at the Rockefeller University in New York.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
I'm not going to go through all the details of the study, but essentially what they were doing was exposing subjects to some sort of infection, either bacterial or viral infection and inducing stress. Sounds like a double whammy, right?
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
You'd think that maybe getting a little electric foot shock or cold water exposure or something to increase your levels of stress and adrenaline would just make the effects of the infection worse, but no, quite the opposite. brief bouts of stress, which now you should be thinking about in terms of cortisol and epinephrine release, were actually able to increase immune system function.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
The duration here is really important because if stress stayed too high for too long, then yes, indeed, stress can hinder the immune response. But for a period of about one to four days, it actually can protect you by way of increasing the immune response. There's a human study that I definitely want to point out to you because it was published more recently than the McEwen work.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
The title of the paper is Voluntary Activation of the Sympathetic Nervous System. That's the system that causes fight or flight and AKA stress. This is Cox, K-O-X et al, P-N-A-S, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2014. And they incorporate the ever famous Wim Hof breathing. Here's what they did.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
they injected people with E. coli and they had groups that either did the sorts of breathing I've been describing that increased adrenaline release. Although I should say, I don't think you need that breathing to get adrenaline release. You could do it with cold exposure. You could do it with other things, high intensity interval training as well. And what they found was that the, the,
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
The response to the E. coli was quite different in the people that had a protocol, in this case breathing, to increase adrenaline. So this is a remarkable study because what they found was that the fever, the vomiting, all the negative effects of E. coli, many of them, and in some cases all of them, were greatly attenuated by way of engaging the adrenaline system.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
The point is you can control your immune system by finding a way that you can increase adrenaline. And this runs counter to what we always hear, which is don't get too stressed or you will get sick. Learn to control adrenaline, turn it on and turn it off. Learn to control cortisol, turn it on with light in the morning, try and turn it off.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
And then when it spikes because of life events, learn to turn it off. Learning to turn on and off adrenaline, AKA epinephrine, and learning to turn on and off cortisol affords you the ability to turn on energy and focus in your immune system. That's the most important point from today's podcast. And understanding that it doesn't matter what protocol you use.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
Maybe it's a cup of coffee and running up a hill five or six times. That will improve your immune system function if you get adrenaline in your system. You can use an ice bath, you can use a cold bath. It really doesn't matter. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health. This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient levels, and much more.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
It's very important for immune system function, for memory, for not getting depressed. You just don't want your cortisol levels to be too high and you don't want them to be elevated even to normal levels at the wrong time of day. epinephrine or adrenaline has also been demonized a bit. We think of it as the stress hormone, this thing that makes us anxious, fight or flight.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
They've also recently added tests for toxins such as BPA exposure from harmful plastics and tests for PFAS or forever chemicals. Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to your physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors who are expert in the relevant areas.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
For example, in one of my first tests with function, I learned that I had elevated levels of mercury in my blood.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
Function not only helped me detect that, but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, I'd been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification. And I should say, by taking a second function test,
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
that approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by function simplicity and at the level of cost. It is very affordable.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. So up until now, we've been talking about increasing energy and increasing the immune system by way of cortisol and epinephrine, but I'd be totally remiss if I didn't cover how cortisol and epinephrine if chronically elevated or if elevated too high, can have a lot of detrimental effects.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
your immune system over time will get battered and you won't be able to fight infection off as well, right? You can start laying down the sort of classic pattern of cortisol induced body fat. Why do we seek high fat and or high sugar foods when we are stressed for a while? Why would that be? And the reason is that the so-called glucocorticoids of which cortisol is a glucocorticoid
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
It's caused, as we've mentioned before, by releasing hormones from the brain and ACTH from the pituitary, et cetera. But normally high levels of glucocorticoid shut off the releasing hormones in the brain and in the pituitary. They shut down in a so-called negative feedback loop.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
Chronic stress, however, stress that lasts more than four to seven days causes changes in the feedback loop between the adrenals and the brain and the pituitary such that now the brain and the pituitary respond to high levels of glucocorticoids, cortisol, by releasing more of them. It becomes a positive feedback loop. And that's bad. It's a cascade of stress equals more stress equals more stress.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
So this is why it's very important to learn to turn off the stress response. So there's one study that Dahlman and her colleagues did where they stimulate chronic stress by increasing corticosterone, cortisol. And they found that subjects would increase their consumption of sugar and fat. In fact, they would even eat lard. And that led to all sorts of things like type two diabetes,
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
dysfunction in the adrenal output, et cetera. And so the real key is to learn to shut off the stress response. And you should watch yourself next time you experience stress. If it's a short-term bout of stress, typically it blocks hunger. If it's a longer bout of stress, typically it triggers hunger in particular for these so-called comfort foods, sugary and fatty foods.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
The fact of the matter is that epinephrine is your best friend when it comes to your immunity, when it comes to protecting you from infection. And epinephrine, adrenaline, is your best friend when it comes to remembering things and learning and activating neuroplasticity. We're going to talk about that as well.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
Other bad effects of stress is that yes, indeed, stress can make you go gray. Pigmentation of hair, just like pigmentation of skin, is controlled by melanocytes. Well, it turns out
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
that activation of the so-called sympathetic nervous system, which is really just another name for the system that liberates adrenaline from the adrenals and epinephrine in the brain, drives depletion of melanocytes in hair stem cells. So indeed there's a rate of aging that we will undergo based on our genetics, but stress will make us go gray.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
How do I know the difference between chronic and acute stress and how do I keep chronic stress at bay? Once again, getting your light and your feeding and your exercise and your sleep on a consistent schedule or consistent-ish is going to be the most powerful thing you can do in order to buffer yourself against negative effects on mental health and physical health for that matter.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
There are things that one can take, supplements, prescription drugs, et cetera. All supplements, of course, have to be checked out for their safety margins for you because they're going to differ from person to person. You're responsible for making sure they're safe for you if you decide to use them. One of the most common ones is ashwagandha. it has a very strong effect on cortisol itself.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
How strong? The decrease in cortisol node in humans is 14.5 to 27.9% reduction in otherwise healthy but stressed humans. The other compound that I think deserves attention is apigenin, A-P-I-G-E-N-I-N, apigenin, which is what's found in chamomile. I take it before bedtime, 50 milligrams. The major source of action is to calm the nervous system.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
And it does that primarily by adjusting things like GABA and chloride channels, but also has a mild effect in reducing cortisol. So ashwagandha and apigenin together sort of, I would consider the most potent
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
commercial compounds that are in supplement non-prescription form that one could use if they were interested in reducing chronic stress, especially late in the day by way of reducing cortisol late in the day. So you're probably getting the impression that cortisol and epinephrine are a bit of a double-edged sword. You want them elevated, but not for too long or too much.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
You don't want them up for days and days and days, but you do want to have a practice in order to increase them in the short term. we should talk about protocols that can set a foundation of cortisol and epinephrine that is headed towards optimal. Optimization is always going to be a series of regular practices that you do every day.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
So sleeping at certain times, light at specific times, food at specific times, certain foods, et cetera. And that's highly individual, but there are some universals and we've covered a number of those in the discussion today. Meal timing. Meal schedules has a profound effect on energy levels. And as I mentioned before, the energy I'm referring to is not glucose energy.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
Once again, it's a question of how much and how long and the specific timing of release of cortisol and epinephrine, as opposed to cortisol and adrenaline being good or bad. They're terrific when they're regulated. They are terrible when they're misregulated. And we will give you lots of tools to regulate them better. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, BetterHelp.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
It's what I'm talking about is neural energy, epinephrine and cortisol. Fasting and timing one's eating are two sides of the same coin. When our blood glucose is low, cortisol and epinephrine are going to go up. Anytime we haven't eaten for four to six hours, levels of epinephrine and cortisol are going to go up pretty substantially.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
One thing that many people do to great benefit is they follow a so-called circadian eating schedule. They eat only when the sun is up, they stop when the sun is down, more or less.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
The other way to think about this is they stop eating a couple hours before sleep and they eat more or less upon waking, assuming that they're waking up more or less around the time the sun rises, maybe plus or minus two hours. Now, let's say you decide to do what I do, which is I skip breakfast. I drink water, I delay my caffeine for 90 minutes to two hours, and then I drink my caffeine.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
And then my first meal is typically around lunchtime, 11.30 or 12. So I've got a cortisol increase. I've got my sunlight in the morning. So I'm getting a big pulse and energy early in the day. And yes, there's a little bit of agitation. I am hungry sometimes early in the day, sometimes no, but my ghrelin system is used to kicking in right around noon.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
At the point where I eat, as long as I don't eat carbohydrate, in my case, I know that my epinephrine levels are going to stay pretty high. So for me, it's usually meat and salad or something of that sort or fish and salad. So fasting is a tool for many reasons can increase growth hormone, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
But today I'm talking about fasting as a tool to bias your system toward more epinephrine adrenaline release and toward more cortisol release, but still low enough that it's not chronic stress, that it's not causing negative health effects. One has to learn how to regulate these hormones with behavior, with nutrition, perhaps with supplementation.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
I also want to mention again that I think there's great benefit to having a practice that perhaps you do every other day, but if you can't, maybe every third day or every other day of deliberately increasing your adrenaline in your body while learning to stay calm in the mind so that you learn to separate the brain body experience.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
The idea is to stay calm in your mind so that then you can regulate your action. So once again, we've covered a ton of material. I hope right now you're thinking, okay, am I in a state of chronic stress? Am I under activated? Or could I afford to increase my levels of adrenaline cortisol to improve my relationship to my immune system and to energy, neural energy?
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. Today, we're going to focus on how particular hormones influence our energy levels and our immune system. We're going to talk about the hormones cortisol and epinephrine, also called adrenaline.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
And I hope that you'll think about some of the ways in which cortisol and adrenaline are not good or bad, that stress isn't good or bad, but short-term stress is healthy. Alertness and energy is healthy, even if it puts you at the edge of agitation. That's an opportunity to learn how to control these hormones better.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
And I hope that if you're in a state of chronic stress, that you'll do things to start tamping down some of that stress and that you realize that your nervous system and your hormone system are linked, but they're linked in ways that you can control, that we don't have to be slaves to our hormones and certainly not the hormones that cause us stress.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
We can learn to control those both to the benefit of our body and benefit of mind. Thank you for joining me for what I hope was an informative discussion and an actionable discussion about how to increase energy and the immune system by way of cortisol and adrenaline, epinephrine.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
I really appreciate your willingness to learn new topics as well as to embrace and think about new tools and whether or not they're right for you. And as always, thank you for your interest in science.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice. It was a condition of being allowed to stay in school, but pretty soon I realized that therapy is an extremely important component to overall health.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise, including cardiovascular exercise and resistance training, which of course I also do every week. There are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First of all, it provides a good rapport with somebody that you can trust and talk to about all issues that you're concerned about.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
Second of all, it can provide support in the form of emotional support or directed guidance. And third, expert therapy can provide useful insights. With BetterHelp, they make it very easy to find an expert therapist with whom you resonate with and can provide those benefits that come through effective therapy.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
Also, because BetterHelp allows therapy to be done entirely online, it's very time efficient. If you'd like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman. For this month only, March 2025, BetterHelp is giving you the biggest discount offered on this show with 90% off your first week of therapy. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 90% off your first week.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
Today's episode is also brought to us by Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need, but nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, all in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish cognitive and physical performance.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are vital for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or your nerve cells. Drinking element dissolved in water makes it extremely easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing. They have a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
They have watermelon, citrus, et cetera. Frankly, I love them all. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman Lab to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman Lab to claim a free sample pack. Cortisol Biology 101 in less than two minutes.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
Your brain makes what we call releasing hormones. And in this case, there's corticotropin releasing hormone. CRH is made by neurons in your brain. It causes the pituitary, this gland that sits about an inch in front of the roof of your mouth and the base of your brain to release ACTH.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
ACTH then goes and causes your adrenals, which sit above your kidneys and your lower back, to release cortisol, a so-called stress hormone. But I would like you to think about cortisol not as a stress hormone, but as a hormone of energy. It produces a situation in the brain and body whereby you want to move, and whereby you don't want to rest and whereby you don't want to eat, at least at first.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
If you're somebody who has challenges with sleep or you're somebody who has challenges getting your energy level up throughout the day and getting your energy level down when you want to sleep, today's episode is also for you. And we're going to talk about the immune system and how to enhance the function of your immune system.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
Epinephrine or adrenaline 101 in less than two minutes. When you sense a stressor with your mind or your body senses a stressor, excuse me, from a wound or something of that sort, a signal is sent to neurons that are in the middle of your body. They're called the sympathetic chain ganglia. The name doesn't necessarily matter. They release norepinephrine very quickly.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
It's almost like a sprinkler system that just hoses your body with That will increase heart rate, will increase breathing rate. It will also increase the size of vessels and arteries that are giving blood flow to your vital organs. You also release adrenaline from your adrenals. Again, riding atop your kidneys.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
And you release it from an area of your brain called locus coeruleus, and that creates alertness in your brain. Okay, so we have cortisol and we have epinephrine and their net effect is to increase energy. So the first tool is to make sure that your highest levels of cortisol are first thing in the morning when you wake up. One way or another, every 24 hours, you will get an increase in cortisol.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
It's to stimulate movement from being asleep, presumably horizontal, to getting up and starting to move about your day. The best way to stimulate that increase in cortisol at the appropriate time is that very soon after waking, within 30 minutes or so after waking, get outside, view some sunlight. Even if it's overcast, get outside, view some sunlight, no sunglasses.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
Do that because in the early part of the day, you have the opportunity to time that cortisol release to the early part of the day. It will improve your focus, it will improve your energy levels, and it will improve your learning throughout the day. So here's how it works. On a sunny day, so no cloud cover,
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
provided that the sun is not yet overhead, it's somewhere low in the sky, could have just crossed the horizon, or if you wake up a little bit later, it could be somewhat low in the sky. Basically the intensity of light, the brightness, is somewhere around 100,000 lux. Lux is just a measurement of brightness. On a cloudy day, it's about 10,000 lux. So tenfold reduction.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
But bright artificial light, very bright artificial light, is somewhere around 1,000 lux. And ordinary room light is somewhere around 100 to 200 lux. So even if you have a very bright bulb sitting right next to you, that's not going to do the job. Your phone will not do the job, not early in the day. To get the cortisol released at the appropriate time, you need to get outside.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
I think it's fair to say that most people would like to have a lot of energy during the day, if you work during the day, and they'd like their energy to taper off at night. And I think it's fair to say that most people don't enjoy being sick. And it turns out that the two hormones that dominate those processes of having enough energy and having a healthy immune system are cortisol and epinephrine.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
So let's just set a couple general parameters. If it's bright outside and no cloud cover, get outside for 10 minutes. If it's a cloudy day, dense overcast, you're probably going to need about 30 minutes. If it's light cloud, broken cloud cover, it's probably going to be somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
This is why it's vital to get this light on a regular basis to get that cortisol released early in the day. That sets you up for optimal levels of energy. Now, throughout the day, you're going to experience different things. Most of you are not spending your entire day trying to optimize your health. Some of you might be, but most of you have jobs and you have families and you have commitments.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
Life enters the picture and provides you stressors. Those will cause increases in cortisol and epinephrine. The key is these blips in cortisol and epinephrine need to be brief. You can't have them so often or lasting so long that you are in a state of chronic cortisol elevation or chronic epinephrine elevation.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
This system of stress was designed to increase your alertness and mobilize you towards things, get you frustrated and provide the opportunity to change behavior. And the reason it works is that cortisol when it's released into the bloodstream, it actually can bind to receptors in the brain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
It can bind receptors in the amygdala, fear centers and threat detection centers, but also areas of the brain that are involved in learning and memory and neuroplasticity. And this is why I say that neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to change itself in response to experience, is first stimulated by attention and focus and often a low level state of agitation.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
So understand that and you won't be quite so troubled about the little stress increases that you experience throughout the day. Now, there are ways to leverage stress, epinephrine and cortisol in ways that serve you and to do it in a deliberate way.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
There are also ways to do that that increase your level of stress threshold, meaning they make it less likely that epinephrine and cortisol will be released. So I want to talk about the science of those practices because I get asked about these practices a lot. Things like Wim Hof breathing, which is also called TUMO breathing, things like ice baths, things like high intensity interval training.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
All of those things have utility. The question is how you use them and how often you use them. Those tools, just like stress from a life event, can either enhance your immunity or deplete it. That's right. Those same practices of ice baths, tummo breathing, high intensity interval training or training of any kind can deplete your immune system or it can improve them.
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
Excuse me, they can improve it, meaning they can improve your immune system. The key is how often you use them and when. And so I want to review that now in light of the scientific literature, because in doing that, you can build practices into your daily or maybe every other day routine that can really help buffer you against unhealthy,
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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
of cortisol and epinephrine, meaning cortisol increases that are much too great or that last much too long. Epinephrine increases that are much too great or that last much too long. Let's say somebody tells you something very troubling, or you look at your phone and you see a text message that's really upsetting to you.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
That will cause an immediate increase in epinephrine, adrenaline in your brain and body. And chances are it's going to increase your levels of cortisol as well. Let's say you get into an ice bath or a cold shower. That will cause an equivalent increase in epinephrine and cortisol.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
let's say you go out for high intensity interval training, you decide you're going to run some sprints, you do some repeats, or you're going to do some weightlifting in the gym, or you decide that you want to do some hot yoga, you're going to increase your epinephrine and cortisol levels. And guess what? They increase your levels of energy and alertness.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
I just want to cover a little bit about what cortisol and epinephrine are, where they are released in the body and brain, because if you can understand that, you will understand better how to control them. First of all, cortisol is a steroid hormone, much like estrogen and testosterone in that it is derived from cholesterol.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
So if you're somebody who struggles with energy and alertness, It can be beneficial, provided you get clearance from your doctor, to have some sort of protocol built into your day where you deliberately increase your levels of epinephrine and your levels of cortisol.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
So it's really important to understand that the body doesn't distinguish between a troubling text message, ice, tumour breathing, or high-intensity interval training or any other kind of exercise. It's all stress. cognitively reframing that and telling yourself, I like this, I enjoy it, is not going to change the way that that molecule impacts your body and brain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
I sort of chuckle because people would love to tell you that all you have to do is say, oh, this is good for me. No, what it does to tell yourself that it's good for you or that you enjoy it is that it liberates other molecules like dopamine and serotonin that help buffer the epinephrine response.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
Now, the way that it does that, I've talked about previous episode, but I'll just mention that dopamine is the precursor to epinephrine. Epinephrine is made from dopamine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
And that's why if you tell yourself you're enjoying something, and because dopamine is so subjective that you can, in some ways, as long as you're not completely lying to yourself, you can get more epinephrine, you get more mileage or more ability to push through something. And you can sort of reframe it, but it's not really cognitive reframing.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
The cognitive part is the trigger, but it's a chemical substance that's actually occurring there. It's dopamine giving you more epinephrine, a bigger amplitude epinephrine release, and it gives you some sense of control. So here's a protocol that anyone can use if you want to increase levels of energy, if you suffer from low energy during the daytime or whenever it is that you'd like to be alert.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
pick a practice that you can do fairly consistently, maybe every day, but maybe every third day or every fourth day. Maybe it's an ice bath or a cold bath. Maybe it's a cold shower. Maybe it's the cyclic inhale, exhale breathing protocol I described.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
If that wasn't clear and people always ask for a demo, I'm not going to do the whole thing right now, but I'm willing to do a few rounds of this or a few cycles, I should say. So it's inhale. I would do that more deeply, more like . You do that 25, 30 times repeatedly, you will start to feel warm. People in the yoga community, they say you're generating heat.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
You're not generating heat, you're releasing adrenaline. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, 25 or 30 times, you will feel agitated and stressed. That's because you're releasing adrenaline in your body, and that's because you're releasing norepinephrine in your brain, and you'll be more alert. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline
AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. As somebody who's been involved in research science for almost three decades and in health and fitness for equally as long, I'm constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental health, physical health, and performance.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
Now, I've discussed on this podcast before that the PFASs or forever chemicals like Teflon have been linked to major health issues such as endocrine disruption, that means hormone disruption, gut microbiome disruption, fertility issues, and many other health problems. So it's really important to avoid them.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
This is why I recently fell in love with Our Place products, especially one of their cooking pans, the Titanium Always Pan Pro. Our Place products are made with the highest quality materials and are all PFAS and toxin free. They're beautifully designed and function extremely well for all your cooking needs.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
Most mornings I cook eggs in it, I cook ground beef in it, ground venison, and the Titanium Pan is also designed in a way that allows eggs and meat to cook perfectly without sticking to the pan. It's extremely easy to clean, and like all Our Place products, it's nice to look at when sitting on the counter or on the stove.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
For a limited time, Our Place is offering an exclusive 20% discount on their innovative Titanium Always Pan Pro, designed to last a lifetime and completely toxin-free. Visit fromourplace.com slash Huberman and use the code SAVEHUBERMAN20 to claim the offer. With a 100-day risk-free trial, free shipping, and free returns, you can experience this terrific cookware with zero risk.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice. It was a condition of being allowed to stay in school, but pretty soon I realized that therapy is an extremely important component to overall health.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise, including cardiovascular exercise and resistance training, which of course I also do every week. There are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First of all, it provides a good rapport with somebody that you can trust and talk to about all issues that you're concerned about.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
Second of all, it can provide support in the form of emotional support or directed guidance. And third, expert therapy can provide useful insights. With BetterHelp, they make it very easy to find an expert therapist with whom you resonate with and can provide those benefits that come through effective therapy.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
In addition, there are hormones that come both from the mother and from the developing baby, the developing fetus, that impact whether or not the brain will be what they call organized masculine or organized feminine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
Also, because BetterHelp allows therapy to be done entirely online, it's very time efficient. It's easy to fit into a busy schedule. There's no commuting to a therapist's office or sitting in a waiting room or anything like that. You simply go online and hold your appointment. If you would like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman. So I just want to mention some tools. You might be asking yourself, how could tools possibly come up at this stage of the conversation where we're talking about sexual development and we're talking about the differentiation of tissues in the body? Well, this is true both for children and parents and adults.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
I want to emphasize that there are things that are environmental And there are things that people use that actually can impact hormone levels and can impact sexual development in fairly profound ways. And I want to be very clear. This is not me pulling from some rare journal. I've never heard of it. This is pulling from textbooks in particular.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
Today, I'm guiding a lot of the conversation on work that on behavioral endocrinology. This is a book by Randy Nelson and Lance Crickfield, true experts in the field. I'm going to talk about some of the work from Tyrone Hayes from UC Berkeley about environmental toxins and their impacts on some of these things like testosterone and estrogen. I'm going to touch into them there.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
I'm going to give some anecdotal evidence that's grounded in studies, which we will provide in the caption or that I'll reference here. You know, again, I'm just going to highlight when one starts talking about environmental factors and how they're poisoning us or disrupting growth or
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
fertility rates, it can start to sound a little bit crazy, except when you start to actually look at some of the real data, data from quality research labs funded by federal government, funded not from companies or other sources that are really aimed at understanding what the underlying biology is. And for that, I really we we should all be grateful to Tyrone Hayes at UC Berkeley.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
I remember way back when I was a graduate student in the late 90s, goodness, at UC Berkeley. And I remember him, he was studying frogs. He was talking about developmental defects in these frogs that live in different waters around. It was California, but also elsewhere. And he identified a substance which is present in a lot of waterways throughout this country and other countries. So U.S.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
And as I say this, I want you to try and discard with the cultural connotations or your psychological connotations of what masculinization and feminization are, because we're only centering on the biology. So typically people have either two X chromosomes And the traditional language around that is that person is female, right?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
and beyond, certainly not just restricted California. which is atrazine. This is A-T-R-A-Z-I-N-E. Again, this is the stuff of textbooks and it causes severe testicular malformations. So again, atrazine exposure is serious. And what's interesting is if you look at the data,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
what you find is that at sites in Western and Midwestern sections of the United States, 10 to 92% of male frogs, these were frogs, mind you, had testicular abnormalities. And the most severe testicular malformations were in the testes rather than in the sperm. So it's actually the organ itself, the gonad itself. it's very well known now that atrazine is in many herbicides.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
And so, you know, whereas I would say in the 80s and 90s, the discussion around, you know, herbicides and their negative effects was considered kind of like hippy dippy stuff or the stuff you hear about it, you know, your local community markets and these kind of new agey communities, now there's,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
very solid data from federally funded labs at major universities that have been peer reviewed and published in excellent journals showing that indeed many of these herbicides can have negative effects primarily by impacting the ratios of these hormones in either the mother's or in the testes, altering the testes of the fathers or direct effects on developing young animals and potentially humans.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
And so you ask, well, what about humans? Frogs are wonderful, but what about humans? So here are the data on what's happening. And this isn't all going to be scary stuff. We're also going to talk about tools to ameliorate and offset some of these effects.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
depending on your needs but across human populations sperm counts are indeed declining okay so in 1940 the average um the average density of human sperm was 113 million per milliliter of semen that's how it's measured how many sperm per milliliter of semen in 1990 this figure has dropped to 66 it went from 113
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
million per milliliter to 66 million per milliliter in the United States and Western Europe. So it's not just a US thing. Researchers also estimated that the volume of semen produced by men has dropped 20% in that time, reduced sperm count per ejaculation even further. So between 1981 and 1991, the ratio of normal spermatogenesis has decreased from 56.4% to 26.9%. So
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
there's a lot that's happening primarily because of these herbicides that are in widespread use to reduce sperm counts and these are going to have profound effects not just on sperm counts but on development sexual development at the level of the gonads and the brain because you need testosterone to get uh dihydrotestosterone for primary sexual characteristics you need
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
that's come from testosterone to masculinize the brain. And of course, we're not just focusing on sperm and testosterone. You of course also know that many of these herbicides are disrupting estrogens in a similar way, which might explain why puberty is happening so much earlier in young girls these days. So there are a lot of things that are happening.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
Now, does this mean that you have to run around and neurotically avoid anything that includes things like atrazine and should you be avoiding all kinds of herbicides? I don't know, that's up to you, but it does seem that these have pretty marked effects in both the animal studies and in the human studies. So let's talk about female sexual development and
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
As always, what we'll do is we'll talk about the normal biology. Then we'll talk a little bit about a kind of extraordinary or unusual set of cases. But we'll talk about them because they illustrate an important principle about how things work under typical circumstances.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
Or an X chromosome and a Y chromosome, and that person will become male. Now, it's not always the case. There are cases where it's XXY, where there are two X chromosomes plus a Y chromosome. There are also cases where it's XYY, where there are two Y chromosomes. And these have important biological and psychological impacts.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
so there is a mutation called androgen insensitivity syndrome and understanding how androgen and sensitivity syndrome works can help you really understand how hormones impact sexual development so here's how it works there are individuals who are xy so they have a y chromosome that are born that make
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
testosterone, they have testes, and they don't have Mullerian ducts because on the Y chromosome is this Mullerian inhibiting hormone. However, these individuals look completely female. And in general, they report feeling like girls when they're young, women when they're older. But there's something unusual that's happening in these individuals because they have an XY chromosomal type and not XX.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
So what's happening? Well, what's happening is the testes are making testosterone, but the receptor for testosterone is mutated. And therefore the testes never descend. They don't have ovaries, they have testes, but the testes are internal.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
And so typically these individuals find out that they are actually XY chromosomes so that their chromosomal sex is male, if you will, and their gonadal sex is male, but the gonads, the testes are inside the body. They don't actually develop a scrotum. They don't make ovaries. And when they don't menstruate around the time of puberty, that's a sign that something is different.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
And so they never menstruate around puberty. And if they look into this deeply enough, what you find is that they are actually XY, they make testosterone, but their body can't make use of the testosterone because they don't have the receptors.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
And the receptors are vitally important for most all of the secondary sexual characteristics that we talked about, body hair, penis growth during puberty, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
So again, we're talking about this in order to illustrate the principle that in order to have its effects, a hormone doesn't just have to be present, that hormone actually has to be able to bind its receptor and take action on the target cells. Perhaps the simplest way to understand how estrogen and testosterone impact masculinization or feminization of the brain and behavior is from a statement.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
It's actually the closing sentence of an abstract that my colleague Nirao Shah at Stanford School of Medicine published, which is that estrogen, again, it's estrogen that is aromatized from testosterone by aromatase, sets up the masculine repertoire of sexual and in animals and in humans, territorial behaviors. So it sets up the circuitry in the brain. Estrogen does that.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
Estrogen sets up the masculine circuitry in the brain. And testosterone is then what controls the display of those behaviors later in life. And I find that incredibly interesting. You would think it was just testosterone did one thing and estrogen did another, but it turns out that nature is far more interesting than that. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. As somebody who's been involved in research science for almost three decades and in health and fitness for equally as long, I'm constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental health, physical health, and performance.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
So the first thing we need to establish is that there is something called chromosomal sex. Whether or not there are two X chromosomes or an X and Y chromosome is what we call chromosomal sex. But the next stage of separating out the sexes is what we call gonadal sex. Typically, not always, but typically, if somebody has testes for their gonads, we think of them as male.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
I discovered AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast or even knew what a podcast was, and I've been taking it every day since. I find that AG1 greatly improves all aspects of my health. I simply feel much better when I take it. AG1 uses the highest quality ingredients in the right combinations, and they're constantly improving their formulas without increasing the cost.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
Whenever I'm asked if I could take just one supplement, what would that supplement be? I always say AG1. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
Okay, so what are some things that impact sexual development early in life and later in life? Let's talk about cannabis. Let's talk about alcohol. First of all, cannabis, marijuana, THC, there are many studies that point to the fact that THC and other things in cannabis promote significant increases in aromatase activity.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
Pot smokers aren't going to like this, especially male pot smokers aren't going to like this, but it's the reality. Here's the deal, that cannabis, and it's not clear if it's THC itself or other elements in the marijuana plant, promote aromatase activity.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
Now, this has been observed anecdotally where pot smokers have a higher incidence of developing something I mentioned before, gynecomastia, breast bud development, or full-blown breast development in males. Now, earlier I said that estrogen is what masculinizes the male brain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
In utero, that's true, but the way that cannabis seems to work, at least from the studies I was able to identify, is that it promotes circulating estrogen in the body and therefore can counteract some of the masculinizing effects of things like testosterone and dihydrotestosterone on primary and secondary sexual characteristics so i mentioned this because
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
You know, I think nowadays marijuana use is far more widespread and certainly during puberty, it's it can have profound effects on these hormonal systems. And so we'll do another episode that goes really deep into this. But yes, cannabis promotes estrogenic activity by increasing aromatase. Most everyone can appreciate that drinking during pregnancy is not good for the developing fetus.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
Fetal alcohol syndrome is a well-established negative outcome of pregnancy.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
and it's something that there are cognitive effects that are that are really bad there there's actually physical malformation um etc so drinking during pregnancy not good probably drinking during puberty not good either because alcohol in particular certain things like beer but other grain alcohols can increase estrogenic activity now this isn't just about protecting from estrogenic activity.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
It's also protecting girls from excessive or even hypoestrogenic effects of alcohol in puberty. Now, many teenagers drink, college students drink, and it's important to point out that puberty doesn't start on one day and end on another day. Puberty has a beginning, a middle and an end, but development is really our entire lifespan. Okay, so we talked about cannabis. We talked about alcohol.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
Let's talk about cell phones. First of all, I use a cell phone. I use it very often. and I do not think they are evil devices. I think that they require some discipline in order to make sure that it does not become a negative force in one's life. So I personally restrict the number of hours that I'm on the phone and in particular on social media. But what about the cell phone itself?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
When I was a junior professor, I was a pre-tenure early professor, I taught this class on neural circuits and health and disease. And one of the students asked me, are cell phones safe for the brain? And all the data pointed to the fact that
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
And if somebody has ovaries, we think of them as female. Although that's not always the case either, but let's just explore the transition from chromosomal sex to gonadal sex, because it's a fascinating one that we all went through in some form or another. So this XY that we typically think of as promoting masculinization of the fetus
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
they were or at least there were no data showing that it wasn't i still don't have the answer on that frankly i'm not personally aware of any evidence in quality peer-reviewed studies showing that cell phones are bad for the brain or that holding the phone to the ear is bad or that bluetooth is bad or any of that i'm just not aware of any quality studies however
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
I was very interested in a particular study that was published back in 2013 on rats. It was basically took a cell phone and put it under a cage of rats and looked at basically testicular and ovarian development in rats and saw minor, but still statistically significant defects in ovarian and testicular development. Since then, and now returning to the literature,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
i've seen a absolute explosion of studies some of which are in quality journals some of which are in what i would call not blue ribbon journals identifying defects in testicular and or ovarian development by mere exposure to cell phone Oh my god. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
Today, we're going to explore hormones, what they are, how they work, what leads to masculinization or feminization of the brain and body. What we're trying to do today is really get to the biology, the physiology, the endocrinology, and the behavior.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
We say that because on the Y chromosome, there are genes and those genes have particular functions that suppress female reproductive organs. So on the Y chromosome, there's a gene which encodes for something called Mullerian inhibiting hormone.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
So there's actually a hormone that's programmed by the Y chromosome that inhibits the formation of Mullerian ducts, which are an important part of the female reproductive apparatus. That's critical because already we're seeing the transition between chromosome Y chromosome and gonad. And other genes on the Y chromosome promote the formation of testes.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
So there are genes like the SRY gene and other genes that promote the formation of testes while they also inhibit the formation of the malaria So the transition from chromosomal sex to gonadal sex is a very important distinction. It's kind of a fork in the road that happens very early in development while fetuses are still in the embryo.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
So we have to distinguish between chromosomal sex, gonadal sex, and then there's what we call hormonal sex, which is the effects of the steroid hormones, estrogen and testosterone and their derivatives on what we call morphological sex or the shape of the baby and the human and the genitalia and the jaw and all these other things. And so it actually is quite complicated.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
So, you know, it's a long distance from chromosomes to gender identity and gender identity has a lot of social influences and roles. This is an area that right now is very dynamic and in the discussion out there, as you know, but just getting from chromosomal sex to what we would call gonadal sex and hormonal sex and morphological sex involves a number of steps.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
So today we're going to talk about those steps. And there's some fascinating things that do indeed relate to tools, do indeed relate to some important behavioral choices, important choices about things to avoid while pregnant,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
And for those of you that are not pregnant, things to avoid if you're thinking about eventually having children, and that is not to drive development in one direction or another, but there are examples where there are some deleterious things in our environment that can actually negatively impact what we call sexual development overall, regardless of chromosomal background.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
So let's get started with that. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function. Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
Hormones by definition are a substance, a chemical that's released in one area of the body, typically from something we call a gland, although they can also be released from neurons, but they're released often from glands that travel and have effects both on that gland, but also on other organs and tissues in the body.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient levels, and much more. They've also recently added tests for toxins such as BPA exposure from harmful plastics and tests for PFAS or forever chemicals.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to your physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors who are expert in the relevant areas. For example, in one of my first tests with function, I learned that I had elevated levels of mercury in my blood.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
Function not only helped me detect that, but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, I'd been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification. And I should say, by taking a second function test,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
that approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by function simplicity and at the level of cost. It is very affordable.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. Let's talk a little bit more about what hormones do. Hormones generally have two categories of effects. They can either be very fast or they can be very slow. There are hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, which act very fast.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
And then there are hormones like testosterone and estrogen, which we refer to as the sex steroid hormones. These molecules, for those of you that are interested, are what are called lipophilic, which just means that they like fatty stuff. They can actually pass through fatty membranes.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
And because the outside of cells, as well as what's called the nuclear envelope, where all the DNA contents and stuff are stuffed inside, are made of lipid, of fat, these steroid hormones can actually travel into cells and then interact with the DNA of cells in order to control gene expression.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
So they can change the sorts of things that cells will become, and they can change the way that cells function in a long-term way. And that's actually how the presence of these genes like SRY and mullerian inhibiting hormone lead to
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
or elimination, I should say, of things like the Mullerian ducts and promote instead what's called in males the Wolffian ducts or promote the development of testes rather than ovaries. So all you need to know is that hormones have short-term and long-term effects and the long-term effects are actually
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
Related to their effects on genes and how those genes are expressed or repressed not in order to prevent them from having particular proteins made so these hormones these steroid hormones are exceedingly powerful and And if we're going to have a discussion about masculinization or feminization, et cetera, you also need to think about the counterpart.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
It's not just about masculinizing the body or feminizing the body and brain. It's also about demasculinizing the brain in many cases as a normal biological function of typically of XX females and defeminization, the suppression of certain pathways that are related to feminization of the body and brain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
So I've just thrown a lot of biology at you, but this is where it all starts to get incredibly surprising. you would think that it's straightforward, right?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
And that differentiates hormones from things like neurotransmitters, which tend to act more locally. Examples of tissues that produce hormones would be the thyroid, the testes, the ovaries, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
You have a Y chromosome, you suppress the female reproductive pathway like the Mullerian ducks, you promote the development of testes, and then testes make testosterone, and then it organizes the brain male, and it wants to do male-like things, and then in females, you get estrogen, and it wants to do female-like things, and air quotes here for all of this, and it turns out
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
That isn't how it works at all. Here's where it's interesting. We have to understand that there are effects of these hormones, testosterone and estrogen, on what are called primary sexual characteristics, which are the ones that you're born with, secondary sexual characteristics, which are the ones that show up in puberty, and these are happening in the brain and body and spinal cord.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
And so I'm going to disentangle all this for you by giving you some examples. First, let's talk about the development of primary sexual characteristics, the ones that show up at birth. And one of the more dramatic examples of this comes from the role of testosterone in creating the external genitalia.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
It turns out that it's not testosterone that's responsible for the development of the penis in a baby that has an X chromosome and a Y chromosome. It's a different androgen. Androgen is just a category of hormones that includes testosterone, but testosterone is converted in the fetus to something called dihydrotestosterone. And that's accomplished through an enzyme called 5-alpha reductase.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
Dihydrotestosterone is what we would call the dominant androgen in males. It's responsible for aggression. It's responsible for a lot of Muscular strength, it's involved in beard growth and male pattern baldness. We're going to talk about all of that. But dihydrotestosterone has powerful effects in determining the genitalia while the baby is still in the embryo. So there's testosterone that's made
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
And then of course there are areas of the brain like the hypothalamus and the pituitary, which are closely related to one another and release hormones that cause the release of yet other hormones out in the body. So let's start with development, sperm meets egg. Everything that happens before that is a topic of the next episode. But sperm meets egg. This is mammalian reproduction.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
And that testosterone gets converted by this enzyme 5-alpha reductase in a little structure called the tubercle. That tubercle will eventually become the penis. So you say, okay, straightforward. This testosterone is converted to dihydrotestosterone. And then if there's dihydrotestosterone, it controls penis growth. And indeed that's the case. So that's a primary sexual characteristic.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
That baby will then grow up and later during puberty, There will be the release of a molecule I talked about this last episode called kispeptin, K-I-S-S-P-E-P-T-I-N, kispeptin, which will cause the release of some other hormones, conantropin-releasing hormone, luteinizing hormone, will stimulate the testes to make testosterone.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
So in puberty, testosterone leads to further growth and development of the penis, as well as the accumulation of, or growth of pubic hair, deepening of the voice, all the secondary sexual characteristics. There's a very interesting phenomenon that was published in the journal Science in the 1970s, for which now there's a wealth of scientific data.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
And this relates to a genetic mutation where 5-alpha reductase, the enzyme that converts testosterone to dihydrotestosterone, doesn't exist. It's mutated. And this actually was first identified in the Dominican Republic. What happens is, baby is born, if you were to look at that baby, it would look female. There would be very little or no external penis.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
And what was observed is that from time to time, that baby, after being raised as a girl, would, around the age of 11 or 12 or 13,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
would start to sprout a penis there's actually a name for this it's called huevidosis which the translation is more or less penis at 12. and as strange as this might sound it makes sense if you understand the underlying mutation what happens in these children these huevidosis is that the child is born it has testes which are not descended so up in the body
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
They weren't able to convert testosterone to dihydrotestosterone because they lack this enzyme 5-alpha reductase. As a consequence, the primary sexual characteristic of external male genitalia, penis, doesn't develop.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
And then what happens is the baby grows up and then testosterone starts getting secreted from the testes because caspeptin in the brain signals through gonadotropin and luteinizing hormone travels down to the testes. The testes start churning out testosterone and there's a secondary growth of the penis. And all of a sudden there's a penis. And the point here is
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
that dihydrotestosterone, not testosterone, is responsible for this primary growth of the penis, and that testosterone later is involved in the secondary sexual characteristics, deepening in the voice, et cetera. Now, this is where the information gets even more interesting and applies to essentially everybody.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
You might think that testosterone, because it masculinizes the body in the secondary sexual characteristic way, and because dihydrotestosterone, another androgen, masculinizes the primary sexual characteristics, the growth of the penis early on, that testosterone must masculinize the brain. But the masculinization of the brain is not accomplished by testosterone. It is accomplished by estrogen.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
testosterone can be converted into estrogen by an enzyme called aromatase there are neurons in the brain that make aromatase and convert testosterone into estrogen in other words it's estrogen that masculinizes the x y individual that masculinizes the brain and this has profound effects on all sorts of things on behavior on outlook in the world, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
And that egg starts to duplicate. It starts to make more of itself. It makes more cells. And eventually some of those cells become skin. Some of those cells become brain. Some of those cells become muscle. Some of those cells become fingers. All the stuff that makes up the brain and body plan.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
But I think most people don't realize that it's estrogen that comes from testosterone that masculinizes the male brain, the XY brain, not testosterone nor dihydrotestosterone. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Our Place. Our Place makes my favorite pots, pans, and other cookware.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development
Surprisingly, toxic compounds such as PFASs or forever chemicals are still found in 80% of nonstick pans, as well as utensils, appliances, and countless other kitchen products.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
Meaning is how we each individually piece together the relevance of one thing to the next, right? So if I suddenly told you that this pen was downloading all the information to my brain that was important to deliver this information, you'd probably think I was a pretty strange character because typically we don't think of pens as downloading information into brains.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
But if I told you that I was getting information from my computer that was allowing me to say things to you, you'd say, well, that's perfectly reasonable. And that's because we have a clear and agreed upon association with computers and information and memory. And we don't have that same association with pens.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
you might say, well, duh, but something in our brain needs to solidify those relationships and make sure that the certain relationships don't exist. And it appears that REM sleep is important for that because when you deprive yourself or people of REM, they start seeing odd associations. And we know that if people are deprived of REM sleep for very long periods of time, they start hallucinating.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
They literally start seeing relationships and movement of objects that isn't happening. And so REM sleep is really where we establish the emotional load, but where we also start discarding of all the meanings that are irrelevant. And if you think about emotionality, a lot of over emotionality or catastrophizing is about seeing problems everywhere.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
It's very important in order to have healthy emotional and cognitive functioning that we have fairly narrow channels between individual things. If we see something on the news that's very troubling, well, then it makes sense to be very troubled.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
But if we're troubled by everything and we start just saying, you know, everything is bothering me and I'm feeling highly irritable and everything is just distorting and troubling me, chances are we are not actively removing the meaning, the connectivity between life experiences as well as we could. And that almost always maps back to a deficit in REM sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Juve. Juve makes medical grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast, It's the incredible impact that light can have on our biology.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
Now, in addition to sunlight, red light and near infrared light have been shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health, including faster muscle recovery, improved skin health and wound healing, improvements in acne, meaning reductions in acne, reduced pain and inflammation, improved mitochondrial function, and even improving visual function itself.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
What sets Chuve Lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy device is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning specific wavelengths of red light and near infrared light in specific combinations to trigger the optimal cellular adaptations.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
Personally, I use the Juve whole body panel about three to four times per week, typically in the morning, but sometimes in the afternoon. And I use the Juve handheld light both at home and when I travel. If you'd like to try Juve, you can go to Juve, spelled J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman. Juve is offering an exclusive discount to all Huberman Lab listeners with up to $400 off select Juve products.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
Now this is true regardless of whether or not you wake up at the middle of the night to use the restroom or your sleep is broken. The more sleep you're getting across the night, the more REM sleep you're going to have.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
Again, that's Juve, J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman to get up to $400 off. So REM sleep seems to be where we uncouple the potential for emotionality between various experiences.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
And that brings us to the absolutely fundamental relationship and similarity of REM sleep to some of the clinical practices that have been designed to eliminate emotionality and help people move through trauma and other troubling experiences. Many of you perhaps have heard of trauma treatments such as EMDR, eye movement desensitization reprocessing.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
or ketamine treatment for trauma, something that recently became legal and is in fairly widespread clinical use. Interestingly enough, EMDR and ketamine, at kind of a core level, bear very similar features to REM sleep. So let's talk about EMDR first. EMDR, eye movement desensitization reprocessing, is something that was developed by a psychologist, Francine Shapiro.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
She actually was in Palo Alto. And the story goes that she was walking, not so instantly, in the trees and forest behind Stanford. And she was recalling a troubling event in her own mind. So this would be from her own life. And she realized that as she was walking, the emotional load of that experience was not as intense or severe.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
she extrapolated from that experience of walking and not feeling as stressed about the stressful event to a practice that she put into work with her clients, with her patients, and that now has become fairly widespread. It's actually one of the few behavior treatments that are approved by the American Psychological Association for the treatment of trauma.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
And REM sleep and non-REM, as I'll refer to it, have distinctly different roles in learning and unlearning, and they are responsible for learning and unlearning of distinctly different types of information. And this has enormous implications for learning of motor skills, for unlearning of traumatic events, or for processing emotionally challenging, as well as emotionally pleasing events.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
What she had her clients and patients do was move their eyes from side to side while recounting some traumatic or troubling event. Why eye movements? Well, she never really said why eye movements, but soon I'll tell you why the decision to select these lateralized eye movements for the work in the clinic was the right one.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
So these eye movements, they look silly, but they basically involve sitting in a chair and moving one's eyes from side to side for 30, 60 seconds, then describing this challenging procedure. Now as a vision scientist who also works on stress, When I first heard this, I thought it was crazy, frankly. People would ask me about EMDR, and I just thought, that's crazy.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
I went and looked up some of the theories about why EMDR might work, and there were a bunch of theories. Oh, it mimics the eye movements during REM sleep. That was one. Turns out that's not true, and I'll explain why. The other one was, oh, it synchronizes the activity on the two sides of the brain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
Well, sort of, I mean, when you look into both sides of the binocular visual field, you activate the visual cortex, but this whole idea of synchrony between the two sides of the brain is something that I think modern neuroscience is starting to, let's just say gently or not so gently move away from this whole right brain, left brain business.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
It turns out, however, that I move into the sort that I just did and that Francine Shapiro took from this walk experience and brought to her clients in the clinic. are the sorts of eye movements that you generate whenever you're moving through space, when you are self-generating that movement.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
So not so much when you're driving a car, but certainly if you were riding a bicycle or you were walking or you were running, you don't realize it, but you have these reflexive subconscious eye movements that go from side to side, and they are associated with the motor system. So when you move forward, your eyes go like this.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
There've been a number of studies showing that these lateralized eye movements helped people move through or dissociate the emotional experience of particular traumas with those experiences such that they could recall those experiences after the treatment and not feel stressed about them or they didn't report them as traumatic any longer.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
Now, the success rate wasn't 100%, but they were statistically significant in a number of studies. In the last five years, there have been no fewer than five journals and papers showing that lateralized eye movements of the sort that I just did, and if you're just listening to this, it's just moving the eyes from side to side with eyes open,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
that those eye movements, but not vertical eye movements suppress the activity of the amygdala, which is this brain region that is involved in threat detection, stress, anxiety, and fear. There are some forms of fear that are not amygdala dependent, but the amygdala, it's not a fear center, but it is critical for the fear response and for the experience of anxiety. So that's interesting.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
We've got a clinical tool now that indeed shows a lot of success in a good number of people.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
where eye movements from side to side are suppressing the amygdala and the general theme is to use those eye movements to suppress the fear response and then to recount or repeat the experience and over time uncouple the heavy emotional load, the sadness, the depression, the anxiety, the fear from whatever it was that happened that was traumatic. This is important to understand because
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
I'd love to be able to tell somebody who had a traumatic experience that they would forget that experience. But the truth is you never forget the traumatic experience. What you do is you remove the emotional load. Eventually it really does lose its potency. The emotional potency is alleviated.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
Now EMDR, I should just mention, tends to be most successful for single event or very specific kinds of trauma that happened over and over, as opposed to say an entire childhood. or an entire divorce. It tends to be most effective for single event kinds of things, car crashes, et cetera, where people can really recall the events in quite a lot of detail.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
And as we'll see, one can actually leverage their daytime activities in order to access more slow wave sleep or non-REM sleep, as we'll call it, or more REM sleep, depending on your particular emotional and physical needs. So it's really a remarkable stage of life that we have a lot more control and power over than you might believe.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
It's not for everybody and it should be done, if it's going to be done for trauma, it should be done in a clinical setting with somebody certified to do this, but that bears a lot of resemblance to REM sleep, right? This experience in our sleep where our eyes are moving, excuse me, although in a different way, but we don't have the chemical epinephrine in order to generate the fear response.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
And yet we're remembering the event from the previous day or days. And then now there's this chemical treatment with the drug ketamine, which also bears a lot of resemblance to the sorts of things that happen in REM sleep. Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic. It is remarkably similar to the drug called PCP, which is certainly a hazardous drug for people to use.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
Ketamine and PCP both function to disrupt the activity of a particular receptor in the brain called the NMDA receptor, N-methyldeaspartate receptor. This is a receptor that's in the surface of neurons or on the surface of neurons for which most of the time it's not active. But when something very extreme happens,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
and there's a lot of activity in the neural pathway that impinges on that receptor, it opens and it allows the entry of molecules, ions, that trigger a cellular process that we call long-term potentiation. And long-term potentiation translates to a change in connectivity so that later you don't need that intense event for the neuron to become active again. Ketamine blocks this NMDA receptor.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
So how is ketamine being used? Ketamine is being used to prevent learning of emotions very soon after trauma. Ketamine is being stocked in a number of different emergency rooms where if people are brought in quickly, and these are hard to describe even, a horrible experience of somebody seeing a loved one next to them killed in a car accident and they were driving that car.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
Today, we're going to talk about dreaming, learning during dreaming, as well as unlearning during dreaming, in particular, unlearning of challenging emotional events. Now, numerous people throughout history have tried to make sense of dreams in some sort of organized way, the most famous of which, of course, is Sigmund Freud, who talked about symbolic representations in dreams.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
This isn't for everybody, certainly, and you need to talk to your physician, but ketamine is being used so they might infuse somebody with ketamine so that their emotion is, it can still occur, but that the plasticity, the change in the wiring of their brain won't allow that intense emotion to be attached to the experience.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
Now, immediately you can imagine the sort of ethical implications of this, right? Because certain emotions need to be coupled to experiences. But in the clinical setting, the basis of ketamine-assisted therapies is really to remove emotion. Ketamine is about becoming dissociative or removed from the emotional component of the experience.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
So now we have ketamine, which chemically blocks plasticity and prevents the connection between an emotion and an experience. That's a pharmacologic intervention. We have EMDR, which is this eye movement thing that is designed to suppress the amygdala and is designed to remove emotionality while somebody recounts an experience. And we have REM sleep where the chemical epinephrine that
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
So let's start by talking about slow wave sleep or non-REM sleep. So slow wave sleep is characterized by a particular pattern of brain activity in which the brain is metabolically active, but that there's these big sweeping waves of activity that include a lot of the brain. Now, the interesting thing about slow wave sleep are the neuromodulators
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
and the experience of intense emotion in the brain and body is not allowed. And so we're starting to see a organizational logic, which is that a certain component of our sleeping life is acting like therapy. And that's really what REM sleep is about. I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, Eight Sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night. Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
Eight Sleep makes it very easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to program the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation of the Pod Cover called the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity. I find that very useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night. warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
It also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring. If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
we should really think about REM sleep and slow-wave sleep as both critical. Slow-wave sleep for motor learning and detailed learning, REM sleep for attaching of emotions to particular experiences, and then for making sure that the emotions are not attached to the wrong experiences, and for unlearning emotional responses if they're too intense or severe.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
And this all speaks to the great importance of mastering one's sleep, something that we talked about in episode and making sure that if life has disruptive events, either due to travel or stress or changes in school or food schedule, something that we talked about in episodes three and four, that one can still grab a hold and manage one's sleep life.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
because fundamentally the unlearning of emotions that are troubling to us is what allows us to move forward in life. And indeed the REM deprivation studies show that people become hyper-emotional. They start to catastrophize and it's no surprise therefore that sleep disturbances correlate with so many emotional and psychological disturbances.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
By now it should just be obvious why that will be the case. I was in a discussion with a colleague of mine who's down in Australia, Dr. Sarah McKay. I've known her for two decades now from the time she was at Oxford. And Sarah studies, among other things, menopause in the brain. And she was saying that a lot of the emotional effects of menopause actually are not directly related to the hormones.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
There've been some really nice studies showing that the disruptions in temperature regulation in menopause map to changes in sleep regulation, that then impact emotionality and an inability to correctly adjust the circuits related to emotionality. So sleep deprivation isn't just deprivation of energy. It's not just deprivation of immune function.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
that tend to be associated with it that are most active and least active during slow-wave sleep. And here's why. To remind you, neuromodulators are these chemicals that act rather slowly, but their main role is to bias particular brain circuits to be active and other brain circuits to not be active. and they are associated as a consequence with certain brain functions.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
It is deprivation of self-induced therapy every time we go to sleep. So these things like EMDR and ketamine therapies are in-clinic therapies, but REM sleep is the one that you're giving yourself every night when you go to sleep, which raises, I think, the other important question, which is how to get and how to know if you're getting the appropriate amount of REM sleep and slow wave sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
Turns out that for sake of learning new information, limiting the variation in the amount of your sleep, is at least as important and perhaps more important than just getting more sleep overall.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
I find great relief personally in the fact that consistently getting for me about six hours or six and a half hours is going to be more beneficial than constantly striving for eight or nine and finding that some nights I'm getting five and sometimes I'm getting nine and varying around the mean.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
Now, ideally you're getting the full compliment of slow wave sleep early in night and sleep toward morning, which is REM sleep, which brings us to how to get more REM sleep. Well, there are a couple of different ways, but here's how to not get more REM sleep, all right? First of all, drink a lot of fluid right before going to sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
One of the reasons why we wake up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom is because when our bladder is full, There is a neural connection, literally a set of neurons and a nerve circuit that goes to the brainstem that wakes us up. So having a full bladder is one way to disrupt your sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
The other one is tryptophan or anything that contains 5-HTP, which is serotonin or a precursor to serotonin. Serotonin is made from tryptophan. For some people, those supplements might work, but beware serotonin supplements could disrupt the timing of REM sleep and slow wave sleep. Now, if you want to increase your slow wave sleep, that's interesting. There are ways to do that.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
One of the most powerful ways to increase slow wave sleep, the percentage of slow wave sleep, apparently without any disruption to the other components of sleep and learning, is to engage in resistance exercise. It's pretty clear that resistance exercise triggers a number of metabolic and endocrine pathways that lend themselves to release of growth hormone, which happens early in the night.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
And resistance exercise therefore can induce a greater percentage of slow wave sleep. It doesn't have to be done very close to going to bedtime.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
In fact, for some people that the exercise could be disruptive for reasons I've talked about in previous episodes, but resistance exercise, unlike aerobic exercise does seem to increase the amount of slow wave sleep, which as we know is involved in motor learning and the acquisition of fine detailed information, not general rules or the emotional components of experiences.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
Alcohol and marijuana are well known to induce states that are pseudo sleep-like, especially when people fall asleep after having consumed alcohol or THC, the active component, one of the active components in marijuana. alcohol, THC, and most things like them, meaning things that increase serotonin or GABA, are going to disrupt the pattern of sleep. They're going to disrupt the depth.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
They're going to disrupt the overall sequencing of more slow-wave sleep early in the night and more REM sleep later in the night. That's just the reality. Now, of course, if... That's what you need in order to sleep. And that's within your protocol. As I've said here before, I'm not suggesting people take anything. I'm not a medical doctor. I'm not a cop.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
So I'm not trying to regulate anyone's behavior. I'm just telling you what the literature says. Today, we've been in a deep dive of sleep and dreaming, learning and unlearning. And I just want to recap a few of the highlights and important points. A lot more slow-wave sleep and less REM early in the night. More REM and less slow-wave sleep later in the night.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
So we know for instance, and just to review, acetylcholine in waking states is a neuromodulator that tends to amplify the activity of brain circuits associated with focus and attention. Norepinephrine is a neuromodulator that tends to amplify the brain circuits associated with alertness and the desire to move.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
REM sleep is associated with intense experiences without this chemical epinephrine that allows us the anxiety or fear and almost certainly has an important role in uncoupling of emotion from experiences, kind of self-induced therapy that we go into each night. That bears striking resemblance to things like EMDR and ketamine therapies and so forth.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
Slow-wave sleep is critical, however, it's critical mostly for motor learning and the learning of specific details. So REM is kind of emotions and general themes and meaning and slow-wave sleep, motor learning and details.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
I personally find it fascinating that consistency of sleep, meaning getting six hours every night is better than getting 10 one night, eight the next, five the next, four the next. I find that fascinating and I think I also like it because it's something I can control better than just trying to sleep more, which I think I'm not alone in agreeing that that's just hard for a lot of people to do.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
Thank you for joining me in this journey of the nervous system and biology and trying to understand the mechanisms that make us who we are and how we function in sleep and in wakefulness. It's really an incredible landscape to consider. And I hope that you're getting a lot out of the information. As always, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
Serotonin is the neuromodulator that's released and tends to amplify the circuits in the brain and body that are associated with bliss and the desire to remain still. And dopamine is the neuromodulator that's released and is associated with amplification of the neural circuits in the brain and body associated with pursuing goals and pleasure and reward.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
So in slow wave sleep, something really interesting happens. There's essentially no acetylcholine. And acetylcholine, as I just mentioned, is associated with focus. So you can think of slow wave sleep as these big sweeping waves of activity through the brain and a kind of distortion of space and time so that we're not really focusing on any one thing.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
Now, the other molecules that are very active at that time are norepinephrine, which is a little bit surprising because normally in waking states, norepinephrine is going to be associated with a lot of alertness and the desire to move. But there's not a ton of norepinephrine around in slow-wave sleep, but it is around.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
So there's something associated with the movement circuitry going on in slow-wave sleep. And remember, this is happening mostly at the beginning of the night. Your sleep is dominated by slow wave sleep. So no acetylcholine, very little norepinephrine, although there is some, and a lot of serotonin.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
And serotonin, again, is associated with this desire, this sensation of kind of bliss or wellbeing, but not a lot of movement. And during sleep, you tend not to move. Now in slow wave sleep, you can move. You're not paralyzed. So you can roll over. If people are going to sleepwalk, typically it's going to be during slow wave sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
And what studies have shown through some kind of sadistic experiments where people are deprived specifically of slow wave sleep, and that can be done by waking them up as soon as the electrode recordings show that they're in slow wave sleep, or by chemically altering their sleep so that it biases them away from slow wave sleep. What studies have shown is that motor learning
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
is generally occurring in slow wave sleep. So let's say the day before you go to sleep, you were learning some new dance move, or you were learning some specific motor skill, either a fine motor skill or a course motor skill. Learning of those skills is happening primarily during slow wave sleep in the early part of the night. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
A lot of that has been kind of debunked, although I think that there's some interest in what the symbols of dreaming are. And this is something that we'll talk about in more depth today, although not Freudian theory in particular.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
By now, many of you have heard me say that if I could take just one supplement, that supplement would be AG1. The reason for that is AG1 is the highest quality and most complete of the foundational nutritional supplements available.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
What that means is that it contains not just vitamins and minerals, but also probiotics, prebiotics, and adaptogens to cover any gaps you may have in your diet and provide support for a demanding life.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
For me, even if I eat mostly whole foods and minimally processed foods, which I do for most of my food intake, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits and vegetables, vitamins and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone. For that reason, I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012. When I do that, it clearly bolsters my energy, my immune system, and my gut microbiome.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
These are all critical to brain function, mood, physical performance, and much more. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim their special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
In addition, slow wave sleep has been shown to be important for the learning of detailed information. So we can think of slow wave sleep as important for motor learning, motor skill learning, and for the learning of specific details about specific events.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
And this turns out to be fundamentally important because now we know that slow wave sleep is primarily in the early part of the night and motor learning is occurring primarily early in the night and detail learning is occurring early in the night. I want to talk about REM sleep or rapid eye movement sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
REM sleep and rapid eye movement sleep, as I mentioned before, occurs throughout the night, but you're going to have more of it. A larger percentage of these 90 minute sleep cycles is going to be comprised of REM sleep as you get toward morning. REM sleep is fascinating.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
It was discovered in the 50s when a sleep laboratory in Chicago, the researchers observed that people's eyes were moving under their eyelids. Something very important that we're going to address when we talk about trauma later is that the eye movements are not just side to side, they're very erratic in all different directions.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
One thing that I don't think anyone, I've never heard anyone really talk about publicly is why eye movements during sleep. Eyes are closed and sometimes people's eyelids will be a little bit open and their eyes are darting around, especially in little kids. I don't suggest you do this.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
So I think in order to really think about dreams and what to do with them and how to maximize the dream experience for sake of learning and unlearning, the best way to address this is to look at the physiology of sleep, to really address what do we know concretely about sleep? So first of all, as we get sleepy,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
I'm not even sure it's ethical, but it has been done where you pull back the eyelids of a kid while they're sleeping and their eyes are kind of darting all over the place. Rapid eye movement sleep is fascinating and occurs because there are connections between the brainstem, an area called the pons,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
and areas of the thalamus and the top of the brainstem that are involved in generating movements in different directions, sometimes called saccades. Although sometimes during rapid eye movement sleep, it's not just rapid, it's kind of a jittery side to side thing. And then the eyeballs kind of roll. It's really pretty creepy to look at if you see.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
So what's happening there is the circuitry that is involved in conscious eye movements is kind of going haywire, but it's not haywire. It's these waves of activity from the brainstem up to the so-called thalamus, which is an area that filters sensory information and then up to the cortex. And the cortex of course is involved in conscious perceptions.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
In REM sleep, serotonin is essentially absent, okay? So this molecule, this neuromodulator that tends to create the feeling of bliss and wellbeing and just calm, placidity is absent. In addition to that, norepinephrine, this molecule that's involved in movement and alertness is absolutely absent.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
It's probably one of the few times in our life that epinephrine is essentially at zero activity within our system. And that has a number of very important implications for the sorts of dreaming that occur during REM sleep and the sorts of that can occur in REM sleep and unlearning. First of all, in REM sleep, we are paralyzed. We are experiencing what's called atonia, which just means
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
completely laid out and paralyzed. We also tend to experience whatever it is that we're dreaming about as a kind of hallucination or a hallucinatory activity. So in REM, our eyes are moving, but the rest of our body is paralyzed and we are hallucinating. There's no epinephrine around.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
Epinephrine doesn't just create a desire to move and alertness, it is also the chemical signature of fear and anxiety. It's what's released from our adrenal glands when we experience something that's fearful or alerting. So if a car suddenly screeches in front of us or we get a troubling text message, adrenaline is deployed into our system. Adrenaline is epinephrine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
Those are equivalent molecules. And epinephrine isn't just released from our adrenals, it's also released within our brain. So there's this weird stage of our life that happens more toward morning that we call REM sleep, where we're hallucinating and having these outrageous experiences in our mind, but the chemical that's associated with fear and panic and anxiety is not available to us.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
And that turns out to be very important. And you can imagine why that's important. It's important because it allows us to experience things, both replay of things that did occur, as well as elaborate contortions of things that didn't occur. And it allows us to experience those in the absence of fear and anxiety.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
So we have this incredible period of sleep in which our experience of emotionally-laden events is dissociated. It's chemically blocked from us having the actual emotion. So To just recap where we've gone so far, slow-wave sleep early in the night, it's been shown to be important for motor learning and for detail learning.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
we tend to shut our eyes, and that's because there are some autonomic centers in the brain, some neurons that control closing of the eyelids when we get sleepy. And then we transition into sleep. And sleep, regardless of how long we sleep, is generally broken up into a series of 90-minute cycles, these ultradian cycles. So early in the night,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
REM sleep has a certain dream component in which there's no epinephrine, therefore we can't experience anxiety, we are paralyzed. Those dreams tend to be really vivid and have a lot of detail to them. And yet in REM sleep, what's very clear is that the sorts of learning that happened in REM sleep are not motor events. It's more about unlearning of emotional events.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
And now we know why, because the chemicals available for really feeling those emotions are not present. Now that has very important implications. So let's address those implications from two sides. First of all, we should ask what happens if we don't get enough REM sleep? And a scenario that happens a lot where people don't get enough REM sleep is the following.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
I'll just explain the one that I'm familiar with because it happens to me a lot, although I figured out ways to adjust. I go to sleep around 10, 30, 11 o'clock. I fall asleep very easily. And then I wake up around three or 4 a.m. I now know to use a NSDR, a non-sleep deep rest protocol. And that allows me to fall back asleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
Even though it's called non-sleep deep rest, it's really allows me to relax my body and brain. And I tend to fall back asleep and sleep till about 7 a.m. During which time I get a lot of REM sleep. And I know this because I've measured it. And I know this because my dreams tend to be very intense of the sort that we know is typical of REM sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
In this scenario, I've gotten my slow wave sleep early in the night and I've got my REM sleep toward morning. However, there are times when I don't go back to sleep. Maybe I have a flight to catch, that's happened. Sometimes I've got a lot on my mind and I don't go back to sleep. I can tell you and you've probably experienced that the lack of REM sleep tends to make people emotionally irritable.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
It tends to make us feel as if the little things are the big things. So it's very clear from laboratory studies where people have been deprived selectively of REM sleep that our emotionality tends to get a little bit unhinged and we tend to catastrophize small things. We tend to feel like the world is really daunting. We're never going to move forward in the ways that we want.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
We can't unlearn the emotional components of whatever it is that's been happening, even if it's not traumatic. The other thing that happens in REM sleep is a replay of certain types of spatial information about where we were and why we were in those places.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
And this maps to some beautiful data and studies that were initiated by a guy named Matt Wilson at MIT years ago, showing that in rodents, and it turns out in non-human primates and in humans, there's a replay of spatial information during REM sleep. that almost precisely maps to the activity that we experienced during the day as we move from one place to another.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
So here's a common world scenario. You go to a new place, you navigate through that city or that environment. This place doesn't have to be at the scale of a city. It can be a new building. It could be finding particular rooms, new social interaction. You experience that, and if it's important enough, that becomes solidified a few days later and you won't forget it.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
These 90 minute cycles tend to be comprised more of shallow sleep and slow wave sleep. And we tend to have less so-called REM sleep, R-E-M sleep, which stands for rapid eye movement sleep. For every 90 minute cycle that we have during a night of sleep, we tend to start having more and more REM sleep. So more of that 90 minute cycle is comprised of REM sleep and less of slow wave sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
If it's unimportant, you'll probably forget it. during REM sleep, there's a literal replay of the exact firing of the neurons that occurred while you were navigating that same city you're building earlier. So REM sleep seems to be involved in the generation of this detailed spatial information. But what is it that's actually happening in REM sleep?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
So there's this uncoupling of emotion, but most of all what's happening in REM sleep is that we're forming a relationship with particular rules or algorithms. We're starting to figure out based on all the experience that we had during the day, whether or not, it's important that we avoid certain people or that we approach certain people.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget
Whether or not it's important that when we enter a building that we go into the elevator and turn left where the bathroom is, for instance, these general themes of things and locations and how they fit together. And that has a word, it's called meaning. During our day, we're experiencing all sorts of things.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
So by taking AG1 daily, I get the vitamins and minerals that I need, along with the probiotics and prebiotics for gut health, and in turn, brain and immune system health, and the adaptogens and critical micronutrients that are essential for all organs and tissues of the body.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
So anytime somebody asks me if they were to only take one supplement, what that supplement should be, I always say AG1, because AG1 supports so many different systems in the brain and body that relate to our mental health, physical health, and performance. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
For this month only, April 2025, AG1 is giving away a free one month supply of omega-3 fish oil, along with a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2. As I've highlighted before in this podcast, omega-3 fish oil and vitamin D3 plus K2 have been shown to help with everything from mood and brain health to heart health and healthy hormone production and much more.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to get the free one month supply of omega-3 fish oil plus a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2 with your subscription. What about people who have been training for a while? If you're somebody who's been doing weight training for a while, The data point to the fact that more volume can be beneficial even for muscles that you are very efficient at contracting.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Now, the curve on this, the graph on this begins again at about five sets per week for maintaining a given muscle group and extends all the way out to 25 or 30 sets per week. However, there are,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
individuals who for whatever reason can generate so much force they're so good at training muscles that they can generate so much force in just four or six or eight sets that doing this large volume of work is actually going to be counterproductive so everyone needs to figure out for themselves first of all how often you're willing to do resistance exercise of any kind
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
They are absolutely essential for maintaining how we breathe. They're absolutely essential for ambulation, for moving and for skills of any kind. So, When we think about muscle, we don't just want to think about muscle, the meat that is muscle, but what controls that muscle. And no surprise, what controls muscle is the nervous system.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
And then it does appear that somewhere between five and 15 sets per week is going to be the thing that's going to work for most people. Now this is based on a tremendous amount of work that was done by Andy Galpin and colleagues, Brad Schoenfield and colleagues, Mike Roberts.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
There's a huge group of people out there doing exercise physiology and a small subset of them that are linking them back to real world protocols that don't just pertain to athletes. So that's mainly what I'm focusing on today. And surely there will be exceptions.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Now, if you are going to divide the sets across the week, you're not going to do all 10 sets, for instance, for a given muscle group in one session, then of course it's imperative that the muscles recover in between sessions. You might ask, well, what about the speeds of movements? This is actually turns out to be a really interesting data set.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
For generating explosiveness and speed, it's very clear that learning to generate forces quickly and to move heavy or moderately heavy loads quickly is going to be beneficial because of the way that you train the motor neurons and of course changes in the muscle. And so what this would involve is something like 60 to 75% of a one repetition maximum.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
And then in a controlled way, moving that as quickly as one can throughout the entire set, and certainly not going to failure because as you approach failure, the inability to move the weight with good form, the weight inevitably slows down. So as you're probably starting to realize you need to customize a resistance practice for your particular needs and goals.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
So we've talked about a few principles. The fact that you need to get sufficient volume, you need at least five sets to maintain, and you probably need about 10 sets per muscle group in order to improve muscle. That moving weights of moderate to moderately heavy weight quickly is going to be best for explosiveness.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
That isolating muscles and really contracting muscles hard, something that you can test by just when you're outside the training session, seeing whether or not you can cramp the muscle hard will really will tell you your capacity to improve hypertrophy or to engage strength changes in that muscle.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
That your ability to contract a muscle hard is inversely related to the number of sets that you should do in order to isolate and stimulate that muscle. Now, how long to recover between sets? This is a question for the testosterone protocol. Duncan French and colleagues found that it was about two minutes, keeping that really on the clock, two minutes, not longer.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
For hypertrophy and for strength gains, it does seem that resting anywhere from two minutes or even three or four or even five or six minutes can be beneficial. So how do we know if we've recovered? How can we test recovery? And this is not just recovery from resistance training. This is recovery from running, recovery from swimming.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Up until now, I've been talking about resistance training more or less in a vacuum. I haven't even touched on the fact that many people are running and they're doing resistance training or they're swimming and they're doing resistance training. Well, you can assess systemic recovery, meaning your nervous system.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
and your nervous system's ability to generate force, both distributed and isolated, through three main tests. And fortunately, these tests are very simple. And two of them are essentially zero cost, require no equipment. HRV, heart rate variability, has made its way finally into the forefront of exercise physiology and even into the popular discussion.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
I've talked about HRV before, how when we exhale, our heart rate slows down because of the way that our diaphragm is connected to our heart and to our brain and the way our brain is connected to our heart. When we inhale, our heart rate speeds up and that is the basis of heart rate variability. Heart rate variability is good. but heart rate variability is difficult for a lot of people to measure.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
There are two measures, however, whether or not you recovered that you can use first thing in the morning when you wake up in order to assess how well recovered you are and therefore whether or not you should train your whole system at all that day. The first one is grip strength.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
The nervous system does that through three main nodes of control. Basically, we have upper motor neurons in our motor cortex, so those are in our skull, and those are involved in deliberate movement. Those upper motor neurons send signals down to my spinal cord, where there are two categories of neurons.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Grip strength, the ability to generate force at the level of squeezing the fist or squeezing down on something might seem like kind of a trivial way to assess recovery, but it's not because it relates to your ability to use your upper motor neurons to control your lower motor neurons and to generate isolated force. And so that's really what you're assessing when you do that.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Some people will use one of these grip tools. If I've been working really hard, not sleeping very well, or I've been training a lot, any one or combination of those things, my grip suffers. I can't actually squeeze that thing down as much as I can. But on a good day, I can squeeze this thing so that I eliminate the hole in the donut, so to speak.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
You can also take a floor scale and squeeze the scale and see how much force you can generate. I would do that as a baseline to establish what you can do when you're well rested. And then if you do that in the morning, you can see whether or not you're able to generate the same amount of force. A lot of this is very subjective with the scale.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
You're really trying to assess whether or not you can generate the same amount of force. If you start seeing a 10% or 20% certainly reduction in that, that's concerning. It means that your system, that your nervous system as a whole, it's not necessarily fatigued. It's that the pathways from nerve to muscle are still in the process of rewiring themselves in order to generate force.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
And you might think, well, I trained one muscle group one day, why am I having a hard time doing this for a completely different muscle group? It doesn't make any sense. But there's something about the upper motor neuron to lower motor neuron pathway generally that allows you to use something like grip strength as a kind of a thermometer, if you will. of your ability to recover.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
So look for your ability to generate force in grip when you first wake up. It's not going to be as good as it is at 3 p.m. after a cup of coffee and a couple meals, but the point isn't performance overall. The point is to assess whether or not you're getting better, worse, or the same from day to day. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health. This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient levels and much more.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
They've also recently added tests for toxins such as BPA exposure from harmful plastics and tests for PFAS or forever chemicals. Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to your physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors who are expert in the relevant areas.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
For example, in one of my first tests with function, I learned that I had elevated levels of mercury in my blood.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Function not only helped me detect that, but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, I'd been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification. And I should say, by taking a second function test,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
One are the lower motor neurons and those lower motor neurons send little wires that we call axons out to our muscles and cause those muscles to contract. They do that by dumping chemicals onto the muscle. In fact, the chemical is acetylcholine. Now there's another category of neurons in the spinal cord called central pattern generators or CPGs. And those are involved in rhythmic movements.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
that approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by function simplicity and at the level of cost. It is very affordable.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. The other one that's really terrific and the Andy Galpin's group is using, and I'm delighted about this because it relates to something that my lab is very excited about as well, is carbon dioxide tolerance. So this is a really interesting tool that endurance athletes, strength athletes, I think can all benefit from.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
So here's how you do the carbon dioxide tolerance test. You wake up in the morning and what you're going to do is you're going to inhale through your nose as deeply as you can. You can do this lying down, sitting, whatever. Inhale through your nose. and then exhale all the way. So that's one. You're going to repeat that four times.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Then you take a fifth inhale as deep as you can through your nose, fill your lungs as much as you can. And if you can try and expand, make your stomach go out while you do that, that means that your diaphragm is really engaged. So you're inhaling as much as you possibly can. Then hit the timer and your goal is to release that air as slowly as possible through your mouth.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
So it looks like you have a tiny, tiny little straw in your mouth and you're letting it go. As slowly as you possibly can. Measure what we call the carbon dioxide blow-off time or discard rate. I know you can all sit with lungs empty after you eliminate all that air, but don't lie to yourself. Don't stop the timer when you've been sitting with your lungs empty for a while.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Stop the timer when you are finally no longer able to exhale any more air. Your carbon dioxide discard rate will be somewhere between one second and presumably two minutes. Two minutes would be a heroic carbon dioxide discard time. 30 seconds would be more typical. 20 seconds would be fast.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
If your carbon dioxide discard time is 20 or 25 seconds or less, you are not necessarily recovered from your previous day's activities. If your carbon dioxide discard time is somewhere between about 30 seconds and 60 seconds, you are in what we would call kind of the green zone where you are in a position to do more physical work.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
And if your carbon dioxide discard time is somewhere between 65 and 120 seconds, well, then you have almost certainly recovered your nervous system. I'm not talking about the individual muscles, but your nervous system is prepared to do more work. I'm really keen on this tool because everybody has different abilities. I realize people have varying levels of stress and demand in their life.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
It's just impossible to prescribe an entire protocol that says, okay, yes, you should train today and this is exactly what you should do. No, you shouldn't. Use carbon dioxide discard rate because A, it's valuable, it's informative, B, it's zero cost and C it's something that you can track objectively over time. And that's really the key. So recovery is a complex process.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
It's got a lot of things, but the CO2 tolerance test should be a valuable tool. Now, another tool for recovery that people are very excited about is the use of cold and the ice bath. And this is important. Yes, it will reduce inflammation.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Anytime we're walking or doing something where we don't have to think about it to do it deliberately, it's just happening reflexively, that central pattern generators and motor neurons. Anytime we're doing something deliberately, the top-down control, as we call it, from the upper motor neurons comes in and takes control of that system. So it's really simple. You've only got three ingredients.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Yes, it will reduce the amount of delayed onset muscle soreness, but it does seem to interfere with some of the things like mTOR pathways, the mammalian targeted rapamycin pathway, and other pathways related to inflammation that promote muscle repair and muscle growth.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Remember, stress, tension, and damage are the stimulus for nerve to muscle connections to change and for muscles to get bigger, stronger, and better. And so if you're getting into the ice bath after doing resistance training, you are likely short-circuiting the improvements that you're trying to create. The other thing are non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs. You know their trade names.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
These are painkillers that many people take. Those, as I've mentioned in a previous episode, seem to prevent a lot of the gains, the improvements in endurance, strength, and size that people are specifically using exercise for. So be cautious about your use of non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs. especially within the four hours preceding or the four hours following exercise.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Let's talk about some of the things that seem to work across the board to improve strength, improve hypertrophy and improve nerve to muscle communication and performance. The first thing that's absolutely key for nerve to muscle communication and physical performance of any kind might not sound that exciting to you, but it is very exciting, and that's salt.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Nerves, nerve cells, neurons, communicate with each other and communicate with muscle by electricity. but that electricity is generated by particular ions moving into and out of the neuron. And the rushing in of a particular ion, sodium, salt, is what allows nerve cells to fire. If you don't have enough salt in your system,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
your neurons and your brain and your nerve to muscle communication will be terrible. If you have sufficient salt, it will be excellent. How much salt will depend on how much water you're drinking, how much caffeine you're drinking, and how much food you're ingesting, and whether or not you're taking any diuretics, how hot it is, et cetera, how much you're sweating.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
So you want to make sure that you have enough salt, potassium, and magnesium in your system if you want to perform well. The other thing that's been shown over and over again and numerous well-controlled studies to improve muscle performance is creatine. How much creatine?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Well, I asked the experts and they tell me that for somebody who's about 180 pounds, five grams a day should be sufficient or so. Creatine seems to have a performance enhancing effect. There are 66 studies, 66, showing that power output is greatly increased, anywhere from 12 to 20%. And this is sprinting and running and jumping as well as weightlifting by creatine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
The ability to hydrate your body is improved by creatine because of the way that it brings more water into cells of various kinds. It reduces fatigue. When it comes to supporting muscle. It does seem that ingesting 700 to 3000 milligrams of the essential amino acid leucine with each meal is important. Now that does not necessarily mean from supplements.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
In fact, most people recommend that you get your you get your amino acids, including your essential amino acids and your leucine from whole foods, high quality proteins are high density proteins. What do you mean by that?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
You've got the upper motor neurons, the lower motor neurons, and for rhythmic movements that are reflexive, you've also got the central pattern generators. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Well, it is true that a lot of sources of protein are found in things like beans and nuts and things like that, that all the essential amino acids can be found there, but per unit calorie,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
if it's in your practice, if it's in your ethics to ingest animal proteins, it's true that for instance, 200 calories of steak or chicken or fish or eggs will have a higher density of essential amino acids than the equivalent amount of calories from nuts or plants. So I'm not, for the vegans and vegetarians, I'm certainly not saying there's no way that you can support muscle growth.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
You absolutely can. I encourage you to think about this protein density issue and whether or not you're getting sufficient essential amino acids, especially leucine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
But I think the simple takeaway from the literature that I was able to extract, eating two to four times a day, making sure you're getting sufficient amino acids in a way that's compatible with your ethics and with your nutritional regimen is going to support muscle repair, muscle growth, strength improvements, et cetera, just fine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Last but not least, I want to thank you for your time and attention today. And as always, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. Today, I want to talk about something that is vitally important for not just athletic performance, but for your entire life and indeed for your longevity, and that's muscle.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Now I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each and every night. Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop about one to three degrees.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees. Eight Sleep automatically regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your unique needs.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Now I find that extremely useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night and warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
And I know that because Eight Sleep has a great sleep tracker that tells me how well I've slept and the types of sleep that I'm getting throughout the night. Their latest model, the Pod 4 Ultra, also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees in order to improve your airflow and stop you from snoring.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
If you decide to try Eight Sleep, you have 30 days to try it at home and you can return it if you don't like it. No questions asked, but I'm sure that you'll love it. Go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and the UAE.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra. Today's episode is also brought to us by Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need, but nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, all in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are vital for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or your nerve cells.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Drinking element dissolved in water makes it extremely easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes. To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing. They have a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. They have watermelon, citrus, et cetera. Frankly, I love them all. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim an Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. I'd now like to shift our attention to how to use specific aspects of muscular contraction to improve muscle hypertrophy, muscle growth, as well as improving muscle strength. There are a lot of reasons to want to get stronger.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
And I should just mention that it's not always the case that getting stronger involves muscles getting bigger. There are ways for muscles to get stronger without getting bigger. However, increasing the size of a muscle almost inevitably increases the strength of that muscle, at least to some degree.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Reasons why most everyone should want to get their muscles stronger is that muscles are generally getting progressively weaker across the lifespan. So when I say getting stronger, it's not necessarily about being able to move
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
And one of the things that's exquisite and fantastic about the human brain is that it can direct all sorts of different kinds of movement, different speeds of movement, movement of different durations, all of that, is governed by the relationship between the nervous system, neurons, and their connections to muscle. So today, as always, we're going to talk a little bit of mechanism.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
increasing amounts of weight in the gym, but rather to offset some of the normal decline in strength and posture and the ability to generate a large range of movement safely that occurs as we age. So there's an important principle of muscle physiology called the Henneman size principle. And the Henneman size principle essentially says that we recruit what are called motor units
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Motor units are just the connections between nerve and muscle in a pattern that staircases from low threshold to high threshold. What this means is when you pick up something that is light, you're going to use the minimum amount of nerve to muscle energy in order to move that thing. Likewise, when you pick up an object that's heavy,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
you're going to use the minimum amount of nerve to muscle connectivity and energy in order to move that object. So it's basically a conservation of energy principle. Now, if you continue to exert effort of movement, what will happen is you will tend to recruit more and more motor units with time.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
As you recruit more and more of these motor units, these connections between these lower motor neurons and muscle, that's when you start to get changes in the muscle. That's when you open the gate for the potential for the muscles to get stronger and to get larger. And so the way this process works has been
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
badly misunderstood in the kind of online literature of weight training and bodybuilding, and even in sports physiology, the Henneman size principle is kind of a foundational principle within muscle physiology, but many people have come to interpret it by saying that the way to recruit high threshold motor units, the ones that are hard to get to, is to just use heavy weights.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
And that's actually not the case. As we'll talk about, the research supports that weights in a very large range of sort of a percentage of your maximum, anywhere from 30 to 80%. So weights that are not very light, but are moderately light to heavy can cause changes in the connections between nerve and muscle that lead to muscle strength and muscle hypertrophy. Put differently,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Heavy weights can help build muscle and strength, but they are not required. What one has to do is adhere to a certain number of parameters, just a couple of key variables that I'll spell out for you. And if you do that, you can greatly increase muscle hypertrophy, muscle size, and or muscle strength if that's what you want to do.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
And you don't necessarily have to use heavy weights in order to do that. Now, I'm sure the power lifters and the people that like to move heavy weights around, will say, no, if you want to get strong, you absolutely have to lift heavy weights.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
And that might be true if you want to get very strong, but for most people who are interested in supporting their muscular such that they offset any age-related decline in strength or in increasing hypertrophy and strength to some degree, there really isn't a need to use the heaviest weights possible in order to build strength and muscle.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
So there are three major stimuli for changing the way that muscle works and making muscles stronger, larger, or better in some way. And those are stress, tension, and damage. Those three things don't necessarily all have to be present, but stress of some kind has to exist. So this is very reminiscent of neuroplasticity in the brain. There is a good predictor of how well
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
or how efficient you will be in building the strength and or if you like the size of a given muscle. And it has everything to do with those upper motor neurons that are involved in deliberate control of muscle. You can actually do this test right now. You can just kind of march across your body mentally and see whether or not you can independently contract any or all of your muscles.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Because everything about muscle hypertrophy, about stimulating muscle growth, is about generating isolated contractions, about challenging specific muscles in a very unnatural way. Whereas with strength, it's about using musculature as a system, moving weights, moving resistance, moving the body.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
I'm going to explain how neurons control muscle. We will touch on some nutritional themes and how that relates to muscle in particular, a specific amino acid that if it's available in your bloodstream frequently enough and at sufficient levels can help you build and improve the quality of muscle. We are also going to talk about recovery. That's when muscle grows.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
The specific goal of hypertrophy is to isolate specific nerve to muscle pathways so that you stimulate the chemical and signaling transduction events in muscles so that those muscles respond by getting larger. So there's a critical distinction in terms of getting stronger versus trying to get muscles to be larger hypertrophy per se. And it has to do with how much you isolate those muscles.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
So you can nest this as a principle for yourself, which is if you want to get stronger, it's really about moving progressively greater loads or increasing the amount of weight that you move. Whereas if you're specifically interested in generating hypertrophy, it's all about trying to generate those really hard, almost painful localized contractions of muscle.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
If ever there was an area of practical science that was very confused, very controversial, and almost combative at times, it would be this issue of how best to train. I suppose the only thing that's even more barbed wire of a conversation than that is how best to eat for health. Those seem to be the two most common areas of online battle. What's very clear now from all the literature is that
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Once you know roughly your one repetition maximum, the maximum amount of weight that you can perform an exercise with for one repetition in good form, full range of motion, that it's very clear that moving weights or using bands or using body weight, for instance, in the 30 to 80% of one rep maximum, that is going to be the most beneficial range in terms of muscle hypertrophy and strength.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
So muscle growth and strength. So let's say you're somebody who's been doing some resistance exercise kind of on and off over the years, and you decide you want to get serious about that for sake of sport or offsetting age-related declines in strength. The range of sets to do in order to improve strength ranges anywhere from two, believe it or not, to 20 per week.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Again, these are sets per week and they don't necessarily all have to be performed in the same weight training session. It appears that five sets per week in this 30% to 80% of the one repetition maximum range is what's required just to maintain your muscles. So think about that. If you're somebody who's kind of averse to resistance training, you are going to lose muscle size and strength.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Your metabolism will drop. Your posture will get worse. Everything in the context of nerve to muscle connectivity will get worse over time, unless you are generating five sets or more of this 30% to 80% of your one repetition maximum per week, okay? So what this means is for the typical person who hasn't done a lot of weight training, you need to do at least five sets per muscle group.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Now that's just to maintain. And then there's this huge range that goes all the way up to 15 and in some case, 20 sets per week. Now, how many sets you perform is going to depend on the intensity of the work that you perform.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
This is where it gets a little bit controversial, but I think nowadays most people agree that 10% of the sets of a given workout or 10% of workouts overall should be of the high intensity sort where one is actually working to muscular failure. But the point being that most of your training, most of your sets, should be not to failure.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
That's when muscle gets more flexible. None of that actually happens during training. It happens after training. Most people, when they hear the word muscle, they just think about strength. But of course, muscles are involved in everything that we do. They are involved in speaking. They're involved in sitting and standing up. They're involved in lifting objects, including ourselves.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
And the reason for that is it allows you to do more volume of work. So we can make this simple, perform anywhere from five to 15 sets of resistance exercise per week, and that's per muscle, and that's in this 30 to 80% of what your one repetition maximum.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
That seems to be the most scientifically supported way of offsetting any decline in muscle strength, if you're working in the kind of five set range, and in increasing muscle strength when you start to get up into the 10 and 15 set range.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
but it's pretty clear that performing this five to 15 sets per week, whether or not it's in one workout or whether that's divided up across multiple workouts is really what's going to be most beneficial. And please do keep in mind Henneman's size principle and the recruitment of motor units.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
And remember the better you are at contracting particular muscles and isolating those muscles, the fewer sets likely you need to do in order to get the desired effect. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also contains adaptogens. I started taking AG1 way back in 2012, long before I even knew what a podcast was.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
I started taking it and I still take it every single day because it ensures that I meet my quota for daily vitamins and minerals, and it helps make sure that I get enough prebiotics and probiotics to support my gut health.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Over the past 10 years, gut health has emerged as something that we realize is important not only for the health of our digestion, but also for our immune system and for the production of neurotransmitters and neuromodulators, things like dopamine and serotonin. In other words, gut health is critical for proper brain function.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery
Now, of course, I strive to eat healthy whole foods from unprocessed sources for the majority of my nutritional intake, but there are a number of things in AG1, including specific micronutrients, that are hard or impossible to get from whole foods.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
the debris that surrounds neurons, especially injured neurons. And the glymphatic system is very active during sleep. And the glymphatic system is something that you want very active because it's going to clear away the debris that sits between the neurons and the cells that surround the connections between the neurons called the glia.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
Those cells are actively involved in repairing the connections between neurons when damaged. So the glymphatic system, is so important that many people, if not all people who get TBI are told, get adequate rest, you need to sleep. And that's kind of twofold advice. On the one hand, it's telling you to get sleep because all these good things happen in sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
Principles are far more important than any one experiment or one description of mechanism and certainly far more important than any one protocol because principles allow you to think about your nervous system and work with it in ways that best serve you. So let's start. about pain and the somatosensory system.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
It's also about getting those people to not continue to engage in their activity full-time or really try and hammer through it. The glymphatic system has been shown to be activated further in two ways. One is that sleeping on one side, not on back or stomach, seems to increase the amount of wash out or wash through, I should say, of the glymphatic system.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
The other thing that has been shown to improve the function of the glymphatic system is a certain form of exercise. And I want to be very, very clear here. I will never, and I am not suggesting that people exercise in any way that aggravates their injury or that goes against their physician's advice.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
However, there's some interesting data that zone two cardio for 30 to 45 minutes, three times a week seems to improve the rates of clearance of some of the debris after injury and in general, injury or no, to accelerate and improve the rates of flow for the glymphatic system. It could be fast walking, it could be jogging, if you can do that with your injury safely. It could be cycling.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
And this is really interesting outside of TBI because what we know from aging is that aging is a nonlinear process. It's not like with every year of life, your brain gets a little older. Sometimes it follows what's more like a step function. You get these big jumps in markers of aging.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
I guess that we could think of them as jumps down because it's a negative thing for most everybody would like to live longer and be healthier in brain and body. And so the types of exercise I'm referring to now are really more about brain longevity and about keeping the brain healthy than they are about physical fitness. So I think this is really interesting.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
And if some of you would like to know the mechanism or at least the hypothesized mechanism, there's a molecule called aquaporin-4 that, is related to the glial system. So glia, it means glue in Latin, are these cells in the brain, the most numerous cells in the brain, in fact, that in sheath synapses, but they're very dynamic cells.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
Aquaporin-4 is mainly expressed by the glial cell called the astrocyte. Astro looks like a little star. Incredibly interesting cells. And the thing to remember is that the astrocytes bridge the connection between the neurons, the synapse, the connections between them and the vasculature, the blood system and the glymphatic system.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
So this glymphatic system and the glial astrocyte system is the system that we want chronically active throughout the day as much as possible. So low level walking, zone two cardio, and then at night during slow wave sleep is then really when this glymphatic system kicks in.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
So that should hopefully be an actionable takeaway provided that you can do that kind of cardio safely that I believe everybody should be doing who cares about brain longevity, not just people who are trying to get over TBI. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. By now, many of you have heard me say that if I could take just one supplement, that supplement would be AG1.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
The somatosensory system is, as the name implies, involved in understanding touch, physical feeling on our body. And the simplest way to think about the somatosensory system is that we have little sensors and those sensors come in the form of neurons, nerve cells that reside in our skin and in the deeper layers below the skin.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
The reason for that is AG1 is the highest quality and most complete of the foundational nutritional supplements available. What that means is that it contains not just vitamins and minerals, but also probiotics, prebiotics, and adaptogens to cover any gaps you may have in your diet and provide support for a demanding life.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
For me, even if I eat mostly whole foods and minimally processed foods, which I do for most of my food intake, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits and vegetables, vitamins and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone. For that reason, I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012. When I do that, it clearly bolsters my energy, my immune system, and my gut microbiome.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
These are all critical to brain function, mood, physical performance, and much more. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. For this month only, January 2025, AG1 is giving away 10 free travel packs and a year supply of vitamin D3 K2. Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim the 10 free travel packs and a year supply of vitamin D3 K2.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
Now I'd like to return a little bit to some of the subjective aspects of pain modulation, because I think it's so interesting and so actionable that everyone should know about this. Our interpretation, our subjective interpretation of a sensory event is immensely powerful for dictating our experience of the event.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
The molecule adrenaline, when it's liberated into our body, truly blunts our experience of pain. We all know the stories of people walking miles on stumped legs, people doing all sorts of things that were incredible feats that allowed them to move through what would otherwise be pain. And afterward they do experience extreme pain, but during the event, oftentimes they are not experiencing pain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
And that's because of the pain blunting effects of adrenaline. Adrenaline binding to particular receptors actually shuts down pain pathways. People who anticipate an injection of morphine immediately report the feeling of loss of pain. Their pain starts to diminish because they know they're going to get pain relief. And it's a powerful effect. Now, all of you are probably saying placebo effect.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
Placebo effects are very real. Placebo effects and belief effects, as they're called, have a profound effect on our experience of noxious stimuli like pain. And they can also have a profound effect on positive stimuli and things that we're looking forward to. One study that I think is particularly interesting here is from my colleague at Stanford, Sean Mackey. They did a neuroimaging study.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
They subjected people to pain. In this case, it was a heat pain. People have very specific thresholds to heat at which they cannot tolerate any more heat, but they explored the extent to which looking at an image of somebody, in this case, a romantic partner that the person loved would allow them to adjust their pain response. And it turns out it does. They could tolerate more pain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
And they reported it as not as painful. That response that feeling of love internally can blunt the pain experience to a significant degree these are not small effects and not surprisingly how early a relationship is how new a relationship is directly correlates with people's ability they showed to use this love this internal representation of love to blunt the pain response
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
We have some that correspond to, and we should say respond to mechanical touch. So, you know, pressure on the top of my hand or a pinpoint or other sensors, for instance, respond to heat, to cold, some respond to vibration.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
So for those of you that have been with your partners for many years and you love them very much and you're obsessed with them, terrific. You have a pre-installed, well, I suppose it's not pre-installed. You had to do the work because relationships are work, but you've got a installed mechanism for blunting pain. And again, these are not minor effects. These are major effects.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
And it's all going to be through that top-down modulation that we talked about, not unlike the mirror box experiments with phantom limb that relieve phantom pain or some other top-down modulation in the opposite examples, the nail through the boot, which is a visual image that made the person think it was painful when in fact it was painful, even though there was no tissue damage.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
It was all perceptual. So the pain system is really subject to these perceptual influences, which is remarkable because really when we think about the somatosensory system, it has this cognitive component, it's got this peripheral component, but there's another component, which is the way in which our sensation, our somatosensory system is woven in with our autonomic nervous system.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
independent of love, we're going to talk about something quite different, which is putting needles and electricity in different parts of the body, so-called acupuncture, something that For many people, it's been viewed as a kind of alternative medicine, but now there are excellent laboratories exploring what's called electroacupuncture and acupuncture.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
And I think what you'll be interested in and surprised to learn is that it does work, but sometimes it can exacerbate pain and sometimes it can relieve pain. And it all does that through very discreet pathways for which we can really
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
say this neuron connects to that neuron, connects to the adrenals, and we can tie this all back to dopamine because in the end, it's the chemicals and neural circuits that are giving rise to these perceptions or these experiences rather of things that we call pain, love, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
There are actually a lot of really good peer-reviewed studies supporting the use of acupuncture for in particular GI tract issues.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
In recent years, there's been an emphasis on trying to understand the mechanism of things like acupuncture and acupuncture itself, but as a way to try and understand how these sorts of practices might actually benefit people who are experiencing pain or for changing the nervous system or brain-body relationship in general.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
What I want to talk about in terms of acupuncture is the incredible way in which acupuncture illuminates the crosstalk between the somatosensory system, our ability to feel stuff externally, exteroception, internally, interoception, and how that somatosensory system is wired in with and communicating with our autonomic nervous system that regulates our levels of alertness or calmness.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
So this takes us all back to the homunculus. We have this representation of our body surface in our brain. That representation is what we call somatotopic. And what somatotopy is, is it just means that areas of your body that are near one another are represented by neurons that are nearby each other in the brain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
We have a huge number of different receptors in our skin and they take that information and send it down these wires that we call axons in the form of electrical signals to our spinal cord and then up to the brain. And within the spinal cord and brain, we have centers that interpret that information that actually makes sense of those electrical signals. And this is amazing because
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
The connections from those brain neurons are sent into the body and they are synchronized with, meaning they cross wire with and form synapses with some of the input from the viscera, from our guts, from our diaphragm, from our stomach, from our spleen, from our heart.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
Our internal organs are sending information up to this map in our brain of the body surface, but it's about internal information, what we call interoception, our ability to look inside or imagine inside and feel what we're feeling inside. So the way to think about this accurately is that our representation of ourself
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
is a representation of our internal workings, our viscera, our guts, everything inside our skin and the surface of our skin and the external world. And those three things are always being combined in a very interesting, complex, but very seamless way. Acupuncture involves taking needles and sometimes electricity and or heat as well, and stimulating particular locations on the body.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
Let's continue our discussion about neuroplasticity, this incredible feature of our nervous system that allows it to change itself in response to experience, and even in ways that we consciously and deliberately decide to change it. Most people don't know how to access neuroplasticity. And so that's what this entire month of the Huberman Lab Podcast has been about.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
And if somebody has a gastrointestinal issue, like their guts are moving too quick, they have diarrhea, you stimulate this area and it'll slow their gut motility down. Or if their gut motility is too slow, they're constipated, you stimulate someplace else and it accelerates it.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
Hearing about this, if it sounds kind of to a Westerner who's not thinking about the underlying neural circuitry, it could sound kind of wacky. But when you look at the neural circuitry, the neuroanatomy, it really starts to make sense. Intense stimulation of the abdomen, however, with this electroacupuncture has a very strong effect of increasing inflammation in the body.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
And this is important to understand because it's not just that stimulating the gut does this because you're activating the gut area, it activates a particular nerve pathway for the aficionados, it's the splenic spinal sympathetic axis, if you really want to know, and it's pro-inflammatory under most conditions.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
If for instance, the person is dealing with a particular bacterial infection, that can be beneficial. And this goes back to a much earlier discussion that we had on a previous podcast that we'll revisit again and again, which is that the stress response was designed to combat infection.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
So it turns out that there are certain patterns of stimulation on the abdomen that can actually liberate immune cells from our immune organs like our spleen and counter infection. When you stimulate these pathways that activate in particular the adrenals, the adrenal gland liberates norepinephrine and epinephrine, and the brain does as well.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
It binds to what are called the beta-noradrenergic receptors. Okay, so this is really getting kind of down into the weeds, but the beta-noradrenergic receptors activate the spleen, which liberates cells that combat infection. That's the short-term quick response.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
The more intense stimulation of the abdomen and other areas can be pro-inflammatory because of the ways that they trigger certain loops that go back to the brain and trigger the sort of anxiety pathways that exacerbates pain. So one pathway stimulates norepinephrine and blunts pain, the other one doesn't. What does all this mean? How are we supposed to put all of this together?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
Well, there's a paper that was published in Nature Medicine in 2014. This is an excellent journal. that describes how dopamine can activate the vagus peripherally and norepinephrine can activate the vagus peripherally and reduce inflammation. What this means is that there are real maps of our body surface that when stimulated,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
communicate with our autonomic nervous system, the system that controls alertness or calmness, and thereby releases either molecules like norepinephrine and dopamine, which make us more alert and blunt our response to pain, and they reduce inflammation. But there are yet other pathways that when stimulated are pro-inflammatory.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
None of those sensors has a different unique form of information that it uses. It just sends electrical potentials into the nervous system. Pain and the sensation of pain is, believe it or not, a controversial word in the neuroscience field. People prefer to use the word nociception Nociceptors are the sensors in the skin that detect particular types of stimuli.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
One of the things that bothers me so much these days, and I'm not easily irritated, but what really bothers me is when people are talking about inflammation, like inflammation is bad. Inflammation is terrific. Inflammation is the reason why cells are called to the site of injury to clear it out. Inflammation is what's going to allow you to heal from any injury. Chronic inflammation is bad.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
But acute inflammation is absolutely essential. Remember those kids that we talked about earlier that have mutations in these receptors for sensing pain, they never get inflammation. And that's why their joints literally disintegrate. It's really horrible because they don't actually have the inflammation response because it was never triggered by the pain response.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
So I think that the data on acupuncture are turning out to be very interesting. I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, David. David makes a protein bar unlike any other. It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. That's right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from protein. These bars from David also taste amazing.
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Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
My favorite flavor is chocolate chip cookie dough, but then again, I also like the chocolate fudge flavored one and I also like the cake flavored one. Basically, I like all the flavors. They're incredibly delicious. For me personally, I strive to eat mostly whole foods.
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Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
However, when I'm in a rush or I'm away from home, or I'm just looking for a quick afternoon snack, I often find that I'm looking for a high quality protein source. With David, I'm able to get 28 grams of protein with the calories of a snack, which makes it very easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight each day.
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Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
And it allows me to do that without taking in excess calories. I typically eat a David Barr in the early afternoon or even mid-afternoon if I want to bridge that gap between lunch and dinner. I like that it's a little bit sweet, so it tastes like a tasty snack, but it's also giving me that 28 grams of very high quality protein with just 150 calories.
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Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
If you would like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, the link is davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Before I continue, I just thought I'd answer a question that I get a lot, which is what about Wim Hof breathing?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
Wim Hof, also called AKA the Iceman, has this breathing that's similar to TUMO breathing, as it was originally called, involves basically hyperventilating and then doing some exhales and some breath holds. A number of people have asked me about it in relation to pain management. The effect of doing that kind of breathing, it's not a mysterious effect. It liberates adrenaline from the adrenals.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
When you have adrenaline in your system and when the spleen is very active, That response is used to counter infection and stress counters infection by liberating killer cells in the body. You don't want the stress response to stay on indefinitely, however.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
Things like Wim Hof breathing, like ice baths, anything that releases adrenaline will counter the infection, but you want to regulate the duration of that adrenaline response. Today we've talked about a variety of tools, but I want to center in on a particular sequence of tools that hopefully you won't need, but presumably if you're a human being and you're active, you will need at some point.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
It's about managing injury and recovering and healing fast, or at least as fast as possible. It includes removing the pain. It includes getting mobility back and getting back to a normal life, whatever that means for you. I want to emphasize that what I'm about to talk about next was developed in close consultation with Kelly Starrett, who many of you probably have heard of before.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
Kelly can be found at The Ready State. He's a formally trained, so degreed and educated exercise physiologist. He's a world expert in movement and tissue rehabilitation. So I asked Kelly, I made it really simple. I said, okay, let's say I were to sprain my ankle or break my arm or injure my knee or ACL tear or something like that, or shoulder injury.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
what are the absolute necessary things to do regardless of situation? So the first one is a very basic one that now you have a lot of information to act on, which is sleep is essential. And so we both agreed eight hours of sleep would be ideal, but if not at least eight hours immobile. So that's a non-negotiable.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
It actually comes from the Latin word nocera, which means to harm. And why would neuroscientists not want to talk about pain? Well, it's very subjective. It has a mental component and a physical component. We cannot say that pain is simply an attempt to avoid physical harm to the body. And here's why, they actually can be dissociated from one another.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
in terms of getting the foundation for allowing for glymphatic clearance and tissue clearance, et cetera. The other is if possible, unless it's absolutely excruciating or you just can't do it, a 10 minute walk per day. Of course, you don't want to exacerbate the injury, at least a 10 minute walk per day and probably longer. This is where it gets interesting.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
I was taught, I learned that when you injure yourself, you're supposed to ice something, you're supposed to put ice on it. But I didn't realize this, but when speaking to exercise physiologists and some physicians, they said that the ice is really more of a placebo.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
It numbs the environment of the injury, which is not surprising, and will eliminate the pain for a short while, but it has some negative effects.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
that perhaps offset its use it actually can create some like clotting and sludging of the of the tissue and fluids which is bad because you want the macrophages and the other cell types phagocytosing eating up the debris and injury and moving it out of there so that it can repair So that was surprising to me, which made me ask, well, then what about heat?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
Well, it turns out heat is actually quite beneficial. The major effects seem to be explained by heat improving the viscosity of the tissues and the clearance and the perfusion of fluid, blood, lymph, and other fluids out of the injury area. So all of this might sound just like common sense knowledge.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
I always just thought it's ice, it's non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs, it's things that block prostaglandins. So things like aspirin, ibuprofen, Acetaminophen, those things generally work by blocking things like they're called the Cox prostaglandin blockers and things of that sort, things in that pathway.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
Those sorts of treatments which reduce inflammation may not be so great at the beginning when you want inflammation. They may be important for limiting pain so people can be functional at all. But the things that I talked about today really are anchored in three principles. One is that the inflammation response is a good one.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
It calls to the site of injury, things that are going to clean up the injury in bad cells. Then there are going to be things that are going to improve perfusion, like the glymphatic system, getting deep sleep, feet elevated, sleeping on one side, low level zone two cardio three times a week. Many people ask me about platelet rich plasma, so-called PRP.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
They take blood, they enrich for platelets, and then they re-inject it back into people. Here's the deal. It has never been shown whether or not the injection itself is what's actually creating the effect. The claims that PRP actually contains stem cells are very, very feeble.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
And when you look at the literature and you talk to any one expert in the stem cell field, they will tell you that the number of stem cells in PRP is infinitesimally small. Stem cells are an exciting area of technology. However, there's a clinic, down in Florida that was shut down a couple years ago for injecting stem cells harvested from patients into the eye for macular degeneration.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
These were people that were suffering from poor vision. And very shortly after injecting these stem cells into the eyes, they went completely blind. And I'm not here to tell you that you should or shouldn't do something, but I do think that anything involving stem cells, one should be very cautious of.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
And there's a famous case that was published in the British Journal of Medicine where a construction worker, I think he fell is how the story went. And a 14 inch nail went through his boot
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
The major issue with stem cells that I think is concerning is that stem cells are cells that want to become lots of different things, not just the tissue that you're interested in. So if you damage your knee and you inject stem cells into your knee, you need to molecularly restrict those stem cells so that they don't become tumor cells, right? A tumor is a collection of stem cells.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
One needs to approach this with extreme caution, even if it's your own blood or stem cells that you're reinjecting. So I'm going to close there. I've talked about a lot of tools today. I've talked a lot about somatosensation, about plasticity, about pain, about acupuncture. some of the nuance of acupuncture, inflammation, stress. We even talked a little bit about high intensity breathing.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
So as always, we take kind of a whirlwind tour through a given topic, lay down some tools as we go. Hopefully the principles that relate to pain and injury, but also neuroplasticity in general today in the context of the somatosensory system will be of use to all of you. I don't wish injury
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
on any of you but i do hope that you'll take the information do with it what you will once again thanks so much for your time and attention today and as always thank you for your interest in science
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
and up through the boot and he was in excruciating pain just beyond anything he'd experienced he reported that he couldn't even move in any dimension even a tiny bit without feeling excruciating pain they brought him into the clinic into the hospital they were able to cut away the boot and they realized that the nail had gone between two toes and it had actually not impaled the skin at all
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
His visual image of the nail going through his boot gave him the feeling, the legitimate feeling that he was experiencing the pain of a nail going through his foot, which is incredible because it speaks to the power of the mind in this pain scenario. And it also speaks to the power of the specificity. It's not like he thought that his foot was on fire.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
He thought because he saw a nail going through his foot, it was going through his boot, but he thought it was going through his foot. that it was sharp pain of the sort that a nail would produce.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
It really speaks to the incredible capacity that these top-down, these higher level cognitive functions have in interpreting what we're experiencing out in the periphery, even just on the basis of what we see. So why are we talking about pain during a month on
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
Well, it turns out that the pain system offers us a number of different principles that we can leverage to A, ensure that if we are ever injured, we are able to understand the difference between injury and pain, because there is a difference. That if we're ever in pain, that we can understand the difference between injury and pain. that we will be able to interpret our pain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
And during the course of today's podcast, I'm going to cover protocols that help eliminate pain from both ends of the spectrum, from the periphery, at the level of the injury, and through these top-down mental mechanisms. Believe it or not, we're going to talk about love. A colleague of mine at Stanford, who runs a major pain clinic, is
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
and has published quality peer reviewed data on the role of love in modulating the pain response. So what we're talking about today is plasticity of perception, which has direct bearing on emotional pain and has direct bearing on trauma. So let's get started in thinking about what happens And I will tell you just now that there is a mutation, a genetic mutation in a particular sodium channel.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
We've explored neuroplasticity from a variety of different perspectives. We talked about representational plasticity. We talked about the importance of focus and reward. We talked about this amazing and somewhat surprising aspect of the vestibular system, how altering our relationship to gravity.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
A sodium channel is one of these little holes in neurons that allows them to fire action potentials. It's important to the function of the neuron. It's also important for the development of certain neurons. And there's a particular mutation. There are kids that are born without this sodium channel 1.7, if you want to look it up. Those kids experience no pain. No pain whatsoever.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
And it is a terrible situation. They don't tend to live very long due to accidents. It's a really terrible and unfortunate circumstance. In fact, it's reasonable to speculate that one of the reasons, not all, but one of the reasons why people might differ in their sensitivity to pain is by way of genetic variation in how many of these sorts of receptors that they express.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
People who make too much of this receptor experience extreme pain from even subtle stimuli. So let's talk about some of the features of how we're built physically and how that relates to pain and how we can recover from injury. I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night. Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees.
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Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees. Eight Sleep makes it very easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to program the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep. Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation of the Pod Cover called the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
I find that very useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night. warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep. It also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman. So first of all, We have maps of our body surface in our brain. It's called a homunculus.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
That representation is scaled in a way that matches sensitivity. So the areas of your body that are most sensitive have a lot more brain real estate devoted to them. Your back is an enormous piece of tissue compared to your fingertip, but your back has fewer receptors devoted to it. And the representation of your back in your brain is actually pretty small.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
And in addition to that, making errors as we try and learn can open up windows to plasticity, but we have not really talked so much about directing the plasticity toward particular outcomes and we really haven't talked yet about how to undo things that we don't want.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
Whereas the representation of your finger is enormous. So how big a brain area is devoted to a given body part is directly related to the density of receptors in that body part, not the size of the body part. You can actually know how sensitive a given body part is and how much brain area is devoted to it through what's called two-point discrimination. You can do this experiment if you want.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
I think I've described this once or twice before, but basically if you have someone put, maybe take two pens and put them maybe six inches apart on your back and touch while you're facing away. And they'll ask you how many points they're touching you and you say two, but if they move those closer together, say three inches, you're likely to experience it as one point of contact.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
Whereas on your finger, you could play that game all day. And as long as there's a millimeter or so spacing, you will know that it's two points as opposed to one. And that's because there's more pixels, more density of receptors. This has direct bearing to pain because it says that areas of the body that have denser receptors are going to be more sensitive to pain than to others.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
So just as a rule of thumb, areas of your body that are injured, that are large areas that have low sensitivity before injury likely are going to experience less pain. And the literature shows will heal
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
more slowly because they don't have as many cells around to produce inflammation and you might say wait i thought inflammation is bad well one of the things i really want to get across today is that inflammation is not bad inflammation out of control is bad but inflammation is wonderful inflammation is the tissue repair response i thought it might be a nice time to just think about
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
between the periphery and the central maps in a way that many of you have probably heard about before, which will frame the discussion a little bit better, which is phantom limb pain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
Now, some of you are probably familiar with this, but for people that have an arm or a leg or a finger or some other portion of their body amputated, it's not uncommon for those people to feel as if they still have that limb or appendage or piece of their body intact. And typically, unfortunately, the sensation of that limb is not one of the limb being nice and relaxed and just there.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
The sensation is that the limb is experiencing pain or is contorted in the specific orientation that it was around the time of the injury. has a blunt force to the hand and they end up having their hand amputated, typically they will continue to feel pain in their phantom hand, which is pretty wild.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
And that's because the representation of that hand is still intact in the cortex, in the brain, and it's trying to balance its levels of activity. Normally it's getting what's called proprioceptive feedback. Proprioception is just our knowledge of where our limbs are in space. It's an extremely important aspect of our somatosensory system. And there's no proprioceptive feedback.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
And so a lot of the circuits start to ramp up their levels of activity and they become very conscious of the phantom limb. Now, before my lab was at Stanford, I was at UC San Diego. And one of my colleagues was a guy, everyone just calls him by his last name, Ramachandran, who is famous for understanding this phantom limb phenomenon and developing a very simple, but very powerful solution to it.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
And so today, we are going to explore that aspect of neuroplasticity, and we are going to do that in the context of a very important and somewhat sensitive topic, which is pain, and in some cases, injury to the nervous system. We, as always here on this podcast, are going to discuss some of the science, we get into mechanism, but we also really get at principles.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
that speaks to the incredible capacity of top-down modulation. And top-down modulation, the ability to use one's brain cognition and senses to control pain in the body is something that everyone, not just people missing limbs or in chronic pain can learn to benefit from because it is a way to tap into our ability to use our mind to control perceptions of what's happening in our body.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
So what did Ramachandran do? Ramachandran had people who were missing a limb put their intact limb into a box that had mirrors in it such that when they looked in the box and they moved their intact limb, the opposite limb, which was a reflection of the intact limb, because they're missing the opposite limb, they would see it as if it was intact.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
And as they would move their intact limb, they would visualize with their eyes that's in the place of the absent limb, so this is all by mirrors, moving around and they would feel immediate relief from the phantom pain. And he would tell them and they would direct their hand toward a orientation that felt comfortable to them. Then they would exit the mirror box. They would take their hand out.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
And they would feel as if the hand was now in its relaxed, normal position. So you could get real time in moments, remapping of the representation of the hand. Now that's amazing. This is the kind of thing that all of us would like to be able to do if we are in pain, because If you do anything for long enough, including live, you're going to experience pain of some sort.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
And this, again, I just want to remind you, isn't just about physical injuries and pain. This has direct relevance to emotional pain as well, which we, of course, will talk about. So the Ramachandran studies were really profound because they said a couple of things. One, plasticity can be very fast, that it can be driven by the experience of something, just the visual experience.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
And so this may come as a shock to some of you, and by no means am I trying to be insensitive, but pain is a perceptual thing as much as it's a physical thing. It's a belief system about what you're experiencing in your body. And that has important relevance for healing different types of injury and the pain associated with that injury.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
Now, this brings up another topic, which is definitely related to neuroplasticity and injury, but is a more general one that I hear about a lot, which is traumatic brain injury. Many injuries are not just about the limb and the lack of use of the limb, but concussion and head injury. But I want to talk a little bit about what is known about recovery from concussion.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
And this is very important because it has implications for just normal aging as well and offset setting some of the cognitive decline and physical decline that occurs with normal aging.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
Typically after TBI, there's a constellation of symptoms that many people, if not all people with TBI report, which is headache, photophobia, that lights become kind of aversive, sleep disruption, trouble concentrating, sometimes mood issues. There's a huge range and of course the severity will vary, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Control Pain & Heal Faster With Your Brain
it's very clear that regardless of whether or not there was a skull break and regardless of when the TBI happened or how many times it's happened, that the system that repairs the brain, the adult brain, is mainly centered around this lymphatic system that we call for the brain, the glymphatic system. It's sort of like a sewer system that clears out
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
I want to be very clear that white noise has been shown to really enhance brain states for learning in certain individuals, in particular in adults. but white noise actually can have a detrimental effect on auditory learning and maybe even the development of the auditory system in very young children, in particular in infants.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
So first I'd like to talk about the beneficial effects of white noise on learning. There are some really excellent studies on this. The first one that I'd like to just highlight is one that's entitled Low Intensity White Noise Improves Performance in Auditory Working Memory Task, an fMRI study.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
This is a study that explored whether or not learning could be enhanced by playing white noise in the background But the strength of the study is that they looked at some of the underlying neural circuitry and the activation of the neural circuitry in these people as they did the learning task.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
And what it essentially illustrates is that white noise, provided that white noise is of low enough intensity, meaning not super loud, it actually could enhance learning to a significant degree. And this has been shown now for a huge number of different types of learning. I was very relieved to find, or I should say excited to find this study published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
This is a 2014 paper. White noise improves learning by modulating activity in dopaminergic midbrain regions and the right superior temporal sulcus. I don't expect you to know what the dopamine midbrain region is, but if you're like me, you probably took highlighted notice of the word dopaminergic.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
Dopamine is a neuromodulator, meaning it's a chemical that's released in our brain and body, but mostly in our brain that modulates, meaning controls the likelihood that certain brain areas will be active and other brain areas won't be active. And dopamine is associated with motivation. Dopamine is associated with craving.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
But what's so interesting to me is that it appears that white noise itself can raise what we call the basal, the baseline levels of dopamine that are being released from this area, the substantia nigra. So now we're starting to get a more full picture of how particular sounds in our environment can increase learning.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
And that's in part, I believe, through the release of dopamine from substantia nigra. So I'm not trying to shift you away from binaural beats, if that's your thing, but it does appear that turning on white noise at a low level, but not too loud can allow you to learn better because of the ways that it's modulating your brain chemistry. So what about white noise and hearing loss in development?
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
I find that it greatly improves all aspects of my health. I just feel so much better when I take it, and I attribute my ability to consistently work long hours over all these years while also maintaining a full life, having tons of energy, sleeping well, not getting sick, et cetera, in large part to AG1. And of course, I do a lot of things. I exercise, I eat right, et cetera.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
I know a lot of people with children have these kind of noise machines, like sound waves and things like that, that help the kids sleep. And look, I think kids getting good sleep and parents getting good sleep is vital to physical and mental health and family health. So I certainly sympathize with those needs.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
However, there are data that indicate that white noise during development can be detrimental to the auditory system. I don't want to frighten any parents. If you played white noise to your kids, this doesn't mean that their auditory system or their speech patterns are going to be disrupted. or that their interpretation of speech is going to be disrupted forever.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
There are data published in the Journal of Science some years ago showing that when they exposed very young animals to this white noise, it actually disrupted the maps of the auditory world within the brain.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
So auditory information goes up into our cortex, into essentially the outside portion of our brain that's responsible for all of our higher level cognition, our planning, our decision-making, et cetera, creativity.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
and up there we have what are called tonotopic maps what's a tonotopic map well remember the cochlea how it's coiled and at one end it responds to high frequencies and the other end it responds to low frequencies sort of like a piano in the auditory system we have what are called tonotopic maps where frequency high frequency to low frequency and everything in between is organized in a very systematic way
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
Now, our experience of life from the time we're a baby until the time that we die is not systematic. We don't hear low frequencies at one part of the room or at one part of the day and high frequencies at another part of the room, another part of the day. They're all intermixed.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
But if you remember the cochlea separates them out, just like a prism of light separates out the different wavelengths of light, the cochlea separates out the different frequencies. And the developing brain takes those separated out frequencies and learns this relationship between itself, meaning the child and the outside world. white noise essentially contains no tonotopic information.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
The frequencies are all intermixed. It's just noise. So, One of the reasons why hearing a lot of white noise during development for long periods of time can be detrimental to the development of the auditory system is that these tonotopic maps don't form normally. At least they don't in experimental animals.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
Now, the reason I'm raising this is that many people I know, in particular friends who have small children, they say, I want to use a white noise machine while I sleep. but is it okay for my baby to use a white noise machine?
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
But with each passing year, and by the way, I'm turning 50 this September, I continue to feel better and better. And I attribute a lot of that to AG1. AG1 uses the highest quality ingredients in the right combinations, and they're constantly improving their formulas without increasing the cost. So I'm honored to have them as a sponsor of this podcast.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
And I consulted with various people, scientists about this, and they said, well, you know, the baby is also hearing the parents' voices and is hearing music and is hearing the dog bark. So it's not the only thing they're hearing. However, every single person that I consulted with said, But you know, there's neuroplasticity during sleep. That's when the kid is sleeping.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
And I don't know that you'd want to expose a child to white noise the entire night because it might degrade that tonotopic map. It might not destroy it, might not eliminate it, but it could make it a little less clear, like sort of taking the keys on the piano and taping a few of them together.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
Once your auditory system has formed, once it's established these tonotopic maps, then the presence of background white noise should not be a problem at all. In fact, it shouldn't be a problem at all because you're also not attending to it.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
The idea is that it's playing at a low enough volume that you kind of forget it in the background and that it's supporting learning by bringing your brain into a heightened state of alertness and especially this heightened state of dopamine, dopaminergic activation of the brain, which will make it easier to learn faster and easier to learn the information.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors function. Last year, I became a function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health.
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This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient levels and much more. They've also recently added tests for toxins such as BPA exposure from harmful plastics and tests for PFAS or forever chemicals.
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Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to your physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors who are expert in the relevant areas. For example, in one of my first tests with function, I learned that I had elevated levels of mercury in my blood.
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Function not only helped me detect that, but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, I'd been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification. And I should say, by taking a second function test,
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
that approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by function simplicity and at the level of cost. It is very affordable.
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As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners.
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Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. So now I want to talk about auditory learning and actually how you can get better at learning information that you hear, not just information that you see on a page or motor skill learning. So there's a phenomenon called the cocktail party effect.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, AG1 is giving away an AG1 welcome kit with five free travel packs and a free bottle of vitamin D3 K2. Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim the special welcome kit with five free travel packs and a free bottle of vitamin D3 K2. Can you hear me? Can you hear me?
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
Now, even if you've never been to a cocktail party, you've experienced and participated in what's called the cocktail party effect. The cocktail party effect is where you are in an environment that's rich with sound, many sound waves coming from many different sources, many different things. So in a city, in a classroom, in a car that contains people having various conversations,
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
you somehow need to be able to attend to specific components of those sound waves, meaning you need to hear certain people and not others. You and your brain are exquisitely good at creating a cone of auditory attention, a narrow band of attention with which you can extract the information you care about and wipe away or erase all the rest. Now this takes work, it takes attention.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
One of the reasons why you might come home from a loud gathering, maybe a stadium, a sports event or a cocktail party for that matter, and feel just exhausted is because if you were listening to conversations there or trying to listen to those conversations while watching the game, it takes attentional effort and the brain uses up a lot of energy
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
just at rest, but it uses up even more energy when you are paying strong attention to something, literally caloric energy, burning up things like glucose, et cetera. Even if you're ketogenic, it's burning up energy. So the cocktail party effect has been studied extensively in the field of neuroscience.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
And we now know at a mechanistic level, how one accomplishes this feat of attending to certain sounds, despite the fact that we are being bombarded with all sorts of other sounds. So there are a couple of ways that we do this. First of all, much as with our visual system, we can expand or contract our visual field of view Okay, we can do that. We can expand and contract our visual field of view.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
Well, we can expand and contract our auditory field of view, so to speak, or our auditory window. We can really hear one person or a small number of people amidst a huge background of chatter because we pay attention to the onset of words but also to the offset of words.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
So one of the more common phenomenon that I think we all experience is you go to a party and, or you meet somebody new and you say, hi, I would say, hi, I'm Andrew. And they'd say, hi, I'm Jeff, for instance. Great, great to meet you. And then a minute later, I can't remember the guy's name. Now, is it because I don't care what his name is?
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
No, somehow the presence of other auditory information interfered. It's not that my mind was necessarily someplace else. It's that the signal to noise, as we say, wasn't high enough. Somehow the way he said it, or the way it landed on my ears, which is really all that matters, right, when it comes down to learning, is such that it just didn't achieve high enough signal to noise.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
Today, we're going to talk all about hearing and balance and how you can use your ability to hear specific things and your balance system in order to learn anything faster. The auditory system, meaning the hearing system, and your balance system, which is called the vestibular system,
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
So the next time you ask somebody's name, remember, listen to the onset of what they say and the offset. So we'll be paying attention to the j in Jeff, and it would be paying attention to the th in F, in Jeff, excuse me. And chances are you'll be able to remember that name.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
Now I do acknowledge that trying to learn every word in a sentence by paying attention to its onset and offset could actually be kind of disruptive to the learning process. So this would be more for specific attention. Using the attentional system, we can actually learn much faster and we can actually activate neuroplasticity in the adult brain, something that's very challenging to do.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
and that the auditory system is one of the main ways in which we can access neuroplasticity more broadly. I'd like to now talk about balance and our sense of balance, which is controlled by, believe it or not, our ears and things in our ears, as well as by our brain. and elements of our spinal cord.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
Okay, well, if you can hear me, that's amazing because what it means is that my voice is causing little tiny changes in the airwaves wherever you happen to be and that your ears and whatever's contained in those ears and in your brain can take those sound waves and make sense of them. And that is an absolutely fantastic and staggering feat of biology.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
The reason why we're talking about balance and how to get better at balancing in the episode about hearing is that all the goodies that are going to allow you to do that are in your ears. They're also in your brain, but they're mostly in your ears.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
So as you recall from the beginning of this episode, you have two cochlea, cochleas, that are one on each side of your head, and that's a little spiral snail-shaped thing that converts sound waves into electrical signals that the rest of your brain can understand. Right next to those, you have what are called semicircular canals.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
The semicircular canals can be best visualized as thinking about three hula hoops with marbles in them. So imagine that you have a hula hoop and it's not filled with marbles all the way around. It's just got some marbles down there at the base. Okay, so if you were to move that hula hoop around, one of those hula hoops is positioned vertically with respect to gravity, but basically it's upright.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
Another one of those hula hoops is basically at a 90 degree angle, basically parallel to the floor. If you're standing up right now, if you're seated. Okay. And the other one is kind of tilted about 45 degrees in between those. Now, why is the system there? Well, those marbles within each one of those hula hoops can move around but they'll only move around if your head moves in a particular way.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
And there are three planes or three ways that your head can move. Your head can move up and down, like I'm nodding right now, so that's called pitch. Or I can shake my head, no, side to side, that's called yaw. And then there's roll, tilting the head from side to side, the way that a cute puppy might look at you from side to side. Pitch, yaw, and roll,
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
are the movements of the head in each of the three major planes of motion, as we say. And each one of those causes those marbles to move in one or two of the various hula hoops, okay? They aren't actually marbles, by the way. These are little, kind of like little stones, basically, little calcium-like deposits. And when they roll back and forth,
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
they deflect little hairs, little hair cells that aren't like the hair cells that we use for measuring sound waves, but they're basically rolling past these little hair cells and causing them to deflect. And when they deflect downward, the neurons, because hair cells are neurons, send information up to the brain.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
So if I move my head like this, there's a physical movement of these little stones in this hula hoop, as I'm referring to it, but they deflect these hairs, send those hairs, which are neurons, those hair cells send information off to the brain. Any animal that has a jaw has this so-called balance system, which we call the vestibular system.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
One of the more important things to know about the vestibular, the balance system, is that it works together with the visual system. Let's say I hear something off to my left and I swing my head over to the left to see what it is. There are two sources of information about where my head is relative to my body, and I need to know that.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
First of all, when I quickly move my head to the side, those little stones as I'm referring to them, they quickly activate those hair cells in that one semicircular canal. and send a signal off to my brain that my head just moved to the side. But also visual information slid past my field of view. I didn't have to think about it, but just slid past my field of view.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
And when those two signals combine, my eyes then lock to a particular location. Now, if this is at all complicated, you can actually uncouple these things. It's very easy to do. If you get the opportunity, you can do this safely wherever you are. You're going to stand up and you're going to look forward about 10, 12 feet. You can pick a point on a wall, stand on one leg and lift up the other leg.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
And yet we understand a lot about how that process works. So what we call ears have a technical name. That technical name is auricles, but more often they're called pinna, the pinnas, P-I-N-N-A, pinna. And the pinnas of your ears, this outer part that is made of cartilage and stuff, is arranged such that it can capture sound in the best way for your head size.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
You can bend your knee if you like, and just look off into the distance about 10, 12 feet. If you can do that, if you can stand on one leg, now close your eyes. chances are you're going to suddenly feel what scientists call postural sway. It is very hard to balance with your eyes closed. You might think, and if you think about that, it's like, why is that? That's crazy.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
Why would it be that it's hard to balance with your eyes closed? Well, information about the visual world also feeds back onto this vestibular system. So the vestibular system informs your vision and tells you where to move your eyes and your eyes and their positioning tell your balance system, your vestibular system, how it should function.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
So up until now, I've been talking about balance only in the static sense, like standing on one leg, for instance, but that's a very artificial situation. Even though you can train balance that way, most people who want to enhance their sense of balance for sport or dance or some other endeavor, want to engage balance in a dynamic way, meaning moving through lots of different planes of movement.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
For that, we need to consider that the vestibular system also cares about acceleration. So it cares about head position, it cares about eye position and where the eyes are and where you're looking, but it also cares about what direction you're moving and how fast. And one of the best things that you can do to enhance your sense of balance is to start to bring together your visual system
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
the semicircular canals of the inner ear, and what we call linear acceleration. So if I move forward in space rigidly upright, it's a vastly different situation than if I'm leaning to the side.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
One of the best ways to cultivate a better sense of balance, literally, within the sense organs and the neurons and the biology of the brain is to get into modes where we are accelerating forward, typically it's forward, while also tilted with respect to gravity. Now, this would be the carve on a skateboard or on a surfboard or a snowboard.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
This would be the taking a corner on a bike while being able to lean safely, of course, lean into the turn so that your head is actually tilted with respect to the earth. The head being tilted and the body being tilted while in acceleration, typically forward acceleration, but sometimes side to side, has a profound and positive effect on our sense of mood and wellbeing.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
And as I talked about in a previous episode, it can also enhance our ability to learn information in the period after. generating those tilts and the acceleration. And that's because the cerebellum has these outputs to these areas of the brain that release these neuromodulators like serotonin and dopamine, and they make us feel really good.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
Those modes of exercise seem to have an outsized effect, both on our wellbeing and our ability to translate the vestibular balance that we achieve in those endeavors to our ability to balance while doing other things. So I encourage people to get into modes of acceleration while tilted every once in a while, provided you can do it safely.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
It's an immensely powerful way to build up your skills in the realm of balance. And it's also, For most people, very, very pleasing. It feels really good because of the chemical relationship between forward acceleration and head tilt and body tilt. Once again, we've covered a tremendous amount of information.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
Now you know how you hear, how you make sense of the sounds in your environment, how those come into your ears and how your brain processes them. In addition, we talked about things like low level white noise and even binaural beats, which can be used to enhance certain brain states, certain rhythms within the brain, and even dopamine release in ways that allow you to learn better.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
And we talked about the balance system and this incredible relationship between your vestibular apparatus, meaning the portions of your inner ear that are responsible for balance and your visual system and gravity. And you can use those to enhance your learning as well, as well as just to enhance your sense of balance.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
Last but not least, I'd like to thank you for your time and attention and desire and willingness to learn about vision and balance. And of course, thank you for your interest in science.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
So the shape of these ears that we have is such that it amplifies high-frequency sounds. High-frequency sounds, as the name suggests, is the squeakier stuff. So we have low-frequency sounds and high-frequency sounds and everything in between. And those sound waves, for those of you that don't maybe fully conceptualize sound waves, are literally just
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
fluctuations or shifts in the way that air is moving toward your ear and through space. In the same way that water can have waves, air can have waves, okay? So it's reverberation of air. Those come in through your ears and you have what's called your eardrum. And on the inside of your eardrum, there's a little bony thing that's shaped like a little hammer.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
So attached to that eardrum, which can move back and forth like a drum, it's like a little membrane, you've got this hammer attached to it. And that hammer has three parts. For those of you that want to know, those three parts are called malleus, incus, and stapes. But basically you can just think about it as a hammer. So you've got this eardrum and then a hammer.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
and then that hammer has to hammer on something. And what it does is it hammers on a little coiled piece of tissue that we call the cochlea. So this snail-shaped structure in your inner ear is where sound gets converted into electrical signals that the brain can understand. Now, the cochlea, at one end is more rigid than the other.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
So one part can move really easily and the other part doesn't move very easily. And that turns out to be very important for decoding or separating sounds that are low frequency and sounds that are of high frequency. like a shriek or a shrill. And that's because within that little coiled thing we call the cochlea, you have all these tiny little, what are called hair cells.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
interact with all the other systems of the brain and body and used properly can allow you to learn information more quickly, remember that information longer and with more ease, and you can also improve the way you can hear. You can improve your balance. We're going to talk about tools for all of that. As many of you know, I've been taking AG1 daily for more than 13 years.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
Now they look like hairs, but they're not at all related to the hairs on your head or elsewhere on your body. They're just shaped like hair, so we call them hair cells. those hair cells, if they move, send signals into the brain that a particular sound is in our environment. Now, this should stagger your mind. If it doesn't already, it should, because
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
What this means is that everything that's happening around us, whether or not it's music or voices, all of that is being broken down into its component parts. And then your brain is making sense of what it means. Your cochlea essentially acts as a prism. It takes all the sound in your environment and it splits up those sounds into different frequencies.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
And then the brain takes that information and puts it back together and makes sense of it. So those hair cells in each of your two cochlea, because you have two ears, you also have two cochlea, send little wires, what we call axons, that convey their patterns of activity into the brain.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
And there are a number of different stations within the brain that information arrives at before it gets up to the parts of your brain where you are consciously aware. And there is a good reason for that, which is that more important than knowing what you're hearing, you need to know where it's coming from.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
And our visual system can help with that, but our auditory and our visual system collaborate to help us find and locate the position of things in space. That should come as no surprise. If you hear somebody talking off to your right, you tend to turn to your right, not to your left.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
If you see somebody's mouth moving in front of you, you tend to assume that the sound is going to come from right in front of you. disruptions in this auditory hearing and visual matching are actually the basis of what's called the ventriloquism effect.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
The ventriloquism effect can basically be described in simple terms as when you essentially think that a sound is coming from a location that it's not actually coming from. The way you know where things are coming from, what direction a car or a bus or a person is coming from is because the sound lands in one ear before the other.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
And you have stations in your brain, meaning you have neurons in your brain that calculate the difference in time of arrival for those sound waves in your right versus your left ear. And if they arrive at the same time, you assume that thing is making noise right in front of you. If it's off to your right, you assume it's over on your right.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
And if the sound arrives first to your left ear, you assume quite correctly that the thing is coming toward your left ear. But what about up and down? If you think about it, a sound coming from above is going to land on your right ear and your left ear at the same time. a sound from below is going to land on your right ear and your left ear at the same time.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
So the way that we know where things are in terms of what's called elevation, where they are in the up and down plane is by the frequencies. The shape of your ears actually modifies the sound depending on whether or not it's coming straight at you from the floor or from high above.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
Now, this all happens very, very fast in the subconscious, but now you know why if people really want to hear something, they make a cup around their ear, they essentially make their ear into more of a fennec fox type ear, if you've ever seen those cute little fennec fox things.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
They have these big spiky ears, they kind of look like a French bulldog, although they're kind of the fox version of the French bulldog. These big tall ears, and they have excellent sound localization. And so when people lean in with their hand like this, if you're listening to this, I'm just cupping my hand at my ear, I'm giving myself a bigger pinna.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
And if I do it on the left side, I do this side. And if I really want to hear something, I do it on both sides. So this isn't just gesturing. This actually serves a mechanical role. And actually, if you want to hear where things are coming from with a much greater degree of accuracy, this can actually help because you're capturing sound waves and funneling them better.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
However, I've now found an even better vitamin mineral probiotic drink. That new and better drink is the new and improved AG1, which just launched this month. This next-gen formula from AG1 is a more advanced, clinically-backed version of the product that I've been taking daily for years. It includes new bioavailable nutrients and enhanced probiotics.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each and every night.
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Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
Eight Sleep automatically regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your unique needs. Now I find that extremely useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night and warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
And I know that because Eight Sleep has a great sleep tracker that tells me how well I've slept and the types of sleep that I'm getting throughout the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
Their latest model, the Pod 4 Ultra, also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees in order to improve your airflow and stop you from snoring. If you decide to try Eight Sleep, you have 30 days to try it at home, and you can return it if you don't like it. No questions asked. but I'm sure that you'll love it.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
Go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and the UAE. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
So now I want to shift to talking about ways to leverage your hearing system, your auditory system, so that you can learn anything, not just auditory information, but anything faster. I get a lot of questions about so-called binaural beats. Binaural beats, as their name suggests, involve playing one frequency of sound to one ear and a different frequency of sound to the other ear.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
And the idea is that the brain will take those two frequencies of sound. And because the pathways that bring information from the ears into the brain eventually cross over, they actually share that information with both sides of the brain, that the brain will average that information and come up with a sort of intermediate frequency.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
And the rationale is that those intermediate frequencies place the brain into a state that is better for learning. And when I say better for learning, I want to be precise about what I mean. That could mean more focus for encoding or bringing the information in. As you may have heard me say before, we have to be alert and focused in order to learn. So can binaural beats make us more focused?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
Can binaural beats allow us to relax more if we're anxious? So what are the scientific data say about binaural beats? The science on binaural beats is actually quite extensive and very precise. So sound waves are measured typically in Hertz or kilohertz.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
I know many of you aren't familiar with thinking about things in Hertz or kilohertz, but again, just remember those waves on a pond, those ripples on a pond, If they're close together, then they are of high frequency. And if they're far apart, then they are low frequency. So if it's many more kilohertz, then it's much higher frequency than if it's fewer hertz or kilohertz.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
The NextGen formula is based on exciting new research on the effects of probiotics on the gut microbiome. And it now includes several specific clinically studied probiotic strains that have been shown to support both digestive health and immune system health, as well as to improve bowel regularity and to reduce bloating.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
And so you may have heard of these things as delta waves or theta waves or alpha waves or beta waves, et cetera. Delta waves would be big, slow waves, so low frequency. And indeed, there is quality evidence from peer reviewed studies that tell us that Delta waves like one to four Hertz, so very low frequency sounds can help in the transition to sleep and for staying asleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
And that Theta rhythms, which are more like four to eight Hertz can bring the brain into a state of or meditation. So deeply relaxed, but not fully asleep. And you'll find evidence that alpha waves, eight to 13 Hertz can increase alertness to a moderate level. That's a great state for the brain to be in for recall of existing information.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
And that beta waves, 15 to 20 Hertz are great for bringing the brain into focus states for sustained thought or for incorporating new information and especially gamma waves, the highest frequency, the most frequent ripples of sound. so to speak 32 to a hundred Hertz for learning and problem solving.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
Here we're talking about the use of binaural beats in order to increase our level of alertness or our level of calmness. Now that's important to underscore because it's not that there's something fundamentally important about the binaural beats. They are yet another way of bringing the brain into states of deep relaxation through low frequency sound or
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
highly alert states for focused learning with more high frequency sound. They're effective, but it's not that they're uniquely special for learning. It's just that they can help some people bring their brain into the state that allows them to learn better. There's very good evidence for anxiety reduction from the use of binaural beats.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
And what's interesting is the anxiety reduction seems to be most effective when the binaural beats are bringing the brain into delta, so those slow big waves like sleep, theta and alpha states. There's good evidence that binaural beats can be used to treat pain, chronic pain, but the real boost from binaural beats appears to be for anxiety reduction and pain reduction.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
As someone who's been involved in research science for more than three decades and in health and fitness for equally as long, I'm constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental health, physical health, and performance. I discovered and started taking AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast, and I've been taking it every day since.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
Many people like binaural beats and say that they benefit from them, especially while studying or learning. I think part of the reason for that relates to the ability to channel our focus when we have some background noise. And this is something I also get asked about a lot. Is it better to listen to music and have background noise when studying or is it better to have complete silence?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Hearing & Balance Enhance Focus & Learning
Well, there's actually a quite good literature on this as well, but not so much as it relates to binaural beats, but rather whether or not people are listening to music so-called white noise, brown noise, believe it or not, there's white noise and there's brown noise, there's even pink noise.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
For those of you that are interested in meditation and perhaps those of you who are not, but are considering it, what they talk about in this book is the fact that meditation has two separate lines of effects. One of those lines of effects are things that change your state. So you're stressed, you sit down, you meditate and you relax and you go into a particular state.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
The other are the changes that occur over time and those are changes in trait. So personality can actually change with long bouts of TM meditation or repeated meditation. In any case, the reason we're talking about altered traits today is because certain types of meditation can get people's brains into states that very closely mimic slow wave sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
which just means it's below the thalamus, hypo. It sits at the base of your brain in the front. It's part of the forebrain. So it's more or less above the roof of your mouth, maybe about a centimeter or so, and then about a centimeter forward in most people. And neurons in the hypothalamus release hormones that are called releasing hormones.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
So what this means is for people that are interested in increasing growth hormone, a meditation practice that allows you to get into these slow wave states delta-type frequency activity in the brain may be very beneficial because, as I mentioned before, that's what's gating growth hormone release. It's not just a circadian phenomenon. It's actually controlled by these brain waves.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
Now let's move to the things that one can do that have been shown to have let's just be honest, pretty enormous effects on growth hormone release in waking. And these are things that are very actionable. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
As somebody who's been involved in research science for almost three decades and in health and fitness for equally as long, I'm constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental health, physical health, and performance. I discovered AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast or even knew what a podcast was, and I've been taking it every day since.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
I find that AG1 greatly improves all aspects of my health. I simply feel much better when I take it. AG1 uses the highest quality ingredients in the right combinations, and they're constantly improving their formulas without increasing the cost. Whenever I'm asked if I could take just one supplement, what would that supplement be? I always say AG1.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
One of the things that can have a dramatic effect on levels of growth hormone release in waking, as well as in sleep the following night, is exercise. There are hundreds, if not thousands of studies measuring growth hormone, both during... or sometimes after exercise or the following night.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
And the conclusion that one takes away from all of these is that exercise has to be of particular duration and intensity in order to get growth hormone release. So first, I'm just going to tell you what I found to be the maximum amount of growth hormone release as it relates to a particular form of exercise.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
The particular form of exercise is either weight training or it can be endurance training, but the endurance training and the weight training actually have to be limited to about 60 minutes, not much longer. A proper warmup seems to accelerate the release of growth hormone once the hard work phase starts. So 10 minutes of warmup or so was the number that I extracted from all these studies.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
And when you say warmup, it doesn't mean just warm up the limbs and tissues that you're going to use so you don't get injured, actually warm the body. Getting the body warm as a warmup seems to be important because temperature of the body seems to be an important condition. or prerequisite for certain patterns of exercise to maximize growth hormone release.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
So if it's weight bearing exercise, it would be getting close to that final repetitions where you can't complete them, but not pushing through those or even going to failure, but getting close leads to anywhere from 300 to 500% increases in resting growth hormone levels and 300 to 500% increases in growth hormone the following night when you go to sleep, which is incredible.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
So anytime you hear releasing, chances are those are neurons that are in your brain and they extend little wires we call axons into your pituitary and the pituitary releases a bunch of hormones into the bloodstream and the pituitary releases things that most often have the name of stimulating hormone because they stimulate organs. So
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
One of the other conditions that seemed to be important, again, was to have relatively low blood glucose. So probably not eating too close to exercise or not ingesting a lot of sugars during the exercise. That was supported by the fact that ingestion of a sports drink that contains caloric sugar immediately flatlined the growth hormone levels.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
So really interesting relationship between insulin, glucose, and growth hormone. And then... The other interesting thing was that even after the exercise, taking body temperature back down to normal levels relatively quickly seemed to be associated with these big spikes in growth hormone.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
Otherwise what would happen is you get these big spikes in growth hormone, but if the exercise went too long or if body temperature remained too high for too long, then you didn't get the second increase in growth hormone the following night. Let's talk about supplements. So this has been known about for some time,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
But arginine, the amino acid arginine can increase growth hormone levels substantially. The levels and the amounts of arginine required to get big growth hormone release increases is pretty substantial. So some people will take arginine before bedtime. Some people will take it before exercise. The prerequisite again is low blood glucose. Blood glucose is high, it's going to quash the effect.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
the amounts of arginine that people take are anywhere from three grams to 10 grams or sometimes even more. Although this is definitely a case of more is not better. There is a threshold at which is actually blunted by taking more than nine grams of arginine. Now, nine grams of arginine orally is a lot of pills. It's at minimum nine pills, and it can cause some GI disturbance, right?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
People can feel nauseous. Some people will throw it up. What's interesting, however, is that whether or not it's by mouth or by vein,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
taking arginine can dramatically increase growth hormone release 400 to 600 above baselines these are huge increases in growth hormone now here is something really important and interesting to note which is that increasing arginine levels with the specific goal of increasing growth hormone release can actually short circuit the effects of exercise on growth hormone.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
Several studies I looked at, looked at the interaction of taking arginine and the exercise or just the arginine or just the exercise alone. And so you don't, unfortunately, if growth hormone increases your goal, you don't unfortunately get to increase growth hormone 800% by taking arginine and exercising. It always seems to be clamped at about 300 to 500% increases. So hopefully that's clear.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
One thing that's particularly interesting to me as somebody who's in his 40s is that it's actually between ages 30 and 40 that the amount of growth hormone that you release each night is reduced by two to threefold.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
In keeping with the theme of thyroid hormone, you have thyroid-releasing hormone in the brain, tells the pituitary to release thyroid-stimulating hormone, and then the thyroid, which we'll talk about in a moment, releases thyroid hormones.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
And since everybody goes through this age-related decline very dramatically, it seems to me that the things that we're supposed to be doing anyway, like exercising, like trying not to eat too close to bedtime, trying to optimize sleep, all of these are wonderful tools that we should be pursuing and perhaps using, and they can actually offset the two to three fold decrease, right?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
If we're talking about a two to three fold decrease for people there in their thirties and forties, and then we're talking about increases from exercise or from maybe from supplementation, but certainly from exercise of 300 to 500%, well, then all of a sudden we're in a position to actually offset the age related decline in growth hormone completely just through behaviors.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
And I think that's quite interesting and quite powerful. Now, I'd like to discuss a way that anyone can increase their levels of growth hormone dramatically. And when I say dramatically, I mean dramatically. I'll get to the numbers in a couple minutes, but we have to remember how growth hormone is released in the first place. Remember, it all starts in the brain, in the hypothalamus.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
The hypothalamus is a brain area that controls things like sexual behavior, temperature regulation, meaning when you want to be awake and when you want to be asleep, aggression, all of that. There are other brain areas involved too, but it has a rich collection of different neurons involved in all these very basic functions.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
Now, as we talked about the releasing hormones, the growth hormone releasing hormone comes from neurons in the hypothalamus. Those then communicate with the pituitary and the pituitary releases growth hormone. And then the growth hormone acts on all these different tissues, muscle, liver, cartilage, et cetera. Body fat makes them use energy.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
That's why you lose body fat when growth hormone levels are high. It makes you grow muscle, strengthens bones, et cetera. Now, one of the things that has a profound effect on growth hormone levels, growth hormone release is temperature. Now the data on this are very strong and the data come from both animal studies and human studies. And if you're guessing which direction this is going to go,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
The thyroid is a little butterfly-shaped gland that's right around the Adam's apple, and it's got four little bumps behind it called the parathyroid gland, and it releases thyroid. two hormones into the blood to stimulate different tissues and their metabolism. And those hormones are called T4 and T3. So if this is already sounding like a lot of information, it's really easy, I promise.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
you can probably imagine that making animals or people warmer is the way to go if you want to increase growth hormone. Now, anytime you're going to increase temperature of yourself or anyone else or an animal, it is risky. I want to be really clear about this. Not everyone should engage in the behaviors I'm about to describe, but
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
and i should just say the reason it's risky is it doesn't take much of a temperature increase in the brain to cook the brain to cook neurons and after that point neurons can't come back and people can die from hyperthermia however
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
There are really strong data pointing to the fact that sauna, AKA deliberate hyperthermia, not too high, however, that sauna can increase the release of growth hormone and other hormones. And what's so dramatic about this literature is the size of the effects that are reported. Entering environments where it's very hot for short periods of time, anywhere from 20 minutes to 30 minutes,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
where the temperature is 80 degrees Celsius to 100 degrees Celsius has been shown to increase growth hormone release 16-fold. That's right, 16-fold, that's 1,600%. Now, there are also effects on other hormones, prolactin, cortisol, et cetera. So the pattern that was described in this study and there've been many studies now, endocrine effects of repeated sauna were done in 17 humans.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
They actually had to do this three days in a row. And the pattern was to get into the sauna for 20 minutes, followed by 30 minutes of cooling, followed by 20 minutes sauna again, led to a five-fold increase in growth hormone. And then by doing that, day after day after day, on the third day, you would see these huge increases of like 16 fold, up to 16 fold.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
But these increases in growth hormone are tremendous. And what they probably stem from are increased activity of neurons within the hypothalamus that stimulate growth hormone release from the pituitary. And that's probably because the growth hormone releasing hormone neurons in the hypothalamus
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
sit very closely and may even be intermixed with some of the neurons in the hypothalamus that regulate heat and body temperature. Remember metabolism is in part a heat. It's like a furnace of how much energy you're consuming and using for building or for energy usage purposes. So sauna can be very, very interesting.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
And again, it's 20 minutes, 30 minute cooling, 20 minutes again, proceed with extreme caution, but nonetheless, these are pretty extreme effects in terms of their abilities to increase growth hormone levels. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, David. David makes a protein bar unlike any other. It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
That's right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from protein. This is 50% higher than the next closest protein bar. David protein bars also taste amazing. Even the texture is amazing. My favorite bar is the chocolate chip cookie dough. But then again, I also like the new chocolate peanut butter flavor and the chocolate brownie flavored. Basically, I like all the flavors a lot.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
They're all incredibly delicious. In fact, the toughest challenge is knowing which ones to eat on which days and how many times per day. I limit myself to two per day, but I absolutely love them.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
With David, I'm able to get 28 grams of protein in the calories of a snack, which makes it easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight per day, and it allows me to do so without ingesting too many calories. I'll eat a David protein bar most afternoons as a snack, and I always keep one with me when I'm out of the house or traveling.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
Releasing hormone comes from the brain, stimulating hormone comes from the pituitary. And in this case, we're talking about the thyroid binding up that stimulating hormone and saying, oh, I need to release something that releases T4 and T3. And guess what? You can basically forget about T4. T4, it's not completely inactive. It has some roles, but T3 is the one that's more or less active.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
They're incredibly delicious, and given that they have 28 grams of protein, they're really satisfying for having just 150 calories. If you'd like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, that's davidprotein.com slash Huberman.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
there's a kind of new area that's developing now that I think deserves our attention, not because I'm encouraging it, but because it is happening and those are peptides. So these days you hear a lot about peptides. I'd like to clarify a little bit about what peptides are. Peptides is a really, huge category of biological compounds. Peptides are just strings of amino acids, right?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
So we've talked about L-tyrosine, arginine, ornithine. Those are amino acids. Those are individual amino acids. And those are put together into little small peptides or they're what are called polypeptides, which are just longer peptides.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
It turns out that for any substance like growth hormone or growth hormone releasing hormone, it's made up of different amino acids in different sequences, just like your genes are made up of A's and G's and C's and T's, nucleotides in different sequences. It's like a recipe.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
Peptides tend to be short sequences of amino acids that resemble a hormone enough or resemble some other peptide enough that it can lead to the similar or same effects when you inject them. So for example, we make growth hormone releasing hormone from our brain, which stimulates growth hormone from the pituitary, but
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
People now will take things like sermoralin, S-E-R-M-O-R-E-L-I-N, sermoralin, which is not the entire peptide sequence of growth hormone releasing hormone, but it's a subset of those. Then that stimulates the release of growth hormone from the pituitary. So this is not taking growth hormone, this is taking the stimulating hormone or what's often called a secretagogue or a mimic.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
It causes a secretion of the hormone that one wants. Sermorlin is prescription. Do they work? Yes. Do they shut down your natural production of, growth hormone-releasing hormone?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
Well, the answer is yes, but some of these peptides actually have the effect of changing gene expression, because as you recall, growth hormone, big increases in growth hormone that are short-lived, like sauna, or I should say exercise, or arginine, or sauna, it seems like has these huge effects. Those are transient.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
But when one is injecting over and over a constant level, you can put into action gene expression programs that can be long lived. And let's say you have a particular tumor in the body. Tumors will grow when they see growth hormone, even if that tumor is unhealthy for you, right? You've got growth of tissues all over the body. So again, not promoting their use, but they're definitely out there.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
And so now if you hear about them or if someone's talking to you about them, now hopefully you have a better understanding about their underlying biology. And you can think rationally about whether or not they are the right decision for you. Okay, once again, covered an enormous amount of material.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
Hopefully now you understand thyroid hormone and what it does and a little bit about its mechanism or maybe a lot and growth hormone and what it does and how both of them take care of our metabolism. They dictate how many nutrients we can eat and make use of. They can pull from body fat stores, repair muscle, repair cartilage. They really are incredible compounds and they are actionable.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
Now, what does thyroid hormone do? The main role of thyroid hormone of T3 is to promote metabolism and that doesn't just mean the consumption of energy it means the utilization of energy including the buildup of tissues so it acts on all sorts of target tissues in the body it acts on muscle it acts on the liver it acts on the cartilage, it acts on the bone.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
There are things that we can do, like getting that early phase of sleep, perhaps supplementing with arginine, maybe not. hopefully getting adequate exercise, warming up properly, not making the exercise too long or too intense will help, maybe sauna or things like it, you know, deliberate safe hyperthermia, with the emphasis on safe, might be things that are of use.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
And so now hopefully you understand not just thyroid and growth hormone, but the logic that underlies thyroid hormone, growth hormone, estrogen, testosterone, why we eat, why we stop eating, cholecystokinin, ghrelin. If these names don't mean anything to you, then perhaps go back and listen to those episodes.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
But regardless, I hope that you come away from this with a deeper understanding about these hormones, which are so powerful in controlling the way our brain functions and the interplay between the brain and hormones, because it is really a bi-directional The brain is telling the body what hormones to make.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
The hormones are influencing all the tissues of the body, but also telling the brain whether or not to eat more or grow more or think more, et cetera. So I really appreciate your time and attention. If you like this podcast and you're finding it useful, please recommend it to other people. And last but not least, I thank you for your time and attention and above all for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. Today, we are going to talk about two hormones, thyroid hormone and its related pathways, and growth hormone and its related pathways.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
It's involved in taking fats and breaking them down into fatty acids and converting those into ATP, which is an important thing for cells to use energy. It's also involved in taking sugars and turning those into energy. And yes, it goes to adipose tissue, to fat.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
We have different kinds of fat that we'll talk about today, but it goes to white fat and it liberates or helps liberate some of the fats from those fat cells and use them for energy. And this is why higher thyroid is associated with leaner bodies. Lower thyroid is associated with less lean bodies.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
One thing that's absolutely key and is actionable, we're right there already in discussing tools, is iodine. Iodine is most common in sea salt, in kelp and in seaweed. And most people can get enough iodine from the food they eat and or the table salt they consume. Almost all table salt from all over the world, regardless of where you are, contains iodine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
The thyroid needs iodine in order to produce thyroid hormone. Iodine combines with an amino acid that we've talked about before called L-tyrosine. L-tyrosine comes from meat, from nuts. There are some plant-based sources as well. It is the precursor to dopamine. But in the thyroid, iodine combines or works with L-tyrosine to produce T3 and T4, the thyroid hormone.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
So you absolutely need sufficient iodine, you need sufficient L-tyrosine, and then you also need something else, which is called selenium. Selenium is important in order for thyroid hormone to be made because of the way that it allows L-tyrosine and iodine to interact. And the thing is, most people aren't getting enough selenium because they don't eat foods that are high in selenium.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
Now, how much selenium you need will depend on where you live. It actually varies country by country. Some countries I found say that you should get 100 micrograms, some say 200, some say 155. The average was about 155 micrograms, the countries I looked at. People who are trying to increase thyroid levels might want to consume more selenium.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
And if you consume a vitamin, of course, you want to make sure if it has selenium that you're not overdoing it by consuming a lot of selenium rich foods either. Brazil nuts are the heavyweight champion of foods to get selenium from. It has very high concentrations of selenium. In just six or eight, Brazil nuts contain something like 550 micrograms
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
which arguably are the two hormones and two systems in the body that are most significant for setting your overall level of metabolism. So metabolism is the consumption of energy, not necessarily eating, but it's the use of energy in the cells of the body.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
of selenium it's also present in fish ham of all things contains a lot of selenium for whatever reason pork does i'm not a big consumer of pork beef has some selenium but what's interesting if you look at the sources you know pork beef turkey chicken cottage cheese eggs what you want to understand is that they have something like 30 to 50 micrograms of selenium.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
So if you're not eating Brazil nuts, and I'm guessing most people aren't, and you're not eating a lot of animal-based foods, which I know many of you aren't, then you're probably not getting enough selenium. And again, you can have these levels measured, or you can just check what you're consuming and figure out whether or not you're meeting the ration that you need in order to get healthy
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
levels of thyroid i also want to mention that for children their daily requirements of selenium are much lower as low as you know 30 or 40 micrograms for kids 14 years or younger and again that's micrograms not milligrams so again look into what you need but if you're somebody who's interested in keeping thyroid function
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
and productive, then you certainly want to make sure you're getting enough iodine, you're getting enough selenium, and you're getting enough L-tyrosine. And it's interesting when you start looking at the various foods, especially highly processed foods, then you start to realize that perhaps many people, maybe you, are not. I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, Eight Sleep.
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Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night. Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees.
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Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
Eight Sleep makes it very easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to program the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.
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Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation of the Pod Cover called the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity. I find that very useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night. warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.
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Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
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Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
for growth of tissues for repair of tissues and also just for day-to-day maintenance of function these two hormones thyroid hormone and growth hormone we think of as related to metabolism of things in the body keeping body fat low and keeping muscles strong and tendons strong and repairing themselves etc but they are also key for brain function for the ability to maintain cognitive function throughout the lifespan
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
if you're curious how thyroid actually increases metabolism allows you to eat more etc it relates to something we covered last issue which is glucose remember when you eat something blood sugar goes up insulin is secreted from the pancreas and it makes sure that blood glucose doesn't go too high which can damage tissues or too low which you make you hypoglycemic
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
thyroid increases glucose uptake by various tissues in particular muscle and bone it actually can increase bone mineral density which is a really good thing as you get older when i say older i mean basically 30 and older you the reason you can recover more quickly from injuries if you have a healthy thyroid and healthy thyroid pathways is because you can consume energy.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
That energy is diverted toward bone repair and muscle repair and cartilage repair. And so the way it does this again is by increasing ATP. But the whole idea here is that selenium, L-tyrosine allow thyroid to be at healthy levels so that thyroid then can take glucose in the blood and divert it to tissues for it to be used in particular your brain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
And that's why the ability of your brain to use glucose or ketones for that matter is going to be aided by having healthy thyroid. So do the things, take the things, eat the things that are going to allow you to have healthy levels of thyroid hormone.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
If you're concerned about having excessively high or excessively low levels of thyroid hormone, absolutely look up what the symptoms are, talk to your physician. And there are a number of good treatments. I didn't talk about prescription drugs that can improve symptoms related to hypo or hyperthyroid. Of course, They have synthesized thyroid.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
So if you don't make enough thyroid, you can take thyroid, it's by prescription. If you have too much thyroid, sometimes they'll take out the thyroid gland or they can administer drugs that will either block receptors or will interfere with some of the pathways from the brain to the pituitary or from the pituitary to the thyroid. in order to adjust thyroid hormone that way.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
So there are the big guns in terms of the treatments for different thyroid disorders, but we're not talking about thyroid disorders. We're talking about how to get and maintain thyroid levels in healthy ranges and some straightforward ways to do that through diet and supplementation. Next, we're going to talk about growth hormone.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
Growth hormone is a pretty straightforward one for you to understand now because it follows the exact same logic as thyroid hormone. In fact, their functions are so closely overlapping that you're probably going to think, why do you have these two systems? So just very briefly, growth hormone releasing hormone.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
So remember releasing means it comes from the brain, comes from the brain and tells the pituitary to release growth hormone. And then growth hormone is released into the bloodstream where it goes and acts on a ton of tissues, muscle, ligaments, bone, fat, et cetera, to increase metabolism. It sounds just like thyroid hormone and they do work in parallel.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
And that's why we've lumped them together in the same episode. They increase metabolism and repair and growth of tissues. Today, we're going to talk about the things that anyone can do to increase growth hormone. And there are reasons why certain people would want to do that.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
People that make normal quote unquote levels of growth hormone might want to do that as they age, because during puberty and development, the pituitary is churning out tons of growth hormone. It's responsible for the growth, not surprising, of the body and all its features, height just being one of those.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
And so as we age, we make less growth hormone, and that is one of the reasons why we recover more slowly from injuries. It's one of the reasons why we accumulate body fat, and it's one of the reasons why our metabolism slows. And so growth hormone replacement therapy has been tremendously popular in the last 20 years, which is not to say it doesn't carry its problems, it does.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
Here's one of the major problems with injecting growth hormone. I'm not saying people shouldn't do this if the doctor has approved it or it's in keeping with their particular life goals, but growth hormone, if it's in levels that are too high, will cause growth of all tissues.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
So not just muscle, not just reduction in body fat by metabolizing, by allowing fatty acids to be pulled out of storage and used for ATP, but it will also cause increase in growth of the heart and the lungs and the liver and the spleen. And so this is the concern with abuse of growth hormone. So we're not going to be talking about abuse of growth hormone.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
So the big theme I'd like to introduce is that metabolism isn't just about losing weight, but having a high metabolism provided it's not too high is great. It means that you will have more lean tissue, more bone and muscle and less adipose tissue fat. And we know that that's healthy. There are neurons in your brain in an area called the hypothalamus.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
We will, however, talk about tools that anyone can use to increase levels of growth hormone. Some of them are behavioral, some of them are supplement based, and some of them interact with behaviors and supplements. And what's cool about the discussion about growth hormone is that the tools that exist out there to increase growth hormone are very actionable.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
There are things that can increase growth hormone three, four, 500% or more. And even though that's a short-lived increase, they can have very powerful effects on metabolism and on repair of tissues. So let's talk about those. As always, I want to emphasize, talk to a doctor before you do anything, including remove any treatments.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
Growth hormone is released every night when you go to sleep and it's released in the early part of sleep during so-called slow wave sleep. So the two conditions that have to be met in order for growth hormone to be secreted regularly for tissue repair, et cetera, are you need to get into slow wave sleep, the so-called deep sleep, and you need blood insulin and glucose to be relatively low.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
So eating within two hours of going to sleep is going to suppress growth hormone release. That's very clear. So what is special about this early phase of sleep? What in particular about slow wave deep sleep allows the pituitary to release growth hormone? So the answer is it's a delta wave activity in the brain. Delta waves are these big giant waves of activity in the brain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
that correlate with slow wave sleep as opposed to faster waves of activity that associate with rapid eye movement sleep. It's the delta waves of activity, these sweeping big waves of activity in the neurons that stimulate the brain to stimulate the pituitary.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
Because once you understand that, then you have something to anchor to in terms of thinking, what are the things I can do in waking that will allow me to release more growth hormone, which for most people is going to be a good thing. Now, the delta wave activity and the slow wave activity in the brain
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
being very important for growth hormone release and growth hormone release being so important for metabolic functions and peeling away unwanted body fat and repairing tissues, et cetera. forces us to ask, well, what other things can we do in waking in order to increase growth hormone release? So let's start with the ones that have a potentially big effect, but are a little bit harder to access.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone
And for that, I want to point toward a book, which is really kind of interesting. It's not focused on growth hormone, but the book is called Altered Traits, This is the book. It's an excellent book. Altered Traits by Goleman and Davidson. Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body. Very interesting book.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. My name is Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. So let's talk about emotions. Emotions are a fascinating and vital aspect of our life experience.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
And so we need to agree at the outset that emotions are complicated and yet they are tractable. They can be understood. And today we're going to talk about a lot of tools to understand what emotions are for you to understand what your emotional states mean and what they don't mean. And in doing that, that will allow you to place a value on whether or not you should hold an emotional state as true
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
And it's clear from most all of the theories of emotional health that an ability to recognize when your own internal state is being driven primarily by external events as important for being able to emotionally regulate, right? People who are constantly being yanked around by the external happenings in the world, you would say are emotionally labile. They are not in control of their emotions.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
Even if they're calm all the time, if that calmness only arrives because they're in a placid environment and then you put a cracker in that environment and they freak out, well, then they're not really calm. So how much the outside environment disrupts your internal environment has everything to do with this balance of interoception and extra reception.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
And it very likely has roots in whether or not you were secure attached or insecure attached, disorganized or ambivalent as a baby. So while we can't travel back in time, there is an exercise that you can do to address, at least in this moment, whether or not you have a bias for extra reception or a bias for interoception.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
If you close your eyes right now and concentrate on the contact of any portion of your body and trying to bring as much of your attention to that point of contact as possible. And then from there, you're going to move your attention even more deeply into say the sensation of what's going on in your gut. Are you full? Are you empty? Are you hungry? Are you not? Is your heart beating at what rate?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
What's the cadence of your breathing? Basically bringing your focus and attention to everything at the surface of your skin and inward. So I'm going to do a rare thing on the Huberman Lab podcast. I'm going to introduce about five to eight seconds of silence in order to allow you to do that a little bit.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
Now try and do something that for most people actually is a little bit harder, which is to purely exterocept. Put your eyes or your ears or both on anything in your immediate space. I would say, look across the room, pick a panel on the wall or a leg of a table or something and try and bring as much of your attention to that as possible.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
And again, I'll take about five seconds of silence to allow you to exterocept. Okay, so what you probably found is that you were able to do that, but that some degree of interoception is maintained. It's hard to place 100% of your attention on something externally, unless it's really exciting, really novel. If you've ever watched a really great movie,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
presumably you're exterocepting more than you're interocepting until something exciting happens and then you feel something. You're actually tethering your emotional experience to something external. And now you can also do this dynamically. You can decide to focus internally and then externally. You can decide to split it 50%, 50% or 70, 30.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
one can develop you can develop a heightened ability to do this and the power of doing that is actually that when you are in environments where you feel like you're focused too much internally and you'd like to be focused more externally you can actually do that deliberately but as you notice it takes work these exercises are really what are at the core of these development of emotional bonds.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
or not true, whether or not it has meaning or it doesn't, as well as whether or not the emotions of others are important to you in a given context. We're going to talk a lot about development. In fact, we're going to center a lot of our discussion today around infancy and puberty.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
Because as we mentioned before, these four things, the gaze, vocalization, touch, and affect, those are happening very dynamically. So if somebody winks at you, you're paying attention to their wink, but then you also notice how you feel. This is very dynamic. So if it seems overwhelming to try and interocept and exterocept and then shift the balance, you do that all the time.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
Your brain and nervous system are fantastic at doing this. Now, some people have a very hard time breaking out of a very strongly interoceptive mode. Some people have a harder time breaking out of their exteroceptive mode. It's very interesting to note the extent to which we have biases in how interoceptive or exteroceptive we are. Remember those three axes that we talked about earlier.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
You have valence, good or bad. You have alertness, alert or calm, and you have interoceptive or exteroceptive bias. Early in development, you start off with this interoceptive bias. You are starting to develop expectations, predictions about how the outside world is going to work. And you are trying to figure out the reliability of outside events and people and where things are reliable.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
when people are reliable, we are able to give up more of our interoception. There's literally trust that our interoceptive needs, our internal needs will be met through bonds and actions of others. And this starts to veer toward the discussion about neglect and trauma. We are going to devote entire episodes, probably an entire month to trauma and PTSD, but these
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
those have roots in what we're talking about now. And it's important to internalize and understand what we're talking about now in order to get the most out of those future conversations. So now I want to just pause, just shelve the discussion about interoception, exteroception for a moment. And I want to talk about what is arguably the second most, if not equally important,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
aspect of your development as it relates to emotionality. And as it relates to this, what I call trust, but this ability to predict whether or not things in the outside world are reliable or not reliable in terms of their ability to help you meet your interoceptive needs. And that period is puberty. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. As somebody who's been involved in research science for almost three decades and in health and fitness for equally as long, I'm constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental health, physical health, and performance.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
We're also going to talk about tools for enhancing one's emotional range and for navigating difficult emotional situations. I'm not a clinical psychologist, I'm not a therapist, but I do have some background in psychology.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
I discovered AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast or even knew what a podcast was, and I've been taking it every day since. I find that AG1 greatly improves all aspects of my health. I simply feel much better when I take it. AG1 uses the highest quality ingredients in the right combinations, and they're constantly improving their formulas without increasing the cost.
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Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
Whenever I'm asked if I could take just one supplement, what would that supplement be? I always say AG1. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
So up until now, we've been talking mainly about psychology, not a lot of biology, not a lot of mechanism. And now we're going to transition into talking about mechanism, hormones, receptors, et cetera. Puberty is a absolute biological event. It has a beginning. And it has a specific definition, which is the transition into reproductive maturity. So there are a lot of hormonal changes.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
Yes, there are also a lot of brain changes and most people don't realize it, but the brain changes occur first. The brain turns on the hormone systems that allow puberty to occur. One of the more interesting molecules that triggers puberty in all individuals is something called kispeptin, K-I-S-S-P-E-P-T-I-N, kispeptin. Kispeptin is made by the brain and it stimulates
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
large amounts of a different hormone called GNRH, gonadotropin-releasing hormone, to be released. Gonadotropin-releasing hormone then causes the release of another hormone called something called luteinizing hormone, or LH, which travels in the bloodstream and stimulates the ovaries of females to produce estrogen and the testes of males to produce testosterone.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
This is interesting because at this point, the testes in males start churning out tons of testosterone in order to trigger the development of secondary sexual characteristics, body hair and all the others, deepening of voice, et cetera. And in females, estrogen is doing various other things, breast development, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
And today I'm going to be drawing from the psychology greats, not me, but from the greats of psychology who studied emotion, who studied emotional development and linking that to the neuroscience of emotion. Because nowadays we understand a lot about the chemicals and the hormones and the neural circuits in the brain and body that underlie emotion.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
So that's how puberty happens at the biological level, gets triggered by leptin and cispeptin. And then this young child, is now a different creature to some to some extent, not just because they're reproductively competent, of course, but because there's a shift in a number of the things that underlie these social bonds.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
There are there's a marked shift in a number of the things that allow children and adults to engage in predictive behavior about each other. And most of what consumes the minds and
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
waking hours of adolescents and children who have gone through puberty and going through puberty is questions about how they relate to social structures, who they can rely on and how they can make reliable predictions in the world now that they have more agency, that they are physically changed.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
In fact, you could argue that puberty is the fastest rate of maturation that you'll go through at any point in your life. It's the largest change that you'll go through at any point in your life in terms of who you are. because your biology has fundamentally changed at the level of your brain and your bodily organs, all your organs from the skin inward.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
So I want to visit a little bit of the research about some of the core needs that occur during puberty and adolescence. So there's a terrific review article that was published in the journal Nature about the biology of adolescence and puberty, as well as some of the core needs and demands that have to be met for successful emotional maturation during that time.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
We will provide a link to that, but I just want to highlight a few of the things that they place in the final table. I don't want to go through all the results right now because you could do that on your own if you like. They mainly highlight a lot of the changes in neurons and neural circuits. For instance, I'll just highlight one.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
There's a connection between the dopamine centers in the brain and an area of the brain that's involved in emotion and dispersal. Dispersal is very interesting. What you observe in animals and humans is that around the end of adolescence and during the transition to puberty, both because of changes in the brain and changes in hormones,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
there's an intense desire on the part of the child to get further and further away from primary caregivers. Mostly there's a desire to start spending more time with friends, more time with peers and less time with adults. So there's something about these hormones that don't just allow sexual reproduction. They don't just change the brain and bodily organs and the shape of us. They also,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
bias us towards dispersal, getting further and further away from primary caregivers in particular. And what's interesting is during puberty, there's increased connection, connectivity, as we call it, between the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in motivation and decision making, being able to suppress action for making long-term goals possible, as well as dopamine centers and the amygdala.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
So while there's no one single universally true theory of emotion, At the intersection of many of the existing theories, there are really some ground truths. I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, 8sleep. 8sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
So there's this really broad integration and testing. I think this is the key element here, testing of circuits for emotions and reward as they relate to decisions. And I think that's useful because when you look at the behavior of adolescents and teens, they are testing social interactions. They are testing physical interactions with the world.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
Oftentimes they're engaging in unsafe behavior and you can't just, I would never try and justify that with the underlying neurology, but the neuroscience points to increased connectivity between areas of the brain that are related to emotionality and to threat detection like the amygdala, but also reward. So it's a time of testing behaviorally how different behaviors lead to success or not.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
It's how different behaviors lead to fear states or not. You can start to map the neurology onto some of this emotional exploration. I do realize that this episode is about emotions. Puberty is a time in which the internal state of
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
the person or the animal is being sampled and tested against different extra receptive events only now they are able to guide those events with more agency the child or the adolescent is now able the teen really is able to now sample many many more extra receptive events through behavior and so
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
Adolescence and puberty is really seen as the period of development in which one self samples for these two elements that we talked about at the beginning, which are how do I form bonds and how do I make predictions about what will make me feel good at a level of interoception.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
But in terms of the biology, it's clear that there's this stage of development where more autonomy, more physical capability is triggered by these hormone changes in the brain and these peptide changes in the brain and body. And that nonetheless brings us back to the exact same model that we started with in infancy of alert or calm, feel good,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
or feel bad, primarily exterocepting, primarily interocepting. So I keep going back to this. I'm sort of like a repeating record on that because the same core algorithm, the same core function is at play throughout the lifespan.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
And that's a useful framework, in my opinion, because it allows you to sort through all the data and information that's out there about, well, this area, the stria terminalis is active or the basolateral amygdala is active or gray matter, thickening or this hormone or that hormone and return to a kind of kernel of certainly not exhaustive truth.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night. Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
It doesn't cover all aspects of emotionality, but at least establishes some groundwork from which you can start to evaluate how different behaviors might or might not make sense, how certain emotional responses might or might not make sense, regardless of the age of the person or the organism. I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Element.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. We should all know that proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. In fact, even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance to a considerable degree.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
It's also important that you're not just hydrated, but that you get adequate amounts of electrolytes in the right ratios. Drinking a packet of Element dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate amounts of hydration and electrolytes.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of both, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I'll also drink a packet of Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
There are a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. I like the watermelon. I like the raspberry. I like the citrus. Basically, I like all of them. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim an Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement spelled L-M-N-T.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
There's a theory of emotional development that I find particularly interesting, which is from Alan Shore at UCLA that talks about how most of our testing of bonds and relationships is this seesawing back and forth between very dopaminergic, so driven by dopamine, or serotonergic, driven by serotonin, states. And this starts with infant and mother or infant and father.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
Healthy emotional development clearly begins with an ability for the caretaker and child to be in calm, peaceful, soothing, touch-oriented, eye-gazing type of behaviors. Those really drive serotonin, the endogenous opioid system. things that are very calming and are centered around pleasure with the here and now, as well as excited states of what we're going to do next.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
There's actually a kind of characteristic sign of the dopaminergic interaction where both caretaker and child are wide-eyed. The pupils dilate, that's a signature of arousal. They get really excited. Oftentimes the baby will look away if it gets really excited. Those are signatures of dopamine release in the body. And in adolescence, these same things carry forward where their good bonds are,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
achieved through hanging around, watching TV, just kind of being there, you know, playing video games or texting together or talking, whatever it is that the soothing local activity happens to be, as well as adventure and things that are exciting. And so this kind of seesawing back and forth between the different reward systems.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees. Eight Sleep makes it very easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to program the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
seems to be the basis from which healthy emotional bonds are created. We can't have a complete conversation about emotions and bonds and social connection without talking about oxytocin. Oxytocin has come to such prominence in the last decade or so and seems to be everywhere. Anytime you hear a discussion about neuroscience in the brain or hormones in the brain,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
Oxytocin is released in response to lactation in females. It is released in response to sexual interactions. It is released in response to non-sexual touch. It's released in males and females. And indeed it's involved in pair bonding and the establishment of social bonds in general. Oh, my God. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep. Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation of the pod cover called the Pod Four Ultra. The Pod Four Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
I don't know. I don't know. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
I find that very useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night and warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep. It also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman. If we want to understand emotions, we have to look at where emotions first develop.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
It's fair to say that emotions make up most of what we think of as our experience of life. Even the things we do, our behaviors and the places we go and the people we end up encountering in our life, And all of that really funnels into our emotional perception of what those things mean, whether or not they made us happy or sad or depressed or lonely or awe-inspiring.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
And the rule that every good neuroanatomist knows is that if you want to understand what a part of the brain does, you have to address two questions. You have to know what connections does that brain area make? And you need to know what's called the developmental origin of that structure. What are the brain areas for emotion? And nowadays there's a lot of debate about this.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
For years, it was thought that there might be circuits, meaning connections in the brain that generate the feeling of being happy or circuits that generate the feeling of being sad, et cetera. That's been challenged.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
And yet I think there's good evidence for circuits in the brain, such as limbic circuits and other circuits that shift our overall states or our overall level of alertness or calmness, or whether or not they bias us toward viewing the outside world or paying more attention to what's going on inside our bodies. But the important thing to understand is that Emotions do arise in the brain and body.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
And if we want to understand how emotions work, we have to look how emotions are built. And they are built during infancy, adolescence, and puberty. And then it continues into adulthood. But the groundwork is laid down early in development when we are small children. You were born into this world without really any understanding of the things around you.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
Now, there are two ways that you can interact with the world, and you're always doing them more or less to some degree at the same time. Those are interoception, paying attention to what's going on inside you, what you feel internally, and exteroception, paying attention to what's going on outside you.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
Hold that in mind, please, because the fact that you're both interocepting and exterocepting is true for your entire life, and it sets the foundation for understanding emotions. It's absolutely critical. As an infant, you didn't have any knowledge of what you needed. You didn't understand hunger. You didn't understand cold or heat or any of that.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
When you needed something, you experienced that as anxiety. You would feel an increase in alertness if you had to use the bathroom. You would feel an increase in alertness if you were hungry. And you would vocalize, you would cry out, you would act agitated, you might coo, you might do a number of different things. And then your caregiver, whoever that might have been, would respond to that.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
So this is actually really important to understand that a baby, when you were a baby and when I was a baby, we didn't have any sense of the outside world, except that it responded to our acts of anxiety, essentially. all developmental psychologists agree that babies lack the ability to make cognitive sense of the outside world.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
But in this feeling of anxiety and registering one's own internal state, and then crying out to the outside world, either through crying or subtle vocalizations, or even just cooing, making some noise, we start to develop a relationship with the outside world in which our internal states, our shifts in anxiety, start to drive requests and people come and respond to those requests.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
And this gets to the basis of what emotions are about, which are emotions are really about forming bonds and being able to predict things in the world. And at this point, I actually just want to pause and mention a really interesting tool that is trying to address this question of what are emotions and what do they consist of that you can use if you like. This is an app. I didn't develop it.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
I don't have any relationship to them, but the app was developed by people at Yale and it's called Mood Meter. What they're trying to do is put more nuance, more subtlety on our and our language for emotions and be able to allow you to predict how you're going to feel in the future. I'm on the app right now, and I know you can't see this, but it's called Mood Meter.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
Now, one thing that is absolutely true is that everyone's perception of emotion is slightly different. meaning your idea of happy is very likely different than my idea of what a state of happiness is.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
You know, it says to me, hi, Andrew, how are you right now? And I click the little tab that says, I feel, and I can either pick high energy and unpleasant, high energy and pleasant, low energy unpleasant or low energy pleasant. And I would say right now I feel high energy pleasant. So I just revealed to you how I feel.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
So I click on that and then it gives you a gallery of colors and you just move your finger to the location where you think it matches most. And as you do that, little words pop up. So say motivated, cheerful, inspired. I would say I'm feeling right now cheerful. So you click that and then you just go to the next window and it just says, what are you doing?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
And this feels like play to me, but I'm going to call it work. And then that's it. And then what it does is it basically starts to collect data on you. You're giving it information and it starts to link that to other features that you allow it access to if you like. And it starts helping you be able to predict how you're going to feel at different times a day.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
And it points to a couple of really interesting features, which is that we don't really have enough language to describe all the emotional states. And yet there's some core truths to what makes up an emotion.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
This can really help people, kids and adults, understand better what they're feeling and why, and when best to engage in certain activities, and thankfully, when best to avoid certain activities too. So the way this works is the following. you need to ask yourself at any point, you could do this right now if you like, what's your level of autonomic arousal?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
Autonomic arousal is just the continuum, the range of alert to calm. So if you're in a panic right now, you are like 10 out of 10 on the arousal scale. If you're asleep, you're probably not comprehending what I'm saying, although maybe a little bit, but let's say you're very drowsy, you might be at a one or a two.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
And then there's this other axis, this other question, which is what we call valence. Now, valence is a value. Do you feel good or bad? I would say I feel pretty good right now on a scale of one to 10. I'm like, I don't know, I feel like a seven. So I'm alert and I feel pretty good.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
And we know this also for color vision, for instance, even though the cells in your eye and my eye that perceive the color red are identical right down to the genes that they express, we can be certain based on experimental evidence and what are called psychophysical studies,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
And then there's a third thing, which is how much we are interocepting and how much we are exterocepting, all right? So how much our attention is focused internally on what we're feeling and how much it's focused externally. And this is always going to be in a dynamic balance.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
So for instance, if you're really, really stressed, oftentimes that puts you in a position to be really in touch with what's going on in your body. If you start having a lot of somatic, a lot of bodily sensations, like your heart is beating so fast that you can't ignore it, then you're really strongly interoceptive.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
So there's these three things, how alert or sleepy you are, that's one, how good or bad you feel, that's two, and then whether or not most of your attention is directed outward or whether or not it's directed inward. And much of what we call emotions are made up by those three things. Let's return to the infant. There's the baby in the crib. It's mostly interocepting.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
As caregivers bring it what it needs, you hope, milk, diaper changes, et cetera, a warm blanket if it's cold, pull off the blanket when the baby's fussing and it's too warm, because babies get too warm also, it starts to exterocept. the baby starts to look into the outside world and start making predictions.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
It starts wondering how much it needs to cry or predicting, well, if I cry like a little bit, then mom comes over and I get my milk. Babies are starting to evaluate and do all this, but they're not doing it consciously. They're doing this in order to relieve anxiety.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
As a young creature, an infant and young toddler, you were mainly focused inward and you started to understand what was going on outward as a way of predicting what would bring you relief, what would remove your anxiety. And that's where the fundamental rules of your experience, your emotional experience were laid down.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice. It was a condition of being allowed to stay in school.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
But pretty soon I realized that therapy is an extremely important component to overall health. In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise. There are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First of all, it provides a good rapport with somebody that you can trust and talk to about all issues that you're concerned about.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
Second of all, it can provide support. in the form of emotional support or directed guidance. And third, expert therapy can provide useful insights. With BetterHelp, they make it very easy to find an expert therapist with whom you resonate with and can provide those benefits that come through effective therapy.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
that your idea of the most intense red is going to be very different than my idea of the most intense red if we were given a selection of 10 different reds and asked which one is most intense, which one looks most red. And that seems crazy. You would think that something as simple as color would be universal, and yet it's not.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
Also, because BetterHelp allows therapy to be done entirely online, it's very time efficient. It's easy to fit into a busy schedule. There's no commuting to a therapist's office or sitting in a waiting room or anything like that. You simply go online and hold your appointment. If you would like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman. So now let's talk about what kind of baby you were, because that actually informs your emotionality now. These are classic, they're actually famous experiments done by Bowlby and Ainsworth. This is this classic experiment of what was called the strange situation task.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
in which, and I'm describing it very coarsely here, I realize, but a mother and child come into the laboratory, the baby and the mother or father play together for a bit, and then the mother leaves. The mother leaves for some period of time and then comes back. And the research is devoted to understanding the response of the child when the caretaker, the mother or the father returns.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
Bowlby and Ainsworth and many of their scientific offspring and colleagues identified at least four patterns that babies display when their caretaker returns and they group these into group a b c d so much so that the kids were referred to as a babies b babies c babies or d babies the first babies are the a babies when their caretaker would return
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
the infant would respond with happiness, with what looked like delight. They would go to the caretaker, they seemed happy. These are referred to as secure attached kids. The B babies, as they're called, were less likely to seek comfort from their caregiver when the caregiver would return.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
So they would sometimes continue to play with their toys or they would be with the, they had an adult in the room while the parent was gone, they would stay with them. These were referred to as avoidant babies. The C babies would respond to the return of the caregiver with acts of annoyance. They seem kind of angry. And those were referred to as ambivalent babies.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
And then the third category, the D babies were the disorganized babies. The child avoided interactions with everyone and their behavior didn't really change whether or not the caregiver was there or not. This work, this classic work, opened up a huge set of important questions that related to what is the reestablishment of the bond really about?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
I mean, what's actually being figured out here is not whether or not there are four categories of babies, that's interesting, but it presumably is more interesting to focus on What is it that defines a really good bond, a secure attachment or an insecure attachment or an avoidant attachment? And the four things are gaze,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships
literally eye contact, vocalizations, so what we say and how we say it, affect or emotion, so the way that we express, you know, crying, smiling, et cetera, and touch. But gaze, vocalization, affect and touch are really the core of this thing that we call social bonds and emotionality.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
But when you eat, you want to eat within the local schedule for alertness. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. By now, many of you have heard me say that if I could take just one supplement, that supplement would be AG1. The reason for that is AG1 is the highest quality and most complete of the foundational nutritional supplements available.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
What that means is that it contains not just vitamins and minerals, but also probiotics, prebiotics, and adaptogens to cover any gaps you may have in your diet and provide support for a demanding life.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
For me, even if I eat mostly whole foods and minimally processed foods, which I do for most of my food intake, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits and vegetables, vitamins and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone. For that reason, I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012. When I do that, it clearly bolsters my energy, my immune system, and my gut microbiome.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
These are all critical to brain function, mood, physical performance, and much more. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim their special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
Okay, I talked about traveling eastward, but we haven't talked about traveling westward. Let's say you're traveling from New York to California or from Europe to California. The challenge there tends to be how can you stay up late enough?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
Now, some people are able to do this because as I mentioned earlier, the autonomic nervous system is asymmetrically wired such that it's easier to stay up late later than we would naturally want to than it is to go to sleep earlier. So let's say you land and it's 4 p.m. and you're just dying, you're in California, you came from Europe, it's 4 p.m. and you really, really want to go to sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
That's where the use of things like caffeine, exercise and sunlight can shift you, right? If it's after your temperature peak, then viewing sunlight around 6 p.m. or 8 p.m. or artificial light, if there's in sunlight, will help shift you later, right? It's going to delay your clock and you're going to be able to stay up later.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
And if we are living our life in a perfect way where we wake up in the morning and we view sunlight as it crosses the horizon, and then by evening we catch a little sunlight, and then at night we're in complete darkness, we will be more or less perfectly matched to the external or ambient light-dark cycle.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
The worst thing you can do is take a nap that was intended to last 20 minutes or an hour. I do this routinely and then wake up four hours later or you wake up and it's midnight and you can't fall back asleep. You really want to avoid doing that.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
So provided it's not excessive amounts, stimulants like caffeine and coffee or tea can really help you push past that afternoon barrier and get you to sleep more like on the local schedule and eating on the local schedule as well. A number of people have asked about the use of melatonin to induce sleepiness. Melatonin is this hormone that's released from the pineal gland.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
Melatonin induces sleepiness. Melatonin during development is also responsible for timing the secretion of certain hormones that are vitally important for puberty. Does melatonin control the onset of puberty? Not directly, but indirectly.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
Melatonin inhibits something called gonadotropin-releasing hormone, which is a hormone that's released from your hypothalamus, also roughly above the roof of your mouth and your brain. Gonadotropin-releasing hormone is really interesting because it stimulates the release of another hormone called luteinizing hormone, which in females causes estrogen to be released within the ovaries.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
It's involved in reproductive cycles. And in males, stimulates testosterone from the sertoli cells of the testes. Melatonin is inhibitory to GnRH, gonadotropin-releasing hormone, and therefore is inhibitory to LH, luteinizing hormone, and therefore is inhibitory to testosterone and estrogen. There's just no two ways about it.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
So melatonin is used widely for inducing sleepiness when you want to fall asleep in the new location that you've arrived. You can't fall asleep, you take melatonin, it helps you fall asleep. It does not help you stay asleep. In addition to that, melatonin has been kind of touted as the best way to shift your circadian clock.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
I'm happy to go on record saying, look, if you need melatonin and you can work with a doctor or somebody who really understands circadian and sleep biology, go for it if that's your thing.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
As always on this podcast and elsewhere, I have a bias toward behavioral things that you can titrate and control like exposure to light, exercise, temperature, et cetera, that have much bigger margins for safety and certainly don't have these other endocrine effects that we've been thinking about and talking about.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
So if you want to take melatonin in the afternoon in order to fall asleep or in the evening, be my guest, that's up to you. Again, you're responsible for your health, not me. But for many people, melatonin is not going to be the best solution.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
The best solution is going to be to use light and temperature and exercise on either side of the temperature minimum to shift your clock, both before your trip and when you land in your new location and your clock starts to shift. Okay, so now you know my opinions about melatonin. Feel free to filter them through your own opinions and experiences with melatonin.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
And now you also understand what your temperature minimum is and how it represents an important landmark, either side of which you can use light temperature and exercise to shift your clock. Just to remind you a little bit about temperature, if you want to shift your clock, you can take a hot shower and then that will have a cooling effect after the hot shower.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
Very few of us do that because of these things that we call artificial lights and this other thing that we call life demands. So today we're going to talk about when we get pulled away from that rhythm. So what is the perfect day? What does that look like from a circadian sleep wakefulness standpoint?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
And if you were to get into a cold shower or an ice bath, if you have access to one, afterward, there's going to be a thermogenic effect of your body increasing temperature. So you can start to play these games with timing and hot and cold, with meals, whether or not you eat or you don't eat, and with light exposure, whether or not you view light or you don't view light.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
So now you can start to see why understanding the core mechanics of a system can really give you the most flexibility. And that really underscores the most important thing is that when you understand mechanism, it's not about being neurotically attached to a specific protocol, it's the opposite.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
it can give you great confidence and flexibility in being able to shift your body rhythms however you want. And when things get out of whack, you can tuck them right back into place. One thing that's common is that people need to do a quick trip. It's not always that you're going to go on vacation for two weeks or work someplace else for weeks on end.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
If your trip is 48 hours or less, stay on your home schedule. 72, that's when you start running into trouble. The transit time is also important, but I would say if it's three days or less, stay on your home schedule as much as you can. I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Roka. I'm excited to share that Roka and I have teamed up to create a new style of red lens glasses.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
These red lens glasses are meant to be worn in the evening after the sun goes down. They filter out short wavelength light that comes from screens and from LED lights, the sorts of LED lights that are most commonly used as overhead and frankly lamp lighting nowadays. And I want to emphasize Roka Red Lens glasses are not traditional blue blockers.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
They're not designed to be worn during the day and to filter out blue light from screen light. They're designed to prevent the full range of wavelengths that suppress melatonin secretion at night, and that can alter your sleep. So by wearing Roka Red Lens glasses, they help you calm down and they improve your transition to sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
Now I put my Roka Red Lens glasses on as soon as it gets dark outside, and I've noticed a much easier transition to sleep, which makes sense based on everything we know about how filtering out short wavelengths of light can allow your brain to function correctly. If you'd like to try ROKA, go to roka.com, that's R-O-K-A.com and enter the code Huberman to save 20% off your first order.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
Again, that's R-O-K-A.com and enter the code Huberman at checkout. So let's talk a little bit about a different form of jet lag that requires no planes, no trains, no automobiles, and that's shift work. Shift work is becoming increasingly common. Many of us are shift working even though we don't have to. We're doing work in the middle of the night.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
We are working on our computers at odd hours, sleeping during the day. Here's the deal with shift work. If there's one rule of thumb for shift work, It's that if at all possible, you want to stay on the same schedule for at least 14 days, including weekends.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
Now that should immediately cue the non-shift workers to the importance of not getting too far off track on the weekend, even if you're not a shift worker. So sleeping in on Sunday is not a good idea. The most important thing about shift work is to stay consistent with your schedule. If you're going to work a shift where let's say you start at 4 p.m.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
You basically want to get as much light, ideally sunlight, but as much light into your eyes during the period of each 24 hour cycle when you want to be awake, when you want to be alert. And you want to get as little light into your eyes at the times of that 24 hour cycle when you want to be asleep or drowsy and falling asleep. How much is enough?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
and you end at 2 a.m., excuse me, then there's some important questions that arise. For instance, should you see light during your shift? Well, this is a matter of personal choice, but ideally you want to view as much light as possible and as safely possible when you need to be alert. So that would mean from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. And then you would want to sleep.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
So using light as a correlate of alertness and using darkness as a correlate of sleepiness, what this means is see as much light as you safely can during the phase of your day when you want to be awake. So let's say you go to sleep at, you get home after this 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. shift, you maybe eat something, you go to sleep and you wake up and it's noon or 1 p.m. Should you get light in your eyes?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
You guessed it. You need to know your temperature minimum. You need to know whether or not your temperature is increasing or decreasing. And now we can make this whole thing even simpler and just say, if your temperature is decreasing, avoid light. If your temperature is increasing, get light. It's that simple. I'm going to pause there, and then I want to talk about kids and the elderly.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
In other words, how do we control sleep and circadian rhythms and wakefulness in babies, adolescents, teens, and aged folks? All right, as I mentioned earlier, melatonin is not cyclic. It's not cycling in babies. It's more phasic. It's being released at a kind of a constant level. And babies tend to be smaller than adults. They are. And so those concentrations of melatonin are very high.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
As a baby grows, those concentrations per unit volume are going to go down. Babies are not born with a typical sleep wake cycle. And now all the parents saying, tell me something I didn't know. Perhaps the most important thing, if you're having to map to a baby's schedule in order to make sure that they're getting changings and nursing, et cetera, at the appropriate times,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
is to try and maintain, if you can't sleep or you can't sleep continuously, to try and maintain your autonomic nervous system in a place where you're not going into heightened states of alertness when you would ideally be sleeping. Now,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
I realized that this could be translated to try and stay calm while you're sleep deprived, which is very hard for people to do, but this is where the non-sleep deep rest protocols surface again, and can potentially be very beneficial for people to be able to recover, not necessarily sleep, but for them to maintain a certain amount of autonomic regulation.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
Today's podcast episode is about jet lag, shift work, and we are going to discuss protocols that are backed by science that can support particular tools that you can use to combat things like jet lag
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
Last night I woke up, I went to bed about 10.30. I woke up at three in the morning. I knew I wasn't feeling rested. I did a NSDR protocol. I fell back asleep. I woke up at 6.30. You need to teach your brain and your nervous system how to turn off your thoughts and go to sleep. And ideally you do that without medication, unless there's a real need, you do that through these behavioral protocols.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
They work because they involve using the body to shift the mind, not trying to just turn off your thoughts in the middle of the night. Similar circumstances can arise if you're taking care of a very sick loved one, you're up all night. Try and stay calm using NSDR protocols. I know it's harder to do than to say, but those protocols are there, they're free. There's research to support them.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
Try and get sleep whenever you can, but also try to get morning sunlight and evening sunlight in your eyes if you can. And if you can't get that, use artificial light, okay? Once again, I've thrown a tremendous amount of information at you. I hope you will figure out your temperature minimum and start working with that to access the sleep and wakeful cycles that you want to access.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
Well, a good number to shoot for as a rule of thumb is to try and get exposure to at least 100,000 lux before 9 a.m. 10 a.m. maybe, but before 9 a.m. Assuming you're waking up sometime between 5 and 8 a.m. The mechanism of circadian clock setting involves these neurons in your eye that send electrical signals to this clock above the roof of your mouth.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
I hope that you'll explore NSDR. You have now access to a lot of mechanism about sleep and wakefulness. I really believe... that as we drill deeper and deeper into these mechanisms and you start hearing some of the same themes again and again, you're going to start to develop an intuition and an understanding of how these systems work in you and your particular life circumstances.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
So know your temperature minimum, understand light in the early part of the day is valuable. Light when you want to be awake, provided it's not so bright, it's damaging, it's great for you whether or not it comes from screens or sunlight, but sunlight's better.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
avoid light in the four to six hours before your temperature minimum, or else you're going to delay your clock, unless you're traveling and that's what you want to do, okay? Use temperature, increase temperature to shift your clock, decrease temperature to delay your clock. Thanks so much for your time and attention. I really appreciate it. See you next time on the Huberman Lab Podcast.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
And as always, thanks for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
And that system sums, meaning it adds photons. It's a very slow system. So here we're talking about trying to get that at least 100,000 photons, but not all at once. So what do you do? You go outside. Going outside, even on a cloudy day, could be 7,000, 10,000 lux. It's really remarkable how bright it is, meaning how much photon energy is coming through.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
So try and get 100,000 lux before that 9 a.m. Now, if you can't do that because you live in an area of the world where it's just not bright enough, Some people have sent me pictures from Northern England. It's just not bright enough in winter. Then sure, you can resort to using artificial lights in order to get enough photons.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
And I'm putting out this 100,000 lux number as a target to get each day before 9 a.m. You can, in theory, get it all from artificial lights, but there are some special qualities about sunlight that make sunlight the better stimulus. Then I've recommended based on scientific literature that you look at sunlight sometime around the time when the sun is setting.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
And the reason for that, of course, is because it adjusts down the sensitivity of your eyes, because here's the diabolical thing. While we need a lot of photon energy early in the day to wake up our system and set our circadian clock and prepare us for a good night's sleep 14 to 16 hours later, it takes very little photon energy to reset and shift our clock
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
And that's why you want to, as much as you safely can avoid bright light and even not so bright light between the hours of 10 or 11 PM and 4 AM. So let's talk about shifting clocks because for the jet lag person, this ability to shift the clock with light temperature exercise and food is vitally important for getting onto the new local schedule.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
offset some of the negative effects of shift work and make life easier for the new parent, as well as for the newborn child, the adolescent, anyone that wants to sleep better, feel better when they're awake, et cetera. Let's just take a step back for a moment and remind everybody what we're talking about. The circadian rhythm is a 24 hour rhythm in all sorts of functions.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
And there's so much out there about jet lag today, I'm going to dial it down to one very specific parameter that all of you can figure out without any technology or devices, and can apply for when you travel for work or pleasure or anytime you're jet lagged. And I want to absolutely emphasize that you don't have to travel to get jet lagged. Many of you are jet lagged.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
You're jet lagged because you're looking at your phone in the middle of the night. You're jet lagged because you're waking up at different times a day. You're jet lagged because your exercise is on a chaotic regime some days at this time, some days at that time. But there are some simple things that you can do. So that's where we're headed.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Aeropress. Aeropress is personally my favorite way to brew coffee. It's similar to a French press, but it's much better. The Aeropress was designed in Palo Alto by Alan Adler, a former teacher at Stanford in the engineering department.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
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Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
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Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
I've been using my own Aeropress Premium for a few months now, and I absolutely love it. With the holidays coming up, I can't imagine a better gift for any of the coffee lovers out there. With over 55,000 five-star reviews, Aeropress is the best-reviewed coffee press in the world. If you'd like to try Aeropress, you can go to aeropress.com slash Huberman.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
That's A-E-R-O-P-R-E-S-S dot com slash Huberman to get a free reusable metal filter with your Aeropress purchase. Aeropress ships to the USA, Canada, and over 60 other countries around the world. Again, that's aeropress.com slash Huberman. Let's talk about what jet lag is. There are quality peer-reviewed papers showing that jet lag will shorten your life. Jet lag is a serious thing.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
Now, here's what's interesting. Traveling westward on the globe is always easier than traveling eastward. It's interesting because the effects of jet lag on longevity have shown that traveling east takes more years off your life than traveling west. Now, here's what's interesting. When we think about the effects of jet lag on longevity or this idea that it can shorten our lives,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
we have to ask ourselves why, why is that? And it turns out there's a pretty simple explanation for this. We've talked before about the autonomic nervous system, this set of neurons in our spinal cord and body and brain that regulate our wakefulness and our sleepiness.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
It turns out that human beings and probably most species are better able to activate and stay alert than they are to shut down their nervous system and go to sleep on demand. So if you really have to push and you really have to stay awake, you can do it. You can stay up later. but falling asleep earlier is harder.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
And that's why traveling east has a number of different features associated with it that because you're traveling east, you're trying to go to bed earlier. As a Californian, if I go to New York City, I've got to get to bed three hours early and wake up three hours earlier, much harder than coming back to California and just staying up a few more hours.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
And this probably has roots in evolutionary adaptation where under conditions where we need to suddenly gather up and go or forage for food or fight or do any number of different things that we can push ourselves through the release of adrenaline and epinephrine to stay awake. Whereas being able to slow down and deliberately fall asleep is actually much harder to do.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
So there's an asymmetry to our autonomic nervous system that plays out in the asymmetry of jet lag. All right, well, let's think about travel and what happens. Let's say you're not going eastward or westward, but you're going north or south. So if you go from, for instance, Washington, DC to Santiago, Chile, you're just going north and south. You're not really moving into a different time zone.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
The most prominent one is a rhythm in our feelings of wakefulness and sleepiness. You also have a rhythm in sleepiness and wakefulness that correlates with that. We tend to be sleepy as our temperature is falling, getting lower, and we tend to be more awake or waking when our temperature is increasing. We have a clock over the roof of our mouth. called the suprachiasmatic nucleus.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
You're not shifting. So you will experience travel fatigue. And it turns out that jet lag has two elements, travel fatigue and time zone jet lag. Time zone jet lag is simply the inability of local sunlight and local darkness to match to your internal rhythm, this endogenous rhythm that you have.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
So before we get too complicated and too down in the weeds about this, I want to just throw out a couple important things. First of all, some people suffer from jet lag a lot, other people, not so much. Most people experience worse jet lag as they get older. There are reasons for that because early in life, patterns of melatonin release are very stable and flat and very high actually in children.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
Then it becomes cyclic during puberty, meaning it comes on once every 24 hours and turns off once every 24 hours. And then as we get older, the cycles get more disrupted and we become more vulnerable to even small changes in schedule, et cetera, meal times, right? So jet lag gets worse as we age. I want to make...
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
changing your internal rhythm really easy, or at least as easy and as simple as one could possibly make it, I believe. What I want to talk about is perhaps one of the most important things to know about your body and brain, which is called your temperature minimum. Your temperature minimum is the point in every 24-hour cycle when your temperature is lowest.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
Now, how do you measure that without a thermometer? It tends to fall 90 minutes to two hours before your average waking time. Temperature actually is the signal by which this clock above the roof of your mouth entrains or collectively pushes all the cells and tissues of our body to be on the same schedule. Temperature is the effector.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
And once you hear that, there should be an immediate, oh, of course, because how else would you get all these different diverse cell types to follow one pattern, right? A pancreatic cell does something very different than a spleen cell or a neuron, right? They're all doing different things at different rates.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
So the temperature signal can go out and then each one of those can interpret the temperature signal as one unified and consistent theme of their environment. Here's the deal. If you expose your eyes to bright light in the four hours after your temperature minimum, your circadian clock will shift so that you will tend to get up earlier and go to sleep earlier in the subsequent days, okay?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
So it's called a phase advance, if you'd like to read up on this further. You advance your clock. However, if you view bright light in the four to six hours before your temperature minimum, you will tend to phase delay your clock. You will tend to wake up later and go to sleep later. I tend to wake up at about 6 a.m., sometimes 6.30, sometimes seven.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
It depends a lot on what I was doing the night before, as I'm guessing it does for you. But that means that my temperature minimum is probably somewhere right around 4.30 a.m., which means that if I wake up at, and I were to view bright light at 4.35 AM, I'm going to advance my clock. I'm going to want to go to bed earlier the subsequent night and wake up earlier the subsequent morning.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
And as I shift my wake up time, my temperature minimum shifts too, right? If I were to view bright light in the four to six hours before 4.30 AM, guess what? The next night I'm going to want to stay up later. and I'm gonna want to wake up later the subsequent morning. Your temperature minimum is a reference point, not a temperature reading.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
Again, if you want to measure your temperature minimum and figure out what it is, 98 point whatever, 96 point whatever, that's fine. You can do that, but that information won't help you. What you need to know is what time your body temperature is lowest and understand that in the four hours or so just after that time, viewing light will advance your clock to make you want to get up earlier.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
That clock generates a 24 hour rhythm. And that clock is entrained, meaning it is matched to the external light dark cycle, which is no surprise, 24 hours. Spinning the earth takes 24 hours. So our cells, our organs, our wakefulness, our temperature, but also our metabolism, our immune system, all of that is tethered to the outside light dark cycle.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
So now you can start to see and understand the logic of this system. you can now start to shift that temperature according to your travel needs. Here's one way in which you might do that. Let's say I am going to travel to Europe, which is nine hours ahead, typically, from California.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
I would want to determine my temperature minimum, which for me is about 4.30 a.m., maybe 5 a.m., and I would want to start getting up at about 9,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
5.30 AM and getting some bright light exposure, presumably from artificial sources, because the sunlight isn't going to be out at that time, maybe even exercising as well, maybe even eating a meal at that time, you would want to start doing that two or three days before travel. Because once you land in, or I land in Europe,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
chances are just viewing the sunrise or sunset in Europe is not going to allow me to shift my circadian clock. Some people say, get sunlight in your eyes when you land, but that's not going to work because one of two things is likely to happen.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
With a nine hour shift like that, either I'm going to view sunlight at a time that corresponds to the circadian dead zone, the time in which my circadian clock can't be shifted, or I'm going to end up viewing sunlight at a time that corresponds to the four to six hour window before my temperature minimum. So it's going to shift me in exactly the opposite direction that I want to go.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
So it can be very, very challenging for people to adjust to jet lag. So you need to ask, am I traveling east or am I traveling west? Am I trying to advance my clock or delay my clock? Remember, viewing light, exercise and eating in the four to six hours before your temperature minimum will delay your clock.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
Eating, viewing sunlight and exercising, you don't have to do all three, but some combination of those in the four to six hours after your temperature minimum will advance your clock. And this is a powerful mechanism by which you can shift your clock anywhere from one to three hours per day. which is remarkable.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
That means your temperature minimum is going to shift out as much as three hours, which can make it such that you can travel all the way to Europe. And as long as you've prepared for a day or so by doing what I described back home, and then doing it when you arrive, you can potentially accomplish the entire shift within anywhere from 24 to 36 hours.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness
And so a lot of people are landing in Europe, getting sunlight in their eyes and throwing their clock out of whack or not shifting their clock at all. This brings me to the other thing that's highly recommended. And I've mentioned this before, but you want to eat on the local meal schedule. If it's in your practice to fast, fast, that's fine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools
AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also contains adaptogens. I started taking AG1 way back in 2012, long before I even knew what a podcast was. I started taking it and I still take it every single day because it ensures that I meet my quota for daily vitamins and minerals, and it helps make sure that I get enough prebiotics and probiotics to support my gut health.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools
Over the past 10 years, gut health has emerged as something that we realize is important not only for the health of our digestion, but also for our immune system and for the production of neurotransmitters and neuromodulators, things like dopamine and serotonin. In other words, gut health is critical for proper brain function.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools
Now, of course, I strive to eat healthy whole foods from unprocessed sources for the majority of my nutritional intake, but there are a number of things in AG1, including specific micronutrients, that are hard or impossible to get from whole foods.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools
So by taking AG1 daily, I get the vitamins and minerals that I need, along with the probiotics and prebiotics for gut health, and in turn, brain and immune system health, and the adaptogens and critical micronutrients that are essential for all organs and tissues of the body.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools
So anytime somebody asks me if they were to only take one supplement, what that supplement should be, I always say AG1, because AG1 supports so many different systems in the brain and body that relate to our mental health, physical health, and performance. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools
For this month only, April 2025, AG1 is giving away a free one month supply of omega-3 fish oil, along with a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2. As I've highlighted before in this podcast, omega-3 fish oil and vitamin D3 plus K2 have been shown to help with everything from mood and brain health to heart health and healthy hormone production and much more.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools
Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to get the free one month supply of omega-3 fish oil plus a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2 with your subscription. Next, I'd like to move to exercise and how particular timing and types of exercise can vastly improve fat loss. The topic of exercise is a kind of controversial one.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools
I think the most simple way, the most fluid way to have this conversation about exercise and fat loss is in terms of three general types of training. And those are high intensity interval training, so called HIIT, H-I-I-T. So high intensity interval training, sprint interval training, so that's going to be very high intensity or S-I-T, or moderate intensity continuous training, M-I-C-T.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools
So we've got HIIT, SIT, and MICT. If you'd like to map this to VO2max, SIT, this sprint interval training was defined as all out greater than 100% of VO2 max bursts of activity that last eight to 30 seconds interspersed with less intense recovery periods.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools
What portion depends on a number of factors, but that simple formula is important. So a calorie is a calorie as a unit of energy, and we need to accept and acknowledge this calories in,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools
So this would be sprinting down field for eight to 30 seconds, then maybe walking back for about a minute or two and then sprinting again and then continuing. So that would be SIT. HIIT, H-I-I-T. It's defined as submaximal, so 80 to 100% of VO2 max bursts of activity that lasts 60 to 240 seconds interspersed with less intense recovery periods.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools
MICT, okay, this moderate intensity continuous training is steady state cardio, sometimes called zone two cardio these days on the internet. which is performed continuously for 20 to 60 minutes at moderate intensity of 40 to 60% of VO2 max, or if you prefer heart rate, 55 to 70% of max heart rate, okay?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools
So we can think about high, medium, and low intensity exercise, although low intensity usually means that you could carry on a conversation or maybe you'd have to gasp every few steps or so while trying to talk and run.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools
That's I think going to be the most useful way to have this conversation that we're having now because there's so many different forms of exercise that people do and intensity is important. Let's ask the question that I think many people are wondering about, which is, is it better, meaning do you burn more fat if you do your exercise fasted?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools
And fasted in this respect could be that you wake up in the morning, you've been fasting all night, you just hydrate and you exercise. For short periods of training, it doesn't really seem to matter whether or not you eat before training or you don't if your goal is fat oxidation.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools
at a period of about 90 minutes of moderate intensity exercise, there's a switch over point whereby if you ate before the exercise, you will reduce, excuse me, you will burn far less fat from the 90 minute point onward than you would if you had gone into the training fasted.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools
Now, there are also studies that point to the fact that you don't have to wait to 90 minutes in order to get this enhanced fat burning effect. If one does high intensity training or even the very high intensity forms of training like sprints or squats or deadlifts or any kind of activity that can't be maintained for more than these eight or I would say up to 60 seconds.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools
meaning calories ingested versus calories burned formula, but the calories burned portion is strongly influenced by a number of things that you can control that can greatly accelerate or increase the amount of adipose tissue or the proportion of adipose tissue that you burn in response to exercise and food.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools
So a set of lifting weights repeated, repeated. If that's done, for anywhere from 20 minutes, so weight training, or power lifting, or these kinds of things, or kettlebell swings, or up to 60 minutes, well then the switchover point in which you can burn more fat if you go into that fasted comes earlier.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools
And this makes sense because there's nothing holy about the 90 minute point for medium intensity zone two cardio. That 90 minute point is the point in which the body shifts over from mainly burning glycogen, basically sugar that comes from muscles or the liver and realizes this is going on for a while. I'm going to shift over to a storage site that is in reserve, like body fat.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools
This is something that has to do with the milieu of various hormones. What has to happen is insulin has to go down far enough. So if you ate before the exercise, you'd have an increase in insulin. If you ate carbohydrates, you'd have a bigger increase in insulin. Fat and proteins indeed will have lower amounts of insulin and fasting will give you the lowest amount of insulin.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools
Well, then that switch over point is going to come earlier in the exercise. Think about if you were to do something high intensity for 20, 30, 40 minutes, so maybe lift weights and then get into zone two cardio. If you were fasted, the literature says that you're going to burn more body fat per unit time than if you had eaten before or during the exercise. So what does this mean?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools
This means if you want to burn more body fat, if it's in your protocols and you've been approved to do this safely, Exercise intensely for 20 to 60 minutes. The higher the intensity, obviously the shorter that bout is going to be and then move over into zone two cardio. And if you do that fasted, then indeed you will burn a higher percentage of body fat.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools
But if you can't even get to the exercise, if you're somebody who just can't do the training at all, you're unwilling to, or you're incapable of training, unless you eat something, then obviously eating something makes the most sense.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools
And what you eat prior to exercise, that's a whole other biz that people argue about and fight about whether or not you should go into it with low carbohydrates or higher carbohydrates, all of that. But in general, the theme there is very simple, which is that you want insulin levels to be pretty low if your goal is body fat reduction.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools
This could be distilled into a simple protocol whereby three or four times a week you do high intensity training followed by either nothing or followed by low intensity training, especially if you're able to do that fasted. And I should just mention that none of this stuff about fasted is about performance.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools
If you want to perform really well, you want to, this is for reasons of performance and you want to, you know, it's for a sport or a competition. It's not for body fat purposes. Well, then all of this kind of falls away and is modified by what's ideal to eat for performance. But what we're talking about today is how to optimize body fat, body fat loss.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools
So I think you get the principle now, but you should all be asking yourselves as scientists of yourselves, why would it be that certain patterns of exercise would lead to more or less fat loss? And again, it has to do with the neurons. It has to do with how we engage the nervous system. So while non-exercise activity induced thermogenesis, NEAT, the fidgeting, and cold can induce thermogenesis,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools
Today, we're going to talk about the fact that your body fat of various kinds, and there are several kinds of body fat, are actually innervated by neurons. Neurons connect to your body fat and can change the probability that that body fat will be burned or not. So your nervous system is the master controller of this process.
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by engaging shiver type movement or low level movements. Big movements that are of very high intensity, meaning they require a lot of effort, deploy a lot of adrenaline, epinephrine from our neurons and signal particular types and amounts of fat thermogenesis, fat oxidation.
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Whereas low level intensity exercise, low or moderate intensity exercise, you know, walking, running, biking, where you can do that easily, there's not very much adrenaline release.
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So adrenaline and AKA epinephrine is really the final common path by which movement of any kind, whether or not it's low level shiver or whether or not it's lifting a barbell, sprinting up a hill or doing a long bike ride, adrenaline is the effector of fat loss. It's the trigger and it's the effector.
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So now I want to turn our attention to compounds that increase epinephrine and adrenaline, as well as compounds that work outside the adrenaline epinephrine pathway to increase the rates of fat loss.
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I almost always save compounds and supplements and things of that sort to the end, because I do believe that people should look first toward behavioral tools and an understanding of the science before they look toward a supplement or a particular thing that they can extract from diet.
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And this is mainly to try and shift people away from the kind of magic pill phenomenon or the idea that there is a magic pill because there really isn't. And frankly, there never will be, but there are some compounds that can greatly increase fat oxidation and mobilization and understanding which compounds increase oxidation or mobilization
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can be very useful if your goal is to accelerate fat loss. I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar.
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We should all know that proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. In fact, even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance to a considerable degree. It's also important that you're not just hydrated, but that you get adequate amounts of electrolytes in the right ratios.
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Drinking a packet of Element dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate amounts of hydration and electrolytes. To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of both, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning.
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I'll also drink a packet of Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes. There are a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. I like the watermelon, I like the raspberry, I like the citrus. Basically, I like all of them.
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If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim an Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement spelled L-M-N-T. So it's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. There are things that people can ingest that will allow them to oxidize more fat.
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And it plays a strong role in the calories out, the calories burned component. So let's talk about fat utilization. Let's talk about how fat is converted into energy which is sometimes also called fat burning. There's two parts to this process. One is fat mobilization. And the second is fat oxidation or utilization. And that's a process called lipolysis.
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And that occurs mainly by increasing the amount of epinephrine that is released from neurons that innervate fat tissue. One of the more common ones is one that you may already be using, which is caffeine. It's well established that caffeine can enhance performance if you're caffeine adapted. Now, caffeine for burning more fat, for oxidizing and mobilizing more fat is an interesting one.
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It can be effective at dosages up to 400 milligrams. 400 milligrams is roughly a cup and a half of coffee or two cups of coffee. Nowadays, there's a lot more caffeine
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So if you go to a typical cafe and you were to get their medium size, that would have close to a gram of caffeine, which is why if you're a regular caffeine consumer and you don't get that gram of caffeine in your coffee each day, you will get a headache. It can cause constriction and dilation of blood vessels in ways that's complicated, but you'll get a headache.
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Caffeine can enhance the amount of fat that you burn in any duration of exercise. And it can shift the percentage of fat that you oxidize compared to glycogen. Unless you take that caffeine and it ramps you up so much that you're training really, really intensely. The bottom line is if you like caffeine and you can use it safely,
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ingesting somewhere between 100 and 400 milligrams of caffeine prior to exercise somewhere between 30 to 40 minutes before exercise can be beneficial if we're talking about fat oxidation, burning more body fat. And if caffeine is the kind of the entry point for most people of using compounds to increase the rate or percentage of fat loss in exercise and even at rest,
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What are some of the other things that are useful and interesting? Well, in terms of tools that are actionable and have reasonable safety margins, I've talked before about something called GLP-1. This is something that can be triggered by the ingestion of yerba mate. Mate increases GLP-1. GLP-1 is in the glucagon pathway. So let's just quickly return to our biochemistry.
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As you recall, fat is mobilized from body fat stores. and then it's burned up, it's oxidized in cells. It actually needs to be converted into ATP and those fatty acids are essentially converted into ATP in the mitochondria of the cell. High insulin prevents that from happening and glucagon facilitates that process. glucagon facilitates that process through increases in GLP-1.
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The short takeaway is mate increases GLP-1 and yes, increases the percentage of fat that you'll burn. It increases fat burning. And that is especially true, it turns out from the scientific literature, if you ingest mate prior to exercise of any kind. So if you want to burn more fat, Drinking mate before exercise is good.
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Drinking it at rest when you're not exercising will also help shift your metabolism toward enhanced burning of fat by increasing fat oxidation. Now there's a whole category of pharmaceuticals that's being developed right now that are in late stage trials or are in use for the treatment of diabetes, which capitalize on this GLP-1 pathway.
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They go by various names and there are people on the internet who are selling these things. They are prescription drugs. And I want to emphasize that they are prescription drugs. And you obviously wouldn't want to use any of these without a prescription and a requirement.
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It does seem that they are effective for the treatment of certain kinds of diabetes and lead to fairly significant weight loss and reduction in appetite. So this is kind of the modern version of GLP-1 is pharmaceuticals of GLP-1 metabolism are drugs such as semaglutide. I can never pronounce this. I can't seem to pronounce many things, it seems. Semaglutide is the way I would pronounce it.
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In any case, this compound increases GLP-1. It's actually a GLP-1 analog in some cases, and they go by various types of trade names. And again, the semaglutide is the prescription version of the, it's kind of the heavy artillery GLP-1 stimulant. And again, should be only explored with a prescription. So those are the compounds that really increase fat oxidation directly.
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Fat cells can be visceral around our viscera, our organs, or they can be subcutaneous under our skin. Stored fat has two parts that are relevant here. It's got the fatty acid part, and that's the part that your body can use. And that's attached to something called glycerol, and they're linked by a backbone. To mobilize fat, you got to break the backbone between glycerol and these fatty acids, okay?
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There are going to be a number of things that impact insulin and glucagon. that are going to shift the body toward more fat burning. And so for instance, berberine, which comes from a plant or metformin are compounds that are now in kind of growing use for reducing blood glucose.
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They are very potent at reducing blood glucose, which will reduce insulin because the job of the hormone insulin is to essentially manage glucose in the bloodstream. So there are huge differences gallery of compounds that will reduce insulin and thereby can increase fat oxidation.
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And that's because, as I mentioned before, fat oxidation, this conversion of fatty acids into ATP in the mitochondria is inhibited by insulin. So if you keep insulin low, you're going to increase that process, which brings us full circle back to the issue of diet and nutrition.
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there is really solid evidence from the Gardner lab at Stanford and from other labs showing that when you look at different diets, you look at low fat diets, high fat diets, keto diets, intermittent fasting, provided people stick to their particular diet, it doesn't really matter which diet you follow. You can still get a caloric deficit and you get weight loss.
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Adherence, however, is always an issue. And so what I always say is that you want to use the eating plan that is obviously beneficial to your health, but the one that allows you to adhere to whatever it is that the particular nutrition protocol is, right? If you can't stick with something, then it's not very worthwhile.
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It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. Today, we're going to talk about the science of tools for fat loss.
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But from the purely scientific standpoint, there's also an advantage to keeping insulin low. Now that doesn't necessarily mean you go to zero carbohydrate.
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I've talked before about my preferred way of eating is to go low or no carbohydrate throughout the day for alertness, to get that adrenaline release and the focus that goes with it, et cetera, and the ability to think and move and do all the things I need to do during the day. And then I eat carbohydrates at night because it facilitates the transition to sleep. That's what works for me.
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But when insulin is low, you do place your system in a position to oxidize more fat. And so that's why I think a lot of people do see benefit from lower carbohydrate or moderate carbohydrate diets, because when insulin is low, you are in a position to oxidize more fat, both from exercise and at rest. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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That's accomplished by an enzyme called lipase, but you can forget all that if you want. Remember, we're just trying to mobilize fat. So the first step is to get those fatty acids moving around in the bloodstream, to get them out of those fat cells. And then they can travel and be used for energy. They're going to go into cells that can use them for energy.
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And once they are inside those cells, they're still not burned up. You need to oxidize them. They need to be moved into the mitochondria and then they can be converted into ATP, into energy. So just to really zoom out again to make sure I don't lose anybody, you got to mobilize the fat, then you have to oxidize the fat.
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And many of the things that the nervous system can do is to increase the mobilization of fat, but also the oxidation of fat. So what are these neurons that connect to fat doing? What are they releasing exactly? How do they actually increase fat mobilization and how do they increase fat oxidation, burning of fat? Well, there are a couple of things that they release that encourage that process.
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And the main one that you need to know about is epinephrine or adrenaline. The conversion of these fatty acids into ATP in the mitochondria of cells is favored by adrenaline. And adrenaline is released from two sources. Adrenaline is released from the adrenal glands, which sit atop our kidneys and our lower back.
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And it's also released from the so-called sympathetic nervous system, although that name is a bit of a misnomer because it has nothing to do with sympathy, has to do with stimulating alertness and promoting action of the body.
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It was thought for a long time that adrenaline swimming around in your body of when you're fasted because fasting can increase adrenaline or when you're engaging in intense exercise or when you're stressed is going to promote fat oxidation. That's actually not the case. the adrenaline that stimulates fat oxidation, the burning of fat is coming from neurons that actually connect to the fat.
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Today's episode is mainly going to be focused on how the nervous system, neurons, and some of the cells they collaborate with like glia and macrophages, how those encourage or can encourage accelerated fat loss, because it turns out they can. Remember, your nervous system, which includes your brain and your spinal cord and all the connections that they make with the organs of the body,
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It's a local process. And this is very important because it means that what you do, the specific patterns of movements and the specific environment you create that can stimulate these particular neurons to activate fat meaning to release fat, to mobilize it, and then to burn it is going to be a powerful lever that you can use in order to increase fat loss.
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Okay, so let's talk about how to activate the nervous system in ways that it promotes more liberation, movement, mobilization of fat, and more oxidation of fat. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, David. David makes a protein bar unlike any other. It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar.
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That's right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from protein. This is 50% higher than the next closest protein bar. David protein bars also taste amazing. Even the texture is amazing. My favorite bar is the chocolate chip cookie dough. But then again, I also like the new chocolate peanut butter flavor and the chocolate brownie flavored. Basically, I like all the flavors a lot.
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They're all incredibly delicious. In fact, the toughest challenge is knowing which ones to eat on which days and how many times per day. I limit myself to two per day, but I absolutely love them.
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With David, I'm able to get 28 grams of protein in the calories of a snack, which makes it easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight per day, and it allows me to do so without ingesting too many calories. I'll eat a David protein bar most afternoons as a snack, and I always keep one with me when I'm out of the house or traveling. They're incredibly delicious.
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And given that they have 28 grams of protein, they're really satisfying for having just 150 calories. If you'd like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, that's davidprotein.com slash Huberman. So one of the most powerful ways to stimulate epinephrine, which is also called adrenaline, from these neurons is through movement.
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The type of movement that I'm referring to is extremely subtle, shivering movement. is a strong stimulus for the release of adrenaline, epinephrine, into fat and the increase in fat oxidation and mobilization. And there are other subtle forms of movement that can greatly increase fat metabolism and fat loss.
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There was a group in England during the 1960s and 70s that discovered a pathway by which subtle forms of movement can greatly increase fat loss. This is the work of Rothwell and Stock. It's very famous in the thermogenesis literature. And I learned about this early on when I was an undergraduate and I asked, how did they come across this? And here's how the story goes.
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They were aware that some people overeat and yet don't put on weight. Other people overeat even just a little bit and they seem to accumulate extra adipose tissue. Now, this is long before all the discussions about microbiome and hormone factors and as long before many of the hormone factors besides insulin had even been discovered.
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What they did was they examined people who overate and did not gain weight. And what they observed was that those people engaged in lots of subtle movement throughout the day. In other words, they were fidgeters and that's what they call them.
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And in 2015, and again, in 2017, there've been studies that have explored this using some modern metabolic tracking and indeed simply moving a lot, being a fidgeter, bouncing your knee, standing up and pacing several times or many times throughout the day. considerable amounts of fat loss and weight loss when people were ingesting the same amount of food.
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governs everything. The nervous system and the role of the brain and other neurons has been vastly overlooked in the discussion about losing fat.
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Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools
If they overate, they were able to compensate and burn off that food. So for people that are overweight, who are kind of averse to exercise, fidgeting might actually be a good entry point. Now that's great. And you can think about the protocols, but I want to, nest that protocol in what I said before, which is that fat is controlled by these neurons and the epinephrine they release.
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Those subtle movements of our core musculature not just the core, but all our limbs and our musculature, those low level movements, they trigger epinephrine release from these neurons and they stimulate the mobilization of fat. And then that fat is oxidized at higher rates. So what's the protocol? Fidget.
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If you're really interested in burning calories and you already exercise, you want to burn more, or you don't have the opportunity to exercise or you're averse to exercise for whatever reason,
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fidgeting movements, staccato movements, standing up, walking around, pacing, all the sort of nervous activities that we're so critical of in other people and sometimes in ourselves are actually mobilizing and oxidizing a lot of fat and a lot of energy. And while this probably won't compensate for chronic overeating,
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Now, I would be remiss and I'd probably come under a pretty considerable attack if I didn't just acknowledge upfront a core truth of metabolic science and also of neuroscience, frankly, which is that calories in versus calories out, meaning how many calories you ingest versus how many calories you burn is the fundamental and most important formula in this business of fat loss and weight management in general.
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the caloric burn from this is considerable and very likely can offset a meal that had excessive calories or a kind of steady state of eating too much. Now it should make sense why shivering is one of the strongest stimuli that one can incorporate to stimulate fat loss. Now, shivering is almost always associated with cold. We think shivering, we think cold, because when we get cold, we shiver.
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And there are two ways that shivering can increase fat loss. And there are several ways that you can use shivering, you can leverage shivering, and you can leverage cold to accelerate fat loss, but you have to do it correctly. And most of the people... that are using cold and frankly suggesting cold as a means to increase metabolism fat loss are suggesting the exact wrong protocol.
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Most people out there are using cold exposure, typically by taking cold showers, or by getting into cold water of some other kind, a lake or a river or a cold bath or an ice bath. Since today we're talking about accelerating fat loss through the use of science-based tools, I want to emphasize a study that was published in Nature just a couple of years ago showing
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exactly how cold increases metabolism and fat loss, okay? So we have several kinds of fat, three kinds in fact. We have white fat, white adipose tissue, and we have brown fat or brown adipose tissue. And there's a third kind, which is beige adipose tissue. White fat is the type that we traditionally think of as fat, subcutaneous fat. And it is not particularly rich in mitochondria.
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It is there as an energy storage site. And we have to mobilize the fat out as we talked about before and burn it up elsewhere. Brown fat largely exists between our shoulder blades and on the back of our neck, between the scapulae, and it's rich with mitochondria, which is why it's called brown fat. And brown fat has a particular,
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biochemical cascade whereby it can take food energy and it can take food basically, break it down and convert it into energy within those cells. But unlike fatty acids from white fat, which have to travel elsewhere, get broken down in mitochondria and convert into ATP, et cetera, used by the mitochondria rather, Brown fat is thermogenic. It can actually use energy directly.
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Cold causes the release of adrenaline from your adrenals, and it causes the release of epinephrine from these neurons that connect to fat. The paper published in Nature shows that it is shivering itself. that causes the brown fat to increase your burning, your burn rate and your metabolism. And it works like this.
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When you get into cold and you shiver, the shivering, that low level movement of the muscle, those small movements, triggers the release of a molecule called succinate, S-U-C-C-I-N-A-T-E, succinate. And succinate acts on the brown fat to increase brown fat thermogenesis and fat burning overall.
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And the question then is how long to get into that cold environment and how cold should that environment be? So first let's talk about how long to get into that cold environment. It turns out that if you want to trigger the shiver, what you want to do is to get into the cold and then get out of the cold and typically not dry off. and then get back into the cold and out of the cold.
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That will definitely stimulate more shivering than just getting into the cold itself. So how cold should it be? And look, if you get into water that's very, very cold, it can actually shock your heart. It can actually give you a heart attack if it's truly, truly ice cold and you're not adapted to that. So proceed with caution, please. I'm not a physician and I don't want to see anyone get hurt.
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Just cold enough to be uncomfortable is a good place to start. So for some of you, that's going to be 60 degrees. For some of you, that's going to be 55 degrees. For some of you, it's going to be high 30s, right? Depends on how cold adapted you are.
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So what you need to do is find a temperature that you can get into one to five, probably one to three times a week if you really want this to accelerate fat loss. And you want to get in until you just start to shiver. And then you want to get out and not dry off. Wait anywhere from one to three minutes and then get back into the cold.
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There's simply no way around the fact that if you ingest far more calories than you burn, you're likely to gain weight. And a good portion of that weight is likely to be adipose tissue, fat. It's also true that if you ingest fewer calories than you burn, that you will lose weight and that a significant portion of that will come from body fat.
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So here's a potential kind of sets reps protocol that you can play with. Find a temperature that induces shiver for you. That's going to vary depending on your cold tolerance and how cold adapted you are. One to three, maybe five times a week, get in until you, or get under the shower or whatever it is until you start to shiver, genuinely shiver.
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Then after about a minute or so, get out, spend one to three minutes out, but don't dry off. Get back in for anywhere from one to three minutes, but try and access the shiver point again. And you might do three repetitions of that. So it's three times in and three times out total. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1.
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Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. My name is Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Let's talk about neuroplasticity. More specifically, let's talk about how we can optimize our brains.
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I delay my caffeine two hours after waking. And then I generally try and get exercise in the first hour or ideally within the first three hours of waking up. And then I'll move into a focused learning bout. If I find that I'm too alert, and then I generally will tend to eat and kind of bring down my level of alertness and will continue working.
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I typically eat my first meal right around midday, whether or not I've exercised or not. In general, I rely on a low carbohydrate meal. I'll eat meat or salad or some variation of that. And nuts and fats and things like that because of the choline content for focus. I'm just going to continue to march through my day. And this is of course what I experienced.
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Some people are quite different, but what I find is around 2 or 3 p.m. I start getting a little groggy, a little bit sleepy. I will tend to shift my work from work that requires a lot of duration path outcome, really careful analysis and activation of the no-go pathway. Around early afternoon, I find I can do kind of typical more mundane tasks because
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Those tasks require less cognitive load and they can be done more or less in and out of sequence. I can answer a couple email here, maybe answer that email there. And then typically around 4 p.m. or so, I do two things. One is I make sure I hydrate and then I always do a non-sleep deep rest protocol sometime in the afternoon.
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This is sometimes a 10 minute yoga nidra type protocol or a 30 minute yoga nidra type protocol. And I do that because for me, by about 4.30 in the afternoon, I'm capable of doing basically nothing. I personally find it a mistake to, at that point, down a double espresso and charge really hard. It just doesn't work for me. I end up really disrupting my sleep schedule.
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I end up disrupting a lot of different things. So for me, I do the non-sleep deep rest protocol. I usually emerge from that feeling like I have another whole day second wind, like I could just work, work, work, work, work. and then I'll do a second bout of learning.
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I'll do some sort of work that either involves linear analysis of something, so maybe numerical work, or I'm trying to learn something. This learning bout is very different than the morning one. This is a work bout or learning bout that's more in the clear, calm, and focus regime because I've come out of this non-sleep deep rest,
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I'm not ingesting caffeine because I want to make sure that I can sleep later that night really well. And this tends to be more when I do creative type work. Creativity is a very interesting state of mind in which we're taking existing elements, things that we already know, and rearranging them in ways that are novel. Creativity has two parts.
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It has a creative discovery mode where you're kind of shuffling things around in a very relaxed way and kind of being playful or exploring different configurations. And then creativity also has an absolutely linear implementation mode in which you take the idea or the design you've come up with and you create something very robust and concrete. And so creativity is really a two-part thing.
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And the first part, of actively exploring different configurations, sometimes in a playful way, sometimes in a way that's almost random and just kind of exploring, that state is definitely facilitated by being relaxed and almost sleepy. When you find yourself in that kind of clear, calm, and focused mode, creative works tend to come about very well in those regimes.
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Now, I know that a lot of people out there rely on substances to access creative states, I'm not a marijuana user. It's just not the drug for me for a variety of reasons. I'm not a drinker. It's not the substance for me for a variety of reasons.
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The problem with using substances to access creativity is that generally the substances that relax people will allow them to get into that creative brainstorming mode, but not so good at the linear implementation mode. So that afternoon block is when I try and access the freer kind of looser mindset that's associated with the fatigue that comes later in the afternoon.
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First of all, there are several forms of plasticity. The best way to think about it is in terms of short-term, medium-term and long-term plasticity. Short-term plasticity is any kind of shift that you want to achieve in the moment or in the day, but that you don't necessarily want to hold onto forever. And I'd say, well, what kinds of things are those?
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For some of you, that state that favors creativity and creative learning might be better in the morning. I don't know. You're going to have to decide. For some of you, you're going to be late shifted. Some of you are going to be morning shifted. But where we have alertness, generally we are good at linear implementation. We're good at activating the no-go pathway and suppressing action.
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Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
And we are good at pursuing particular goals and strategy implementation. And where we tend to be more relaxed and we tend to be almost in a kind of sleepy mode. So for me coming out of one of these non-sleep deep rest modes or sleep, that's when we tend to be better at novel configurations of existing elements, which is creativity. And this brings about a question that I get
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Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
all the time, which is what about psychedelics? On psychedelics, people report being able to smell colors or to hear trees, et cetera. And that's because there's a lot of sensory blending. However, that's led to the misconception that sensory blending itself is a creative process. There's nothing creative about sensory blending.
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The essence of a creative process is new ways of configuring things that lend themselves to a bigger or greater or deeper or novel understanding on the part of the observer. And just sensory blending is not going to accomplish that.
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Now, I think that there may come a time, and certainly there are clinical trials that are happening now, where psychedelics are leveraged toward particular clinical goals. These are clinical studies done with a psychiatrist present that is authorized to do that, that can help people through depression, trauma, et cetera.
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So all of this is to say that, no, I don't take psychedelics to access creative states. That's not where I think the, the important role of psychedelics might show up if it's going to for humanity. I think that it may have these important roles in the clinical context, provided it's done legally and safely.
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Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
I think that the creative process being a two-stage process means that I am personally best served by having this period of nonlinear exploration of concepts, whatever it is I happen to be working on, in the afternoon, but then I'll actually shelve that work.
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Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
I'll just set it aside and then I'll revisit it the next day or even the next day to see whether or not the work itself is ready for deliberate linear implementation, which I would want to do during one of these highly focused states. The long and short way of saying this is that when we're very alert, do linear type of operations.
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When we tend to be more sleepy and more relaxed, that's when creative works can first be conceived, but their implementation requires high levels of alertness. I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't.
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That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. We should all know that proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. In fact, even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance to a considerable degree.
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It's also important that you're not just hydrated, but that you get adequate amounts of electrolytes in the right ratios. Drinking a packet of Element dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate amounts of hydration and electrolytes.
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Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of both, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I'll also drink a packet of Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.
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Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
Well, for instance, short-term plasticity might be you wake up earlier than you would like to catch a flight. You're not feeling particularly alert and you want to use a protocol or you decide to use a protocol, which could be coffee, or it could be a certain form of breathing, or it could be some other tool to become more alert at a time of day when normally you aren't that alert.
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Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
There are a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. I like the watermelon. I like the raspberry. I like the citrus. Basically, I like all of them. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim an Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement spelled L-M-N-T.
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Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
Now that gets us more to the kind of late afternoon evening. Now I am, as I've mentioned before, I'm a proponent of getting sunlight in the evening as well. By getting light in the evening, it accomplishes two things for me. First of all, it makes sure that I don't get up too early, that I'm not waking up at three or four in the morning because it's going to shift my clock.
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Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
It's going to delay it a little bit. And so this is really important. If you want to keep your schedule on a normal routine,
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Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
on a regular 24 hour cycle and not have your circadian rhythms of sleep and wakefulness drifting all over the place, and you want some predictability to how your mind is going to work in order to optimize learning and performance, well, then you need to get morning light and evening light. The morning light is going to advance my clock, make my system want to get up earlier.
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And the evening light is going to delay my clock a little bit so that on average, it kind of bookends my circadian mechanisms. And I'll basically want to go to sleep at more or less the same time each night and wake up. more or less at the same time each morning. That's how it works. And that's a hardwired mechanism. That's not some subjective thing that I tell myself.
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That's a hardwired mechanism. So that gets us to the evening. And generally in the evening, I'll get that light by going outside and then I'll start to dim them for the evening. Because as I've mentioned many times before, and I'm not going to belabor the point, you want to minimize your light exposure, especially overhead bright light exposure in the evening from about 10 PM to 4 AM.
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So for me, it screens off, it's dim lights, and that's what favors falling asleep in a good night's sleep for me. since we were talking about food earlier, I'll just revisit a little bit of what I said before. My evening meal tends to be more carbohydrate rich. So I'm not one of these people that's keto or high meat only or anything like that.
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Remember, fasting in low carbohydrate states facilitate alertness. Carbohydrate rich foods facilitate calmness and sleepiness. They stimulate the release of tryptophan and the transition to sleep. I tend to achieve that state using carbohydrates and it also replenishes glycogen.
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The next piece of scientific data that I'm going to describe is a very important piece of scientific data for sake of understanding how to optimize your brain and access sleep. It also can help avoid a lot of anxiety issues. The peak output of the circadian clock for wakefulness, in other words, the peak of our wakefulness and the suppression of the sleep signal
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actually happens very late in the day. So we have this trough of activity and body temperature is lowest right before waking. Then as we wake up, our body temperature goes up and into the afternoon, it continues to go up, up, up, up, up. And then it tends to fall in the evening and towards bedtime. But there's a brief blip of release of peptides and other substances from the body
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from the sleep centers in the brain that signals the peak of alertness and wakefulness about an hour before bedtime. Now that's often the time when people start stressing about the fact that they have something to do the next day and they worry about not being able to sleep and it can cascade into a whole set of things. I anticipate a in alertness and activity and I don't worry about it.
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Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
But your expectation is that when you return home, you will discard with that the need to do that at 5.30 a.m. because you'll be asleep at 5.30 a.m. So there's short-term plasticity, behavioral plasticity. Then there's medium-term plasticity.
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I use that perhaps to get organized for the next day. But basically I just go through, if I'm going to do anything, it's going to be very mundane tasks like cleaning or things that require almost zero effort. And that probably speaks to my cleaning abilities too. I tend to go to sleep somewhere around 10, 30, 11. And if all goes well, I stay asleep for four or five hours.
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Typically it's three or four, and then I wake up. What it probably reflects is that the real time, meaning the time that I should go to sleep is probably closer to eight o'clock. The word midnight was literally supposed to mean midnight. We were meant to go to sleep and wake up with the setting and arising of the sun.
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So I think that's the natural pattern and we've just deviated from it with artificial lights. So waking up at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. doesn't necessarily mean that there's something screwed up about you. What it likely means is that you were supposed to go to bed much earlier.
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And because of this asymmetry in the autonomic nervous system where it's much easier for us to push and to delay our sleep time than it is to accelerate our wake up time. In other words, it's easier to stay up and hang out at the party even if you don't want to be there than it is to wake up when you're exhausted and you're fast asleep.
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most people are pushing through into the late hours of the evening and night and going to bed much later than they naturally would want to. And so I personally don't want to go to bed at 8 p.m. A lot of good things happen between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. And so I want to enjoy those and I push through the evening hours. But as a consequence, I'm running out of melatonin.
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My melatonin release is basically subsided by about 3 or 4 a.m. And so it makes sense that I would wake up. if I wake up in the middle of the night and I'm anxious for whatever reason and my mind is looping, I have a couple rules. One is I don't trust anything I think about when I wake up in the middle of the night, any of it.
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There's just nothing either for me terribly creative or worth linear implementation at that time. But one thing that has been very helpful is to sometimes do one of these non-sleep deep rest protocols as a way to go back into sleep. Those for me have been very useful at helping me turn off kind of looping thinking in the middle of the night and fall back asleep.
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Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
In reviewing my schedule for you, just as a context for how to implement certain types of tools for optimizing learning, realize that it gives the impression that there's a 90 minute bout of learning and work in the morning and then a 90 minute bout of creative type work in the afternoon and that's it. There are a lot of hours in between, of course, and I just want to be very clear.
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For instance, if you go on vacation to Costa Rica and you don't know your way around Costa Rica, you want to learn the different town and the routes there, but you don't have any intention of going back, it's just medium-term. You want to just program it in for sake of your time there, and then you want to discard it.
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Those hours for me are occupied by pretty, not mundane tasks, but things that are kind of random. Those are things like email or attending to Zoom meetings or meeting with colleagues and students and things of that sort. I mentioned those two 90 minute bouts because those are the two 90 minute bouts where I'm trying to expand on the mental capacities that I already have.
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They're really where I'm trying to stretch and grow what I'm able to do on a regular basis reflexively. And so for many of you out there who are in school or have family demands or other demands, the key is to slot in those brain optimization segments of about 90 minutes, one or two, or maybe more per day. You're trying to slot those in wherever you can amidst your other
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and things that you need to do. But you want to do that in an intelligent way that's anchored to your biology. And then you want to do a number of things, which I've talked about today, in order to optimize those sessions to get the most out of them.
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I think the way to look at any tool to modulate or measure the nervous system is ask whether or not it's going to move you up or down the state of autonomic arousal, whether or not it can make you more alert or more calm, more focused or less focused. That's kind of the two axes here is that we need to think about. I think the subjective reading of whether or not one is alert or calm
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Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
and whether or not that alertness or calmness matches the goal or the thing that we're trying to achieve in terms of learning, including sleep. is the most valuable internal tool and recognition that we can all have. But ultimately it's about tailoring that alertness and calmness to the specific types of learning and activities that you are going to do and perform.
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And it's reciprocal, meaning some of those activities like exercise early in the day will increase your level of autonomic arousal and alertness. Certain foods will tend to wake you up. Certain foods will tend to make you more sleepy and the volume of food and the timing of food is a factor also. So it's a huge parameter space.
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Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
It's a huge set of variables that impacts whether or not we're feeling well, performing well, learning great or not learning great. And the key thing is to become an observer of your own system and what works for you. And to recognize that there are two bins of tools for optimizing learning and brain performance.
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Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
Most of the time when we think about or talk about optimizing the brain, we're talking about long-term plasticity. We're talking about the kinds of changes that people want to make so that their brain reflexively works differently. Long-term plasticity is almost always the big goal. It's I want to know how to speak that language. I want to be able to do that skill.
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One are tools that are really anchored in biological mechanism and we are certain of what those are. And I've talked about some of those. The other are the more subjective tools. For some of you, visualization might work terrifically well. For some of you, one song might really wake you up because of the associations you have with it.
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And for me, I might just, you know, it might repel me from the room because I don't like it, or it might put me to sleep. But of course, volume is kind of a universal. Loud music tends to wake people up. Soft music doesn't tend to wake them up quite as much.
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Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
So part of today is really getting you to think about in a scientific way, in a structured way about the non-negotiable elements, which are that you're going to have a period of every 24 hour cycle when you tend to be more awake and a period when you tend to be more asleep and how to leverage those so you're not fighting an uphill battle to wake up when you're actually...
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would want to be and should be sleepy and not trying to go to sleep when you are naturally going to be most awake. So a lot of it is really anchors back to those core mechanisms of biology. And then you start layering on the different protocols of food and supplementation, et cetera. And I think it's important to recognize that some people are just more go, go, go, go, go.
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And some people are just calmer and have a harder time getting into action and an activity. It's just the way that we're wired. Some of us have autonomic nervous systems that are more geared towards parasympathetic calm states. And so there are people like that too. And so you have to know where you are and what particular goals you're trying to pursue.
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Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
As always, thank you for your interest in science.
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Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
I want to be able to feel this way. I'm going to frame all this in the context of the daily life, the weekly life, and the yearly life. And that's because neuroplasticity and optimizing your brain rides on a deeper foundation of this thing that governs plasticity and in fact governs all our life called autonomic arousal,
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Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
is that we're asleep for part of the 24 hour cycle and we are awake almost always. I've said it before, but I'll say it again. The trigger for plasticity and learning occurs during high focus, high alertness states, not while you're asleep. And the focus and alertness are both key because of the neurochemicals associated with those states.
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Neuroplasticity is this incredible feature of our nervous system that allows it to change itself even in ways that we consciously decide. Now that's an incredible property. Our liver can't decide to just change itself. Our spleen can't decide to just change itself through conscious thought or through feedback from another person.
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Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
But the actual rewiring and the reconfiguration of the brain connections happens during non-sleep deep rest and deep sleep. So you trigger the change and in sleep, you get the change. So some of the things that we'll talk about today about optimizing the brain are centered around not sleep, but around the autonomic arousal system.
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Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
We have this system of neurons in our brain and body that's just incredible that wake us up and make us alert. And when we're not accessing that system well, we cannot access plasticity, we cannot optimize our brain.
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Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
Likewise, if we cannot sleep well and we can't rest well, we will not access plasticity and rewire our brain because that's when the actual configuration between the connections occurs. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens.
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As somebody who's been involved in research science for almost three decades and in health and fitness for equally as long, I'm constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental health, physical health, and performance. I discovered AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast or even knew what a podcast was, and I've been taking it every day since.
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I find that AG1 greatly improves all aspects of my health. I simply feel much better when I take it. AG1 uses the highest quality ingredients in the right combinations, and they're constantly improving their formulas without increasing the cost. In fact, AG1 just launched their latest formula upgrade.
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This new formula is based on exciting new research on the effects of probiotics on the gut microbiome and now includes several clinically studied probiotic strains shown to support both digestive health and immune system health, as well as to improve bowel regularity and to reduce bloating. Whenever I'm asked if I could take just one supplement, what would that supplement be? I always say AG1.
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If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. For this month only, January 2025, AG1 is giving away 10 free travel packs and a year supply of vitamin D3 K2. Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim the 10 free travel packs and a year supply of vitamin D3 K2. So to set this in context,
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I wake up each day and I'll be totally honest, I usually don't feel like bouncing right out of bed. I wake up generally more tired and groggy than I would like because I tend to go to sleep too late. What it means is that I'm not really matching my sleep of going to bed probably at 8.30 or nine and waking up at 4 a.m.
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So neuroplasticity will allow me to optimize my wakefulness, but I have to do something in order to access that. And some of you may already be anticipating what I'm about to say, which is, oh no, he's going to tell us to get sunlight in our eyes in the first 30 minutes of the day. I am going to tell you to do that, but I'm going to also tell you two things that I have not discussed before,
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Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
which relate to the plasticity between the melanopsin cells, these sunlight detecting, bright light detecting cells in our eye and the circadian clock. I've never said this before in this podcast, but it turns out that the connections between these melanopsin cells and the circadian clock are plastic throughout the lifespan. So there's an opportunity for short-term plasticity.
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Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
So that's why I view sunlight first thing in the day. It helps me wake up. The other thing that I do is that there's a circuit that exists between the circadian clock and our adrenals that I've talked about before that triggers the release of cortisol first thing in the morning that wakes us up, especially when we view light. So if you're groggy in the morning, that's why viewing light is helpful.
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The cells in those tissues can make changes, sure, but it's our nervous system that harbors this incredible ability to direct its own changes in ways that we believe or we're told will serve us better. Today's podcast is really directed toward answering your most common questions and the bigger theme of how does one go about optimizing their brain or even think about optimizing the brain?
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Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
The other thing that I do is I delay my intake of caffeine for the first two hours that I'm awake. Earlier, we talked about the adenosine system and how the accumulation of adenosine makes us sleepy and caffeine suppresses adenosine. It makes us feel alert.
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Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
And so by delaying caffeine until about two hours after waking, I'm able to capture and reinforce to potentiate the neural circuit that exists between the circadian clock and the cortisol release in the adrenals.
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Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
as well as leave those adenosine receptors unoccupied so that I can then use the caffeine to get a natural lift in alertness and focus two hours later, as opposed to using it just to wake myself up out of sleepiness. I also make sure I hydrate first thing in the morning.
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There's plenty of data now showing that even a slight increase in dehydration, meaning just when you're lacking water, can make people have headaches. It can provide some additional photophobia for those of you that are migraine prone. bright light can trigger migraines.
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That's no surprise to those of you that get headaches and migraines, but dehydration can compound the vulnerability to migraine and headaches. So I drink water, I drink black coffee, or I drink mate, which is just a, because I have Argentine lineage, which is just a high caffeine drink first thing in the morning, but I delay it until two hours after I wake up.
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Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
And that's because I want the circuits between my eye and my circadian clock and my adrenals to be functioning in a particular way so that then later the caffeine is an addition, it adds more alertness. Now, this is a discussion about how to optimize your brain. Many people who wake up quickly and just naturally feel like bouncing out of bed, I envy these people,
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they will do just fine by going into a learning bout or taking care of whatever it is that they need to take care of. Sometimes that's kind of more mundane tasks like email and whatnot. Here's more or less a rule about how the brain functions vis-a-vis focus, learning, and creativity. Generally, states of high alertness when we're very, very alert are great for strategy implementation.
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The sort of thing that we are very good at when we're well rested and we're focused and our autonomic arousal or our alertness rather as it is at a high level. If you are somebody who is hitting that alertness phase of your day very early, right after you wake up, that's a great time to move right into things that
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at least the research says, you already know, have the strategy and you just want to implement the strategy. But for me, for instance, I get up, I'm not terribly alert first thing. And so I try and just get my brain and my thoughts organized. It's not a time for me to be responding in a very linear fashion to emails or carrying out calculations. That comes about two hours later.
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And I think many people out there will relate, mid-morning is when many people tend to achieve their peak in alertness and focus. Now, Many times I get the question, and what I'm about to say is directly related to the hundreds of questions I got about this. Should I use background music in order to learn?
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So as a rule of thumb, if you're feeling too keyed up, then silence and quiet is going to be helpful. In fact, if you're very keyed up, a particular circuit related to the basal ganglia starts getting triggered more easily. It's called the go-no-go circuit.
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We have circuits that connect our forebrain to a structure in our brain called the basal ganglia, which is actually a collection of structures. And the forebrain, which is involved in rational thought and thinking and planning and action, is always trying to plan what should I do and then implement that action. And the basal ganglia are intimately involved in that discussion.
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There's a reciprocal loop of communication. between basal ganglia and cortex. The basal ganglia has one set of connections to the cortex and the cortex back to the basal ganglia that facilitates go, it facilitates action. And the molecule, the neuromodulator dopamine, triggers the activation of go. It tends to make us want to do more things.
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Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
What is this thing that we're calling optimizing the brain? In doing so, I'm also going to share some of my typical routines and tools. I share them because many of you have asked for very concrete examples of what I do and when. And so I want to open up the discussion today by emphasizing something that's fundamentally important, which is that plasticity is not the goal.
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It tends to make us bias toward action by the way that dopamine binds to something called the D1 receptors, just a particular type of dopamine receptor, for those of you that want to know. The no-go pathway, the pathway in the basal ganglia and cortex that suppresses action, involves dopamine binding to this other receptor called the D2 receptor.
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Now, D1, D2 receptors, you can't just consciously decide, oh, I only want my D1 receptors and my D2 receptors to be active. You have to think about which sorts of states of mind and body facilitate go and which ones facilitate no go. There are three sort of levels of autonomic arousal, of alertness that bias us more toward go, no go, or both. So here's how it works. Let's say I'm very alert.
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Maybe I got a particularly good night's sleep the night before, I had a little too much coffee, and I'm going to sit down to some work. The thing to know, and what I always tell myself is when I'm very alert, I am very prone to go to action, but I'm also prone to not no-go, right? I'm not going to be very good at suppressing action. So those are two different things.
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Being biased toward action and being biased toward suppressing action are two different things, okay? So those are push-pull. Toward action, suppress action. So if I'm very alert, I'm aware that I will have a bias toward action. It'll be hard for me to suppress non-action, but that it's very nonspecific. When you are very alert, the best situation for learning is going to be silence.
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It's going to be complete quiet. If you are low arousal and you're tired and you're kind of sleepy, a lot of people find that having some background chatter and some background noise can help elevate their level of autonomic arousal. For most people, three hours after waking, those three hours tends to be the period in which they're most alert throughout the day.
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So that morning three hours is quite vital. I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, David. David makes a protein bar unlike any other. It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. That's right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from protein. These bars from David also taste amazing.
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My favorite flavor is chocolate chip cookie dough, but then again, I also like the chocolate fudge flavored one and I also like the cake flavored one. Basically, I like all the flavors, they're incredibly delicious. For me personally, I strive to eat mostly whole foods.
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However, when I'm in a rush or I'm away from home, or I'm just looking for a quick afternoon snack, I often find that I'm looking for a high quality protein source. With David, I'm able to get 28 grams of protein with the calories of a snack, which makes it very easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight each day.
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And it allows me to do that without taking in excess calories. I typically eat a David Barr in the early afternoon or even mid-afternoon if I want to bridge that gap between lunch and dinner. I like that it's a little bit sweet, so it tastes like a tasty snack, but it's also giving me that 28 grams of very high quality protein with just 150 calories.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
If you would like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, the link is davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Now, many of you might ask about exercise and when to exercise.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
In terms of rising body temperatures and matching body temperature to mental alertness, et cetera, it's pretty clear that exercising early in the day, not only biases us towards waking up earlier, but that it also triggers the release of things like epinephrine and other neuromodulators that lend,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
to a situation where we have heightened levels of arousal and mental acuity in the late morning and even into the afternoon. This can be very good because if you want to restrict most of your focus learning to the early part of the day, exercising early in the day does set a neurochemical context or milieu for go. It tends to trigger activation of the go pathway.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
The goal is to figure out how to access plasticity and then to direct that plasticity toward particular goals or changes that you would like to achieve. Let's start by talking about the different systems within the nervous system that are available for plasticity. And in doing so, I'll frame them in the context of what I do on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, and on a yearly basis.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
And so for those of you like myself who have a hard time kind of engaging and getting into action early in the day, Early morning exercise within an hour of waking and certainly no later than three hours after waking will give you quote unquote more energy throughout the day. So in kind of reviewing what I've set up until now, I do the morning light thing.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
So you can actually have a heightened experience of something. And that of course will also be true for the taste system. I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
We should all know that proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. In fact, even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance to a considerable degree. It's also important that you're not just hydrated, but that you get adequate amounts of electrolytes in the right ratios.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
Drinking a packet of Element dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate amounts of hydration and electrolytes. To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of both, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
I'll also drink a packet of Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes. There are a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. I like the watermelon, I like the raspberry, I like the citrus. Basically, I like all of them.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim an Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement spelled L-M-N-T. So it's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. You also can really train your sense of smell to get much, much better.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
No other system that I'm aware of in our body is as amenable to these kinds of behavioral training shifts and allow them to happen so quickly. In fact, how well we can smell and taste things is actually a very strong indication of our brain health. So our olfactory neurons, these neurons in our nose that detect odors,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
by literally taking foods and chewing them or sucking on them and breaking them down into their component parts. And that's one way that we sense chemicals with anything, our tongue. So these chemicals, we sometimes bring into our body, into our biology, through deliberate action. We select a food, we chew that food, and we do it intentionally.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
are really unique among other brain neurons because they get replenished throughout life. They don't just regenerate, but they get replenished. So regeneration is when something is damaged and it regrows. These neurons are constantly turning over throughout our lifespan. They're constantly being replenished. They're dying off and they're being replaced by new ones.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
This is really interesting because other neurons in your cortex, in your retina, in your cerebellum, they do not do this. They are not continually replenished throughout life. But these neurons, these olfactory neurons are, they are special. And there are a number of things that seem to increase the amount of olfactory neuron neurogenesis.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
There is evidence that exercise, blood flow can increase olfactory neuron neurogenesis. Although those data are fewer in comparison to things like social interactions, or actually interacting with odorants of different kinds. But what I'd like to do is empower you with tools that will allow you to keep these systems tuned up.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
Last time we talked about tuning up and keeping your visual system tuned up and healthy, regardless of age. Here we're talking about really enhancing your olfactory abilities, your taste abilities, as well by interacting a lot with odors.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
preferably positive odors, and sniffing more, inhaling more, which almost sounds crazy, but now you understand why, even though it might sound crazy, it's grounded in real mechanistic biology of how the brain wakes up and responds to these chemicals. Now, speaking of brain injury, olfactory dysfunction is a common theme in traumatic brain injury for the following reason.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
These olfactory neurons, as I mentioned, extend wires into the mucosa of the nose, but they also extend a wire up into the skull and they extend up into the skull through what's called the cribriform plate. It's like a Swiss cheese type plate where they're going through and if you get a head hit, the cribriform plate shears those little wires off and those neurons die.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
Now, eventually they'll be replaced, but there's a phenomenon by which concussion and the severity of concussion and the recovery from a head injury can actually be gauged in part, in part, not in whole, but in part by how well or fully one recovers their sense of smell.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
So if you're somebody that unfortunately has suffered a concussion, your sense of smell is one readout by which you might evaluate whether or not you're regaining some of your sensory performance. Of course, there will be others like balance and cognition and sleep, et cetera. But I'd like to refer you to a really nice paper
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
which is entitled Olfactory Dysfunction in Traumatic Brain Injury, The Role of Neurogenesis. The first author is Marin, M-A-R-I-N. The paper was published in Current Allergy and Asthma Report. This is 2020. I spent some time with this paper. It's quite good. It's a review article. I like reviews if they're peer-reviewed reviews.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
What they discuss is, and I'll just read here briefly because they said it better than I could. Olfactory functioning disturbances are common following traumatic brain injury, TBI, and can have a significant impact on the quality of life. although there's no standard treatment for patients with the loss of smell.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
Now I'm paraphrasing post-injury olfactory training has shown promise for beneficial effects. But what does this mean? This means that if you've had a head injury or repeated head injuries, that enhancing your sense of smell is one way by which you can create new neurons.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
And now you know how to enhance your sense of smell by interacting with things that have an odor very closely and by essentially inhaling more, focusing on the inhale to wake up the brain and to really focus on some of the nuance of those smells. As a last point about specific... odors and compounds that can increase arousal and alertness.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
And this was simply through sniffing them, not through ingesting them. There are data, believe it or not, there are good data on peppermint and the smell of peppermint. Minty type scents. whether you like them or not, will increase attention and they can create the same sort of arousal response, although not as intensely or as dramatically as ammonia salts can, for instance.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
Sometimes they're coming into our body through non-deliberate action. We enter an environment and there's smoke and we smell the smoke, and as a consequence, we take action. Sometimes, however, other people are actively making chemicals with their body. Typically, this would be with their breath, with their tears, or possibly, I want to underscore possibly,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
By the way, please don't go sniff real ammonia. You could actually damage your olfactory epithelium if you do that too close to the ammonia. If you're going to use smelling salts, be sure you or you know what you're getting and how you're using this, you can damage your olfactory pathway in ways that are pretty severe. You can also damage your vision.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
If you've ever teared up because you inhaled something that was really noxious, that is not a good thing, but it means that you have irritated the mucosal lining and possibly even the surfaces of your eyes. So please be very, very careful.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
Scents like peppermint, like these ammonia smelling salts, the reason they wake you up is because they trigger specific olfactory neurons that communicate with the specific centers of the brain, namely the amygdala and associated neural circuitry and pathways that trigger alertness of the same sort that a cold shower or an ice bath or a sudden surprise or a stressful text message would evoke.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
Remember, The systems of your body that produce arousal and alertness and attention and that cue you for optimal learning, AKA focus, those are very general mechanisms. They involve very basic molecules like adrenaline and epinephrine, same thing actually, adrenaline, epinephrine. The number of stimuli, whether it's peppermint or ammonia or a loud blast,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
the number of stimuli that can evoke that adrenaline response and that wake up response are near infinite. And that's the beauty of your nervous system. It was designed to take any variety of different stimuli, place them into categories, and then evoke different categories of very general responses. Now you know a lot about olfaction and how the sense of smell works.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
Let's talk about taste, meaning how we sense chemicals in food and in drink. There are essentially five, but scientists now believe there may be six things that we taste, alone or in combination. They are sweet tastes, salty tastes, bitter tastes, sour tastes, and umami taste. Most of you have probably heard of umami by now. It's U-M-A-M-I.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
Umami is actually the name for a particular receptor that you express on your tongue that detects savory tastes. Each one has a particular group of neurons in your mouth, in your tongue, believe it or not, that responds to particular chemicals and particular chemical structures. It is a total myth, complete fiction that different parts of your tongue harbor different taste receptors.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
That high school textbook diagram that sweet is in one part of the tongue and sour is in another and bitter is in another, they are completely intermixed along your tongue. So all these receptors in your tongue make up what are called the neurons that give rise to a nerve, a collection of wires, nerve bundles of what's called the gustatory nerve.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
The gustatory nerve from the tongue goes to the nucleus of the solitary tract and then to the thalamus and to insular cortex. And it is an insular cortex, this region of our cortex that we sort out and make sense of and perceive the various tastes. Now it's amazing because just
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
taking a little bit of sugar or something sour, like a little bit of lemon juice and touching it to the tongue within 100 milliseconds, right? Just 100 milliseconds, far less than one second, you can immediately distinguish, ah, that's sour, that's sweet, that's bitter, that's umami. And that's an assessment that's made by the cortex. Now, what do these different five receptors encode for?
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
by making what are called pheromones, molecules that they release into the environment, typically through the breath, that enter our system through our nose or our eyes or our mouth, that fundamentally change our biology.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
Well, sweet, salty, bitter, umami, sour, but what are they really looking for? What are they sensing? Well, sweet stuff signals the presence of energy, of sugars. And while we're all trying or we're told that we should eat less sugar for a variety of reasons, The ability to sense whether or not a food has rapid energy source or could give rise to glucose is essential. So we have sweet receptors.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
The salty receptors, these neurons are trying to sense whether or not there are electrolytes in a given food or drink. Electrolytes are vitally important for the function of our nervous system and for our entire bodies. Bitter receptors are there to make sure we don't ingest things that are poisonous.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
The bitter receptors create a, what we call labeled line, a unique trajectory to the neurons of the brainstem that control the gag reflex. if we taste something very bitter, it automatically triggers the gag reflex. Putrid smells will also evoke these same neurons.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
The umami receptor isn't sensing savory because the body loves savory, it's because savory is a signal for the presence of amino acids. The presence of amino acids in our gut and in our digestive system and the presence of fatty acids is essential. The sour receptor, why would we have a sour receptor? It's there and we know it's there to detect the presence of spoiled or fermented food.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
Fermented fruit can be poisonous, right? Alcohols are poisonous in many forms to our system. the sour receptor bearing neurons communicate to an area of the brainstem that evokes the pucker response, closing of the eyes and essentially shutting of the mouth and cringing away. Now what's the sixth sense within the taste system? Not sixth sense generally, but within the taste system.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
What's this putative possible sixth receptor? There are now data to support the idea, although there's still more work that needs to be done, that we also have receptors on our tongue that sense fat. And that because fat is so vital for the function of our nervous system and the other organs of our body, that we are sensing the fat content in food.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
I'll just give an example, which is a very salient and interesting one that was published about 10 years ago in the journal Science, showing that humans, men in particular in this study, have a strong biological response and hormonal response to the tears of women. What they did is they had women, and in this case, it was only women for whatever reason, cry and they collected their tears.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
I want to talk about the tongue and the mouth as an extension of your digestive tract. We are essentially a series of tubes and that tube starts with your mouth. and heads down into your stomach. And so that you would sense so much of the chemical constituents of the stuff that you might
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
bring into your body or that you might want to expel and not swallow or not interact with by being able to smell it. Is it putrid? Does it smell good? Does it taste good? Is this safe? Is it salty? Is it so sour that it's fermented and is going to poison me? Is it so bitter that it could poison me? Is it so savory that, yes, I want more and more of this. Well, then you'd want to trigger dopamine.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
That's all starting in the mouth. So, you have to understand that you were equipped with this amazing chemical sensing apparatus we call your mouth and your tongue. And those little bumps on your tongue that they call the papillae, those are not your taste buds. Surrounding those little papillae like little rivers are these little dents and indentations.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
And what dents and indentations do in a tissue is they allow more surface area. They allow you to pack more receptors. So down in those grooves are where all these little neurons and their little processes are with these little receptors for sweet, salty, bitter, umami, sour, and maybe fat as well. Remember,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
even though we can enjoy food and we can evolve our sense of what's tasty or not tasty, depending on life decisions, environmental changes, et cetera, the taste system, just like the olfactory system and the visual system was laid down for the purpose of moving towards things that are good for us and moving away from things that are bad for us.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
That's the kind of core function of the nervous system. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Our Place. Our Place makes my favorite pots, pans, and other cookware. Surprisingly, toxic compounds such as PFASs or forever chemicals are still found in 80% of nonstick pans, as well as utensils, appliances, and countless other kitchen products.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
As I've discussed before in this podcast, these PFAS or forever chemicals like Teflon have been linked to major health issues such as hormone disruption, gut microbiome disruption, fertility issues and many other health problems. So it's really important to try and avoid them. This is why I'm a huge fan of our place.
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Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
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Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
I cook eggs in my Titanium Always Pan Pro almost every morning. The design allows for the eggs to cook perfectly without sticking to the pan. I also cook burgers and steaks in it, and it puts a really nice sear on the meat. But again, nothing sticks to it, so it's really easy to clean and it's even dishwasher safe. I love it and I basically use it constantly.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
Our Place now has a full line of titanium pro cookware that uses its first of its kind titanium nonstick technology. So if you're looking for non-toxic long lasting pots and pans, go to fromourplace.com slash Huberman and use the code Huberman at checkout. Right now, Our Place is having their biggest sale of the season. You can get up to 30% off all products now through May 12th, 2025.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
With a 100-day risk-free trial, free shipping, and free returns, you can try Our Place with zero risk and see why more than 1 million people have made the switch to Our Place kitchenware. Again, that's from ourplace.com slash Huberman to get up to 30% off. Now I'd like to return to pheromones. So I mentioned earlier, true pheromonal effects are well-established in animals.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
And one of the most remarkable pheromone effects that's ever been described is one that actually I've mentioned before on this podcast, but I'll mention again just briefly, which is the Coolidge effect. The Coolidge effect is the effect of
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
a male of a given species, in most cases, it tended to be a rodent or a rooster, mating, and at some point reaching exhaustion or the inability to mate again because they just simply couldn't for whatever reason. The Coolidge effect,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
establishes that if you swap out the hen with a new hen or the female rat or mouse with a new one, then the rat or the rooster spontaneously regains their ability to mate. Somehow their vigor is returned. The refractory period after mating that normally occurs is abolished. and they can mate again. But it turns out that females also will, female rodents will mate to exhaustion.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
Today, we're going to talk about chemical sensing. We're going to talk about the sense of smell, our ability to detect odors in our environment. We're also going to talk about taste, our ability to detect chemicals and make sense of chemicals that are put in our mouth. and into our digestive tract.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
Then those tears were smelled by male subjects or male subjects got what was essentially the control, which was the sailing. Men that smelled these tears that were evoked by sadness had a reduction in their testosterone levels that was significant. They also had a reduction in brain areas that were associated with sexual arousal.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
And at some point, excuse me, they will refuse to mate any longer unless you swap in a new male. And then because mating in rodents involves the female being receptive, there are a certain number of behaviors that mean that she, that tell you that she's willing and wanting to mate, so-called lordosis reflex.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
then if there's a new male, she will spontaneously regain the lordosis reflex and the desire to mate. How do we know it's a pheromonal effect? Well, this recovery of the desire and ability to mate both in males and in females can be evoked completely by the odor of a new male or female. It doesn't even have to be the presentation of the actual animal.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
And that's how you know that it's not some visual interaction or some other interaction. It's a pheromonal interaction. Now, as I mentioned earlier, pheromonal effects, humans have been debated for a long period of time. We are thought to have a vestigial, meaning a kind of shrunken down miniature accessory olfactory bulb called Jacobson's organ or the vomeronasal organ.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
Some people don't believe that Jacobson's organ exists. Some people do. So there's like little dents as you go up through your nasal passages. And there is evidence of something that's vomeronasal-like. Vomeronasal is the pheromonal organ. They call it Jacobson's organ if it's present in humans. Kind of tucked into some of the divots in the nasal passage.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
So even if that organ, Jacobson's organ isn't there or is not responsible for the chemical signaling between individuals, there is chemical signaling between human beings. So I mentioned earlier the effect of tears in suppressing the areas of the brain that are involved in sexual desire and testosterone of males. That's a concrete result. It's a very good result published by an excellent group.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
There is also evidence both for and against chemical signaling between females in terms of synchronization of menstrual cycles. Now, the original paper on this was published in the 1970s by McClintock.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
And it essentially said that when women live together in group housing dormitories and similar, that their menstrual cycles were synchronized and that was due to what was hypothesized to be pheromonal effects. Over the years, that study has been challenged many, many times.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
The more recent data point to the idea that there is chemical-chemical signaling between women in ways that impact the timing of the menstrual cycle. Is that a pheromonal effect? Well, by the strict definition of a pheromone, a molecule that's released from one individual that impacts the biology of another individual, yes. It's not clear what the chemical compound is. None of this surprises me.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
None of this should surprise you.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
It's very clear that hormones have a profound effect on a large number of systems in our biology and that smell and taste and the ability to sense the chemical states of others, either consciously or subconsciously, have a profound influence on whether or not we might want to spend time with them, whether or not this is somebody that we're pair bonded with, whether or not this is somebody that we just met and don't trust yet, things of this sort.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
And given what's at stake in terms of reproductive biology, it makes so much sense that much of our biology is wired toward detecting and sensing whether or not things and people are things that we should approach or avoid. You and every other human from the time you're born until the time you die are actively seeking out and sensing and evaluating the chemicals that come from other individuals.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
There's a really nice study that was done by the Weizmann Institute, a group there. I think it was also Noam Sobel's group, but another group as well, as I recall, looking at human-human interactions when they meet for the first time. It's a remarkable study because what they found was people would reach out and shake hands.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
They actually recruited subjects that had a high propensity for crying at sad movies, which was not all women. What they were really trying to do is just get tears that were authentically cried in response to sadness, as opposed to putting some irritant in the eye and collecting tears that were evoked by something else, like just having the eyes irritated.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
And what they observed was almost every time within just a few seconds of having shaken hands with this new individual, people will touch their eyes. They are taking chemicals from the skin contact and they are placing it on a mucosal membrane of some sort, typically not up their nose or in their mouth, typically on their eyes.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
Believe it or not, you're marking other people when you shake their hand and they are then taking your mark and rubbing it on themselves subconsciously. So we all do these kinds of behaviors. And now that you're aware of it, you can watch for it in your environment. You can pay attention to people. We are evaluating the molecules on people's breath.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
We are evaluating the molecules on people's skin by actively rubbing it on ourselves. And we are actively involved in sensing the chemicals that they are emitting, their hormone status, how they smell. We're detecting the,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
pheromones possibly but certainly the odors in their breath so today we talked a lot about olfaction taste and chemical sensing between individuals i like to think that you now know a lot about how your smell system works and why inhaling is a really good thing to do in general for waking up your brain and for cognitive function and for enhancing your sense of smell
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
And we talked about chemical signaling between individuals as a way of communicating some important aspects about biology. People are shaping each other's biology all the time by way of these chemicals that are being traded from one body to the next through air and skin to skin contact and tears.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
Last but not least, I want to thank you for your time and attention and your willingness to embrace new concepts and terms and to learn about science and biology and protocols that hopefully can benefit you and the people that you know. And of course, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
Nonetheless, what this study illustrates is that there are chemicals in tears that are evoking or changing the biology of other individuals. Now, I didn't select this study as an example because I want to focus on the effects of tears on hormones per se, although I do find the results really interesting. I chose it because
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
I wanted to just emphasize or underscore the fact that chemicals that are made by other individuals are powerfully modulating our internal state. And that's something that most of us don't appreciate. I think most of us can appreciate the fact that if we smell something putrid, we tend to retract, or if we smell something delicious, we tend to lean into it.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
But there are all these ways in which chemicals are affecting our biology and interpersonal communication using chemicals is not something that we hear that often about, but it's super interesting. So let's talk about smell and what smell is and how it works. I'm going to make this very basic, but I am going to touch on some of the core elements of the neurobiology. So here's how smell works.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
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Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
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Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
As someone who's been involved in research science for more than three decades and in health and fitness for equally as long, I'm constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental health, physical health,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
and performance i discovered and started taking ag1 way back in 2012 long before i ever had a podcast and i've been taking it every day since i find that it greatly improves all aspects of my health i just feel so much better when i take it and i attribute my ability to consistently work long hours over all these years while also maintaining a full life having tons of energy sleeping well
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
not getting sick, et cetera, in large part to AG1. And of course, I do a lot of things. I exercise, I eat right, et cetera. But with each passing year, and by the way, I'm turning 50 this September, I continue to feel better and better. And I attribute a lot of that to AG1.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
And we are going to talk about chemicals that are made by other human beings that powerfully modulate the way that we feel, our hormones and our health. Now that last category are sometimes called pheromones. However, whether or not pheromones exist in humans is rather controversial. There actually hasn't been a clear example of a true human pheromonal effect.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
AG1 uses the highest quality ingredients in the right combinations, and they're constantly improving their formulas without increasing the cost. So I'm honored to have them as a sponsor of this podcast. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
Right now, AG1 is giving away an AG1 welcome kit with five free travel packs and a free bottle of vitamin D3 K2. Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim the special welcome kit with five free travel packs and a free bottle of vitamin D3 K2. Smell starts with sniffing. Now that may come as no surprise, but no volatile chemicals can enter our nose unless we inhale them.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
If our nose is occluded, or if we're actively exhaling, it's much more difficult for smells to enter our nose, which is why people cover their nose when something smells bad. Now, the way that these volatile odors come into the nose is interesting. The nose has a mucosal lining, mucus, that is designed to trap things, to actually bring things in and get stuck there.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
So at the base of your brain, so you could actually imagine this, or if you wanted, you could touch the roof of your mouth, but right above the mouth, about two centimeters is your olfactory bulb. The olfactory bulb is a collection of neurons, and those neurons actually extend out of the skull, out of your skull. into your nose, into the mucosal lining.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
So what this means in kind of a literal sense is that you have neurons that extend their little dendrites and axon like things or little processes as we call them out into the mucus and they respond to different odorant compounds. Now the olfactory neurons also send a branch deeper into the brain and they split off into three different paths. So one path is for what we call innate odor responses.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
So you have some hardwired aspects to the way that you smell the world that were there from the day you were born and that will be there until the day you die.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
These are the pathways and the neurons that respond to things like smoke, which as you can imagine, there's a highly adaptive function to being able to detect burning things because burning things generally means lack of safety or impending threat of some kind. It calls for action.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
And indeed these neurons project to a central area of the brain called the amygdala, which is often discussed in terms of fear, but it's really fear and threat detection. You also have neurons in your nose that respond to odorants or combinations of odorants that evoke a sense of desire and what we call appetitive behaviors, approach behaviors that make you want to move toward something.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
So when you smell a delicious cookie or some dish that's really savory that you really like, that's because of these innate pathways, these pathways that require no learning whatsoever. Now, some of the pathways from the nose, these olfactory neurons into the brain are involved in learned associations with odors.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
Many people have this experience that they can remember the smell of their grandmother's home or the smell of particular items baking or on the stove in a particular environment. Typically these memories tend to be of a kind of nurturing sort of feeling safe and protected.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
But what is absolutely clear, what is undeniable is that there are chemicals that human beings make and release in things like tears onto our skin and sweat and even breath that powerfully modulate or control the biology of other individuals. There are things floating around in the environment, which we call volatile chemicals.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
But one of the reasons why olfaction, smell is so closely tied to memory is because olfaction is the most ancient sense that we have. So we have pathway for innate, responses and a pathway for learned responses. And then we have this other pathway.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
And in humans, it's a little bit controversial as to whether or not it sits truly separate from the standard olfactory system or whether or not it's its own system. embedded in there, but that they call the accessory olfactory pathway. Accessory olfactory pathway is what in other animals is responsible for true pheromone effects.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
For example, in rodents and in some primates, including mandrills, if you've ever seen a mandrill, they have these like beak noses things, you may have seen them at the zoo, look them up if you haven't seen them already, M-A-N-D-R-I-L-S, mandrills. There are strong pheromone effects.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
Some of those include things like if you take a pregnant female rodent or mandrill, you take away the father that created those fetuses or fetus. and you introduce the scent of the urine or the fur of a novel male, she will spontaneously abort or miscarry those fetuses. It's a very powerful effect.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
Another example of a pheromone effect is called the Vandenberg effect, named after the person who discovered this effect, where you take a female of a given species that has not entered puberty, you expose her to the scent or the urine from a sexually competent, meaning post pubertal male. And she spontaneously goes into puberty earlier.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
So something about the scent triggers something through this accessory olfactory system. This is a true pheromonal effect and creates ovulation, right? And menstruation or in rodents, it's an estrous cycle, not a menstrual cycle. So this, This is not to say that the exact same things happen in humans.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
In humans, as I mentioned earlier, there are chemical sensing between individuals that may be independent of the nose, but those are basically the three paths by which smells, odors impact us. So I want to talk about the act of smelling. And if you are not somebody who's very interested in smell,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
but you are somebody who's interested in making your brain work better, learning faster, remembering more things, this next little segment is for you because it turns out that how you smell, meaning the act of smelling, not how good or bad you smell, but the act of smelling, sniffing, and inhalation powerfully impacts how your brain functions and what you can learn and what you can't learn.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
Noam Sobel's group, originally at UC Berkeley and then at the Weizmann Institute, has published a number of papers that I'd like to discuss today. One of them, human non-olfactory cognition phase locked with inhalation. This was published in Nature Human Behavior, an excellent journal. As we inhale, What this paper shows is that the level of alertness goes up in the brain.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
And this makes sense because as the most primitive and primordial sense by which we interact with our environment and bring chemicals into our system and detect our environment, inhaling is a cue for the rest of the brain to essentially to pay attention to what's happening, not just to the odors. As the name of this paper suggests, human non-olfactory odors phase locked with inhalation.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
What that means is that the act of inhaling itself wakes up the brain. It's not about what you're perceiving or what you're smelling. And indeed sniffing as an action, inhaling as an action has a powerful effect on your ability to be alert, your ability to attend, to focus, and your ability to remember information. When we exhale,
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
So when you actually smell something, like let's say you smell a wonderfully smelling rose or cake, yes, you are inhaling the particles into your nose. There are literally little particles of those chemicals are going up into your nose and being detected by your brain. Other ways of getting chemicals into our system is by putting them in our mouth.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
The brain goes through a subtle, but nonetheless significant dip in level of arousal and ability to learn. How should you use this knowledge? Well, you could imagine, and I think this would be beneficial for most people to focus on nasal breathing while doing any kind of focused work that doesn't require that you speak or eat or ingest something.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
There is a separate paper published in the Journal of Neuroscience that showed that indeed if subjects, human subjects are restricted to breathing through their nose, they learn better than if they have the option of breathing through their mouth or a combination of their nose and mouth. Now, there are other ways to wake up your brain more as well. For instance, the use of smelling salts.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
I'm not recommending that you do this necessarily, but there are excellent peer reviewed data showing that indeed, if you use smelling salts, which are mostly of the sort that include ammonia, ammonia is a very toxic scent, but it's toxic in a way that triggers this innate pathway, the pathway from the nose to the amygdala and wakes up the brain and body in a major way.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
This is why they use smelling salts when people pass out. They work because they trigger the fear and kind of overall arousal systems of the brain. This is why I think most people probably shouldn't use ammonia or smelling salts to try and wake up, but they really do work.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
Now, inhaling through your nose and doing nasal breathing, it's going to be a more subtle version of waking up your system, of alerting your brain overall.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
And for those of you that are interested in having a richer, a more deep connection to the things that you smell and taste, practicing or enhancing your sense of sniffing, your ability to sniff might sound like a kind of ridiculous protocol, but it's actually a kind of fun and cool experiment that you can do.
Huberman Lab
Essentials: How Smell, Taste & Pheromones Shape Behavior
You just do the simple experiment of taking, for instance, an orange, you smell it, do 10 or 15 inhales, followed by exhales, of course, or just through the nose. I'm not going to do all 10 or 15 and then smell it again. And you'll notice that your perception of that smell, the kind of richness of that smell will be significantly increased.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Chris Palmer. Dr. Chris Palmer is a psychiatrist and researcher at Harvard University.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Those are the stereotypes, right? Or suspicious of science, NIH and CDC, or believes in science, NIH and the CDC wholeheartedly. The divide is very stark. And this needs to stop. Like the divide needs to stop. We need to start filling in with answers. And I think there's soon to be a exploration, a scientific exploration of the relationship between vaccines and autism.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
I read this someplace on X, which means... But I think that's the idea. And I think some people were kind of upset that resources were going to be devoted to this because they felt like it was a done deal. And then others are very excited because they feel like, hey, listen, if... If you don't think there's a link, then here's an opportunity to establish that with real rigor.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
And I think everyone's just really interested in the studies being done properly. Look, I think more data is always great.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Well, if there's an inflammation link, then yes.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
What about dad? You know, there are these theories about the statistically significant increases in rates of autism for offspring of men who are 50 or older. My read of the data says is that it's still a very small increase. It's not like the kind of increases you're describing here for diabetes.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Which is something like... 25 times greater than the increase due to age of the male. So this is so important because people hear, oh, you know, older sperm equals higher probability of autism. But yes, still a very low probability of autism compared to dad is obese, but in his 20s or 30s.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Such a critical message, but also reassuring in the sense that we can do something about it. We can. Because what you're talking about is metabolic dysfunction, mitochondrial dysfunction of the parents, right? So, you know, trying to control the behavior of still unborn or yet to be conceived children is pretty tough to do. And
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
And yet anyone thinking of conceiving should really pay close attention to their metabolic health is clearly the message. I think obesity becomes a little bit of a, of a, of a critical factor, yet a distractor that wasn't meant to rhyme. For when we hear metabolic health, I think a number of people hearing this will say, well, I'm not overweight, so my mitochondria are probably healthy.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
But what you listed off included high triglycerides, You said blood pressure, which, you know, there are some thin people or, you know, non apparently obese people. I say apparently obese because a lot of people are carrying a higher body fat percentage than they realize, even though they're not, you know, taking up a lot of space. So I think, you know, It's not always, and low HDL.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
So sometimes, you know, we're shocked to see like, oh, this person is like apparently healthy, but has, you know, low HDL and has got their ApoB is through the roof and they're not well. But just because they're not obese doesn't mean they're metabolically healthy, correct?
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Right. I mean, what I realize, and this was really where I wanted to bring us to, is a question for you. I have an idea, but let's also pose the question as an idea and feel free to bat it down. I'm beginning to think that in order to get out of this health rut that we're in, that clearly relates to mitochondrial dysfunction, right?
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
And at the same time, there are tools, the lifestyle tools that you described. Yes, there are supplements and maybe methylene blue will be advantageous and methylate B12 perhaps, but certainly the lifestyle factors. Most people, again, when they hear metabolic health, they just think, okay, metabolism, obesity, thinness or fatness, and it sort of becomes a gravitational pull towards that.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Do you think it's possible to create a metric
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
I don't want to say BMI as an example because that's controversial for some people, but is it possible to create a metric of all-around metabolic health that would be incentivized so that people can live better lives, their offspring can be healthier as well, and we can unburden the healthcare system and potentially avoid millions and millions of people having these so-called incurable mental health disorders, in air quotes?
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
It's a new perspective that will change the way that you think about mental and physical health and that no doubt will impact your health practices in very positive ways. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Fantastic. What role do you see yourself in going forward? I mean, clearly public education about these issues related to metabolic and mitochondrial health is a wonderful home for you. In addition to all your clinical work and everything else you're doing this, you're clearly very passionate about it.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
If I may ask, do you have plans to get involved in helping the new NIH, new Health and Human Services folks, you know, steer in the right direction?
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Chris Palmer. Dr. Chris Palmer, welcome back. Thank you so much for having me back. I credit you with leading the
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Which makes sense. MAO inhibitors inhibit the enzymes that break down, or let's just speak about these enzymes broadly.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
I think most antidepressant drugs or treatments for ADHD, typical prescription treatments, either reduce the breakdown of neuromodulators like serotonin, dopamine, acetylcholine, depending on which one we're talking about, or they reduce the reuptake so that there's just more neuromodulator around for longer. Yes. Tell us about mitochondria in the framework of mental health.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
call to arms, the public awareness and the implementation of what some people call metabolic psychiatry, but what we could easily just call the relationship between mental and physical health and the use of nutrition. supplementation and where appropriate prescription drugs for the treatment of mental health.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
But what do you call this field that you've basically founded and that you're pioneering? There are others, right? But that you're pioneering and how should the general public think about the relationship between mitochondria and their mental health for those that are not aware? Educate us.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is an all-in-one vitamin, mineral, probiotic drink with adaptogens. I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring this podcast. The reason I started taking AG1 and the reason I still take AG1 is because it is the highest quality and most complete foundational nutritional supplement.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
What that means is that AG1 ensures that you're getting all the necessary vitamins, minerals, and other micronutrients to form a strong foundation for your daily health. AG1 also has probiotics and prebiotics that support a healthy gut microbiome.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Your gut microbiome consists of trillions of microorganisms that line your digestive tract and impact things such as your immune system status, your metabolic health, your hormone health, and much more. So I've consistently found that when I take AG1 daily, my digestion is improved, my immune system is more robust, and my mood and mental focus are at their best.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
In fact, if I could take just one supplement, that supplement would be AG1. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. They'll give you five free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2 with your order of AG1. Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim this special offer. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each and every night. Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees. Eight Sleep automatically regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your unique needs.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Now, I find that extremely useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night, and warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow-wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
And I know that because Eight Sleep has a great sleep tracker that tells me how well I've slept and the types of sleep that I'm getting throughout the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Their latest model, the Pod 4 Ultra, also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees in order to improve your airflow and stop you from snoring. If you decide to try Eight Sleep, you have 30 days to try it at home, and you can return it if you don't like it. No questions asked, but I'm sure that you'll love it.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and the UAE. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra. What are some of the things that we know? can improve mitochondrial health, either number, function, or otherwise.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
And maybe we can talk about the basics first and get a little bit granular, if you could, about what are the prescriptions for keeping your mitochondria healthy or improving your mitochondrial number and improving their function. And then we can transition from there to the more, let's just say, the more advanced ways of doing that. Is there a role for supplementation? Is there a role for drugs?
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Is there, you know, these days, well, I hear about urolithin A, because I'm a little bit of an adventurer these days, and I'm turning 50 later this year, I decided to experiment with a peptide that is SR31, which is specifically to improve mitochondrial function. I'm doing this with the full understanding. It may do nothing or it may kill me. I don't know, but we'll find out.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
But someone had to do it. And I'm a one variable at a time kind of guy. So it was important for me to stay with my current regimen and only change that, do blood work, et cetera, because a lot of people, some people out there are more in the mode of trying to do a bunch of things. And I don't think that's as helpful to me. It's also just not, it's not in keeping with my nature.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
He focuses on how metabolic health and mitochondrial health in particular can be leveraged to treat and in some cases cure psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia, autism, depression, bipolar and ADHD.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
That's right. I'm monogamous with respect to variables. Right. So what can we do at a basic level to keep and improve our mitochondrial number and function? And if we have to hit on some of the usual suspects, fine. You could tell us how we can do this.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Thank you. Thank you.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
One of the beautiful things about science is that you isolate variables. You can get very reductionist. We know that there are these things called mitochondria that they move around. I mean, these discoveries are truly incredible that have been made in the last hundred years or so. But...
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
There's been this kind of obsession, I think, in the public discussion around health that, you know, around things that are obviously related to the thing that you're trying to cure. So serotonin and brain health. It's like, oh, OK, it makes sense. You know, the listening to Prozac book came out. We increased serotonin. Some people are feeling better. Maybe it's through neuroplasticity.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Maybe it's direct effects of serotonin. But it makes sense. Serotonin, brain, right? You know, it... But if we zoom out from that and we accept, because it's true, that essentially all cells are dependent on mitochondria for their function, why wouldn't we go to this fundamental layer first in order to try and improve mental and physical health simultaneously?
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
It's a very different way of approaching medicine in general. Normally we go, okay, well, the issue is right here. That's where the tumor is. That's where the circuit deficit is. This is where the lesion is or the growth, and we're gonna go there, right? But to avoid the pathologic state in the first place,
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
These six pillars are wonderful, by the way, a diet, exercise, sleep, substance, overuse or abuse, stress mitigation, and relationship slash purpose. So we're going to keep returning to this theme of mitochondria as foundational throughout today's discussion because I think people need to frame their health in that context. I really do.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Years ago, my postdoc advisor, the late Ben Barris, he died, unfortunately, of pancreatic cancer, but just an incredible scientist, MD and a scientist who really popularized the study of glia. Prior to that, they were seeing this kind of like backwater science. Everyone thought it was just glue for the brain.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
He used to stop us in the hallways late at night, and we called it getting bend, because you'd want to leave. And he was a night owl, it was awful, and you'd get stuck there. But I'll never forget, he stopped me, he called me Andy, and he said, He did this numerous times, but he said, Andy, why? No one calls me that by the way anymore.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
He said, Andy, why is it that as we get older, we have less energy? And I'm like, I don't know, Ben. He's like, someone needs to, he's like, why don't you work on that? Why are you working on these retinal cells? Like you should work on that. And he said, why is it that our brain is less plastic? Well, I don't know. I think it's the glia, right?
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
And there is some evidence that it has something to do with the glia, among other things. But there's a fundamentally interesting question. You look at kids and they're just full of energy. And there's the NAD hypothesis and there's these others, but it always seems to circle back to mitochondria. Yes. Over and over. So I think the answer is very clear.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
We have a ton of mitochondria early in life and over time it gets depleted. Is it that simple? Yeah. I mean, there are other things too.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Today, we discuss how metabolic health, something we hear a lot about nowadays, is really about mitochondrial health and the specific lifestyle and other factors that you can use to improve mitochondrial number and function. We talk about things like exercise, sleep, sunlight, which you've heard about before, but we talk about those from a different perspective.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Really? Well, I guess in some sense that makes sense, although I would have thought it would be the younger population.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function. Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient levels and much more.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
They've also recently added tests for toxins such as BPA exposure from harmful plastics and tests for PFAS or forever chemicals function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to your physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors who are expert in the relevant areas.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
For example, in one of my first tests with function, I learned that I had elevated levels of mercury in my blood.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Function not only helped me detect that, but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, I've been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
And I should say, by taking a second function test, That approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by function simplicity and at the level of cost.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
It is very affordable. As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. Let's talk about diet and nutrition for a moment. In recent years, you've talked a lot about the clinical use of the ketogenic diet. for various mental health disorders and cited some spectacular results. And this has had a huge impact on everybody's thinking about what ketogenic diets originally were for.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
It was developed as a medical treatment for epilepsy, is my understanding. Only later did it become popular as a potential avenue for losing body fat, et cetera. What are some of the ways that people can use diet and nutrition to improve metabolic health generally? But let's be more specific, mitochondrial health, number, turnover, all the good stuff that happens in mitochondria.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
um how can nutrition be used um to improve that and why would it be that the ketogenic diet would improve mitochondrial function or is it that the ketogenic diet bypasses the need for standard cellular metabolism by um pulling on some other cellular metabolism um uh mechanisms i'm just trying to draw the link here between uh ketogenic diet and mitochondria because
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
We've, you've well established that mitochondria are central to this whole picture of mental and physical health.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Is that because of the increased calorie consumption? There's this really nice paper that was published a few years ago showing that people who eat above a certain threshold of processed foods tend to consume on average about 500 calories more than they require per day, which might not seem like much.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
But over time that compounds and they gain a lot of adipose tissue and then the adipose tissue is secreting a lot of things into the bloodstream make the whole situation even worse, both brain and bodily. But aside from the caloric load, I mean, is there any evidence that these food dyes and other things that are included in these foods are detrimental to mitochondrial health?
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
This is a somewhat controversial thing these days because some of these dyes were banned recently, which I saw as a good thing. But then some of the diehards in the scientific community are like, oh, those dosages are
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
represent like six thousand fold what you'd have to eat what most people eat you know the dosages used in mice but but the fda still pulled those dyes and the fda is a pretty conservative body um so i don't know i not every chemical is bad of course um but
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Wow. So this would be even just like somebody has like a bag of chips and some – you know, just pour in water type pre-made soup or something like that. Those are ultra processed. This would be somebody orders a sandwich at the deli for lunch, which can be done in a relatively healthy way, depending on what's in that sandwich. And then does soda and bag of chips on the side.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Like, I mean, that's a lot of, in my opinion, highly processed food. But people, I think sometimes people don't, Think of it that way? Yes. I was surprised and somewhat delighted to learn that one of the ways that the public health folks got kids to smoke fewer cigarettes, because when I was growing up, smoking was cool. If you smoked cigarette, it was cool. People thought it was cool.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
It definitely is reinforcing because of the nicotine, the dopamine increases, and it was considered cool. you had your like Marlboro Man image from the preceding decades, but then it was really the 90s kind of, it was the actors and models and stuff that made it cool. Like people smoked and it was supposed to be cool. And one of the ways that,
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
we ended up with people smoking far less was not just to ban it on campuses, because that just makes teens want to do it more, right? In college, you want to do it more, was to have these commercials of these... It was all, to be direct, it was just like these...
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
rich white guys in a room that was portraying like the boardroom of a tobacco company and they were like cackling and talking about like, ha ha ha, they don't think it causes cancer and this kind of thing. Basically pitting youth against adults so that the youth felt like their money was being taken by the establishment. So is there a world where kids are gonna be like,
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
forgive me, but you know, like F that I'm not eating Doritos, you know, like I'm not going to be manipulated by highly processed foods or I'm going to hold onto my mental health by making healthy choices in terms of food. It's tricky, but it has a lot of the same parallels to cigarette use or alcohol use.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
But I feel like the only way to really get Americans to change their behavior besides scaring them fundamentally, but even if you do that is to incentivize it. And one of the best incentives historically for public health change has been to pit the make the public feel like they're pitted against the people that are trying to take their money unfairly and make them unhealthy at the same time.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
You got to activate that kind of rebellious spirit. Uh-uh, not going to do it. Just telling people this is bad for you doesn't work, right? We know that. How do we incentivize people?
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
I saw that clip. It's so disturbing to see someone from the American Heart Association actively lobbying to keep tax dollars directed towards... including sugary soda, not even diet soda, but sugary soda in lunches and food for people who are low income.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Well, I feel like the smoking parallel is critical and maybe the trans fat. the history of entire cities banning the use of trans fats, for instance, or the use of styrofoam containers, right? I mean, it's a very different issue. This doesn't directly get to human health, although styrofoam's not good, but it's about waste and environment.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
But I feel like there has to be a top-down ban, and Americans also don't like bans, right? We don't like things, we like choice, but we don't like the consequences of choice. And then we want people to fix the consequences of those choices with treatments that don't have side effects. And then this is kind of the cycle that I've observed in my lifetime over and over again.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
I think it's the rebellion piece. It's when people realize they're being manipulated. Once people realize they're being manipulated, I feel like that's when they're willing to intervene and stop otherwise reinforcing activity, reinforced addictive activity, save money and like take a different direction. Like that's inherent to the American spirit.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
As much as we love freedom, we also, we have this like, no, you're not gonna do this to me kind of spirit. We see it everywhere. This is my belief. But then again, I was kind of a rebellious teen. But if it's in service to health, why not?
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Yeah, we went into a public health discourse. We're weaving back and forth. That's what we do here. I think it's, I mean, look, it's very timely, right? I don't care if you're the staunchest Democrat or the staunchest Republican or somewhere in between, like these issues affect everybody. And- anyone who just wants to view Maha as a Republican thing, it's fine. I'm not affiliated with Maha.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
I am in favor of improved public health from whatever angles that can meaningfully be done. So tell us about ketogenic diet and then I'd like to ask about things that we can do to improve mitochondrial function in these other bins. But does ketogenic diet improve mitochondrial function? And if so, how does that work?
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Well, I'm just a runway for people to... It was incredible messages to take off. Thank you again for the opportunity to disseminate this word.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
And we discuss some things that have never been discussed before on this podcast, at least in light of mitochondrial health. Things such as creatine, methylene blue, nicotine, And we talk about the key role of specific B vitamins and iron in brain function.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Thank you. Thank you.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Well, first of all, I and I'm sure the listeners really appreciate your humility regarding... who is responsible for the big surge in the interest in this field. So thanks for crediting your predecessors and the others in the field.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
I'm gonna get really vocal about this lobbying through the American Heart Association thing because I was just shocked, right? For all the obvious reasons, American Heart Association, you assume that they are all about healthy hearts and we know metabolism and healthy weight and activity and all that is healthy for hearts.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
And it was so clear that they were on the take from these food companies and that's why they sent, even just the timing and the delivery. Again, I'll post to the link because it's just like,
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
jaw-dropping like i can't believe this is like it's like the old commercials of the people from the cigarette industry saying that the cigarettes don't cause cancer and you they know it does and and we're just this is happening now in real time and um this conversation will certainly assist in drawing attention to this i'll probably do a social media post on it as well but there's this
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
this thing that happens in medicine and public health where the thing that's so obviously the problem is like, it's not even staring us in the face. It's like slapping us in the face. And we take 20 to 30 years relying largely on messaging through Hollywood, kind of what actors are doing, what athletes are doing. Then people are like, oh yeah, maybe this is a thing.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
And then think the battleship just like eventually just pivots. But there's been decades of horrible misfortune and loss in mental health and physical health, people thinking that there's something wrong with them or, you know, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, it's asinine. It's crazy.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
At the same time, I credit you with really popularizing a lot of these terms, being willing to go public facing and share about metabolic psychiatry, for lack of a better way to put it. metabolic psychiatry, and really championing these ideas and being open to being part of a medical and science and public discourse community. So I'd be remiss if I didn't say that.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
And so I'm excited about Maha, even though I don't have any affiliation to it, because it's the first time in my lifetime that anyone said like, hey, let's actually just talk about and think about how to really get healthy. What do we know right now? And so I'm not a political person, but I think it's really important
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
that we get focused on what's literally slapping us right in the face with like, this is absurd. Forgive me for editorializing here, but we keep coming back to this. We know what we need to do.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Yes, I'm not, I'm certainly not, not any longer. And it's also, I think, important that the highly processed foods and the palatability and the accessibility and the low cost. We're not talking about eliminating pie and pastries. I think sometimes people think, oh, I'll never have a muffin again. I'll never have a chocolate croissant. That's not really what we're talking about.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
So hopefully you'll take that in.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
We're not talking about a homemade cake. We're not talking about cupcakes. We're talking about things that are easily purchased at low cost, unpackaged, eaten in transit. What we're doing, I realize, is painting this picture of a little bit of the past, the recent past. But what you do so beautifully is you you're really orienting us where we are now.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
And the fact that we need more science, but we know an awful lot, and there's so much that we can do. And these six pillars of diet, exercise, sleep, avoiding excessive substance abuse, or use or abuse, excuse me, stress mitigation, relationships and purpose, which center back on mitochondrial health.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Could we talk about some of the other things that we can do for mitochondrial health, things we can take? These days, we're hearing a lot about creatine. What are the data on creatine and mitochondrial function or brain function? I'm not familiar with these data. I should be.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
It's true. And I'm not alone in that sentiment. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Our Place. Our Place makes my favorite pots, pans, and other cookware. Surprisingly, toxic compounds such as PFASs, or forever chemicals, are still found in 80% of nonstick pans, as well as utensils, appliances, and countless other kitchen products.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
We also have a very direct discussion about vaccines and whether or not inflammation caused by vaccines can potentially damage mitochondria, which then leads to mental health challenges. And of course, in that context, we discuss the vaccine autism debate.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
As I've discussed on this podcast, these PFAS or forever chemicals like Teflon have been linked to major health issues such as hormone disruption, gut microbiome disruption, fertility issues and many other health concerns. So it's really important to avoid them. This is why I'm a huge fan of our place. Our place products are made with the highest quality materials and are all PFAS and toxin free.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Now there's a lot of interest in methylene blue ever since a video of Robert Kennedy putting methylene blue in his water on a plane kind of went viral. Methylene blue has been around a very long time. What are your thoughts on it? What does it do? Is it going to help mitochondria? Is it for everybody? I don't take it.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
I particularly love their Titanium Always Pan Pro. It's the first non-stick pan made with zero chemicals and zero coating. Instead, it's pure titanium. This means it has no harmful forever chemicals and that it doesn't degrade or lose its non-stick effect over time. It's also beautiful to look at. I cook eggs in my Titanium Always Pan Pro almost every morning.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
The design allows for the eggs to cook perfectly and without sticking to the pan. I also cook burgers and steaks in it, and it puts a really nice sear on the meat. But again, nothing sticks to it, so it's really easy to clean and even dishwasher safe. I love it, and I use it constantly.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Do you know what the dose range is? I don't, off the top of my head. Yeah, because methylene blue, as I understand, has some MAO activity, can adjust some of the enzymes that in turn adjust levels of serotonin. which is why I haven't taken it. I've just been cautious about, I don't really want to boost my serotonin.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
There's this recent study out of a lab at Stanford showing that the rewarding properties of various things, as we know, increase dopamine in anticipation of a reward, but also important, it seems, these are mouse studies, but
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
serotonin drops as dopamine goes up and that drop in serotonin is at least as important as the increase in dopamine for the reinforcing properties of certain behaviors and substances and um i i'm very reluctant to tamper with anything that would raise serotonin because in these studies um or these experiments or in these experiments i should say increasing serotonin
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
offset some of the rewarding aspects of otherwise rewarding things. So I want things that are rewarding to feel rewarding. And so this difference between dopamine and serotonin seems pretty vital. I mean, that's not to say I'm like terrified of anything that increases serotonin, but to do it pharmacologically just seems a little...
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
a little sketchy given I don't have a clinical need that I'm at least not that I'm aware of.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Interesting. Very interesting, in fact. Before moving on to some more clinical questions, we've been going deep into the science and some public health thoughts and reflections and ideas. There's a supplement called urolithin A that people seem really excited about for improving mitochondrial function. I'm not super familiar with the literature.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
But coenzyme Q12, urolithin A, we're starting to hear more about these sorts of things sold over the counter. Do you have any thoughts on those?
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Again, that's fromourplace.com slash Huberman to get 10% off. Today's episode is also brought to us by Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need, but nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, all in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Things like transcranial magnetic stimulation? Yes. Which is done non-invasively, right?
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish cognitive and physical performance. it's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are vital for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons, or your nerve cells.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
I don't think it's just Americans. I think our species needs to run up against the guardrails at the edge of the cliff and
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
six times and sadly see a good number of people go over to their demise before we go wait a second we need to think about how fast we're taking these turns we need to pull back i mean there's something weird about our species that we love to develop technology and then uh and then find the destructive aspects of those technologies and pull back and a lot of our you know it's like two steps forward one step back type evolution
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
It seems inherent to homo sapiens. Forgive me for getting so macroscopic here, but when you look through, there's a wonderful book, The Prince of Medicine, there's a history of medicine, Galen, and like it starts there and all the way forward. And you read like the, what is it? The Emperor of All Maladies about cancer.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
And you just realize like we're stumbling forward and making miraculous progress. And at the same time, we are, seemingly deliberately overlooking a lot of the stuff that's just obvious. It's like the old advice as we exit this conversation about supplements, the old advice that if you just eat a balanced diet, you're good, doesn't work anymore.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Drinking element dissolved in water makes it extremely easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes. To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
I noticed that because quote unquote balanced diet, first of all, no one can agree on that. and people get caught up in the vegetarian versus carnivore debates, which are really like, or vegan versus carnivore, which are really at the extremes. So we've lost our bearings. We're kind of like, true north is so clear what true north is.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
mostly non-processed, minimally processed foods, getting adequate quality protein. You could do that vegetarian. You could do that with some animal-based products. If you choose, it's doing that for 90% or 80% of one's nutrition. It's exercise. We know what forms are. Like all the information's there, as you're pointing out.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
but somehow we're just going to have to keep putting it back in our faces or see enough unfortunate stuff that we go away a second, like this is time for a course correction. But hey, that's what we're trying to do here, right? Absolutely. And we have colleagues to do it as well. And I'll just throw in, as long as we're editorializing a lot today,
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
I think in the last five years, the discourse around public health from the mental health side, from the cardiology side, from the cancer side, from the long-term has really transformed in no small part thanks to social media and podcasts. So things are evolving.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Oh, well, and thank you. And thank you. Vitamin deficiencies and mental health. It almost sounds like we're headed deeper into supplements and we might touch on that.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
But a few years ago, I went to a McKnight meeting and somebody presented some proteomics data where they were sequencing spinal fluid from depressed patients and finding that certain depressed patients had deficiencies in certain vitamins that could easily be replaced through supplementation. And lo and behold, their depressions were in these particular patients were being cured
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Literally reversed, going into remission by virtue of taking the appropriate vitamins. But the issue was they had to use spinal taps. So it was not in order to know what these patients needed. But it was really striking. I thought, goodness, we're talking about B vitamins and depression. So could you tell us about B12 and other B vitamins and B12? methylation and folate.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
There's a little cluster of topics here that I think is super interesting and that people really should know about vis-a-vis depression and other CNS challenges.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and therefore losing a lot of water and electrolytes. They have a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. They have watermelon, citrus, et cetera. Frankly, I love them all.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
We also discuss public health and what is needed to truly change the way people exercise and eat and the rapidly changing landscape of the National Institutes of Health and the CDC. As you'll soon hear, Dr. Palmer gives us a masterclass on mitochondrial function and how to improve this vital aspect of our health.
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. If I think about a mental health condition like depression, let's take depression to start off.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
I can just broadly create two columns of things or approaches that one might take. One is this mental model of sort of a molecule deficiency. I'm not saying this, but there are many who at one point thought depression is related to a deficiency in serotonin, or depression is related to a deficiency in dopamine, either levels, regulation,
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
enzymatic control, whatever the level of control, just this idea that these molecules are somehow lacking. If you put them back, you can relieve some symptoms of depression. The other column that comes to mind for me, having looked at the data on cognitive behavioral therapy, on the data on
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
psychedelics in the clinical setting for the treatment of depression, SSRIs, and other so-called antidepressants is this notion of neuroplasticity, the idea that neural circuits can change and that neural circuits control our sense of well-being, our perception of self, perception of others, feelings of agency, et cetera.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
we're really sorry we can't do better you're just gonna have to suffer for life like we can do better and i applaud your efforts to bring about that change i mean i think people realizing that often not always but often mitochondrial dysfunction is at the heart of of these things um is critical um speaking of which
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
I have to ask, and feel free to pass on this question if you like, but I've become very interested in vaccine biology and the debate about vaccines, about the adjuvants that are used to deliver the vaccines. Obviously, it is a very contentious topic. I just want to know, without being... I'm not trying to be provocative here.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Is there any evidence that vaccines or the adjuvants for vaccines or anything about vaccines and their delivery can disrupt mitochondrial function? You know, so often we think that it's like the vaccine having a specific effect on what the vaccine was designed to target that could potentially cause side effects or something like that. That's what many of the theories hold.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
But given the key role of mitochondria in all aspects of brain functioning. And given that some people are convinced, I'm not saying I believe this, but are convinced that vaccines are tied to these mental health challenges or to autism, let's be direct about this. Is there any evidence that vaccines of any kind can disrupt mitochondrial function or support mitochondrial function for that matter?
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
And it's now very clear that if you change levels of neuromodulators like dopamine, like serotonin, you don't necessarily cure depression but you open a window for plasticity, and then perhaps the therapy that you're doing can modify brain circuits more robustly.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
So I think in terms of molecule deficiency, maybe it's a vitamin deficiency, a neuromodulator deficiency, and then I also think about plasticity, that these treatments are just allowing for more brain change more rapidly. What other columns would you add to that picture? And perhaps first, do you think that picture is woefully inadequate or just partially inadequate?
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
For instance, forgive me, but the one that I'm aware of is that flu in pregnant mothers at the first to second trimester transition is correlated with statistically higher incidence of schizophrenia in the offspring. Do I have that right?
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Because I think this is the way most people think about the treatment of mental health. They think, oh, there's something missing. You take a drug and you get that thing back. And then like ADHD, you don't have enough dopamine or you put it in and then all of a sudden the tensional circuits work better. This kind of thing versus plasticity, which is the modification of those circuits.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Assuming there's choice, there's a risk-benefit analysis. Do you want the... the potential inflammation from the vaccine or lack of, you run the gamble. It's hard to predict who's going to have a big inflammatory response and who's not.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Although I'm thinking in the back of my mind about these lifestyle factors, even though it's a young child or an adolescent in some cases, but young children typically, there are things that you can do to bolster the the health of that kid going into a vaccine if you're choosing to vaccinate your kids, right? Like proper sleep, proper nutrition, proper everything.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
You wouldn't want them even slightly sleep deprived because that would increase the risk of inflammation, right? I mean, these things compound as I understand it. So You know, I think what most all parents really want is a sense of control over what are inevitably a mixture of controllable and uncontrollable factors. And this is what I hear when I really listen to this debate about vaccines.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
If you've heard about metabolic health, you've heard about the obesity crisis, that's important. But looking at all of that and approaching it through the lens of mitochondrial health, you'll soon learn is absolutely the way to go.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
I hear my science colleagues inevitably saying, okay, the Wakefield data were BS, et cetera. Like, no, no, no, there's no possibility. And then I hear parents who are having kids whose kids are due for vaccines. And they're like- I don't know what to do. They're terrified. And these are smart people, and they don't know what to believe anymore. That's the challenge.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
And the two things are not mutually exclusive. But I think until now, there really hasn't been a clear understanding that there are other columns for mechanistic change in mental health.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
I appreciate the thoroughness of your answer. I can promise you that Anything we put out about that will include the full context.
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
Well, if they do, I'm going to get rabid by posting the preamble because it's very important that people hear the full context. And I really appreciate you embracing that topic with the depth and rigor and
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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
sensitivity also that that you do uh because i don't think we can um duck this vaccine question anymore um i never thought in my lifetime that vaccines would be a thing it's like when i was a kid everyone got the polio vaccine the measles vaccine and kind of went about our way i do understand the number of vaccines that kids are getting now like the vaccine schedule has expanded um uh yeah i've been um
Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer
kind of thrown into the middle of this as different guests have come on this podcast who've said they do get the flu vaccine, others who say they don't. And, you know, gosh, if ever there was a separator besides Democrat versus Republican, it's this vaccine thing. It's really like V separator. It's so closely tied to believes in science, doesn't believe in science.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Charan Ranganath. Dr. Charan Ranganath is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of California, Davis.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
I don't know if it's cynical or optimistic, but if I recall the quote that Dr. Ranganath passed along, which does not come from him, it descends from somebody else, not to be named, is that, quote, science progresses one funeral at a time. Very, very actually interesting. very interesting statement. It could be examined from a number of directions, but I agree. I agree.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
I mean, there's some wonderful, let's call them aged scientists with tremendous knowledge and excitement. I mean, one only has to listen to like the Nobel prize winner, Richard Axel, talk about his love of olfaction and perception, and you can sense his delight and he's getting up there. Sorry, Richard, but it's true. You're in your, he's in his seventies, right?
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Hopefully he'll live a very long time, but yeah, And certainly science progressed as a consequence of him being alive and working on the olfactory system. But I think what you're referring to is really important. Neuroplasticity doesn't necessarily shut down as we age. It might even stay open to the same degree as early adulthood.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
But if I understand what you're saying correctly, you believe that it's because people tend to seek out less new knowledge as opposed to lacking the ability to create new knowledge.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Dr. Ranganath has an exquisite ability to describe research studies in clear terms and to combine that with his own narrative and life experience in a way that really frames for you practical tools that you can apply in your daily life. Before you begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
No, we've talked about that in this podcast. I think the key statement that you made that people should hold on to as we progress through this is that dopamine is not dumped everywhere. It's not sprinkled all over the brain. It's released in fairly restricted sites in order to drive particular processes. I think that's sufficient for now.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is David. David makes a protein bar unlike any other. It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
We can put a link to the paper, of course, in the show note caption. So let me make sure I understand that the, when people are prompted with a question.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
That drives release of dopamine. The amount of dopamine is proportional to how curious they are to get the answer to that particular question. And then the dopamine itself, if elevated because they are very curious, can increase the probability that they will remember the answer. it creates a milieu, an environment for better memory.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
But that can confuse us and make us think that dopamine improves our memory, but it's that curiosity increases dopamine, which increases the capacity to store information that comes subsequent to curiosity.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
So when people ask me, and they ask me a lot, how best to elevate their brain dopamine, One reasonable answer based on this study is curiosity, to engage curiosity. Do you know the quote by Dorothy Parker? The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. I believe it was Dorothy Parker. If it wasn't, I'm sure we'll find out quickly in the comments on YouTube.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
That's right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from protein. This is 50% higher than the next closest protein bar. These bars from David also taste incredible. My favorite bar is the cake flavored one. But then again, I also like the chocolate flavored one and I like the berry flavored one. Basically, I like all the flavors. They're all incredibly delicious.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
The dopamine system.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Recently, we had one of the world's experts on romantic relationships on this podcast, Esther Perel, to be specific. And we talked about a lot of things related to romantic relationships. But she said that one of the most sustaining factors for romantic relationships over long periods of time.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
is a sense of curiosity, both about the other person, but also about oneself and how one changes in the context of the relationship, and also curiosity about where the relationship could eventually go, where one to continue to invest in it. So this word of curiosity seems to be a resounding theme.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
I'm struck by, although it makes total sense, that curiosity would drive dopamine release in these pathways, that novelty would drive dopamine release in these pathways. And that also in the physical realm, dopamine is so important for physical movement. I don't think this is a coincidence, right?
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Somehow evolution organized this neuromodulator dopamine to be involved, the way I think about it, is in both a physical movement, it's required for it in fact, as well as cognitive movement. What we're really talking about is cognitive forward movement, if there is such a thing. Is there a... We're both neuroscientists, but you're the memory researcher.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Is there sort of a word or a framework for thinking about cognitive movement forward, meaning as opposed to just recycling past ideas and memories, the notion of taking memories and actually putting them, as you said earlier, into the present to anticipate the future, actually forward mental movement?
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Well, to be clear, you observed heightened activity in a dopaminergic circuit. So the idea that it would not involve dopamine is... is a bit of a stretch, but you didn't directly show that it was dopamine, so you're being very exact.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Now for me personally, I try to get most of my calories from whole foods. However, when I'm in a rush or I'm away from home, or I'm just looking for a quick afternoon snack, I often find that I'm looking for a high quality protein source.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
And with David, I'm able to get 28 grams of high quality protein with the calories of a snack, which makes it very easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight. And it allows me to do so without taking on an excess of calories. Again, I focus on getting most of my food from whole food sources throughout the day.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
No, no, trust me, this audience likes nerdy. I think that's part of why they're listening. Locus coeruleus is just an area of the brain that tends to sprinkler large brain areas with epinephrine, or norepinephrine, noradrenaline, So somewhat distinct from the dopamine system, but you're telling us it can also release dopamine.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. By now, many of you have heard me say that if I could take just one supplement, that supplement would be AG1. The reason for that is AG1 is the highest quality and most complete of the foundational nutritional supplements available.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
What that means is that it contains not just vitamins and minerals, but also probiotics, prebiotics, and adaptogens to cover any gaps you may have in your diet and provide support for a demanding life.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
For me, even if I eat mostly whole foods and minimally processed foods, which I do for most of my food intake, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits and vegetables, vitamins and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone. For that reason, I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012, and often twice a day, once in the morning or mid-morning, and again in the afternoon or evening.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
But I typically eat a David Barr in the late afternoon when I get hungry between lunch and dinner, sometimes also mid morning if I get hungry then. And sometimes I'll use it as a meal replacement, although not a complete meal replacement, it can get me to the next meal. So if I need to eat in a couple of hours, but I'm really hungry, I'll eat a David Barr.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
When I do that, it clearly bolsters my energy, my immune system, and my gut microbiome. These are all critical to brain function, mood, physical performance, and much more. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim their special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer. One thing that we talked about just briefly earlier was this non-sleep deep rest protocol that in yoga tradition is called yoga nidra or yoga sleep because you lie down, it's self-directed relaxation, long exhale breathing to slow your heart rate, et cetera, et cetera.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
I called it NSDR not to appropriate it, but because the language of yoga nidra is a little bit of a separator for people. It sounds a little bit esoteric, right? And non-sleep deep rest tells you what it is, right? Um, there's a study, uh, the university of Copenhagen.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
I can try to link to it in the show note captions, and I'd love your thoughts on it that show that people who do this practice, this is a pet, um, imaging study. So positron emission tomography for those that don't know, and they see significant increases in striatal dopamine in the condition of people that do this self-directed relaxation, as opposed to a more traditional meditation.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
And this is why I say that NSDR is useful for restoring mental and physical vigor. Which translates to this idea that dopamine prepares us for or is a reservoir for potential movement, typically toward rewards. And I love that we're talking about some of the other facets of dopamine because all too often people think about it as pleasure or motivation. And certainly it's involved in motivation.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
And I'm very happy. to learn that it's also involved in learning. That's a novel perspective on dopamine. And we hear so much about dopamine. Do you think that when dopamine is released as a consequence of curiosity in a way that primes the memory system, that we become entrenched in particular behaviors or um, routes of, uh, pursuing curiosity, um, to the exclusion of others.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
What I'm thinking about here as a kid, um, we've seen these data, um, kids with ADHD, um, actually have terrific ability to focus if it's something that they're really excited about, really curious about.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
So you give a kid with ADHD who loves video games, a video game, and they're like a laser. So it's not that they lack the capacity to focus, it's that they have a harder time dropping into focus. But it seems that because of the learning dimension to dopamine, that these circuits could potentially, quote unquote, learn that it's video games that provides that feeling of focus
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
As I mentioned before, they are incredibly delicious. In fact, they're surprisingly delicious. Even the consistency is great. It's more like a cookie consistency. kind of a chewy cookie consistency, which is unlike other bars, which I tend to kind of saturate on. I was never a big fan of bars until I discovered David Bars. If you give them a try, you'll know what I mean.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
to the exclusion of other things, meaning how does one keep a diversification of inputs to the dopamine system, so that we're continually driving dopamine through lots of different things, as opposed to just social media, or just video games, or just pick your favorite? Yeah, thing.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Because becoming a functional human being involves the requirement to focus on many things, not just the things we were curious about.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
So if you'd like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, the link is davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Levels. Levels is a program that lets you see how different foods affect your health by giving you real-time feedback on your diet using a continuous glucose monitor.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
it's such an important theme. I feel like nowadays, in part because of the algorithms on social media where we are fed things that feed our progressively greater and greater scrolling and dwell time, as it's called, you know, the algorithms are measuring clearly how long we dwell on a given image and what's in that image and etc. But it'd be nice to cultivate an algorithm for curiosity.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
He is one of the world's leading researchers in the topic of human memory. And memory, of course, is an essential component to our entire lives. Memory isn't just important for remembering things that we learn.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Surely it can be done. I mean, you got all these smart computer scientists and AI folks. And we come into this world naturally curious. All primates, including humans, will visually fixate on anything that's novel, right? And study it. And try and make predictions and gain understanding.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Um, maybe now would be a good time for us to discuss a little bit about the circuitry involved in memory so that we have that as a template to, to, uh, to, um, digest some other themes in memory. Um, most people are probably familiar with the so-called hippocampus, um, which is, uh, means seahorse.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
It looks a little bit like a seahorse, although the anatomist had a little bit of an imagination there in my opinion. But, um, Hippocampus, let's add to it prefrontal cortex, which you've already mentioned, and then these neuromodulatory systems. So if we were going to assign a one sentence definition, functional definition to each of those areas, what would you say the hippocampus does?
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Please, and let's add those in. But I think if we can start with three, I think then folks can digest it.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Yeah, yeah. But...
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
He used to call me Andy. That's fine. Yeah. Long story. That's a Davis thing.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
And one of the most important factors in both your short and long term health and your energy levels each day is your body's ability to manage blood glucose to maintain energy and focus throughout the day. You want to keep your blood glucose levels steady without big spikes or crashes.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
I first started using levels about three years ago as a way to understand how different foods impacted my blood glucose levels. And it's proven incredibly informative for determining what food choices I make, when best to time my food intake around things like workouts,
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Is it that they get a, a error signal or a correct signal if they're doing it in the right direction over time, they just kind of, the brain figures it out.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
No, that's okay. I mean, if I'm correct, if I'm wrong, I forget the Wisconsin card sorting task details, but you know, like they, they're told to just start sorting the cards and that the, the correct algorithm will reveal itself by a series of error and correct signals.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
And so maybe I'm taking all the red cards and putting them in one pile, black cards and putting them in another, and getting error signals. So then maybe I go odds evens. Maybe I divide by suit, depending on what kind of cards they are. Maybe I organize by even-odd alteration. And sooner or later, the brain figures it out.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
So there's context-dependent action and learning without the prefrontal cortex.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
both cardiovascular training versus resistance training and when and what to eat close to sleep or not so close to sleep when I wake up in the morning, if I'm fasting or breaking a fast, et cetera. Indeed, using levels has helped me shape my entire schedule. So I have more energy, more cognitive focus. My workouts are better. My sleep is better.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
They perseverate.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
That's so interesting. Maybe you could say that another time. You said it very clearly. I got it. But say it one more time because if anyone missed it, this is super important. Older people can –
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Everything got better when I understood how different things, especially food, were impacting my blood glucose levels. So if you're interested in learning more about levels and trying a CGM yourself, you can go to levels dot link slash Huberman. Right now, Levels is also offering an additional two free months of membership.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Gosh, it speaks to almost two parallel processing streams for memory, if I'm not mistaken – Or maybe – so what's going on there? Is it that one form of memory involves the suppression of information and that circuit is actually quite active in these older people and young people?
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Whereas curiosity for – and the ability to remember and integrate new information is somehow diminished in older people. Earlier we were talking about how that's not the case, that curiosity – if curiosity is intact, memory is intact and growing. Yeah.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
I would guess no, but this is why I asked about movement earlier. Curiosity is also linked to your ability to access novel scenarios. Of course, online you can just thumbscroll or click and access all sorts of novelty. There must be data as to whether or not people in their 70s, 80s, and 90s are scrolling social media to the same extent that younger people are.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Okay. So scrolling is bad for memory.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Again, that's levels.link, L-I-N-K slash Huberman to try their new sensor and two free months of membership. Today's episode is also brought to us by Waking Up. Waking Up is a meditation app that offers hundreds of guided meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga nidra sessions, and more.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
I'll just bring it up. White matter are the fiber tracks, the wires, essentially, that connect neurons across long and short distances.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
I started practicing meditation when I was about 15 years old, and it made a profound impact on my life. And by now, there are thousands of quality peer-reviewed studies that emphasize how useful mindfulness meditation can be for improving our focus, managing stress and anxiety, improving our mood, and much more.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
There are some CEOs that are doing spectacular things.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Really? Yes. So depression is dangerous for memory.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Do you think that depression is dangerous for memory and a risk factor for Alzheimer's because it is, by definition, anti-curiosity?
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Depression means poor sleep, which means poor learning, which means that's a big part of it.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
It's also vitally important for setting the context of our entire life, meaning only by understanding where we come from, who we were, and who we are currently, can we frame what we want to do in the next moments, the next day, the next years, and indeed for the rest of our life.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
In recent years, I started using the Waking Up app for my meditations because I find it to be a terrific resource for allowing me to really be consistent with my meditation practice. Many people start a meditation practice and experience some benefits, but many people also have challenges keeping up with that practice.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Function. I recently became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
While I've long been a fan of blood testing, I really wanted to find a more in-depth program for analyzing blood, urine, and saliva to get a full picture of my heart health, my hormone status, my immune system regulation, my metabolic function, my vitamin and mineral status, and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors on your results. For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had two high levels of mercury in my blood. This was totally surprising to me. I had no idea prior to taking the test.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Function not only helped me detect this, but offered medical doctor-informed insights on how to best reduce those mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, because I had been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification, and worked to reduce my mercury levels.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Comprehensive lab testing like this is so important for health, and while I've been doing it for years, I've always found it to be overly complicated and expensive.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
I've been so impressed by Function, both at the level of ease of use, that is getting the test done, as well as how comprehensive and how actionable the tests are, that I recently joined their advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman Lab listeners. Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. You probably think a fair amount about age-related cognitive decline and Alzheimer's. And I'm just curious.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
um, at a personal level, uh, what are the sorts of things that you do to try and offset cognitive decline? Uh, you seem to be a very vivacious and curious person. Um, I've known you a long time and I don't know whether or not you were caffeinated every time we met, but you have a lot of energy. You're a very curious person. Um, you just wrote a book.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Um, we'll talk more about, and you're going on podcasts. You're doing a lot of things besides running a, you know, world-class research laboratory. So clearly a lot of curiosity. Um, What do the data say about ways to maintain or enhance one's memory capacity?
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
What I and so many other people love about the Waking Up app is that it has a lot of different meditations to choose from, and those meditations are of different durations. So it makes it very easy to keep up with your meditation practice, both from the perspective of novelty, you never get tired of those meditations.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
With the understanding that curiosity is probably involved as we talked about earlier, but at a really basic level, I mean, a number of things leap to mind, but I'm just curious what your, if you had to pick like three to five things that are clearly substantiated in the data as supporting the maintenance or enhancement of memory as we get older, what are those?
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Wow, so these are people exercising, paying attention to their sleep, social engagement. What are some of the other, I'm guessing, low inflammatory diet?
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
The smoking one is interesting because we know smoking can cause cancer. Mm-hmm. And cardiovascular risk is, is real there. Although there are some data, as I understand that nicotine itself, not smoking, vaping, dipping, or snuffing, but that nicotine can be pro cognition and maybe even pro memory. Um, and nowadays people are using nicotine more and more.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
There's always something new to explore and to learn about yourself and about the effectiveness of meditation. And you can always fit meditation into your schedule, even if you only have two or three minutes per day in which to meditate. If you'd like to try the Waking Up app, please go to wakingup.com slash Huberman, where you can access a free 30 day trial.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
I'm not a big proponent of this because of the blood pressure increase and the typical routes of administration are dangerous, but, um, Nicotine, I've been told, is protective for Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Is that true?
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Which I define as people wonder what is that? And there are all these online debates about vegan, vegetarian, carnivore, blah, blah, blah. But I think most people in the world are omnivores, most. And I think it's very clear that the number one thing for healthy diet is to try and get most of one's food from non-processed or minimally processed sources.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
That sort of sets you in the right direction.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Yeah, they do great work.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Olive oil, fruits, vegetables, fish, eggs, limited amounts of meat, although I'm half Argentine. Yeah, you like your steaks. I do.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Again, that's wakingup.com slash Huberman to access a free 30 day trial. And now for my discussion with Dr. Charan Ranganath. Dr. Charan Ranganath. Welcome.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
That's my understanding. Yeah. Although the times I've said that on the Internet, I caught a lot of pushback from some of the cannabis researchers. But then having invited one of them on this podcast, I then got subsequent input from other researchers which counter their narrative, which we can both say because we're both research scientists. That's what you call a field.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
No, no, no. You didn't. You didn't. I think the point is just that it's very clear that there are certain individuals for whom high THC consumption can trigger psychotic episodes. Yeah, and we're seeing this with – But not everyone. Yeah.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
What was the first example?
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Oh, psychedelic. OK, we'll talk more about that. Charne is himself a rock and roll musician and loves rock and roll, hence the reference to Rick Rubin earlier. And there's a photo of Rick here in the studio that our photographer, Mike Blayback, took. So we were looking at that together. So yes, psychedelics have claimed the minds of certain people, made them
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
helped contribute to their pre-existing, presumably, psychosis. I should also say, in fairness to the other compounds out there, methamphetamines have also significantly contributed to the progression of psychosis in many people. So it's not just psychedelics. And then, of course, there are those who have somehow managed to take psychedelics and become more sane.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Speaking of memory, we go way back.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Or at least remain as sane as they were before.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
That makes sense, given the neurodegenerative dopaminergic... involvement in schizophrenia and those drugs are pro-noradrenergic dopaminergic in general.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
I was a graduate student when you were first hired as an assistant professor, which for those that aren't familiar with the academic nomenclature and trajectories, assistant professors are professors that have not yet received tenure. But now, of course, you're a full professor and you are a world expert in memory, something that I think occupies the minds of all of us. even if we're not trying.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
So eat healthy. We talked about exercise. Yeah, yeah. And my understanding – I've been looking at this in detail lately, but I'd love your thoughts – is that while everybody – we now believe men, women, et cetera, should do both cardiovascular exercise, so to speak –
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
elevate heart rate for 12 to 60 minutes kind of thing, depending on the intensity, as well as resistance training to maintain neuromuscular function, offset sarcopenia, et cetera. To me, the really impressive effects of exercise on learning capacity and the brain in terms of brain health seem to come from cardiovascular exercise.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
And that could just be because that's what's been emphasized in the studies. But even when one looks at some and compares the best human studies, it really does seem like getting blood flow up to the brain, getting a nice, release of neuromodulators into the brain facilitates learning. And then, of course, people have to do something with that learning, right?
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
So do you make an effort to exercise for the specific purpose of maintaining or enhancing brain function?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
I'm sure people will be curious. What does it take to finish a book and how much? You mean you took a toll on your body?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
I'm just sorry to hear it.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Good for you.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Beautiful dogs.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
So that's actually the segue to my first question, which is, as we move through our day, how much of our cognition, our perception is focused on things that are happening in the present as opposed to being driven by prior memories. You know, studies ever been done that evaluate how often our brain, you know, switches to thoughts about the past.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Yeah, they use these for military operations in the Tier 1 military. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're trained to jump out of planes with parachutes.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
You're like, but this one's the ninja.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
They're like feral people, feral dogs. Yeah. But they have big hearts because they're eternally grateful. You gave them a home.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
No, I see where you're going with this.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
You're in great shape. You're a few years older than I am and I haven't seen you in a while. And I always have this like slight fear when I run into a colleague again after a while, because there was this joke that we didn't tell professors until we became professors about the so-called tenured look.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
You see someone come in as a postdoc, you see them as a junior professor, and then you see them after tenure. And tenure is a big milestone, right? It corresponds to academic freedom, et cetera. It's a wonderful milestone. It's a wonderful thing that we both have this.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
But you see some people who got tenure and you just go, oh, goodness, they look like they're, you know, age 25 years in five years. We also see this with former presidents, not all of them, but a lot of them. And so to run into you, well, I saw you on Lex Friedman's podcast, but then to see you, I'm like, Charm's taking great care of himself. It makes me happy. It's not a judgment.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
It makes me happy because I love my colleagues and I want to see them live a very long time because I don't subscribe to the idea that science progresses fast. one funeral time of my favorite scientists.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
No, I'm saying that there's certain scientists- I love my fellow scientists. I do too.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
There are certain scientists that you'd love to see live forever, and you're one of them. So you said walk in the dog, which presumably gets you some sunlight, a lot of sunlight in Davis, even in the winter. Yeah, yeah. Cloud cover is bright up there. It gets you on a regular sleep rhythm. But you said this sense of purpose, right? And I'm curious about how you now frame exercise.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
You said you don't like working out. You made an investment in your health by paying a trainer. So now you train regularly. And that's also an investment in your brain health. And if we were to go back to this notion of sense of purpose, are you talking about a larger sense of purpose? Like, okay, I want to contribute to understanding of how the brain works. You're a brain explorer after all.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Of course, we learn about things that are in our present. I know this as a cup because I was taught that at some point, but what I'm referring to is how much of our thinking on a day-to-day basis is literally in the past.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
And therefore, the exercise and the money you put towards a trainer is linked to the ability to do that. Are you linking these nodes or are these kind of separate entities? Like, yeah, I want to be healthier and here's a way to be healthier and ergo. I'll be around longer to study the brain.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
It speaks to your mentoring as well.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
I'm not in my world. You want to learn something, you learn something from somebody who's skilled in how to improve somebody at something.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
You're a real scientist.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Any scientist that likes administrative stuff, I think I'm willing to call out as... What are they doing in science? Because that's like you're supposed to be focusing on experiments. So bravo. So values, then motivation.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
We'll talk about those three things.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Let's, let's, um, uh, hover on that attention versus intention. We hear these words all the time. Um, attention is the directing of one's perception to particular sensations or things in one environment is the way loosely defined, um, accurate, but not exhaustive. Um,
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Intention is understanding why we're having a cognitive sense, maybe a cognitive emotional sense of why I am directing my perception to particular things. Is that right?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
This is why, for instance, that people who have deficits in memory, either due to brain damage or due to age related cognitive decline or diseases like Alzheimer's dementia, suffer so much, not just in terms of not being able to remember things for sake of daily tasks, but also for sake of placing themselves in the larger context of their life.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Chances are.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
You're not allowed. Who are these people giving you this feedback? Send me their names and numbers. I have words for them. And listen, I would say, given you run a world-class laboratory, you're successful in your family life, you're successfully raising your second dog, you've written a spectacular book, you're going on podcasts, you're educating the public, I would say you're doing great.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
So keep going. And whoever these people are, We'll have words with that. You know.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
I don't want to take us off track, but you know, I spend a lot of time each morning. I first do a non-sleep deep rest or some sort of meditation. Rick Rubin taught me this to get into intention. And there are other people who've come into my life recently. This notion of intention, the reason I said, let's hover on it is so important because we are in a world where things will grab our attention.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
especially on social media. It's basically a war for attention. I don't think it's an attention economy anymore, or Simon's brilliant, I'm not trying to take anything away from that, but it's a war for attention. And one of the ways that you rob your competitors is by taking their attention.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
I used to joke when I was in a very competitive area as a postdoc, I was competing against a big lab at Harvard and this and that, trying to find genetic markers for retinal neurons, et cetera. And I said, if I could just get them excited about The Wire, remember that show, The Wire? Because it'll suck like 15 hours of those postdocs time. So I thought, you know, it'd be really diabolical.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
I didn't do it. But, you know, telling people like, you have to see the wire, they, you know, this and that, you know, because you get someone on a really good Netflix program. And if they're a competitor, you just got a competitive advantage. But this is being done all day long, right?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
In any case, attention is our ability to, for our perception to be drawn to whatever is most, moving most, loudest, most salient. Intention is different.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Hence the values list.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
When was that? Mine was 2010.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Yeah. We'll have to look up.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Well, I'm from the Bay Area and spent a lot of time with those folks, men and women in tech. I think that the best ones, like the truly exceptional ones, are very good at dropping into a trench of attention. They're very disciplined with their phone use. And the ones that are doing a lot of task switching often don't have complete lives. They really don't.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
They're not taking care of their health also. And they are sort of under the sense that like they're working all the time when they're not. As a graduate student, I didn't have a smartphone. I did something recently. I tweeted about this. You may have commented about it. I don't know. But This has helped me a lot. I took an old phone and I put social media on the old phone and only social media.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
So it doesn't operate as a phone. I can airdrop things to it. So I use that for looking at social media and for posting. That phone is in a box. And then my... is for texting and other forms of communication. So I still have that distraction around me, but social media is now a dedicated thing that I spend a specific amount of time and I have a timer on that phone.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
So I allocate myself a certain amount of time each day. So for every moment I start that timer, once it hits zero, that's it. And I'm starting to shorten that amount of time. The impact on productivity in terms of writing, in terms of researching, in terms of just dropping into conversation, has been enormous with that simple switch.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
And I just find it easier to just segregate social media from the phone. Part of the problem is that the phone is, it's like in a walking office. It's not even, it's a phone, it's a computer, it's just too much access.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Really? Yeah. What about looking at pictures of – I think it was Larry Squire when I was down at San Diego that said that hanging a few pictures in your office of things that are really pleasant memories can really enhance your work environment because you look at them and go, oh, I remember that. Because of all the context it brings about.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
But you're saying that the act of taking pictures depletes our memory for that experience.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
No, it is real.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
So is it, so it sounds like if we have, we go on and, uh, on a vacation or to a show or something that taking a photo, as long as it's intentional of something specific that will look, the key is to look at it later, not just post it, but to look at it later and to spend a few moments or more drawing to mind some of the emotional and cognitive experiences around that memory that,
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
however, changes the memory, right? Anytime we create a story, we're changing the memory. But perhaps, provided it was a good experience, that's better than to not access the photo at all. But I'm struck by, as you are, the number of people who are taking photos at a concert.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
A friend of mine who's a very successful photographer who shoots a lot of photos of musicians thinks this is the craziest thing, as if any one of those photos is going to be meaningful, right? That they're outside of the experience of the concert, which is exactly what you're describing. Maybe you just have a memory of taking a lot of photos.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Not a hippie. You sound like a punk rocker. It's not confused with two. That's good. Yeah, exactly.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
No, no. I have a question that I'm hoping binds some of this together related to taking photos and memories. I keep many photos. I like printed photos. I have these in a drawer. They mean very much to me. Some of them are in the studio, but I keep most of them in a drawer at home. Polaroids are an interesting example, I think, of what you're describing.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
The act of taking a Polaroid is more than just clicking or pressing with your thumb on a camera. There's a waiting process. You actually get to see the photo emerge over time. I would bet, even though I haven't run the study, I would bet that people keep Polaroids more than they, and look at Polaroids more than they keep other photos.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Which if you think about it is, if it's true, if it's true, is counter logic because, you know, usually people want to do another photo because they don't like the way they looked in the previous photo. With Polaroids, you can't do too many of those, right? It's kind of one and done, maybe two and done.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
But I feel like the act of taking the Polaroid, waiting for the photo to emerge, kind of stamps it in your memory of the experience itself. And the act of taking the photo is more involved. It's more of a process than just a click, that then you see the photo later. Now, of course, with digital photography, you see it, but you can take 100, you can take 200 photos like that.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
If we were to export this theme of limiting our task switching as a way to enhance our memory, setting up our environment in a way where we put our phone away perhaps, and we also are focused on intention, why we are in something. Do you think that there's something positively reinforcing about getting into a trench, as I call it?
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Because I find that conversations like this, one of the reasons I do this podcast, the solo episodes and these interviews, is that they provide something that my life prior to it did not provide, which was depth. I mean, we're just here. There's no phones here. And if there are, they're off, right?
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
And I feel like anytime we go into these trenches, could be a video game, could be an interaction with a loved one, of various kinds, but when we go into these tunnels of attention, there's something that's so deeply satisfying about it, especially to those who have attention deficit issues, that it feels like something real happened, and the rest is just noise.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Is there any relationship of the focus system release of dopamine. I know release of dopamine can drive focus, but is the reverse also true?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Correct. That's the question.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
You're catastrophizing.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
But if you survive – You averted the catastrophe. The question is, does the potential catastrophe live within you or does it die within you? You only need to live within you sufficiently enough that you avoid the threat in the future, right? But that's the double-edged sword of noradrenergic systems is that they capture lots of memory and they open up thoughts about what could have gone wrong.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
But if it didn't go wrong, it didn't go wrong. You're alive. You only need to remember to avoid whatever puts you in that circumstance.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Yesterday, I took a brief nap in the afternoon. I do this practice of non-sleep deep rest in the afternoon.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
I'll check it out. Earlier you mentioned, and I want to make sure that we return to this notion of taking care of one's vision and one's hearing as a way to offset memory loss. Very important concepts. Could you share with us what's known about that?
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
So don't listen to your headphones too loud, right?
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
It's very restorative for mental and physical energy, I find. But I fell asleep toward the end of it. And when I woke up, I was in a dark room, but I didn't know where I was for about, it felt like 10, 15 seconds, somewhat scary, but I'd forgotten that I was in my solo studio. I had turned the room lights down.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Oh, yeah. Yeah. All the top music. I'm friends with some some really amazing musicians. They all wear insert earplugs.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Oh, I just mean protect your hearing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
I did an episode on oral health and the effects on, as you said, on brain health are amazing because streptococcus mutans, which is the bacteria that causes cavities, can funnel its way into the bloodstream and potentially cross the blood-brain barrier, which is, I think, why people think it might be detrimental to brain health.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Is that the explanation for the brain fog that people report?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
What is it when we have these lapses in memory as we emerge from sleep, or sometimes if one has been severely jet lagged, you can experience this disorientation of place. Do we know what that is?
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
This probably explains, at least in my mind, why these lifestyle factors like improved sleep, cardiovascular and resistance training exercise, but certainly cardiovascular exercise, eating a lot of leafy foods, et cetera. We know all of those things offset inflammation to some degree or another. Right.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
I mean, one of the best ways to inflame your brain and body is to not get enough sleep and eat, you know, a lot of highly processed foods, for instance. To date, are there any even semi satisfactory prescription drugs or other compounds that can slow the progression of Alzheimer's dementia once it's started?
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Recognizing family members isn't just about being able to relate to those family members on a day to day basis. It's also about understanding the full context of all one's memories with those people and what meaning a given interaction brings to any of life's experiences. So today you're going to learn how memory works. You're going to learn about things like deja vu.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
I think people really need to hear and internalize that because I think everyone is waiting for this miracle drug that is unlikely to ever arrive frankly. I mean, today we have some okay treatments for Parkinson's to try and offset the loss of dopaminergic neurons, but they can even transplant essentially dopaminergic neurons into the substantia nigra. But
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
None of those things, L-DOPA, et cetera, have proved to be cures for Parkinson's. Not getting hit in the head is helpful. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
So there are a lot of don'ts. I'm grateful that today you're sharing a number of do's, both in the context of offsetting age-related cognitive decline, Alzheimer's, but also in terms of how to enhance focus and enhance memory. I want to make sure that we touch on a few topics related to memory that
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
a little bit off the trajectory we're on now, but that come up a lot when people start thinking about memory. And one that's kind of intriguing, very intriguing, is déjà vu. Do we have any understanding about what déjà vu is? Is it just like a recollection of something similar that spontaneously gets triggered? I'm like, what is déjà vu?
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Sea lions?
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Okay, we'll get back to that.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
HM is a now dead famous patient and literally chapter in the history of neuroscience, somebody who had his hippocampi bilaterally, one on each side of the brain, removed to treat epilepsy. It fixed the epilepsy, but he had lost all capacity to remember prior events.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
I don't know what that is.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Less than a second.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
So for those looking for novelty in different domains of life, maybe this is the solution.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
So basically... Not much epinephrine, not much adrenaline.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
I'd like to talk about the relationship between memory and mental health for the following reason. I'm very struck by the fact that in experiments such as the work that Karl Deisseroth, who was actually the first guest on this podcast, brilliant neuroengineer, of course, and psychiatrist, described in which he's talking to a patient who's depressed
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
This patient has a stimulator for the vagus nerve that can crank up stimulation of the vagus nerve. And essentially the narrative goes from this patient, I believe it was a woman in this case, talking about being suicidally depressed. She can't anticipate doing anything of any interest or excitement to her, increasing vagal stimulation, which by the way, folks, does not just calm people down.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Vagal stimulation actually creates a lot of alertness. So this is a vast misconception out there that vagal stimulation is all about calming. In any case, as the vagal stimulation goes up, her narrative literally changes in real time to, yeah, I could see myself going out and applying for a job. I'm kind of excited about the future, et cetera.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
So complete transformation of one's outlook, but also in some instances, memory of prior events. So how we cast prior events is so interesting. And the bridge I'd like to build right now conceptually is that There are two papers that intrigue me.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
One is a paper from Lamberto Maffei's lab in Pisa, which had a paradigm for exploring learned helplessness in rodents, which is a sort of a model for depression, how long a rodent is willing to swim in water to save its life, right, before it gives up. And there's a learned helplessness that eventually arrives. These, yes or not, kind experiments. But at some point they give up and then
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
they've essentially learned they're helpless. And of course they save the animal before it dies. But these animals given essentially an SSRI like Prozac can, restore some sense of hope, meaning they'll swim longer after having learned to be helpless. Is it recovery of depression? We don't know.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
But in humans, you see some of the same thing when SSRIs have been effective and they're not always effective. You also see this in some of the psilocybin trials where people have done the psilocybin therapies.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
In the correct context. And now all of a sudden people have this completely different emotional version of the same events. Like, yep, a bunch of terrible things happened. or with the MDMA trials for PTSD.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Controversial right now, FDA didn't approve it, but a good number of patients described saying, yeah, this really terrible set of things that happened, those happened, but I accept it and I'm taking the lessons and I'm moving on and then there's maybe even forgiveness, et cetera, et cetera. So to me, this is a shift in memory brought about by a dramatic shift in neuromodulators.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
SSRIs, of course, increase serotonin. Psilocybin increases serotonin. And it's interesting to me that MDMA, while it increases dopamine, most dramatically increases serotonin. 7X or more in terms of the—now, I'm not suggesting anyone do these drugs at all.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Who's the president?
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
With too much of— Too much MDMA. Although the studies on this is interesting because the study that claimed that MDMA did that actually was retracted. Oh, is that right? It turns out they had inadvertently used methamphetamine. Keep in mind, folks, that MDMA is methylene, dioxin, methamphetamine. So I'm not suggesting anyone do these drugs. I'm using this as a conceptual term.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Right, right, right. I mean, so in clinical trials, it's clearly been shown, both for SSRIs as well as for psilocybin, these are still emerging clinical trials, and MDMA, that in a significant percentage of individuals, especially when combined with therapy, people can now feel differently about the same memory.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Well, it depends on what time of year relative to the election you ask, right? Very interesting. I'm curious also why it is that most all of us have a stable representation of who we are. So, my understanding is that even people with very severe memory deficits don't wake up in the morning and wonder, you know, who am I or who is this person in this body?
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
So feeling different about the same memory and feeling different about therefore the sense of possibility going forward. This to me is incredible. And it speaks to the fact that much of depression the lack of positive anticipation about the future, et cetera, is based on memories about failures of past or harms of past.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Right. So what is the relationship between the serotonin system and memory? Or what is the relationship more broadly of these neuromodulatory systems or the vagal system that can create these incredible reversals of what we previously thought of as terrible as manageable? And therefore, we're willing to lean into life again. What is that?
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
That somehow we remember that we have a self, that we are separate from other selves, that that kind of knowledge might be innate, we might be born with it, and that the representation of self in memory is very stable. Is that true?
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
You change. You change. Yeah. You change. If, if the integration is guided properly. One thing that I do want to make sure I highlight, and it's not just for, you know, public safety reasons, although that as well, is that people are so intrigued by the idea of quote unquote, opening plasticity. Plasticity is just an opportunity for learning new contingencies, right?
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Just taking psychedelics is an experience, but certainly, but it's, The learning of new contingencies occurs in the integration phase as well as within the session. That's why the clinical trials that showed some efficacy for some people were guided intensely by therapists. The mere act of having plasticity, plasticity is an opportunity for learning. It's not the actual learning.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Or you have a sense of agency in there. Yeah. Some of the psychedelics, I've never tried this one, but There are interesting studies of ibogaine, iboga, where the universal experience, as I understand, is that it's 22 hours long. It's actually a cardiovascular risk. There's some things that need to be offset there. So don't run out and do this, folks.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
But people, I'm told, get a high-definition movie of specific events in their life that actually happened only when they close their eyes. So no hallucinating with eyes open. Interesting. And then they have agency within those movies. And once they... exact the change they wanted to have. It rotates like a cube, very interesting perhaps to a memory researcher why this would be.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
And then they get another event of past where they have agency in that event. Incredible.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
A number of papers are being retracted now.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
I've made foolish errors in outdoor adventures in my past where afterwards I thought that was a really dumb move to even go to that place. to dive, let alone what we did when we did there. Like, you know, I mean, some of the stupid stuff that we did, even NS Kids, like bridge jumps and without testing water depth. I mean, stupid, stupid stuff. Yeah. That I don't recommend anyone repeat.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
But you're right. The surviving stories are, you carry those forward.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
The problem is the other stories we can talk about, people who are paralyzed, dead, et cetera, those stories exist too.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Well, and I think this is where people have to be very careful not to cowboy post-traumatic stress disorder treatment in a way that allows the narrative to make it worse.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Because people, a previous guest on this podcast has this notion of, in describing this, of story fondling, where people can go further and further into the description of how terrible something is reinforced by others, and then the memory changes to become much worse. than either the real events were, or just simply worse within their body and mind. And then they have to live that forward.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
So it can go both ways, which is really points to the key, which is to do this with really trained professionals.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
So recollection is really a double-edged blade.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
It's been referred to as the pain of an old wound.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
I didn't say that. Someone else.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Incredible. I want to make sure that we talk about something important. at first glance, very different than all of this, but it lands squarely in the conversation we've had until now, which is your love for and your participation in rock and roll. You have a band, right? Pavlov's Dogs.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Okay, what are the other ones called?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
It's like – Is it original music or covers?
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
um she's still touring yeah she's amazing a friend of mine went on tour with her yeah there's a band called surfboard surfboard was on tour with so i know them yeah oh that's a friend from surfboard no yeah the great band um and she toured with blondie blondie's amazing she's still super vivacious yeah surfboard and and um uh and danny um what instrument do you play
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
You're going to learn ways to offset age related cognitive decline, what the research really says about that and ways to prevent things like Alzheimer's dementia. We also talk about ADHD or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. And Dr. Ranganath shares his own experience with ADHD, how it relates to memory and the tools that he has used in order to combat his own ADHD.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Lead vocals?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Can people find links to any Pavlov Dog live shows or recordings online?
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Okay. And you have a show coming up. We'll put a link to that because people will listen to this long after that, presumably. That's coming up in Chicago on October 15th.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
We'll put a link to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. But for those that can't make it, because most of us aren't in Chicago, including me, unfortunately, we'll keep an eye out for Pavlov's dogs. I love that you play music. And I just have, for sake of time, one question about your love for rock and roll and playing music. When you're playing rock and roll live, are you thinking about anything else?
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
I love that. When I do live shows, I like to have the. I'm house lights relatively dim. I don't want to see anybody at first. And then as they get more comfortable, I'm happy to have the house lights come on. Cause I don't play anything. I do live events where I talk about science, where I tell stories about science and scientists. Okay.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
A couple of things are right in the front of my mind and I'd be remiss if I didn't say them right now. First of all, it's absolutely clear that we need to get you back here for more discussion about memory and learning. There's just so much that we didn't have the opportunity to cover in this conversation, but we most certainly will in a future conversation.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
They become more optimistic. And yet I would argue that we become more, quote unquote, set in our ways because neuroplasticity, the ability to reshape our neural circuits, diminishes with age.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
We didn't bring up the turkeys of Davis. No, we didn't. Second of all, I want to thank you for writing your book, Why We Remember, because it's a fantastic exploration of the modern understanding of memory. still some of the mysteries that remain, but this is a field that's evolved a lot and you capture so much of the incredible findings there over the years in a very pleasurable way.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
So it's a pleasure to read. And then I also want to thank you for coming here today to share with us your understanding about memory and also your sharing of your experience with ADHD and some of the tools you use, some of the struggles.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
I think all too often people hear about these scientists or physicians or people who are authorities on a topic and they don't hear about the challenges they face. And I
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
assure you that a great, great many people will appreciate the fact that you yourself have struggled with certain issues related to attention, but that you've overcome them at least as well to be able to be a functional parent and family man, professor, author, now public educator, dog owner. Second time around.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
And, you know, for that and for a great many other reasons, you've educated us and you've given us a great many practical tools. It's also great to see you as a fellow punk rocker and old friend. And I even let you call me Andy. So thank you. So thanks for coming here today. And please do come back again, Charn.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
Thank you for joining me for today's discussion about memory and ADHD with Dr. Charan Ranganath. To learn more about his work and to find a link to his book, as well as social media accounts, please see the links in the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
In addition, please subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. Please check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep, to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
So that's Instagram, X, formerly known as Twitter, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media channels.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
If you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, our neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as protocols in the form of brief one to three page PDFs. Those protocol PDFs are on things like neuroplasticity and learning, optimizing dopamine, improving your sleep, Deliberate cold exposure, deliberate heat exposure.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
We have a foundational fitness protocol that describes a template routine that includes cardiovascular training and resistance training with sets and reps, all backed by science. And all of which again is completely zero cost. To subscribe, simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab up in the upper right corner, scroll down a newsletter and provide your email.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Charan Ranganath. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath
And by the way, for folks listening who are considering a career in science, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, prior to recording— You told me a saying that I've never heard before.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Jordan Peterson. Dr. Jordan Peterson is a psychologist, an author, and one of the most influential public intellectuals of our time.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And as you said... Or it reveals itself to you.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Yeah. So I think you two would enjoy a conversation at some point.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
For me, I felt a compulsion to share what I knew, but because during the pandemic, everyone was so focused on vaccines and lockdowns that no one was talking about the reality that everyone was facing, including me. Sorry, Josh Gordon, I know him through time, our director of the National Institutes of Mental Health.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Not a single thing out there about, hey, folks, if you're going to be indoors this much, get some sunlight in your eyes in the morning or else you're going to have trouble sleeping. Trouble sleeping equates to mental health issues, stress, uncertainty. My lab was working on ways to regulate stress through Deliberate breathing through other mechanisms.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
It was like, well, I want people to have tools, zero cost tools to deal with their stress, to help them regulate their circadian biology because those wick out to countering the negative forces that were on us, which are social order was disrupted. People are at home. So it was a desire to give people tools that I knew existed, that I was knowledgeable about.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And I had a longstanding kind of growing compulsion that I wanted to talk about neuroscience because it's so difficult.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
There was a lot of energy behind the mission, but then there was a calling. The calling was from hearing about people suffering. It's like, well, of course you're not sleeping well. I mean, not only are there a million things to worry about right now, people aren't working, et cetera, but you're not getting sunlight in your eyes. You need to get outside.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
You need to, you know, and then there's the whole socialization thing and whatever people's circumstances, there are things that they could do. And so I felt that calling and my conscience told me that I have the knowledge. So why would I cloister with it at home? That's like, what good is that? And so I just started blabbing on the internet.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
No, I absolutely believe that things come from outside of us, certainly for me. I'm now very much a devotee of prayer. I pray before this podcast.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Well, before this podcast, I prayed for clarity of mind to be able to learn from you and to help transmit that knowledge out to people in a way that would be useful to them, for sustained focus, for the ability to also let go and not try and control or lead with questions and to allow a sense of randomness and serendipity to make it what it is, trusting that it's in service to the listeners.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Yeah. I pray before every podcast. I pray before going to sleep each night. I've been doing this for about for a little over a year, I always quietly... Why?
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
My coming to the whole notion of prayer and God, et cetera, was complicated in the backdrop in the sense that I always secretly prayed. Always secretly prayed. And then about a year, about a year and a half ago, a guy that works on my security team started talking to me about the Bible. We started talking about God. And It made sense. I started reading the Bible. I'm not through it yet.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And I started praying. And I had a number of experiences as a consequence of praying, clearly as a consequence of prayer, that made me realize that prayer doesn't give me a capacity of any sort. It just allows certain things that I believe are inside of me to come out.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Yeah, that's right. Oh yeah. That's right.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Yeah. And it felt different. So I should say that, you know, I have this little list that I sometimes do. I'll say, you know, uh, Deliberate breathing, aka breath work, can allow you to shift your state. Hypnosis is a tool that can allow you to solve a particular problem because it has some, you know, aspect of neuroplasticity in there.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Non-sleep-deep rest, which is a thing that was, you know, built out of this practice called yoga nidra, where you go into an awake but deeply relaxed state, allows you to restore your vigor. Meditation to me is a way of of enhancing one's ability to focus. Third eye meditation of concentrating your breath, et cetera. I mean, we know based on the data improves focus.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Prayer to me is entirely different than all of those. There's some overlap. They look similar. Some of them look similar from the outside. But prayer is the, for me, is the allowing of something from truly outside me to come through me and bring out the best in me. And that's why I, pray for things. I pray for ability. I pray for other people.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And I also have learned that a powerful aspect of prayer is just listening. Because just stopping and listening and trying to invite in or allow in messages that if I didn't still myself that I wouldn't hear. And sometimes I'll go to sleep and then the next morning something will come to mind. It's not always immediate.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Having spent a good portion of my career digging around in brains, recording from neurons, slicing up brains, staining brains, and from my understanding of neuroscience, and I think by now in almost 2025, we have a fairly good understanding of what different brain areas do, how different circuits interact. I don't see how anyone who's really interested in how humans work can not believe in God.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And I'm not being disparaging of people that don't. I know people that are atheists. I have some in my family. And I just don't think that the human brain and mind is capable of understanding and managing itself as well as it possibly could in the absence of concept of God in prayer.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And I think there's a lot of historical evidence to support that statement, meaning that this notion of God has been around a very long time. This is not a coincidence. I mean, humans have discarded many of the things that, you know, other people perhaps came up with. This has been a stable feature of being human for a very long time, of societies for a very long time.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And I've been wanting to ask you,
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
throughout today's conversation, to what extent do you think the different religions and the way that they represent God differently, or in the case of Christianity, God and Jesus Christ, to what extent do you think that the stories and the lessons and the teachings overlap at the level that we're talking about today, which is really about a psychological and neuroscientific level?
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Seems to me that they all converge on the same themes, but I'm not, you know, I'm somewhat of a newbie to all, to formal prayer and to reading the Bible and so on. So I like to say, you know, I haven't gotten my jersey yet because I don't deserve it, but I'm putting in, I'm showing up to practice, you know, this kind of thing.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
So I'm just curious to what extent you see consistent themes across religions and maybe even to atheism too. Like atheism, it's been argued as its own form of religion perhaps, right? And for anyone listening, I mean, I want to make clear, I don't have any pushback on atheism.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
It's just that for me, adopting, really coming to terms with a real belief in God and adopting a prayer practice every single night and also during the day many times and always before a podcast has been just tremendously beneficial to my life. So that's why I'm going to continue to do it. Why wouldn't I? But that's the question.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I love this, and I'll tell you why. Because... the way that I think of the prefrontal cortex is that its main job is context dependent strategy setting.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
To what extent do different, the way that different religions represent God, you think across religions converge on common themes?
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Dr. Peterson emphasizes how to use different sources of story, philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience to understand and best guide one's decision-making process. Indeed, he discusses the tight relationship between the call to adventure and responsibility as a trustable framework for moving forward in life towards one's best possible outcomes.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
What happened with Foucault?
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Context dependent. That's a crucial issue. And you mentioned hypothalamus, this, you know, it's basically the size of, you know, two marbles or so sitting above the roof of our mouth, tiny, tiny little brain area. It's mostly switches in there. What do I mean by that? Anytime a neurosurgeon has stimulated neurons in a little sub area of the hypothalamus, you get
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
It's like they nailed that. That sounds like what you were saying before. Yeah, yeah. Where you set your sights. Yes, exactly. High and to the heavens and then to the most proximal thing that's going to deliver you to the next rung.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
either rage or sexual appetite or mating with inanimate objects. I mean, this was done in both non-human primates and in humans. Uncontrollable thirst. Uncontrollable thirst, hunger, total suppression of hunger. I mean, all the basic drives are operating there like switches. Exploration. And prefrontal cortex has direct access to it, to the hypothalamus.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Which of those readings would you recommend for somebody who's interested in psychology and neuroscience explained at that level?
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
These are these lineages that we were talking about before. It's hard for people to appreciate just how powerful these academic lineages are and scientific lineages are because they set trajectories. And they define what's forbidden.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Yeah, yeah. Sorry, I'm laughing because it's so preposterous.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And prefrontal cortex is context-dependent learning, context-dependent decision-making. And I love that you brought in this notion of Changing an impulse, in the example that you gave in your son's impulse to be aggressive or wild in some way that was inappropriate for the home environment at that moment, And two things that you said really resonate.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Yeah, I was going to say, clearly it worked out. Yes, yes. I've been meaning to ask you, I've been reading a really interesting book recently that's basically grounded in Adlerian psychology. Yeah. I wasn't familiar with Adlerian psychology.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
The book talks about Adler as a counterpoint to Freud and Jung. What's the book? The book is called The Courage to be Disliked. And I highly recommend it to everybody. It was actually written by a Japanese author. I think there are two Japanese authors. It didn't get quite so popular in this country, but it had a big following in Japan and I think in other places in Asia.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And the book is set up as a conversation between essentially a philosopher of Adlerian psychology and a student who's challenging him. So it's a conversation that raises all the challenges that would come to one's mind if you were to be presented with this idea of, life tasks and that we're supposed to discard with our thoughts about prior trauma and just figure out what are our tasks now.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And I like the practicality of it. Yeah, I like that. I was just curious what your thoughts were about that. It seems to fit quite well with your notions and what you've talked about in multiple books, including the most recent one.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
the one that's out now, about getting really serious about what your tasks are at this moment in time and embracing those tasks as a way to progress forward, as opposed to floundering in notions about the past. And I think it might hit some people square upside the head when there's, I think, one of the chapters opens with the words, there's no such thing as trauma, which is clearly not true.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
But the whole idea is to prompt a different way of thinking and to let people start to drill into, okay, what do I need to do now, regardless of what my parents did or didn't do? Regardless of my damaged self. Right, regardless of my damaged self. And I must say, I really like the book.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Well, I would say... I should say, I really like the concept of embracing task while agonizing over the meaning of life and what one is to do.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
The prefrontal cortex, his prefrontal cortex, had to learn that whatever he was feeling for himself, his own desires, needed to be placed in the context of other people's wishes, desires, and needs as well.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
You know what's missing from the literature? Thank you for those, by the way, is a really excellent up-to-date book on neuroscience and the mind and psychology. Perhaps we write one together.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I mean, it's just not out there. I mean, there are textbooks on neuroscience. There's a lot of discussion, as you know, about free will, lack of free will, depending on which author you're paying attention to. But there isn't really a satisfactory book about the brain, the mind, and psychology.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
this doesn't exist yeah the closest one i ever encountered probably is affective neuroscience panksepp's book he's uh i'm so i must say um you've mentioned panksepp a few times and and yach panksepp uh as some of you may know but perhaps most of you don't as was such a gift to science and the fact that
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I think the first time I heard you lecture in one of your YouTube lectures, you mentioned Panksepp and I thought, okay, like this guy knows the good stuff because he was the first one to talk about juvenile play as a way of exploring circuitry and social dynamics.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Youngsep would have been far more recognized had he been, he was at Bowling Green University, I think. And so smaller university, perhaps, I don't know, I didn't ever hear a lecture and maybe not as charismatic as some of the other luminaries of neuroscience at that time, but...
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And we see the same thing in kids, obviously.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
When you look out on the landscape of social media, do you see elements of that as well? That there's sort of a playfulness among people that's establishing a hierarchy? It seems like Elon's having a good time with his rockets and his X and Tesla.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Let's talk about sense of humor, if you don't mind, because... I think it's something that's sorely lacking in a lot of the discourse among adults, so to speak. And I think these days, I think a lot about what young people are observing. A few years back, I was watching this show. I didn't like it. Forgive me, because I think the actor was quite good.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
But the show was Californication with David Duchovny. And I realized... this show is all about the adults acting like children and the children acting like adults.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And I thought, this is terrible. Not because I'm some sort of moral avenger or something, but it just, it was sort of like, the question I've been asking myself a lot over the last few years is, who are the adults in the room? Like, who's actually regulating all this stuff that's happening? Everyone's in disagreement. People are misbehaving in the kind of worst of ways by...
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
you know, not treating each other with respect. Um, occasionally you'd see in a discourse that felt like meaningful and structured or, um, explorative in the real sense, like people were there to learn. I think that's been one of the successes of, of your work and of Rogan's work. And I like to think, you know, my podcast as well, Lex Friedman, certainly and others. Right. Um,
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Sometimes people use comedy, sometimes people use neuroscience as a probe, but in any case. But, you know, I've been concerned that there isn't this kind of like, enjoyment of discourse between people that disagree in a way that includes forgiveness or like, oh, you got like good one, like you got me or, you know, and it seems like it's degenerated into things that are so nasty.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And it's sort of like people are entering the game, if you could even call it that, with a refusal to shift. Like that's not a debate. There's nothing playful about it. Like you have to be willing to have a winner and a loser and you have to be willing to be either one if you're going to engage in real discourse, in real play.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And to me, it's like, okay, I can manage seeing all that or participate or not participate to the extent that I want. But for young people, it's got to be really discouraging. It's like you either dunk on somebody or get dunked on.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
They want no part of it.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Right. People will call him that. They try and, you know, Manosphere bro, whatever. It doesn't... The reality falls so far from there when you really understand.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Yeah, the power pendulum has definitely swung in a different direction.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
It certainly elevated podcasts and their impact and significance across the board.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Well, it was interesting because Rogan's conversation with Trump was a serious one. Theo's conversation with Trump was a mixture of serious and less serious. And I mean, I couldn't help but smile big when at the inauguration, the thanks went out to a number of people, including Theo Vaughn. I mean, if you think about this. I know. It's so funny. Good for Theo. It's so funny. I'm yet to meet him.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I hear he's a really nice guy.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Because that always happens. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. Before we started, we were touching on this a little bit. And you said something, which was that you're hoping for a really formidable, strong Democratic Party to counter the Republican Party. And you're saying it again now, you're concerned that if there isn't one, that power might run amok.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I think that judging from some of the article titles that I've seen at New York Times and other venues, it seems like there might be some consideration about this. They're talking about a restructuring of the Democratic Party. Who's going to lead? Who's going to be their Joe Rogan? Which is, by the way, a silly question. That's just the silliest question.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
He is, as we say in science, he's N of one. Don't even try. Like, the whole point is to create... Why would you?
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
It's just him being him. Yes, exactly. And someone who is a self-declared Democrat will do that as well, but not by trying to be him. That's just not going to happen.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
That's absolutely true. Podcasting is real. Even for, I'll just say, because perhaps it's of interest or maybe even actionable for people. I mean, I get a little frightened every podcast, certainly if I'm going to talk about like forming this relationship to prayer or I'm exploring. I mean, I'll talk about circuits in the brain all day long with no fear whatsoever. That's my wheelhouse.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
But anything that's new, which is a real exploration and evolution of where I'm at, of course, is going to evoke fear. I also know that's where the growth is. I would hate for this podcast to look the way it did on episode one now. And clearly this conversation is a new direction that I've not taken before in this podcast. But I'm delighted that it's happening. I want to say that.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And I think that some level of fear and anxiety about the unknown is absolutely required. And I think that that's something that hopefully any, especially young people listening, need to know. You're not supposed to perform well at the outset in anything. You're not.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I've certainly made mistakes publicly, apologized for the ones that I felt I should apologize for. There's a slip of the tongue and said something, went back and corrected. It was embarrassing, but the ability to laugh at oneself is tremendously powerful. Genuinely laugh. It's just thinking like, oh, God, where was I thinking? I understand. You know, sometimes we err, you know.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I have a couple of questions about you. Uh-oh. I know you're the clinician, and I'm not trying to play that role. When you wake up in the morning, is your mind in a good place typically, or are you tormented? Where does your mind land most mornings? First thing.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
You're into your tasks, into the day.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
open-mouthed in amazement and gratitude for that it's preposterous and i have this tour that's going well it's been going for like six years really your tour schedule is is superhuman i have to say having done some live shows i mean what you do with tours and i've been to one of your shows i highly recommend people attend it was spectacular i don't want to give too much away but it's
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
not planned in the sense that there's a script or something. It's very open. It's a quest. It's a quest. An intellectual quest. It's a real experience. And men, wear your jacket and tie because everyone else there is going to be wearing at least a jacket.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
This is a place where people can hear lectures in a given domain?
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
So people are there to learn.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Same. Like, around certain topics. Yeah, yeah. I've cried a few times on this podcast this year and a few others, so that was a vulnerability I'd never expected.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
You have some grandkids now, too.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And I'm certain that by the end of today's discussion, you'll be thinking about your own neural circuits, That is the connections in your brain that drive emotions, thoughts, and behavior, as well as your psychology, your different states of mind. And you are going to have a number of different tools and frameworks with which to apply all that knowledge toward the best possible outcomes.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
A long way from posting lectures on YouTube, which is where most people originally found you, if they were listening about that. That's certainly how I learned about you. I thought, this guy's talking about really interesting things in the fields of psychology. He knows who Jock Panksepp is, and he's posted on YouTube. Can I ask, what inspired that move? Was that from conscious?
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Was that calling or conscience?
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Could you give me an example?
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
This is acetylcholine, by the way, folks, has two general receptor systems. The nicotinic system, which is a stimulant but also relaxes you. That's why people... like nicotine, and then the muscarinic system, which creates changes in our self-perception and perception of the things around us.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Well, you've certainly prevailed.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Well, I guess that speaks to what I was going to say, which is that I want to thank you for posting those videos on YouTube and for entering that adventure because it It certainly was the beginning of a long adventure that's still happening now, where you continue to take risks that are healthy risks in service to trying to understand the truth and share that.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And I must say, never with the stance that you know absolutely right for everybody, but certainly where you have felt you could share useful knowledge at the practical level, like really how to operationalize, like clean up your room, right? Do these things to try and discover your path. Get on your path, set your sights to the right level.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And to make that a daily practice and a repeated lifelong practice is really spectacular. And it's obviously inspired millions of people, including myself. I'll also say that it's really wonderful that you are also continuing to do that yourself.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And making that visible to people, your live events, of course, are an exploration in the moment where you raise a question and ask a question and address it. It's not preplanned. And I must say that your progression of books and podcasts and where things are going now, in particular, that today you said you are hopeful that the Democratic Party.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I think most people assume that you're very right-leaning. I'm not going to assume one way or the other. But the fact that you are intentionally inviting and hoping for opposition so that power is checked and things continue in the right direction, I think that's really beautiful because what you're asking for is more balance as opposed to more skewing of knowledge and power.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And I think that's a terrific example. And it's clear that you live right near the edge in order to inspire us to Basically explore knowledge, explore ancient teachings, and merge them with where we are now.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
It's not so much a stimulant as it, it's a, I would veer towards almost like a psychedelic or it has an effect of, making us less fearful and intrigued.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Thank you for those words. I also agree it's freely available by people being themselves and, as you said, following their curiosity and conscience. Thank you for coming here today and sharing with us where you're at now, your knowledge, and please come back again. I really enjoyed this.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Thank you. It's a labor of love inspired in no small part by you and my other podcast colleagues, and in your case, my academic colleagues. So thank you, Jordan. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Jordan Peterson.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
To find links to Dr. Peterson's work, his social media, his new book, We Who Wrestle With God, as well as a link to the Peterson Academy, please see the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. Please also click follow for the podcast on both Spotify and Apple.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or topics or guests that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. And if you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Yeah, it's hard to describe. Yeah, yeah. Hard to describe.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
So that's Instagram X, formerly known as Twitter, Facebook, Threads and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
So people would take this as an agent? The Vikings would take this as an agent before going into that?
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes everything from podcast summaries to what we call protocols in the form of brief one to three page PDFs that cover things like how to optimize your sleep, how to regulate your dopamine. We also have protocols related to deliberate.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
cold exposure get a lot of questions about that deliberate heat exposure and on and on again all available at completely zero cost you simply go to hubermanlab.com go to the menu tab in the top right corner scroll down to newsletter and enter your email and i should mention that we do not share your email with anybody thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with dr jordan peterson and last but certainly not least thank you for your interest in science
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
They would narrow the context within which their, I'm calling them impulses, but you're giving a more sophisticated explanation for them, within which the aggressive impulse, the strategically aggressive impulse could be channeled. Right.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
To be able to decapitate people, eviscerate people, do whatever it was that they needed to do in order to win. And to suppress their own feelings of pain. Yeah.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
There's an experiment, if I may, that might shed some light on what it would look like. A former guest on this podcast, actually, David Anderson at Caltech, has been studying hypothalamic circuits.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And he and his former postdoc, Dayu Lin, discovered a small, tiny, tiny collection of neurons in the ventromedial hypothalamus that, when stimulated, would send these animals, these mice, you can find videos of this online, into a rage. Now, the interesting thing is, is it required the presence of another mouse. Right, right.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Somewhat context-dependent. If they were alone in their cage, they wouldn't attack themselves or the walls of the cage. But if you put a... air or water filled glove within the cage, they would absolutely attack it to try and destroy it. Then you turn off these neurons, the mouse is calm. We can put a link to this in the show note caption. Now here's what's remarkable.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
The ventromedial hypothalamus has these neurons basically interspersed with other neurons that when stimulated suppress rage and activate copulation. Incredible, right? Within the same structure, you have these mutually exclusive sets of neurons and behaviors.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And it speaks to, I think, some of the things that Freud and others have talked about in terms of the juxtaposition of these neurons, but that they mutually inhibit one another, which lends itself to some really interesting questions about when aggression and sexuality become combined in states of pathology. Okay, so, but in any event, so...
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is David.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Context dependent control over impulses, over the hypothalamus seems to be the theme here. And the other thing that you mentioned is the ability for your son in this case, but presumably also the Vikings, to be able to broaden their temporal scope, to be able to think about the time domain differently. This is something I'm absolutely obsessed by.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
The more we experience, what I brought up at the beginning was that we have this autonomic arousal system. The more alert we are, the less we are able to take ourselves into notions of this too shall pass. The past, the present, the future. Autonomic activation, stress, panic, fear, anger tend to make us lose sight.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
We get blinders on, lose sight of the fact that there was a past, there's a present, and there's a future.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
David makes a protein bar unlike any other. It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. That's right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from protein. These bars from David also taste amazing. My favorite flavor is chocolate chip cookie dough, but then again, I also like the chocolate fudge flavored one and I also like the cake flavored one.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
They want what they want now. Regardless. And they don't care about the we. Or the future.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Very much a toddler. Well,
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Basically, I like all the flavors. They're incredibly delicious. For me personally, I strive to eat mostly whole foods. However, when I'm in a rush or I'm away from home or I'm just looking for a quick afternoon snack, I often find that I'm looking for a high quality protein source.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Yeah, especially the biting. Forgive me for interrupting, but there's a very interesting paper published about two years ago showing that there's a specific circuit from the hypothalamus to the neurons that control jaw closure that are independent of the neurons that control jaw closure for eating and for drinking. Oh, yeah, yeah. That are specifically for aggressive biting.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I mean, I hope people understand the significance of this because what this means is there are dedicated circuits for aggressive biting in your hypothalamus. We all learn to suppress these, except probably under conditions where our life is endangered, in which case you'd probably bite like hell in order to try and get out of that circumstance. But we are all born with this circuit.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
We die with this circuit. most of us, apparently not these kids, learn to suppress the circuit. An eight-year-old biter is a scary thing. A one-year-old biter is like a little bit of a worrisome thing. A two-year-old, like, okay, we need to work on this. An eight-year-old biter, people are starting to be concerned.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I think even without knowledge of the psychopathology literature, one would be very concerned if their eight-year-old is biting other kids. Not just because of the damage induced, but it's so very different.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
With David, I'm able to get 28 grams of protein with the calories of a snack, which makes it very easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight each day. And it allows me to do that without taking in excess calories. I typically eat a David Barr in the early afternoon or even mid-afternoon if I wanna bridge that gap between lunch and dinner.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I'm going to pause you there because I think this is extremely important. So the god of war.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
The goddess of love.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
So the idea that the different gods are the reflective of different, let's just say it as neuroscientists, as different hypothalamic and related circuits.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I like that it's a little bit sweet, so it tastes like a tasty snack, but it's also given me that 28 grams of very high quality protein with just 150 calories. If you would like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, the link is davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Levels.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And the circuit may run in reverse. My colleague David Spiegel, who's our vice chair of psychiatry at Stanford, has done some beautiful experiments examining the relationship between prefrontal cortical areas and the insula, a brain area that has a map of our internal body state, interoception, our ability to sense our internal workings, et cetera. In any event,
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
There are certain conditions, including depression, where the direction of flow between the prefrontal cortex and the insula literally reverses. It's like running against the typical traffic. This is a very different example because here you're presenting in the context of rage or sociopathy and these kids who shoot up schools.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
But I do absolutely subscribe to what you just said, that if one drops into one of these more primitive states and emotions and all the things that go with it for a very long time, It's almost as if the governor, which is the prefrontal cortex, starts to become the governed. That the whole circuit starts to run from bottom up as opposed to top down. And I think there's good neurologic evidence.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
It's like there's multiple people in there. Yeah, definitely. In everyone. One of the most incredible.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is an all-in-one vitamin, mineral, probiotic drink with adaptogens. I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring this podcast. The reason I started taking AG1 and the reason I still take AG1 is because it is the highest quality and most complete foundational nutritional supplement.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Levels is a program that lets you see how different foods affect your health by giving you real-time feedback on your diet using a continuous glucose monitor. One of the most important factors in both your short and long-term health is your body's ability to manage blood glucose or blood sugar.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
What that means is that AG1 ensures that you're getting all the necessary vitamins, minerals, and other micronutrients to form a strong foundation for your daily health. AG1 also has probiotics and prebiotics that support a healthy gut microbiome. Your gut microbiome consists of trillions of microorganisms that line your digestive tract
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Today we discuss the human animal, what it means to be a human being at the level of psychology, at the level of neuroscience, and indeed at the level of expression of different personality types within us. Most of us don't think about having different personalities.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
and impact things such as your immune system status, your metabolic health, your hormone health, and much more. So I've consistently found that when I take AG1 daily, my digestion is improved, my immune system is more robust, and my mood and mental focus are at their best. In fact, if I could take just one supplement, that supplement would be AG1.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer. Today's episode is also brought to us by Roca.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Roka makes eyeglasses and sunglasses that are of the absolute highest quality. I'm excited to share that Roka and I have teamed up to create a new style of red lens glasses. These red lens glasses are meant to be worn in the evening after the sun goes down.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
They filter out short wavelength light that comes from screens and from LED lights, the sorts of LED lights that are most commonly used as overhead and frankly lamp lighting nowadays. And I want to emphasize Roka Red Lens glasses are not traditional blue blockers. They're not designed to be worn during the day and to filter out blue light from screen light.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
They're designed to prevent the full range of wavelengths that suppress melatonin secretion at night and that can alter your sleep. So by wearing Roka Red Lens glasses, they help you calm down and they improve your transition to sleep. Most nights I stay up until about 10 p.m. or even midnight and I wake up between five and 7 a.m. depending on when I went to sleep.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Now I put my Roka Red Lens glasses on as soon as it gets dark outside, and I've noticed a much easier transition to sleep, which makes sense based on everything we know about how filtering out shortwave lengths of light can allow your brain to function correctly. Roka Red Lens glasses also look cool, frankly. You can wear them out to dinner or to concerts or out with friends.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
To maintain energy and focus throughout the day, you wanna keep your blood glucose steady without big spikes or crashes. I first started using levels about three years ago as a way to understand how different foods impacted my blood glucose levels.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
So it turns out it is indeed possible to support your biology, to be scientific about it, and to remain social after all. If you'd like to try ROKA, go to roka.com, that's R-O-K-A.com and enter the code Huberman to save 20% off your first order. Again, that's R-O-K-A.com and enter the code Huberman at checkout.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
One of the most remarkable real life examples I've ever witnessed of the power of belief in God, I'm just going to say it as it occurred,
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I have a good friend who for many years struggled with alcohol and drug addiction of multiple kinds, incredibly kind person, incredibly successful in his career, married, two beautiful children, multiple relapses, crashed his truck at seven in the morning after getting intoxicated at 6.30 in the morning, got out of that one, happened again and again, multiple rehab centers of the sort of standard treatment, etc.,
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And then ultimately enough happened within that whole set of circumstances that his wife said, you know, this is it. You've got to solve this or we just can't be with you. A very scary situation for everybody involved, including him, who absolutely adored his family. He told us, his friends, that he was going to go to a center here in Los Angeles that treats addiction.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
with essentially religion, a belief in God. He was already fairly religious. Most Sundays he attended church and things of that sort. And you can imagine we all thought, including myself, like, okay, dude, good luck. I hope this works. But I would say zero minus one confidence in his ability to get and stay sober. He just had not succeeded prior to this. He's been sober more than four years now.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And it's proven incredibly informative for determining my food choices when I eat specific foods and how I time eating relative to things like my workouts, both weight training and cardiovascular training, things like running and when to eat before I go to sleep to allow for the most stable blood sugar throughout the night. Indeed, using Levels has helped shape my entire schedule.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
He got out of there and never looked back. And I wonder now whether something must have changed in his brain by adopting what was essentially a— Different incentive structure. Right, different incentive structure, but fear wasn't doing it before, fear of extreme consequences, which were on the table at that time when he went in, weren't enough.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Something about going there and the work that he did there allowed him to then... It's almost like he got another prefrontal cortex, a more powerful prefrontal cortex. So maybe we could talk about that.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Even if you know you're not. Even if you know it's irrelevant. I've never done cocaine. I would be open about it if I had. I think I like dopaminergic states enough that I've been very scared of doing it, frankly. Also, it wasn't around much just because of when I went to college. It just wasn't a drug that was around much. But
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
So if you're interested in learning more about Levels and trying a CGM yourself, you can go to levels.link slash Huberman. Levels has just launched a new CGM sensor that is smaller and has even better tracking than before. Right now, they're also offering an additional two free months of membership.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
It's a remarkable drug in the sense that people who take cocaine seem to be excited about everything. They're in this high dopaminergic state. And their brain becomes exceptionally good at finding cocaine even in the absence of resources, which is pretty remarkable if you think about it. Most people can't find the thing or get the thing they want in the absence of the resources to get it.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
But people who take hard drugs that really spike dopamine somehow manage. Yeah, sure. Sometimes they lie, cheat and steal, but they'll do other things too, right? They'll socialize with people that have it so they don't have to lie, cheat and steal. It's incredible to see that drug and things like methamphetamine take over people's
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And now I'm thinking... The pathway appears when the aim is firmly in mind.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Yeah, brutal, brutal. Nowadays, I get a lot of questions about pornography. And the discussion around pornography is always related to the discussion around masturbation.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
But let's just talk about pornography for a moment in this context of these primitive drives and these circuits within the hypothalamus, which we were all born with, that clearly some of them are devoted to our progression as a species through reproduction. Zero question about that. Sexual behavior being linked to reproduction. Not always, but certainly we can all agree on that.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I hope we can still all agree on that. But last time I checked, that's still true. A sperm and an egg met someplace in some context to create all of us. Okay. We're still grounded in that. Pornography is something that I hear quite a lot. from typically young males, but sometimes young females or even older females who say that they can see themselves trying to resist the desire to go look at it.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Again, that's levels.link spelled L-I-N-K slash Huberman to try the new sensor and two free months of membership. And now for my discussion with Dr. Jordan Peterson. Dr. Jordan Peterson, welcome.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And it almost doesn't feel like a desire anymore. They're sort of just in a kind of a compulsion that is almost unconscious, but they're just aware of the fact that they're- Like an eating disorder. Like an eating disorder. They're doing it. They know they shouldn't be doing it, and they can't help themselves.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And we could think about two ways to attack this if one believes it's a real concern, and they certainly do, so I do. I would be open if I had or do. Pornography has not been my thing, and I don't struggle with it. But when I hear from these people, it's so clear that they're asking, is it the prevalence of pornography out there? Or is it something really broken in them? Like, are they broken?
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
But I don't know that I would say after having the discussion we've had thus far that they're broken. It seems to me that it's like, as you said, it's the manifestation of one part of their... It's one personality within them.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Delighted to have you here and want to talk about elements within your new book.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Also some elements within your previous books and within that mind of yours generally. As a framework for that, I'm wondering if you would tolerate or permit a little bit of a discussion about sort of brain and psychology. Just kind of lay the groundwork for where we might prod some of the themes that you bring up related to the book.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
The analog in the food world would be highly palatable, highly processed food.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
The other day I went into a gas station to use the restroom because I was traveling home for Thanksgiving. And I looked around and I thought, this isn't a convenience store. This is a pharmacy. Everything that had chocolate also seemed to have caffeine and color. Everything, every drink seemed to combine not just sugar, but also caffeine and some other things that would provide stimulants.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And you've got nicotine. Energy drinks. And these things on their own aren't necessarily bad. Any one of these one elements in low enough doses, in frequent use, et cetera. But maybe sugar being the one that clearly I think deserves deeper investigation, right? Yeah.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Well, I didn't think we were going to go here, but I think it's extremely appropriate and important that we do. So I know that you followed what is essentially an elimination diet for a number of years. You eat meat, right? I eat meat, vegetables, fruit, and some starches, unrefined starches, in any event.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
One thing that I think is absolutely clear from following a clean diet, so to speak, of any kind, but let's say of the sort that you follow or I follow,
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
is that you very soon learn the relationship between taste of the food, volume of the food, macronutrient, so protein, fat, or carbohydrate content, micronutrients, and satiation, which is, if you think about it, it's sort of like a big plate of broccoli or a big steak or something.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
The brain learns and the hypothalamus learns the association between the taste, the caloric content, what else is in there, and satiation. If you think about highly processed food or even combinations of multiple ingredients, that's absolutely impossible to do. The brain can't parse what are the various things in here and how do they relate to my feelings of satisfaction.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
It's the difference between a super drug and what I believe are the elements that we avoid.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Yeah, because in the context of these processed foods, they're activating multiple neuron systems in the hypothalamus and gut. We know that the gut has neurons that can respond to sugar, fatty acids, and amino acid content. And there's this prominent theory that one of the main reasons we eat is to forage for amino acids, that we'll eat until we get enough of the essential amino acids.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And we correlate that with taste, but that the gut has neurons where we know the gut has neurons that signal through the vagus up through a little relay called the no-dose ganglion, if you want to look at it, fun name, and then up to the dopaminergic centers of the brain, which make us, oh, when we eat something that has a high essential amino acid content, like a steak, like a really tasty steak.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
the neurons in the gut in a way that is independent of taste are signaling to the brain, ah, I'm getting essential amino acids. You should eat more of this thing. If those, let's just say a small fraction of those amino acids that are present in a candy bar or in a package of Skittles, which I'm guessing there's very few of them, if any, you're going to continue to forage for food
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
So I view the brain as obviously a bunch of cells and parts, et cetera, but I distill it down to some sort of basic features. First of all, we have an autonomic physiology. I think we'd both agree on that, that regulates our sleepiness and wakefulness, our breathing, our heart rate, stuff that runs in the background.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
because those neurons will also respond to sugar. Basically, it will keep you eating until you get enough of those amino acids. In other words, there are two parallel tracks, one within our taste system. Multiple pathways to satiation. Right, multiple pathways to satiation, one dependent on taste, one dependent on actual nutrient content. The mouth can only learn taste association.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
The mouth can't actually learn nutrient content. The gut knows nutrient content. The problem is you take a food that is low in a micronutrient or macronutrient or essential amino acids or essential fatty acids. After all, there are no essential carbohydrates. There are only essential amino acids and essential fatty acids. And it will keep you eating.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And it will keep the appetite system revving until you get enough of those. Now, here's the issue. If you've ever done this, it's probably been... So that's empty calories. Empty calories. So in some ways, you know, this, again, is an analog to the whole discussion around pornography, masturbation, and reproduction, right?
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I'm not saying that reproduction is the be-all, end-all of sexual activity, but in the evolutionary sense, it absolutely is. There's no question about that. There's no moral judgment there. That's just the reality. So the situation with food is the following. If we are eating without any gut level understanding of what's coming in, we will keep eating. Let me give an example.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
You probably haven't done this experiment in a while, but if you've ever just had ribeye steak or two, it's pretty satiating. Maybe you also have a salad if you're me or some broccoli or something like that. If one takes, then even after you've eaten all that, one bite of pasta, one bite of pasta, the next impulse is more, right?
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Even though you already have enough essential amino acids from those steaks, your leucine threshold, you've reached that, et cetera, all of that good stuff. Why? Because blood glucose goes up and then you desire more because blood glucose elevations are linked directly to the dopaminergic system.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
So what I'm basically trying to say here is that I do think that there are elements to our food, modern food, if you will. It seems like it's anything but modern in the sense that it's worse for us than the more primitive foods. But highly processed foods, pornography, any drug that spikes dopamine dramatically, like methamphetamine, for instance.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
any behavior that spikes dopamine dramatically that very quickly hijacks these circuits. And to me, the way to teach those circuits a calmer, more prudent version of themselves, right, to enter a different hypothalamus, activation pattern is to start breaking the things down into their essential elements, right? About the motivation, the pleasure, et cetera, to tamp all that down.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I mean, we know that for pornography, if the pornography is very extreme, then less extreme pornography doesn't seem to work.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And then we have a lot of circuitry devoted to what I would call impulses, things that we desire we want to move toward. appetitive behaviors, and we also have some impulses to avoid things that are putrid, painful, etc. That's all in there like it is in other animals.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Right, and I would venture in a very different domain that if you were to eat your steak slathered in barbecue sauce for a couple of weeks, going back to the way that you eat them now, which by the way, this is a great opportunity to educate people about something that you taught me when we had dinner last, which is that if you're going to order a steak, order a Pittsburgh char.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
The char on the outside is incredibly tasty. We love the umami taste. I wish you have a devoted taste receptor to that.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Yeah. And if they don't know what a Pittsburgh char is, then maybe you're in the wrong restaurant or you need to educate them. But incredibly satiating, delicious, right? But if you were to slather those steaks in a bunch of things, I would suspect that after a while, your plain steaks wouldn't taste as good.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
But the way to make them taste good again would be to eat them plain for a period of time in which the stuff, all the condiments, et cetera, would start to become aversive. I do believe that when we return to the sort of most naturally satisfying mode
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
of engaging with these uh with these circuits here we're talking about food and sex in parallel that they become especially satiating and i think that you know in hearing from all these people that are addicted to pornography and they're not addicted like they telling me they love it and they can't stop they're telling me it's no longer working for them that the that there's this you know diminishment in the amount of dopamine that they're getting over time and they feel trapped within it and they have no sense whatsoever because they haven't been socialized to go out and find a real relationship
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
a real sexual relationship or a relationship of any kind.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And there's also a learning of those biological systems in the brain to evoke arousal by observing sex as opposed to participating. Right, right. Completely different. So some of these... Right, that's voyeur.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And so you think about young brains that are highly plastic. Yeah. Learning that.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I've wondered for a while whether there's something inherently rewarding about... creating impact or action at a distance. Here's why. I've been watching these videos of Elon's rockets and thinking, like, that is awesome. That is awesome.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
However, as we discussed today, due to the activity of specific brain circuitries, including the hypothalamus, the prefrontal cortex, and others, We each and all can adopt different states of mind that powerfully influence our emotions, our thoughts, and our actions. And in so doing, we are different people depending on those states of mind.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Yeah, just there's one image of the rocket thrusters that just captivated me. I'm not a spacecraft guy. I mean, I think it's really cool, but I wouldn't consider myself somebody that, like, looks at the stars and thinks, I want to go up there. I might if I'd given the opportunity, but that's not been my thing. But I looked at this and I thought, what an awesome display of power.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
But then I was saying, what is power? It's really about having impact or action at a distance. When we were kids, we liked dirt clod wars. Targeted, right. What an incredible display of funneling the laws of physics and engineering into something that can have enormous action at a distance and perhaps even take us into new galaxies. Amazing, right?
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Great. We'll circle back to impulse. I'd like to do that. And then we have a lot of circuitry. People will hear about it as executive function, prefrontal circuitry, which does many things, but I like to think of
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Function. I recently became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Comprehensive lab testing like this is so important for health, and while I've been doing it for years, I've always found it to be overly complicated and expensive.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I've been so impressed by Function, both at the level of ease of use, that is getting the test done, as well as how comprehensive and how actionable the tests are, that I recently joined their advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman Lab listeners. Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. So this thing about action at a distance to me feels like so inherent to our progression as a species. Most technologies are about that.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
In fact, if you think about social media, you know, somebody tweets something and, you know, when people react to it, maybe positively or negatively, The school shooter in a very dark example, a sad, a tragic example, right? Action at a distance. Then you think about pornography and masturbation, and I'm not passing any moral judgment here.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
The ultimate form of creating action at a distance would be to create a new human being with somebody. You're propagating in physical distance, creating a new being, and in time. Incredible. And then you think about masturbation, and you think about pornography, and there is no action at a distance. And I'm not just punning here. I mean, literally, there's not much action at a distance.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
As a circuit that can say, and here I'm borrowing from a previous guest who's a neurosurgeon, it can say, shh, or exert what's called top-down suppression on these, what I'm calling impulses.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
It's all up close to oneself. But there's no impact on anybody. It's almost as if the energy that we're born with to be able to create positive things to evolve our species through action at a distance, through creation of knowledge, technology, children, communities, culture. The ultimate expression of sterility. It's just looped back into oneself.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
It's as if, and I don't know what language there is for this in biology, but it's as if like all that dopaminergic drive is just kind of looped back into oneself and it goes nowhere. And I think when I hear about the incredibly like what the language for it is only like the diminished souls of these people who are coming to me saying like, you know, like help.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And I'm thinking, okay, listen, I'm a podcaster, I'm a scientist, I know some things about the dopaminergic system, but there are ways that they can get help. I think there are 12-step programs for this and so forth and other things. But I think what they're saying is that they're just kind of dissolving in their own – in their own reflex, but there's no action at a distance for them.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
This is the same thing I see with the failure to launch kids who are still living at home, who are not having any action at a distance. I think we were designed to disperse from our families and to create action at a distance up until a certain age. But I see so many of the problems that we face as failure to find a productive way to have action at a distance.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Great. So circuitry that's devoted to our ability to self-inhibit the desire to reach for something or to avoid something. We can push ourselves into things that would otherwise be aversive. We can avoid doing things that would otherwise drive us to, quote unquote, just do it anyway.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And then we have what I think of as our default settings, kind of how we're operating in the world with respect to food, other people, ourselves, our thoughts. if we don't intervene with ourselves. And these default settings are of course established by both nature,
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
This is success at a distance and over time.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
a genetic program that wires up circuitry, but also nurture because of the immense neuroplasticity that occurs in the first 25 years plus of life, but especially those first years of life. And then of course we have neuroplasticity, this incredible gift that humans have more of than any other species as far as we know, which is we can decide to make changes.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Now, the reason I lay out this framework as opposed to starting with a question is because there are so many amazing questions that you ask in this book, you know, we who wrestle with God. I mean, trying to wrap our arms and minds around this huge set of questions.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
It's almost as if, I mean, I realize that for people listening, it might not seem like this, but to us, his friends who had seen him try so hard in the context of people he truly, deeply cares about, more than anybody in the world, his children, his wife, it was almost like he got a brain transplant. It was astonishing.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
He uses very Christian... Religious language. He said that he felt Jesus' love for him and he saw an image of who he could become. This was important, perhaps. No doubt. Not just perhaps, but no doubt of who he could become. That was worth it. And he had the adequate social support within this place. And so there was reinforcement. Yeah.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
But what's remarkable is that he was able to take that outside of this place. Right, right. It was a residential facility out of this place. And carry it with him. Yeah. To this day, he is rock solid. In that domain, and I will say in all the other domains of his life too, extremely successful as an artist. I don't want to out him. Extremely successful as a commercial artist.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And happy and in service and just seems like he got a brain transplant. Right.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And it occurred to me to just step back from all of that and ask, is part of the reason that we have a concept of God, that there are multiple religions, is that the consequence of some humans at some point realizing, or perhaps God himself realizing, that what we are equipped with as humans
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I think in 12-step programs, they allow the steps to be milestones. I mean, there's clearly a dopaminergic component. I hope people understand that dopamine is dumb. In fact, dopamine isn't dumb. Dopamine has no intelligence at all. It's just a currency of motivation and reward. Which is why it can be gamed by cocaine. Which is why it can be gamed by cocaine or most anything that can –
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
ferret its way into the hypothalamic system. And I hope people picked up on what you said before, because it's so important that as one moves toward a target, dopamine increases en route to that target. I'm rephrasing what you said before. You said it
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I just want to make sure people understand that as that dopamine increases, the probability that your perception will go to something other than the target decreases exponentially. As you get closer and closer, you get more and more dopamine, the greater the elevation dopamine, the lower the probability that you'll engage in any other pattern of self.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
It's like, it's almost, or these, or a personality type other than the one that you're engaged in in pursuit of this behavior will emerge.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
You run faster as you see the finish line. Right. Faster and faster. This concept of sin as missing the target, or this definition of sin, I think is incredibly important.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
which we just described is insufficient to allow us to evolve as a species and be the best version of ourselves. I think this for me really is like the central question of at least my life, which is to what extent do I need to intervene with my default settings, rewire them, engage that prefrontal cortex and push down on some repetitive or aversive behaviors. And to what extent can we do that?
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
This is so important, and there's something that I've never talked about on this or any other podcast, which is that in humans, we have a massive expansion of an area of the frontal cortex called the frontal eye fields. So there's circuitry deep in the brain, if you want to look it up, it's superior colliculus. It's also called the tectum in other species. It means roof.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
It's the roof of the midbrain, et cetera, that generate reflexive eye movements. You stimulate in there, it's like a machine. In fact, a colleague of mine who's now retired at Stanford, Eric Knudsen, who did some beautiful work on neuroplasticity, was describing an experiment where they take out the frontal cortex of these owls. Owls are, because they... They don't have much eye movements.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
They move their head almost all the way around. We've all seen that. And they use this for homing in on their targets. The owl or a monkey or a human in the absence of a prefrontal cortex or suppression of prefrontal cortex becomes like a machine. You click here, they look there. Right, right. You click here, they look there. Puppies are like this. Kittens are like this. Everything's a stimulus.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Why? Because there isn't that top-down inhibition of those reflexes.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Everything's a target. Everything's a target. Everything is a target. And there's no context-dependent learning, right? I love that you gave the example of the decerebrate cats. They even can do fictive motion. They can walk on a treadmill and it's like with no cortex. It's amazing. Makes you rethink the cortex. Yeah, that's for sure.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And humans have these frontal eye fields, which are an evolved area. They're present in other species too, but they're massively expanded in humans. So this is a cortical area, a frontal cortical area devoted to controlling gaze and the context and control of gaze. So it no longer becomes just a reflex that you can suppress as in the case with an adult cat versus a kitten or a dog versus a puppy.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
The frontal eye fields actually regulate all sorts of context dependent like, oh, like he's looking at me directly. Is it aggressive?
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
um, well then maybe I'll activate my aggression or maybe I'll brace my defenses or, wow, she's, uh, we came to this party together, but she seems super interested in like directing her gaze. How are we inferring this? Sometimes it's body language. Sometimes it's this, sometimes he looked at her. There are all these memes about this, right? Right. Right. Right.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
The famous, the famous look over the shoulder meme that seems to have taken over the internet from time to time.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Exactly. So humans have, and if, massively expanded notion of what gaze is and our ability to control gaze and understanding of gaze. So when you raise this idea, when you raise this fact, rather, about gaze defining the target, And that looking at others' gaze allows us to understand what they are defining as the target.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
We're starting to get into notions of theory of mind and things of that sort.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
So curl up, like turtle up, and then look.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
It has a map of auditory. So when you hear something to your right, you turn to your right. Right, right.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And to what end? And maybe we need a rule book. You know, I am starting to believe, and I'm now 49 years old, that we need a rule book, that the neural circuitry that's encased within our skulls is not sufficient to allow us to navigate through life to our best outcome.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
It's almost like it is as if every goal was elevated. Right. Right. And it's funny because for the first couple of months that I was interacting with him, I thought, okay, like he's different. And I thought, you know, like most people would, you know, perhaps would think like, all right, let's see. Let's see. But this has been four years now. He's very consistent with his program.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
You know, he's involved in a program that keeps him on track. Right, right, right. But he's elevated. And he's not talking above people. It's like he's elevated, but he's grounded. When you talk to him, he's not kind of off some other place. He's actually very, very present. And even his text messages are very much of like, what's going on today?
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
You know, asking questions that are very much of the now. And it's been a remarkable thing to observe because he was about as down in his addiction and had so much to lose and had essentially risked it over and over and over to the point where You know, I didn't think it was ever going to turn around. And all of his friends thought the same. And his wife, of course, is delighted.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And his kids are delighted. Of course. And I can say this without revealing because no one knows. I'm a godfather to his son. And his son is thriving, which is wonderful to see. And I just think sometimes about how badly it could have gone the other way. Yeah. And it's fantastic. It's nothing short of spectacular.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Today's discussion is both an intellectual one and a practical one. You will learn where and how to place your thoughts, You will learn the relationship between the call to adventure and responsibility.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. We should all know that proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of both, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I'll also drink a packet of Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
There are a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. I like the watermelon. I like the raspberry. I like the citrus. Basically, I like all of them. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman Lab to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman Lab to claim a free sample pack.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I love this idea of looking upward and defining, or at least having a sense that there's a internalization of the greatest possible outcome. And when I say greatest, both for oneself, but also for the community, right?
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And you have to make sure that you're not hijacked by that hypothalamic circuit or personality as you've described it.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Absolutely. I've been spouting off on social media and podcasts for a while now that any big inflection in dopamine that isn't preceded by a lot of effort to generate that dopamine inflection is very dangerous. Think drugs, think pornography, think highly processed foods, think anything that creates this big sense of indulgence and pleasure without any effort.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
is running counter-current to our evolutionary wiring. Now you could say, well, okay, so what are we supposed to do? Move into caves?
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Of some sort. And the other issue, and it's coming up again and again today, and I love that it is, is this notion of the temporal domain, of rewards that exist over multiple timescales or broader timescales. One of the things that I feel truly lucky for is the fact that I went the path of science where We were chuckling about this earlier. You know, a project could take a year.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Then you have to restart because that project went nowhere. And then you finish the project, you submit a paper, the review. I mean, the reward schedule in science could take four years. It's not just about getting a degree. Like getting papers through sometimes took a year, sometimes took two years.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
You know, sometimes things didn't go well and you had to publish in a journal that you wouldn't have wanted to. Or sometimes you had to abandon projects altogether. Right. So my reward system was trained up on lots of timescales, short, medium, long timescales. As I've moved into podcasting, the temporal loops are shorter, they're faster. But nonetheless, we do long form content.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
But I think platforms like X, I think are wonderful if used appropriately. I think it's especially great nowadays, frankly. And Instagram, et cetera, they're very useful. But they train us, and I imagine they've trained the young brains that were weaned on them, because I wasn't, but that were weaned on them for fast temporal time scales. This isn't like playing a long poker game.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
This is like playing the slot machine over and over and over, right? Yes. It's not like a four-day tournament.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Right. Right, right. It's really... And then, of course, we have this notion in this country that in any moment it could be rags to riches or some overnight fame type thing that exists as a possibility in our culture in a way that it hadn't prior.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
So I think that one of the things that could be useful, just venturing a hypothesis here, is that young and older people could take a look at their life and ask, over what variation of time scales do I derive reward? Right. Training for a marathon is a longer timescale.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Yeah, school, a degree, et cetera. In business, the timescales are sometimes fast, sometimes short.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Well, to have goals at multiple timescales, you need to be able to... I love this entropy argument. It makes total sense that... you want to be able to withstand the periods of time when you don't know whether or not things are becoming more or less uncertain. This is part of becoming an adult, if you will.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Right, right. It's a rewriting of the reward contingencies.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
This is why I believe that pornography is potentially so poisonous because the level of uncertainty is basically zero.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
People can access what they want to see. They can keep foraging until they find it.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And that's not the way that relationships work. The way relationships work is... Ask somebody else, they might say yes, they might say no. You're out on a date, they might not want a second date. Things could progress, you might think that you're on the path to one thing and it turns out it doesn't work or you're not compatible.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Right. No action at a distance.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Right. Yeah. The only implication of the pornography masturbation scenario is that is more pornography masturbation. That's the only implication of it. That's, that's all that possibly could arise.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Wonder where he got it from.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Otherwise, dopamine is driven down further.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
We see this with people who are highly successful, who seem to have lots of areas of their life regulated. And then, you know, they collapse their lives. And we sometimes see it with drugs of abuse as well.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Although, unless those drugs of abuse are dopaminergic and people have them in check, so to speak, which is exceedingly rare, it's usually just a matter of time and they don't reach the mountain top.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And gazes everywhere with these multiple heads.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Is this like, I mean, I guess I will just say it. Recently, there's been a number of posts on X of this woman who had sex with 100 men in a day. And now she's saying she's going to have sex with a thousand men in a day.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I'm speechless. Um, that's for sure. I'm speechless. My, my, um, response to the, uh, her kind of, um, post hundred men thing, um, was, it was hard for me to know to what extent that was part of the, the, uh, whatever performance, whatever it was, you know? So, um, it was hard for me to discern what was really going on there. I'm not a psychologist. Um, but anyone who saw that
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
would say this is a pretty dark situation.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
What's also dark, and I'm not saying this from a place of moral judgment, I'm just saying this from a place of just kind of like, wow, like this woman obviously navigating life in this way, her choice, clearly.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
But the fact that so many people know about this, the fact that so many people and here we're talking about it, but I think in service to a greater good, I certainly believe like that this is now out out there. It's out there. Just like seeing somebody murder somebody in cold blood. We talked about that recently, a video of an assassination.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Those had been available before, but those two things kind of leveled up. or leveled down, you know, one's idea of what humans are capable of by allowing so many people... And what's acceptable. What's acceptable. Or desirable. That's right. The threshold shifted. That's for sure. Maybe that's what I'm looking for. The threshold shifted. Yeah.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And as Dr. Peterson emphasizes in his new book, We Who Wrestle With God, he emphasizes the use of story, in this case, biblical stories, to understand oneself and to best guide one's actions towards the most positive and generative outcomes. We discuss the self, romantic relationships and commitments, the family, community, and culture.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And birth rates are way, way down.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
This was if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with. Someone I know who was in their 20s in the 1970s explained to me, I always thought that song was about, you know, if you can't be with the person that you love, you know, you find someone else you can love. They explained to me that's not what that was about. That was about the wildness of the 70s.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Yeah, that was about the sort of the... just promiscuity had emerged as a theme of the 1970s.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
You said that the patriarchy, the masculine fails before the... Well, no, I didn't say that happened. No, no, I didn't say that happens in concert. Yeah, in concert. Sure, sure, it's a feedback. So it's not causal.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
There was a recent post on X that just held my gaze, my attention, where it was a back-and-forth debate, a pseudo-political social debate, and then there were three words that – I'll just say that – Marc Andreessen said, you know, it was about restoring vigor, pride, and achievement. And I thought, wow, like he's not a political candidate, but. That's a beautiful trifecta.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Vigor, pride, and achievement. To celebrate those. And I put that next to, you know, the deep pleasure in generative action at a distance. A technological development. The rockets. And there are other generative achievements.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
This is important. Can we operationalize this? So in your first book, you talked about get your room in order.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
One of the first things I do when I wake up in the morning, I... look around the kitchen. I look around my room and I try and get things in order.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And I, now I need that in order to be able to think clearly, but it's just a first order of business.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And you get the brain into what I call linear operations. Like the ability to carry out something linearly when there's a near infinite number of options in your phone, in your physical space, I think is so powerful. Yeah, well, it's an antidote to chaos. You're picking a target.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And it's a reduction of entropy. And you know it's not sin to clean your room or to organize your space or the garage. So you start with... So within the day, one can do that. In terms of... I really love the stickiness, the positive stickiness of this idea that adventure and responsibility are the same thing.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
He's trying to solve crimes. He's trying to catch bad guys.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Well, what are we to make of, you know, cities like San Francisco, which I grew up just south of, and it's, you know, by any standard, it's a beautiful city. I know people are going to, like, roll their, some people roll their eyes. I mean, you have The bay on one side, you have the ocean on the other. It has magnificent bridges.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I mean, it's a testament to what's possible in a city in terms of diverse landscapes, et cetera. But the downtown, the center of the city, is just beyond anybody's sense of indecency to walk down in the afternoon hours, let alone at night. So that at this point, you wonder, like, Is the center really the center?
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I mean, you literally have to avoid the center of the city in order to get away from any of that. And it's very... Yeah, well, the question is... It's tragic.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I heard recently that religion teaches through story. Philosophy teaches through language that is divorced of story. And that science is designed to try and remove itself from language almost entirely. I mean, you'd love to just present graphs and figures, but you have to explain what's in those, right? There's a discussion. There are some conclusions.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
But the idea is that as scientists, we're supposed to be objective and just interpret the data as they stand. Yes, to only be informed by the facts. To not infuse a story. But story is the way that the brain works, right? I mean, beginning, middle, end.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Well, for a number of reasons. I mean, one of the primary ones, in my opinion, and I'm familiar with the scientific community, is that that a lot of science is built on lineages and who your advisors were and so forth. It relates to funding, et cetera. And it used to be that the primary value within and across lineages was to seek out new territory.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I could tell a lot of stories that would take up hours about great advisors telling their students to move into new territories, which sounded like get out of my field. I'm going to demolish you. But instead, what they were encouraging them to do was to go on let's use your language, new adventures of responsibility.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
But instead what's happened is that 95% of the scientists in a given subfield all work on similar problems, pin metals on each other, validate each other, fund each other. And as a consequence, there are a lot of untouched problems that will hopefully someday be investigated.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
The other consequence is that this debacle within the field of Alzheimer's and dementia, where one laboratory fudges data, and you kind of wonder if
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I mean, that's not my subfield, but you step back from there and you go, how the hell does this progress for 15 years where everyone was, you know, like it's the emperor has no clothes, like everyone agreeing that this is the stuff to work on when in fact the data were falsified and people knew, people knew. So what that means is that it's like bad family values passed on through generations.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And I do think these are well-meaning people along the line, but- Yeah, yes and no.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Right, the careerist aspect as opposed to the scientist aspect.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I think one needs to reward true adventure and novelty, taking on novel problems. And, you know, these days it's so hard for a scientist to birth an entire new field, and yet there are huge, huge sets of untapped problems. The challenge for them is it's difficult to get funding to take on things that are truly new. There's a lot of discussion these days about challenges with the NIH, et cetera.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I think that the biggest challenge regardless of the size of the budget, which is also an issue that needs to be dealt with and where it's spent, is that we tend to reward science that's already completed, that fits with the current narrative, and it's very incremental.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
They reward incremental science, whereas great science comes through taking great risk and people, like you said, holding the truth above all else and being willing to stake their careers on it. And we need to actually reward failure if it involved effort to solve things correctly.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
In other words, give young scientists funding and encourage them to go after novel problems and understand that most of them will fail. And that doesn't necessarily mean that they have to be exited out of the university. Give them a new novel problem to tackle. The problem is there's so much pressure. And you know, because you, university professor.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I know, you know, in order to reach tenure, you need to reduce the entropy as much as possible. In any event, without going down that path too far, I now understand why you're saying that science has to invoke story. That makes sense. It has to be embedded. That makes sense. That makes sense.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
So are they personalities within what most people would think of as our larger personality? I mean, what I'm hearing is that, let's say somebody's an addict.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
So he left... what was indulgent, he had everything, for what was truly generative in service to something larger. And dangerous.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
How long? Five years ago? Yeah, we are about to hit the end of four years in a couple of weeks. We launched in January 2021. No premonition could have seen this. I had no concept that it would become what it's become.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
You know, people will ask me, what's next? Where are you headed? And I always just say, you know, like on, well, on Friday, I'm talking to Jordan Peterson and I'm focused on that all week long. And next week I'm recording a solo podcast about whatever it happens to be. I just believe that's setting my sights on the proximal. And I just believe in, I know my, my,
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Oh, yeah. I delight in it. It's hard sometimes. I was trying to read a really difficult paper yesterday. It's hard, but it feels so good.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Earlier we were talking about operationalizing knowledge. the effort, the calling to move from potential chaos to order starts with organizing one's physical space. If we were to extend the rings of the bullseye out a little bit further for people listening who are trying to figure out where do they receive that calling? How do they find
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
they're calling that like where so responsibility and adventure being perhaps the um the the compass through which we can you know like navigate there so they think like well where can they um grab a hold of their responsibility and yeah and then as a consequence of doing that engage in adventure and have an impact that is good for them and good for the world that that's how do how they find that i think there's there's very practical answers to those questions so
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
The degenerative stuff. A colleague of mine who's a geneticist said, you know, it takes many, many, many generations to evolve a species. It doesn't take very many to devolve a species. Negative mutations can build on another and crash a species very, very fast. I think our psyche is similar in that way.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
My father came to this country from Argentina and he grew up in a lot of, surrounded by a lot of political chaos. Came to the country, became a physicist, probably because he likes order. He's a very orderly guy. And it was probably in the early 90s that we went, I was born in 75, so probably, yeah, early 90s, that we went to a movie theater together to see a movie.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And he said it as we were walking in. He said, look. And I said, what? And he said, this is the beginning of the end. And I said, what do you mean? He said, we're degenerating as a society. And I said, why? And he said, there are people here in their pajamas. And obviously they weren't in their pajamas, but they come in and kind of like bathroom slippers.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And they weren't slovenly, but they weren't taking care of themselves.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
clearly worse worse they didn't care what other people thought right that's right they were making a public display of their lack of care right right exactly yeah that's a narcissistic aspect to that too yeah yeah he's right about that yeah and i thought at the time like he's being judged yeah i was a teen right he's being judgmental etc and um but you know i would say from 1990 until fairly recently hopefully things are shifting for the better now but
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
there has seemed to be, it's kind of chaos out there. Now, I think it's wonderful that people can express themselves by wearing clothes that they feel represent them, etc. But this wasn't that. This was a lack of care.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
We also discuss the media, politics, cancel culture, things like social media and pornography, shifting masculine and feminine roles, and the innate human drive to create action at a distance, both in space and in time. Today's discussion is both intellectual and practical.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Where do you think we are now in the United States? I think in terms of how we hold and represent order versus chaos. I mean, we were talking about some of the, you know, these social media posts recently. We just had a public display of an assassination. Maybe, you know, I hadn't intended on going there, but I think it's worth talking about. It was weird.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I got pulled into this through tangential reasons. This Luigi Mangione's last tweet was a podcast cover of my episode with Jonathan Haidt. And some media outlets tried to make something of that, you know. But clearly he was... Very smart. Clearly, he had forethought to his actions. He 3D printed this gun, it seems. It is all alleged now, but it seems to be pointing in that direction.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
He seems to not want the police to go investigate anybody else, you know, because he claims there's no one else acting with him, etc. He clearly was trying to make a statement, but the statement was a combination of statements about the... the insurance system, sort of anti-establishment because of his affinity for Kaczynski Unabomber bombings.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
But at the same time, he didn't really seem to fall into kind of left-leaning or right-leaning politics squarely. He was kind of all over the place. So you're a trained clinician. Do you think there's some schizotypal or schizophrenic type organization there in his head or lack of organization? I mean, what are we to make of this? And we had to see... Somebody assassinated, shot in the back.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Yeah, he was a valedictorian. He went to a high school and graduated.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I was going to say all these CEOs now are going to need personal security. That's hardly going to cause them to adjust their premiums or something downward. I mean, I think as people get more scared, they tend to shore up. Double down? Yeah, they tend to double down. I mean, earlier we were talking about action at a distance. I mean, clearly this Mangione guy is aware of action at a distance.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
It's hard to do good things over long periods of time. Right? It's not hard to be good. It's just hard to do good things. It's hard to do big things. I mean, I think that's one reason why I'm very happy that Elon is being celebrated. You don't have to agree with him politically anymore. But the rockets, the idea of going to Mars, trying to make sure that our species replaces itself.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I mean, these are big, important endeavors.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
It's hard. It's hard. It's hard to do long term good things because they're long term. That's what I was trying to say.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Because a podcast... I definitely would have failed. Oh, definitely.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Because it wasn't the pursuit of pleasure per se. It's sort of like the difference between, you know, is it easier to be the class clown or the top of the class? It's just much easier to be the class clown. All you have to do is crack 10 jokes, one of them hits, you know, and you're safe, but you're actually dissolving as you go.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I think people forget how Joe's podcast started. You might know this story. I'll keep it brief. But he was a comedian at the Comedy Store. He had done some television and things of that sort. And people can find this online. The videos are on YouTube where a comedian was stealing Ari Shaffir's jokes. So Joe got up on stage and said, there's some ethics in the comedy community.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
People can buy jokes, but you don't steal jokes apparently. And there's an etiquette as well. So apparently he confronted this guy in front of the audience and said, you're stealing his jokes. And the guy challenged him and Joe said, no, like Joe was stood up in the name of justice for a friend of his.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And my understanding, could be wrong about this, but my understanding is that Joe was then banished from that particular comedy club. So what did he do? He went home, he popped open his laptop and he and Brian Redman and a few other folks started what eventually became the Joe Rogan podcast.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
It came out of an impulse to stand up for the truth, which I think is an important thing for people to understand because it helps you understand Joe. And he's been unerring in that. Yeah. And I think that that's steep. And more power to him. has been a driving force for the podcast.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Right. He's genuinely curious.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
I love this idea or what you just said that it doesn't even so matter. So much matter the direction as much as the commitment. A colleague of mine at Stanford who I respect tremendously, Anna Lemke, who wrote the book Dopamine Nation. She's the head of our dual diagnosis addiction center.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
She was the one who really, truly deserves credit for bringing dopamine into the public discussion over the last few years. She initiated that, talking about how big inflections in dopamine that are very fast, that aren't preceded by effort. aka drugs of abuse, behavioral addictions, et cetera, leave us below baseline with our dopamine. And then people will engage in more of the behavior.
Huberman Lab
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
It drives us further and further and further. That's kind of the principle of it. I was talking to her about how people get sober and the conversation turned to how do young people find their purpose? It was very interesting. She said, let's talk about finding purpose. Everyone nowadays wants to know what their purpose is.
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How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
And she said, the way you find your purpose is by going out onto your front lawn and seeing if the leaves need to be raked. Sounds familiar, right? You find purpose by... figuring out how you can be of use at progressively larger and larger spheres away from yourself. And in doing that... And the present. And in doing that, you start to hear the calling and you find your purpose.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Peter Attia. Dr. Peter Attia is a medical doctor who did his training at Stanford University School of Medicine and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Aside from food, what exogenous molecules do you take?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
What dosage of rapamycin do you take?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
By virtue of the side effect.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
And the idea there is that you're limiting mTOR. You're causing your cells to grow less, mature slower, and in that sense, slowing down aging. Is that the idea? Yeah.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
So by the end of today's episode, you'll learn a lot about NAD. You'll learn a lot about the biological pathway. You'll learn a lot about the delivery routes, the various supplements, and why people think they may be useful, why others, perhaps even Dr. Atiyah and myself, think they may not be useful for longevity. You'll have to listen to find out what the answer is there.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
How do you feel when you're on rapamycin, aside from the canker sores?
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Does it synergize with caloric restriction or collide with caloric excess? Meaning if you're taking rapamycin, but you're slightly over your caloric needs, maybe you're trying to add a little bit of body weight or you happen to overeat a little bit just because, is it going to collide with rapamycin's potential positive impact on slowing aging?
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
I should also mention that we give somewhat of an overview or a framework for thinking about approaches to longevity. So if you're interested in things like rapamycin, metformin, and whether or not fasting can improve longevity, we get into that as well. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
But again, we'll have to wait and see what that shows. Without going off track too much, my understanding is that the dog study was halted because of a lack of federal funding. Is it continuing?
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Yeah. I was on NIH study sections for many years reviewing grants. I rotated off as a regular member a little over a year ago. And I can tell you that the whole process is designed to be as targeted to the best and most exciting work possible. But there's a number of features now that make it such that It's largely the work that's already mostly completed that gets funded.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
You know, like, how does that work? But anyway, we could have a whole other journal club discussion about funding, but I had to ask. I was curious. So hopefully that study will get completed, and thanks for raising those funds. Let's talk about NAD. Yes. It's in essentially every cell of the body except red blood cells, correct? Yes.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
It's generally thought to be associated with energy production and mitochondrial pathways in every single cell.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
It's also, as I recall, where the story began. That's exactly right. It was some experiments where the sirtuins were mutated in one direction or the other, meaning gain of function or loss of function. These days people hear gain of function and they immediately think to pandemic-related themes. But gain of function is a way of –
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
changing genes typically to augment a function, increase its robustness, or in some cases to rescue a phenotype where you have a knockout mouse that lacks a gene, so that's loss of function, or a strain of yeast that lacks a gene, and then you do the gain of function rescue experiment. You reintroduce the gene of interest. It's an important – I wouldn't even call it a control.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
It's an important experiment in any case because loss of function will tell you a lot. But gain of function and loss of function, assuming that the results jibe, tells you much, much more. This is one of the major areas – I think this is very important to highlight – where human genetics really struggles.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
because you can get humans with a mutation in a particular pathway, like, I don't know, the Sonic Hedgehog pathway. Somebody is hypomorphic for Sonic Hedgehog, and they might actually lack a major tooth up in the middle because of the role of Sonic Hedgehog at the midline. And you could say, okay, well, loss of function here. Here's the role of Sonic Hedgehog.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
But the ideal experiment is to put the gene back in and then rescue that phenotype because, as any logical mind can tell, There could be many things downstream of Sonic Hedgehog that could create the phenotype that you observe. But if you put Sonic Hedgehog back in, yes, that's still true, but you get more reassurance that that's the gene of interest.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Now, proper hydration is critical for the optimal functioning of all the cells in your body. And that's especially true for the neurons, the nerve cells. In fact, we know that even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish both cognitive and physical performance.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
So with respect to sirtuins, as I recall, they deleted the sirtuins. Yeah.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
So it's both necessary and sufficient for extended life.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
As many of you know, I've been taking AG1 for more than 10 years now, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring this podcast. To be clear, I don't take AG1 because they're a sponsor. Rather, they are a sponsor because I take AG1. In fact, I take AG1 once and often twice every single day, and I've done that since starting way back in 2012.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
There is so much conflicting information out there nowadays about what proper nutrition is, but here's what there seems to be a general consensus on.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Whether you're an omnivore, a carnivore, a vegetarian or a vegan, I think it's generally agreed that you should get most of your food from unprocessed or minimally processed sources, which allows you to eat enough but not overeat, get plenty of vitamins and minerals, probiotics and micronutrients that we all need for physical and mental health.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Now, I personally am an omnivore and I strive to get most of my food from unprocessed or minimally processed sources. But the reason I still take AG1 once and often twice every day is that it ensures I get all of those vitamins, minerals, probiotics, etc. But it also has adaptogens to help me cope with stress.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
It's basically a nutritional insurance policy meant to augment, not replace quality food. So by drinking a serving of AG1 in the morning and again in the afternoon or evening, I cover all of my foundational nutritional needs. And I, like so many other people that take AG1, report feeling much better in a number of important ways, such as energy levels, digestion, sleep and more.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
So to make sure that I'm getting proper hydration and electrolytes, I personally dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I first wake up in the morning and I drink that or sip that across the first half hour of the day or so. And then I also make it a point to drink another packet of Element dissolved in an equal amount of water, so 16 to 32 ounces,
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
So while many supplements out there are really directed towards obtaining one specific outcome, AG1 is foundational nutrition designed to support all aspects of well-being related to mental health and physical health. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
They'll give you five free travel packs with your order, plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
at some other point during the day, and maybe even a third if I'm exercising and or sweating a lot. I should mention that Element tastes absolutely delicious. My favorite flavor is watermelon, although I also confess I like the raspberry flavor, the citrus flavor. Basically, I like all the flavors.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Well, that experiment's never been done and never will be done. The joke I was trying to set up for is the one I'll make now, which is no one wants to be in the control experiment. That said, nobody wants to be in the treatment experiment either. You got me. You beat me to the punch. No one wants to be in the treatment group either because of it requires eating so little.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. Today's episode is also brought to us by Levels.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
It's incredibly interesting because I think when you look at cell biology and you see these parallel pathways, when you see these effects of experiments where changing sirtuins or changing caloric restriction independently increase lifespan, combine the two, you get this, what appears to be a synergistic effect, but it's, as you pointed out, an additive effect.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
it was like a pretty straightforward experiment to do. You could just do an occlusion, right? You could then put back in the sirtuin or adjust calories and see whether or not you get the, effectively, whether the math is corrected.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Yeah. Making a fly mutant, Drosophila mutant that overexpresses sirtuins, a worm C. elegans mutant that overexpresses sirtuins, that's a pretty quick experiment to do because of this short generation time of those species. Right. Now a mouse, It's a longer experiment, but I'm guessing all of those experiments have been done.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Levels is a program that lets you see how different foods impact your health by giving you real time feedback on your diet using a continuous glucose monitor. One of the most important factors in both short and long term health is your body's ability to manage blood glucose.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
We should probably clarify what a transgenic mouse is. I talked about knockout mice. That's when a gene or genes in some cases. is deleted from the genome. So it's null. It does not express that gene. The gain of function would be to put back that gene in. That would be a knock-in mouse.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
So in that case, you still get some normal expression of the gene from the endogenous genome, but now you have a transgene that's inserted there. And there are all sorts of important intricacies that relate to this. For instance, where the transgene is inserted. If it's downstream of an enhancer that's muscle-specific, then you can get a... mouse that it overexpresses sirtuins just in muscle.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
You can get it ubiquitously expressed. There are a number of different ways that this can happen. I'm assuming this was ubiquitous expression of, you said SIRT6? SIRT6, yeah. So every cell in the body that normally would express SIRT6 would express more SIRT6.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Dr. Atiyah is one of the world's most trusted voices on the topics of healthspan and lifespan, and with good reason. He is known to systematically review the research literature, the clinical trials, and he maintains an avid clinical practice.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
I'm guessing unless they made it clear that it was tissue-specific, that it's whole body. So we're talking about it when Peter says transgenic mouse, he's talking about a mouse that has this transgene that causes it to express more sirtuin-6 than it ordinarily would. And let's assume, although we don't know this for sure, that the other genes in this mouse are functioning as they would normally.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
To maintain optimal energy and focus throughout the day, you want to keep your blood glucose levels steady without big spikes or crashes. I first started using levels about three years ago as a way to try and understand how different foods impact in my blood glucose levels.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
What sorts of things are downstream of sirtuins? And that question translated to normal English is what is changing as a consequence of increasing the sirtuin? Could it be, for instance, well, unlikely based on what we already know about caloric restriction and the fact that they are independent parallel pathways, but is it something related to glucose metabolism?
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Is it something related to clearance of senescent cells? I'm just throwing out possibilities here.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
And it's proven incredibly useful for determining what food choices I should make, when best to eat certain foods, especially around things like workouts, and when and what to eat relative to when I go to sleep in order to allow for the best possible night's sleep and stable blood sugar throughout the night and when I wake up in the morning.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
this business of DNA repair and reducing, you know, fragmentation or mutations to DNA that are naturally occurring has been a hot idea in the field of aging for a long time. Is that because when x-rays became popular or post-nuclear fallout that people showed accelerated signs of aging? I mean, how did we get from DNA mutation to accelerated aging? Like-
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
So if you're interested in learning more about Levels and trying a CGM yourself, go to levels.link slash Huberman. Levels recently launched a new CGM sensor that's even smaller and has even better tracking than their previous version. Right now, they're also offering an additional two free months of membership.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Again, that's levels.link spelled L-I-N-K slash Huberman to try the new sensor and two free months of membership. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken many times before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
I'd like to take a quick break to let you know that the Huberman Lab team has launched a new podcast with host Dr. Andy Galpin. Andy is an expert in exercise science and human performance, and has long been a fan favorite on the Huberman Lab podcast.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
This new podcast is called Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin, and it dives into topics such as how to build muscle and strength, how to improve your cardiovascular health, and how to optimize recovery and sleep for performance and much more. Andy is an absolutely fantastic educator and true expert on all things human performance.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
One of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to control the temperature of your sleeping environment. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
I know you'll thoroughly enjoy his new podcast and learn a ton of useful knowledge from it. So please check it out and give it a subscribe wherever you're watching or listening to podcasts now. Again, the podcast is called Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
How do you activate sirtuins?
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
It's also interesting because keratinocytes in skin turn over every 28 days or so. So you could imagine because it's a novel population of cells that they would have steady expression of sirtuins and NAD. Then they simply die for whatever reason, or that it starts off very high on day one of generation, then tapers off quickly. But That's not the case, it sounds like.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
What about neurons? I mean, you've got the same set of central nervous system neurons your entire life. And of course, some peripheral neurons as well, but there's some regeneration in the periphery. So we need to, let's just talk about brain.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
So unless you're talking about the olfactory bulb where you have constant turnover throughout the lifespan, you have the same hippocampal neurons, except a small population, same hippocampal neurons, cortical neurons, retinal neurons that you were born Are we observing NAD levels tapering off as we age?
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Eight Sleep makes it incredibly easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to program the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for well over three years now, and it has completely transformed my sleep for the better.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation pod cover, the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity, higher fidelity sleep tracking technology, and it also has snoring detection that remarkably will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
And I would say a fair number of so-called anti-aging approaches are targeting the the so-called reactive oxygen species, ROSs, which impede mitochondrial function, essentially. This is an opportunity for me to call out the work that I think is at least intriguing, which is the work of a colleague by the name of Glen Jeffery at the University College London,
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
He's been in the field of visual neuroscience for a very long time. And a few years back, he started doing some experiments on animals and now also two studies published on humans showing that exposing the aged eye, so 40 and older, to red light and near infrared light for a couple minutes a few times a week can... spare certain processes involved in vision, photoreceptors. How does this work?
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Well, the idea, this isn't proven yet, the idea is that it's reducing reactive oxygen species and thereby improving mitochondrial function in what is perhaps the most metabolically active cell type in the entire body, not just the eye, which are the photoreceptors. So it's an intriguing set of studies.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Again, we don't have all the mechanisms worked out, but it brings us around again to this idea that mitochondria are vitally important for the functioning of cells. Things that impede the function of mitochondria can either reduce the output of and or kill cells. And so anything that can improve redux... can potentially keep a cell around longer, functioning better.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
So when I hear about the role of NAD in this pathway, I think like most people, I think, okay, well then I should just take more NAD and maybe I will age more slowly, or I will replace some NAD that's missing as I age in whatever cell type. Turns out that might not be so straightforward, right?
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
I mean, I don't want to jump to supplementation just yet, but if we are to back up from NAD a little bit and look at the pathway leading to NAD, it's NR, NMN, and NAD. We'll spell these out in a moment. And this sort of competition that's out there in the market is around either infusing or in some cases ingesting NAD directly.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, you can go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep currently ships to the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman. And now for my discussion about NAD and longevity with Dr. Peter Attia. Peter Attia, welcome. How are you?
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Taking NMN, which is the precursor to NAD orally, I haven't heard of anybody infusing it, or taking oral form NR, which is the precursor to NMN. My understanding is that NMN is simply NR minus a phosphate group.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
So when it comes to the topic of whether or not a particular molecule or supplement or prescription drug is indeed something that we should be thinking about and perhaps even taking in order to improve our healthspan and lifespan, Dr. Atiyah is the person that I choose to sit down with and discuss it. So today we are going to discuss the so-called NAD pathway.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Because everything we're on right now is upstream of sirtuins.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
And I'm only leaping further to this discussion about how to increase NAD because I know that's in the back of people's minds. We're not going to double click here just yet. I just want to frame that up because ultimately that's where we are headed in terms of people making decisions as to whether or not they should take NR or take NMN or infuse NAD or none of the above.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
I would say scientific justification for longevity. I'll go on record now saying that I take NMN and in some cases I will take NR and NMN and I observe, this is just end of one self-observational data, I observe a very clear positive effect, but I don't think it has anything to do with extending lifespan.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Great to see you again. Great to be here again. Should we parse this?
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
an ad thing i think we should do you mind if i set up a little bit of a framework great so for people that want to live as long as possible i figure there are at least four categories of approaches broadly speaking the first i'll just call the do's and don'ts you've talked a lot about these your book outlive beautifully covered these and i tend to regurgitate some of what you say on this podcast.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
So a couple of kind of practical notes. I've taken NR in capsule form. I've taken NMN typically in powdered form where I put it sublingually under the tongue.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
No, I took NAD as an infusion. I've probably done it five or six times. And for the first 10 minutes of the infusion, you feel like somebody's stepping on your chest with a boot. Your legs cramp up. You feel nauseous. I did not take the anti-nausea med that was offered. I don't like taking things if I can avoid it. I just figured I'll just experience this. It was very uncomfortable.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
To the point where you couldn't read a paper or a book. You just want to be left alone. You actually get a little bit irritable. You're like, this is awful. Every noise in the room is a bit too loud during that first 10 minutes.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Right. I don't know what it was doing physiologically except making me feel miserable during the infusion. There are ways to adjust this even without the anti-nausea meds. For instance, you can slow the infusion. That's the typical way.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
People will put it in over the course of several hours, anywhere from three hours to as brief as 30 minutes is kind of the record that I've heard about for 500 milligrams of NAD. If you put 1,000 milligrams in there, obviously it's more painful and you have to – anyway, there are a bunch of practical considerations. You feel – now, maybe it's placebo, but one feels quite good afterward.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
So as soon as the drip is done, you feel better than – you did prior to the drip. How do you feel if you just receive an IV infusion of the same volume? I've done that because I've received saline drips. You also feel pretty good. It's hard to disentangle these things. And typically they'll put other things in the bag, glutathione, some vitamin C. You know, they tend to sell these as kits.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
I decided to try it. It seemed fine. I did it when traveling. I don't know, maybe I'm due for another one soon. But for me, the more typical way to try and increase NAD or whatever, because I don't know what it's doing exactly, but I like the effects of taking sublingual NMN. The single most Let's say salient to me anecdotal data on taking sublingual NMN is that it makes my hair grow really fast.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
It makes my nails grow really fast. And I do feel an increase in energy. And I take it first thing in the morning. And what dose? One and a half grams, 1,500 milligrams.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
I'm not even approaching that at all. Well, it's clear to me, based on my read of the data, that NR can cross the cell membrane directly. Directly. Very easily. There's no obstacle to NR getting into cells. Okay. And NMN cannot because of the extra phosphate group. So that if you take it sublingually or you ingest it orally, it goes into the gut. The phosphate group is cleaved.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
And because of that, the argument is that if one were to compare the benefits of taking NR versus NMN, there are more data to support NR. as a precursor to NAD, a more effective precursor to NAD than orally ingested NMN. But some people will say, well, I'll just take more NMN than I would NR. And then this gets into the realm of cost effectiveness. It's just a commercial issue.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
It starts becoming a battle between commercial sources. And I don't dispute that NR... makes more sense as a precursor, especially at dosages of, you know, 300 to 600 milligrams versus 1500 milligrams. But I've opted to take sublingual NMN mostly based on cost and are at the dosages people recommend is quite expensive.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Namely, you want to move appropriately and often enough, so get enough zone two cardio, do your resistance training, keep nerve to muscle connection strong, avoid the sorts of things that would lead to falling and being immobile, eat right. There's a whole category of things there we're not going to talk about today, although we might touch on a bit.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
You'd be spending about 300 bucks a day, right? It's just it's not feasible. It's just not feasible. So I don't have a deep desire for my hair to grow faster or my nails to grow faster. It's more the increase in energy effect. Now, I will say that sublingual NMN is also a bit of a laxative. So there are all these, and I say that somewhat chuckling, but some people say it makes them feel better.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Well, is that because you're evacuating your bowels a few minutes or hours later and then you've feel less bloated and you have more energy, it's very unclear. I think what has not been done, as far as I know, is to compare orally ingested NR at say 600 milligrams, relatively high dose versus a gram of sublingual NMN and then actually measure blood levels of NAD.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
If that experiment has been done and I'm not aware of it, I'm not aware of it, then forgive me. Maybe someone will put it in the show note captions. But I guess this gets down to the question of how many people are taking oral NR or NMN or are taking NAD infusions, which by the way are quite expensive, anywhere from $300 to $1,000 a drip. That's pretty expensive. What benefits are they getting?
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
What are they getting out of this? What are they getting? Is it an acute increase in NAD that what? That causes them to live, what, a week longer? I mean, we have no idea.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Know your genetics and make some good decisions on the basis of your genetics. So the do's and don'ts. The second category I would put under the umbrella of calories, glucose, insulin, et cetera, that all kind of funnel in, at least in my mind, to mTOR, mammalian target of rapamycin, a molecule that's robustly expressed during development in essentially all cells of the body.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Because my understanding is that there are some studies that have explored the role of supplemented NR, maybe NMN as well, but certainly supplemented NR for sake of lowering inflammation to offset some of the negative effects of time zone shift, alcohol. Yeah. I have a few others listed here, overnutrition.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
and then across the lifespan tapers off. During puberty, especially, well, let's say infancy through puberty, cells are expressing so much mTOR and they're growing like crazy. And we often associate that early stage of life as youth, not aging, because we think of it as a kind of a timestamp as opposed to the verb. But I would argue as a developmental neurobiologist by training that
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Right. I totally agree. And I think... You know, at this point, I'm questioning whether or not I'm wasting my money taking NMN or NR. The reason I take NR is really for these anti-inflammation reported purported effects. I just want to pay a little bit of attention to the whole commercial battle around this because I think it's relevant. I mean, I think right now, as far as I know,
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
The FDA has essentially said that NMN should not be sold as a supplement, but it is still being sold as a supplement. So there's a little bit of ignoring of the FDA's request. NR, as far as I know, is authorized for sale as a supplement. Yeah.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
It's one of the most rapid phases of aging of our entire lifespan. Look at a picture of you when you were five, look at a picture of you when you were eight versus 15. You look very different and your size is robustly different.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Well, you just answered the question I was going to ask, but I suppose the question therefore becomes, is there any benefit to taking either of them for sake of lifespan?
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
One's just got a phosphate group on there. You might need to take a little bit more of the NMN versus NR or maybe a lot more, who knows. in order to get the same increase in NAD, is my understanding.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
And I should say that basal and squamous cell carcinomas are very, very common.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Assuming somebody is averse to feeling like they have an elephant stepping on their chest. They're going to pay $750 for it, aka an NAD infusion once a week. Look, people may opt to do that. People with a disposable income could do that, drip it in slower, not feel nauseous. Increase NAD with the hope, hope, hope that maybe it's going to extend your life.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Most people considering supplementation to augment the NAD pathway are going to default to either taking NR or taking NMN.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
You could also weight train for the first hour and then enjoy some food afterwards. Lane Norton taught me that there are data showing that exercise, in particular resistance training, improves the rewarding properties of food, makes food taste better, which we've all kind of intuitively experienced. So you spend the first hour, Working out, second hour eating.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Okay. Well, I'm going to pull a little bit from marketing – text here, but I trust these showing- Really? Yeah. Yeah, I do. Because they have citations to support them and we can include the citations. I can say these are not linchpin arguments for doing one thing or the other, but we already established that NR
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
and NMN are quite similar except for the presence of a phosphate group on NR that gets cleaved off.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Or NR. Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah, okay. Great. Well, then you took the words right out of the data I was going to refer to. That's right. Because I asked a few folks that helped develop some of the NR supplements. Like, what are the data that support the use of NR for increasing NAD? And they say NR can cross the cell membrane directly. NMN cannot.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Okay, but you can just cleave the phosphate group. Right, right. Exactly. NR, they claim, I'm not, this is not my claim, but they claim that NR is, quote unquote, 25% more effective than NMN in raising whole blood NAD levels. But I'm guessing that's milligram for milligram, right? Okay, so then you just adjust the milligram dosage a little bit and so on.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
What's entirely unclear is what raising blood NAD translates to in terms of getting more NAD into cells.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
This is a pathway that's received a lot of attention in recent years as a potential target for improving lifespan, that is for living longer. Today we discuss the various molecules in this pathway and the various approaches to increasing NAD, which is the end target goal of anyone that's trying to augment the NAD pathway, so to speak. So for instance, we talk about taking and R.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Yeah. I mean, the brain, the same brain has to learn an entirely new body every year in terms of how to move it, limb length, et cetera. So a lot of the so-called anti-aging or longevity approaches that fall under this umbrella relate to things like caloric restriction or taking drugs such as rapamycin. And of course, mammalian target of rapamycin is the target of rapamycin. Duh.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
There's something so sticky about the longevity field, just so sticky about this idea that one could take something and extend lifespan and people don't want to be in the control group. So they're willing to invest significant amounts of money to do it.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
They're probably about – 30 to 50 prior to this FDA ruling, which is kind of an interesting situation in its own right. You know, what happened there was the supplement NMN, suddenly the FDA decided that it should not be sold over the counter anymore because there was a clinical trial initiated on NMN, which essentially makes NMN a drug.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
clinical testing and thereby can't be classified as a supplement any longer. That was the rationale as I understood it. But as with things like N-acetylcysteine- That was more of a lobbying effort though, I think.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
And this had happened prior for N-acetylcysteine, NAC. which some people take. It's a mucolytic. It's actually a great decongestant. If you're congested and it increases glutathione, that's my understanding. I believe somebody checked me on this. Does it decrease or increase glutathione? Increases glutathione is my understanding. If I have that wrong, someone will tell me quickly in the comments.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
My understanding is that in Europe, NAC might even be available by prescription. In the US, you can still buy it over the counter, but a few years back, The FDA said, nope, can't sell NAC any longer. And there was a pushback lobby to keep it on the market. And you can still buy it on Amazon. The same thing has more or less happened with NMN.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
certainly with nr although nr was never in question in terms of whether or not it should be sold as a supplement or not because as far as i know there's no clinical trial on nr at least not currently so there's a clinical trial on nmn which classifies it as an experimental drug and therefore the fda said nope you can't sell it as a supplement a few companies major companies pulled nmn from the market in the u.s
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Many smaller companies just kind of watched and waited and continued to sell it. And I checked prior to the beginning of this episode and you can still buy it online. But of course, a lot of what we're saying today is kind of a, why would you? We're not really coming up with strong arguments for taking NMN, at least not in today's discussion.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Right. And the experts in this area like Charles Brenner have pushed back hard on that, arguing that the studies were not done well. Is that – I recall.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
In an effort to essentially remove excess insulin, blood glucose, and thereby reduce reduce mTOR activity, so essentially slow cellular growth. And all that fits nicely into the logic that mTOR is associated not just with development, but with aging because development is aging.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
No. In fact, I don't want to quote him at all. But I think he would argue that sirtuins, NR, NMN – should not logically or practically be linked to efforts to extend lifespan, but that there are some interesting positive effects of augmenting NR as a means to increase NAD for sake of anti-inflammation and some of these other effects that we've been discussing.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
And then I would say there's a third category, and it's the one we are going to talk about today, which is targeting specific cellular pathways that some people have deemed potentially interesting for longevity. And the pathway that we're going to spend some time on is the so-called NAD pathway.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
You seem to be vigorous. You take great care of yourself. How much do you think taking rapamycin, for how many years have you been taking it? Six. Has contributed to your current state or vigor? Zero idea. This is my opportunity to ask about your belief or lack of belief in biological aging tests. Because if somebody is going to experiment with any or all of these things,
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
um they may want to evaluate whether or not their biological age is changing and there are a number of these tests available and people love this stuff love them they love them i mean who wouldn't want to see that they are 51 years old but their biological age is 37. i just did a movement test the other day so it's a it's a
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
NR, NMN, NAD being the major players, and we'll talk about some of the biochemical and enzymatic steps in between. And then I suppose there's a fourth category, which we could say is the do everything, even the most esoteric of things category. This is a rare category. There are folks like Brian Johnson who spend a lot of time in this category specifically.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Okay. Well, I bought that chart, my life in weeks. Yes. In fact, I bought two of them for reasons that are uninteresting. I've watched that chart, Phil. Not quite what you predicted, but I put my estimated lifespan to be 95. Great.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
And then I have little lines on the side of how much vigor I felt from, and just overall wellness, completely subjective of zero being like Completely cratered near death to 10, like it's best I've ever felt. But you make that note every how often? Okay. So what I did is, you know, from 10 to 15, I felt, you know, blank. And then in my 20s, I actually didn't feel so great because I was working –
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
80-hour weeks, commonly. You can ask my former lab technicians. I was just talking to Fung Nguyen recently. I mean, I used to work to collapse, not healthy.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
80-hour a week, maybe 100 hours occasionally, maybe 70, maybe back to 40, but just too much work, not enough sleep, nutrition not great, just not doing the right things, but just gave my 20s to being in lab, basically, and a lot of my 30s as well. So I would say from 40 to 45, my vigor was higher than in my 30s.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
And then now I track, I would say about every two months, I'll start filling in that line. And it's adjusted for by stressors and adjusted for by positive things in life. And the goal for me is to figure out what are the behavioral tools and other things I can do or take that are going to keep the vigor as high as possible. Vigor, well-being.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
And internal peace, et cetera, all of that combined, kind of what I'm calling wellness in this very subjective measure, as high as possible as I transition to my 50s, my 60s, 70s, and 80s. And I'm guessing that I'm going to have to do many more things in my 80s and 90s in order to maintain balance. a similar, hopefully, level of vigor and well-being than I do now.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
taking very high doses of polyphenols, limiting their caloric intake to just early part of the day. I think he eats dinner at 11 a.m. I don't know if it still qualifies as dinner at 11 a.m., but his final bite of calories is, I believe, at 11 a.m. Doing everything from red light to PRP, platelet-rich plasma, excuse me, and essentially the kitchen sink approach to longevity and aging.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
And the question is, will I be able to?
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Yeah. Because I think the chart is great. I think the chart, more than any supplement for longevity, gives one a visual perspective of where they sit in this long arc. And I don't think the brain is very good at anchoring us to the notion that we are mortal. Because if we think about that for even a few moments too long, it makes us anxious. And I think we are very good at avoiding that. Yeah.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
I better get cracking on some stuff.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Do you avoid going through the non, let's just say the non-traditional scanner at the airport? the one that might use higher levels of radiation? No. Do you think about how many flights you take as a source of radiation? No.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
I think you just relieved a lot of people of some unnecessary concern.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Yeah, grip strength, jumping, cognitive function. I mean, I've got very good genes in terms of longevity on one side of my family, pretty good on the other, although not as robust. I mean, if I just look historically. Yeah, who knows, right? I mean, but my sense is that I'll live to be 95 if, you know, barring, you know, bullet bus or cancer.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Yeah, a short nap would reset me near completely. Yeah. I got more colds and flus in that time because I wasn't taking such good care. But then again, I was indoors more, so it's an imperfect experiment. But you're right. I think that as I've approached 50... I need to do more.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Mine was never very good, so...
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Sorry to interrupt, but since we've been talking about molecules and energetic pathways- What about energy? Just that get up and go. Let's just say after a decent night's sleep, seven and a half hours, waking up same time more or less, 6.30, 7 a.m. probably for you or me. And – Why is it that as we get older, we have less energy? Our mutual good friend, the late Ben Barris used to ask about this.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
He used to say, he called me Andy. He was like, Andy, why do I have so much less energy? I was like, I don't know. I don't know. It's a great question. Now, unfortunately he died of pancreatic cancer. So there may have been other things going on, but that was prior to the cancer, at least as far as I know. You know, it's a very interesting question. Why do we have less energy?
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
And I don't think anyone's ever been able to answer that question.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Maybe, although... Up until now, we've been talking about all these ways to try and increase NAD in the bloodstream and hopefully in cells. And I don't know, I take my NMN and my NR and I feel a little bit of a boost in energy, but I can't say that it's so significant that I feel like I can sprint back and forth just spontaneously.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Like I love Froot Loops, right? Interesting. By way of contrast, the food part is easy for me. I like healthy food and- Oh, I like healthy food.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Okay. Yeah, I don't like unhealthy food. I've weaned myself off. I never really liked it that much. I mean, I like a great tasting slice of pizza or ice cream every once in a while, but I much prefer- Meat, fish, chicken, eggs, fruits, vegetables, rice, oatmeal. I just like that stuff. I'm a weirdo that way, I suppose.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
But on the topic of exercise as it relates to vigor and longevity, I'm intrigued by how some forms of exercise give us more energy. especially the same day, and how some forms of exercise or even timing of exercise tends to deplete us. Because I think one of your major calls to the public has been to move more for sake of their healthspan and lifespan.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
But because of the time investment that it takes to work out in a gym or to go for a run or a ruck, I think some people think, well, that's a lot of time, but if it gives you more energy and more focus to do other things, well, then it's great. So it's not just about living longer. It's about being able to do more.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
And I've noticed, I don't have any science to back this up, but I'd love someone to run a test on this, that if I complete my workout before 9 a.m., even if I have to start it while I'm a little bit fatigued, I have more energy all day long. But that if I initiate that workout, say mid to late morning, I'm pretty tired in the afternoon. It's like I give everything I have to that workout.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
And so it becomes a little bit defeating since I'm not a professional athlete or even an amateur athlete. I'm working out for healthspan, lifespan, but I want to do exercise that gives me more life during my waking hours. I think somebody should study this.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
And I'm convinced that it has something to do with the change in body temperature that occurs across the day and the additional change in body temperature that occurs as a consequence of exercise.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
I haven't thought about it that much, but not so much. Not so much. And I wonder whether folks like our friend Jocko Willink are able to do so much. He has so much vigor, that guy, in part because he basically exercises just after the lowest temperature phase of the circadian rhythm. And he uses exercise presumably to drive himself out of that and get that
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
temperature increase, that's the consequence of waking. But in his case, he's waking up so early, 4.30 is when he starts those workouts. So it's something for people to play with.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
It's something that I don't think gets discussed enough, which is, yes, you should exercise, do resistance training, do cardiovascular training, but play with the timing of those and see how at a given intensity, it impacts your energy levels for the remainder of the day. I think it's an important metric that
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Again, I just don't see a lot of attention to because I think if people could experience the increase in energy that is the consequence of working out at the right intensity in the right way at the right times for them, they'd be much more apt to do it.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
It wouldn't feel like this – like spending money on something that sure will make you live longer but then you're depleted and you can't do cognitive work. There's something pretty impressive about the fact that as far as I know –
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
The last three, let's just call them, I don't want to call anyone out specifically, major pillars of the high-level administration at Stanford School of Medicine, to my knowledge, were all 5 a.m. runners. There's something about early morning exercise. And my good friend, Eddie Chang, who's the chair of neurosurgery at UCSF, he's been on this podcast, known him since we were seven years old.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
He's an early morning exerciser, and then he's got tons of energy all day.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Yeah, I don't doubt it. I just have noticed that in the few times in my life where I've kick my own butt to get out and start working out really early, I have more energy all day long. Sometimes I still require a brief nap, but it's a pretty striking effect as compared to the 10 a.m. workout effect. So I've started setting a standard of trying to get my workout done before 9 a.m.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
So anyway, it's something for people to play with because the more energy to live in your waking hours, perhaps not longer, but certainly have more energy in terms of output, I think is a significant and undervalued parameter. So let's quickly return to supplements. We, I think, are converging on an answer about NR, NMN, and NAD, which is you don't take them. Correct. I take NR and NMN
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
with not a lot of religious adherence, I should say. If I ran out, I might not buy it for a while. And the only observed effect for me is this accelerated hair growth, which is a pain in the butt, frankly, because it just means I have to get my hair cut more often. I'm not trying to grow my hair faster, but okay.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
What are some other supplements, if any, that you take that are peripheral to this pathway or separate from this pathway? Rapamycin is a prescription drug only, right? So are there any over-the-counter things that you take that you would place into the lifespan category? Maybe they touch into healthspan as well. I'm happy to list off what I do, but what are your, let's just say top five at least?
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
versus NMN versus direct infusions, or even orally taking NAD. And we compare them in terms of both what's known and what is not known about their ability to get into cells and any efficacy they may have for either longevity or healthspan.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Okay. I'll try and move through my list pretty quickly. I may miss one or two things and I don't know, maybe we'll put the list someplace online and fill in any gaps. I definitely take AG, AG1, you know, my typical ad read. I've been doing it since 2012. That's true. I take one or two servings a day, three if I'm traveling. And I'll generally do that first thing in the morning or in the evening.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
For me, it's really about capping off the vitamin minerals that I might be lacking in my diet, and also the whole adaptogen business, I think, and polyphenols. I'm very interested in Pendulum because part of the reason I take AG1 is for the gut health aspect. Bowel movements are more where I'd want them.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
I mean, it sounds kind of weird to talk about, but you just feel better when your gut motility is right. I feel like it adjusts my gut motility so it's neither too fast nor too slow. So that's first and foremost. I take a quality fish oil. either the one that AG makes or Carlson's in liquid form that has that lemon flavoring. And I make sure I get above one gram per day of EPA.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
So that's usually a tablespoon, sometimes two tablespoons. I make sure that I get enough D3, typically from the dropper, 5,000 IU per day, approximately. Sometimes 3,000, sometimes 7,000. I kind of play around that. And I test my blood levels. I also take methyl B12. And I also take Tonga Ali. So I take one capsule of that in the early part of the day.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
That has lowered my sex hormone binding globulin, freeing up a bit more testosterone. That's why I like it. And I take a couple of green tea capsules in the morning. I drink yerba mate. That's more of a stimulatory effect. And I take the NMN in powder form, sometimes NR as well. And again, if I run out of that, I tend to go long periods of time without. I use Element as an electrolyte. So-
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
People are probably noticing this is all pretty basic. I take, in my case, 10 grams of creatine monohydrate per day. I sometimes forget to take it. That's why I take 10 grams. I'll sometimes miss a day. And I certainly feel the effects of that in the gym because of the greater water volume in the muscles.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
But there are a lot of data on creatine monohydrate for sake of either maintaining or offsetting some of the cognitive dysfunction associated with sleep deprivation, maybe aging altitude and some other things as well. And then for a few months I was playing around with, let's say, nicotine gums. I stopped doing that.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
First of all, I was dipping it and I ended up lifting for an entire episode of the Lex Friedman podcast that I only realized later. So I stopped taking it also because it gave me a kind of a tick and cough when I wasn't chewing it. And then I felt like I needed to chew it and it's a little too stimulatory for me. Before sleep, I take magnesium threonate, really bullish on magnesium as well.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Apigenin, 50 milligrams, which is essentially chamomile extract and theanine. And occasionally I'll take 900 milligrams inositol also, or instead, I kind of mix those up and around. And then I use a quality whey protein as a protein replacement, that kind of thing.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
And I've played around with various things like Shilajit and sometimes get the sense that it's having an effect, but then I'll stop taking it for long periods of time. There are very few things that I've stayed with for long periods of time, and I basically just described what those are. If ever someone were to design a supplement that would provide more energy all day long that wasn't caffeine.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
I'd probably look to that, but I ingest caffeine in the form of yerba mate and coffee. I've played around with caffeine tablets, taking 50 milligrams of caffeine in tablet form. I mention that only because it has a distinctly different feel than ingesting caffeine through liquid form. It feels stronger, and I don't know why that is.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
In fact, there's a very well-known podcaster who drinks peppermint tea and takes caffeine tablets as a way to, I don't know, drink peppermint tea, which sounds very nice and mellow, but also get the stimulant effect. So anyway, that's pretty much it.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
And then I do a lot of things, as I know you do, mainly based on suggestions you've made about getting zone two cardio, rucking, weight vest walks and hikes. three times a week resistance training, three times a week cardiovascular training, one long, one medium, one short. And I try and hit the sauna and the cold once a week. And yeah, that's pretty much it.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
I think there are a bunch of other supplements that are really interesting and kind of fun to play with if one wants to, like 600 milligrams of alpha-GPC or 900 milligrams of alpha-GPC in a double espresso prior to a workout. You feel different. It's a stimulant. But I don't like to do that too often because of the increase in TMAO that occurs.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
And then you have to take 600 milligrams of garlic to offset that increase. And you start getting- If we believe TMAO matters. Right. If you believe TMAO matters. I don't. Okay, great. Even better. I'll maybe skip the garlic. So things like that. I prefer to just eat garlic anyway. So there are a bunch of things like that that are kind of fun to play with as pre-workouts.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
But yeah, that's the core supplement regimen. And it's the one I've stuck with for, gosh- at least 10 years, or in the case of AG, more than that. So I should say, because any discussion around supplements, I think it's going to have people pricking up their ears to, okay, this is like a sales pitch or something. I absolutely want to go on record.
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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
The things you choose to do and not do are going to have much greater effect on your health span and lifespan, that is the behavioral things, in particular sleep, exercise, nutrition, sunlight, et cetera, than any one supplement that you're going to take. So I do view supplements, I think, through the appropriate lens, which is that they are indeed a supplement. They are not necessary.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Many of them are simply sufficient to serve as an insurance policy or to augment mental and physical health, maybe longevity, in ways that make it worthwhile given my disposable income that I want to devote to supplements. But I don't think – you need them.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Okay, so I completely agree with you. Exercise, sleep, nutrition, and emotional health, not listed in any particular order. Peter and I both completely agree. Those are the critical four. Before we close, NR, NMN, NAD, and NAD in particular, how do we view this? Is it a pathway that we should be focusing on in terms of supplementation or infusions for sake of extending our life?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Great. Thank you for that clear stance and the willingness to change it in light of new data. Peter, so good to sit down with you again and talk science, talk health, and in this case, talk about the supplements that we're not going to take in addition to the ones that we do take. We will do this again sometime very soon, hopefully. In Austin. Would love that. Thanks, Peter. Thanks, man.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Thank you for joining me today for my discussion with Dr. Peter Attia. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. In addition, please subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. That's a terrific zero-cost way to support us. In addition, you can leave us up to a five-star review on either Spotify or Apple.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
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Huberman Lab
Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
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Huberman Lab
Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
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Huberman Lab
Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
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Huberman Lab
Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion, all about NAD and longevity with Dr. Peter Attia. And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy
Dr. Atiyah and I compare and contrast the literature on this, again, both research and clinical literature, and we discuss whether or not he or I take NAD, NMN, or NR. And if so, or if not, the reasons for that. We also each go through our own supplement regimen, which of course reflects what we do believe can potentially have an effect on healthspan and or lifespan.
Huberman Lab
What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Carolina Westland. Dr. Carolina Westland is an animal ethologist and expert in animal behavior.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
What you just described beautifully breaks down what one observes if you go to a dog park or the beach. My bulldog mastiff, Costello, he was a mudded bulldog. So I always say, you know, no underbite. So it wasn't this. It was this, right? So a proper bulldog before they inbred them so much that they have the underbite and the short snout, the brachycephalic, the breathing issues.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
But he neither stalked. Nor chased. Nor was he interested in killing anything. He didn't have that sense to try and harm. But he certainly liked to consume. So he was at the end of that behavioral description. And what were they bred for? So I'll try and not take up too much time on this one because I want to learn from you.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
The original bulldog line was a cross between a mastiff, something like a mastiff, strong, large, high pain tolerance, and a pug, short snout. And the gene cross there, and obviously the dog geneticists weren't thinking about specific genes.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
They were thinking about traits, was the short snout was great for what's called bull baiting because that short snout provides the kind of lever that when they bite down onto the nose of a bull, which is what they were used for, it was a pretty cruel practice, very hard to shake them loose. The bull could shake them and they're not going to shake loose.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Just think about trying to pick something up with long tongs, right? The physics of this versus a clamp, right? Like a C-clamp. Yeah. the mutation that takes the pain receptors out of the face or reduces them is close by another gene that is involved in generating the tensile nature of the skin. So this is why they have the jowls, the folds.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
So if you're a pet owner, This episode is going to be of immense value to you. If you're not a pet owner, you'll still learn a ton about animal biology and psychology, including yours. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
And you can, I don't suggest anyone do this, but Costello, I'll just give an example. Sometimes, unfortunately, would like get a fish hook through his jowl when he was playing at the ocean or something. And he'd come up to me bleeding, smiling, you know, basically you have to take this thing out.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Pain tolerance was very high in the front of the animal, in the face. And toward the rear of the animal, you touch his back toe. So they have a gradient of pain receptors that runs high density in the back, low density in the front. So they were bred for bull baiting. And the original line has been bred out. It's people who care about the bulldog breed and bring in some more humane animals.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
breeding practices to the bulldog, because it's a pretty brutal breed now, have tried to reestablish the original line, which again, where elbows back, no strong underbite, as opposed to what you see now. So that's the sort of brief history on the bulldog. They have to be born by cesarean, because big shoulders, small hips. Anyway.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
The interesting thing about the bulldog, I always said, and this will take us back to behavior, was the contract that I felt I had with my bulldog was one of he would protect me to the death. You do notice that anytime they hear a noise or anything, they're hypervigilant. If there's no impending threat, total relaxation. The most efficient use of energy of any species.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
So basically it was, I'll die for you, Andrew, but unless your life is in danger, I'm not going to do anything. So maybe we could talk about temperament in dogs and how they experience their emotional life. I don't know if we can make general statements about this, but you've spent a lot of your time thinking about the emotional life of animals. What does a dog need in order to feel calm and safe?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Carolina Westland. Dr. Carolina Westland, welcome. Thank you. I'm super excited for this conversation.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
I can barely contain myself. I think we have so much to learn from animals, and I think we have so much to learn from our relationship to animals. I also believe that we have all sorts of ideas about what animals experience, what they think about us, the relationship that we think we have with them. Oh, yeah. Today, you're going to set the record straight.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
So we might consider just touching the animals that you're calling a consent test, like as a test. And then if they move toward you, then what is the pattern of tactile stimulation that dogs like? I've been reading up on this a little bit and somebody ran an experiment that I think is kind of interesting. describing the differences between rates of petting.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
And basically the conclusion was that essentially they claim that all dogs are averse to very rapid touch, but that people tend to pet quickly. And they showed a beautiful example of just if one just deliberately strokes the animal very slowly, the animal's eyelids just start to hood. And you basically just – diffuse the tension very quickly, which I think is interesting.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
You know, as humans, we think, oh, we want to pat the dog on its head. And for some reason, we associate patting with fast patting or petting as a quick process. You're going to scratch and pet this animal where it very well could be that all the dogs out there are just dying for some really nice, slow strokes. Yeah.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
I feel like dogs want the part of their body scratched that they can't access on their own. I'm yet to meet a dog that doesn't like being scratched on its rump.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Like the top side of their back leg. Yeah. Right? Like right there. Yeah. It's got to feel so good.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Because they can't get to that. Yeah. As well as underneath their rear leg. Right? Like just kind of in the crook of the rear leg with that soft skin there. Right? Yeah. But having interacted with dogs that were more skittish versus more calm, I totally agree that different animals, regardless of breed, just have a completely different relationship to touch and how quickly they want to interact.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
To start off, could you just briefly list off some of the species of animals that your students have worked with and studied?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
I've heard, and I don't know if it's true, that for dogs, space is a big thing. I don't know if this is true. I'm sure someone will... refute this, but the idea that, you know, if your dog runs up to you when you walk in or to, you know, a dog runs up to you and it's a new dog you're just meeting and they touch you or they jump up on your shin, that it's their attempt to dominate you.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Like, this is my space. I'm controlling you. Because you wouldn't necessarily walk up to a dog that you just met and just get right in their space without kind of them approaching you as well. What are your thoughts on this whole dominant submission thing on the basis of touch and space?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Great. I don't have any stake in this. I just would like to learn and I would like people to learn so that they can have Better interactions with and for animals.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
okay there's dominance among dogs or among dogs and other non-human animals i'm thinking in terms of the relationship between human and dog and touch and space you know i've heard that the dog touches you it thinks it owns you i've heard that if you move into a space um that the dog is and it backs away then it's uh you know it thinks of you as dominant um i've also heard that if the dog
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
moves into your space very quickly that it sees itself as kind of the leader in this relationship. There are a lot of theories out there about this. And I'm realizing that all these theories about animals must be very contentious because they lack the language to tell us what we want to know. So we're always sort of guessing when we're doing a theology.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Interesting. I have heard this, that when you walk your dog, that your dog should be next to you or behind you. Very few dog owners actually walk with their dog behind them. I live in an area that is frequented by dogs and owners. It's interesting to kind of interpret that as a question, which is if the dog walks in front, does it mean that it somehow is the leader?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
I mean, are humans just completely wrong about all this stuff? I think so. Great.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
I grew up around a few horse people. My first girlfriend had a horse. And it was remarkable to me to see and to get some just external understanding of the relationship between human and animal through observing that. I think of all the relationships between animals and humans, the horse-human relationship is seems to be the one where there's the most amount of physical contact. You ride a horse.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
So along the lines of priority of access to resources, when I got my puppy, I was taught in the dog training course that I took with him that I should eat and then he should eat or that we could eat alongside one another different food, although I confess I often fed him steak. If it was appropriate food for a bulldog, I fed it to him. It –
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
As opposed to letting him eat before me because of this access to resources thing. Is there any truth to that? This is taught in a lot of dog slash owner training. Because a lot of dog training is actually owner training. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure.
Huberman Lab
What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Dr. Westland and I discuss the relationship between humans and domesticated animals with a focus on the evidence-based protocols for optimizing the mental and physical health of our pets. Dr. Westland explains the best way to interact with our animals. Now, we may assume that the way we pet our animals and exercise them and feed them makes them truly happy.
Huberman Lab
What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
That's a novel perspective because I think that so much of what's out there in terms of dog slash owner training is really about not so much dominance but really trying to establish a relationship where it's clear that you're the caretaker to quote unquote make them feel safe so that their job is very clear so they don't feel the anxiety of needing to perform roles that perhaps are yours.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
There's a lot like what you hear when you hear about parent-child training basically. So Maybe, given the sort of pattern of your answers over the last couple of questions, I should ask the question, which is a really straightforward one, which is, how do you think about animals? Like what is your view of animals when you think about them?
Huberman Lab
What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
I know you're interested in their welfare and improving their well-being and conditions. But how do you – like when you see an animal, most people say, OK, well, that's a dog. That's a horse. That's a parrot. Can I interact with it? Maybe I don't want to or maybe I have a phobia. Who knows? But how do you think about animals?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Like what's driving this inquiry in terms of their emotional and their cognitive life?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
You learn to read the horse's intentions. It learns to read yours through these subtle squeezing of the legs or kicking, not kicking hard, but just like a nudge of the heel, just a slight tug on the reins. It's really remarkable. What does the horse experience the world as?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
They definitely have scent glands back there.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Yeah. Interesting. So can we interpret dog wags of different types? Is there a way to do that?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
So looking from the left, meaning the left eye slightly forward, the head tilted.
Huberman Lab
What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Some people are just listening. They're not watching, so they can't see this. So what Carolina is describing is if the head is turned slightly to the side, so the left eye is forward.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
And the opposite to the right hand side if it's more attractive to them. Yeah. So this is lateralized. Interesting. And then the tail wag, you said a dog wagging on the left hand side. More negative right-hand side and more positive. What about full sweeps?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Do you think that over time we learn these signals without realizing that we learn these signals?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Because we associate it with our dog being in a particular circumstance or behaving in a certain way.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
I've heard before that they sort of have these orbs of awareness around them and that they're paying attention to things on the horizon, that they're clearly paying attention to things very up close to their body. But if you were to put us into the mind of a horse as best you can, how does the horse experience the world as?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Which behaviors in dogs are maintained from interactions with other dogs? when they interact with humans. For instance, if one is going to take a dog out on a walk and it's familiar with the sound of the leash coming off the the hook or something like that. It's not uncommon for a dog to go into that long, full front leg stretch that people call down dog in yoga.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
And some people will say that's a kind of remnant of the puppy play kind of stance. Again, people say this stuff. People are often self-appointed dog experts. This is kind of interesting. And I've learned this from researching online that the various camps of quote unquote dog experts disagree vehemently with each other. I mean, they write to me saying, you know, they're evil.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
This person is cruel. You know, they blame each other of animal cruelty for different training tools. We'll talk about that a little bit later. But Dogs will do this down dog type movement, whatever it means, with other dogs, and they'll do it with humans. Do you think it means the same thing in those two different contexts?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
as a wild horse and with a rider on its back trying to steer it in a particular direction at a particular speed.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
That's a beautiful thing when you see animals adjusting their level of kind of vigor in play so that the play can continue. It's very sweet. I mean, it speaks to a bigger question, which is, do dogs have empathy?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
I mean, I think many dog owners are familiar with when we're grieving, a dog will often come closer as opposed to moving further away. I mean, I've seen some incredible moments. You know, we interpret these things, right? We anthropomorphize. But I had someone in my home years ago who was grieving a death in her family, and she
Huberman Lab
What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Costello came and put a paw on her knee, and it's hard to not interpret that as a meaningful moment of empathy. Who knows what he was experiencing? Maybe he was experiencing distress for all I know, but the more pleasant interpretation is that he wanted to extend comfort.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also contains adaptogens. I started taking AG1 way back in 2012, long before I even knew what a podcast was.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
I started taking it and I still take it every single day because it ensures that I meet my quota for daily vitamins and minerals and it helps make sure that I get enough prebiotics and probiotics to support my gut health.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Over the past 10 years, gut health has emerged as something that we realize is important not only for the health of our digestion, but also for our immune system and for the production of neurotransmitters and neuromodulators, things like dopamine and serotonin. In other words, gut health is critical for proper brain function.
Huberman Lab
What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Now, of course, I strive to eat healthy whole foods from unprocessed sources for the majority of my nutritional intake, but there are a number of things in AG1, including specific micronutrients, that are hard or impossible to get from whole foods.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
So by taking AG1 daily, I get the vitamins and minerals that I need, along with the probiotics and prebiotics for gut health, and in turn, brain and immune system health, and the adaptogens and critical micronutrients that are essential for all organs and tissues of the body.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
So anytime somebody asks me if they were to only take one supplement, what that supplement should be, I always say AG1, because AG1 supports so many different systems in the brain and body that relate to our mental health, physical health, and performance. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
For this month only, April 2025, AG1 is giving away a free one month supply of omega-3 fish oil, along with a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2. As I've highlighted before in this podcast, omega-3 fish oil and vitamin D3 plus K2 have been shown to help with everything from mood and brain health to heart health and healthy hormone production and much more.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to get the free one month supply of omega-3 fish oil plus a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2 with your subscription. Today's episode is also brought to us by Juve. Juve makes medical grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast, it is the incredible impact that light can have on our biology.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Now, in addition to sunlight, red light and near infrared light sources have been shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health, including faster muscle recovery, improved skin health and wound healing, improvements in acne, reduced pain and inflammation, even mitochondrial function and improving vision itself.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
What sets Juve Lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy device is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning specific wavelengths of red light and near infrared light in combination to trigger the optimal cellar adaptations. Personally, I use the Juve whole body panel about three to four times a week, and I use the Juve handheld light both at home and when I travel.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
If you'd like to try Juve, you can go to Juve, spelled J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman. Juve is offering an exclusive discount to all Huberman Lab listeners with up to $400 off Juve products. Again, that's Juve, spelled J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman to get up to $400 off. I've always been delighted and curious about the fact that
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
if two animals of the same species both receive food or a treat, it seems, I don't know, but it seems that they are paying attention to how much treat the other is getting. And as a sibling, I have an older sister who I get along very well with and always have. But when we were kids, I'll never forget if there was a treat like a milkshake or something.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
she would point out that she had slightly more than I did. If there was a slice of cake or something, it was as much as we would look at the slice of cake being served to us, we were looking to see how much the other one got. And this was a reflexive thing. And we're not competitive in any dimension, really.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
We've always respected each other's strengths and weaknesses in a way that's very complimentary. But when it comes to treats, Humans and dogs pay a lot of attention to who's getting what.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Yeah, I'm always interested in these studies that every few years – I didn't know that one, so thank you for sharing that – where there's something about resource allocation that's revealed. And then for every one of those, there will be a study that shows, for instance – I'm not going to get the details right here, but –
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
that crows will teach each other ways to open boxes so that another one can get food even if they don't have access to that food just it seems like an act of altruism so we'll see fairness we'll see altruism oh yes um a very different picture than this whole notion of dominance hierarchies in every member of a species is just trying to get the most that they possibly can
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
even at the expense of others. It's beautiful in a way, and we, again, have to be careful not to anthropomorphize, to not assume that members of a species are doing this because they're benevolent. I like that interpretation. But maybe, as you pointed out before, that having a happy group makes for more happiness for oneself.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Let's talk about a species that can be divisive. cats. My sister has cats and I don't mind them. I can't say I gravitate toward them, but I don't dislike them. You do own a cat and you're an animal ethologist. Tell us about cats from the perspective of an animal ethologist. When you look at a cat, What are you looking for to tell you something about whether or not it's a friendly cat?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
I mean, obviously, if its hair is standing up on its back and it's arching and it's hissing, that's obvious. But what are you looking at in the context of the way that cats evolved and their species in general?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
So it's not a gift. We can put that one to rest.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
I had a girlfriend in graduate school and her cat would catch these very large mice and put them in our shoes at night. It was dreadful.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Well, they were dead when we found them. So I'm assuming that the cat would put them in the shoes. The cat also loved to retrieve tinfoil balls, little tinfoil balls. I've never seen a cat retrieve. Yeah, yeah. I wasn't too enthusiastic about the cat. And then I developed a really close relationship with it. At least from my side, I thought it was a close relationship.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
And he would catch mice, put them in our shoes at night while we slept. Yeah. That's pretty unpleasant. You had to check your shoes in the morning. So those weren't gifts.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
I've seen that. Well, they'll play with them, right?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
What is this behavior of bumping where the cat bumps its head against you or your arm? Is it to spread smell?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
And when they're scent marking you, why are they scent marking you?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
So is scent marking about territory as well? Like if a cat... Oh, yeah.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Interesting. So if your cat is urinating inside, you now have an experiment to run. The use of a litter box is a pretty interesting one to me. It's not one I spent a lot of time thinking about. But if you sort of step back and say, okay, here's this animal that we've domesticated, and it readily learns how to cover its waste.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Interesting. Dogs, I know, are very smell-oriented. They experience the world differently. perhaps largely, but certainly quite a bit through their noses. They can sense odor and set a distance and certainly up close. They like to get their nose right into things and sniff, get deep sniffs. And they're always collecting information with their noses. there's a huge range of dog breeds.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
which is very different than a dog, which can be trained to withhold until you go out on a walk. That's basically the two different strategies there. And I don't know what it is if you own a monkey or something else, but what is it about the covering of waste behavior? Is that something in cats, is that a natural behavior they do in the wild? If they roam, why do they bother?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
And then sort of tacked to this is that with dogs, oftentimes after they eliminate waste, they'll step away from it and kick dirt in the general direction. And I've heard it interpreted two ways. One is that they're trying to spread scent, and the other is that they're trying to cover waste.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
so again uh this is why i was interested in talking to an animal ethologist as opposed to a pet behavioral trainer right i'm also interested in that but but i think we have to again acknowledge that much of the interpretation that we have about animals behavior is just human interpretation so certainly so what is this uh covering of waste do we know what it's for in the wild in cats
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Okay, so cat owners take note, separate the food from the litter box by some distance. I was always somewhat surprised, although less so over time, how much determination and effort my bulldog would put into peeing on things, on walks. I feel like it was one of his great joys in life. There I go again, anthropomorphizing. But to smell something... and then pee there.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
But as she points out, many of the things that people assume turn out to be false when it comes to our pets and their fundamental drives. She teaches us the very basic but powerful things that we can do to satisfy those drives, both for the animal's sake, of course, and to better our relationship with them.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
He seemed to have an endless supply of urine for this. It was really remarkable. As a scientist and someone who loves dogs and loved him more than words, I just was like, this is amazing. He loves this behavior.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
So there's some innate drive in dogs, it seems, to read the emotional and hormonal states of other dogs that have been – To me, it felt like their form of social media. Like, I'm going to post here. What are other people posting here?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
I mean, clearly there's some brain real estate devoted to this behavior. I'm not being facetious. I mean, I look at, you know, you get a human brain, 40% of that real estate is for vision. Another 40%, it's mixed in there with other stuff, is for motor behavior. Yeah.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
we have neural real estate for smelling and certainly for touch, but even if you're a massage therapist or you're a, or you do, you know, touch based work, you're, uh, even if you're a braille reader, um, the amount of neural real estate for these other things is vastly larger, except for the blind person where the visual stuff is taken over by the tactile stuff and auditory.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
So amount of real estate correlates. So when I see a behavior that's like, this is one of the main things dogs do. Yeah, it's pretty striking. So dogs descended from, they were domesticated from wolves, correctly. Did that happen at independent locations around the earth?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
And I think any discussion about dogs requires that we first kind of separate out some of the major differences, at least in terms of the purebred versions of them. When I see a mastiff versus a chihuahua versus like a scent hound, I'm looking at, to me, what appear to be very different animals. Is it true that certain dogs rely on their sense of smell far more than others?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Interesting. I don't know of any other species that does that, except maybe like certain fish or dolphins that follow fishing boats so they can get some of the catch. But that's different because... You know, I see these Instagram videos of like an otter jumping on a kayak and there's some interaction that's regular. You know, that the person goes out on their kayak, they interact with this otter.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
So animals will do this, but usually there's some sort of food. It just sounds like food payoff and safety is really the key. Does that mean that animals at a very basic level are looking to optimize food intake and safety? And what does that tell us about zoos? I personally have a pretty strong visceral reaction to zoos that have large carnivores.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
I realize we could have a discussion about elephants too, but I feel like large carnivores housed in zoos creates some issues for me. I won't go into what this is, but I'm also here that zoos have positive breeding programs, endangered species protection programs. What's your take on zoos?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
One of the things that really turned me on to just how – more sophisticated cat species are than I ever assumed was something that happened when I was a postdoc also at Stanford. I was a member of the San Francisco Zoo. The San Francisco Zoo is an outdoor zoo by comparison to most other zoos I've been to, and I haven't been to that many, but it's a pretty nice landscape. There's an outdoor lemur.
Huberman Lab
What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
I call it an exhibit, but an indoor-outdoor lemur thing that's really amazing. There's some giraffes, all this. Well, around the time I was in – when I was a postdoc, I'll just briefly tell this story. I was at the movies in San Francisco and I stepped out to get something to drink and the kid behind the counter said a tiger escaped from the San Francisco Zoo and is killing people. I thought,
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
And if so, do the ones that rely on their nose just not pay attention to what they're looking at unless you insist? I mean, the other version of this question is how should we interact with dogs differently depending on what breed of dog they are?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Like, that's crazy. It turns out that was only partially true. What had happened is there was a tiger there, Tatiana, who – they used to have these moats around the tiger enclosure. And it was very close to Christmas. People can look this up and get the details. And there were a couple of kids who were throwing either pine cones or throwing something at the tigers. Okay?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
The zoo was near shutting down. Tatiana – either ran up or jumped the moat, I don't know how she did it, got out and moved through the crowd. This is, to me, the interesting part. Moved through the crowd, completely ignoring most of the people that were around, centered in on and killed one of the kids. Then moved to the second kid, worked him pretty well.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
The authorities showed up, killed Tatiana. This opened up a whole discussion in the zoo community, raised a lot of complicated questions about enclosures, et cetera. The enclosures there, by the way, now are very different. They have these high glass as well. And of course, the ending was sad for everybody. I took a break from my membership there. I reactivated it a few years later.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
That tiger obviously is gone. I still am conflicted about this whole picture. What's interesting to me is the intentionality of the tiger. So this was not a bloodthirsty tiger that just wanted to kill humans or eat humans. It was those two humans that pissed her off, and those two humans were going to pay, and they paid. The family sued the zoo, and then it was a whole thing.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
I don't know how it ended up with the lawsuit, but it was a whole thing. Some people can look this up online. When you hear that, that a tiger did that, as opposed to just going into a frenzy the way humans sometimes go into a frenzy, attacking whoever and as many people as possible, what do you think? What does it tell us about tigers and their consciousness?
Huberman Lab
What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Does it surprise you how directed it was? No. As opposed to just – I mean there were plenty of people around that were an easier kill.
Huberman Lab
What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
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Huberman Lab
What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
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Huberman Lab
What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
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Huberman Lab
What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
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Huberman Lab
What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
And I should say, by taking a second function test, That approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by function simplicity and at the level of cost.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
It is very affordable. As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners.
Huberman Lab
What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. Can we talk a little bit about the Prey? and stalking and capture and killing sequence.
Huberman Lab
What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
One of the things that I've always been fascinated by is when a, let's just use a cat as an example, could be large cat, could be small cat, is in its stalking mode that it essentially gets one ballistic strike opportunity before the chase is on or the animal gets away or it gets caught, right? And we'll see the...
Huberman Lab
What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
We had a cat when I was a kid that would like stalk and, you know, so obviously like creep up and then right before it would leap at the prey, it would, It would start shattering its teeth. I'm assuming that was behavioral suppression or something leaking through.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
What's going on when an animal does that very deliberate stalking, that calculation, and the teeth chatters or twitching is starting to occur? What is that?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
So it's almost like a hydraulic pressure or something.
Huberman Lab
What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Interesting. Interesting. We've talked about dogs. We've talked about cats. Let's talk about birds.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
I had parrots when I was a kid. They were domestically bred little gray-cheeked dwarf parrots. It didn't turn out poorly. It didn't turn out great. I didn't clip their wings because I couldn't bring myself to, and they flew around my room a lot and shitted around the room a lot and threw a lot of food on the ground a lot and eventually made sense to give them to somebody who had an aviary.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
What are parrots thinking about?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Is that really like 90% of their conscious life?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
I mean, they destroyed, I mean, they took great pleasure in ripping everything. Books, books, covers. Yeah.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Yeah, I don't recommend anyone own parrots, frankly. That was an experiment gone wrong. Luckily, I think they're still alive. They live a very long time. And people can look up the Ecuadorian gray-cheeked dwarf parrots. They have this beautiful orange under their wings. They have little gray cheeks. And they were called pocket parrots.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
The excitement for me at that, I was young, I was probably 11, was that I'd be able to carry them around in my pocket. They didn't want to do that at all. Yeah. Anyway, it's interesting to think about this need for animals to express their natural repertoire of behaviors. For dog owners, I think the common practice is to put out a bowl of food.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Would we be better off bringing the food to a park and going to the park and then having them eat there or somehow incorporating the roaming and prey-seeking behavior? I mean, how would one incorporate that into a more – pleasant experience for the dog? Because what you're saying makes total sense. They need to express these behaviors.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
If they can't, it's going to come out some other way and maybe destructive to them or the environment.
Huberman Lab
What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Poodles like to kill and – the post-kill ripping apart.
Huberman Lab
What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Gosh, the name and the look of a poodle suggests a much more docile animal. So they really like to rip bodies apart.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
That makes sense given what I understand about the dosing of different animals.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Really, he wouldn't chew his food. Yeah, it's interesting. The dog food training animal health world sells lots of things where you can put food inside of an object where they have to really work hard at it. I had mixed results with that because I have heard that in addition to exercise and wanting your proximity that animals, dogs in particular perhaps,
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
need that cognitive work that they, they get bored and they really need the challenge of, of working their mind so much so that on rainy days, when you like, if weather's really bad and you can't go out that they need an immense amount of kind of like search and forage type behavior. So I would, I, I strive to do that. Um, And I know some people might hear this and just think this is crazy.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Like my dog just wants to curl up at my feet and it just wants to fetch the ball. But that's for fetching breeds. If I threw a ball to Costello, he would go to it and then just sit on top of it. He had no interest whatsoever in doing anything with that in terms of retrieving it. But he –
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
love to just love to tug so just you know if i tied a a rope to a tree for instance he would jump on on there and hold on and i could swing him by his body way to you know 90 pounds yeah and he'd stay up there for 10 minutes yeah like the the pleasure of chewing was clearly the strongest innate drive so i think what i'm realizing is that understanding the sequence of natural behaviors but also where in that sequence a particular breed really leans to absolutely yeah yeah
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Bulldogs, Rottweilers, Mastiffs. And some of the smaller ones, the Pugs, the French Bulldogs. I think people don't appreciate how the breeding down because people now, you know, a lot of people have dogs who live in apartments, you know, smaller dogs. Although there's this weird thing, you know, you talk to a vet of a family member who's a vet. You say, what's a great like apartment dog?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
And they'll say Great Dane because they don't need a ton of
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
We also discuss the unique neurological and physiological requirements of different dog breeds. That's a fascinating conversation that stems from their lineage from wolves. And we'll tell you whether or not your particular breed, even if it's a mutt, should be exercised in a particular way, whether or not it needs additional forms of stimulation that you're not currently giving it and so on.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
I think I've always been fascinated by, and there's a little bit of data starting to emerge on this as to what the mechanisms might be, is self versus other species recognition. Most notably that Dogs, unless it's a dominance behavior, don't try to mate with cats, for instance. They might hump, but that's a separate thing. They're actually separate circuits.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
A colleague, David Anderson at Caltech, did a really beautiful study. The takeaway shows that there are separate circuits in the brain for mounting behavior for sex versus mounting behavior for dominance. Oh, interesting. And the mounting behavior for dominance circuits exist in males and females of a species where only the male mounts for purposes of reproduction.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
So this notion of mounting as a dominance behavior is a very real thing even in mice.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
In any case, setting mounting for dominance behavior aside, aka humping, it's remarkable. Like a horse doesn't try and mate with a dog. Different species of animals seem to know self versus other. They don't have to learn it from their mom or dad or us. It's innate. It's innate. Yeah.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
It's so interesting. As a kid who had aquaria, you can tell I've had a lot of different animals. I never successfully bred fish in captivity. I tried to breed cuttlefish in captivity in my lab. That didn't work, although I successfully raised them. But I got really into freshwater discus for a while. Okay.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
tried very hard to get a breeding tank going it's very difficult um but occasionally you know someone in the aquarium community that i was a part of would succeed in getting you know breeding between discus fish but you never ever ever see an instance of like a discus fish trying to uh fertilize the eggs of a uh of a different species of fish they just know yeah
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
And it's got to be for them odorant or presumably mixed sensory. It's really a striking aspect of even in – I have friends who study flies. So if they study Drosophila of one particular type, the one type of fruit fly will not try to mate with another type of fruit fly.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
And they look very similar to you and me.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Disgusting. People can offset their disgust by... We'll provide a link to the now very famous picture of Conrad Lorenz, who won the Nobel Prize, I believe, for... His discoveries about imprinting where the geese would imprint on him. It's him swimming in a lake with the trail of baby geese behind him, the goslings behind him.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
That's going to open up a whole set of ideas for people because this whole notion of secure, insecure, and then the D-babies in the classic Bowlby experiments that we've talked about before on this podcast where this kind of disorganized response is something that is thrown around a lot nowadays in dating culture, relationship, pop psychology culture like our people. Yeah.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Is he or she securely attached? Is he or she avoidant? Is he or she anxious attached? Guess what, folks? It's also in your pets. So now you can start to get into that. In those classic experiments of Bowlby, just to summarize very briefly, mother and it was typically mother, although other caretakers now have been tested, but mother and child are separated.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
There's a predictable, understandable, and healthy anxiety response that occurs. If the conditions are right, the kid eventually comes to play and relax a bit. If the conditions aren't right, they don't. That's all healthy. But the real test is on reunion with mom. Yeah.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Right. The strange situation test. Do they feel comforted and how do they approach mom when mom comes back? Is it eager to see and relax? Is it uncertain? Is it avoidant? That's what this test is about.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
People, I'm assuming, were anticipating you to say the pit bulls or the Dobermans. But anyone that's owned a terrier will know that they are great ratting dogs.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
So this is great. So if people drop off their dog at the dog sitter when they travel and then come back, the reunion tells you a lot about how that dog feels.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
In this country, the typical idea is that puppies can be separated from their mother at about eight weeks. Do you feel that's too early?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Anyone who's seen a Westie, those cute little West Highland Terriers, the little white ones, they're real cute. If one of those hears or senses a rodent in the wall, I've seen one stalk one for several days. It will move along. We used to call it rat TV. The Westie will sense when and where the rodent is there with an absolute fixation.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
I love this notion because We can't prepare humans, including ourselves, or animals for every circumstance, but we can train up neural circuits. I'm a neurobiologist after all. And so I like to think of this more as opposed to preparing for events, you prepare for processes. So, you know, much has been said on this podcast and others about like deliberate cold exposure.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
You know, why take a cold shower? It's not about the specific benefits of the cold shower. It teaches you how to navigate having high adrenaline in your body, which is the universal generic response to stress. So you can export self-regulation from one situation to the other. Yeah. what you're describing is a much more important life stage example than deliberate cold exposure.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
It's about, as you said, being able to navigate attachments that are there, then gone, then there again. This is one of my major concerns. We don't want to go off on a tangent too far here, but since humans are animals, as you pointed out, about texting, you know, oftentimes texting can be a wonderful tool. It also can be a way that people don't learn to ever deal with, to self-regulate.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
You see this as the plane lands or the plane's taking off. People, you know, frantically texting, which can be about, hey, my plane just arrived. It can also be about an inability to just deal with the real life uncertainty that you're not in charge up there, the pilots and the weather conditions are. So in any case, I have a probably controversial question.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
But we've opened up some Pandora's boxes, so why not? I opted to neuter my dog. I did that when he was about six months old. I did that honestly, reluctantly. People say, well, you know, men with their dogs and they don't want to neuter their dogs and it's for these, you know, whatever, Y chromosome related reasons or something, perhaps it is.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
But really the reason I was reluctant was A, I thought I might want to breed Costello at some point. The other is I spent two years of my life studying and researching and eventually publishing papers on the effects of early androgens and I had a minor role in that study, but effects of early androgens on brain development.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
And you don't have to spend long in that field of hormones and development to know that hormones, testosterone and estrogen have a powerful, powerful organizing effect on the brain of males and females. Yeah.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Right. And then there's the surge of hormone that comes. So, right, it happens in utero. And then those are the organizing effects. And then there are the activating effects, as you're pointing out, of hormones that then during puberty. the ovaries in females or the testes in males, produce hormones that then act on this kind of template that was laid down.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
And so I knew that whatever testosterone, estrogen, et cetera, Costello had seen in utero, he'd seen. And that by removing his testicles, let's be honest what neutering is, all the men are cringing and the women are like, okay, got it. But if I said remove ovaries, they might have a different response. So by removing his testes, that... he would not experience the activating effects of hormones.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
And if there's any way to get into that wall and kill that rodent, it's coming out with that rodent in its mouth. It's remarkable. The amount of dedication is just striking. And it's all about killing that rat.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Okay. To make a long story short, it seemed he had a great life. He was a wonderful dog. When he got to be about nine years old, he had a lot of joint aching and pain. He had some extensive nail growth that was really, really fast. Some things were odd. I opted to do an experiment and I started injecting him with 50 milligrams of testosterone per week.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
The response was incredible. His vigor returned. His joint pain, at least in terms of his willingness to go down the stairs quickly, to stand up quickly, incredible. He got two more years of what I thought was a great life. I hope it was. And what's interesting is that when I talked about this publicly on a few other podcasts, I injected my bulldog with testosterone after neutering him.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
I thought I was going to get a tsunami of criticism from the veterinary community. Instead, I received hundreds of emails saying, thank you. we actually actively discourage people from neutering their animals unless they're in a circumstance where that dog can get out and mate because we don't need more strays. And there are a number of health, positive health benefits to keeping hormones intact.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
And I'm going to start doing what you did with some of my patient dogs. Not one vet – mind you, I have no training as a vet. Not one vet said, hey, you were out of line doing that. You shouldn't have been doing that. And I'll tell you, if I get another dog and it's a male dog, I'll be very careful to not let him out and I'll be very careful with the training so he's not excessively aggressive.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
But I'm not going to neuter him. And I know this is going to activate some people, but – I'd love your thoughts on neutering in male and female dogs in particular, given everything that you and I know about hormones and what we just talked about.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Yeah, why don't we just give them vasectomies?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Tie the tubes. Yeah, tie the tubes. Whatever it is.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Okay, so to me, it's very interesting that in Norway, dogs are not allowed to be fixed except for medical reasons. In Australia, they have to be, at least in Western Australia. So this idea of keeping dogs intact, so to speak, is not such a heretical one. But I think in the United States, a lot of this is still getting worked out.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
And I think the statistics say that the number of people with pets in the home now in the United States is like almost every home.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Certainly, there are a lot of dogs in shelters now. During the pandemic, people were adopting them like crazy. So it was actually hard to get dogs and cats during that time. I don't know what the state of things is now. Someone can put that in the comments. I really have one last category of questions, but it's a...
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
It's one that you've sort of touched on from various sides throughout today's conversation. And that relates to humans as animals. You know, I don't think one can be an animal ethologist or a neurobiologist for that matter. who, you know, reads papers and does studies on other animals, without at some point stepping back and making this realization, like, we're old world primates.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
We're the best at technology development, you know, among all the species. I mean, I don't think that's too much of a leap. Yeah. We're certainly not as good at natural camouflage, catching and killing things with our hands. We need tools to do this. So we have our strengths. We have our limitations with respect to the other species.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Is there anything in your training as an animal ethologist that causes you to reflect on human beings as particularly – I don't know, spectacular and particularly deficient in some way, like, or just any kind of musings about the human species, because that's a species we haven't talked about today.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
But I think a lot of what you're describing in terms of the breakdown of these sequence of behaviors, what makes us feel safe, you know, one can't help but wonder, like, what are some aspects of ourselves that perhaps if we thought about a little bit more deeply, we could really benefit from?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
That's a great one, frankly, this idea that, you know, in addition to our ability to build sophisticated tools, that our ability to stamp down knowledge.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
I appreciate you reminding us of that, that this is all a dynamic process. We can only do so much with this piece of meat in our skulls in terms of trying to decipher the world around us. But I do think that this idea of this insight that we're unique in our ability to learn from things long ago has stamped down things now that people could potentially learn
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
from not just in the present but in the future is incredible and in many ways appropriate for where we're at now, which is you sitting here educating us about the different species. And I want to... I really want to extend my gratitude for the work that you do is very unique.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
People by now will realize that you're animal ethologists, but you pay attention to real world experiments run in a diverse range of settings. And it's clear that you have great care for the animals. All the species on the planet and how they interact.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
You've also offered us some wonderful tools of how to improve the lives of our cats, our dogs, and to really hopefully make people somewhat of ethologists of themselves and of their interactions with animals. I think that's, for me, one of the biggest takeaways today is to really...
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
People listening to this and watching this should really reflect not just on does the dog like to be pet here or there, but how is it that a certain behavior is showing up in an animal? What does that reflect because of its natural lineage and our own and to really think about those relationships and trying to improve them?
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
So you've given us tremendous knowledge for its own sake, practical knowledge. And again, there's just so much care woven into everything you do that you've shared. So thank you for traveling such a long way to share with us.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Carolina Westland. To learn more about her work and to find links to the various resources discussed during today's episode, please see the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
In addition, please follow the podcast by clicking the follow button on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. And you can now leave us comments at both Spotify and Apple. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. And if you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Huberman Lab
What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the information on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, it's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as what we call protocols in the form of one to three page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure,
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
And because we both realize there are also cat owners out there, too, we discuss the often misunderstood communication signals and social needs of cats. As you may know, there is a tremendous amount of debate out there about the best training and practices for taking care of our dogs and other animals.
Huberman Lab
What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Carolina Westland. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Our Place. Our Place makes my favorite pots, pans, and other cookware. Surprisingly, toxic compounds such as PFASs or forever chemicals are still found in 80% of nonstick pans, as well as utensils, appliances, and countless other kitchen products.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
As I've discussed before in this podcast, these PFAS or forever chemicals like Teflon have been linked to major health issues such as hormone disruption, gut microbiome disruption, fertility issues and many other health problems. So it's really important to try and avoid them. This is why I'm a huge fan of our place.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
I cook eggs in my Titanium Always Pan Pro almost every morning. The design allows for the eggs to cook perfectly without sticking to the pan. I also cook burgers and steaks in it, and it puts a really nice sear on the meat. But again, nothing sticks to it, so it's really easy to clean and it's even dishwasher safe. I love it and I basically use it constantly.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
With 100-day risk-free trial, free shipping, and free returns, you can try Our Place with zero risk and see why more than 1 million people have made the switch to Our Place kitchenware. Again, that's from ourplace.com slash Huberman to get up to 30% off. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each and every night. Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop about one to three degrees.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees. Eight Sleep automatically regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your unique needs.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
And so much of that is grounded in speculation and training outcomes, which of course are important. The conversation today with Dr. Westland approaches animal health and welfare through the lens of ethology and the species that our pets evolved from to provide actionable protocols that are grounded in science and that you can implement right away to improve your pet's wellbeing.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Now, I find that extremely useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night, and warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow-wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
And I know that because Eight Sleep has a great sleep tracker that tells me how well I've slept and the types of sleep that I'm getting throughout the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Their latest model, the Pod 4 Ultra, also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees in order to improve your airflow and stop you from snoring. If you decide to try Eight Sleep, you have 30 days to try it at home, and you can return it if you don't like it. No questions asked. but I'm sure that you'll love it.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Go to 8sleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra. 8sleep ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and the UAE. Again, that's 8sleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra. That's a beautiful and to me completely novel description of the breakdown of different breeds.
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What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund
Not according to the dosing of wolf versus mastiff genes, which is what some of the more reductionist research papers on this really do. They have these charts. We'll provide a link to one that was published in Science Magazine about 10 years back that had this sort of dosing of mastiff genes versus wolf genes. And
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Josh Waitzkin. Josh Waitzkin is a former child prodigy who began playing the game of chess at six years old. And by the time he was 16 years old,
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
So he's an awesome... I've been connected to him through Martha back, the previous guest on this podcast. And she spent... They're good friends. They've spent a lot of time in Londolozi together. And I'd love to get Boyd Vardy on here.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
You've got a process that seems to work very well, at least up until this point. There's no reason to think it wouldn't work well, especially given that you said not exactly, leaving that openness to changes in our biology, life events in and for people around us.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Our Place products are made with the highest quality materials and are all PFAS and toxin-free. They're beautifully designed and function extremely well. As I mentioned, I love the Titanium Always Pan Pro from Our Place. I cook eggs in it most mornings, and the titanium pan is designed in a way that allows the eggs to cook perfectly without sticking to the pan.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
I also cook burgers on it, and it really puts a nice sear on the burger without the meat sticking to the pan. It's extremely easy to clean, and like all Our Place products, it's nice to look at when sitting out on the counter or stove.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
You know, this concept of energy is a complicated one and there's no clear definition anyway. But when I think about energy, I don't think about caloric energy. I think of neural energy. And I think about certain neural circuits like that. Like if you, like I love the feeling of excitement and tension that then is funneled into a specific activity that then yields some new vista repeat.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
You know, it's just, that's science and that's learning. The day I realized that I'll never, you know, saturate all the knowledge that I could gather, organize and disseminate through the podcast. I was like, F yes. Like, that's just great because there's, but I realize also that thing, we can saturate ourselves internally. We can drive ourselves to the point of no replenishment.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
We can, you know, get so narrow focus. That's why I think so much about aperture in time and space. We can get so narrow focus that we, we end up, you know, like a, like a gopher that, you know, dug our way into a desert. And then we're like, or you're just far from your family or far from home, you know, because you just dig, dig, dig, dig, dig.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
So, you know, I think, what is it, you know, like eagle vision, you know? I think that the diving birds are probably the ultimate in terms of having panoramic vision. Do you know this?
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
They have a horizon viewing density of cells so they can view the horizon and they have a pupil to view the fish so that they can dive and grab the fish despite the refraction of light under the water because the fish isn't actually where they see it. So when people say eagle vision versus, you know, like... you know, like predator vision up close or something.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Yeah, so they're flying and they're tracking the horizon And they're also tracking things right below them simultaneously. That to me is the ultimate state to try and achieve in terms of space and time tracking. That's a beautiful metaphor. And they have to also adjust for, right, the refractory.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Yeah. Diving seabirds are the ones that really just... I'm going to do it. They're the ultimate.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Okay, great. Yeah, I can send you some literature there. I'd love it. The time unit of a day is what most people can manage in their minds. Maybe you could return to this cycle of conscious focus, stimulus response and getting out of that. I love the example of going to take a piss because everyone does it. I do think too many people do it holding a phone. Yeah.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Can't be good for a number of reasons. Maybe just walk us through that. So do you think it's – let me ask a series of short questions. So when I wake up in the morning, for instance, like many people, I'm not – I don't feel immediately alert. I don't feel like I could just dive into writing if writing is the most important thing I need to do that day or – I have some transition time.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Do you think that people should embrace natural transition times on the time scale of a day or that they should train themselves to like, you know, bounce into effort, like go with the flow or, or force oneself through, through the door?
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
We'll put a link to it. Such a good book. So good. I'm so glad that Tim Ferriss, as who we're referring to, collected all these habits of different writers. And like, some of them are so quirky and crazy, and some are downright dangerous.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Some are out partying all night, drugs, alcohol, caffeine. Others are super regimented and monk-like. It's the range of daily architectures is so vast.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Yeah, thank you. We'll definitely revisit certain time points and themes there. I can imagine as a young boy playing chess, you have your own strategies, you're developing an understanding of what works for you, but of course you, as a young kid, are also getting into the mind of the other player.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
In fact, throughout today's episode, I promise that you will constantly be reflecting on where you experience things like tension and fear, both in your personal life, your professional life, your educational life, whatever it is that you're trying to learn and pursue in life. Today's conversation, thanks to Josh, will allow you to look at that, understand it better,
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
You actually described that your coach or coaches were encouraging you to get into a different mindset, one that was not your default or trained up mindset, less focused on chaos and aggression and more in this this other mode of playing by thinking about these other types of chess players and ways to play chess.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
this difference between physical endeavors and cognitive endeavors, I think is so key. Nowadays, most people are involved in cognitive endeavors and there's so much, it's basically like being in a glass house with windows everywhere. I mean, social media, texting, windows, internet connection on the computer. There's just so many points of entry and where one can become distracted.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Whereas if you paddle out to ocean, you know, sure you could bring your phone perhaps, but you're limited by the environment and the need for safety of the number of things that you can think about.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
I'm learning to turn stuff off while I work. Um, I mean, I have had to learn to just fight things back because when I started in science, I mean, I didn't have a smartphone or I didn't any of that. And, um, yet one really has to fight nowadays for their freedom from these interruptions. So it's something that people really have to cultivate.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And so in terms of the structure of that day, you pose a question for the day, like the most important question, would it be like, let's say, like I'm working on a revision of this book. that I delayed release on because I wanted to add a bunch of things to it. So would one say the most important question is how do I finish this book today or is there – I'm guessing it's more conceptual than that.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And that's usually where people, including myself, pivot away. I'm thinking outside of the work domain now. Like, like, ah, like I don't want to think about, like it's when we tend to, I noticed that there's an infinite amount of distraction available nowadays, right? if we want it.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
So I can imagine that most kids are not weaned, their brain isn't developing around a game, right? It seems that your brain was built, the developmental neuroplasticity that's so robust in early childhood was built around this game that we call chess. And it seems to me that you were encouraged to develop a theory of mind that wasn't just your own, which is itself, I think is really unique, right?
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And, you know, audio books and podcasts, and I think podcasts are wonderful, but, you know, they can be a source of distraction from the critical question we need to be asking, or they can be a source of answers for perhaps the critical questions we're asking. But there's just so many of these opportunities to just look away from something that is like a – it's like a emotional infection.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
It's different than an infection in your skin that's nagging because you can feel it there and you want to get that thing out, right? Very primal instinct, like get that thing out, get the infection out. This is like an emotional infection that you can just kind of not see if you choose to turn away. But those are the things that really get you over time.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
First thing in the morning is when I get my insights or understanding or when the truth hits me square in the face. Like there's no avoiding. I wake up, I think about like, okay, that's the thing I got to deal with. And I tend to write it down right away. Try not to write it down on my phone. I think having a point of capture that doesn't offer any other distractions.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
That's why I'm a big believer in pen and paper.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Yeah, it's all stimulus response. You're going into stimulus. If people can start to think about being reflective versus in stimulus response, I think that's sort of like the widest binning of all this. I have to say the shower. I've talked about this thing about why people have insights in the shower with my friend. I'd love to introduce you to him at some point.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
We've been friends since we were seven years old. My friend, Dr. Eddie Chang, he's a neurosurgeon and the chair of neurosurgery at UCSF. And he studies speech and language. And he's taken people with locked-in syndrome and developed AI algorithms so that they can speak through a screen with their face moving in real time by decoding human speech or human speech cortex.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And a truly brilliant individual. He's been on this podcast. He'll come back again. Ask him about the shower thing because he used to work on neuroplasticity of the auditory system. We think, we wonder if it's the kind of white noise of the shower as well. Yeah.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Because Eddie's done beautiful work showing that it's the signal to noise in the auditory system that defines whether or not a certain pattern of speech or auditory cue gets remembered. So when you have this in the background, let's just put this in the terms that we've been referring to this up until now, the thoughts that surface above that noise have a big sharp peak relative to the background.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
So it's the signal to noise. Whereas certainly the opposite would be when you're on your phone and you're scrolling through and you're looking at all the thoughts and feelings and stuff of other people. So how do you capture your own thoughts in terms of which are and filter them through what's meaningful and what's not meaningful? is I think actually a really important question to begin with.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And white noise background with very deprived visual stimulation, most showers aren't that interesting. It's white noise, blank walls, a few things that are familiar to you, so they basically disappear from your visual field. And the idea is that thoughts then can that are constantly geysering up through your unconscious mind can be captured because everything else is noise.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Perhaps, this is a hypothesis. And maybe I'll put you and Eddie together sometime and just be an observer. That's powerful. So, I mean, that's how we learn language. It's the error signals against the background noise. This is how you fix stutter. You create background noise. You increase noise, which actually elevates signal in the auditory system, oddly, in any case.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
I mean, most six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 12 year olds might be told, hey, listen, you know, the reason they were mean to you at school is like, they just hate themselves. Or, you know, they just didn't think about whether or not to pick you, you know, first or last for the game or whatever it is, right? You know, that you get told to do that.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
So you found that four and a half hours... was the sweet spot of a focused work. But for some people, it might be an hour. They might need to train up that level of focus.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
But for you, it became a, it seems an intense practice of trying to learn to get into the mind of another while holding onto your own sense of what's you versus them. And so as a developmental neurobiologist, I understand this is like perhaps one of the most important events in the development of our brain. Seems that your brain was built up around that dynamic.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Living one's life like a work of art.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Let's do it. Well, clearly you are. I'm in the fight, man. You're in the fight and you're setting an incredible example. and you have your entire life, which is remarkable and so deeply appreciated.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
I have to say, and now I will reveal this, that when I started this podcast, I had a short list of people that would be kind of like pinch me guests, not because I want the guests to pinch me, but like, wow, like I can't believe I'm sitting down with blank. And you were on that list. I've read the art of learning. I've, you know, I watched and read everything I could about your, your work.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And, um, I did see that the search for Bobby Fisher with the understanding that that's accurate about certain things and probably inaccurate about others. So if people choose to watch that, they should keep that in mind. It is Hollywood. Yep. Um, more importantly, um, we've had this chance to sit down and do this. And I have to say, I, uh,
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
I gained so much from your incredible precision, but also scope of observation in the world. Because I'm not a basketball player, I don't know how to play chess. and yet I've learned so much from you and your writings and your teachings, and just the chance to sit down here and to learn from you. I know I'm speaking on behalf of myself and literally millions of people.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
I just want to say thank you for living your life like a work of art and for incorporating public education, which is what we're doing here, into this set of pursuits that you've been after, one after the other, but that are bound by this set of core themes. So without getting too abstract, I just want to say thank you so much for coming here, for educating us, for making us think.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
I know it's going to change people's thoughts and behavior for the better. And the only question left is to say, would you please come back and talk to us again more?
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Thank you. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Josh Waitzkin. To learn more about Josh's work and to find a link to his book, The Art of Learning, which by the way, I highly recommend, please see the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Please also click follow for the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or topics or guests that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. And if you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And so now you coach peak performers and so much of coaching and teaching Being a parent is to get into the mind of another. The difference is when you're a parent, you can think back to being a child and at least get some general sense of what that's like.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
So that's Instagram X, formerly known as Twitter, Facebook, Threads and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes everything from podcast summaries to what we call protocols in the form of brief one to three page PDFs that cover things like how to optimize your sleep, how to regulate your dopamine. We also have protocols related to deliberate.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Cold exposure, get a lot of questions about that. Deliberate heat exposure and on and on. Again, all available at completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter and enter your email. And I should mention that we do not share your email with anybody.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Josh Waitzkin. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Stepping back from what I just said, and I realize that there's a lot of words there, but do you think that what you're doing when you approach a practice – like Tai Chi or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu or science or math or music from the perspective of a performer or a teacher is that you're getting into the mind of someone else
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
you're getting it, you're trying to, or you're trying to stay in your own mindset. I'm sorry I'm not being more succinct with this, but I think that, you know, as humans, we do this. Like I'm sure our dogs look up at us and say, oh, like they're happy with me or they're sad with me, but they're, you know, the algorithms they're running are more simplistic.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
I mean, we as the most sophisticated old world primates do this so spectacularly well. And it seems that much of your career and your life has been built around these kinds of dynamics.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
So put simply, what is your mindset when you approach a practice that's just you in the practice versus your mindset when you approach a practice when it's you and another, a competitor, versus when you're trying to teach something, you and a bunch of different minds, but there's a common goal? Okay, so there's really three big questions wrapped in there.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
and know where to apply work, when to relax, when to push forward, and in effect, how to become a better learner, both of yourself and whatever it is that you happen to be pursuing in life. We have a saying in science, which is that sometimes you encounter somebody who is truly N of one, meaning a sample size of one in a category all by themselves. Josh Waitzkin is truly an N of one.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
15 really big questions. And my audience gets upset at the length of these questions. But I think for me, it's important to just kind of set this out there as a buffet from which you can select anything or discard anything that you like.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
So you're trying to unpack his strategy. Always. And you're assuming that he has or she has a strategy.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
That's a lot of plates to spin. And I guess what I said before, not so clearly, is that for a young mind to be able to learn to spin all those plates is incredible. It's clearly possible, it's unique, but it's possible you did that. But it takes a young mind or an adult mind out of its own unique experience.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
So this is eventually how we'll circle back to pre-consciousness versus post-consciousness. But in the meantime, when was it that you first recall thinking not, oh, I'm going to beat this guy, but sensing, you know, he's getting nervous or he's confident, or he can sense that I'm nervous, or I'm going to set a trap and just, you know, feeling out, you know, whether or not they detect the trap.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
I know of no other person like him or even close to him in terms of his ability to live a unique life path and to take what he learns and to put it out into the world so that others may benefit. He lives with a tremendous amount of intentionality for the people he loves, for the things he loves, and with the intention of helping others learn how to learn better.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
This is the opposite of Asperger's or autism, by the way, what you're describing is a hypertrophy set of circuits for theory of mind in a very young kid. So to be able to understand what's happening around you, and I think for many people, the joys of childhood are really about not being aware of what's going on around you. The psychologist would refer to, this is like a lack of impingement.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Impingement is when like a kid is playing and they're really enjoying something and then suddenly they decide they don't want to play anymore and the parent doesn't want to be bothered. So they say, no, no, no, no, like keep playing. You know, they're like impinging on the kid's reflexive desire to do something or not do something. This isn't about keeping them safe.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
This is in the domain of safety. But at least within the channel of chess, it seems that you developed your entire understanding of the psychology of human beings, except for, of course, you had an experience at home of family and friends. But chess certainly cut a wide trough through your development.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
I must say it was a true honor to sit down with Josh. I've been a huge fan of his work for a very long time. you'll also learn that he's a really nice person. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
What do you think it is about failure or missing the mark in some way that catalyzes change. I mean, I always say that, you know, your brain has no reason to change if you're just in trying to learn something and you're in flow, you're getting, you know, most people associate being quote unquote in flow with getting everything correct, doing everything correctly.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Um, I don't think that was the original definition that Cheeks and I intended, but, um,
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, this podcast episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Josh Waitzkin. Josh Waitzkin, welcome. Thank you, man. Great to be here.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
the neuroscience of brain plasticity tells us that it's only under conditions in which there's some mismatch between what you're trying to do, like even, you know, like this has been studied in terms of reaching for an object and there's a mirror displacement or a prism displacement or something, you eventually can learn to error correct because the cup is actually over there as opposed to where you see it.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
But it is the deployment of these chemicals inside of us, adrenaline and noradrenaline and dopamine, in particular, those three, they're cousins, the catecholamines that tells the, at a neurochemical level, tells the synapses, wait, something needs to change.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
I mean, the brain doesn't have any reason to change unless there's frustration, agitation, or at least some neurochemical change associated with those things that we call frustration and agitation. So do you think these big, what feel like cataclysmic fails set a sort of window of plasticity in which we can change? I often didn't think that.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
That it's only through like the devastation of a huge loss that the brain is now set up for a bunch of new learning. Certainly we wouldn't want to design the system that way, but as I always joke, you know, I wasn't consulted the design phase and you weren't either. We just had to work with what's there. Like big failure. Why do you think that sets a wave front of change?
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Yeah, maybe we should talk about that.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
You said, I'm not a scientist, but I'm looking forward to tomorrow. And I said, trust me, you're a scientist. Yeah. I do science through the lens of a certain understanding of mechanism and structure function and some processes. And you do science through the lens of experience and drawing core concepts.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
parallels and principles in different domains and at different levels of from unskilled all the way up to virtuosity. That's kind of how I see it.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
I feel like I've known you a long time because I saw the search for Bobby Fischer and I learned about the real human that was about you. And I read The Art of Learning and I must say I'm a fan and somewhat obsessed with the uniqueness of your arc and the choices you've made and your understanding of learning as a process and its universal properties, its specific properties in different contexts.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
So I'm excited to dive in. I think for people that perhaps are not familiar with you, maybe you could just give us a broad overview of your backstory, like the things that you've really focused on in kind of chunks, if you will, just for a couple of minutes so that people can get familiar with the incredible things you've done.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
had become a national champion many times over as well as an international champion in fact he achieved the level of international master which is one of the highest levels of achievement in the game of chess for anyone of any age his early life achievements were the topic and focus of the book and movie searching for bobby fisher he then quit playing the game of chess and moved on to martial arts the study of philosophy at columbia university new york
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And I think that reflects the uniqueness of your choice-making process, which then we'll get into.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Oh, my God, and love. Yeah. I mean, breakups are devastating. They're a death of sorts. Yeah. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. AG1 is designed to cover all of your foundational nutritional needs, and it tastes great.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Now, I've been drinking AG1 since 2012, and I started doing that at a time when my budget for supplements was really limited. In fact, I only had enough money back then to purchase one supplement, and I'm so glad that I made that supplement AG1.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
The reason for that is even though I strive to eat most of my foods from whole foods and minimally processed foods, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits, vegetables, vitamins, and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone. And I need to do that in order to ensure that I have enough energy throughout the day, I sleep well at night, and keep my immune system strong.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
But when I take AG1 daily, I find that all aspects of my health, my physical health, my mental health, and my performance, both cognitive and physical, are better. I know that because I've had lapses when I didn't take AG1 and I certainly felt the difference.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
I also notice, and this makes perfect sense given the relationship between the gut microbiome and the brain, that when I regularly take AG1, which for me means a serving in the morning or mid-morning and again later in the afternoon or evening, that I have more mental clarity and more mental energy. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
For this month only, January 2025, AG1 is giving away 10 free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3 K2. Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim the 10 free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3 K2. Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim the 10 free travel packs and a year supply of vitamin D3 K2. Today's episode is also brought to us by Juve.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Juve makes medical grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast, it's the fact It's the incredible impact that light can have on our biology.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Now, in addition to sunlight, red light and near infrared light have been shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health, including faster muscle recovery, improved skin health and wound healing, improvements in acne, meaning reductions in acne, reduced pain and inflammation, improved mitochondrial function, and even improving visual function itself.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
What sets Juve lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy device is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning specific wavelengths of red light and near infrared light in specific combinations to trigger the optimal cellular adaptations.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Personally, I use the Juve whole body panel about three to four times per week, typically in the morning, but sometimes in the afternoon. And I use the Juve handheld light both at home and when I travel. If you'd like to try Juve, you can go to Juve, spelled J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman. Juve is offering an exclusive discount to all Huberman Lab listeners with up to $400 off select Juve products.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Again, that's Juve, J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman to get up to $400 off. I have a friend who's a trauma therapist, addiction expert. And, you know, occasionally you'll hear these tragedies of typically it's young guys who the girlfriend breaks up with them and they commit suicide. And for years he would work with families of these people, these, these young guys.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And he finally connected the dots and he realized that in every case it was as if there was no future whatsoever because it was their first relationship. And it, when you hear it, you just go, Oh, it makes so much sense. But you know, the 16 year old and 18 year old brain, however old these kids were, it's, it's devastating. I, I,
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
I want to make sure that I ask about devastation, because you said that you were devastated. You experienced a tremendous amount of pain from these losses, in particular the one that you just described. If you don't mind, I'd like to ask you about what that was like.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
I don't want to spin off into a discussion about the science of grief, but I did an episode about grief and it was really surprising to learn that most of what you hear about in pop culture, that there are these very specific stages of grief and you progress through them linearly. None of that is true. All of modern research says that it's not disbelief, anger, acceptance.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
It's like a hodgepodge of different emotions depending on time of day and middle of the night. But the core feature, and I find this so interesting, is that grief, whether or not it's
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
what I would consider kind of trivial grief, like losing your favorite pen or a watch that you really love, okay, an object versus somebody extremely close to you, a parent, a loved one, a child, God forbid, that the brain systems that map memory onto action are disrupted in grief such that, you know, you wake up each day and you want to go see the person or call them. And so it's a
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
what grief really represents is a remapping of your understanding about what you can do with your physical body to create action and interaction with this person that's now gone. And so the remapping is one of the nervous system having to do all this no-go. We talk in terms of inaction systems and the basal ganglia of the brain. You have go programs and no-go programs.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
There's some other stuff too, but it's mostly go or no-go. And basically grief is this taking of a – depending on how long and how deeply you knew the person, a tremendous amount of neural real estate and algorithms that were all go. You could text them, you could call them, you could hug them, you could kiss them, you could listen to them, you could smell them. And now it's all no go.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And that we think is what we experience as grief. Now, in terms of losing a very important chess match, when you talk about being in pain and in grief, What was that like? Was it, did that mean sleepless nights, disbelief? And at what point do you think you were able to say, okay, you know what, I'm going to start thinking about this constructively.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
I'm going to turn this into a go as opposed to just trying to, you know, get in your time machine and travel back in time, which of course is impossible. What was that early experience of devastation like and how did it transmute into growth?
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And loss isn't relative. You know, I mean, the fact that we're sitting right now not far from, you know, hundreds, if not thousands of homes that have been wiped away doesn't change other losses. Like we sometimes will say, well, at least we're, you know, I have a lot of friends that lost their homes. They'll say, well, at least we have our health, we have our things, you know, okay.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And so we can do this, but it's not how the human emotion system responds reflexively to our own losses. So I don't think it's like dismissive or sociopathic to experience big loss in one's life as a big loss, even if it's not the worst possible loss. It's just not how we're wired.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
You have to be in a mode of theory of mind with yourself about your future self somehow. And this is what I think losses are so beneficial for is that if you've had a couple of breakups, you realize that you can fall in love again. If you've only had breakups, perhaps you think, well, it always leads to a breakup.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
But you know that the process of moving forward is the only way to test that hypothesis again. And so I think repeated failure – is essential, right? Because with repeated failure means that there was also repeated fighting one ways back after failure.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
So yeah, I think sometimes not to take us into a different course of story, but just very briefly, the first manuscript I ever submitted in graduate school took forever to get published. And it went from the highest of journals down to a good journal, solid journal, but it took forever. And that was so beneficial.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
I was crushing at the time, but my reward circuitry is built up around very long latency between effort and final outcome. I'm just used to long waits between figuring out what's going to happen. And actually, one of the weirdest things about podcasting or social media is that I feel like you go to, quote unquote, to publication so fast. It's like, whoa. Projects used to take two years.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And then you get reviews and then this, you know. So I think your early devastating failure or failures, because you had a few of them in there at least. Oh, a lot more than a few. Probably set you up for tremendous frustration tolerance. And this, not just hearing, I mean, the words, this too shall pass, they're helpful, but that's really something that needs to be experienced in my view.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Do you believe in optimal levels of arousal for different aspects of practice or game? Autonomic arousal is something that I've worked on for many years, and one of the most impressive features, I think, of our brains as humans. First would be our ability to think into the past, present, or future, or combination of those two.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
If other animals do that, they don't do it nearly as well, and they certainly don't Create technologies to bridge those different time scales. That's number one. But the other one is our visual and temporal aperture of focus. So when we are in a state of elevated arousal, our visual aperture shrinks. I'm sure you're familiar with this. And we slice time more finely. It's like a higher frame rate.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
which is why people who, for instance, see a devastating traumatic car crash report experiencing things in slow motion, right? Because their frame rate is high, like a slow motion video. Whereas when we are relaxed, our frame rate is larger bins of time. And I feel like so much of the discussion around things like flow and optimal states for learning have to do with
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Assuming that there's one optimal state of arousal, but I feel like in every endeavor I've ever been involved in, it's about learning the transitions between the arousal states that allows us to pull back a little bit as things, as you said, like get tense, just relax just a little bit to be able to maybe see a different perspective or ratchet up our level of tension or AKA arousal.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
in order to be able to fine slice the micro expressions of a competitor. I mean, these two cameras on the fronts of our skull and the rest of our brain are really devoted to this process of shrinking or expanding the aperture of our consciousness. And it can be talked about in terms of space, just vision, like tunnel vision versus panoramic vision.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
It can be talked about at space time, tunnel vision, fine slice, panoramic vision, broader slice. But then when you start getting into like the, then you map that onto the past, present and future mapping. And that's where I feel like we're into the game of skill learning and chess and strategy.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
So forgive me for the kind of, you know, top contour neuroscience, but that's how I see the human primate as so different than all the other creatures in the world. That's how we're different because we can learn chess or ballet, foil. Gibbons are pretty amazing at what gibbons do. But if they're trying to learn other stuff that they've been failing so far.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
I mean, if I inject you with just a little bit of adrenaline, it stays in your periphery, but it activates systems in your brain in parallel to that. And you're going to experience an immediate dilation of your pupils. you'll have more tunnel vision. I mean, every process is sped up in the direction of higher frame rate.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Immediately, like, they jump and then they wish they hadn't jumped. Such an important message. You know, we hear all this stuff about suicide prevention and, you know, but just that knowledge. I mean, I don't know how conscious of that sort of thing people are as they're headed down the, the, the trench. I mean, what, um, of, of suicidal depression, but, um,
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
These apertures that we're talking about, these time-space apertures where frame rate is set and visual aperture is set, I think for most people, we experience them as sort of notches. So it's like you're in a high state of arousal and you have high frame rate. And just like being like a ball bearing down in a trench, you can't really see out the other side.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
You're literally in there at a certain frame rate of, let's say, an argument, an intense argument with somebody where you want to win and you're frustrated with them and the whole situation and you're in the trench. Whereas when you're relaxed, it's more a broad concave or a flat table where the ball bearing can move around at will.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
It sounds like Marcelo and people that train these different transition states as you really learning to access the different frame rates, but from a place of like kind of like a little dimple in a table and then being able to move to the next one as a dimple and kind of moving from dimple to dimple as opposed to like these trenches of brain states.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And I think about this a lot, a lot, because I feel like most bad decisions are made from a high frame rate, high arousal state. Most of the terrible things that humans have done to one another... I suppose there's sociopathy and pre-planned things, but they tend to be associated with high arousal states where people regret what they did. All second degree murder, for instance.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
In any event, I think the ability to move through these different arousal states at will is possible. You asked earlier, like, how would one do that? Well, the beautiful thing about the visual system in these different frame rates and states of arousal is that it works in both directions. So when you're in a higher state of arousal, your visual aperture shrinks, you go to a higher frame rate.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
But it's also true that if you shrink your visual aperture, you go to a higher frame rate. The converse is also true if you deliberately, for instance, as we're looking across one another right now, if I start to take in the fullness of the picture here, the walls, There's a natural relaxation of the autonomic arousal systems or parasympathetic activity goes up.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And what's incredible is that anytime we view a horizon, that naturally happens because you're not setting to a single fixation point. So anytime you see a horizon, you relax and it's not a coincidence. So the visual system can drive it inward and your autonomic arousal can drive it toward your visual system.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
The other thing is there's a really beautiful paper that came out about two years ago, which showed that people who do a biofeedback game where they're watching a little, you know, it's like a more kind of like a sine wave and they're deliberately trying to increase their level of arousal as the curve goes up, for those that are just listening.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Within a few days, they can learn to control their pupil size, which sets their arousal and their aperture for a segmenting time. So you can learn this through biofeedback. And I think that the script for that is available online. I haven't tried it yet, but have you ever heard of these yogis that could control their pupil sizes even independently of one another? That's amazing because
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
It's not supposed to be able to occur, but you can. So you can learn to, you know, I guess the poor man's version of this would be look in the mirror, stare at yourself and try to ramp up your level of autonomic arousal, watch your pupils get bigger, and then try and relax yourself and make them smaller.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
That practice, it seems in biofeedback, allows people to do it without staring into the mirror, so to speak. So it can be done. It's just that it hasn't been parsed by science that finely until recently.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Yeah. Very bizarre. Luckily it was before social media.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Why do you think they don't? It takes time and it doesn't seem as intuitive as going out and shooting free throws or something?
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Function. I recently became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
While I've long been a fan of blood testing, I really wanted to find a more in-depth program for analyzing blood, urine, and saliva to get a full picture of my heart health, my hormone status, my immune system regulation, my metabolic function, my vitamin and mineral status, and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors on your results. For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had two high levels of mercury in my blood. This was totally surprising to me. I had no idea prior to taking the test.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Function not only helped me detect this, but offered medical doctor-informed insights on how to best reduce those mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, because I had been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification, and worked to reduce my mercury levels.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Comprehensive lab testing like this is so important for health, and while I've been doing it for years, I've always found it to be overly complicated and expensive.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
I've been so impressed by Function, both at the level of ease of use, that is getting the test done, as well as how comprehensive and how actionable the tests are, that I recently joined their advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman Lab listeners. Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. We had a guest on this podcast, Jim Hollis. He's an 84-year-old, probably 85-year-old Jungian analyst on, and he, just brilliant guy.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
He's written some really important books under Saturn's shadow and And he said, you know, so he has a real kind of like suit up, show up, you know, get to work kind of mentality. But he also is a very reflective person.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And he said, you know, if there's one simple key to life, it's that one understand that most of our daily lives, our waking lives are in stimulus response, but that it's so critical to take 10 to 15 minutes each day to just get out of stimulus and response.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And either to just let stuff geyser up out of our unconscious, subconscious mind, or to just put some real thought to something that, you know, most everybody is in stimulus response.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
I wonder these days with social media and so many things filling the space between walking to the car or with the, you know, pro players that you work with, you know, I'm guessing the moment they're on the plane, they're on their phones and texting and All these things are wonderful technologies, but they fill all the space with stimulus response. They fill all the space with stimulus response.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And it's not unless you go to a place with no wifi accessibility that you suddenly realize like, wow, like in most of modern life, we're just constantly in this tennis or ping pong match with this trivial thing and that trivial thing. And some of it's essential, but that there's no quote unquote space anymore.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Yeah, well, it's as Hollis said, the stimulus response thing dominates. And it dominates, I think, because, well, I have several reflections. First of all, I just have to say, you're absolutely a scientist.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
You just proved it to us through a description of this process, which I might ask you to describe once again, because I think there's so much value in each of the pieces and how it's put together. Three things come to mind. First of all, yes, indeed, as you know, and listeners of this podcast will know that it is during sleep that we reorganize our
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
neural connections and actual neuroplasticity occurs. The stimulus is provided in wakefulness and focus and attention, but the actual rewiring occurs during sleep, deep sleep and rapid eye movement sleep. One little fun, I think, but also powerful tool that I learned from, maybe you know him as well. I'm blessed to have Rick Rubin as a very good friend. Oh, yeah.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
and eventually foiling, which is essentially surfing over the water. Josh is not only a high performer, he has now become perhaps the most sought after professional coach in the domains of finance, in the domains of creative endeavors, professional sports, and military. Today's episode is one of my favorite Huberman Lab podcast episodes ever.
Huberman Lab
The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Rick and I have had beautiful jams. Yeah, wonderful. Such a wise tool. I've been spending more and more time with Rick. But he taught me something extremely valuable, which was the process of taking some time to just lie completely still and let your mind go as wild as it needs to or as calm as it needs to while keeping the body completely still. This mimics rapid eye movement sleep.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
when we're paralyzed and the mind is very, very active. And I actually think that practices such as yoga nidra, non-sleep deep rest are also mimics of rapid eye movement sleep. And there are data starting to emerge now that it mimics rapid eye movement sleep, but in wakefulness. So put simply lying still, relaxing the body as much as possible and letting the mind be extremely active.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Rick also taught me a little trick for which I don't know any science, but it certainly seems to work for me, which is that if you wake up from a dream and you want to continue having that dream, keep your body completely still. Whereas if you wake up from a dream and it was a troubling or anxiety-provoking dream, move your body. And it seems to work extremely well.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And I have my theories about why this works. I have to ask about this process of of reflecting on one's own mistakes deliberately, kind of addressing one's own pain points or shame points as such a key feature of your upbringing and your practice around learning. Forgive me for going a little bit longer here, but recently somebody taught me something extremely useful.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
She said, you know, our consciousness is sort of like a lighthouse and we have this beam of light sweeping around 360 degrees. but where we have places of shame about whatever, things that were done to us, things that we've done, whatever, just points of shame, things that we don't want people to know about us, that we don't even like to think about. It's like a stain on that lighthouse.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And when that light passes through that stain, it casts a wedge, a shadow in the shape of a wedge. And she described it in somewhat mystical terms. She said, you know, it's through that shadow that evil things enter us. And that the world can hurt us.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And that the process of getting over our shame but also experiencing life in much more fullness and being able to cultivate our craft and be more present for ourselves and for others is a process of going right up to that lighthouse window and looking at the stain and going, that's what it is. And that's the process of wiping it off. Now, that's all.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
That's just an illustration for us to understand what I think is the process you're describing, which is that you get right up next to your worst nightmares, your worst mistakes, the things you don't want to think about. And in doing so, you learn to relax in their presence and they sort of disappear as points of shame.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Especially if you become very good very young. I mean, I think this is true of most prodigies. I don't want to name them, but I have a colleague... Very smart guy. His science is very solid. And I remember I met with him and I said, is it true that you're- Jerry's going to love that. That's okay. He's done nice work.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
I just wouldn't say that it's like transformed our understanding of like everything in that field. But he's made some very important contributions. He's a fabulous teacher and a nice person. But he's said, one day I was meeting with him and I said, you're a child prodigy, I heard. And he said, former child prodigy. And I was like, okay, well, here we're getting technical.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
But yeah, okay, I think we're – and I asked my dad because he – my dad lived in the same building as Daniel Berenbaum, the musician. It was if you've ever seen the movie Hillary and Jackie. He was one of the world's most accomplished piano players at a very young age. And, um, and my dad used to hear him playing when he was a kid and like, they wouldn't let him play with other kids.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And he was like, I mean, Berenbaum is a seer for classical musicians and pianists in particular. It's like serious stuff. And I, so I asked my dad, I was like, what's the deal with this child prodigy thing? And he said, um, yeah, very few of them go on to do much in their adult careers in any field. Right. And I was like, wow. And, um,
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Okay, so what's missing there is clearly not a lack of ability, focus. I mean, you could just say raw talent, but you still have to – a kid still has to focus. So what's missing is this transfer of understanding, it seems, or what you're talking about, the interconnectedness of things. And so – Yeah, I probably will get myself in trouble with this colleague.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
But hey, listen, maybe he'll take on something new and do something additionally spectacular. He's got a lot of things on his plate. But, you know, that struck me. I was like, oh, you know, it's not clear that being a quote unquote child prodigy is such a good thing for the long arc of one's life. But you have seemed to bring in these other elements. Love. I'd like to talk more about that.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And I would also add, at least from an outsider's perspective of you seem to have broken the mold with like kind of what's expected of you, you know, based on your prior accomplishments.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Oh, there's also a tendency to lie. Carol's early papers referred to this in the discussion sections. You have to read deep into those papers. But she describes how the – students who did not have growth mindset that really identified and held so much of their ego with their performance were at a significantly greater tendency to lie about their performance when they didn't do well.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Could you give me an example of one such principle? Because I love in biology teaching not names, not using nouns, but instead teaching verbs. Because ultimately, if you want to understand, for instance, how the nervous system works or the immune system, you teach the verb actions of verbs. And the names of the molecules are important if you decide to go into that field professionally.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
But otherwise, the principles and verbs are what's most important. So what's an example of a principle of chess or a mode of action on the board that you think transfers?
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
You know what leaps to mind when you made that description, and I didn't follow all of it to memorization, was family feud. I just imagine two families in a feud, right? You get two brothers together, they can do certain things. But you get a brother and sister together, I have a sister, she can do certain things that are powerful and diabolical in ways that two brothers can't.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Yeah, so you get two big strong brothers, but maybe one that can't, you know, creep through small places. And so you can map to different, you know, that's sort of more of just kind of an analogy for it all. But I started to immediately think about like, oh, it's like a family feud. If I were to view the pieces as sibling dynamics and parent-sibling-cousin dynamics,
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Eight Sleep makes it very easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to program the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation of the pod cover called the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity. I find that very useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night, and warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
It also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring. If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, you can go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to access their Black Friday offer right now. With this Black Friday discount, you can save up to $600 on their Pod 4 Ultra. This is Eight Sleep's biggest sale of the year.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Eight Sleep currently ships to the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman. When I think about interconnectedness, I think the word mapping comes to mind. And I define a map of any kind as a transformation of one set of points into another set of points, right? points along the earth transferred onto a page or an electronic map.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
What's missing from a kind of basic understanding of a transformation of points into another transformation of points are these verb actions, like it's the algorithms, if you will. That's not present in how we map one context onto another context. It requires a lot of thinking to do what you describe. I don't think it's reflexive for most people.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
to say, watch a game of basketball and think about the emotional dynamics and the consistencies of the emotional dynamics. Last night, I had the great gift of Josh brought me to a Celtics game. So he brought me to a Celtics game and they're playing the Clippers. So I was cheering against the hometown crowd here in Los Angeles, but it was friendly.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And you were describing the players and their recent history and the kind of last season, the season. And you said something about the difference between pre-conscious effort and post-conscious effort. Maybe we could talk about that as a gateway into ego. which is like a term that the moment you throw out the word ego, it's like saying sex.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
It's like people make all sorts of assumptions about what it is and what it isn't. But let's talk about pre-conscious and post-conscious. Because we'll get back to the Celtics and the game that was played last night. By the way, the Celtics won in overtime by a good size margin. So there's something very beautiful
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
that I think all of us are drawn to as observers, but hopefully everyone gets to experience this at some point in their life as well firsthand, when somebody in art, music, sport, or whatever is just being themselves and this seeming virtuosity comes out. If I think about kind of what Rick Rubin does, a lot of what Rick has done historically is to find artists and work with artists and
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
just bring out what they're already doing, like the core elements. Like when Beastie Boys started, it was like a joke, he said, and they were kind of making fun of, had wrestling elements and hardcore and punk and all this stuff and hip hop.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And, you know, but he tends to work with artists early on when they're in that really like pure state of not thinking about the returns on their investment and all that. And you know, he said many times before to me and publicly that, you know, after people achieve a certain level of fame, it's much harder to get back to that just pure picture of oneself, pre-conscious expression.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Just Josh being Josh as an eight-year-old, you just happen to be in Washington Square Park learning chess or, you know, pick any number of different examples. So very different than when people now reflect on their trophies on the wall or their platinum records or the fact that they won and lost or that there's another champion in the house that, you know,
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
that, um, and the real virtuosos seem to be people that, um, can get back to that over and over again. The yo-yo mas, the, you know, um, and people live longer now. So it used to be the, the Mozart's, the box, you know, they could make their contribution and, and then, uh, they died. Yeah. Now we live longer lives. So, um,
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
People have many more chances, but there's also that longer window for lack of productivity.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Exhale, I guess we should save a few lives here or prevent a few deaths rather. Anytime you emphasize the duration or intensity of your exhales, you're going to blow out more carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is the trigger for the gas reflex. So yes, you'll be able to hold your breath longer above or below water if you first do cyclic hyperventilation and then a long dump all your air.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
but never, ever, ever do cyclic hyperventilation, folks, or any long exhale emphasized breathing, even standing in a puddle, because that gasp reflex is the thing that makes you shoot for the surface. And if you don't do that, You feel pretty peaceful until lights out.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Dumping carbon dioxide will let you hold your breath longer, but that's part of the problem.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Yeah, trying to be our previous selves is not a great strategy. Trying to integrate our previous experiences in our current and future selves seems like a good strategy.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
How important do you think it is to attach language to these things of identity and source of motivation? In other words, let's say, okay, you're working with the Celtics. They won the championship last year. This year they are in a completely different mental frame as a consequence.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
they're quote unquote dominant in the sense that they hold the crown, they hold the trophy, but they're more vulnerable too because the only place to go from there is either stay or you're going down a notch or more. So do you think it's important for them to create a verbal label for where they're at? Like we're the champs and we're going to hold on to the belt.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
We're going to hold on to, I realize there's not a belt in basketball, by the way, that they're going to hold on to their status. Or is that the wrong way to think about it? Because the game is played through verbs. It's not played through adjectives.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
I know as a podcast host, you're not supposed to say that, but it's absolutely true. because not only is Josh Waitzkin so highly accomplished, but he is an exceptional teacher of the learning process. He took what he learned in chess and about learning chess and applied that to martial arts, to foiling, et cetera.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And so hard for people to do. I mean, I think about Michael Jordan and the fact that he wanted to be a pro baseball player. So he had a brief stint at that and it was underwhelming certainly compared to his basketball career. But of course his basketball career was, you know, so spectacular that, you know, the expectation wasn't there. But, um,
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Nonetheless, you know, it's so rare to find people that are super successful repeatedly within domain, let alone across domains. It's just. Yeah. Richard Feynman. Yeah. He could paint a little bit and draw a little bit, but I don't know. I've seen those pictures of the roosters. They're kind of first year art school. Yeah. So it's cool. Like, cool.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
You learn to draw and paint, but he weren't like, if his name wasn't on them, like no one would care.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
So I feel like there are at least three components to what you're describing. One is that, you know, maybe in this pre-conscious phase, people are thinking about what they have to gain from this process that they're in. And the process is natural, at least to the extent that they're motivated to do it. It comes from some source.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
This seems to be the stage and the thing that Rick Rubin is trying to tap into in the artists that he works with, whether or not they're established or new, is that it's the identification of that preconscious energy, which is so pure and so beautiful by definition. As opposed to the second thing, which is when people have something to lose, They went from poverty to having a really nice home.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
They bought their mom a home. They're loving this life. They don't want to lose it. They don't want to go back to where they were before, even though where they were before probably played a key role in that pre-conscious state that allowed them to get to that next level versus something to protect. And trying to not lose everything you've got is very different than trying to protect your
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
certain elements of what one has. So like in terms of the Celtics, they hold the championship title now. So they have something to lose, frankly. They could not get it again, but it's in the record books. So it's nuanced, right? It's not like in a fight, you can get knocked out or worse, but you're still a champion if you were a champion once. I mean, certain fields are like that.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Right. Because then the words like reigning champions, you know, it's like, even though you're already the reigning champion, you know, or you think about dynasties. Like I grew up in the, when the 49ers were like kind of in multiple dynasties, it was like the Joe Montana era and the Steve Young era.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And like, you know, like these dynasties where they were just considered such an important team and,
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
overall because of how long they were able to do what they did the bulls right you know um so tiger woods right and there seems to be a kind of obsession with this process at least in the united states where we love to see the rise of somebody from uh you know ignominy to fame or rags to riches and then but there also seems to be this kind of obsession with their fall their demise and then coming back again and i think the the the most um
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
You know, prominent example of this in my mind is Mike Tyson, whose life is like, as a friend described it, is almost Shakespearean in the way that he came from nothing, then youngest heavyweight champion, then all these issues, you know, legal and financial, then back again. And now he seems to be in kind of...
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
He's at least of a level of status where he can wear his own shirt and no one thinks it's weird. It actually looks cool. He's probably the only guy who can wear a shirt with his own name on it and it just seems right. Like he earned that one. And I think ironically it was the hangover. It was him pretending to have a – as an actor that kind of brought him back as a lovable character.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
It's kind of interesting. Like he seems to now be on the Mount Rushmore of famous American athletes who – You know, like, I only wish the best for him. But whatever happens next, like, it's cemented. His legacy is cemented. At some point, people's legacy is cemented. And I wonder how that feels, too.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
So maybe we could talk about these different stages of the sine wave that hopefully is upward and drifting right.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Or your wife is eight months pregnant. Like, how do you feel being, you know, 5,000 miles away right now? That would be pretty benign compared to, right? Yeah. It's like, thanks, you know?
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Most consistent stimulus for adrenaline release and noradrenaline release in the brain. that is safe if done properly. And you never really habituate. Maybe we'll just really quickly double click on this thing of cold plunging. I don't go for time. I think only in terms of walls of adrenaline. So some days like just getting in the thing is a big wall.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
I think of it just, for lack of a better word, as a wall. On a hot day, I'm happy to get into the cold plunge. But then what I think is so valuable about cold plunging is that If you start to focus on what neuroscientists call interoception, our perception of everything from our skin inward, you can start to feel the deployment of adrenaline in your body, or at least its effects.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And you can say, here's another wall of adrenaline. You watch your frame rate go up, the impulse to stay still, because as you move, you break up that thermal layer, it gets even colder. But then you also want to get out, and then that wall passes. And then you start to notice that the distance between the walls changes. And then playing with that in one's mind as
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
You know, when I distract myself, the walls come, you know, suddenly. Or when I'm focused on the walls, they seem like big swells as opposed to when I relax myself, they seem like just like kind of more sharp peaks. And learning that those dynamics of how adrenaline impacts us cognitively and frame rate and all that, I think is an immensely valuable practice.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And I can't think of anything else, not sprinting, not lifting weights, You know, not real life arguments because that can be destructive. I can't think of any other kind of venue for exploring one's ability to work through stress and tension than the cold plunge.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
I don't necessarily. Yeah, same. I'll do cold plunge for one to three minutes. Yeah. And I love contrast with heat. Oh, so beautiful. And I'm very heat tolerant. I love, love, love, love the sauna. Yeah. I don't love the cold, but I love the long arc of dopamine that comes after the cold. I always say no one really enjoys being in the thing. Is there a better sleep hack?
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Well, there are supplements that can support sleep and that kind of thing. And people learning how to deliberately relax their body can help with transition to sleep and back to sleep. But, you know, one core principle that I haven't really talked about in the podcast is that if you – the more adrenaline nor –
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
epinephrine, noradrenaline, and dopamine that you experience early in the day, as well as cortisol from bright light exercise, caffeine, and cold, the better you're going to sleep at night. It also sets your circadian rhythm around kind of like a big set of arousal promoting stimuli early in the day.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And then, you know, last third of your day, you're very parasympathetic, for lack of a better way to put it. And that eases the transition to sleep. I mean, you know, dimming the lights, parasympathetic, bright lights, Increases the amount of cortisol with your morning cortisol pulse by 50%, 5-0, which is great. Keeps you less susceptible to infection all day, these kinds of things.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
I mean, we're meant to be in oscillation, obviously, across the 24-hour cycle, but even within the day. It's a little bit tougher when people have evening activities. Like last night, I was watching these guys play a hard game of basketball at 8 to 10 p.m., That's a lot of late night work.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Right. So is there a better sleep stack? Not really. I mean, and if you want to increase your rapid eye movement sleep non-pharmacologically, I would say, meaning not exogenous pharmacology. Yeah, the cold plunge in the morning, early part of the day. For evening, anything that moves blood out to your periphery.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
So sauna, pot shower, that sort of thing is going to drop your core body temperature when you get out. It's a little paradoxical to people, but you warm up to then cool off at the level of core body temperature and it'll ease the transition to sleep. Yeah, it's a wonderful practice. And people who pick at cold plunging, they're like, well, it blocks hypertrophy. Okay, yeah, okay, that's true.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
So in the six hours after you're trying to get a little more peak on your biceps or something, it's going to block that. But most people have not experienced control over their physiology at the level that comes from doing consistent cold plunging in the early part of the day. warming up and becoming more parasympathetic later in the day.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
They start to feel a level of control over their mood and energy that's so striking with basically zero cost tools. I agree. Yeah. Sorry to riff on that, but people will probably wonder about specifics. I want to make sure that we talk about two things and you can decide which one to talk about first. One is ego and
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And then the second one is earlier you described a set of dynamics across the day and some concrete things about, you know, how one picks the most important question, like what am I working on today?
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And how to kind of push that into certain portions of the day, how long to do that, and then how to, you know, stay out of stimulus and response and the transition points so that you can make the most of that work or extract the most from that work as you head Into the evening dinner with your family, sleep, and then wake up, repeat. Which one do you think would be most valuable?
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
The game is go wherever you want to go. Where should we go? All right. Before we get practical, let's get a little bit more theoretical and then get back to practical. Ego. The constriction is what comes to mind. The idea that I want to impose my will on something. I want a certain outcome. And if I don't get it, it's going to hurt in some way.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
There's some punishment mechanism internally like that might drive me to work even harder. It's not always bad. But how do you frame ego? And I will say that the words I am seem very important. Like when people identify as I am the champion, I'm part of a champion team in the NBA. I'm a Celtic, I'm a player, I'm a Celtics player. Clearly I'm not.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
But when we attach identity to ego, that's also where it seems like it kind of deepens the trench a bit, but maybe it can be more relaxed than the way I'm describing it. How do you think about ego?
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
I mean, and as I walked in here to take a seat at my chair, I got a good hard slap on the back from you. And I was wondering if you were testing me. I thought you last night too. I won't ask what your read of my ego was, but I felt it as a slap of camaraderie. Like, let's do this. It felt great. And I was also thinking about my good friend, Lex Friedman, who is a
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Wealthfront. I've been using Wealthfront for my savings and my investing for nearly a decade, and I absolutely love it. Every January, I set new goals for the year, and one of my goals for 2025 is to focus on saving money.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and a very intense guy who wears his heart on his sleeve publicly. And people sometimes will take shots at him for that, which really upsets me.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Yeah. You guys would have a fun conversation. He, uh, he's going to be jealous that we got a chance to sit down here, but, um, you know, Lex is, uh, at home and with his friends exactly how he appears to be that like all that, that intense, um, self-torture around what to do and how to frame something, who to talk to, how to talk to them. And, um, that's, that's the world he lives in. And, and, um,
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
But in terms of his physicality, like I think it's hard to understand like just how – I mean like he's like dense like dark matter. You know, like it's the – and I think a lot of guys that roll jujitsu, like you shake their hands and like there's a solidity there that's very different than just muscle. It's like people that are just like –
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
They're used to being up against bodies, apparently, you know, so it's an experience, you know. These are subtle things, but clearly they matter. And as you've pointed out, one brings them to their professional life. You bring it to friendships. You know, I can't think of many super, quote unquote, solid friends, but Lex is among them. the most solid of them. He's just beautiful. His presence.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And from participating in all those endeavors, he was able to distill out the essential elements of learning and how to tailor one's learning process to one's own unique personality and style, flaws and tendency to make mistakes, and how to leverage all of that in order to be able to learn better.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And Rick Rubin, you know, we both know Rick and people know Rick as this bearded icon of creativity. And he is indeed that. The fluidity that he moves through life with is just, it's like, it's astonishing. I've spent a lot of time with him and I don't want to like get into my observations of Rick, the Rickisms, if you will.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
But it's astonishing how much attention and he puts into creating this thing that we're talking about space, like getting out of stimulus and response. I don't think he'd mind me sharing this. It's not uncommon for me to like go over to hang out with him and he'll just say like, hey, like before we like talk, you want to just like do this meditation? And we'll just like sit there and meditate.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And you quickly go into a mindset of like, oh my goodness, like this is like a thing. And then, but like, nope, you just get into being present. And then, I don't know, then you hang out and you talk about, if you're us, you know, the Ramones, because we both love the Ramones. Yeah. So I love the way you frame ego. I think that that's very helpful because a physical embodiment of something that is
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
largely psychological to most people, at least the concept is very helpful. Do you ever just as a practice, just look at how people walk or how they interact? Oh yeah.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
What about in non-competitive endeavors like ballet, opera? music where certainly it's competitive in that, you know, you're competing for people's attention, time and money, but you're not, it's not direct competition.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Uh, do you spend time working with performers in, in these domains where, um, you know, like just, I heard from someone recently who, uh, she said, you know, I'm a good dancer, but then I went to New York and I discovered that I'm not such a good dancer. Like, like the level of, of who gets to actually dance in some of the premier venues there is like so unbelievably high that, um,
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And by the way, that shouldn't discourage anyone. That should encourage people. Show them what's possible. Do you work with people like that or is it usually competitive arenas?
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
So pose a hypothesis, isolate variables, test hypothesis, feedback to hypothesis, confirm or deny hypothesis, and just...
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
I love it. It also reflects your clearly repeating pattern of being willing to segment your life into different goals and different pursuits. applying what you've learned previously, learning new things and incorporating those. It brings me back to two things that we touched on earlier.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
One, that if we don't close the hatch on, we're going to get it from the listeners, which is this paper that we both read. I just want to, or took a look at. Before the paper, let me just say one important thing.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And the daily physical interactions with the ocean, with fear, with uncertainty, with just variables that you can't control. And trying to identify what are the variables I can control in this context and work with those to try and tease out new learning. that running those algorithms every day seems absolutely essential.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Well, so it's not my study, but this paper that I sent you, I think is really interesting. It's a paper published in the journal Neuron, very fine journal, excellent paper. We'll post a link to it, but it has many interesting features about, it's really about the study of surprise and the dopamine system, but they use as the experimental context, people watching a game of basketball
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
And they observed that the reset on sort of the interval timer is essentially said anytime there's been a reversal of which team has the ball. So a drive down court by one team, then the other team. And if there's a rebound and then it switches direction, whatever, it might not switch direction. Basketball provides the perfect dynamic to study this while people are being
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
For more information, see the episode description. Today's episode is also brought to us by Our Place. Our Place makes my favorite pots, pans, and other cookware. Surprisingly, toxic compounds such as the PFASs or forever chemicals are still found in 80% of nonstick pans, as well as utensils, appliances, and countless other kitchen products.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
while there's some detection of brain activity going on. And one of, I think, the most interesting questions about this paper and implications are that just as we can set the aperture of our vision or the frame rate of how well we're clocking time, how finely we're clocking time or how coarsely we're clocking time,
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
There's this big question, which is kind of a philosophical question, really, which is how do we segment time in our life? Earlier, you mentioned that one of the major kind of timestamps, if you will, is a bad event. Like, oh, shit, like the things went completely differently than I would have preferred them to. It could be the death of another. It could be the death of a dream.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
It could be a setback, a reason, whatever. that it marks time. And we just had these fires. I mean, LA will be before and after the fires of 2025. You know, I remember early in 2020, Kobe Bryant dying, right? So these things, I remember the Challenger explosion, like negative events, you know, occupy a certain place in our memory more easily than positive events, but no one will forget
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
The birth of their first child or hopefully their second child too if they had a second child or their wedding day, right? These things segment time. You seem to be able to segment your life into a series of pursuits where you cut ties with –
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
practice of something like chess and you take what you learn and move it forward into what seems to be a very different lifestyle and way of being, I think one of the major challenges for a lot of people, it seems, is how to thread the different elements of their life forward in a way that feels contiguous. And I think it's probably true that most people would prefer to not have
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
major losses be necessary in order to segment their life in the most fulfilling way. So how do you think about the segmentation of time? And maybe we'll run this backward from the scale of your lifetime. We don't know how long you'll live, but hopefully a long time.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
That's assumed by way of standard genetics, somewhere in the neighborhood of between 90 and 110, if you take good care of yourself, which you seem to. Sounds good. Okay. And then let's compare that to...
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
how one structures a day, and that will allow us to bring us back to what you talked about before with this most important question dynamic and focus and replenishing and dynamic between conscious and unconscious mind. So when you think about your life, you're 48 years old? Okay, I'm 49, so we're more or less the same point, looking backward anyway.
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
Our lives are very different, but same age, roughly. If you think you're going to live to be about 100, how are you thinking about your timeframe? Are you thinking, okay, here's what I'm going to do for the next five years, 10, I'll allow whatever's happening in my life to dictate what I do next. I mean, how are you running this analysis?
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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin
As I've discussed on this podcast, these PFASs or forever chemicals like Teflon have been linked to major health issues such as endocrine disruption, gut microbiome disruption, fertility issues, and many other health problems. So it's really important to avoid them. This is why I've recently fallen in love with Our Place products, especially one of their cooking pans, the Titanium Always Pan Pro.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Melissa Alardo, professor of biomedical informatics at the University of Utah. Dr. Alardo is a world-renowned expert in human genetics and epigenetics.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
And the opposite extreme is a very uncomfortable thing. But if you think about incest, incest has been discouraged in populations for a very long time.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Without anyone understanding genetics, like the mechanisms of genetics per se, it's been well understood that in small villages that people shouldn't mate with their siblings, shouldn't mate with their cousins, and ideally not even with second cousins because of the potential for disease. So I've always been fascinated by the idea that nature punishes
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
reproducing with people that are too close to you. And then, of course, there's the moral and ethical and all that aspect. But Mother Nature actually punishes individuals that do this through mutation.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Yeah, I find it amazing that these things are operating below the level of conscious decision-making to influence preference like this smell or that smell, right? And we've established, you've told us that the smells that reflect the most distant immune system are the most attractive smells, which is really wild. So is it fair to say that humans are continuing to evolve? Yeah.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
As you'll soon learn, Dr. Alardo does incredible real-world experiments that reveal the remarkable interplay between genes and behavior. And she's an absolutely phenomenal teacher who makes complex genetic concepts accessible and practical.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
given that people are traveling further, meeting people from further away, having children with people from origin populations that presumably have never mixed before in the course of human evolution.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
How long ago did this gene that affords better abilities at altitude or ability to survive at altitude enter the human population?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
So does that mean that at some point the species we know as Homo sapiens was able to reproduce with a species that was not Homo sapiens and that's how the gene entered the Homo sapien population?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
The conversation is sure to change the way that you think about mate selection, your parents, their parents, and what you can do to optimize your physiology and health through behavioral practices that influence gene expression. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
But that meant that a Homo sapien mated with this other species of primate.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
And the offspring had this gene incorporated into it.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
And then that offspring at some point mated with another Homo sapiens and so on and so forth. Correct, yes.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Yeah, I'm not trying to paint more color on it so that people – I'm not trying to be salacious here. I think that sometimes we forget that in the primate lineage that there were other primates with whom Homo sapiens were capable of – reproducing with.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
So in the diagram that everyone has seen of a quadruped animal like walking on all fours and then gradually evolving into the upright form that we know as Homo sapiens, which is the primate right before it? Which, by the way, being slightly hunched forward in a slightly C-shaped position looks a lot more like Homo sapiens nowadays who are on their phones all the time.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
That's right.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
That's a separate point. That's an editorial point. But was there a kind of final primate step before Homo sapiens, like one? Or was it a collection of a bunch of different primate species and then we got Homo sapiens?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Melissa Allardo. Dr. Melissa Ilardo, welcome.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I had a colleague at Harvard, he's still there, although I think he closed his lab, who once said, it takes a lot of generations of offspring to evolve a given trait, but it takes very few to devolve a trait.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Like you can create immense problems in all sorts of things from pancreas function to mobility to vision with a deleterious mutation, but it takes a very long time to create an advantage for a given species through the accumulation of new combinations of genes. Is that true?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Got it. Okay. So I'm obsessed with the X-Men.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I love that series. I've probably watched it five different times. I mean, for a biologist who's interested in all animals, but the human animal perhaps most, it's like the perfect form of entertainment for me, right? Different individuals who have mutations that afford them
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
specific gifts or abilities, but it creates some, let's just say, some social tension between those that have and those that don't. And it's about learning to use these mutations for good versus evil. And it gets into all sorts of interesting human psychology.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
You work on the actual real life version of what I think of X-Men and, as you'll tell us today, women as well, which is, as you just told us, there's variation in all of our genomes. And occasionally, by virtue of the needs of a particular group or individual, those mutations afford them an incredible ability to do incredible things.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
So if you would, could you tell us about these underwater free divers that you've studied and This is a collection of studies, I realize, but maybe the first study, because I find this to be one of the more incredible examples of behavior shaping what we think of are fixed properties of the human body. And please just tell us about it. It's such a wonderful story.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Nature versus nurture. Super big question that we all wonder about, you know, how much of our capabilities and potential and just general themes of life, everything from how we look to what we're capable of doing or not doing in the moment or where we might be able to improve or not improve, we hear some of it's nature, some of it's nurture.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
So those are trophies.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
How long are their breath holds on record? I've heard you talk about this before. It's a little debatable, but the number I heard from you in a lecture, I went, whoa.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
That's got to be in the neighborhood of world record stuff. Yeah.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Amazing. So even if it's not 13 minutes, let's say it's half that, it's still super impressive.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
So do they grow up doing this?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Amazing. So how did you find this population and what sorts of questions did you start to ask?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
In other words, just to put this in everyday terms for people, if you don't get good at this, you die.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
If you die young enough, you don't reproduce.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
If you get good enough at this, you can live long enough to reproduce and your children will presumably inherit whatever mutation or genetic variants afford this ability.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
So if we take a step back and we just ask a big question about human genetics, how much of our DNA is modifiable by our environment and what we do, what we choose to do in particular, because that's most of what we're going to emphasize today.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
And in this case, the safety at diving comes from being able to stay under longer. We can talk about that. But as long as we're on this point, and because some people will be tempted to... Go test their breath holding time, which please don't do it. I'm just going to do it across the board. Just don't do it. Learn from an expert.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
If you're going to learn to free dive, learn from somebody who's truly expert under the right conditions. I'll put a link to a couple of folks I know that I have no business relation to, Mark Healy and some other people that teach this on land first. Actually, you know what? I'll just tell you. You know what they told me was the first step in one of these free diving classes?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I chose not to do it, is to Do not do this. But I was told, here's the first step. You're going to hold your breath on land and force yourself to not breathe when the gas reflex hits until you pass out.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
And I was like, you know what? I'm not going to take this course.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I've been told that you go from feeling that gas reflex, you learn to ride that like a bump, the same way you might stay in a cold plunge or something a little bit longer than your impulse would have you stay in. But in this case, you're underwater. And then... It passes and then you're swimming freely about and you feel good. You're relaxed.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
You're doing slow exhales to let off that carbon dioxide, whatever carbon dioxide is left. And then it just lights out.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Yeah.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
That there's no flickering. It just goes to complete blackout.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Like curtains as they call it.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
And then you're dead.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Unless somebody pulls you up to the surface.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
So hopefully we sufficiently scared people into doing this. Okay, so this population presumably is not thinking about carbon dioxide thresholds for the gas reflex areas of the brainstem that are measuring carbon dioxide. They presumably learned through experience that if you do the right things, you live and reproduce. Your family eats. You do the wrong things, you die.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
When you say one of the most revered or expert divers, I'm very curious as to how this weaves back to an earlier part of our conversation. Is prowess at diving based on how long someone can stay under? And is prowess at diving because it correlates with the ability to secure resources? Is that somehow correlated with like desirable mate?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Do these people tend to have more offspring than people that are not as –
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
good at diving and of course there are confounds here like you can imagine differences in hormone levels to begin with uh eating more during uh puberty and growing you know stronger or whatever it is um or more or smarter and not just smarter but do you see this like are the people who are great divers in the village do they tend to be the ones with more um more children to be direct
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Just out of curiosity. Um, and, uh, because I like seafood, um, what, what are they fishing for?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
It's like pure protein.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Very interesting. So what did you study in this group?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
How significant is that oxygen boost?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
That's pretty impressive.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Yeah. By comparison, there are... A lot of discussions online about, you know, if you finish your exercise, resistance training or cardiovascular exercise with a brief sauna session, so going slightly hyperthermic, right? You have to hydrate, et cetera, but it actually works even better as long as we're talking about dangerous practices. It works even better if you're slightly dehydrated.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Do you get an overproduction of red blood cells in the subsequent days? And this is used for a performance enhancing effect in elite athletes mainly. You have to, again, avoid dehydration, death, et cetera, but This is done, and someone will correct me, but the shift in available oxygen is in the low percentages, like 1% or 2%. Okay.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Most of us at some point in high school – learn Mendelian genetics, right? Mendel, the monk and his peas in his garden. Most people probably don't remember the details of that, but we also learn about eye color.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
So this is what people are fighting for using these kind of Baroque protocols. You're talking about a 10% increase in available oxygen through a contraction of the spleen. I didn't even know the spleen could contract.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Just when you put your face into colder than ambient temperature water.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Oh, right.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Ah, so it's only during the breath hold.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Interesting. What an incredible adaptation of the human body.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
What are some other functions of the spleen just for, this is the first time the spleen has ever been discussed on this podcast, I think. Yeah. We don't, think about spleens too often.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Right. Well, for this population, it sounds like it might be critical. You'll tell us.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Yeah. What are some other things that it does?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
One thing in anticipation of this episode, I did a little reading about it, and it gets very heavy neural innervation, which is interesting. We don't normally think about our peripheral organs besides our heart as getting a lot of neural innervation.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Of course, the gut has neural innervation, et cetera, but the spleen gets very heavy neural innervation, which makes me think that maybe there's the opportunity for more perhaps even conscious control of the spleen. Does this population – communicate about any sense that they can like switch this thing on? Or is this just all kind of unconscious genius related to their behavior?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
It's commonplace for people to understand that if both your parents have dark eyes, with very rare exception, it's unlikely that you're going to get light eyes as a child, but it's possible. But if you have one light-eyed parent and one dark-eyed parent, then you start to enter the probability game And that at some point, your parents dictate a lot of your appearance, your phenotype.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Interesting. Horses, I don't think about horses being underwater very often, or greyhounds for that matter. I wonder if they incorporate breath holds as a way to deploy red blood cells.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Like when one becomes a bit hypoxic because you just can't keep up with whatever exertion, like you just can't breathe in enough oxygen, dump enough carbon dioxide to keep up with your physical activity. Is that one of the conditions under which it sort of mimics a breath hold? Or do you need this cold? There seems to be something about the face being cold.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Wild. Yeah. So you sort of answered my next question, which was, uh, why do we have a dive reflex? I mean, we're not a harp seal and we're not a diving bird. Why do we, why do we have this?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
All the psychonauts love the stoned ape hypothesis, which is that psychedelics are what led to new ideas and daytime dreams that led to our evolution and anyway –
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
It was an interruption of the stoned ape. Yes.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
She conducts pioneering studies on how our behavior and the environment can modify our gene expression. Today marks the first time on the Huberman Lab Podcast that we really explore human genetics, epigenetics, and how behavior shapes gene expression across generations.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
And yet that there are aspects of our parents that are not seen in us at all and vice versa. And so I think for most people, when we think about genes, we think about heritability. But your work focuses a lot on the aspects of genetic expression that are subject to change based on what people choose to do or are forced to do in order to survive, something we call selection.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim the special welcome kit with five free travel packs and a free bottle of vitamin D3 K2. Today's episode is also brought to us by Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium and potassium in the correct amounts, but no sugar.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are vital for functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or your nerve cells.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Drinking element dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes. To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I first wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I'll also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes. Element has a bunch of great tasting flavors. I love the raspberry. I love the citrus flavor. Right now, Element has a limited edition lemonade flavor that is absolutely delicious.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I hate to say that I love one more than all the others, but this lemonade flavor is right up there with my favorite other one, which is raspberry or watermelon. Again, I can't pick just one flavor. I love them all.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman, spelled drinkelement.com slash Huberman, to claim a free Element sample pack with a purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. I'm jumping around here, but I feel like these are the questions that are hopefully springing to people's minds here and there.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I've seen these videos of babies being born into a swimming pool and that you get on their belly, it looks like the Nirvana cover and they seem perfectly happy to be underwater shortly after birth, which makes intuitive sense. They were in the womb, they were floating in the amniotic sac and they're underwater, so to speak.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Do we come into this world knowing how to dive and be underwater because of our experience during pregnancy?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
It's fascinating. So what did you discover in this group of incredible divers?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
So could you tell us about selection in terms of how quickly a given behavior, for example, can change our gene expression? I'm not aware of any way to change one's eye color without putting in like a colored contact lens. Now there's some esoteric things showing up online about people using these bizarre treatments to change their eye color.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
But does diving increase the size of the spleen?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I know you've done some work parsing which genes are different in this population and developing some animal models for that. and that some of this converges on thyroid hormone. Could you tell us the relationship between thyroid hormone levels? People are fascinated by thyroid hormone, it seems.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Everyone either thinks they have a thyroid deficiency or an overproduction of thyroid or they want to increase their thyroid. What is the relationship between thyroid hormone and spleen function as it relates to the production of these additional red blood cells?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I can think of two general scenarios where having a nice big spleen would be advantageous. One is in the performance enhancement context. You're a runner, maybe there's a way, I'm not suggesting this as a protocol that, you know, like getting your face into some cold water, holding your breath could afford you a kind of a boost.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
So instead of the scuba tank boost underwater, you're getting the above ground boost in endurance or strength output. But you said you have to be holding your breath at the, at the same time in order to take advantage of that deployment of red blood cells, which is a little confusing to me because I imagine if this...
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
if the spleen contracts and the red blood cells are deployed into the body, that those are available whether or not your mouth is open or not.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
But for the most part, people accept that you're not going to change your eye color by behaving differently. But what are some examples where we can change our gene expression quickly? relatively quickly by doing something differently.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Fascinating. And then the other scenario is for robustness of one's immune system. I, for one, don't like being sick. And if there's anything I can do to increase the function of my immune system, including sleep, exercise, sunlight, all those things, but in particular, if I feel like I'm traveling an additional amount or not sleeping as well,
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I'd be willing to do pretty much anything within the realm of reason to improve my immune system vigor.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
And if sticking my face in a bowl of cold water, 50 degrees for, I guess, as long as I can hold my breath in the morning is going to potentially afford that advantage, I'm willing to be the the idiot that is doing this thing without any specific clinical trial yet. But I'd love to see a clinical trial on this.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Has anything been done to explore how that particular behavior that is generating the dive reflex can afford any enhancement in immune system function?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
We have a family friend who's 94. My mom just told me, 94. And my mom said over the phone, she swims four miles a day. And I'm like, there's no way. And she goes, no way. She swims a mile a day, four days a week, which is still pretty impressive.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Four days a week at 94? Presumably that's not backstroke. Some of it's, yeah, I think that Like, is there something to being in water that just generally is good for us?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I shower, I bathe, but, you know, is there something good about swimming or floating or diving just for our general human physiology that we're aware of?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Has the size of spleens or rather the genes related to what you're talking about, has that been correlated with whether or not people evolved from coastal versus more central regions of continents?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I don't think of humans as an underwater species, but you're changing my view of this. I feel like we need to think about humans as some humans in the past and now spend a lot of time underwater without a scuba tank.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
That's super interesting. So this isn't the only population you've studied. If you would, could you tell us about the recent work, the study on women in particular? And I'm very interested in how this relates to cardiovascular health.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
No wetsuits.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I was wondering, how deep do they dive?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
And 30 feet's not nothing. That's right.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
But deep, deep end in the pool, I, you know, recreational pool near my home growing up. And when you're down at the bottom, you feel significant pressure. You can let some air out to relieve some of that pressure. But you're, I mean, 20 feet is 20 feet, 30 feet. And it's not a linear experience.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
With every additional foot, like you're really experiencing more and more pressure. So.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I just forsake of people out there who perhaps haven't spent time at the bottom of a pool, a 20-foot pool. Like 30 feet is still really impressive.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
And they're bringing a fetus down that low.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
So there was a blue-eyed F1, as we say. That's right. The first. Let's stay on eye color for a moment because before we get into how genes can be modified by behavior, I've been told that the green eye phenotype is one of the more rare eye colors. Is that true?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I have so many questions, some of which are cultural, some of which are biological. I'll start with the cultural questions. Why in this culture is it the women specifically that dive? Are they revered? And are they diving for a particular resource that is, well, because it's underwater, presumably is not available elsewhere, but what are they diving for?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Where the men are afraid of the cold. I hear about a lot of guys that will, will spend dozens of hours picking apart deliberate cold exposure, uh, when it would take them a fraction of the amount of the time to get into the water. In my experience, this is not a controlled studies, uh, women are more tolerant of the cold, at least in terms of being willing to embrace it the first time around.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I have stories of, I won't say which countries, elite special forces, it wasn't the U.S., guys, in that case it was guys, being terrified of getting into cold water, but otherwise being willing to do very, very challenging and indeed very dangerous things. I know a woman who first cold plunged 10 minutes. She was just in there.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
In my experience, women are more willing to get into the cold the first time. And then now there's a lot of debate online about cold tolerance in the two sexes, but I don't, the data aren't really solid there. So I Maybe the men are just afraid of going underwater.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
A hundred years old?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
As we have this conversation, I think it's very important to remind people that correlation is a causation with all the obsession with longevity and living longer. Yeah. I'm not going to rule out the possibility that getting into cold water, in particular diving or generating the dive reflex with cold water, doesn't have a longevity effect.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
But I don't think there's any direct evidence that it does.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
The problem is that you need to do a very long study.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
And the other problem with longevity studies is... You don't really have a good control group, at least within subject, because you don't know when you would have died.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Okay. So these incredible women are diving up until their 70s, 80s?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Okay. So can we assume that there was an original F1 brown-eyed person that gave rise to the entire lineage of brown eyes subsequently?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Very cool. What are they gathering down there?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
So it's all the proteins again. It's expensive sushi.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I'm willing to try octopus. Uh, I have too much, uh, an affinity for cephalopods to eat octopus, but I have in the past and it can be delicious. Um, And so it's amazing to me if I step back from these two populations and I think more broadly as well about what people are willing to work for. Humans will work very hard to get protein.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
It's just kind of incredible how hard they'll work for proteins and lipids combined in delicious form.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I mean, we're not aquatic animals.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
And they're willing to risk their lives and the lives of their fetuses to – The next generation, right? There's nothing I think that a species tries to protect more than the next generation, one would hope, that they're willing to risk their lives on a daily basis multiple times per day to go collect protein, basically.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
So do you think between on-land hunting and what you're describing that if we think about Homo sapien evolution generally, that a big part of Homo sapien evolution as it relates to selection of particular genes to drive particular traits and abilities relates to this thing of just trying to get more protein and fat?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Super interesting. So in this group of Korean women divers, what's going on with their cardiovascular system? You know, earlier we were talking about how this might have implications for oxygen utilization in the brain and body and potential disease treatment ramifications. Yes.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I realize I'm slightly remiss on the statement about eye color not being subject to behavior. We know that as you get more sunlight exposure, in particular ultraviolet light exposure, that eyes will darken regardless of where they start.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Yeah, when I think about heart rate, I think mainly about autonomic function. And again, vagal innervation seems to be a theme there. The vagus is responsible for slowing the heart rate down. Anytime we exhale through respiratory sinus arrhythmia, we essentially slow our heart rate down. It's the fastest way I'm aware of to consciously slow our heart rate down.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
We talk about the inheritance of physical traits like eye color, and we dive deep into fascinating mechanisms such as the mammalian dive reflex, a physiological reaction to breath holding in cold water that as Dr. Ilardo explains, can dramatically alter the physiology of your spleen to allow significant increases in red blood cell count and oxygen availability to your brain and body.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
So as one dives, I guess if they're exhaling, letting out some air, dumping some carbon dioxide, which is probably a good thing if you're a free diver, I don't want to encourage people to do this because it shuts off the gas reflex that would have you jolt to the surface. But assuming no one's going to go out and try this, by dumping air, you're exhaling.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Exhaling slows the heart rate, but not 40 beats per minute.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
It's usually a fraction of that.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
That's interesting. So for non-divers, so for pregnant women on land who aren't from this population, the picture I'm getting is they're sleeping on their back, perhaps because it's more comfortable as they get very pregnant, and their airway is getting cut off. at some point. So they're having these hypoxic episodes. And then there's some gasping as the carbon dioxide gets high.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
This is also incidentally what people who are overweight or by the way, people with very big necks. This is why a lot of big necked, very lean men die in their sleep. This is a kind of well-known thing in certain sports communities. It's very tragic. You say, well, this person's fit, but they're lying on their back. They have big necks and their airway is compressed.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
So like a blue-eyed baby will have much bluer eyes at birth than it will at age 15, at age 80, for instance. And we believe that's due to changes in pigmentation because of UV exposure.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
If you have a big neck, it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to die early, but make sure you're breathing right at night because sleep apnea is very dangerous.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
But it's super dangerous.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
So for pregnant women who are concerned about hypoxia, what are the options that they have besides becoming a diver and joining this incredible community in Korea? Yeah.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Uncomfortable topic, but I think an important one. Earlier, you were talking about genetic selection and what determines survival of offspring. Is it the case that many miscarriages, if not most miscarriages, are because the mutations that arise would have been destructive at some point postnatally, after birth? So it's kind of a nature's... nature's veto on the genetic program.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
So it could be pre-implantation or post-implantation. A mutation arises and somehow the the genetic programs of embryology are somehow made aware that down the line this is going to lead to a stillborn fetus or something.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor Juve. Juve makes medical grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast, it is the incredible impact that light can have on our biology.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
So, I mean, nature doesn't have a conscious logic in the same way that we think, but the genetic decision, therefore, is to stop, is essentially to stop cell proliferation and the pregnancy is terminated.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I'm very curious about how these genetic adaptations and how they relate to behavior impact organs versus things on the surface of the body that we can see versus both. I don't know if this is true, but long ago I heard that, and I don't want to scare anyone because it's not true in every case. I'll repeat, it's not true in every case.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
But I was told by a friend of mine who's a physician that a lot of the wine spot pigmentation of the surface of the body, like a baby will come out with a very dramatic wine spot pigmentation of part of the face or the head, sometimes, not always, is correlated with mutations in internal organs. And this is having run a mouse lab for a long time.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
You study mouse mutants, mice that overexpress or lack or are hypomorphic for a particular gene. And you learn as you work with one of these populations that oftentimes the mutation that impacts, say, retinal development, for which I need to take the retina out, look at it under a microscope and find which cells are miswired or something like that,
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
correlates with something on the surface of the body where you go, oh yeah, the ones with the curly tails, those are the ones that are likely to be the mutants. You still have to do the genotyping. You still got to send out DNA and, you know, or analyze DNA. Nowadays you send it out. But in the old days we genotyped our own mice.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
And what you find is that oftentimes there are these peripheral markers of central issues. I'm also interested in the inverse of that, where there are peripheral markers of central advantages. So in these populations that you studied, they have these larger spleens or this ability to dive deeper and longer, can overcome hypoxia through a drop in heart rate.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Now, in addition to sunlight, red light and near infrared light sources have been shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellar and organ health, including faster muscle recovery, improved skin health and wound healing, improvements in acne, reduced pain and inflammation, even mitochondrial function and improving vision itself.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Is there anything about their external appearance that isn't about soft feet or exposure to the sun that tells you like this population is different? They look different. in ways that we don't expect different populations to just look different. Does that make sense?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
The reason I ask this is that as people we were discussing at the beginning of today's conversation, mate selection, think of. They smell so great. We like them for this reason. We like them for that reason. And there's the conscious choices that we're making. And then there's all the stuff working below our level of consciousness. Like, oh, they smell great.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
And you're actually selecting, at least in part, for their immune system and the potential immune system of offspring. Even if you decide you never want to have children with this person for whatever reason, this stuff is happening in parallel, consciously and unconsciously. And so when I think about, you know, the
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
the ability – the special abilities of different populations at the level of internal organs, like a spleen ability. You also have to wonder if this is represented at the level of, you know, I don't know, like the – I mean, it could be anything, right? I mean, it could be the ones with the better spleens have really nice hands. I mean, and you don't think about it.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
You don't think to correlate those things.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
But as in the example – I was discussing with the mice in a laboratory, when you get mutations that you know impact an internal organ, almost always there's something about, you know, they might have a particular fur pigmentation pattern, assuming it's a whole body mutation. Or sometimes they'll have like one webbed toe or they'll have a pinkies that – pinkies, it's mice.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
They have a little back paw digit that faces in, not out like the others. And so you learn when you work with these things to say, those are the good ones. Those are the mutant ones. Or in some cases, those are the good mutant ones, right? And I think as humans, we don't tend to do this consciously. It's not how we're trained to think, thank goodness. that would complicate all the dating apps.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
People would have to show their digits and Lord knows what else. But human mate selection is in part genetic selection. So what are your thoughts on this in terms of how these things correlate with human choice and behavior? I'm asking you to speculate here, obviously.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
What sets Juve lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy device is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning specific wavelengths of red light and near infrared light in combination to trigger the optimal seller adaptations. Personally, I use the Juve whole body panel about three to four times a week, and I use the Juve handheld light both at home and when I travel.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function. Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient levels and much more. They've also recently added tests for toxins such as BPA exposure from harmful plastics and tests for PFAS or forever chemicals.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to your physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors who are expert in the relevant areas.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
for example in one of my first tests with function i learned that i had elevated levels of mercury in my blood function not only helped me detect that but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels which included limiting my tuna consumption i've been eating a lot of tuna while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with knack and acetylcysteine both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification and i should say by taking a second function test
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
That approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by function simplicity and at the level of cost. It is very affordable.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. As long as we're talking about diving underwater. As a vision scientist, at least that's where my initial training was, I have to ask about vision underwater. Do these two populations use goggles?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
If you'd like to try Juve, you can go to Juve, spelled J-O-O-V-V dot com slash Huberman. Juve is offering an exclusive discount to all Huberman Lab listeners with up to $400 off Juve products. Again, that's Juve, spelled J-O-O-V-V dot com slash Huberman to get up to $400 off. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
So interesting. Um, just going to take one minute and, um, explain to people the underwater thing because, um, I find it fascinating that the surface of the eye is rounded, obviously. People get that. And that's what allows you to refract, to bend the light to a single point so that things look nice and crisp. And when you're underwater, the water essentially fills in the roundness around it.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
The air does, of course, above water as well. But because of the similarity and basically the density of the water and the surface of the eye, even though they're different, you get less of a of a bending of the light to a point. So the reason I'm saying this, the reason I'm giving this very crude lesson in optics is there were really two possibilities.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
One is that kids that dive a lot in their youth have a flatter eye. If you think about a goggle or any kind of underwater seeing device, you're basically putting air between the eye and the water and you're making it flat. So the idea that the eye would become more flat through diving isn't inconceivable. I suppose it could happen.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
But it makes perfect sense to me as to why the European children could do this also because you train it enough. It turns out it's the ability to constrict the pupil down really, really small that can account for this adaptation. So –
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I wouldn't have thought that diving underwater and learning to pick up small objects underwater would make the eye more flat, kind of like wearing a goggle underwater. But the point you make is an extremely important one, because if you take a population that is already afforded some sort of potential genetic advantage and you train them even further, that's when you get X-Men-like behavior.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
And this is really all about the X-Men, right? And women, as you clearly pointed out. And I think that brings us to this question of like human super performance. I think about the fact that almost always when I see a marathon winner nowadays and I think about, is it Elliot Kipchoge?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Elliot Kipchoge set the marathon record with mile times on the order of? 435. 26.3, 26.2 miles at, you know, somewhere in the four and a half minute mile pace continuously. Incredible. So he represents among the pinnacle of that sport. Almost always when we see these incredible endurance runners... they seem to descend from specific regions of the world. Can we talk about why that's so?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Are they inheriting some sort of red blood cell trait? Is it the light-bonedness combined with that? What leads to incredible human performance? I know you're a runner. Your husband's a runner. So how much hope is there for the rest of us? And why is it that folks like Eliud are so unbelievably spectacular? Yeah.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. One of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to make sure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
If we take this out of the realm of physical performance and we take it into cognitive or mathematical performance. I feel like there's some fun thought experiments we could do.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Before we started, you were talking about your time at Princeton as an undergraduate, seeing John Nash, you know, famed for sadly having schizophrenia, diagnosed schizophrenia, the topic of the movie Beautiful Mind with Russell Crowe, but at the same time having incredible abilities. based on presumably things that either correlate with or just by chance run in parallel with the schizophrenia.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Who knows what's driving what or if they're in parallel. We have examples – again, I'm pulling from movies like Rain Man where there's a person who has autism of a type that makes social interactions very challenging –
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
But in that example, which is I think representative of at least some people with autism, extreme mathematical calculation abilities, especially in the physical space, being able to see things and count them very rapidly. Last example I'll give is –
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees. Eight Sleep automatically regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your unique needs. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for over four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
There's this math competition held in India where the kids can update the numbers by moving their hands with a sensor on it, and they're adding the numbers very fast. And you just see this kid basically spooling numbers, spooling numbers, spooling numbers. At the end, they get one opportunity to answer the addition of this immensely long string of numbers correctly, and this kid nails it.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
And you go, whoa, like he's adding things very fast, presumably through some training, but – Is it possible? Is it within the realm of reality?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
based on what we know about human genetics, that there could be genes that select for, say, rapid updating of visual scenes combined with short-term memory or whatever duration of memory is required that would afford certain people certain advantages in this based on inheritance that's then combined with training.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Much in the same way that the ability of the spleen to expand if you dive a lot and you happen to be born in one of these communities that we've been talking about. Is that possible?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Huge Oliver Sacks fan here. I'm sort of becoming a historian of him, an informal historian. And he also loved to spend much of his time underwater.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Yeah, he was an avid diver and snorkeler and scuba diver. And I think in part he said because it was so quiet down there. Incidentally, he had propensagnosia. He couldn't recognize faces. I think I have that right. I've known a few other people with that.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
And propensagnosia, the inability to recognize faces, also seems to correlate with this, for lack of a better way to put it, kind of nerdy, quirky phenotype. A former advisor of mine had it. had this. Although in part, I thought he told us that because then it gave him an out anytime he couldn't remember somebody's name.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
It's a great thing to put forward if you can't remember people's names. No disrespect to the actually clinically diagnosed people with proprosagnosia. It gets you out of a lot of having to remember things. Yeah. I find this fascinating because in this day and age of pathologizing everything,
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Eight Sleep has just launched their latest model, the Pod 5, and the Pod 5 has several new important features. One of these new features is called Autopilot. Autopilot is an AI engine that learns your sleep patterns to adjust the temperature of your sleeping environment across different sleep stages. It also elevates your head if you're snoring, and it makes other shifts to optimize your sleep.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
It's interesting to take, as you just did, and I really appreciate it, taking a step back and saying, yes, there are instances where people on the spectrum have, you know, they need assisted living their entire lives. But there are also people...
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
who are living, you know, incredibly productive lives, even, uh, making incredibly, uh, enormous, meaningful and uniquely meaningful contributions to society who we would say are probably on the spectrum. Um, and so the question then becomes to what extent is it genetic? To what extent is our genes driving a proclivity for numbers or a proclivity for engineering? Um,
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
And on the opposite side, like are great creatives, are they carrying a different set of genes or are they just the ones that can't pay attention to anything so they start throwing things together? Yeah. That was a joke against the creators.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
It's so interesting how we classify intelligence. And some years back, there was a lot of debate about IQ versus emotional intelligence. But there's this wonderful documentary. By the way, there's several movies by this title, but the one I'm thinking of is the documentary Spellbound, which is about the spelling bee competition. And
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
It was the case for a long time that how well and how quickly kids could remember to spell certain words was thought of as some important correlate of intelligence, which is kind of crazy now in the day, an age of autocorrect and things like that. But one could argue that being able to spell is an interesting one.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
But the different kids that they detail, one from a farming community, one from a community where the parents were really hard driving about academics, it tiles the entire representation of every kind of background you can imagine. Different types of parents, blue collar parents, highly educated parents, boys, girls, one that set that's clearly on the spectrum and you see it in the family.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
You can see that and everything in between. And what you come to realize is that training effects are very real. Like if you take a kid in particular and you give them an activity and they repeat that activity, no surprise here, they get very good at that. But it also narrows the number of things that they can also be good at.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
The base on the Pod5 also has an integrated speaker that syncs to the Eight Sleep app and can play audio to support relaxation and recovery. The audio catalog includes several NSDR scripts that I worked on with Eight Sleep to Record. If you're not familiar, NSDR involves listening to an audio script that walks you through a deep body relaxation combined with some very simple breathing exercises.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
This is what I think we forget about neuroplasticity is that the choice to get very good at one thing is also the choice to not get good at a bunch of other things. So when you step back, and I'm not going to ask you for parenting advice, but when you step back and you think about what you know about human genetics,
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Is there a kind of a – assuming one doesn't have to hunt for their food the way these populations you've been studying do, is there a kind of an optimal way to think about kind of genetic bias and what we – perhaps should focus on? Or are you a equal opportunity, get after whatever interests you the most kind of person?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
So interesting. I mean, I think mindset effects are so important, under-discussed. I'm so glad this is coming up. Allie Crum was a guest on this podcast and she shared with us some incredible data on it. You know, you tell people that stress is good for them, you stress them out, their health improves.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
You tell people stress is bad for them, you stress them out, their health gets worse and on and on. There's just so many examples of these. Most of the time people aren't taking a genetic test to determine whether or not they're likely to be good or bad at something. They're looking at their family photos or they're looking at their parents or their grandparents.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
This is the old version of genetic information. And I'm guessing here too one should be very cautious. If your parents weren't athletes, does that mean that you don't have the genes to be a great athlete? Clearly the answer is no. Likewise for intellectual pursuits.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
What about rhythm and dancing ability?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I didn't inherit any rhythm from my dad or my mom. Although my dad is a bit more musical by virtue of being more mathematical. But that is not the same thing as dancing ability. I don't know if we have any truly bad dancers in our family, but we have at least one with exceptional rhythm and ability. She happens to be adopted. So there you go. There you go.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
That's a different version of genetic variation. And an important one in the sense that it's a cross-fostering experiment. Exactly. To put it in animal laboratory terms. If you don't mind, I'd like to talk about the ethics of genetics and genetic engineering. A few years back, a guy in China running a laboratory used CRISPR. to modify the genome of babies. I believe he mutated the HIV receptor.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
And that combination has been shown in peer-reviewed studies to restore your mental and physical vigor. And this is great because while we would all like to get to bed on time and get up after a perfect night's sleep, oftentimes we get to bed a little late or later. Sometimes we have to get up early and charge into the day because we have our obligations.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I believe it wasn't to prevent them from contracting HIV under any circumstances, but rather the relationship between the HIV receptor and some things related to human memory. That was the speculation. There was very little known about this because this was happening in China in a kind of a closed format.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
It wasn't published in a peer-reviewed journal, but he showed up at a human genetics meeting and he announced to the world that he had genetically modified babies through the use of genetic engineering. Now, on the backdrop of this, up until now, we've basically been talking about genetic selection through partner selection, through all sorts of things.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
So there are kind of indirect ways to genetically select. I think people forget that, but here we're talking about deliberate gene insertion or removal in embryos. creating genetically modified humans. After he did that, there was a sort of pause, as I recall. I was paying very close attention to this.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
As to whether or not the international community of genetic ethicists and scientists would say, wow, this is potentially a feat of human engineering that could prevent disease, et cetera, et cetera, or they were going to chastise him. And it turned out they chastised him. And as it were, we were told that he was actually put into prison.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Now, whether or not that prison included a laboratory, we don't know, right? We have no idea. And there were a few other countries that chimed in and said, oh yeah, you know, programs like this have actually been underway elsewhere for a long time. And then it just went silent.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Right now, the idea of the use of CRISPR to improve babies or to protect them against potential diseases is not commonplace. Or if it is, it's not discussed. What are your thoughts on the use of CRISPR to protect children from certain diseases? Let's just put it in that domain. And then, of course, we could talk about the misuse of this.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
But, you know, you could think of parents who are maybe carrying a mutation. They don't want their kids to have Huntington's, for instance. And you could potentially fix that gene. So I'm just going to cast all of that out there to give that kind of backdrop and get your thoughts. And there's clearly no right or wrong answer here, but this is very likely to be a big topic in the upcoming decade.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
NSDR can help offset some of the negative effects of slight sleep deprivation and NSDR gets you better at falling back asleep should you wake up in the middle of the night. It's an extremely powerful tool that anyone can benefit from the first time and every time. If you'd like to try Eight Sleep, go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to get up to $350 off the new Pod 5.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Yeah, there's a lot of debate right now online about some of these companies that allow for a deep sequencing of embryos.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
In particular, in cases of IVF, there's a company, I believe it's called Orchid up in the Bay Area that's kind of foremost in this where, you know, typically for IVF or even for natural pregnancy, there'll be an analysis of like, is there trisomy, like, you know, extra chromosomes, which we know can lead to Down syndrome, et cetera. But
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
these companies for a price offer deep, deep sequencing of genes that correlate with, like they're not causal in many cases, sometimes yes, but oftentimes correlate with, you know, potential spectrum phenotypes or, you know, things of that sort. Cancer susceptibility, BRCA mutation, right? I know several people, unfortunately, that died from cancer and they carried BRCA mutations.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
So this is real stuff. I think that the challenge for a lot of people is that as it stands now, it's very costly. So it sets up a scenario where wealthy people can afford to analyze embryos more vigorously than people who don't have the means to do it. But if we look back 10, 20, 30 years... you know, getting your whole genome sequenced in the early nineties.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Eight Sleep ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and the UAE. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350. Thank you for that, because I think that most everyone is interested in eyes and eye color. What are the sort of examples that come to mind when you think of
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Was it when Venter and those guys first, first nailed that ability? Something like that. I'm just thinking nineties sometimes. Okay. Maybe I'm a little early. We're a little late on that one, but was extremely expensive, but Now it's like, what, $100 or even free in some cases.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Yeah, so most technologies tend to advance that way. So it gets back to also this issue of how much information do you want. And so I guess given your training and understanding of human genetics, there's obviously no one-size-fits-all answer. But when it comes to understanding – how much control to exert over the genome. Where do you land on this? I'm not trying to put you in the hot seat here.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I think people are going to hear more about these technologies and just want to understand how to frame them.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
And by the way, the mammalian dive reflex can be activated outside of free diving, and you can even do it at home. We also explore how mate preference and selection in humans relates to the immune system. That is, if you were given a choice of many, many different mates, as most people are,
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I think that's a great answer. I think it's a really hard question to answer for any of us. I appreciate you being able to look at it and consider it. Dog genetics is fascinating. There are The selection seems to be for phenotype, but also behavioral type.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Which is fascinating.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
That was the basis?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
There is a dog named after the spaghetti sauce or vice versa. Yeah.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
No, I was joking. Tell us, what is the breed of dog?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
And it's a mix between?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
it strikes me that whether or not we're talking about Mendel's peas in the garden, whether or not we're talking about dogs, whether or not we're talking about corn varieties, or we're talking about humans that, um, For some reason, we like to underestimate the power that genes and natural selection have. And behavioral selection, I guess, is the more appropriate term, right?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I'm very curious about this concept of admixing. If you could explain what admixing is. And what I'm getting at here is... Probably the biggest question for me, which is, are we all really one species? I mean, I like the idea that we are all one collective consciousness and unity and peace on earth. Awesome. But really in a serious sense, is Homo sapiens one species?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I mean, there's a lot of genetic variation. And so if you could explain ad mixing, and if you're willing to go out on a limb and address whether or not there might be multiple species of primates walking around that we say, oh, that's a person, but... They might be that much different than us.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Rapid changes in gene expression in any organ could be at the surface of the body or it could be internally that are governed by some change in behavior.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Well, this has been incredibly illuminating. I've learned so much and I know Everyone listening has as well. I don't think we've ever had a discussion about these topics on this podcast in a solo episode or guest episode. You're truly the first person to come on here and talk about human genetics.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
And these incredible populations that you study are not only interesting in their own right, but they really shed light on the interplay between culture and selection, behavior, genetics, and basically what's possible in terms of human potential. And they also have important relevance to human disease, as you mentioned with the hypoxia work.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
And it also shines light on something that I don't think we can get enough of, which is the incredible things that humans are capable of in these very different populations that grew up and continue to exist in ways that are so different than us. I think it can't help but
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
turn the mirror on ourselves and ask ourselves like what are we doing in our daily lives behaviorally how might that be impacting our genes and to start to speculate about that in constructive ways so I just really want to thank you for coming here today and sharing your knowledge for the incredible work that you're doing to be honest I'm envious if I were ever going to do a sabbatical I don't think I'll ever have time to take the sabbatical that I've been accruing but if I ever did I'd love to study one of these incredible populations and try the free dive thing
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
It's really wonderful work, and it's having a huge impact. It's in the news often, as we'll put links to, and recently as well. I'm not going to ask you what you're on to now and what's coming next because we'll save that for a future installment, but I just want to really extend my gratitude on behalf of myself and all the listeners. Thank you so much for the work you do and for educating us.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Awesome. I'll take you up on that. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Melissa Allardo. To learn more about her work, please see the links in the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
In addition, please follow the podcast by clicking the follow button on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. And you can now leave us comments at both Spotify and Apple. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. And if you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, Threads, Facebook and LinkedIn.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the information on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, it's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as what we call protocols in the form of one to three page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure,
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Melissa Lardo. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Excuse me for interrupting, but are those changes that are passed down, are they adaptive? Are they making subsequent populations more resilient or less resilient?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
The mate you would select is the mate who has the immune system composition that is most different from yours. And you would know that on the basis of their smell and how attractive their smell is to you compared to the smell of other people. We also talk about how differences in external traits signal important variations in organ function, hormone levels, and even brain physiology.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
This might be slightly out of line with what we're talking about right now, but I'm really fascinated by this concept of hybrid vigour.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I was taught, I don't know if the data still hold up, that if you give mice a choice of other mice to mate with, to produce offspring with, that they will select a mouse whose major histocompatibility complex, which is a reflection of diversity of immune genes, so to speak, they'll pick the mouse whose immune system is most different from theirs.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
presumably the just so story, because we're making stuff up about why they do this, right? Nobody really knows. The just so story is that they do this in order to produce offspring that have a much broader array of immune genes to be able to combat a much broader array of potential pathogens. Is that true in mice still? And is it true in humans as well?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Do people elect to produce offspring, if given a choice, produce offspring with people that are more different from them as opposed to similar to them?
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Super interesting. So they're given a choice of sweaty clothing from the opposite sex potential partner. I guess they're, I don't know if they were, you know, sent out on dates after the experiment, but And they're smelling, let's say, 10 different t-shirts that are sweaty. And then they're saying – and then they rank order them.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
And the one they like the most, if you go and look at the genome of the person whose sweat was on that clothing.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
It's kind of amazing, right? Like that smell, which we just think of as, I like this body odor, I don't like this body odor, I love this body odor, is... kind of a proxy for gene expression related to the immune system of the offspring that you haven't even had yet with this smelly t-shirt owning person. It's kind of wild.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
So I think it speaks to smell and these aren't really pheromone effects, but it speaks to smell as a pretty powerful driver of mate selection.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I called it hybrid vigor based on no particular knowledge of the correct term. It's the term I use because it makes sense to me.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
Toward the end of our conversation, we discussed the current state and ethical considerations of gene editing in humans, something that's apt to be an increasingly important topic in the years to come because gene editing in humans is now possible and is happening.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I find this super interesting for a couple of reasons. First of all, I'll turn 50 in September, and I remember a time not that long ago where it was very unusual, for instance, to see an interracial couple in a television show when I was growing up. Now that's changed, right? And I think that's reflective of a number of things.
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Behaviors That Alter Your Genes to Improve Your Health & Performance | Dr. Melissa Ilardo
I mean, there's cause and effect directionality here that we could get into, but that's a That yes, people are intermarrying and or producing children with people that – whose backgrounds, genetic backgrounds are very different than their own. And if we take the opposite extreme, it makes perfect sense as to why this hybrid vigor thing would exist.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today we are discussing how to study and learn.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And it is very important anytime you're trying to learn new information. So focus goes with alertness. You can't be focused if you're not alert. This is prerequisite. So you need to be alert and you need to be focused in order to pay attention to the information that you're trying to learn.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
In fact, it is the process of being focused and attending that cues your nervous system that something is important, that something's different about whatever sensory experience you happen to be having when you're focused and attending, whether or not it's the information you're hearing or that you're looking at or both.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
That cue at the level of neurochemicals in your brain and body signals to the neurons, hey, you're going to have to change. You're going to have to alter your connections, either make them stronger or weaker, or a combination of those things in order to make sure that your nervous system can retain and use the information at a future time. So that's step one. And of course, as a part of step one,
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Most people, when they hear about optimal studying strategies, they want to know, you know, what should they do? What should they take in order to learn better? Well, here's what everyone should take in order to learn better, which is a great night's sleep the night before limiting your external stress, although some stress is good because it queues up your alertness.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Fortunately, today you will learn the best ways to study. Turns out there's a rich literature on this dating back well over 100 years, and the data are absolutely fascinating and incredibly actionable. It's incredibly interesting how the fields of education, the fields of psychology and the fields of neuroscience have now come together to define the optimal strategies to study and learn.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
It actually allows you to remember certain things better. We'll talk about this a little bit later. No one can remove all stress from their life, but we know one thing for sure, your ability to be alert and focused is going to be greater if you slept well the night before, okay? So sleep is without question the best nootropic, right? The word nootropic means smart drug.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
I don't really like that term because learning involves all sorts of things. It's not just about being smart. It's about being able to attend. It's about sometimes being creative, flexible with ideas and information. Here's the point. You're going to need to get your sleep right in order to be able to study and learn at your absolute best.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And I've done many episodes of the Huberman Lab podcast about sleep. We have a newsletter about sleep, the details in a short PDF format, the various things you can do to get your sleep optimized, so to speak. You can find all that hubermanlab.com by putting sleep into the search function.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
We don't have time to discuss that material now, but get your sleep right so that you can be alert and focused when it comes time to learn.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Now, the process of being alert and focused on particular material that you want to learn can be enhanced by just having a silent script within your head, silent meaning you're not saying it out loud, where when you sit down to learn, you're looking at a book or you're listening to a lecture, perhaps a podcast like this, you're thinking, okay, I need to learn this, I need to learn this.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
You can voluntarily ramp up your level of focus and alertness by telling yourself that information is important. Don't be a passive participant in learning, this is the basis of active learning, by expecting the information to be so interesting that it pulls your level of attention and focus out of you. Rather, learn to engage your attention and focus voluntarily, volitionally.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
When we hear about ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, we know that people with ADHD can attend very rapidly. They can really pay close attention for long periods of time if they like a given topic or a given experience or activity. They have serious challenges, however, engaging their attention and alertness if they are not excited about an activity or information.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And so it is the hallmark of all good learners to be able to voluntarily force yourself to attend and to focus. And when I say force yourself, that means a constant bringing back of your mind's attention to whatever it is you're trying to learn. It is meant to feel difficult.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
I say meant to feel difficult because that strain that you feel, that encouraging, or in some cases, forcing yourself to attend, sometimes even putting on a hoodie and hat, literally putting blinders so that you can only attend to the material right in front of you, that straining that you feel reflects in part
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
the release of neuromodulators like epinephrine, adrenaline in the brain and body, which serve to cue the neural circuits that they need to change at a later time, okay? So the strain that you feel in trying to learn, the strain that you feel in forcing yourself to learn how to focus, that is good.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
That's a cue to your nervous system that it's going to need to change, that neuroplasticity needs to take place. Think about it.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
If you didn't feel that strain and you were able to perform whatever it is that you were doing, or remember whatever information it is that you're being exposed to seamlessly, well, then your nervous system wouldn't have to change because it already has the capabilities within the neural circuits. So that strain that you feel, that agitation is great.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
That's a cue that you are learning or that you've set the learning process in motion. Now, it's also the case that some people don't have great levels of focus and attention. And there are, of course, pharmacologic tools. I would encourage anyone that has clinically diagnosed ADHD to talk to their doctor about whether or not they should use prescription meds and or other methods.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Eight Sleep.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Great sleep is always going to be an important substrate for attention and focus for anybody, but especially for people with ADHD. I highly encourage anyone that's interested in enhancing their levels of focus and attention to also consider the non-pharmacologic approaches. So this is irrespective of whether or not you need pharmacologic approaches. Yes, being well hydrated.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Yes, the appropriate amount of caffeine for you that allows you to be alert, but not shaking and agitated can be very useful.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
However, the scientific data also support the fact that doing a brief, say five to 10 minute mindfulness meditation each day, these are the data from Wendy Suzuki's laboratory at New York University, showing that people who do a 10 minute meditation per day, where they simply sit or lie down, close their eyes, focus on their breathing, their attention invariably drifts, they bring their attention back to their breathing.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
People who do that on a regular basis improve their level of focus. They improve their memory and recall ability. And of course there are a bunch of other positive effects of that simple zero cost tool of mindfulness meditation. So if you're interested in improving your levels of focus and attention for sake of learning,
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
I highly encourage you to explore the oh so valuable tool of mindfulness meditation, just five or 10 minutes per day done on a regular basis. You miss a day, no big deal, just get right back to it the next day. Does it matter if you do it morning, afternoon, or night? No. Some people find that doing it too late at night might disrupt their sleep.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
But if you think about meditation of the sort that I just described as a perceptual exercise, maybe you don't even call it meditation. You're just teaching yourself to focus. You could even do it with eyes open by focusing on a visual target, allowing yourself to blink. There are good data on this sort of approach as well.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And then just making sure that your visual attention and cognitive attention comes back to that visual target. over and over again. It's a deliberate process of bringing your attention back to a particular location that is very valuable for improving your levels of focus.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
In fact, it is known to create significant improvements in your ability to focus, which is critical for your ability to study and learn. So I know that many people are interested in what to take, what to do at the level of kind of esoteric practices or things to buy. There is stuff out there.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Again, I mentioned hydration, caffeine, great sleep, and so on, but the simple practice of mindfulness meditation or just what I describe as a focusing perceptual exercise of bringing your attention back to the same location over and over again deliberately will train you to train your nervous system to bring your attention back to whatever it is you're trying to learn.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Now I've done other podcasts about how to focus about attention specifically and ADHD. Again, you can find all of those at hubermanlab.com. Simply put ADHD or focus or tools for focus into the search function and it will take you to the exact timestamps in those episodes that are relevant.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Right now, however, I want to talk about the second part of neuroplasticity, which is that the actual changes in the nervous system, the strengthening and weakening predominantly of connections between neurons that underlie learning do not occur during the focusing and learning or rather the exposure to the material. but instead during deep sleep and sleep-like states.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. I've spoken many times before on this podcast about the critical need to get sleep, both enough sleep and enough quality sleep.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And again, I've done a lot of podcasts and talked a lot about tools for getting better sleep, but I just want to remind everybody that the actual reordering of the connections, the strengthening of connections between neurons that underlie learning, the weakening of those connections occurs during sleep in particular, during rapid eye movement sleep, which tends to predominate
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
in the latter half of the night. So make sure that you're getting enough sleep for you. For some people it's six hours, for some people it's eight hours. And yes, there is something called the first night effect. The first night effect is the experimentally observed phenomenon whereby information that you learn on a given day
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
is mostly consolidated during the night's sleep that you have on that first night after the learning occurs. Does this mean that if you get a poor night's sleep on the first night after learning something that you are forever going to forget that information, that it cannot be consolidated into your neural circuits? No, however, it's very clear that the first night after learning
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
you want to get the best sleep possible. So if you're learning about, so you're studying is going late into the night and you're drinking a lot of caffeine, be mindful that the sleep that you get after drinking that caffeine late into the day, the all-nighters that you're pulling, those are not serving your learning well. So you need to structure your life as a student of any kind
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
so that you can get focus and attention to what it is you want to learn. And you can get sleep to the best of your ability. And of course, people who are raising young kids or who have stress in their lives for whatever reason, perhaps won't be able to optimize their sleep on that first night or even subsequent nights. But do your best to get your sleep right.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
It's the single best thing you can do for your mental health, for your physical health and for learning and performance of any kind. And it's really worth the effort now. With an understanding of the mechanisms, the focus and alertness and the sleep phase of neuroplasticity, what are some other things that you can do to enhance whatever studying and learning you've obtained?
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Now, one of the key things to getting a great night's sleep is that your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees in order for you to fall and stay deeply asleep. And to wake up feeling refreshed, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
I already talked about a tool, a behavioral tool for enhancing focus. What about a behavioral tool for enhancing plasticity? If your sleep is great, or especially if your sleep isn't great. And there, I highly recommend you explore non-sleep deep rest or NSDR. There's a script for this in the show note captions.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
NSDR, sometimes referred to as yoga nidra, although those things are similar but different, is a 10 or 20 minute practice that you can do to restore your mental and physical vigor if you haven't slept enough. So you could do it first thing in the morning when you wake up, if you feel you haven't slept enough. You can do it in the afternoon.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
You can do it in the middle of the night if you're not able to sleep and offset some of the sleep loss that you otherwise would have experienced. NSDR is a very powerful tool in order to enhance neuroplasticity. And I'll talk more about this in a future episode. There's a lot of exciting data coming out about NSDR and yoga nidra.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
But if you're sleeping well, and even if you aren't, I highly encourage you to incorporate a 10 or 20 minute NSDR into your schedule someplace. Again, where you place it in your schedule isn't as important as the fact that you do it in order to enhance neuroplasticity. That is the reordering of connections between neurons to serve the studying and learning that you're doing.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Now let's talk about how the best students structure their days. Turns out there are great studies on this. There's a really nice paper In fact, that surveyed close to 700 students. These were medical students, approximately equal number of male and female students, and analyzed the most useful learning habits. That is the learning habits associated with the most successful students.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Now, any time you do a study like this where people take surveys, there's always the issue of In fact, we can pretty much set aside any possible causality. For instance, I'm about to tell you that the very best performing students tend to study for about three or four hours per day, but you could easily say, well, they're the best students because they study three or four hours per day.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
They don't study three or four hours per day because they're the best students. And you'd be exactly right, okay? We can get into all sorts of discussions about correlation versus causation, about reverse causality and on and on. However, none of that is the point here.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
One of the best ways to ensure all of that happens is to control the temperature of your sleeping environment. And with Eight Sleep, it's very easy to do that. You program the temperature that you want at the beginning, middle, and the end of the night, and that's the temperature that you're going to sleep at. And it will track your sleep.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
The point here is to establish what are the habits that the most successful students seem to incorporate over and over again, regardless of what classes they're taking, regardless of where they are in their arc of their learning trajectory.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And so what we know based on this study, and I'll provide a link to it in the show note captions, is that there are at least 10 study habits that the highly effective students use. I'm going to focus on the top five or six just for sake of time, because it turns out that most of the effect it appears of being a better student can be attributed to these top five or six habits.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
That is, what the scientific data say is the best way to study in order to remember information and to be able to use that information effectively in different areas of your life. So for those of you that are still in school, this could be any stage of school, today's discussion will be very useful for you.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
They set aside time to study. They literally schedule time to study. Now this probably serves several roles. The first one is that they are able to clear out other distractions. And in fact, that's the second thing that they do. They are very effective where they make it a point of putting their phone away and off, of isolating themselves. That's right. They're not studying with other people.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
They study alone, which is not to say that people who study with others cannot be effective in their studying, but the best performing students seem to study alone. They put their phone away. They tell their friends and families that they are not going to be able to be reached during that time.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And yes, they study for three or four hours per day, but they break that up into a couple of different sessions, typically two or three sessions. So they're not doing a three or four hour studying about all in one shot. So they're managing their time, they're eliminating distractions, and they're studying for a consistent amount of time, at least five days per week, okay?
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Presumably they're taking some weekends off, although that wasn't made clear from this paper. The other thing that they do, and this is very important, is that they make an effort to then teach their peers, to teach other students in the class. Now, some of you may be thinking,
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
and I'm thinking back to college here, mostly, that if you spend all this time learning the information and you are in a competitive scenario with the other students, that teaching them the information is kind of a freebie for them and it's harder for you, meaning you're putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage or you're giving them an unfair advantage for not having done the work.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Now, while this paper didn't do an analysis of whether or not these students that served as the learners from the other students got an unfair advantage, it's very clear that students who make it a point to learn material in isolation, then bring that material to other students in the same course and teach them perform exceedingly well in comparison to the other students.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
It tells you how much slow wave sleep you're getting, how much rapid eye movement sleep you're getting, which is critical. And all of that also helps you dial in the exact parameters you need I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for well over three years now, and it has completely transformed my sleep for the better.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
So don't be afraid to be a teacher of your peers in order to test. This is key to test and develop mastery of the material. Now in my laboratory for years, we used to have a saying, which I simply picked up from the laboratories I was trained in. I didn't come up with the saying, which was watch one, do one, teach one.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And that was referring to doing surgeries or suturing or doing an antibody reaction or a Western blot or things that you do in laboratories. Watch one, do one, teach one. Watch one, do one, teach one, of course, should be reserved to anything where no one's going to be put in danger by the watch one, do one, teach one procedure, right?
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Some procedures, especially in laboratories, can be dangerous given the materials you use, et cetera. And of course, today we're talking about learning and studying generally. So provided it's safe, watch one, do one, teach one, is an excellent means to learn, that is to study new material, to develop proficiency and even mastery. and over time, perhaps even virtuosity.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
We'll return to that later, those distinctions. So going back to this idea that the best students set aside time, they designate time to study alone without distractions, that is sure to help them anchor their focus and attention. They know that they're going to need to use their focus and attention during that time. And we know,
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
with absolute certainty that focus and attention are a limited but renewable resource in the human brain. The longer you're awake, the more is the buildup of a molecule called adenosine in your brain and body. It makes you sleepy. It makes it harder to focus. When you sleep, adenosine levels are pushed down again. You're able to focus again. You feel more alert.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
You can think of adenosine as limiting your attentional budget, which is not to say that some people don't study best in the afternoon. or in the evening, or even late at night, right? I recall times during university when I'd study between the hours of 10 PM and 2 AM. I don't do that any longer,
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Scheduling time where you know you're going to need to be focused and attending is perhaps one of the most important things toward being able to focus and attend to the material. Now, if you're taking courses, you probably are going to be a slave to the timing of the courses. You aren't going to be able to tell the instructor, okay, listen, I want you to do this course at 3 p.m.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
because that's when you learn best. or at 8 a.m. because that's when you happen to be able to attend best. However, to the extent that you have any control over the time in which you're going to study, keeping that at a regular time or times, perhaps one block early in the day, one block later in the day, perhaps two blocks early in the day and so on is going to be beneficial.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
It turns out that's also supported by the research literature that The brain, just like with its sleep-wake cycles that entrain to a regular schedule, that is your brain and body get used to being active and inactive at particular times based on your exposure to sunlight, your exposure to activities, your social rhythms, et cetera. If you regularly, meaning for the course of about three days,
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation pod cover, the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra cover has improved cooling and heating capacity, higher fidelity sleep tracking technology, and the Pod 4 cover has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve airflow and stop your snoring.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
make it a point to focus and study at particular times. Again, pulling your attention back, it's not an automatic process, but pulling your attention back to a specific location, perhaps on a page or that you're listening to in a lecture.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
your body and brain will start to entrain to that rhythm such that you will be able to focus and attend better simply by virtue of the regularity of the timing of the exposure to the material, okay? So you probably need about two or three days to break into a regular schedule of focusing and attending and studying at a given time or times.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
allow yourself that transition period, but then make it a point to schedule those times to study, set aside your phone, tell people you're going offline, turn off the wifi if you need to or have to, you may need it for your studying, I don't know, depends on what you're studying, but limit distractions at all costs. and learn to just focus on the material. And this is a skill.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
This is the most important thing to understand. It's a skill to be able to focus and study. And it's a skill that you can learn very quickly, especially if you schedule it for regular times and you give yourself two or three days in which to adapt to those schedules and times, and then try and stick to them as regularly as possible.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Perhaps even on the weekends, if you're approaching the end of the quarter or semester, perhaps even on the weekend, even if you're not in the quarter of semester. Keeping those regular times will entrain your nervous system to study and learn at its best at those particular times. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
By now, many of you have heard me say that if I could take just one supplement, that supplement would be AG1. The reason for that is AG1 is the highest quality and most complete of the foundational nutritional supplements available.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
What that means is that it contains not just vitamins and minerals, but also probiotics, prebiotics, and adaptogens to cover any gaps you may have in your diet and provide support for a demanding life.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
For me, even if I eat mostly whole foods and minimally processed foods, which I do for most of my food intake, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits and vegetables, vitamins and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone. For that reason, I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012, and often twice a day, once in the morning or mid-morning, and again in the afternoon or evening.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
When I do that, it clearly bolsters my energy, my immune system, and my gut microbiome. These are all critical to brain function, mood, physical performance, and much more. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim their special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3K2.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer. Before I move into specific ways to study in order to maximally offset forgetting, notice I didn't say in order to learn, but rather to maximally offset forgetting, AKA learning, stably learning material.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, you can go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep currently ships to the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
There's one other point that I wanted to pass along from this really nice study on the study habits of highly effective medical students that I've been referring to. And that is when one examined, or these people were asked about their motivation for studying, the best performing students, had an interesting answer.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
They had a very long term understanding of how or belief rather about how their success in medical school would impact their family, how it would impact their life arc, how it would change them. And they weren't particular about the ways in which it would change them or their family. In fact, it was a rather broad, abstract, aspirational way of thinking about their study efforts.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
So what I like so much about this paper is that in addition to having a fairly large sample size, close to 700 students that were evaluated, and yes, it's purely self-report and this kind of thing, nonetheless, it bridges the two extremes of studying and learning.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
It gets right down into the nitty gritty of how long they study, when they study, the things they do to limit distraction that we just discussed, but it also gets to their underlying psychological motivations and the thing that they use in order to pull them forward through their study efforts. perhaps especially when their desire is waning or their level of fatigue is increasing.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
I don't know that I'm speculating here, but this is this aspirational component of going to medical school, which it turns out in the country in which the study was done, only very, very select few of the very best students are able to achieve that. And they have to learn the information in a different language altogether, which is incredible. I always marvel at that.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
I have friends that did their PhD thesis in Italy. They're Italian by birth. They now happen to run a laboratory in Italy. And they had to do their PhD training and write papers and give their thesis dissertation and defense in English, even though English was their second language. So talk about a challenge. And that's just one example that I can think of. There are many examples of that.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
These students that I'm referring to in this study are not necessarily constantly thinking about how their efforts will transform themselves and their families, but they certainly were able to report what it was specifically that they are seeking, what they're aspiring to, besides just trying to do as well as they can getting into and through medical school.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
So the high level aspirational stuff within you, whatever that is for you, it's going to be highly individual, is certainly important and it offers a bookend to the nuts and bolts-y kind of stuff that you're going to do, I would hope, in order to best study and learn the specific material.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
So the specific actions that you're going to take each day to learn specific bits of information that will pull you toward those important aspirations. And now again, if you love the material you're learning, this aspirational component is probably not as important.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
I can recall during university and graduate school and so on thinking, oh my goodness, this is like the coolest thing I've ever heard. I've probably say that about a million different topics. Oh my goodness, circadian rhythms, seasonal rhythms, melatonin, neural circuits, dopamine. I was just awash with excitement about what I was learning.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice. It was a condition of being allowed to stay in school, but pretty soon I realized that therapy is an extremely important component to overall health.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
But of course, sometimes I would take a course where the material was, I don't know if it was more challenging or not, but I had a harder time getting engaged by the material, either by virtue of how it was being taught to me or the material itself. So the ability to attach to some aspirational goal to pull you through can be very valuable. You're not going to love every topic you have to learn.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
However, I will say that at least in my experience, some of the courses that I look back on most fondly are the courses that I struggled with the most. And in fact, that's the basis of the next and easily one of the most important studying tools.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
So a key theme in all of the excellent literature that is the peer reviewed research on how best to study is that studying that feels challenging is the most effective. I know nobody wants to hear this. Everyone wants to hear about flow. Everybody wants to hear about information just sinking into their brain by osmosis. I think it was a Garfield cartoon where he talked about learning by osmosis.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
There's this very cute real world video of a kid in a classroom, I believe, It's in China where he's taking the book and he puts it on his head. Maybe I can find this clip. And he's just kind of like trying to wash it into his brain. It's super cute clip, but guess what? That doesn't work. I mean, it works to put the book on your head. It doesn't work.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
It's not going to get the information into your brain. Perhaps someday there will be ways to rapidly download information into neural circuits. Right now we know, we've known for hundreds, if not thousands of years that Effort is the cornerstone of learning. So I know there are probably some groans about that.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
I know some of you perhaps were hoping that today I was going to tell you how to study so that studying wasn't painful. I think I can accomplish that by the end of today's episode. But in order to do that, let's take another quiz. Okay, so here's the quiz. Again, you can answer these questions in your head.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
You don't have to tell anyone, but you could write them down or say them out loud if you want. The first question is, When during either your states of alertness or sleep does the remodeling of neural connections occur? I like to think this is a pretty easy one. Okay, the answer is during sleep. The second question is what is one behavioral tool that you can use to improve focus
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
The answer is simple mindfulness meditation, which I'd prefer you think of simply as a perceptual exercise. So again, just sit or lie down, close your eyes, focus on your breath when your attention drifts, bring your attention back to your breath and so on.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise. Now, there are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First of all, It provides good rapport with somebody that you can trust and talk to about the issues that are most critical to you. Second of all, it can provide support in the form of emotional support or directed guidance.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Or if you prefer, you can do this eyes open by focusing on a visual target, either a foot or two feet or three feet away, whatever distance is comfortable for you, allowing yourself to blink as needed, forcing yourself to focus on that visual target for say one to three minutes, maybe even three to five minutes, maybe even 10 minutes. Again, please blink, you don't want your eyes to dry.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Both those tools will improve your ability to attend, to focus to other material when the time comes, okay? The circuits for focus and attention themselves are subject to neuroplasticity. And then the third question is, can you name or list off in your mind three tools that the most effective students have been shown to use?
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
I can think of limiting distraction by virtue of putting away phones and telling others you won't be in contact with them too. And I'm getting these out of order, I realize. is to isolate, to study alone. And the third that I can recall is to teach others in the same course. You can probably think of a few others. Now, why are we taking these silly little quizzes?
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Well, it turns out they're not so silly when one considers that hopefully you'll remember the information from today so that you don't have to listen to it over and over again. but that if ever there was a strongly research supported tool in the literature, in the peer reviewed literature about how students can learn information better, it's testing.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And I know, I know, I know we think of tests as a way to evaluate our knowledge, but it turns out that testing is one of the best ways to build our knowledge, to retain our knowledge, and again, to offset forgetting. Now, the study of testing as a learning tool, not just as a way to evaluate how much information we've learned, goes back over a hundred years.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
There's a classic study that was done in 1917 where grade school age children read biographies. So they read biographies and then the kids were divided into different groups. One group read and reread and reread those biographies over and over. Another group read the biographies once and then were tested on those biographies.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
But get this, they tested themselves on those biographies simply by having to think about the information that they had read and trying to remember the information. Like what was the biography? Who was the person? Who were they married to? What did they do? When did they go to school? What did they do in school? What did they do in the world? What role did they play in life?
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
So they essentially tested their own knowledge simply by going into their own head and asking themselves what they could remember about those biographies. Now, keep in mind here that even though it's fairly apparent that reading a biography two, three, four times might seem more passive than testing oneself on a biography that they had read just once. Right.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
You could imagine that thinking about the biography involves more effort. And indeed it does. But keep in mind also that the kids in the second group were only exposed to the biography once. And yet when you look at the percent of accurate recall of information from those biographies, the children that read the biography once and then
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And third, expert therapy should provide insights. With BetterHelp, they make it very easy for you to find an expert therapist with whom you have these critical components of therapy. Also, because BetterHelp allows for therapy to be done entirely online,
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
made a deliberate point to think about that biography in their own mind to effectively test themselves on that material just within their heads over and over. but an equal number of times as the kids that read the biographies directly on a page over and over, vastly outperformed the kids that read the biographies over and over.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Put differently, reading and rereading material and rereading material is far less effective than reading material and then thinking about that material, testing yourself on that material, forcing yourself to bring that material to mind in your own mind. And this is not just for sake of remembering more volume of material, but also accuracy. of recall of that material.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And that at least to me was pretty surprising at first until one starts to explore subsequent studies of the role of testing as a learning tool. And then you start to realize that testing yourself is far and away the best tool for studying and learning, not just for evaluating your knowledge, but for actually studying and incorporating that knowledge into your neural circuits.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Okay, so I realize that anytime I or somebody else talks about a study that was done in 1917, we think of people in these, you know, like wooden shoes and in these schoolhouses that look so different and kids dress so different. Let's get a little more modern here. Keep in mind, however, that the nervous system hasn't really changed much in tens of thousands of years.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Nonetheless, I think it's nice to think about a more recent study of how best to study. And this study, which by the way, we'll provide a link to in the show note captions, as well as a couple of reviews that include results from similar studies. Again, I'm pointing to a body of research, not just one study here. Looked at whether or not studying material four times, so study, study, study, study,
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
It's very time efficient and easy to fit into your busy schedule with no commuting to a therapist's office or looking for parking or sitting in a waiting room. If you'd like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Waking Up.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
was better in terms of locking that information into people's minds, allowing them to use that information flexibly, which is an element of creativity, essentially giving them mastery of the material, than a different group, which studied once, studied the material twice, studied the material three times, then was tested on the material,
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Or a third group that studied material once, then took one, two, yes, three tests on the material. Now, so what I just described was three groups, all of whom read a passage. This was a passage about animals, about biology, some other topics too in different experiments. Again, three groups, one group studies four times. They study the material one, two, three, four times.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
then later they take a test. The second group studies one, two, three times, takes a test on that material, and then later takes a test. The third group studies the material once, then takes three tests on the material, and then later takes a test. So what's analyzed and compared between these different groups is their performance on that final test, okay? What I put in as the fifth
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
because it was, think about it as SSSS, so study, study, study, study, and then later test, or SSST, study, study, study, test, and then later test, or STTT, study, test, test, test, and then later test. So what's compared and contrasted is performance on the test some period of time later. Now, some experiments made that final test of the material
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
a couple of days later, other experiments made it a couple of weeks later, other experiments made it much later, months or even a year later, okay? The point here is twofold. First of all, based on everything I've told you thus far, you can probably guess who performed best on the test that occurred some period of time later, okay? Right, the performance on that final test
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
was essentially proportional to the number of tests one had already taken on the material. That should be pretty much obvious given the way we've been going today in this description of tests as a way to offset forgetting. So the more tests that you take as a way to expose yourself to the material, the better you're going to perform on that material at some later point.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Now, of course, at some point you have to be exposed to the material for the first time, right? That's why it's studying and learning.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
But after one exposure to new material, taking more tests on that material, even if you don't perform that well on those tests, as long as you're able to see the accurate answers to those tests and compare your answers to those answers will lead to better performance on the ultimate test and retention of that material at some later time.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
put differently, it's not about how many times you study the material or how many times you're exposed to the material. It's about being exposed to the material, doing your best to focus and attend to that material, and then self-testing yourself on that material. Or as the case may be, if an instructor
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Waking Up is a meditation app that offers hundreds of guided meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga nidra sessions, and more. I started practicing meditation when I was about 15 years old, and it made a profound impact on my life.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
is the one giving you the test, but nonetheless, taking tests on that material, not just once, but ideally two or three times, that's what really locks the material into your neural circuits.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
That's what's going to lead to the most pervasive change, the most durable change, we should say, in your neural circuits that carry that material, that hold that material in your mind, what we call neural encoding, okay? So, The more times you test yourself or that you are tested on material, the better your retention of that material.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Now, some people will immediately say, well, goodness, what if I learned it and then I'm tested and I'm somehow consolidating the wrong or inaccurate material, but it doesn't appear to be the case. As long as you learn what the correct answers to the tests are, even if you're getting, you know, 40 or 50% or less accurate on those tests that you take immediately after the studying period,
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
that's still going to be a better strategy than rereading the material, which ought to be somewhat surprising. It certainly was surprising to me. But you know what's even more surprising and a little scary and that we all should know, and I wish I had learned when I was like in the second grade, is that if you ask students, How confident are you in the material that you just learned?
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
How well do you think you would perform on a test? What you see consistently in these studies, I'm chuckling because it's kind of mind blowing, is that the students who studied the material, that is who were exposed to the material four times, think that they are going to perform best on the ultimate exam.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
However, the students that study the material once and then are tested three times on that material, They think that ultimately they're going to perform least well. For instance, they ask them their confidence. How well do you think you would perform on a test of this material in two weeks or in a year or in six months or even tomorrow?
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
They report, that is the students in the study, test, test, test group report, much lower confidence in the material, much lower sense of mastery of the material compared to the students that were exposed to the material four times who were saying, yeah, I think I would do pretty well or very well. And guess what? The exact opposite is true.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And by now, there are thousands of quality peer-reviewed studies that emphasize how useful mindfulness meditation can be for improving our focus, managing stress and anxiety, improving our mood, and much more. In recent years, I started using the Waking Up app for my meditations because I find it to be a terrific resource for allowing me to really be consistent with my meditation practice.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Put differently, when you're exposed to material over and over and over again, you think you've learned the material. In fact, your confidence that you've learned the material increases with each subsequent exposure to the material,
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
but actually you haven't learned it at all compared to the people that are exposed to the material and then take tests on the material, oftentimes straining to get the answers right on those tests. In fact, sometimes getting those answers dead wrong and then realizing they get those answers dead wrong, or sometimes they just sense it. But guess what?
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Testing yourself once, twice, maybe three times prior to the ultimate test of your knowledge of that material is far and away the best way to lock that material into those neural circuits. Now I say, I wish I had learned this when I was a student because to some extent I used a self-testing approach. The one most salient example of that is I took a course when I was in college.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
I still remember it was Biosciences 169L, Neuroanatomy Laboratory taught by Ben Reese. He's still there, I believe. And he was known then and I'm sure still now, if he's still teaching as extremely challenging professor, extremely challenging, not as a person, not his personality, but a ton of detail and rigor and high, high, high expectation
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
for this laboratory course in neuroanatomy, which involved lectures. It involved in a neuroanatomy textbook where you'd look at essentially panels of different brain sections from different species, different types of stains of different brain tissue. Mind you, this is an undergraduate course.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And then there was a laboratory component, hence the L in 169L, where you'd have to go from microscope station to microscope station, identifying structures based simply on what you could see down the microscope.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And therefore, you had to know what the stain was, you know, what was essentially visible to you on the slide, because certain stains reveal certain things like the what we call the cell body of neurons versus the the sort of wires, what we call the axons between neurons, et cetera, et cetera. I remember thinking, this is a really hard course. It was a very difficult course.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And my mode of studying for the course involved, of course, going to class, doing the dissection. We dissected a sheep brain at that time. So we're literally dissecting an actual brain. We're doing microscope work. We're learning about it from the textbook and from lecture. And there was a ton of new nomenclature about rostral, caudal, dorsal, ventral, all the stuff of neuroanatomy.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And then at some point I made the decision, perhaps on the basis of sheer overwhelm, to study for neuroanatomy by laying down on my bed in my, studio apartment i lived alone and closing my eyes and flying through the nervous system from different entry points through the ear review my cochlear anatomy through the eye review my retinal anatomy through the dorsal surface of the brain.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Think about the sulci and gyri, and then the corpus callosum. And I can still see it in my mind's eye. So my process of studying for neuroanatomy, yes, involved exposure to the material, but it involved hours upon hours of thinking about the material within my own mind. So it's a little bit meta unto itself there.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Many people start a meditation practice and experience some benefits, but many people also have challenges keeping up with that practice. What I and so many other people love about the Waking Up app is that it has a lot of different meditations to choose from, and those meditations are of different durations.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
As a consequence, I like to think, in fact, I believe with some confidence that I have a very high mastery of neuroanatomy in different species as well. Now that's my particular area of expertise. I don't think I'm any kind of savant with respect to neuroanatomy. I just spent hours upon hours learning the material and then reviewing the material within my mind.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
So in other words, testing myself, here's what I would do if I were moving down a trajectory of a neural track, for instance, between say the hippocampus and a neighboring structure and I didn't know what was next, I would then go look it up in the textbook and then I'd go back to this mental exercise visualization type studying. It really wasn't studying is the point.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
The point is that I was testing myself. I was trying to find the points in which I no longer had the knowledge to move further through, in this case, my mental image of the brain, but through the material. And this is the key aspect of testing. It's not about just knowing how many things you get right, how many things you get wrong. It's about recognizing exactly what you know and don't know.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And an important component of testing is running up against those things where you say, I can't remember. I don't know what comes next. Or I'm certain that that structure is the fimbria. And then you go and you look and you go, it's not the fimbria, but guess what? I'll never forget, for instance, the location of the habenula or what it looks like.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
A structure of which, by the way, since these names are kind of esoteric, at that time, we didn't know what it does. It turns out it's involved in disappointment. It's key to the depression circuits or the circuits that underlie depression in some individuals. It is suppressed by viewing of morning sunlight. We know that too.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And by getting too much artificial light exposure in the middle of the night, you enhance activity of the habenula. Beautiful work not done by my laboratory, but other laboratories demonstrates that.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
So what I just did for you there was hopefully teach you a little something about neuroanatomy and depression, but more importantly, to just illustrate that how you test yourself can be highly individual to the ways in which you learn best.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
However, even if you are not formally enrolled in any kind of school at the moment, today's discussion will also be extremely effective for you to be able to study and learn better information from say the internet or podcasts or any area of your life where you are seeking to learn and use new knowledge.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Now that contradicts what I said earlier, which is that this notion that people have different learning styles and some people are verbal learners and some people are auditory learners and et cetera, doesn't really hold up so well anymore. which by the way is not to say there isn't any research to support it, it's just that it's heavily contradicted by other research that contradicts that idea.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
So it makes it very easy to keep up with your meditation practice, both from the perspective of novelty You never get tired of those meditations. There's always something new to explore and to learn about yourself and about the effectiveness of meditation. And you can always fit meditation into your schedule, even if you only have two or three minutes per day in which to meditate.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
But your approach, your mode of best testing yourself on material for sake of offsetting the forgetting process and for identifying where you have gaps in your knowledge or where you thought you knew something, but you don't, or you knew something, but it's wrong,
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
That can be accomplished through the approach that's best for you, which in my case turned out to be lying down and thinking about the material in my head.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And still to this day, when I read a paper, I try, I don't always do this, but what I try to do is then take a walk in my yard or outside, and I try and think about the key components of that paper and think about some of the graphs that are especially important, which is what I'm going to do now. I'd like to take a brief break to thank one of our sponsors, Element.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Now, I and others on the podcast have talked a lot about the critical importance of hydration for proper brain and bodily function.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Research shows that even a slight degree of dehydration can really diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes in order for your body and brain to function at their best. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium are critical for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or nerve cells.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise I'm doing, especially on hot days if I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman, spelled drinkelement.com slash Huberman, to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. Okay, so I like to think that we're establishing that testing yourself or testing your students
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
or being tested by your teacher is the best way to offset forgetting. Let's look at the literature that actually supports that statement directly, because in the previous experiment I described, it was either study, study, study, study, or study, study, study, test, or study, test, test, test, and then later everybody takes a test at the same time.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
A variance on that was done where they had one group of students study material, so this is new material. And when I say study, I mean, they were exposed to the material for the first time. And I realize this is a little bit of a problem because we're using the word study when, in fact, I'm trying to make the point that testing yourself is studying, okay?
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
So forgive me, but this is the way it's mapped out in these experiments and these papers, should you look them up in our show note captions. One group is exposed to the material, what we're called studying, and then takes a test immediately after. they are told what they got right, what they got wrong on that test, and what the correct answers are.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And then sometime later, after a delay, they take a test of the same material. Another group studies, that is they're exposed to the material, then there's a delay, okay? That delay could be days, it could be weeks. This experiment has been done every which way, it seems by now.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
I also really like doing yoga nidra or what is sometimes called non-sleep deep rest for about 10 or 20 minutes, because it is a great way to restore mental and physical vigor without the tiredness that some people experience when they wake up from a conventional nap. If you'd like to try the Waking Up app, please go to wakingup.com slash Huberman, where you can access a free 30-day trial.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
then they're tested, and then there's another delay, and then they take a test at the same time that group one did, okay? So again, it's study, test, long delay, test for group one, or study, delay, test, delay, test for group two. Remember, the final test is taken at the same time by everybody.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Or group three, study, that is they're exposed to the material, then a long, long, long, long delay, then a test, and then the ultimate test, okay? The test that everybody takes at the same time. Can you guess which group performed best?
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And the essence of this experiment, if you're listening to this and it's not clear in your mind is you're either exposed to the material and tested very soon after, and then take a test after a delay, say a week or two weeks later, or you're exposed to the material, There's a delay of a few days, then you take a test and then another few days, and then you take a test. So it's more evenly spaced.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Or if you were assigned to the third group, you'd study. You're not going to see the material or be tested on it until a day or two before the big test. Then you're tested on it. You get your answers back and then you're tested on it again. You could imagine that the last group might perform best because they're re-exposed to the material. They're told what the correct answers are.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
So they know what they got wrong. They know what they got right. And then the next day they're taking the test again. I would have thought that group would perform best, but it turns out the opposite is true. It's pretty wild. The best performance comes from being exposed to material, what in this experiment they're called studying.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Okay, so they read a passage or they learn some math material or language material or music material or motor learning. Then they take a test very soon after, even same day or next day. And then there's a long delay. And then they take the test. That group performs best. Put differently, test yourself very soon
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
if not the same day, certainly the next day or so, very soon after being exposed to material for the first time, as opposed to the last group, which performs worst. They perform worse.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Being exposed to material, then there's a long period of time, then you're tested on that material, you are told what you got right, what you got wrong, and then the next day you take a test again, even with overlapping questions to the test you took just the day before, and that group performs worst. group that studied, had a gap test, they had a gap test, they performed somewhere in the middle.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
What does this tell us? What it tells us is so important vis-a-vis neuroplasticity, vis-a-vis best learning strategies. This is something that, goodness, I wish I had learned when I was in graduate school, when I was an undergraduate, when I was in high school and elementary school. Goodness, even when I was in kindergarten, I wish I had learned this.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Test yourself on the material that you were just exposed to very soon after your first exposure to it, because that offsets the natural forgetting of new material that the brain is exposed to. This is absolutely the hallmark of all the impressive data about testing as a tool for learning. Testing oneself or your students or being tested if you're the student by your teacher
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Again, that's wakingup.com slash Huberman to access a free 30-day trial. Okay, let's talk about how best to study and learn. And of course, people have different learning styles. Some people prefer to learn by reading. Some people prefer to study in a group. Some people prefer to highlight. Some people call themselves auditory learners. Other people consider themselves visual learners.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
as a tool not just for evaluating performance, for knowing what you know and don't know, but for consolidating that information in your neural circuits. And when I say consolidating that information in your neural circuits, I realize it's a mouthful, What we know is that this business of putting the testing soon after exposure to new material is about offsetting the forgetting of that material.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
So you might say, wait, if that's true, how come studying the material and then waiting and then taking two tests right back to back where you're learning the material again during the test, that should be the best performing group. Ah, well, there seems to be something fundamentally different about first exposure to material versus testing yourself on that material.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And we don't know exactly what that is. There's some interesting neural imaging data in humans that this has to do something with this notion of familiarity with material. This is very simple. So this is easy to understand, even though it involves a little bit of memory neuroscience nomenclature.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Familiarity with something, recognizing it is not the same thing as having agility with that thing, of having mastery of that thing, is not the same thing as having mastery of the material, of having committed it to memory, okay? So when you read something over and over and over, You see it over and over. You hear it over and over. You think about it over and over.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Of course, you're reading it or you're hearing about it. And you think that you're learning the material, that your neural circuits are changing, but it's a pretty passive process. Or even if it's a difficult chapter to read or a difficult passage of music,
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
The difference is when you're tested on material, something happens in your performance of or recalling of, if it's just cognitive or you're writing it down or you're told to play the music or do the motor movement, something happens in the error, the getting wrong of certain things that cues your nervous system to lock in the information that you have right and to remember what you have wrong so that you then correct it, which is far and away different than
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
exposure and re-exposure and re-exposure, okay? So it's a prerequisite to learning that you need to see the material for the first time. You can't just start testing yourself on material that you've never been exposed to. I suppose you could, but you're going to get it, I would imagine, mostly wrong or all wrong.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
But this business of using testing very soon after first exposure to material as a tool to study, in order to offset forgetting is clearly tapping into this difference between familiarity with something for which we know certain brain areas are activated versus recollection, being able to take that material and bring it to memory, bring it to your focused attention and use that material.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
I realize this is a bit abstract and some of this is still being parsed. If you're interested in the neuroscience of familiarity with something versus your ability to actually recall something and have mastery of that material, There's a really nice review that I provide a link to in the show note caption. It's published in the journal Hippocampus.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
I always chuckle at the fact that there's a journal named after a brain structure. After all, as far as I know, there isn't a journal called Retina or Amygdala. And I have a brief anecdote from graduate school whereby I learned that there was this journal Hippocampus, and it was my first graduate student gathering in graduate school. And the guy who hosted it,
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Turns out it's a luminary in the field of learning and memory. And I was saying, you know, this is ridiculous. Like there's a journal called Hippocampus. Here I am, first year graduate student. He goes, yeah, there is. And I said, yeah, that's so silly. Like who are the idiots that name a journal after a brain structure?
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
But guess what? When one looks at the research on preferred learning styles, pretty much all of that melts away. It turns out that the best way to study and learn is defined not by the medium in which that material arrives, whether or not it's auditory or visual or combined, whether or not you review slides or a textbook, or you watch small videos.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
It turns out there's also a journal called Cerebral Cortex and there's probably one about spinal cord. So it turns out I was the idiot saying this. And the guy I was talking to who of course was the host of the party said, yeah, actually that's my journal. I founded the journal Hippocampus. So you can look them up. So at this point, you're going to take a test and it's a super easy test, okay?
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
I realize we're a bit into the material and we're all probably fatiguing a little bit, marveling, I hope, at what an incredible tool testing and in particular self-testing soon after being exposed to new material is. And the question is this, and by the way, this is an open-ended question.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
You're not supposed to know the answer because I haven't told you the answer yet, but I want you to think about this. If one looks at the majority of data in this whole field of testing as a studying tool, how much improvement do you think you get from testing yourself once on new material? Do you think it's a 10% improvement, a 20% improvement?
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
So here I'm just comparing to testing yourself once on material that you were just exposed to for the first time versus not testing yourself at all, okay? How much do you think you improve? The answer is about 50%, five, zero.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And I can say that on the basis of the fact that in studies of musical learning, of mathematical learning, of language learning, of motor learning, when subjects are exposed to new material and then tested at some period of time later,
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
The percentage of information they get right or that they are able to perform something correctly diminishes over time, especially because they're not doing any practice and no testing in the intervening time. This was built into these experiments. And then you simply ask how much of the material was forgotten if they just were exposed to the material.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
So in the case of say music learning, this would be, you know, your teacher sits down next to you and shows you the scales on the piano.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
but then you're not practicing them in between versus, or perhaps another example would be somebody gives you a lecture about a particular phase in history, and then you're not being exposed to the material again, and you're not self-testing versus if you just take one test, even a self-directed test of the material immediately after, irrespective of how well you perform,
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
you have the amount of forgetting, okay? I want you to think about self-testing in this way, because we're thinking about optimal studying strategies. You have the amount of forgetting that would normally occur. This is oh so important. In fact, I don't even know that most neuroscientists think about learning and neuroplasticity this way. Most everybody, including neuroscientists,
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
are taught, were taught, continue to be taught, that you're exposed to new material, you focus, okay, then during sleep, there's remodeling of the connections, all that's true. but we really need to think about how most information that comes into our nervous system each day is forgotten. Most of it is completely discarded.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
There are some rare clinical deficits where people remember everything, and I'll tell you, these people really struggle in life. They do not do well in work, in relationships. They remember every little detail of everything, and it is incredibly disruptive to their quality of life. It's nothing you want. You want to have a great memory for the right things.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
So when you self-test material, you have the amount of forgetting that occurs compared to if you're just exposed to the material. I want you to keep that fact in mind because that fact is the one that really hit me upside the head and made me realize, goodness gracious, how I wish that I'd self-tested myself on material that I wanted to remember over time. rather than reading it over and over.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
It turns out that the best way to study and learn is to access components of your memory systems that offset forgetting. This is a theme I'm going to return to over and over again throughout today's episode.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
I had this elaborate process for studying that I use all through college and graduate school, and it worked pretty well for me, where I'd read and highlight, then I'd write out my notes, then I would write little paragraphs about that stuff. Now, some of that probably mimicked self-testing. Indeed, it had to have. And then, of course, I would take the quizzes and I would go to office hours.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Once I got serious about school, I got really serious about school. And of course, I still forget things. I've made errors on this podcast before, in part from going too fast or making a joke that People didn't perceive as a joke. So the whole story there. But in any case, of course, I make errors. Of course, I've forgotten certain things and sometimes I misspeak.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
I always strive to get things accurately. We correct things in the show note captions. If they're called out to us, we're now using AI to review the podcast and adjust anywhere using insertions or actually replacing those words if we need to and so on and so forth. But yes, we all forget things. We all make errors.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
But if I had just known that testing myself on material while walking out of class or soon after getting home or later that evening or the next day would allow me to perform so much better on an exam, a midterm or a final exam. And of course I still would have studied because I was committed and you should still study as much as you feel is necessary to get mastery of the material for you.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
However, if I had known that testing oneself or being tested soon after exposure to material would have the amount of forgetting even out to a year later, I definitely would have saved myself a lot of time.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Let's talk about some specifics of ways that you can self-test or if you're a teacher, or if you have good dialogue with your teacher and they are open-minded, perhaps they are open to hearing about what are the best forms of testing oneself as a tool for learning.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
The best tests are open-ended, short answer, very minimal prompt tests, not unlike the type that we've taken today during this podcast, as compared to multiple choice tests. Multiple choice questions allow for familiarity of names, of facts. It's going to be A, B, C, D, and sometimes E is A and C, and so on and so forth. And within each of those A, B, C, D, E,
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Rather than think about studying to learn and retain information, I want you to think about studying to offset the natural process of forgetting that everybody experiences when they are exposed to new material of any kind, cognitive or or motor learning, musical learning, math, et cetera. Okay, so keep this in mind throughout today's episode.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
and you're looking for the right answer, you're looking for the familiarity, the recognition of something. Yes, this, not that. Okay, that's the best answer, you circle C. Okay, this kind of thing, as opposed to an open-ended question where you have to write out your answer, you have to recall the information, right?
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
It requires a much greater degree of mastery of the information than does familiarity or recognition of the material. So the best tests as study tools are going to be open-ended, short answer questions, or even long answer questions. Now there's one exception to this, which are multiple choice tests that include tricks. Okay.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
If you've ever taken the GRE, the graduate school entrance exam or the LSAT,
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
or the MCAT, there are some questions in there that are very straightforward, but in those standardized tests, they tend to include some quote unquote trick questions in which those questions don't allow you to just recognize the correct answer and distinguish it from the other incorrect answers, but rather they have answers in there that on first blush look like the right answer and people have a tendency to circle those and move on.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
or to select those and move on. But if you think about the material a little more deeply, it turns out those quote unquote obvious answers are actually the incorrect answers. So there are versions of multiple choice tests where it requires a, greater degree of mastery of the material where simple familiarity won't serve you.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And you actually have to be able to recall the different components of information leading into that. But those are a bit more rare, certainly in the context of other kinds of learning, like musical learning. Although I suppose for music theory, that could be relevant. But when I say music learning, I'm just kind of defaulting to the idea of the mechanics of musical learning.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
But of course there's music theory, et cetera. So what I'm effectively saying is the ultimate exam, the final exam, the midterm exam, the exam that's administered to you, rarely do you have control over the format of that exam. Sometimes it's mixed format, but the different ways in which you self-test as a form of studying are really key. And ideally you would make these open-ended.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
In other words, you would not simply rely on multiple choice. You would rely on a form of self-testing or that you give your students or that your teacher gives you that requires you to think about the material with some degree of depth, with some degree of effort. And of course, you're going to get certain things wrong.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Now, I would hope that if testing is being used as a learning tool, as opposed to just for evaluation, but here we're talking about using testing as a learning tool, that it wouldn't impact at least not at that moment, your final performance in the course or whatever it is. Rather, it is testing for sake of learning. Now, we know from the literature that students don't like pop quizzes.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
I gave you a few today and forgive me. They don't like pop quizzes. And we know this in the form of, the reduction in teaching evaluation scores, okay? Having received teaching evaluation scores of different, let's say values over the years. And I always take the feedback seriously.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
One salient comment that just leapt into my mind was the fact that I ended up mentioning my bulldog Costello too often in class. So here I'm mentioning him again, just to get back at that one student that said I mentioned him too much. I mentioned him as much as I want. The point here is that When students evaluate their teachers, they tend to punish their teachers for pop quizzes.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Does that mean pop quizzes aren't effective? No, but you know what's more effective? Telling students at the outset of class or telling yourself at the outset of any kind of learning expedition, because this isn't just about the classroom, that you're going to take a bunch of exams, that you're going to use testing or quizzes, whatever you want to call them as a form of teaching and learning.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
The best way to learn is to think about offsetting the natural forgetting of new information. You're trying to inoculate against forgetting. That is the way to remember things. That is the way to gain mastery over them. And I'm going to teach you how to best do that using the data gleaned from the peer-reviewed literature. Now, before I do that, I want to talk about what learning is.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And that you can expect five tests or five quizzes during the course of being presented the material, or that you are going to test yourself every day after the material. Now, sometimes you have to go from one class to the next class. There isn't an opportunity to test yourself, but guess what's not going to be helpful? Walking out of class and getting immediately onto your phone.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
We know that that probably inhibits your ability to remember the material because it's going to enhance forgetting because you do have this key opportunity right after being exposed to new material to help offset the forgetting by testing yourself on that material as soon as possible after being exposed to it.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
So again, even though I did not attend school in an era where we had smartphones and texting, I recall walking out of class and just walking out of class and going to my bicycle, but Of course, there were people to talk to, there were other things to attend to.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
If you're really serious about learning material, take a few seconds, maybe even a few minutes after being exposed to that material and think about that material, test yourself on it. And if you find that you don't know the material, you're confused by it or overwhelmed by it, great. You just accomplished the first step in cueing your nervous system to the fact that it needs to learn that material
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
and you've created an opportunity for enhanced neuroplasticity, which is really what all of this stuff about testing as a form of studying is about. You're going to test yourself so that you figure out what you don't know, so that you then look up that material, test yourself on it again, so that ultimately you forget Very little of it, if any.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Now there are other components to learning a neuroplasticity that I've talked about on previous podcasts that are just too interesting not to mention, but I'm just going to mention them in brief, things like gap effects. Gap effects are oh so cool and they've been demonstrated for lots of different forms of learning. Gap effects are what I just did, which is to take periodic pauses,
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
in the learning of material as short as five to 10 seconds, but even as long as 30 seconds during which, guess what? Your hippocampus, the neurons in your hippocampus repeat information that you've been exposed to for the first time at a rate 20 to 30 times faster than typical, just as it does during rapid eye movement sleep. So if you are a teacher and or if you are a learner,
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
periodically throughout an episode, a class or whatever of trying to learn new motor skills or music skills or whatever kind of learning pause and let your hippocampus generate more repetitions of that material than it would otherwise if you just tried to barrel through.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
So I realize as we've gone through today's discussion that words like test and quiz, evaluation, offsetting forgetting, all of that stuff can spike people's cortisol. It can give us flashbacks to uncomfortable classroom experiences related to being called on, cold called for the answer. a vicious trick that instructors play.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Keep in mind that testing as a form of studying, whether or not self-directed or given to you by a teacher is not for sake of evaluation at the level of, okay, you know, you get an exam at the end of a lecture and then you do your best to answer those questions and then you turn it in and it impacts your grade. No, this is about being told or revealing to yourself how much you know and don't know.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And then of course being told the correct answers so that you can compare your answers to the correct answers and doing this frequently and ideally very soon after being exposed to the material. That's one of the key things that I keep coming back to again and again here, because it's something that frankly was not done while I was in school. for whatever reason.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
I promise to make this fairly brief because I've covered learning and so-called neuroplasticity before on this podcast. For those of you that have heard those discussions, this will serve as a refresher. For those of you that have not heard those discussions, this will be thorough enough for you to be able to digest all the rest of today's information.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And I think that's largely because when people hear the word testing, they think of evaluation. And if anything, at least in the United States, over the last 30 years, but in particular over the last 15 years, there's been this tendency to shift away from formal evaluation. I personally believe that one can learn in many different styles and many different contexts.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
I, of course, as a university professor, believe that for certain topics, in particular science and medicine and health, but other topics as well, of course, that formal rigorous coursework is by far the best way to learn information for me.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
But that regardless of whether or not you're learning just from YouTube or you're learning from podcasts or you're learning from books or you're learning from the school of life, as it were, from experience that testing as a form of studying is absolutely key. And gosh, there's such a beautiful body of research.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
In fact, I'll link to several studies, including a review entitled, Testing Enhances Learning, a review of the literature, as well as a beautiful article, Test Enhanced Learning, which gets into this. And there's a wonderful book about this that I'll also provide a link to in the show note captions.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
all of course, authored by researchers who have worked squarely in this field and compare the data on testing as a studying tool to other forms of studying and learning. So it's a really impressive literature that I do believe we all should have known about. And that's why I'm passing it on to you now.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Now, before we wrap up, I want to make sure that I emphasize some of the other key components to studying and learning that have nothing to do with testing as a studying tool. And those are the role of emotion, the role of story, and the role of what's called interleaving. Now, in terms of emotion, I think we all inherently understand that more emotionally-laden experiences
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
are remembered more durably. We tend not to forget them. In fact, this is the basis of things like PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. It is the reality that one trial learning that is exposure to something and never forgetting it occurs very readily when the thing that we're exposed to is negative or has a very heavy negative emotional salience.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
So it could be something we read or something we see, Sometimes it's something that happens to us. I don't like the idea of that, but this is true. Your nervous system is wired such, neuroplasticity is such that stressful experiences, because they deploy such massive amounts of adrenaline, epinephrine, as well as other neuromodulators,
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
allow very quickly for the milieu, the environment of the neural circuits that led up to that experience to strengthen their connections with one trial, so-called one trial learning. This is why, sadly, although at the same time from an adaptive perspective, we say, fortunately, if you were to step outside today and God forbid, see somebody get hit by a car, you would remember that.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Neuroplasticity is this incredible feature of your nervous system, which of course includes your brain and your spinal cord, which is the ability for your nervous system to change in response to experience. So any form of learning involves neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity, we sometimes hear as neuroplasticity, two words, or neuroplasticity. Those are the same thing, essentially.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Chances are you would remember that forever. Now, that does not mean that the emotional components of that memory necessarily going to stay within you.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
There are tools for the treatment of PTSD, such as the different ones that come to mind are, you know, systematic exposure therapy, where you're re-exposed to that idea or memory, sometimes even circumstance with of course the support of a trained professional, typically a psychiatrist or psychologist. And the emotional load of that experience is gradually
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
uncoupled from your memory of the experience. There's things like EMDR, there are pharmacologic approaches. Some of these are combined with the sorts of things I've described. I've done entire episodes about stress and PTSD. Again, you can find those at hubermanlab.com by putting stress PTSD into the search function.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
However, we know that it is the same neuromodulators, mainly epinephrine and norepinephrine deployed at massive amounts in those moments where something very stressful happens that allows the neural circuits that led up to the circumstance, as well as the neural circuits that encode that visual scene and scenes like it, or sounds like it to be locked in and linked to the stress response.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Now, what this is really all saying is that negative stuff is remembered typically the first time and every time and very durably over time. as compared to positive experiences, which as far as peak experiences go, right, birth of your first child, a wedding, a wonderful professional or personal experience, those two can be one trial, learning and memory.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
But most things that we are exposed to are not at those extremes, either negative or positive. However, we know that any kind of story, any kind of emotional emphasis on material, either in the delivery of that material, but certainly in the way that that material is perceived by you, like getting really excited about something you want to learn, or thinking something's really awful,
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
is likely to be more readily and stably committed to your memory. And that's because of these neuromodulators like epinephrine and norepinephrine, but other neuromodulators as well, that wire those experiences into your neural circuits. Again, these neuromodulators, epinephrine, norepinephrine, we also hear about acetylcholine, dopamine, et cetera,
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
They can operate at low levels and sort of background levels. They can create subtle fluctuations in mood, focus, and attention, or they can create massive shifts in mood, focus, and attention, depending on their levels, their timing, and much, much more.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
The point here is that if you're a teacher and or if you are a learner, paying attention to your internal state as you're trying to learn is very key. We've all had that teacher, that lecturer that just kind of drones things out and monotone.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
If you need to learn the material coming out of a source like that, person or otherwise, you're going to have to ramp up your level of internal attention consciously in order to bring about some emotional salience, some intensity to the way it's perceived. And you can do that just through your own thinking.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
as opposed to the situation where you have a super dynamic teacher who's telling you things with wide eyes and perhaps even cracking jokes. By the way, the teachers that crack jokes get lower teacher evaluations than those that don't crack jokes or swear. Did you know that? Teachers that crack jokes and swear, they're perceived as more likable, but they get lower overall evaluations typically.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
They're seen as less professional and therefore less good teachers by their students. That's why I try not to make too many jokes or swear in my lectures. The point being that We all have those really wonderful dynamic teachers. Yes, it's much easier to learn and remember that material.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
You still need to test yourself on it, but it's much easier to learn that material for the very reasons I stated before. It's a lesser example of more deployment of the neuromodulators in you, the learner, that is exposed to that material, okay?
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
The change that underlies neuroplasticity at the level of cells, which we call neurons or nerve cells, generally involves three different mechanisms. One is the strengthening of certain connections, what we call synaptic connections. Synapses are the location between neurons where they communicate with one another. It's actually a gap between the neurons. is technically called the synaptic cleft.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
So emotion matters, so much so that in a beautiful review about learning and memory from the great James McGaugh, one of the luminaries in modern neuroscience and psychology of memory, He talked about a medieval practice, this is pretty wild, whereby people and kids, kids are people of course, but adults and kids were taught information and then thrown, literally thrown into cold water. Why?
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
To deploy adrenaline and consolidate memory of the material they were exposed to. Now, I know we've covered deliberate cold exposure on this podcast before. No, I'm not saying you need to do a cold plunge after being exposed to new material, but guess what?
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
They were doing that many hundreds of years ago and it makes sense logically based on all our understanding of the neurobiology underlying things like PTSD, underlying emotion-laden memory formation and consolidation and our ability to remember things that were emotionally laden much better than things that were less emotionally laden.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
So if you want to take a cold shower after learning some material or even better testing yourself mentally on that material, while in a cold shower or cold plunge, you certainly can. Just don't stay in there too long. Use best practices. If you want to know what those best practices are for deliberate cold exposure, you can check out our deliberate cold exposure newsletter at hubermanlab.com.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
It's completely zero cost. You don't even need to sign up. You simply go to newsletter in the menu tab and you can find that PDF. And now, because you are becoming proficient in an understanding of neuroplasticity and learning and testing and neuromodulators like epinephrine, yes, drinking caffeine will increase your levels of epinephrine.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Not strikingly so, but enough that it probably helps you learn things a little bit better. Should you drink the coffee after? Listen, that's getting a little bit too down in the details. The most important components to learning are that you be alert so that you can attend, so you can pay attention to the material you're trying to learn and then testing yourself later.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And of course the other component, which is getting sufficient amounts of great sleep each night. And I highly recommend doing NSDR. I mentioned gap effects before. Those are very, very cool. I just used another one now. And the final tool for studying that I believe is not discussed enough and is a bit counterintuitive.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Now, one of the most important things that you're going to learn today is that learning, that is the best learning practices are not intuitive. So before we dive in, keep in mind that whatever you believe about how best to learn for you is probably incorrect.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
So it's a fun one to just mention and that perhaps you can explore in your own studying and learning adventures is interleaving of information. This one's kind of wild, actually. It turns out that if your instructor or you takes information about something that they're trying to teach you or you're trying to learn, maybe it's piano, maybe it's neuroscience, maybe it's how to learn better.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And every once in a while throws in a little anecdote about something, let's just say, or mention something about the Olympics or incorporate something that seems pseudo random because it's not actually related to the material you're trying to learn.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Turns out that that acts not as a gap in the same sense that gap effects, which are times in which you do nothing in order to get more repetitions of the material that you just heard in your hippocampus, but rather those breaks of interleaving information, not just getting a steady barrage, like drinking from a fire hose of new information from start to finish,
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
turn out to enhance overall learning ability. Probably, we think, at a mechanistic level, because the neural circuits are able to generate more repetition, similar to gap effects. But actually, in a very interesting way, also because,
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
It's a gap. And within that gap, chemicals are passed across that gap that allow one neuron to activate other neurons or many neurons to activate many other neurons or to inhibit the activity of other neurons. Okay. One form of neuroplasticity is the strengthening of connections between neurons. Another form of neuroplasticity is the weakening of connections between neurons.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
by injecting other information that seems totally unrelated, random or pseudo random, it allows the brain areas that are responsible for encoding information to take whatever new information you're learning and to incorporate it with existing knowledge or even distantly related knowledge. So does this mean that you should learn math and history in the same lecture?
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Well, I think that might be a bit overwhelming, kind of like drinking from two fire hoses. Here we're talking about interleaving challenging information that's new to you
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
with little anecdotes, little bits of information that perhaps are new to you but don't require a lot of challenge, which is, of course, why every once in a while I throw in a little anecdote about my bulldog or learning neuroanatomy or something of that sort.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
It's not just to provide a break, it's to provide examples that are related, but not central to the material that we've been talking about today, which is all about how to study and learn optimally. Okay, so I realize that many of you are not students any longer, although some of you are, but in many ways, we are all students.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
We are all constantly being exposed to all sorts of information out in the world. Goodness knows. Thank goodness we don't remember it all. But there is, of course, information that we would like to remember, that we would really like to consolidate in our memory and be able to have some mastery over.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Earlier, I said I would distinguish between unskilled, skilled mastery and virtuosity, and I'll do that now. Unskilled, of course, means that we have limited understanding, let alone ability to use information. Skilled typically means we know and can recognize and use information. in basic ways or even advanced ways.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Mastery typically means that we have close to the full depth of knowledge in a given area and that we can use it pretty flexibly. And virtuosity, at least my definition of virtuosity is where we actually have such mastery of material
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
that we can use it in ways that we still don't even know how we can use, meaning that we can inject elements or we even invite elements of uncertainty and kind of spontaneity into the use of that material. Here, I'm thinking of great musicians, I'm thinking of great athletes where,
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
They know all the plays, they know all the moves, it's all scripted into their nervous system and they can deploy those at any time.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
So they have real mastery, but in order to display their incredible abilities, their virtuosity, they actively invite in the X factor, the uncertainty such that sometimes they find themselves playing their instrument or singing or performing athletically or mathematically or what have you in ways that even surprise them. And that of course is a lot to expect of ourselves.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
I think most of us would be content to have skill and mastery of the things that we care about. And you know, should we achieve virtuosity, then wonderful.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
But one of the main points of today's discussion was to arm you with an understanding of neuroplasticity in the context of studying and learning, to really understand that so much of learning stably and consolidating information over time is to offset the forgetting process.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And that testing is not just a tool for evaluating our knowledge, but rather a tool for evaluating and reinforcing and building our knowledge. Put differently, that testing is an excellent tool, if not the best tool for studying. And I think that's an important reframe that others have brought about and that I really want to highlight, underline and boldface during today's discussion.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
It's one that I certainly wish I had applied more in my educational trajectory. And it's one that I plan to deploy further in my seeking out of new knowledge in terms of the podcast and neuroscience, but in other areas of my life as well, because from the existing literature and hopefully from the way it was presented to you today, you probably realize that it is near infinite, if not infinite,
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
that we can apply testing as a tool for studying, self-testing, testing of others, using testing as a way to really probe what we know and don't know and to really offset that forgetting process. And in that sense, it is really nicely aligned with what we know about neuroplasticity. And it's also something that we can use freely and that you can use covertly
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And yet a third form of plasticity, which is often discussed in the media, but is very rare actually, in the nervous system, especially the adult nervous system of humans, is neurogenesis, or the addition of new neurons.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
that you can apply in your own seeking out of knowledge and new skills of all kinds, classroom or otherwise. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. Another terrific zero cost way to support us is to follow the podcast on both Spotify and Apple.
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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five star review. Please check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
If you're not already following me on social media, I'm Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, formerly known as Twitter, Threads, Facebook and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I cover science and science related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media channels. If you haven't already subscribed to our Neural Network newsletter, our Neural Network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter. that has protocols, which are one to three page PDFs that describe things like optimizing your sleep, how to optimize your dopamine, deliberate cold exposure.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
We have a foundational fitness protocol that describes resistance training, sets and reps, and all of that, as well as cardiovascular training that's supported by the scientific research. And we have protocols related to neuroplasticity and learning.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Again, you can find all that at completely zero cost by going to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the right corner, scroll down to newsletter, you put in your email, and we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion, all about how to study and learn. And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Let's just get this out of the way upfront because the addition of new neurons, again, grabs so much attention in media articles, but it's responsible for a near trivial amount of the sort of neuroplasticity that is important for today's discussion, or frankly, for most all discussions.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
It is true you have a specialized set of neurons in your olfactory bulb that are responsible for smell, as well as a specialized set of neurons in the so-called dentate gyrus of your hippocampus, an area of the brain that's important for memory, in which new neurons appear to be added throughout the lifespan. But this is not the major mechanism by which learning and memory occurs in humans.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Rather, the major mechanism by which learning and memory occurs in humans is the strengthening of existing connections and the weakening of existing connections or the formation of new connections between already existing neurons, not new neurons, okay?
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Now, the removal or weakening of connections between neurons being an important component of neuroplasticity is very important for sake of today's discussion. I want to emphasize that when we hear about weakening of connections, we often think, well, that means forgetting, or that means the brain is getting less good.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
However, so much of the neuroplasticity that underlies, for instance, the acquisition of a new motor skill is actually the reflection of removal of connections. So we don't want to project any kind of value onto a discussion about adding new connections, removing new connections. Let's just leave it at this level mechanistically.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
When you hear about neuroplasticity, just know that it could be the consequence of strengthening of connections as well as weakening of connections. and that neither strengthening of connections in the nervous system nor weakening of connections can map directly to the formation or removal of say memories or information. Just know that these are the important mechanisms.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
In fact, if you look at a baby, that is let's say, I don't know, nine months old, their motor skills are not terrific typically compared to the motor skills that that child will have when they are six or seven years old. Just look at a kid trying to eat spaghetti or something of that sort or eat anything when they're a small baby versus a toddler versus a young child versus
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And I confess this was humbling for me as well when I started to dive into this literature, because as somebody who was a student for many years and in some sense still considers himself a student of science, and health information because of this podcast.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
an adolescent or teen, despite the poor table manners of some adolescents and teens and some adults for that matter, they are still exhibiting far more precise motor movements than they did as an infant, of course. And believe it or not,
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
The improvement in motor coordination that one observes in humans and other species for that matter, from birth until the adolescence and teen years and adult years is largely the reflection of the removal, that's right, the removal of as opposed to the formation of neural connections. However, the neural connections that remain become much more robust. They become much more reliable, okay?
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
So that's the mechanistic backdrop for everything that we're going to talk about today, which is how to study and learn. And as I mentioned earlier in my introduction, most of learning and remembering new material is about offsetting the forgetting process that naturally occurs anytime we hear new information.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
So in keeping with what will ultimately reveal itself to be the dominant theme of today's discussion right now, and for reasons that will become clear later, I want you to take a brief quiz. Now, the moment people hear quiz or test, typically it spikes their adrenaline, they start feeling stressed, but don't worry, you're going to keep your answers to yourself.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And you're doing this for a very specific purpose. Here's my question. This is a two question quiz. How many different ways mechanistically speaking does neuroplasticity occur? Is it one mechanism, two mechanisms or three mechanisms? Or is it four or five? Okay, can you name in your head two of the three major changes that the nervous system can undergo which are reflective of neuroplasticity?
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Okay, so the answer to question was, is that there are three different modes of neuroplasticity, as you recall, or as you may not have been able to recall. And by the way, if you were not able to recall the three different modes of neuroplasticity or mechanisms underlying neuroplasticity, that is fine.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And certainly as somebody who still teaches university courses, both to medical students and graduate students and to undergraduate students at Stanford, I thought I understood the whole teaching and learning process, but I too learned that it is anything but intuitive. In fact, most of what we believe about the best ways to study, are absolutely false.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
As you'll soon realize, recognizing the errors in your information retention is another critical and very useful way to retain more information, even if you got the answer wrong or you didn't know. In fact, especially if you got the answer wrong or you didn't know.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
So the three ways are the strengthening of neural connections, second, the weakening of neural connections, and third, through neurogenesis, the addition of new neurons. Why did I provide this quiz? Why did I test you?
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Well, as you'll soon learn, if you look across the total body of research on how best to study and learn, it involves doing exactly what we just did, which is to periodically stop and test yourself on the material that you learned. Testing is not just a way of evaluating what knowledge you've acquired and which knowledge you have not managed to acquire.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
It also turns out to be the best tool for offsetting forgetting of any kind. And I'll go into the data that supports that statement in a moment. So yes, today we're going to get a little bit meta in the sense that we're going to be learning about optimal studying strategies and applying those as we go through this podcast.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
And no, there will not be a test at the end, although you're welcome to give yourself a test at the end. I'm going to provide you with an excellent zero cost, very fast tool that you can use to evaluate your knowledge and your ability to study and learn better as a consequence of having listened to this podcast versus had you not listened to this podcast.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
So if ever there was an incentive to listen to the end, There it is. Okay, let's talk about some of the other practical aspects of studying and learning. I know a lot of you out there who want to learn and want to come up with the best studying strategies are trying to think about how to structure your day or how much to study or when to study.
Huberman Lab
Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning
Let's get the most important things out of the way first. Neuroplasticity and learning, that is converting your studying efforts into retention of knowledge is a two-step process. You've probably heard about active engagement. That's just a fancy set of words for focus, for really attending to the information that you're trying to learn.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Stacey Whitman. Dr. Stacey Whitman is a functional dentist with expertise treating both adult and pediatric patients.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Great. Soft toothbrush. Be gentle. Avoid alcohol-containing mouthwashes for all sorts of reasons. Mm-hmm. Pay attention to the fluoride debate.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Great. I love these hydroxyapatite toothpastes. Yours and Gator Dentist's one. Love them. I don't get paid a dime for it. I pay my own money for them. I really love them. My teeth are so much healthier now. I just like them too. I like that I can... They taste good. I don't actually rinse afterwards. We didn't talk about that, but ideally you don't rinse after you brush.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Avoid nicotine.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And alcohol. Hydrate well.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Electrolytes. Electrolytes. Keep your saliva abundant.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Especially for older people. Yes. Yeah. The nasal breathing during sleep, we can double-click on that one because that's going to get your sleep right.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
trying to think here if there's anything I missed.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you so much for this really extensive and exceptionally clear voyage through oral health. I am sure that people are going to take away many, many things that are actionable. And I really appreciate that you've been such a strong advocate for oral
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
pointing out that oral health is not just about teeth, it's not just about breath, it's about that, but it's also about your whole digestive tract and about brain health and about heart health. And we have a lot of control over this particular aspect of our body, as opposed to like heart health, which we have to get to indirectly unless we're a heart surgeon.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Or gut health, which we have to get to indirectly unless we're gastroenterologists, right?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Well, I absolutely love the work that you're doing. I couldn't think of a better person to bring on here to educate us all. And like I said, you've given us so many valuable tools and we will provide links to all the incredible resources that you're continuing to put out into the world. So thank you for doing that. Thank you for coming here.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thanks for, it's clear that this is a labor of love for you. It's not just about like cleaning teeth or something. So yeah, that you're, people probably can't see, well, certainly if they're listening, they can't see the incredible extensive notes that Dr. Whitman brought with her and her incredible handwriting. Goodness gracious, what beautiful handwriting.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
No, they're notoriously have bad handwriting, but yours is certainly offset whatever. failures of handwriting the other physicians have.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thanks. Well, we'll do it again. And I'm really grateful for you coming on here today. Thank you.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you for joining me today for my discussion with Dr. Stacey Whitman. I hope you found it to be as interesting and useful as I did. To find links to Dr. Whitman's work and the various resources we discussed, please see the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
In addition, please follow the podcast by clicking the follow button on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. And you can now leave us comments at both Spotify and Apple. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. And if you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the information on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, it's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as what we call protocols in the form of one to three page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure,
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Stacey Whitman. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I see. So for people that aren't familiar with pH, it's a measure of how alkaline or acidic a given environment or something is. And so what you're telling me is that fluoride makes teeth ultra strong. It's not a mineral that teeth normally see.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Like if a child never used fluoridated toothpaste or drank fluoridated water, they basically, unless they happen to drink from a stream with fluoride in it, their teeth would rely on hydroxyapatite to remineralize. But we put fluoride into toothpaste and into water and that allows teeth to become even stronger and even more acid resistant.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Stacey Whitman. Dr. Stacey Whitman, welcome.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
What are the times in each 24-hour cycle when our teeth are repairing themselves? So like in the middle of the night, provided somebody's asleep, they're not eating. They're not drinking unless they get up for a moment and have a sip of water or something. In between meals, they're not eating.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
If I just sort of naturally intermittent fast, I generally eat my first bite of food somewhere around 11 a.m., sometimes a little earlier. But But that's just habit that sort of falls under this intermittent fasting kind of thing. So I and many people have stretches of time of anywhere from three to 14 hours when we're not ingesting any food or caloric beverages.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Is that when remineralization occurs?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Remineralization. We'll have to do it.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Oh, that's right. You put the accent. Remineralization.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
You said that before. Yes. Thank you. Is that when our teeth repair themselves?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I'm super excited to talk about oral health from all perspectives. Your public-facing content, especially on Instagram, has completely transformed the way I think about this thing that I call my mouth that people think of as their teeth and their mouth and their breath and their tongue and all this stuff as a key site for evaluating and maintaining health of my brain, my body, and
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I grew up hearing that sugar causes cavities. Does sugar cause cavities? And when we say sugar, of course, all the biologists and people with a nutrition background roll their eyes because sugar is a very broad statement, right? There are simple sugars, there's fructose, there's sucrose, there's glucose, there's All sorts of variation within the simple and complex carbohydrates.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
But when I'm saying sugar, I'm thinking about foods that taste sweet or that contain sugar that's masked by other flavors, just for sake of simplicity.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Like added sugar. I mean, now if you buy a cracker, typically, if you look at the package, there's some sugar in there, which is ridiculous, but that's a whole other discussion. Yes. Or we could just even say starchy carbohydrates. Yes.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Even a good sourdough bread.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Chips.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Is it fair to say, I know you prefer the term fermented carbohydrates or trying to, for most people who don't think in terms of starches versus fiber or simple, although nowadays people are more versed in that sort of thing. I think of carbohydrates or foods for that matter, that if you put them in your mouth and you just kind of kept them there for a little bit, that they would dissolve.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
like a cracker, like a chip, like rice, like a piece of pasta, as opposed to like a piece of broccoli, which would get soggy, but it's got a lot of fibrous material, so it doesn't dissolve in the mouth.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So I'm hearing this as a repeating theme that diet and lifestyle are going to be more important than drugs or products for keeping the mouth looking good and healthy.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Today, you'll make it clear as to why that's the case. I'd like to just start by looking at this oral health thing through the lens of what I think most people think of when they hear the words oral health, which is people want, it seems, whitish or very white teeth, depending on their preference. They want fresh breath, or at least to not have bad smelling breath.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Perhaps it's worth mentioning just what some of the facets of a clean diet are through your lens of what you consider a clean diet.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Is it fair to say that if one does that, either a child or an adult, that their oral microbiome will not only get healthier but that their teeth will get whiter? And the reason I keep bringing this up is I think a lot of people want white teeth or at least not yellow teeth. Sure.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Having been involved in the public-facing health education business for a little while now, I realize that nothing that is – encouraged to be good for us that takes away from the way that people want to look and feel about how they look gets much traction. So what I, what I like about what you're telling us is that all the
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
things of eating mostly unprocessed or minimally processed foods, those are going to be good for our entire body. Great that it's great for our oral microbiome. Probably is good for our whole body because of its effects on the microbiome, at least in part. But what makes teeth white? And will supporting the oral microbiome make our teeth whiter?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And by the way, there are some folks out there whose teeth need to be less white, in my opinion. Agree.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And we're being somewhat facetious, but not really. But I think most people would like to have teeth that would be characterized as mostly white. Yeah.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
and they want their mouth to sort of feel good right the question i have is what are some of the things that many many people do in trying to have white teeth fresh breath that actually are very destructive for our teeth and our oral microbiome and if we go through that entry point into this conversation, then we can get into some of the specifics of why that is.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Do people do that? They gargle with hydrogen peroxide?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
The only time I ever had a bad canker sore was because I gargled with 50% water, 50% hydrogen peroxide because an acupuncturist recommended it. He looked at my tongue and then he said, you should do that. And then I did that. And then four or five days later, I had this nickel-sized canker sore on the roof of my mouth. And I was like, ugh.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And I will say, and I have no product affiliation whatsoever to any specific products, but by switching to hydroxyapatite-containing toothpaste, my teeth... they definitely have gotten whiter. I drink a lot of yerba mate and coffee and I brush, but it was sort of a progressive issue of my teeth dimming. So that's been great. I also used to get cavities fairly often when I was a kid.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I'll talk about that a little bit later. But since switching to hydroxyapatite toothpaste, I've had like stellar dental reviews, assuming my dentist is looking carefully. I believe he is, but we'll see. And to me, it just makes so much more sense. Like, give teeth the mineral that they normally use to remineralize. It just makes sense.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
You're talking about kids and the fact that sometimes if their teeth are a little bit yellow, that's normal. One thing that I've been really struck by as the discussion around longevity seems more and more prominent these days is occasionally I'll run into somebody who's in their 70s or 80s
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
even 90s and it's very rare to encounter somebody in their 80s or 90s whose teeth are not like the color of this tea and for those that are listening it's like a very dark brown um i've never seen somebody unless they're doing something highly artificial with bleaching um I've never seen somebody 75 or older whose teeth aren't basically yellow to brown.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And when you look at people when they're very close to death, their teeth often look very opaque. What is that? Is that a blood flow issue? Is it what's going on there?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Well, I don't drink the wine, but I've definitely had coffee tea since I was a little kid. I've been drinking latte since I was like five.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah. It's delicious.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
That raises a question I'd never thought about before. So if one takes a course of antibiotics... Typically, the advice is to ingest low-sugar kombucha, to have some Bulgarian or Greek yogurt, like repopulate the gut with the substrates for healthy microbiota. Thank you. Thank you.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So what's something that you see many people doing in terms of trying to have bright white teeth that actually is harming their teeth?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
She focuses on oral health as a key feature of overall gut health and a powerful modulator of brain longevity, heart health, hormones, and fertility in both men and in women.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Amazing. I really want to not just double click, but really dive into that. No pun intended. I do want to just ask because a subset of listeners will be interested in how they could get their saliva tested.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I've never had my saliva tested. I will say that based on your teachings online, I've made an effort to drink more water in addition to massive amounts of yerba mate and small amounts of coffee. I've made an effort to – well, I switched to a hydroxyapatite-containing toothpaste, which has been terrific for all sorts of reasons. I've really emphasized nasal breathing.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
That's something I was into before through the sports performance world because my friend Brian McKenzie, who's a human performance expert, was really big on this a while ago. And the healthiest my breathing and cardiovascular function ever was for me was when
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
um something i don't suggest people do unless it's their profession i was boxing for about a five year span and i had a fitted mouthpiece and i would do my running my road work with my mouthpiece and breathing through my nose um and that taught me to like really how to breathe
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
correctly through my nose and it translated to switching to nasal breathing when i slept i didn't sleep with the mouth guard in um but i think that breathing through the nose is just so important for the reasons you're describing james nestor's described and i will share this little factoid and then and then i'll um then i'll shut up and and nasal breathe um
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
A friend of mine who is a physician at UCSF, he told me that the methamphetamine addicts that come in have terrible teeth. Everyone knows this. Meth addicts have terrible teeth. But do you know why it is? He works with the School of Dentistry. It's because they're mouth breathing.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Meth doesn't actually deteriorate the teeth. It's the fact that they're mouth breathers. And so I find this fascinating. And then, of course, the book Jaws, which was published by Paul Ehrlich and Sandra Kahn, my amazing colleagues at Stanford. years ago. And by the way, when they published that book, people said, oh, this is pseudoscience. This is crazy.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
You're saying nasal breathing epidemic of, you know, fear mongering.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
We now know this is a real thing.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So how do you encourage kids and adults to switch from mouth breathing to nasal breathing?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So do you think that most of the common over-the-counter toothpaste, while they smell minty or pepperminty and taste minty and pepperminty, are they effectively cleaning teeth? And are they causing any damage to teeth by virtue of what they have in them?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
We slurp our food.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
It's like that movie. What was that futuristic movie with the little robot? I hated that movie.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I hated that movie.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah, they're slurping their food, lying on recliners. They've outsourced pretty much everything. Yes.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
How much plasticity is there of the sinuses? So let's say somebody has a partially or severely deviated septum and they could get surgery. And I want to talk about some of the different surgeries. There's a balloon expansion thing that online, it looks really cool. I'd like to try this.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah, they put the balloon up there, they inflate the balloon.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah, they numb it and then they take it out and the... You know, this kind of thing. Well, is actually the appropriate way to do it, both in and out through the nose. But if somebody makes the effort to nasal breathe, so maybe they mouth tape at night, or I'm a big fan of shifting from any mouth breathing to nasal breathing by...
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Today, we discuss many of the common myths about tooth and gum care and how to use specific nutrition, breathing and cleaning methods to repair cavities, whiten teeth and freshen breath while at the same time improving the oral microbiome.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
insisting that I nasal breathe while I do any cardio, unless I'm pushing really hard and then I need to bring mouth breathing into it. But I've noticed just because I can measure snoring through sleep on an eight sleep, I can measure snoring that way. But even if you don't do that, there are other ways you can measure snoring with an app or someone can tell you you're snoring.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So this isn't about a product per se, but if I force myself to nasal breathe during cardio workouts, especially kind of zone two, zone three stuff, translates to less mouth breathing and snoring and sleep. So the question is, do the sinuses actually dilate? Or if you have a deviated septum, do you need it surgically or somehow otherwise repaired?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah. I'm measuring deep sleep and REM sleep through the eight sleep or loop or both. Great. Deep sleep is great, provided I get to sleep by about 10, 10.30, because that's when I capture the deep sleep window. If I go to sleep around 11 or midnight, I lose out on some deep sleep, even if I sleep longer. And my REM sleep's really solid these days. I'm struck by how...
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
convincing the data are about nasal breathing, improving brain function. There were a couple of studies that showed that if people either mouth breathe or nasal breathe in a laboratory study, the nasal breathers have better memory recall, but those were of odors. So everyone said, well, okay, of course it's of odors and you're breathing through your nose. And so you can remember those odors.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So they've now run these studies on with other types of memory and brain function. And it's just very clear that you oxygenate your brain better and you You think better. Your cognition is better. Your memory is better for everything, not just odors.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Well, all you have to do to convince the male half of the audience to focus more on nasal breathing is to tell them and to not use mouthwashes is to tell them that being a mouth breather will give them sexual dysfunction or will, will predispose them to sexual dysfunction and they'll start working on their nasal breathing.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Great message. So to shift over to nasal breathing, if somebody's really struggling with this, are you a fan of mouth taping?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Recently, I had the privilege of giving a talk at Stanford with Renee Fleming. It's like one of the world's greatest opera singers alive today. And I said, well, what are some things that you do for your breathing? Because I ended up talking a lot for the podcast and she gave me some lung and diaphragm strengthening exercises. But then the one that she suggested for
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
emphasizing nasal breathing, because there's a lot of nasal breathing that's done quickly and subtly in order to maintain air pressure in the lungs and for her craft, which I know very little about, but is instead of like doing weight training for the neck, it's kind of a fun one. It doesn't make the neck big. So people who don't want a larger neck will appreciate that. But
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
to exercise the internal muscles of the neck. And the way you do this is something called kiss the sky. The boxers will actually know this, the old school boxers. It looks ridiculous, but I'll do it because I look ridiculous on this podcast all the time intentionally. So you look up at the sky and you pucker like you were a puffer fish. for 15 seconds per side.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And she said it builds the strength and the neural control over the internal muscles of the neck. So again, no widening or thickening of the neck, but on the inside, and it makes it much easier to take deep breaths through your nose. It probably increases the amount of resistance so that you can fill your lungs more easily.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So I've been doing a little bit of like kiss the sky and it looks completely ridiculous.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah, George. And you just like really like lip smack as if you were going to kiss this guy from side to side, 15 seconds per side, a couple of times per day, or just whenever you remember it. And I mean, her voice is amazing, like her speaking voice and her posture and everything. So I borrowed that one from her.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Just the scheduling of that alone makes me want to take a nap.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
What's the title again?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Sleep rec, W-R-E-C-K.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Great. In trying to maintain airway health and healthy saliva. And now I'm obsessed with saliva. It's like, cool. It's got all this stuff in it. I was thinking it's just like we know blood has all these goodies in it. We test blood. We know skin microbiome. We know that, you know, women go to an OBGYN. They get pap smears. They get, you know, I mean, they...
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
We know if you ever raise a kid or change diapers, you can tell a lot about somebody's health by the fluids that they emit and that they have within them. I'd like to place saliva on the list of critical things to pay attention to. But chewing gum, is this good for our breathing and for our saliva or not? I'm not a big gum chewer, but is it good, bad, neutral?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I had a bad experience with mastic gum. I was buying it. I love the kind of the primordial aspect of it. It's like a tree sap that you chew on. It comes in this beautiful paper package and, you know, no plastics or anything. You get it going in there and you feel like you're really like working it the same way my bulldog, Costello, would like work.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
He used to like teeth on like bricks and like he was just – and you feel great. And then all of a sudden you'd go – And your jaw would kind of stick. And then later you're like, whoa, like my jaw really hurts.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah, it'll give you that. You know, these days the young influencers are so obsessed by this. It'll give you a little bit of a golf ball hypertrophy of your jaw. That's not why I was doing it. But boy, does it make your jaw feel sore.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
But chewing food is good.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I don't, to me, almond butter is like never existed in nature. Like the idea that you would take like, I mean, almonds are so delicious, right? But that you would like, like grind them up and put them into a paste. Like to me, the texture is so aversive.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Just the fact that like peanut butter, like to me, these things make no sense whatsoever.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
It's for animals and people without teeth.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Well, I was thinking for adults. I was kind of making fun of the fact that adults are eating like kids, like they're like slurping their food.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
What are the numbers on that? I don't know the numbers on that.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Especially since we're literally putting it into our body, not just on the surface of our body. What was the foaming agent again?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function. Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient levels and much more. They've also recently added tests for toxins such as BPA exposure from harmful plastics and tests for PFAS or forever chemicals.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to your physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors who are expert in the relevant areas. For example, in one of my first tests with function, I learned that I had elevated levels of mercury in my blood.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Function not only helped me detect that, but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption. I'd been eating a lot of tuna while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification. And I should say, by taking a second function test,
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
That approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by function simplicity and at the level of cost. It is very affordable.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to function. Earlier, you mentioned the many different systems and diseases of the body that the oral microbiome has been directly linked to. I would say in science and medicine, there are direct effects, like this mediates that, and then there are indirect effects.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Like if a fire alarm goes off in the middle of the night, your sleep isn't good, but fire alarms don't regulate sleep. They just can modulate your sleep. But my understanding, and I'm not deep in this literature, but my understanding is that we now have –
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
fairly conclusive evidence that certain bacteria from the mouth make its way to the brain or heart or other tissues and directly increase either the occurrence or the susceptibility of dementia, cardiovascular disease, that this isn't just a, you know, oh, you broke your ankle. So you move less, you move less, your heart gets less healthy. Your heart gets less healthy.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Your brain gets less healthy. This is the kind of point I'm trying to make, but that there's, but that the bacteria in our mouth, bad bacteria can cause real problems for the brain and heart.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
This is very important because as Dr. Whitman explains, most of the things that people do in pursuit of better tooth health and appearance and fresh breath actually damage their oral microbiome and indeed can lead to serious cardiovascular issues. So today we discuss how to brush, how to floss.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Are ulcerations canker sores?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Or canker sores.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So if one gets a canker sore, what does that reflect typically? Let's assume the toothpaste doesn't have anything to do with it. Is that a disruption in the microbiome? Is it from a physical... injury, like a bite to the gum? It could be all. Okay.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Pancreatic cancer is, sorry to interrupt, I must say I've had a couple of friends die of pancreatic cancer. And while I wouldn't want any cancer, that's the one that I really wouldn't want because so many of them are deadly.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
The Whipple procedure. Yeah. If they catch it early enough, it goes anterior to posterior. And if you catch it early enough, they can lop off the anterior portion, the Whipple procedure as it's called. But even a colleague of mine, a brilliant bioengineer,
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
a few years ago who had the whipple done and he was progressing well and and then he passed away about a year and a half ago yeah pancreatic cancer is i don't want it no joke and um
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
What kind of antibiotics are used to treat these things?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Radical idea that's going to get me in trouble with my more natural health audience, but I speak to Those are their more pharmaceutical, more nothing, don't take anything. What is the argument against once every three years as a healthy adult doing a round of antibiotics to kill off unhealthy bacteria, replenishing the microbiome in various tissues?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah, just preventative. Like kill off what might be living in the mouth, kill off what might be living in the prostate. I learned recently that the prostate doesn't have the same sort of immune system protection.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And so a lot of men, you know, while they don't have UTIs, they have a prostatitis, and they basically just need to do a 21-day or 31-day round of antibiotics. And everyone will be like, oh, you're spreading MRSAs with that or something. But you can protect against a number of different cancers related to the prostate and things like that. Why don't we do this as a regular practice?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Like every three years or so, you just kind of hit the system hard for about a week, kill off a bunch of bad stuff and a bunch of good stuff, and then replenish the good stuff.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Tell me more about ozone.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
HSV-1.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each and every night.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Eight Sleep automatically regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your unique needs. Now, I find that extremely useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night, and warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow-wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
The two things I've done in the last couple of years that have completely transformed my oral health, says my dentist, and how I feel are, first of all, I switched. A few years ago, I would say really about 14 months ago, I just said, that's it. I'm not eating processed foods again. I'm just not going to do it.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So I eat meat, fish, eggs, fruits, vegetables, and I eat some rice, oatmeal, and vegetables.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
sour a good sourdough bread butter olive oil i just which is not to say that i won't have a slice of pizza someday but i just i was like that's it like i'm kind of over it 49 years old i've eaten enough of that stuff i'm kind of like bored with it anyway i hear you and what was interesting is i used to get a lot of tartar buildup a lot um despite brushing and flossing on the um what are the lower front teeth called incisors yeah and it was and they'd scrape it away it's a non-issue
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I switched and I have just full disclosure because there's nothing to disclose. I have no financial relationship to the toothpaste that you make or the toothpaste that Gator Dentist makes. I actually know his real name, but he hides as Gator Dentist. I love Gator. Gator Dentist. But I switched from fluoride containing toothpaste
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
not because of fear of fluoride, but excitement about hydroxyapatite. So I switched to using your toothpaste. And I occasionally, well, I routinely switch back and forth with knobs, where I think it stands for No BS, which is Gator Densis to tablet product.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And I know that because Eight Sleep has a great sleep tracker that tells me how well I've slept and the types of sleep that I'm getting throughout the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So I use them and neither of them pay me. I pay full price. They don't send it to me. I purchase it like anyone else. And that's made a tremendous difference, says my dentist, by no cavities whatsoever. I was constantly battling this when I was a kid and a bunch of oral health issues. And I don't want to waste our time talking about those right now. Maybe we'll return to them a little bit later.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
um my teeth and oral microbiome never felt better um it's it's just remarkable yeah it's just remarkable and i have a family member who has some um gut issues like just digestion issues and it's unclear what's going on there and um i'm inspired to try and help them address that through the oral microbiome by switching to hydroxyapatite and and um and test their oral microbiome that'd be very interesting to know what's going on in there because i think you're swallowing
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Sorry, is there a best test? Because a lot of listeners are going to say, okay, if they have the disposable income, they're going to want to test their oral microbiome.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Is there one that your office uses or that?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Spit, so kid or adult will spit?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Their latest model, the Pod 4 Ultra, also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees in order to improve your airflow and stop you from snoring. If you decide to try Eight Sleep, you have 30 days to try it at home, and you can return it if you don't like it. No questions asked, but I'm sure that you'll love it.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So Bristle is a company that people can... It's an oral microbiome test, yes.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Are you affiliated with them? I should probably ask because some of the audience will... I am actually, yes, I am.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Shotgun metagenomics.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Great. Thank you for that. I think some people want to test their oral microbiome and other things in their mouth.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah, I feel like oral microbiome is so much more tractable. I mean, switch to nasal breathing, get away from alcohol-containing mouthwashes, consider a hydroxyapatite-containing toothpaste instead of fluoride, which brings us to fluoride. Let's talk about fluoride. I've already been accused of being a sunscreen denier. No, I actually believe that sunscreen exists.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I do occasionally use zinc oxide sunscreen a little bit. I prefer a physical barrier because I'll wear a hat or something. I don't tend to burn very easily, but if I feel like I might burn, I use a physical barrier. I'm being somewhat facetious here because people will say all sorts of things, but I did an episode about water.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
about oral health, certainly not the depth or expertise that you're providing today. So thank you. And I said, yeah, fluoride does a bunch of things. My question was and remains, why are we drinking fluoride? But this relates to, okay, I'll tell this story briefly. It's not as cool as your story.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I was taken to a dentist when I was a kid, and they put these like a mouthpiece with fluoride gel in it on the top and bottom, and they sat me in a little wicker chair in front of a TV with cartoons. And I hated it. It tasted awful, and it kind of like had this sour thing. So I was probably six or seven, so I drank it. I just sucked it up.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Go to 8sleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra. 8sleep ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and the UAE. Again, that's 8sleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra. Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
drank it down, turned around, barfed all over the wicker chair.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Fluoride's a poison, but everything is a poison at high concentrations. So most everything is a poison, excuse me, at high concentrations. So I don't have anything against fluoride, but it is a poison. Then the question becomes, if something is not dangerous in a small dose or concentration... What are its cumulative effects? This is what I have issues with.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
People say, oh, going through the x-ray machine, no big deal. But what if you fly 150 times a year? Is it cumulative? And so like the logic of the sort of pushback from the traditional, if I will, community sucks. Like they're just not logical. These are my colleagues sometimes too, right?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I know we've all heard that we need to brush and floss, but Dr. Whitman explains exactly how to do those so that they are of the maximum benefit for our tooth health, gum health, and oral health generally. We also discuss the science and benefits of things like tongue scraping and oil pulling. And we discuss fluoride, which of course is a very controversial and timely topic nowadays.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Just you go to the dentist to get an x-ray, they're like running behind the next wall, put you in a lead shield, and then they're like, oh no, it's no big deal. Well, how many? How many times a year can you do this before it becomes a deal? So my question is, what is the rationale for putting fluoride in drinking water, given that the contact time in the mouth is so short?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And then what's the cumulative effect of bringing fluoride into the gut over and over? And then earlier you said something, and I've never thought about this. The bones contain hydroxyapatite. 60%, I think you said? Mm-hmm. 60% of your bone minerals are made from hydroxyapatite. Fluoride infiltrates the minerals of the teeth and replaces it. So is fluoride going into our bones?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Okay, so I'm not trying to paint a scary picture here, but frankly, and people can probably tell, my blood pressure goes up a little bit when people say, oh, you know, you're anti-fluoride. I'm not anti-fluoride, but I just don't get the logic.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Like, why would I continually bombard my system with fluoride at the level of the gut, at the level of my bones, If it's good for me, tell me it's good for me. But they're saying, oh, it's so that poorer populations don't have decaying teeth. Sounds like a good argument, not even counter-arguing it. But I can't piece together the logic.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And like most public health arguments, I feel like neither side is explicitly clear about what exactly they're arguing about. And that's part of why I have this podcast, to try and get clarity on things.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah. And please don't worry that you're going to offend anyone because I'll offend everybody. And they've already said everything they possibly could. And they'll say more. So I'm not afraid to open up these topics anymore.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And I'll take the heat.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
But you have great teeth and they don't.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Portland is not fluoridated?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
The Woo Woo Caucus.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
That's pretty funny. I like that.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I've been doing weekly therapy for over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice. It was a condition of being allowed to stay in school. But pretty soon I realized that therapy is an extremely important component to overall health. In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise, which of course I also do every week.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
There are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First of all, it provides a good rapport with somebody that you can trust and talk to about any and all issues. Second of all, it can provide support in the form of emotional support or directed guidance. And third, expert therapy can provide useful insights.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Is that right? So if we look at skeletons from dead people, obviously. Well, you can look at skeletons and live people. Skeletons and dead people from dead people that died prior to 1900. How are their teeth?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
With BetterHelp, they make it easy to find an expert therapist who you resonate with and can help you provide these benefits that come through effective therapy. Also, because BetterHelp therapy is done entirely online, it's very time efficient and easy to fit into a busy schedule with no commuting to a therapist's office or sitting in a waiting room.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
On par with lead.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
If you'd like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman. For this month only, March 2025, BetterHelp is giving you the biggest discount offered on this show with 90% off your first week of therapy. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 90% off your first week. This would probably be a good time to talk about
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I still loathe going to the dentist.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I think it's because of that early association.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And I have Danish relatives. They have very nice teeth. If you told me that there's no fluoride in the drinking water in England, I might be like, well, you know, sorry, my English friends. But that's the stereotype, right? That their teeth are bad. I don't think that that's true any longer. I think that that was true at one point.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
the whole concept that teeth can essentially build themselves and destroy themselves independent of sugar intake and other factors. So if you would, could you just briefly walk us through this whole business of mineralization and demineralization of teeth? Because I find this so interesting, and later I'll share a little bit. Full disclosure, I have a very complicated oral health history.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I mean, the data that show deficits on par with what one sees with lead exposure, that's the most striking thing to me.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I really appreciate you taking us through the full arc of the history of it. I think it's extremely important that people take that in so they can start to form their own opinions. And, um, you pointed out a number of, um, logical flaws in, in just the, the way the
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
treatment of everybody with a potent chemical, especially given the amount of water that people drink and cook with, et cetera, without their consent.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need, but nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, all in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are vital for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or your nerve cells.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Drinking Element dissolved in water makes it extremely easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes. To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and therefore losing a lot of water and electrolytes. They have a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. They have watermelon, citrus, et cetera. Frankly, I love them all.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. Okay, so I think that pretty much puts fluoride in a, not in a box, let's say on the shelf for all of us to look at.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I think this is going to be a very important aspect of public health in the year to three years to come with this new administration and Bobby Kennedy paying a lot of attention to fluoride. And I really like what you said about trying to remove the political aspects of this. If this becomes a blue versus red left versus right thing. We're never going to get to the heart of the matter.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And that would be really sad. And the ones that would really suffer would be kids.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So a nonpartisan look at this, which is how I heard everything that you said, just seems really critical. Where are they getting the fluoride?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And had I known what you're about to tell us, I think I would have spared myself a ton of pain.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
You weren't my dentist, unfortunately.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Super interesting. I will resist the temptation to ask questions about why it sounds like mostly red states are the ones doing this as opposed to blue states, although Portland is in a blue state. Portland's traditionally- Blue city, for sure.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah. Right. Blue city in a- Red state. Oregon went red this last election?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
All right. Well, we'll do another episode in 2090 about politics. Meanwhile, back to the oral microbiome and otherwise. I'm very interested in the relationship between oral health and what you described as fertility, pregnancy, and hormones. And obviously hormones can be about men or women, but let's talk about oral health and fertility.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
What, if any, knowledge is there about how the oral microbiome or oral health would be impacting egg health fertility um ovulation uh ovarian reserve is that the sort of the level that the regulation of fertility is thought to occur like what's what's what's known about the link
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Great. What are some of the mechanical as opposed to chemical things that we can do to improve our oral health? So we were all taught brush and floss twice a day. I even have a colleague who can be caught in the bathroom brushing his teeth after lunch. So he's brushing three times a day. I don't know what motivated that. I do that too. Do you? Okay, great. So what's the deal with brushing?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
When, let's say... Kind of like exercise. Let's say if someone were going to only brush once a day, better to brush in the morning or at night? Obviously, people should brush twice a day or more. But if one could only brush once a day, would it be morning or night?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
It's a very interesting conversation that I believe everyone, young, old, parents, and kids need to be aware of. We also discussed treating things like tongue ties, deviated septums, canker sores, and more. By the end of today's episode, you'll have the most up-to-date knowledge about how to take care of your oral health,
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah, thanks for that. More and more I'm getting asked questions on social media and elsewhere about, you know, like, how is this different for women versus men? And in particular, different phases of the cycle and perimenopause, menopause, and essentially the entire lifespan. So appreciate that.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Sounds awful.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
What is geographic tongue caused by? I don't have it. I have a family member who has it. It's permanent because they're quite far along in their life now and still have it from childhood.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
we progress further along in this conversation these ideas pop to my mind that i'd never thought of before like um because i don't tend to use them like um lip balms lipstick um i don't use lipstick i don't use lip balm i suppose i've put like one of those sunscreens when i went skiing or snowboarding years ago on my uh and um now i'm wondering like was that just a terrible idea
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
People are going to use, but I suppose specifically like lipsticks, are they safe for the oral microbiome?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Should we be able to chew equally on both sides of our mouth?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
You said it, so I'll have to ask. Tongue tie, a few years ago, this was a controversial area. Tongue tie being the stretch of skin between the bottom of the tongue and the bottom of the – what is it?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Floor of the mouth.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you. And this idea that in babies it should be caught. Other people say it shouldn't be cut. Mm-hmm. and then everyone starts looking at it. I mean, I think mine just seems to have naturally torn back some distance, but you know, what's the deal with tongue tie? Should it be cut?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I'll take the heat.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Oh, yeah, yeah.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
When they dried my teeth out for something once, they pull it back and you see it's, yeah.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
In your case, was it a general anesthesia or a local anesthesia?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Sure, you're already in there.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
But for most people, it would be a general anesthesia?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
That can cauterize as you make the cut.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So my understanding is that the minerals that make up teeth are not the same materials that are put into a lot of common tooth care products. So without getting into a discussion right now about fluoride in water, we will get to that conversation a little bit later, but in order to frame that properly when we arrive there, could you explain why it is that fluoride is in most toothpastes?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Peptides and red light therapy. Now we're in the sort of specialized next sort of cutting edge of health and self-directed health or self-directed slash working with a... working with a professional like yourself, oral health care.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So can red light therapy, like shining red light and near infrared light, so long wavelength light into the mouth, provide any benefits for a person that doesn't have any other issues, like they just want to maximize their oral health? Is that something that can be helpful? What else is it potentially helpful for?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah. All right. So we'll stand by on that.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Should we be concerned about metal fillings? I don't know what material they use for the other fillings. And sometimes they'll use, quote unquote, sealants. Like they'll see a pit, they'll put some sealant in there. And retainers are made from plastic. Now everyone's worried about plastic. So what gives?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
When basically we don't have fluoride in our teeth at birth, but there are other minerals in our teeth that certain toothpastes have. And so why would we give an artificial substance to our teeth? Maybe you could explain demineralization, remineralization in the context of fluoride and these other minerals. Yeah.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Cruciferous vegetables, sulforaphane supplementation maybe.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
The same things that were recommended in the microplastics episode that I did that other people have touched on. So things like sauna sulforaphane.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Cruciferous vegetable intake should help. bind to some of the microplastics that surely we are ingesting.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
A somewhat unpleasant topic, but something that I've heard repeatedly, and I don't know if it's true, is that dentists more than people in any other profession commit suicide at very high rates.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Um, and then there's this very dark joke that people make, well, you know, their hands are always in other people's mouths, so they don't have anyone to talk to, you know, like, or, you know, like, or, and then I always think, well, the logic's wrong there. They actually could talk as much as they want. It's the patients that can't talk.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So, you know, set, setting aside that kind of like, um, you know, gallows humor, which I don't, it's not my style of humor. Um, Do dentists kill themselves more than people in other professions?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Little Shop of Horrors.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
both for aesthetic reasons and, of course, to reduce cavities and gum disease, and in doing so, how to support your brain and heart longevity. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Our limb bones? Mm-hmm.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
60% hydroxyapatite.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Well, thank you for being a... an incredible ambassador for dentistry and no small part that comes from your obvious kindness and goodness and also the rigor with which you approach it. Thank you. The two are certainly not incompatible. You're proof of that.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I wonder if now would be a good time for us to just sort of summarize the top 10 or top 12 things. There are a bunch of don'ts. Maybe we can leave those out, like avoid sugary, starchy, floury foods that get stuck between teeth, that kind of thing. But maybe I'll fire off a few and you can tell me what I'm missing. Be a nose breather, not a mouth breather, unless you're eating or speaking.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Keep your mouth shut basically, right?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Or you're exercising really hard and you need to suck for some air or you're scuba diving and you would drown otherwise. Eat non-processed, minimally processed foods. We're hearing that over and over again these days. Brush twice a day, floss twice a day, water pick if you can.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So it's brush, then floss.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Floss, then brush.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
No, no. I didn't get it wrong on purpose.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah. So I want to add in these things. So maybe oil pull three times a week. Put some coconut oil in there. Swish it around. Practice your nasal breathing while you're doing it.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
But not in the sink.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Roger Schwelt.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Yeah. And we shouldn't have to take vacations to expensive, sunny places to overcome this stuff. That's not the right way to think about it. The way is to try and weave it into our lives at low expense or no expense, getting outside, for instance, opening windows. In cars, it's the worst. So what's wild is if you go to the Pacific Northwest and
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
in the fall or winter when it's really hard to get light. I think Seattle's the northernmost city in the contiguous US. It's so dark up there. And you get into an Uber. They have tinted windows. It's so crazy. It's so wild, especially since the research on this stuff is being pioneered largely out of the University of Washington in Seattle.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
We've got a number of things exactly backwards, and light in our relationship to light is one of the ways in which we do. The problem, I think, is when we start talking like this, people think, oh, well, we're all supposed to have atriums and skylights and be outside all day. It's like, yeah, actually, that would be great, and dimmer and darker at night.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
So taking small steps towards adjusting toward bright days and— very dim and dark nights is key. We didn't talk about incandescent bulbs. It used to be until about 15 years ago that the quote unquote low efficiency bulbs that were present in all our homes, the bulbs that would burn out pretty often, we know that the incandescent bulbs are more full spectrum.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
They have a lot of red and orange emission. You see them as white, but they look a little warmer. It has that warm. Those are great. Those are great. They're harder to find now. Actually, they were illegal for a short while. I don't think anyone was going to come to your house and arrest you, but you couldn't get them. They were banned. And now they're available again, is my understanding.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Do you know who are really the smartest about this stuff? If you want to know where self-directed human health – is gonna be in five years. You know where you can look? Tell me. You talk to the people who are really good at maintaining aquaria and reptiles. Ah, yes. Because those animals literally die under conditions of pure blue light.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Like if you've ever had fish tanks, I'm like, no, you don't want to send me down this path. But there's a very famous fish tank designer. I was a huge fan of his. Unfortunately, he died of pneumonia when he was 60, Takashi Amano. There's museums in Japan about him. He developed this thing called aquascaping, which is about plants and lighting more than the fish, although there's fish in it.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And everyone, I've been involved in aquascaping in one level or another for a while now. Super geeky, I know. But the whole principle is that you're trying to create full spectrum light, plants, air. You're trying to create the right conditions for these fish and other aquatic elements like plants to thrive.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And anyone that understands how to maintain reptiles or understands how to, which I'm not into, I don't like scaly things except fish, or aquaria, They know you can't have a dearth of long wavelength light or all the fish get sick. The plants die. They just can't do it. Now, there are deep sea plants where the red light, long wavelength light doesn't get down to the bottom.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And forgive me for going off on this. Maybe I should just do a solo episode. But, you know, what's amazing is, you know, the intrinsically photosensitive cells of the eye that set our circadian rhythms and that do all this, the quote unquote reason why the peak of the portion of the visible spectrum is where it is for those cells is because it's the wavelength of light that can go deep into water.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
If you've ever been snorkeling, you only see reds down to about 10 meters or so. You swim down a little bit lower and you need to bring a light with you. Now, of course, the fish that are red are still red down there. You just can't see it because of the lack of reflectance of long wavelength light. So we are walking around in the evening
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
basically being exposed to what our eye and brain think is daytime, just as our retinal sensitivity is going up. And then all day we're in this and it's not bright enough. So anyway, I'll stop now, but it has me activated, as you can imagine, because you hear about all the mental health issues, the physical health issues.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I think they're all downstream, as you pointed out, of mitochondrial dysfunction. put differently, mitochondrial function is downstream of proper relationship to light. Which you so beautifully illustrated. And I learned a ton that I hadn't known before about that. Okay. If I continued on Aquaria, we won't do that. We'll be here. This will be the longest podcast episode ever.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I'd love to talk a little bit about two more things. We will return to New Start. But I want to know about long COVID. Is long COVID a real thing? And what is long COVID? What can be done about long COVID? How do you know if, like most people by now have had COVID at a high level or low level. How do you know if you have long COVID?
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
In fact, by the end of today's episode, you'll be armed with the real knowledge on how to best get over nasty infections of the sinuses, lungs, and throat faster, should you happen to get one, and even better, how to avoid them altogether. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I would imagine that pretty much everything that you've shared with us today would be beneficial. My understanding is that some of the heterogeneity of even just the COVID response in various people who got it, in addition to the heterogeneity and long COVID symptoms, could be due to the fact that the distribution of ACE2 receptors is very widespread in the body.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
SARS-CoV-2 binds to the ACE2 receptor. It's a primary receptor site, as I understand. And, you know, I remember early in the pandemic asking on social media, are there ACE2 receptors in the brain and on neurons? And people were like, no, there's no ACE2 receptor. It turns out the olfactory neurons are chock-a-block full of ACE2 receptor and they are bonafide CNS neurons.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
their brain neurons, and you lose them. Fortunately, those can replenish over time in an activity-dependent way.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
But yeah, when I hear that some people got COVID and it was no big deal, other people got COVID and they felt like they had brain fog for six months and are still coping with it, probably has to do with the extent to which the virus was able to bind to ACE2 receptors in one person's brain versus someone else. Maybe their blood-brain barrier didn't get in there at all.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
It makes sense because the olfactory neurons are replenished, not just regenerate, but they turn over in an activity dependent way. And so it requires electrical activity and their electrical activity is dictated by smell. And so certain clusters of olfactory neurons and the brain neurons that they connect to or reconnect to in this case are going to be activated by different smells.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And so the smell training based protocols for bringing your sense of smell back intentionally includes a variety of smells. You don't just want to smell a lemon. You want to smell lemon, coffee, this. People always say, do I need foul smells too? In kind of unfortunate way, the neurons that detect noxious odors and bad odors tend to not die off as readily. Oh, I see.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
But it makes sense because those are the cells that actually preserve your innate aversion reflex. Right. They're the ones that can, you know, our ability to detect smoke in the air, something very relevant to the recent history here in LA, or ammonia, things that are potentially hazardous for us. The detection thresholds are incredibly low. We're just so sensitive.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Well, yeah. So the trigeminal, it's involved in some of the protection of the nasal epithelium and whatnot. But this is a direct line through the olfactory pathway to the amygdala. A fairly direct line.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Right. All of olfaction bypasses the thalamus, but the learning of odors is... Your odor maps are going to be slightly different than mine based on your experience. But when it comes to the representation of smoke, vomit, feces, and rotting bodies, all the dangerous stuff, our pathways look pretty similar. Got it. To be blunt. Given your expertise in lungs and...
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
A number of people I know have mold issues. They claim or they believe that mold has infiltrated their lungs. Some doctors tell them they're crazy. Some doctors tell them that they're not crazy about that idea. Is mold toxicity a real thing? Can it be treated? Maybe we do an entire episode about this another time, but is it a real thing? And what is the kind of primary treatment for mold toxicity?
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
The reason I asked is it a real thing is that people that I know who believe they have a mold infection or they did do seem to have symptoms that last a long time. Yeah. There doesn't seem to be any general agreement about what specific treatment to use for this unless maybe they need surgery or something. So do you give people antifungals? Is there anything over the counter that can help?
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Will the sauna protocols and steam protocols we were talking about earlier help? I would imagine a lot of warm, moist air is exactly what fungus loves.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Okay, I have to ask about this. Yes. Most people, including me, are familiar with melatonin secretion from the pineal gland being suppressed by light via some neural circuit pathways that go from eye to suprachiasmatic nucleus. There's a circuitous loop to the brainstem and then up to the pineal. So light suppresses melatonin release from the pineal. We know that.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Let's talk about the T in New Start, trust. You talked about higher power. You talked about community. You talked about connection generally and specifically. I've always been struck by how the belief system – can impact our physical health.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
We recently had Dr. Ellen Langer on the podcast from Harvard who's done incredible studies really about how beliefs can shape our physical health in any number of different ways. What is your clinical observation of people who are ill, severely ill, mildly ill.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And the role that trust in, you know, fill in the blank, you can fill in the blank, has in terms of the severity of their symptoms and the rate at which they recover. And hopefully they do recover.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
In that context, melatonin is... the hormone of darkness and causes sleepiness. Correct. What is the role of melatonin in the context that you are describing? Because if indeed infrared and other long wavelength light is causing the production of melatonin from the mitochondria in the rest of the body, I'm assuming that's not to increase our levels of sleepiness. That is correct.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
It's interesting to me that in all hospitals, not just hospitals with an affiliation to a particular branch of religion, you have chaplains. Yeah. You have different people associated often with different religions that people can call upon, which I find amazing right in this quote unquote modern time of modern medicine. Right. As far as I know, every major hospital has this.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
It doesn't matter how cutting edge or how small a community hospital, which, by the way, many community hospitals are excellent. I should point that out. The words community hospital juxtaposed to, you know, cutting edge research institution. You know, there's actually a debate as to, like, which one you would prefer to go to depending on your needs. But they all have...
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
generally, as far as I know, have access to people with whom patients and family of patients and friends of patients can pray. And that's not a coincidence. I think that there's a deep understanding of some sort of relationship there. And Certainly there's good science to support everything you just said. And your clinical experience, in my mind, goes along with that.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
You know, science, as you said, is very reductionist, right? You put people in two groups. One prays, one doesn't. You know, that's the way science is done. Of course. But ultimately, the real-world clinical implications are what... what really resonates. So thank you. Thank you for that. I have one final question and it might get you in trouble, but I'm going to ask anyway.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Let's say I or someone that I care about is admitted to the hospital. What are the things to do or ask that we're not told that can facilitate better care that are within bounds? Now I will go on record since these days I'm in the habit of just kind of saying it all. I'm aware that families of donors to hospitals get special care.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And I do know that melatonin is a powerful antioxidant. Yes. So I'm guessing that next you're going to tell me that it is combating the reactive oxygen species that are produced as a function of mitochondrial metabolism.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
This is, I will just tell you, you go to a hospital, there's a code language. I happen to know it for several hospitals. There's a code language of this is a quote-unquote special patient. This will anger some listeners, but it's true. This is the way the world works.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Some physicians too, right? So there's a code language that differs by hospital, and I know it for several hospitals. And I don't wanna get into that. It's one of the more complicated aspects of medicine and hospitals as businesses and things like that. I'm gonna get some angry calls about this. Now, the point of asking this is that most people are not donors to hospitals.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
They're not going to be flagged as a special patient that gets the room with the window, that gets sunlight in the morning, that gets the room alone without somebody next to them who's coughing all night. And on and on. So are there specific things that people should mention or ask for in order to get the best possible care when admitted to a hospital? Sorry, I got to put you on the spot.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And they're triaging, right? They're triaging. This person is at risk of dying.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
This person is miserable. Right. and you're less miserable, you're going to wait.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Roger Schwelt. Dr. Roger Schwelt, welcome.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I love it. And thank you for stepping right in the line of fire with that one and not trying to dodge it. So it speaks to the kind of person you are. It speaks to the spirit behind your work. which is so clearly in service to helping people. You know, it's such a cliche thing we hear, you know, helping people, I want to help people. But it's very clear that you want to help people.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
You do this in your social media, you do this through your online teaching. We'll, by the way, provide links to all these sources. And you're doing this in so many ways. And of course, in your clinical practice. And, you know, for all those reasons, and also for coming here today to take time out of your very busy professional and family schedule and you have your own self care, right?
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
If you're not healthy, you can't take care of other people's health. I just want to say on behalf of myself and everyone listening and watching, thank you so much. I learned a ton and I know everyone else listening did as well. It's all actionable in service to basic health and improving health and in service to avoiding illness.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Those are not the same thing necessarily, although they go hand in hand, and to moving through illness should one contract an infection. And, you know, just a treasure trove of knowledge. So thank you so much. I'd love to have you back again.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I look forward to seeing you online, but even more so in person. So thank you so much, Dr. Schwelt. You're a real gem.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Roger Schwelt. To learn more about his work and to find the links to him on social media and YouTube, please see the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
In addition, please click follow for the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
So that's Instagram X, formerly known as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Threads. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as what we call protocols in the form of one to three page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure,
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Roger Schwelt. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
For those that aren't familiar with these biochemical pathways, maybe one way for them to think about it is that free electrons are not a good thing in this system. You don't want electrons floating around. And in these biochemical steps that convert energy into the stuff that cells can use more readily to move and do everything that we do, electrons are kicked off. Oxygen can...
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
work with those free electrons. I'm trying to use language here that divorces us from the classic biochemical pathways so that more people can grasp it, because it's really a beautiful mechanism. So if you have a positive charge to effectively work with the free negative charge, then the system is stabilized or at least isn't pushed in in the direction of inflammation.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Many people have heard of free radicals.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And that's what we're referring to.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
You want to offset the free radicals.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And to the biochemists out there and the biologists, I'm using the term offset loosely. Okay. So melatonin in the context of how sunlight can activate melatonin within cells. Maybe it's worth pointing out to people that when the pineal gland releases melatonin to make you sleepy, that's an endocrine or hormone type mechanism. Hormones act on local tissues and more distant tissues in the body.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I discovered you because you were putting out and continue to put out incredible information about how to stay healthy amidst infectious diseases, airborne infectious diseases, skin contact-based infectious diseases, and on and on. And nobody likes to be sick. And you've provided me tremendously valuable information about how to avoid getting sick.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Pheromones act between bodies, right? In the context that you're describing, melatonin is acting within cell. Correct. Okay.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Do you think that that role of melatonin from the pineal at night is part of the reason why sleep is so restorative? Absolutely. it's probably no coincidence then that when we fall asleep, it's at least correlated with, and in many ways caused by the reduction in core body temperature. It's very unusual for melatonin levels to be high when body temperature is high.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
These things normally are coordinated at night. I'm not aware that it actually drops body temperature, but it might, I'm just not aware of the literature. But what you're describing is amazing. I mean, first of all, Most people's minds, including mine, are going to be blown by the fact that long wavelength light can actually go through clothing and skin.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And so you can imagine that if you have a minimum of clothing on, whatever is appropriate for that context, and you get some sunlight on your skin, even on a cloudy day, some of this should be coming through. We could talk about that. It's more UV light, short wavelength light, that's going to break through cloud cover.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And on a clear day or partially cloudy day, we're getting a lot of red light, long wavelength light and infrared and near infrared light coming through.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I think a lot of people don't realize that because in this age of red light devices and infrared light devices, of which I own one and I love and I use, but people forget that the primordial and arguably, I'll say the best source of red light and near infrared light and infrared light of the sort that we're talking about right now is going to come from the sun, right?
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Yeah. Okay, great. How does this keep us safe from infection? As long as we're here, what else is it doing to offset the 70% reduction in mitochondrial function? Because what we're talking about now is the role of melatonin within cells to lower temperature and reduce these reactive oxygen species. Does that somehow offset the reduction in mitochondria that normally occurs?
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
and in many cases, how to accelerate the progression from sick to healthy again. It's been tremendously helpful for getting me back into life, as it were. Let's talk about some of the things that one can do to avoid getting sick when in the presence of airborne viruses, in particular, colds and flus and other viruses, as it were.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Dr. Roger Schwelt is a board-certified medical doctor in pulmonology, which is the understanding and treatment of conditions that impact the respiratory system, such as colds, flus, and other viruses, mold infections, asthma, and more. Dr. Schwelt is also board-certified in sleep medicine.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Is it possible to tease away that effect from the other things associated with living in green spaces? Because fortunately, our audience is trained to think scientifically and they'll know, well, it's not necessarily causal, right? People who live in green spaces tend to walk more. They tend to perhaps eat more fruits and vegetables and on and on.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
If you were to think about the major pillars of remaining healthy, especially when one is exposed to colds and flus from kids, in your case, also in the intensive care unit where people are coming in specifically because they're sick, often with infections like colds and flus or worse. you need to take specific precautions to avoid getting sick.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I should mention that CRPC reactive protein has been associated with a number of blinding eye diseases associated with inflammation and basically Everything bad you can imagine in every organ of the body, heart attack, ischemia, yeah, this kind of thing. Incredible.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Awesome. Too bad the guy's in England. That's a joke for my British friends. Yeah, it tends to be very overcast there, but the sun does come out in England as well.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
What do you think of as the fundamental layer of keeping a healthy immune system to avoid getting sick? And then we'll talk about how to get over and move through being sick more quickly.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I'm not encouraging people to smoke. Clearly, the best outcomes are going to be from not smoking and from getting sunlight. But it is a remarkable study.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Yeah, the dermatologist that I hosted on this podcast, Dr. Teo Soleimani, also happens to be a derm-oncologist. So his specialty is skin cancers. And- I was surprised to learn, but we've talked about several times now offline as well to you and I, I was surprised to learn that the sunlight-induced cancers of the skin, while they do exist, that's real, right?
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
You get too much UV exposure, you're going to age your skin more rapidly, you're going to increase the likelihood that you'll get a skin cancer. and this was really surprising to me. According to him, there is no evidence that sunlight induces the deadly types of cancers like melanoma. Those are more genetically determined.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
That's not to say that sunlight can't damage skin, but it is really interesting that more and more data and clinical trials included are pointing to exactly what you're saying, which is that more sunlight exposure is beneficial. And the risks of sunlight exposure can largely be offset by limiting your exposure to excessive UV.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And it's pretty easy nowadays with any app, a lot of zero cost apps out there. I can put links to one or two in the show note captions that I like that have no affiliation to whatsoever, by the way. We'll tell you when the UV index is highest. It's in the middle of the day, typically. And so it's possible to get plenty of sunlight on your skin without exposing yourself to excessive UV.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is an all-in-one vitamin, mineral, probiotic drink with adaptogens. I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring this podcast. The reason I started taking AG1 and the reason I still take AG1 is because it is the highest quality and most complete foundational nutritional supplement.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
What that means is that AG1 ensures that you're getting all the necessary vitamins, minerals, and other micronutrients to form a strong foundation for your daily health. AG1 also has probiotics and prebiotics that support a healthy gut microbiome. Your gut microbiome consists of trillions of microorganisms that line your digestive tract
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
and impact things such as your immune system status, your metabolic health, your hormone health, and much more. So I've consistently found that when I take AG1 daily, my digestion is improved, my immune system is more robust, and my mood and mental focus are at their best. In fact, if I could take just one supplement, that supplement would be AG1.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. They'll give you five free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2 with your order of AG1. Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim this special offer. Today's episode is also brought to us by Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need, but nothing you don't.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, all in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are vital for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or your nerve cells. Drinking element dissolved in water makes it extremely easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and therefore losing a lot of water and electrolytes. They have a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. They have watermelon, citrus, et cetera. Frankly, I love them all.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Wow. Do you see influenza at the equator?
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Is it not the case that... in hospitals and other places. recovery wards, as it were, that there used to be, classically, there was a habit of putting people out into the sun, like sun decks on the roof of hospitals and things of that sort.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Just as a speculation, why do you think we've migrated away from this, frankly, basic biochemical cellular understanding of how the sun can benefit us? I mean, I feel like so much attention has been paid to how the sun can damage our skin and quote-unquote give us skin cancer that perhaps we overshot the mark.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
unless it comes from an artificial source. Exactly. So this is really the first time in human history that we've had this preponderance of short wavelength, aka blue and green light in the absence of red light. In fact, maybe we should just spend a couple of moments talking about what kind of sunlight exposures you recommend for people depending on time of year.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And then after that, I'd like to talk to you briefly about this shift away from incandescent bulbs to indoor lighting with LEDs. But just to make sure that I don't move us along before providing some of the key, takeaways. How much sunlight should we get each day in the shorter days of winter and in the fall? And when should this be done?
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
In the Jeffrey study, it was clear that there was circadian regulation, as you mentioned, getting that sunlight, excuse me, getting that red light, infrared light into one's eyes early in the day was important. If I'm living a standard life of work and job and people are managing kids and all sorts of things, sometimes it's hard to get into the sunlight because you're just following a schedule.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
How much time each day do you recommend, independent of anything related to getting sunlight in one's eyes for circadian rhythm setting? So how much time, what time of day, and what frequency across the week?
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
When you say 940 nanometers, you're talking about long wavelength, like coming from an artificial source? Correct. Okay.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Most people are not going to own a... a red, a far red, or an infrared light. So I just want to emphasize again for people, you can get that wavelength and all the other relevant wavelengths from the sun.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
That's your red light therapy, folks.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
So is this 15 minutes outside in the first three hours of your conventional day, as I call it? Because people will say, well, the sun comes up later this time. Conventional day, meaning after the sun has crossed the horizon, he has risen.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And this is a relatively new thing. I mean, certainly when I was growing up. Yeah. if I came home and had a snack after school, I was getting kicked out of the house to go outside. It was routine for parents to tell kids they had to go outside. And I think there's also, it's also the case, as you mentioned, that we're working
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
later or at least on devices later into the evening, which means there's more exposure to short wavelength light from devices and artificial sources. Absolutely.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
He does his clinical work in the intensive care unit at Loma Linda University, and he is actively involved in medical and public health education through his terrific online channel called MedCram. Today, we discuss how to avoid getting colds, flus, and other viruses, and how to treat them to minimize discomfort, accelerate healing, and avoid long-term consequences.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Two questions. One, it's hard to attach a single number to this, but what fraction of the obesity epidemic that we observe in the United States do you think is caused by altered interactions with sunlight or artificial light and its consequences or put differently. Let me phrase the question differently.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
If we were designing an experiment and I wanted to wager the hypothesis that exposure to 15 minutes a day of sunlight could help reduce adipose tissue, et cetera, independent of caloric intake. I know this is kind of a heretical idea. Independent of additional exercise and all that. And I designed the experiment with you and we said, okay, people are going to go outside for 15 minutes a day.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
They're going to wear short sleeves if they can, or just a simple long sleeve clothing. They're going to get this long wavelength light from the sun 15 minutes a day. Based on what you told us about the light shown on the back and the lower glucose response. Yes.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Independent of all other variables, what percentage improvement in sort of the overall metrics of obesity and metabolic disease do you think you would predict? If we were just going to, you know, we'd bet a sushi dinner, for instance.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Okay. So that's very helpful. I think a lot of people hearing about the role of sunlight and long wavelength light in particular, its potential influence on improving overall immune system function, metabolic health, etc.,
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
might think that this sounds a little bit kind of biohacky because the moment we get into red lights, that sort of like cold plunges, it's kind of immediately associated with kind of biohacking. People say it's bro science, this kind of thing. I just wanted to remind people that
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
In the early 1900s, a Nobel Prize was given for the use of phototherapy, which is what we're describing for the treatment of lupus. So the idea that specific wavelengths of light can be used in order to treat cellular health or offset cellular disease is not a new idea at all. And you mentioned this earlier, but I just wanted to underscore that for people.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
The other way of looking at all this is that it's primitive. So some people will say, oh, this is biohacking, right? Other people will say, well, this is just primitive, like get sunlight, of course. But you made a very key point, which is that the way we interact with light, and in particular with sunlight nowadays, is so disrupted compared to how it was just 10, 15, especially 20 years ago.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I would just encourage people to pay attention for one week to how much time you're actually getting outside. Now, a few people will already be getting a lot of time outside, but just pay attention. How much time each day do you actually get outside? Without sunglasses on and just measure your total exposure to outdoor time, let alone sunlight.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I think that's just an important experiment for people to do. And because when one does that, you start to realize, my goodness, I'm hardly getting outside at all.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I also want to point out that when it's raining out or when it's very cold out, Even when it's dark and cloudy, quote unquote dark and cloudy, there's far more photons coming through the cloud cover during the day than at night. People – I can't tell you. If I had a dollar for every time somebody said to me online and in person, there's no sunlight where I live.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Listen, go outside on the shortest day of the year. Go outside, folks, and – Look at how bright it is at 10 a.m. or even 2 p.m. Compare that to the middle of the night. There is sunlight. Unless you live in a cave, there's sunlight all year round. It's just striking. So this morning, for Southern California, it's pretty overcast today. It's a misty rain, a little bit more.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And I didn't want to go outside and get my sunlight this morning. But I know I was going to be in the studio all day. And so I went downstairs and I put on a beanie cap and a hoodie and I just got outside with no sunglasses and got some sunlight in my eyes. You know, it's really bright outside even when it's raining.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
It's really bright outside even when it's storming. And I think people somehow they think that if it's not a clear sunny day, there's no sunlight to be had. Correct. And there are many gems that you're providing us today. But one key takeaway is I want people to understand there is sunlight all year round. Yeah.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Yes, unless you live truly a subterranean life, that you are underground, there is sunlight during the daytime.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function. Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient levels and much more. They've also recently added tests for toxins such as BPA exposure from harmful plastics and tests for PFAS or forever chemicals.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to your physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors who are expert in the relevant areas. For example, in one of my first tests with function, I learned that I had elevated levels of mercury in my blood.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Function not only helped me detect that, but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, I'd been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification. And I should say, by taking a second function test,
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
that approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by function simplicity and at the level of cost. It is very affordable.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. It's a spectacular story by any account. I wanted to just touch on the fact that there's no replacement for sunlight. Getting patients outside is hard. And at the same time, most people listening to this aren't, fortunately, are not patients. Thank goodness.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Many people, however, have relatives or themselves are elderly. As people get older, they tend to slow down, get outside less. There are many fortunate exceptions to this, but... One of the setups that I created for myself that I think is certainly feasible for a lot of people is the following. Well, first of all, I always make it a point to get outside and get sunlight in my eyes, rain or shine.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And regardless of where I'm traveling and et cetera. I do that every single day. If I miss a day, it's only because of something like a flight where I happen to be on a plane at the time of sunrise or something like that, in any case. But I have a setup that I constructed for myself that is basically a 10,000 lux light. These are available.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I don't have any relationship to 10,000 lux light sources. Those 10,000 lux light sources tend to be short wavelength shifted. They tend to be very blue. They're white light, but I don't think they have power across the visible spectrum. I think they're very red light and infrared diminished. They tend to be very blue and green light enriched, and it shows up as very bright white light.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
So that's what I put in front of me when I first wake up if the sun isn't out yet. But now I've started putting a red light near infrared light next to it.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And I'll spend the first couple minutes of my day, usually as I journal or do something like that, or sometimes just with my eyes closed, just pleasantly facing in the direction of the 10,000 lux white light and the red light near infrared light. And I must say, again, this is anecdotal, but the combination of the two, not only does it certainly wake you up, the white light will do that alone.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
We know the biological basis for that. But I have noticed a tremendous improvement in energy, mood, focus, et cetera, that comes from the addition of this red light near infrared light. This is not an advertisement for red light near infrared light. I promise. Although, you know, this podcast does have a relationship to a medical grade red light devices.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
But I mentioned this because what I'm trying to simulate there is sunlight. But I still get outside and get sunlight. So I just mentioned this setup because it seems to me that hospitals should be able to create this setup for a minimum of cost. Certainly less cost than it takes to maintain a patient for one day. Exactly. Exactly.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I mean, the cost of maintaining a patient for inpatient care is so high. Medical staff, the disposables, the actual disposing of the disposables, the janitorial staff, the cafeteria. I mean, hospital costs are outrageously high. Now, of course, people will hear this and think, well, that's exactly what hospitals want, right? The longer you stay, it's like a hotel.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
The longer you stay, the longer they can charge you or your insurance. And I'm not a conspiracy theory type.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
But it is interesting that for many people, they associate going to a hospital with staying a long time and getting sicker. Sometimes they get better and go home. Thank goodness. You're certainly a well-meaning doctor. The nursing staff are well-meaning people.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Put simply, why don't hospitals include light therapy given the abundance of data on circadian rhythms and light therapy? And I'll just attach one more thing. My audience always gets upset at the duration of these questions slash editorials, but this is my wheelhouse, this whole light thing. So I can't help myself.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
There's also something known as ICU psychosis, which is when people who are perfectly mentally healthy go into a hospital because of the relationship to light and the disruption in circadian rhythm from the overhead lights, the checking of the patient in the middle of the night, the disruption in sleep, et cetera. People literally develop psychosis that resolves itself the moment they get home
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
and get onto a normal schedule. And it's well known that the patients that are in a hospital bed next to a window don't experience this to the same degree, if at all. So it's sort of like, I feel like we're sitting under an avalanche, not a waterfall, but an avalanche of data telling us what we need to do.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor Juve. Juve makes medical grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast, it is the incredible impact that light can have on our biology.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
That's for sick people. If we're thinking about health maintenance and health improvement in healthy people who are not in the hospital, which fortunately is most people, it's very clear, 15 minutes a day of sunlight exposure. And if you absolutely can't get sunlight exposure, think about some artificial light arrangement that might be beneficial.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I want to make sure that we talk about not just sunlight exposure and long wavelength light exposure from artificial sources, but the flip side of all this, which is the importance of darkness at night. I'm aware of a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences where they basically had kids sleep in either a completely black room
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
or a room that had a 100 lux, this is very dim light, folks, 100 lux light source down in the corner, kind of like a night light, and then looked at morning blood glucose levels, and there was a significant difference in the direction of you don't want any light in the room that you're sleeping. Now, that's hard to do, especially if you're traveling, hotels, but eye masks,
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Now, in addition to sunlight, red light and near infrared light sources have been shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health, including faster muscle recovery, improved skin health and wound healing, improvements in acne, reduced pain and inflammation, even mitochondrial function and improving vision itself.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
In particular, silk or even faux silk eye masks, which are very comfortable, can essentially provide that. It's very clear that it's the light exposure to the eyes. if anything, do you recommend for people who are basically living in an environment that's too bright at night? Do you yourself use blackout curtains? I mean, how rigid?
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I find that this is the one that's a little bit harder for people. You have kids. I mean, how should we work with these data? And what are your thoughts about the importance of getting things really dark at night?
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Yeah. In experimental conditions, that's definitely true. I mean, the sensitivity of the human visual system is extraordinary. I mean, your rods, the higher sensitivity photoreceptors in the back of your eye can can detect a single photon, one photon. Most people aren't familiar with thinking in photon quantities, so that might not mean anything to them.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Put differently, and these are wild data from Chuck Zeisler's lab at Harvard Medical School. light suppresses melatonin. The question is how much light do you need?
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Because of the increase in sensitivity of the eye at night, this rod system and these specialized cells that send signals to the circadian clock, 15 seconds, 15 seconds of artificial light exposure will significantly quash your melatonin. That's a whiz at night. 15, yeah, right. So if you go to the bathroom, so then people say, well, what am I supposed to do? How do I navigate at night?
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And how do I make sure I'm peeing in the toilet, especially for men, right? How do I not trip and fall, this kind of thing, en route to the bathroom or getting a glass of water? It's actually, you know, it's funny, the answer turns out to be so logical, but you almost have to hear it before you kind of go, oh, that makes sense. So perfectly fine to use your phone as a flashlight.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And then people say, well, a flashlight's really bright, but you're not shining the light into your eyes. So looking at your screen dimmed way down in the middle of the night, is going to be very detrimental to the melatonin system right at the time where you want melatonin high and other things too.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
What sets Juve lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy device is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning specific wavelengths of red light and near infrared light in combination to trigger the optimal seller adaptations. Personally, I use the Juve whole body panel about three to four times a week. And I use the Juve handheld light both at home and when I travel.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
But looking at a flashlight shown into the hallway so that you can navigate, very different scenario than it shining directly into your eyes. And then there are a number of different red light sources that are pretty good, like little red light lamps that are effective. Or you can just turn your phone to red light mode. There's a way to do that.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
That's my good friend, Dr. Samer Hurtar. Now, keep in mind that Samer is the head of the chronobiology unit at the National Institutes of Mental Health. So he literally lives and breathes this stuff. The other thing about Samer, which is interesting, is when I first met Samer, he was very, very overweight.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
What Samer may have relayed on that podcast, perhaps not, is that by changing his relationship to light, sunlight and getting sunlight during the day and darkness at night. And by the way, he lived in Baltimore at that time. So it's not trivial to do that. And changing his sleep schedule to one of getting into bed around 9 or 10 p.m.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
and waking up earlier as opposed to staying up late and sleeping the equivalent amount into later in the morning. He lost over 80 pounds effortlessly. his appetite just adjusted because he finally got in tune with his natural circadian cycles.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I agree that we probably should only be eating when the sun is up. I myself, I like dinner somewhere around 6, 6.30. It's tough for me, but I totally agree. If people were willing to meet me for dinner earlier, I'm good. Now, it is true that sleep is vastly improved when you haven't eaten in the previous couple of hours.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
It's also true that trying to fall asleep and stay asleep when you have gnawing hunger in your belly is not easy. No. Okay.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
During today's episode, we discuss long COVID as well as the use of sun and red light to stimulate mitochondrial and therefore metabolic health across the entire brain and body. That opens up a broader discussion about phototherapy, which is the use of light to control health and temperature and other levers for improving brain and bodily function.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I want to talk about the other aspects of new start, nutrition, exercise, trust, rest, et cetera. But before we do that, I want to touch on something that I've been curious about for a long time. It's somewhat controversial. I've stated my stance on this previously, took some heat for it, but maybe I'll revise my stance. You see a lot of patients in the ICU with flu. Yeah.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Obviously the flu can be deadly in some circumstances, but for most people that are healthy, generally healthy, first of all, how concerning is flu? Like, should I really be concerned about flu this winter season, even though I feel robust? And then the second question is, do you personally get the quote unquote flu shot? I said on a previous podcast that I don't get it.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And I took a lot of heat for that. understand that the flu shot does protect against certain forms of flu, not all of them. That statement was kind of pushed out there by folks saying that I was going against CDC guidelines. I'm not going against CDC guidelines. People should do as they choose. They should just know what they're doing. I've never gotten a flu shot.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
If you'd like to try Juve, you can go to Juve, spelled J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman. Juve is offering an exclusive discount to all Huberman Lab listeners with up to $400 off Juve products. Again, that's Juve, spelled J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman to get up to $400 off. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I don't know if I've ever gotten the flu, but that's my personal choice. And it's not based on any specific fear of the flu shot. It's because it's never been an issue for me. And I'm okay with getting a cold or a flu every couple of years, feeling miserable for a week or two and bouncing back. I feel like that's good to develop my own antibodies.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
But maybe I'm thinking about this completely irrationally. So do you get the flu shot? Do you recommend the flu shot for healthy people? Do you recommend the flu shot for people that are metabolically challenged?
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Okay. So at the beginning of the flu season when they say flu shot available now. So it's a mix of antibodies against known strains of the flu.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Or people that are exposed to a lot of flu.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Because like you, you work in the ICU. Right. And if I may, like do you – Do your kids get the flu shot?
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night. Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
So you started your kids once they were in their teen years?
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
So if, well, I am telling you that I've never gotten a flu shot. Am I being irresponsible as a citizen? I don't tend, I mean, I go places, I go to restaurants, I go to the gym. I've remained healthy for the most part. I'm an occasional sniffle here and there. Every couple of years I'll get- It's been a long time actually now that I think about it.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Are there any known risks of the so-called flu shot? And if so, what's the percentage risk?
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I would not want Narcolepsy. I used to work in a laboratory for a summer that were studying narcolepsy. It was the laboratory Emmanuel Mignon's lab at Stanford School of Medicine. He and his colleague Seiji Nishino identified the hypocretinorexin mutation as the source of narcolepsy. And people with narcolepsy...
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
People think it's just excessive daytime sleepiness, but anytime they have it at the extreme, in the extreme examples, when people with narcolepsy have any kind of emotional activation, they fall asleep and they have cataplexy too. So they can't, they can't drive. They become essentially paralyzed like a, like a sleep atonia. Right. Pretty devastating disease.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
So it sounds like that particular strain of the flu shot in Europe was neurotoxic in some way.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Eight Sleep makes it very easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to program the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
In the winter months when flu levels are high, are you wearing a mask from the moment you walk into the clinic in the morning until when you leave? When you walk up to a new patient, if you know they have a flu or if you know they don't have the flu, are you masked up? I mean, this became a big issue around the COVID discussion.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
But to what extent does wearing a conventional mask or even an N95 actually protect you from flu?
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Well, thank you for avoiding bringing the flu here. It's wild because ever since I started this podcast, you know, we put out now two episodes a week, full-length episodes on Mondays and the shorter essential episodes on Saturdays. So I can't afford to get sick. And I haven't been sick in years. I take care to not get sick, but I'm gonna think real carefully about this flu shot thing.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation of the Pod Cover called the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity. I find that very useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night, and warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
What about hand washing? Is that, so a friend, let me give a little bit of backstory. The guy I worked for as a postdoc was an MD, PhD. And he used to joke about the fact that hand washing did nothing because he was, in his prior life, he was a surgeon. I think he did rotation, a surgery rotation. He eventually became a neurologist, then a researcher.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And I used to say, what do you mean the hand washing does nothing? And he's like, well, have you ever seen what a physician does before surgery? You know, they wash up to their, basically their shoulders. They've got betadine, they glove in properly. And you know, that's how you prevent infection. Washing your hands does nothing. It's a formality. And I thought there's no way that could be true.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Then I started digging around in the literature about this and it's kind of mixed. Like, so to what extent does washing our hands actually help us avoid getting infection?
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And flu and cold can survive out on surfaces for how long?
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Our Place. Our Place makes my favorite pots, pans, and other cookware. Surprisingly, toxic compounds such as PFASs or forever chemicals are still found in 80% of nonstick pans, as well as utensils, appliances, and countless other kitchen products.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I've talked before on this podcast about these PFASs or forever chemicals like Teflon, which have been linked to major health issues such as hormone disruption, gut microbiome disruption, fertility issues, and many other health problems. So it's really important to avoid them. This is why I'm a huge fan of Our Place.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Our Place products are made with the highest quality materials and are all PFAS and toxin free. I particularly love their Titanium Always Pan Pro. It's the first nonstick pan made with zero chemicals and zero coating. Instead, it uses pure titanium. This means it has no harmful forever chemicals, and it also doesn't degrade or lose its nonstick effect over time.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
It's extremely durable and it's also beautiful to look at. I cook eggs in my Titanium Always Pan Pro almost every morning. The design allows for the eggs to cook perfectly without sticking to the pan. I also cook burgers and steaks in it and it puts a really nice sear on the meat. But again, nothing sticks to the pan so it's really easy to clean and it's even dishwasher safe.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I love it and I use it every day. For a limited time, Our Place is offering an exclusive 20% discount on the Titanium Always Pan Pro. If you go to the website fromourplace.com slash Huberman and use the code SAVEHUBERMAN20, you can claim the offer. With a 100-day risk-free trial, free shipping, and free returns, you can experience this fantastic cookware with absolutely zero risk.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
It also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring. If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Again, that's fromourplace.com slash Huberman to get 20% off. Let's talk about water and air. I think I, like many people, am curious as to how much water I drink. Is that influencing my susceptibility to infections, et cetera? Water on the body. water we get into, this kind of thing. And then air, humidity, temperature, ozone, anything interesting in those?
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Let's start off with one of my favorite topics would be the S in New Start. Let's talk about sunlight. Listeners of this podcast or anyone that's heard me on social media know that I'm, you know, as... Bigger proponent of getting morning sunlight in one's eyes as one could possibly be without repeating himself 10 million times per year.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
It's a daily activity that we just know has such an outsized positive effect on the whole setting of the circadian rhythm and thereby improved daytime mood focus and alertness in nighttime sleep. But the way you describe sunlight, it goes beyond just getting morning sunlight in one's eyes. So if we want to parse this S, sunlight, in New Start, How are you thinking about sunlight?
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
You can take exogenous interferon? Oh, yeah, absolutely. You take it as a pill?
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I'm surprised that I haven't heard of like peptide clinics selling interferon. Can you inject interferon subcutaneously?
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Wow. For those that don't have access to interferon infusions or a sauna, or even a bath. So what is it? A five to 10 minute hot shower, then get under the blankets, this kind of thing. I mean, this is kind of good old mom's advice kind of stuff.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Is it sunlight on the skin? Is it also midday light, not just morning sunlight? Is it a certain amount of sunlight? And then maybe we can also talk about some of the underlying mechanisms.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Well, and LPS will do this, right? LPS, as you mentioned, is lipid polysaccharide. I think they get it from yeast cell wall or something. It's a foreign antigen. Yeah, it's a contaminant in a lot of gray market peptides and things that I suggest people don't take.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
There are a lot of people now who are interested in peptides and they buy them on the gray market and it says not for human or animal use research purposes only. And people often say, well, why not use those? Why do people have to go through a physician and a compounding pharmacy if they're gonna explore that? territory at all.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And the reason is it's very clear that most of the gray market peptides have LPS in them. So small amounts, but injected repeatedly over time, people start getting the systemic inflammation and fever response. That's a little bit of a tangent, but it gets to the same mechanism. So when you say the use of water in this context, it's really about trying to heat up the core temperature of the body.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Okay. And so when we think about Russian banyas, which I'm a huge fan of, there's a bunch of them in different cities. Whenever I'm in New York, I go to this place down on Wall Street, Spy 88. I have no relation to them. And they have a medium hot sauna for Russians. Medium hot is very hot. It's like a spice in certain restaurants. You have to calibrate to the... the local ethnicity.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And then they have very hot sauna. And what they do there, even when they're not sick, is they'll go from moderately hot to hot to steam, and then back to a hot, hot sauna, then into cold water. So they're doing heat, cold contrast therapy. And the Eastern Europeans and Russians have been, and Scandinavians have been doing this. for centuries, right?
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Here we think of it as like biohacking and this new domain of health, but this has been going on for a very long time.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Yeah, I don't know. I'm sure they exist down there, but I feel like Brazil in the summertime probably feels like a sauna. So you don't need a sauna.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Right. Whereas Siberia... In winter, probably feels a lot like the way I imagine Siberia in winter.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Dr. Schwell emphasizes that sun and red light therapy have a long and well-established medical history and their mechanisms of action are known. And therefore it's not just biohacking as many people think. We also discussed the sometimes controversial topic of the flu shot and if and when you should get one.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
The Russians use these eucalyptus branches.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And it's the, it is, it's eucalyptus branches. I call it, I think it's called platza or something like that. Yeah. And yeah, it costs a little bit more, but if you go to one of these Russian banyas, you can... pay someone who's skilled in this, they basically make you lie down, you cover your face and groin, and then they hit you with these eucalyptus branches.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Not to smack you with them, but the idea is that in the sauna, you're going to bring some of the... additional vasodilation to the surface of the skin so you're getting more blood flow to the periphery is the idea. I don't know if there's any truth to it.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Amazing. Can you just repeat one more time, even though you said it incredibly clearly, this phenomenon of how the white blood cells are liberated by cold and constriction?
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Both, actually. White blood cells, right. White blood cells are involved in the adaptive immune response as well. Amazing. I've never heard of deliberate cold exposure being used to liberate white blood cells in that way, but it makes perfect sense. It sounds like it's largely mechanical.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I love it. One thing that people might want to play with a little bit, although they should be careful, right? If you're pregnant, forget the sauna for a while. Yeah. You know, if you're- Absolutely. You know, everyone has different thresholds for heat tolerance and cold tolerance, but spend a little time in a Russian banya and you'll soon realize that they all wear these like wool hats.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And you might think, oh, well, that's just going to heat you up more. No, it insulates you against the heat. Oh. And so you can stay in much longer because the signal to get out, like that it's too hot, is a brain signal first. Which makes sense, right? Your brain basically evokes something analogous to the gas reflex when you're not getting enough oxygen, right?
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
So if you go in there with a towel on your head or you cover your head, what you find is that you can sit comfortably at much hotter temperatures in the sauna. Got it. that could be a problem, right? Because you don't want to burn your skin. But the sauna actually provides a lot more degrees of freedom and exploration safely than does hot bath.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Because if you get into a bath that's truly too hot, you'll burn your skin. Correct. Right. Whereas in the sauna, you know, you might go into a very hot sauna. I'm very heat tolerant. I don't like the cold so much, but I do it anyway. But I'm very heat tolerant. But when I first hit a, you know, a 210 degree sauna, which is very, very warm sauna, if your head isn't covered,
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
your heart starts racing, you feel like you want out of there. If you go in there wearing like a wool beanie cap, you're like, you're fine. You're fine because the brain signal doesn't get kicked off for a while.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
You know, it's so amazing how humans find the same solutions through different portals. I'm fascinated by this. You know, every once in a while, I sit back from the information that we touched on in this podcast since we launched in 2021. And I think, you know, there are so many different tools and protocols and you're providing additional ones today. They almost all fall into about
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
six to 10 batches. And whether one comes through the portal of traditional Western medicine or Eastern medicine or what the, you know, Finns or the Russians do or what they do, it's so interesting that, you know, we're talking light, temperature, and these things obviously relate, hydration, which I'm sure we'll talk about, mitochondria, cellular metabolism.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I mean, you know, there isn't an infinite number of conceptual themes and they tend to sort of batch into them. And I think understanding those themes helps people make decisions. Like if you're on the road and you're feeling run down after getting off the plane and you're thinking you might be coming down with something, you get that little throat tickle. You only have access to a hot shower.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
That's your best bet. Do that. You don't need a sauna. Ideally, you're getting sunlight. You don't have sunlight. You can take some of the other measures that we were talking about before. Yeah, I find it fascinating that humans eventually converge on the same answers. It just sort of varies in terms of what you call these things. Exactly. You call it hydrotherapy. Yeah.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I call it deliberate heat exposure, deliberate cold exposure if you're, you know, in some cases.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
That said, there are things that purportedly we can take to accelerate our progression through an illness, should we get one, and to help avoid illness. One of the things I'm most interested in is your thoughts on NAC, N-acetylcysteine.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
My understanding is that a few years ago in this country, there was an FDA ban on N-acetylcysteine, but that the people who had already been taking N-acetylcysteine were so bullish about it that they fought back and it has remained freely available without a prescription. My understanding is that N-acetylcysteine requires a prescription in some countries.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Could you tell us what the various uses of N-acetylcysteine are and what its potential role is for avoiding or even accelerating the progression through a viral or other type of infection?
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I'm guessing, oh, I didn't realize you were Canadian. I'm guessing you are correct and I'm incorrect.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Mum, mom, you know, ninth grade and grade nine. These are all Canadian.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Does it also effectively treat liver failure due to other things like alcohol?
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
So NAC is a glutathione precursor, is that right?
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
All right, next episode, I'll show up looking like a chia pet.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
So for those that aren't familiar with monomers and polymers and this kind of thing, basically you're taking a bead and you're creating the polymer, which is more like beads on a string. Exactly. Exactly. And that can capture more things, like a big clumpy – big clumpy sticky molecules aren't quote-unquote bad or good, but in this context, they're definitely bad.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I see. So I started taking NAC at, I think it's 600 milligrams or even 900 milligrams, three to four times per day, which is a very high dose, but restricted to times when I felt like I might be coming down with an infection or I was traveling in the winter months. I still do this. Or if I had any kind of low level congestion. And my understanding is that it's a mucolytic
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
It's used to treat cystic fibrosis and to counteract the buildup of fluid in the lungs, as I understand. So it will make your nose run a bit if you have a little low-level congestion. But what I love about it, and I don't have any – to be clear, folks, I don't have any relationship to any company that sells NAC. I'm not paid by Big NAC or anything similar. Or Big Mac.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Certainly not by Big Mac, but by Big Mac either. Yeah. but I don't like conventional decongestants. I like steam, but I don't like taking over the counter decongestants of the sort of conventional commercial type because they tend to be very drying. They sometimes have a little bit of a stimulant quality to them. I just don't like them. And I find that NAC...
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
in addition to increasing glutathione, which can only be a good thing, is a great decongestant. You do have to keep blowing your nose quite a lot. If you take it right before you go to sleep and you sleep on your back, you can wake up like feeling more congested. So you have to kind of understand what it's doing. That's why we're talking about it in this way.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
But I find that it's helped me move through periods of, you know, sort of exposure to colds, maybe flus, but certainly colds, much faster. And actually there are data to support that it can prevent contracting the flu virus.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Yeah, you raise a really important point around this. I mean, the joke that was told to me years ago is, you know, a drug or a compound is a substance that when injected into an animal – creates a scientific paper, meaning it's very easy to see things change when you add, when you do a dose response curve of just about anything.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And some people might say, well, thank goodness, are any compounds doing anything that's real or is it all placebo? I think there are real effects of compounds. The context is really important. Do you take NAC
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I know people take it continuously. I've never taken it continuously. I sort of enjoy the fact that there are certain compounds out there like NAC that I personally can observe a benefit from if I take it for short periods and slightly higher doses, and then I stop. And I have the, you know, unfounded theory that it –
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
helps punctuate the effectiveness because you're not, you know, because there is down regulation of pretty much every mechanism you could possibly imagine.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And as I recall in the study that you described where people took this 600 milligrams of NAC twice a day, the reduction in severe symptoms or was it the number of people that experienced severe symptoms went from somewhere in the high 70%, maybe 78% or something like that. I'm not quite exact on the numbers here, folks, to about 28%. Is that right?
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And you're getting an increase in glutathione to boot.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Wonderful. Other things that have been shown to improve symptomology or perhaps even immune system function, maybe we could talk about zinc.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I take what most people would consider very high levels of zinc and I've been doing it for a long time and I'm going to continue to do it because I do my blood work and it works for me.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Well, it's never charted out by body weight either. So I weigh 215 pounds. So what's the risk of copper depletion?
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I believe it's in my blood panel. It is in my blood panel. And I don't have a flag there, but I'll keep an eye on it.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Why doesn't somebody market an interferon inhaler or nasal spray?
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
It's worth touching on this that so much of the symptomology when we have a flu or a cold or what have you is the immune system doing its thing. The fever, the congestion. Correct. Yeah. And we think of that as the illness, but it's often the byproduct of the body trying to extrude or kill.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Dr. Schwelt, as you'll soon hear, is world-class at making medical concepts and the actionable items related to health exceptionally clear. As a consequence, I'm certain that you'll truly appreciate the knowledge that he shares in your efforts to be and stay healthy at any age.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
What about... these cocktails that I see of eucalyptus oil, oregano oil, all this stuff, is it completely worthless?
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
They actually- Phagocytosis, folks, sorry for interrupting, but is it a gobbling up of bad stuff by good cells?
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I have a theory that it's not going to be very kind to eucalyptus trees or koalas or anything related to eucalyptus, which is that maybe the eucalyptus oil is a mild irritant.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
at the cellular level, you inhale it, you get this menthol-like odorant, it's kind of caustic, and the immune system reacts to it by activating phagocytes to go gobble up more stuff.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Don't ingest eucalyptus oil, folks. I'll take it as a personal insult. but I'm not gonna take responsibility if you do it anyway. That's a great segue to air. I've heard conflicting things vis-a-vis Should we sleep with an air humidifier? Should we sleep with a cold room under warm blankets?
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Lowering core body temperature definitely helps us fall asleep, but that's under conditions where we're not combating an illness. I have had the experience several times now to the extent that I really believe it's a real effect where,
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
If a room is extremely cold, even if I'm under warm blankets, breathing that cold air at night, I'll often get some respiratory stuff going on, probably because of a drying out of the respiratory pathways.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Sorry, folks. Vaping might be better for you than smoking, but it's still terrible for your lungs. The vaping community hates me because they want me to say it's not carcinogenic, but the data show that it can cause popcorn lung. I mean, it's just not good.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Incidentally, what are your thoughts on non-smoked, non-vaped, non-dipped, non-snuffed nicotine? So nicotine gum, nicotine pouches will raise blood pressure, vasoconstrictor, but definitely increases alertness while causing relaxation. I'll come clean. I occasionally will take a milligram or two, which is very little, of nicotine gum. But never smoke or vape or dip or snuff it.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
It is highly habit forming slash addictive. It does seem that at least in people 60 and older, there may be some mild cognitive sparing or enhancement due to nicotine use. I think that's an area that needs further exploration.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Yeah. I'm not going to try and convince you to get on nicotine. I'll also say that it doesn't just hit the nicotinic receptors. It'll also hit the muscarinic acetylcholine receptors.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And that's one reason why if you do take nicotine gum or use nicotine gums or pouches, what you'll notice is when you don't use it, you'll feel as if your throat is mildly irritated and then you take it and it relaxes it.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And this is one of the more subtle but powerful ways in which it is habit forming. Ah. is that people feel like they're more verbally fluid, they can breathe easier when they're taking nicotine, but it's a vasoconstrictor. So for those interested in performance enhancing effects, it's pushing you in the opposite direction. Anyway.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I think that's interesting. Someone made the comment recently that so much of modern health or our attempts at being healthier in modern times, perhaps the better way to put it, is about trying to bring the outdoors indoors. That's, you know, we exercise in gyms, whereas we used to, you know, carry buckets of
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
fruit and soil and you know uh we are talking about some artificial light um there's no replacement but uh ways to supplement artificial light excuse me ways to supplement sunlight with artificial light you know we're just indoors a lot more and no one's suggesting that we all run around in loincloths outside all the time um but there really does seem to be
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Many factors within outdoor environments, so many both known and unknown, seems that the reductionist approach to science, while I've made it my profession for many decades, is it makes sense why no one thing seems to solve all the issues that we're after, that we need to experience these things in combination. Maybe nature is just the best way to do that.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Important to point that out, that the high-dose supplementation is not the same as ingesting something in the context of a food.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
Oftentimes there's no red light in there either. Exactly. They are really blue, green, yellow. sometimes even UV light. I mean, the fluorescent lights in a department store, for instance, or in a pharmacy, I haven't done the spectral waveform analysis, but those who have, it's published, it's out there.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
There are a lot of data about environmental occupational health stuff would show that it is the emission spectra are severely tilted toward short wave lights. And there's hardly any red light in there. Whereas a candle, for instance, or a fire roaring, fire roaring candle, people ask that, sorry to interrupt, is almost all orange and red light.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And then people say, well, won't that wake me up at night? And a lot of people were surprised to know this. I'll just ask you, and it's not a trick question, but how many looks do you think come from like a really bright candle or a roaring fireplace? or the brightest moonlit night on a full moon.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
So somewhere between one and 10 would be high level. And then I started and I was like, there's no way that could be, right? How could it be? It's like this roaring fireplace or the moon that lights up. So it turns out that if you're at a campfire and we're facing one another around the campfire, I can see your face across the campfire. I can see the front of your body.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And so it looks like it's so bright, it must wake me up. But no, you have no trouble going back to your tent and falling asleep or your cabin. if you turn away from that bright campfire, you need a flashlight to navigate even the shortest distance, which tells you that it's not very bright at all.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
It's very concentrated, but the fall off of that brightness is really what indicates just how dim it really is. But if we think about an LED coming off a wall panel to adjust temperature in a hotel room, It has something like 100 to 400 lux. And yet we think of it as a dim nightlight. And so this is sneaky stuff.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
It's really diabolical because that wall nightlight or thermostat light messes up our vision. glucose regulation, as shown in really good peer-reviewed studies.
Huberman Lab
How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And the Scandinavians, my stepmom is Scandinavian, understood this intuitively. And so in the evening, they don't have ceiling lights. They turn off the ceiling lights, and then they only use desk, you know, sort of table level or even floor lights. Now, candles along the floor would be the ultimate, but it's super dangerous.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
And we just had a bunch of fires here, and those were outdoor fires at first anyway. And the reason we're kind of – riffing in a kind of light bio improv here, is that when you step back and you just look at it logically, we have dim days, as you pointed out before, we have bright evenings and nights, and it's all short wavelength at night. It's terrible.
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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult
I'm beginning to think that many, many, many of the problems that we have in terms of our metabolic health Sure, that has to do with food, certainly has to do with lack of exercise and a number of things, screens, et cetera. But I'm convinced that the light piece is at least one of the top three, if not the top two major factors in determining the kind of obesity metabolic crisis.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Victor Karian. Dr. Victor Karian is a professor and the vice chair of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I could also imagine, and I think this is normally what people are referring to when they talk about transgenerational trauma, this idea that somehow the genome is modified by the trauma such that even if kids are raised by
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
parents that adopted them, or they have no contact with the grandparents or great grandparents that experienced the trauma that somehow they are more vulnerable to, or in some cases, the idea has been put forward, carry that trauma, put in air quotes, such that their life is more difficult, even though they never had a direct experience. of that trauma.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Today, Dr. Karian clearly explains all of that so that by the end of today's conversation, you'll really understand what PTSD is and is not, and of course, the best ways to treat it. Before you begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
What are your thoughts about transgenerational passage of trauma, both forms, both the narrative passage as well as the potential for epigenomic or genomic passage of transgenerational trauma?
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
In terms of stress, I always think of stress as both a response within the brain and a response within the body. And I'm not alone in that belief, I think.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
We know that adrenaline, epinephrine is released from the adrenals, but also from areas of the brain like locus coeruleus, so that there's this parallel effect of elevated states of mind, more alert, more focused on narrow locations in space and time. And the body is also prepared for action. I think this is what underlies the increased heart rate, the shaking in some cases, sweating.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
It's essentially a preparation for action. With PTSD, I often hear that some of the symptoms are more of the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of autonomic arousal, things like dissociation, fatigue, kind of checking out, which I realize is dissociation. But things that are more akin to kind of parasympathetic, right?
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating and sleep tracking capacity.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
For those that don't know, the sympathetic parasympathetic represents the continuum of autonomic interaction. Sympathetic having nothing to do with emotional sympathy. It's all about
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
fight or flight type responses, although at lower levels, it's what's responsible for us being alert here, but not in fight or flight and parasympathetic being more of the rest and digest, even leading into sleep type responses.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
So, you know, if somebody experiences a big stressor, a trauma or chronic stress to the point where it becomes PTSD, is there a tendency for them to be more hypervigilant and You know, a startle response, to have their head on a swivel all the time looking for danger, or to be more dissociative, or can both sets of phenotypes exist in the same person? Yeah.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Post-traumatic stress injury. Injury. Interesting.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I've spoken many times before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night. That's truly the foundation of all mental health, physical health and performance. And one of the best ways to ensure that you get a great night's sleep is to control the temperature of your sleeping environment.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Let's talk about cortisol for a moment. It's a topic that has not received enough attention in previous episodes of the podcast. I'm just going to summarize a little bit of what you said, and you'll tell me where I'm wrong. Cortisol starts to rise just before we wake up in the morning, assuming a good night's sleep, and peaks maybe, I don't know, 30 to 90 minutes after waking.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Eight sleep makes it incredibly easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to control the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. And it turns out the ability to do so allows you to get the maximum amount of deep sleep, slow wave sleep, and rapid eye movement sleep at the different stages of the night.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
you slow risers like me, probably a little delayed. By the way, the height of that peak and the accelerate, I would say the steepness of the curve can be increased by viewing morning sunlight. We know this bright light increases that cortisol peak, it'll make you a better early riser.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
But in any case, typically the pattern then is that it rises through mid-morning and into the early afternoon and then starts to taper off to lower levels. And as you mentioned, we'll see bumps in cortisol post-meal. If there's a stressor, we get a disturbing text, we get a bump in cortisol, but these aren't huge peaks unless it's a big stressor, correct?
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
And then by evening, cortisol levels in healthy individuals are typically low. and that allows for transition into sleep, among other things allow for transition into sleep. But you said in these kids with PTSD, cortisol doesn't come down to low levels as much as it does in healthy individuals in the evening and nighttime.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
And that I imagine would lead to perseverating on stressors from the day, this kid was mean, I have a test tomorrow. Maybe any stressor becomes more, intense in our mind and body, as it were. And that perhaps could lead to issues with quality or duration of sleep, which then could perpetuate the cycle. Do I have that correct? Correct. Okay.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
So has the direct intervention of just trying to suppress evening cortisol ever been done? I mean, certainly there are drugs that will do this. Has that approach ever been taken?
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep. Eight Sleep has now launched their newest generation of the Pod Cover, the Pod 4 Ultra.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Memory, anticipation of the future, problem solving, context-dependent problem solving, so on.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. AG1 is designed to cover all of your foundational nutritional needs, and it tastes great. Now, I've been drinking AG1 since 2012, and I started doing that at a time when my budget for supplements was really limited.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
In fact, I only had enough money back then to purchase one supplement, and I'm so glad that I made that supplement AG1. The reason for that is even though I strive to eat most of my foods from whole foods and minimally processed foods, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits, vegetables, vitamins, and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity, higher fidelity sleep tracking technology, and even has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring. If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, Go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
And I need to do that in order to ensure that I have enough energy throughout the day, I sleep well at night, and keep my immune system strong. But when I take AG1 daily, I find that all aspects of my health, my physical health, my mental health, and my performance, both cognitive and physical, are better.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I know that because I've had lapses when I didn't take AG1 and I certainly felt the difference. I also notice, and this makes perfect sense given the relationship between the gut microbiome and the brain, that when I regularly take AG1, which for me means a serving in the morning or mid-morning and again later in the afternoon or evening, that I have more mental clarity and more mental energy.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer. I definitely want to get into some of those interventions, including some of the ones that you've developed that are very novel and are
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
being used to great success. I want to just circle back for a moment on this relationship between PTSD and, in some cases, inappropriate diagnosis of ADHD. As you mentioned, these two things can coexist in the same person.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
So we don't want anyone who has been told that they have ADHD and PTSD or even just ADHD to immediately assume that that diagnosis is wrong based on what we're going to talk about. But it is possible that the ADHD that a child is told they have is reflective of PTSD. And I imagine that if that PTSD arises through something in the family structure or dynamic
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
It would be even harder to unmask because the parent perhaps would be less motivated to try and understand that if they played some sort of role in it. So I realize this is a complex problem with a lot of layers. But if you were to just throw out a number based on your experience, what percentage of pure ADHD diagnosis would you like to see explored for the possibility of a PTSD diagnosis?
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
influence? Let's just keep it kind of diplomatic that way, as opposed to saying what percentage of ADHD do you think is actually PTSD?
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
It was the condition of being allowed to stay in school. But pretty soon I realized that doing regular quality therapy is an extremely important component to overall health. In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular physical exercise, including cardiovascular exercise and resistance training, which of course I also do every single week.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
It's so interesting. You said, if I understood correctly, that in... Kids with genuine ADHD, the hyperactivity is fairly persistent across environments and with different people, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
This is a very important point. When I did the solo episode on ADHD, I was frankly shocked to learn, but
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
It was validated by the literature and certainly by the responses from the audience that kids with ADHD and adults with ADHD for that matter absolutely have the ability to sharply attend to something if it's something that's very engaging to them, really exciting, something that they typically enjoy.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
But their ability to direct and maintain attention in other environments that are required for normal life progression, school, work, relationships, et cetera, is very diminished compared to those without ADHD. So what I have in my mind is a step function, meaning an increase in a steady state of hyperactivity in a kid with ADHD, but then a jagged line beneath that of attention.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
This is, I believe, the picture I'm painting here. But that in PTSD... The hyperactivity is a jagged line. It really needs a cue, as you said, a loud noise, or maybe it's the presence of a particular voice. I once attended a trauma – it wasn't trauma release as much as it was genuine trauma treatment center out in Florida.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
He is one of the world's foremost experts on post-traumatic stress disorder, in particular, the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder in children and adolescents. Although his knowledge and today's discussion certainly extends to adult PTSD as well. Dr. Carrion is also the director of the Stanford Early Life Stress and Resilience Program.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
There are essentially three components to excellent therapy. First of all, excellent therapy should provide good rapport with somebody that you can trust and talk to about all issues in your life. Second of all, it should provide support in the form of emotional support or directed guidance or both.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
A friend of mine runs this center, and I was out there learning about the practices they use – in order to inform potential experiments for intervention in my lab back at Stanford. And he said something really interesting. He said, you know, when you bring people in to this sort of environment and they've all had trauma, you see a pretty rich array of responses to even just the same conversation.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
And then at one point, perhaps because he said that, I noted that a woman raised her hand and she said that particular timbres of voices in the room were really activating her. you know, this was important. It wasn't just what was being said.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
It wasn't that people were yelling at each other or even the volume of the voices, but that even just the frequency, the lowness or the highness of the voice, as it were, was triggering something in her brain that was giving her these bodily sensations. And it was a very important insight for her to be able to then start to direct interventions.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
So I guess we all hear the kind of now stereotypical example of You know, the veteran who experiences combat comes back and hears a car backfire and then they hide. That's kind of – we read about this and hear about this. But it seems like it's much more subtle than that, that sometimes the cues for this hyperactivity, this hypervigilance is –
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
very much linked to something that sometimes even the person with PTSD doesn't recognize until they start to be put into that environment again and again, and then they can pinpoint it. My question now is if they can pinpoint what the cue is, do they stand a better chance of recovery as opposed to somebody that just like feels like I'm hyperactive, then I'm exhausted, I'm wired and tired and
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
And now I also imagine that in kids, they don't have necessarily the verbal proficiency to be able to express what's going on for them. And in fact, many adults don't really know because we don't have a great language for expressing this body-mind thing. In any event, a lot of questions there.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
But what are your thoughts about the requirement for being able to understand what the cues, what the triggers are in order for a child and or adult to be able to start to make inroads into their PTSD?
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
And thirdly, expert therapy should provide useful insights, insights that can allow you to do better, not just in your emotional life and relationship life, but of course, also your relationship to yourself, your professional life and all of your career and life goals.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I see. So they were traumatized before they went to combat.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
With BetterHelp, they make it very easy to find an expert therapist with whom you can build all three of these effective components of therapy. If you'd like to try BetterHelp, you can go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Waking Up.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Yeah, I'm thinking again about post-traumatic stress injury. The reason I like that term, even though I realize I'm using it non-clinically, is that if we understand that the autonomic nervous system, this seesawing back and forth or this push-pull between the sympathetic fight or flight and parasympathetic rest and digest, loosely speaking, systems are always at play in us.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
When we sleep, more parasympathetic. When we're alert and calm, more sympathetic. And when we're stressed or having a panic attack, extremely sympathetic. If we understand that as a biological system, which it is, that deploys hormones and shapes our patterns of thinking and what's available to us in our memory, et cetera, then PTSI, post-traumatic stress injury,
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I feel like it liberates us a bit to understand that, yeah, this autonomic system has been disrupted in a way. And if I think about the autonomic system as a seesaw, which I often do, I think about the seesaw having a pivot point with a hinge. It's almost like the post-traumatic stress injury is to create the tendency for that hinge to be too tight and
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
And sometimes that makes it more like dissociative and we're exhausted and checked out. And maybe it creates the hinge to be too tight such that we're more on the sympathetic, excuse me, sympathetic the way I, for those listening, I'm using my hands, but you don't have to see it to understand. that the alertness system is locked in place. It's hard to get out of that.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Waking Up is a meditation app that offers hundreds of guided meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga nidra sessions, and more. I started practicing meditation when I was about 15 years old, and it made a profound impact on my life.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
And I almost feel like the injury that is post-traumatic stress injury is a tightening down of the hinge with the seesaw tilted too much to one or the other side. And I, as a biologist, I just wish that we understood what that dysregulation was or is. Chances are it's not one location in the brain or body. It's going to be a network phenomenon.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
But I feel like the word disorder, the D in PTSD is so critical because it highlights the importance and the pervasiveness of this thing. But that the I in post-traumatic stress injury hopefully will give people – it certainly is giving me some sense of relief or liberty and understanding that these are nervous system injuries that need treatment.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
And that there isn't something wrong or crazy with us. because of the fact that we suddenly feel like we're having a panic attack. I've had people I know close to me in my life say, I'm having a panic attack. I'm like, what do you mean? What happened? They're like, nothing happened. That's the point. Well, how'd you sleep? Well, it's okay.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
And you start doing the curbside diagnosis that neither of us is qualified to do, right? But this is what we do as caretakers for each other in our lives. And it very well could be that their autonomic system just got That hinge is just locked in place for whatever reason. Maybe it's one sip too much of coffee. Maybe it's one sip too little. It's probably something or a bunch of things.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I realize I'm getting outside my expertise here because I'm not a clinician, but I feel like This PTSI thing is sticky and important for people to hear about. It's certainly changing the way that I think about PTSD.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
And by now, there are thousands of quality peer-reviewed studies that emphasize how useful mindfulness meditation can be for improving our focus, managing stress and anxiety, improving our mood, and much more. In recent years, I started using the Waking Up app for my meditations because I find it to be a terrific resource for allowing me to really be consistent with my meditation practice.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
And I feel like a good night's sleep allows some recalibration of the tightness of that hinge. Put differently, anytime we don't sleep well or long enough, we're not good psychologically. A good night's sleep is good for everything. We're finally at the point in history where everyone seems to accept that.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I really have to tip my hat to Dr. Matthew Walker from UC Berkeley for writing the book, Why We Sleep. It was only a few years ago that book came out. And he deserves such a token of praise for that because... Prior to that, there was this, oh, I'll sleep when I'm dead mentality. I think people knew sleep was important, but they didn't really understand.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
And he had to come out as kind of the downer message, like, listen, this is serious stuff. You better sleep. You better sleep. But I think we're there now. I think in 2024, we're there. I think people understand.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk about some of the treatments that you use and have developed for PTSD in young people. And maybe we should define young people. Are we talking about the 18 and under, just because that's typically what we think about?
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
So preschoolers are going to be essentially, I think of kindergarten starting at five. So you're talking about zero more to more or less five or six years old is the preschoolers, kindergartners, and then transition point. Correct. And then... For the kids we're about to talk about, we're really talking about, what, six years old until about end of adolescence?
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Many people start a meditation practice and experience some benefits, but many people also have challenges keeping up with that practice. What I and so many other people love about the waking up app is that it has a lot of different meditations to choose from, and those meditations are of different durations.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
So it makes it very easy to keep up with your meditation practice, both from the perspective of novelty. You never get tired. tired of those meditations. There's always something new to explore and to learn about yourself and about the effectiveness of meditation. And you can always fit meditation into your schedule, even if you only have two or three minutes per day in which to meditate.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I can see where that might be problematic when the parents perhaps were the source of the trauma.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
If you'd like to try the Waking Up app, please go to wakingup.com slash Huberman, where you can access a free 30-day trial. Again, that's wakingup.com slash Huberman to access a free 30-day trial. And now for my discussion with Dr. Victor Carrion. Dr. Victor Carrion, welcome.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
So it's just a... just highlight for a second, the fMRI, functional magnetic resonance imaging is wonderful because it allows a lot of imaging both on the superficial outer parts of the brain, but also deep into the brain. My understanding is that and perhaps this has changed in recent years, that the spatial resolution can be very good.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
You can pinpoint very small areas if you have a powerful enough machine, magnet. The temporal resolution, the ability to see changes in the neural circuit activation and deactivation over time, at one point was somewhat limited, but now some of those limitations have been overcome.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
But then what you're talking about near infrared spectroscopy is excellent because it can be taken to a school, right? You don't have to, you couldn't bring an fMRI machine to a school unless it's a medical school where there's the machine. It's much less expensive. The downside is, oh, excuse me. And my understanding is that the spatial resolution isn't quite as high as MRI or
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
But the temporal resolution is very high, which is a huge advantage. And then there's this one disadvantage that you can only really image the outer portions of the brain. But nonetheless, there's a lot of information there. So a little technical lesson for people.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Function. I recently became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
While I've long been a fan of blood testing, I really wanted to find a more in-depth program for analyzing blood, urine, and saliva to get a full picture of my heart health, my hormone status, my immune system regulation, my metabolic function, my vitamin and mineral status, and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors on your results. For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had two high levels of mercury in my blood. This was totally surprising to me. I had no idea prior to taking the test.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Function not only helped me detect this, but offered medical doctor-informed insights on how to best reduce those mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, because I had been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification and worked to reduce my mercury levels. Comprehensive lab testing like this is so important for health. And while I've been doing it for years, I've always found it to be overly complicated and expensive. I've been so impressed by function, both at the level of ease of use, that is getting the test done,
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
as well as how comprehensive and how actionable the tests are, that I recently joined their advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman Lab listeners.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I'd like to talk today about PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, in particular in young people, but also in adults. But before we do that, can you educate us on the definition of stress and maybe distinguish between short-term stress and long-term stress? And then perhaps we can segue into PTSD. Okay.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. I want to get into the Q-centered therapy versus cognitive behavioral versus the no therapy conditions you just described.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
But before we do that, I just want to have a brief discussion about some of the neuroscience you mentioned because I think people will find this very interesting and certainly not just a listing off of names of structures. You said that the frontal limbic pathway is important here, the limbic pathway, including the amygdala, but other structures as well.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
And my understanding, and I think the generally accepted understanding about these limbic pathways is that they create a response state, a state of alertness, a state of relaxation, that they translate certain information that impinges on them into a level of reactivity, either low, medium, or very high. When I say reactivity, a tendency to move,
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
toward or away from something or stay still, put in broadly speaking. Now, the fronto piece, the feeding in of information from the frontal cortex where context-dependent decision-making and, as you said, executive function takes place, is so critical for all of us as we mature. Even as a, I would say, if you look at a puppy, everything's a stimulus. And then over time,
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
They're not going to pick up everything in the room. That's without question largely due to the development of these frontal limbic pathways. And in children and in humans, that is, it's the same. I can imagine that the signals coming from the frontal pathway to the limbic system are going to be somewhat cryptic to people that aren't familiar with psychiatry and neuroscience.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
So maybe we could just throw a few of those out there. Here's an example. Tell me if I'm wrong. But the way I think about this is, okay, a kid is in a room and they're hyperactive or maybe something set them off and they're particularly vigilant and stressed. They're in the stress response.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
The frontal cortex is the pathway by which an internal dialogue could be delivered to quiet that limbic pathway. The message that would perhaps trigger that would be the kid recognizing because they learned this is okay. I've had this happen before. It passes. Or I'm supported. There's Dr. Carrion. There's my mom, there's my dad, there's my teacher, there's my friend.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I'm supported because we know social support is important. Or it's normal to feel stress every once in a while. So these kinds of thoughts or these internal dialogues that we're told that we should do for ourselves when we're stressed, I think we can be pretty certain that that's the kind of information that would trigger this frontodolimbic suppression.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Absolutely not. I have absolutely zero minus one musical ability, but I love music.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Well, me with some degree of proficiency, but not much.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
But everybody else, yes.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
A support system, that's right. And with enough practice hours and enough focus and determination, I'm convinced I could become at least proficient even at 49 years of age.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Even when the limbic system is not active, do you encourage your patients to practice positive thinking?
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Even when they're not in the stress response? All the time.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
So she would drink a glass of orange juice in order to quell her anxiety? Yeah, if she felt bad. And is this something that she would do even when she wasn't feeling stressed? I mean, it's kind of interesting. It suggests and it... completely squares with everything I understand about prefrontal cortical limbic pathways, which is that they're highly subject to contextual learning, right?
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
If anything, the frontal cortex is this incredible feat of evolution that allows us to link essentially any stimulus with any um, non, uh, learned response in the body. Right. I mean, this is what allows, you know, soldiers to learn to overcome their fear of bomb blasts and run toward them if, if necessary. I mean, it, it can cut both ways.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
And today's discussion focuses on the psychological and the neurobiological underpinnings of PTSD and which treatments are most effective for PTSD. We focus heavily on a particular therapy called Q-centered therapy that was developed by Dr. Carrion and colleagues that has been shown to offset the triggering by words or events or memories that often are the precursors to PTSD episodes.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Do you think this is why we hear the kind of classic anecdote about the patient who has anxiety attacks whose psychiatrist gives them... a couple of pills of medication that can help reduce anxiety and they decide to keep those pills in their pocket should they have an anxiety attack. And knowing they have those pills in their pocket allows them to control their anxiety.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
It's so interesting, the sense of agency and control over the non-negotiable stress response. You know, I sometimes, unfortunately, get, in my opinion, incorrectly attached to ice baths. We've talked about cold water exposure on this podcast. Our colleague Craig Heller at Stanford Department of Biology, phenomenal scientist, was on this podcast.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
We talked about some of the beneficial uses of deliberate cold exposure. There are a lot of arguments. Does it increase metabolism? Doesn't seem like it does very much. Is it useful for inflammation? Perhaps. But the one thing that everyone agrees is that being in uncomfortably cold water makes you breathe faster and stress a bit. In other words, it kind of sucks. It's uncomfortable.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
And I think one non-negotiable fact about deliberate cold exposure is that it gives people an opportunity to explore their own stress response if they're going to do it safely, right? You take a cold shower, you have some control. You can get out immediately, obviously. You don't want it so cold that you give yourself cardiac arrest. You have to be careful with deliberate cold exposure.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
But the adrenaline response to uncomfortable cold is non-negotiable. And I believe that whether or not somebody decides to recite the alphabet or think about how cold it is or whatever it is, What they're doing is they are practicing this frontal control over the limbic pathways. It's just sort of a general exercise for controlling the limbic system through thought.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
But as our colleague David Spiegel has said to me many times, he says, you know, it's not just the state that you're in. Here we're talking about stress as the state. It's how you got there. And in particular, did you have any control over how you got there and whether or not you can get out?
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
And I think that the kind of stress that you're talking about in post-traumatic stress disorder or in post-traumatic stress injury is typically of the sort that people didn't have a choice. Certainly these kids didn't have a choice about the initial exposure to the trauma or stressors.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
that also the stress is showing up when they would least want it to appear or when it's very inconvenient to appear.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
It could be from a cold shower. I always say that because oftentimes people think, oh, you know, they're just trying to sell cold plunges. And the truth is you don't need that. I mean, the fact of the matter is it's independent of income. Actually, a cold shower will save you money on your heating bill. I'm not saying everyone should take a cold shower. I love a nice warm or hot shower.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I sometimes use the cold shower as a stimulus and I hate it every time, but I always learn something each time. By the way, it feels great when you get out. So that's nice. And it does for many hours, especially if you end it with some warm water. But the learning, I believe, is in recognizing just how destabilized our patterns of thinking get when we have adrenaline in our body, which is what
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
uncomfortable cold does, and it deploys that adrenaline in the brain and body. It also is a great learning in seeing the return to a baseline, just seeing how that affects our psychology. To my mind, I can think of no other zero cost or even negative cost, meaning saves money, approach that works the first time and every time. you know, that is safe enough, right?
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I mean, I'm not interested in anything that has to do with snakes, for instance. I don't mind spiders. I'll pick them up with my hands as long as it's not a black widow or a particularly large spider, and I'll put it outside. But I don't like snakes. I don't like thinking about them. I don't like being near them.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
So, you know, there are other stressors that one could use, but it's so individual, whereas cold water seems to be pretty uncomfortable for everybody.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
No interest. It's so interesting. You know, these things get so firmly rooted. But I'd love to talk about this toolbox because, first of all, it's, according to your work, and this has been done repeatedly, it's very effective. And I love the idea that it can be customized. So the words that come to mind is a customized toolbox for combating stress and PTSD and
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
And the fact that it can be customized and maybe even covert, like we can have these tools inside us. We don't need to share them with anybody if we don't want to, but that they are very effective. I think that those are very compelling reasons for exploring the toolbox approach a bit more here.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
So you mentioned one way to go about this is to think about, or to have in mind some negative, some neutral and some positive experiences. And then to think about the different tools that one would deploy under those different conditions.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
So what would that look like? Let's say I'm a nine-year-old, I come into your clinic and I meet the criteria for PTSI or PTSD. What sorts of questions would you ask?
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
They say teammates?
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I love that.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Are there any particular tools for when kids are stuck in a stress response? Yes. Because I myself am familiar with... You know, the toolkit that I use, certainly teammates is one of them. And I have others, including long exhale breathing, physiological size. These things will be familiar to some of the listeners.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
But certainly there are times when we're stressed about something and we don't want to be. And we have a hard time pulling our thoughts and our emotions and the stress response together.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Well, what's so interesting to me about the stress response is that while it's quick to start, it's slow to shut off for logical reasons related to our evolutionary trajectory, right? Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could stress when needed and then it would turn off when needed?
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
But what we're really talking about here is intervening in the stress response either before or as it's happening, but then also making sure that the tail of that stress response isn't too long.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
In certain cultures, there are accepted practices that adults use to deal with stress, things like worry beads. And a few years back, there were those, what were the little spinner things that kids had? When those were popular, maybe they're still popular, did you observe any reductions in stress? You know, kids have a lot of energy. Like sometimes I think we confuse energy and stress.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Wouldn't we all love to have the kind of energy that we had in childhood? I was observing this the other day, you know, you'll see a kid sitting cross-legged listening in class. And then all of a sudden it's time to move across the room and they'll just pop up and move across the room.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Like when was the last time any of us like popped up out of our chairs, unless we were particularly excited or scared as adults, just that immediacy to action. implies that there's a lot of energy in the system. So I could imagine that having some ways to siphon off some of that energy through as far as I can tell, you know, things like worry beads or Or fidgets or whatever those are called.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I mean they might irritate some adults around. But really they're pretty innocuous when you think about it.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I mean we have colleagues that not all of them. This is not a requirement for being a professor at Stanford. But I've got colleagues that work 80 hours a week. you could argue that's healthy or unhealthy depending on the context and their agreements with others. But, you know, that requires a lot of energy and I know they are not particularly happy working less.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
So, you know, I think sometimes we are dismissive or kind of pejorative about of physical energy and shaking and moving. But, you know, I see, I know someone in my life who balances her knee while she works and it kind of makes me a little bit nervous, but boy, does she have a lot of focus and energy. You know, so, I mean, I think it's wonderful, in other words.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Earlier, meaning off microphone, we were talking about the fact that some people, indeed some kids, have a different tendency to anchor towards thinking or feeling or action when under stress. And you were describing the four quadrant system. Could you share with us this four quadrant system? Because I think it's both extremely valuable to children and to adults.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
It's certainly something that I plan to incorporate into my life.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
In this four corner system, and forgive me because I called it a four quadrant system, but in this four corners of the square system, you said there's thinking, which is cognitive. There are emotions. Then there's feelings, which are somatic, physical, and then actions. So actions are straightforward. Thinking would be, for instance, if I understand correctly, I'm in danger.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Emotions would be, I'm scared. So it's a verbal label. I'm depressed. I'm scared. I'm sad. I'm... Yeah, in a way it's cognitive too, right?
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
And then in terms of the physical feeling, it's of the body, but it could include of the head too. Like I have a headache or my heart is racing or I'm... or something of that sort. And then actions, of course, is the action that they take.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I love that earlier you were talking about practicing positive thinking even when, perhaps especially when, one is not in the stress response or trauma response, but also of course when one is in the trauma response. I think that's just so vitally important for people to hear, certainly for me to hear.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I'm not claiming to have PTSD, but as a novel concept that I've not heard raised before around these topics. The other is this four-corner system, which immediately occurs to me as so powerful because it breaks down the kind of reflex arc of the stress response into its component parts, right? What's of the body? What's of the thinking? What's of the thinking that's emotional?
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
And then what's the action? And you said as soon as one – identifies one of these corners and starts to kind of look at it differently and consider some of the optionality that exists, an alternative, that all these other options cascade from that.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
And I believe that in doing that, you've described what for thousands of years really, but recently we've heard a lot about in the kind of mindfulness arena as creating space. Like this notion of creating space, not outer space, but creating space within us to choose better options is something that I think until right now, as you've described this, has remained unfortunately very mysterious.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
People talk about, okay, you want to be – reactive, excuse me, you want to be responsive, not reactive. Responsive implies some optionality to your responses. Reactive implies kind of a reflex arc of just whatever the default was. But this notion of space is like too squishy for me as a biologist to really be able to latch onto.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
And I would argue, given the prevalence of PTSD and stress, it's probably too squishy for most people. It hasn't really led to anywhere specific. But I think what you're describing is the ability to become responsive as opposed to reactive. assuming that the word responsive includes like some options within it.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
And so this four-corner system to me is genius because it gives us an anchor point to start from. So could you say that if a child or adult is uncomfortably stressed, maybe about a trauma, but just is like caught in the stress response, that actually pulling out a pen or pencil or crayon, as it were, and drawing a square and just really like, what am I thinking? Like, maybe it's just like...
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
This is terrible. I don't like it. Writing down, I'm embarrassed. Like I'm not with my friends. I'm like not, you know, I'm flushed. You know, my cheeks are flushing, whatever. I'm feeling like just... weighed down or something, and then thinking, well, what are the actions? I want to remove myself from the situation.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
At that point, is the suggestion that one find what is the point of entry that feels most accessible and to start there? Yes, with one caveat.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Yeah, we're very poor at assessing others' internal states. We are. As our colleague Carl Deisseroth, who's also been a guest on this podcast, I heard him once say this in a very large lecture. He said, you know, we're terrible, absolutely dreadful at assessing other people's emotions. In fact, most of the time, we don't even know how we feel.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
And is this something that you suggest kids only do with their therapist or is this something that they can do on their own as well, assuming that they're old enough to write and to think about it?
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Yeah, I'm certain that many, many adults, not just children, can benefit from these tools. I mean, I would argue that most of the bad things that happen in the world are the consequence of dysregulated autonomic function. put kind of bluntly.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Yeah, I mean, I think most homicides are homicides of jealous rage. From what I have read, I don't know if that's still true. And of course, then that It's probably also true for all the things that are not as severe as homicide, but still dreadfully bad, like assault and things like that.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Perhaps this is the appropriate time to give you the opportunity to editorialize a little bit about social media and online behavior, setting aside really aggressive online behavior, bullying and things like that, which of course exists and is really serious. Do you see the behavior of kids and adults online, this sort of...
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Just maybe even the addiction to online commenting and reading of comments and the kind of battling of issues back and forth that clearly isn't going anywhere. Some of it goes someplace functional, but most of it, I would argue, especially among the adults, is going nowhere. It's just very circular. It's my side versus your side, my side versus your side. And emotions get really stirred on there.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Do you think that is reflective of a lack of tools for self-regulation? Do you think like what we're seeing is the manifestation of just a lot of challenges in the world and or an outlet for people to just vent without the need to address their own internal state and what's underlying the venting? I know many –
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
very, very intelligent adults who eventually just had to quit social media in order to have any level of functionality in their life.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I think what you're describing to my mind is a situation where the tool has become the terrain. It's like social media has become the landscape in which many people live as opposed to the real world. I mean, my original understanding of social media is that one would experience and do things in the real world and then bring those to social media. That's certainly what I do.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I teach on social media and I do the learning for that teaching. the drawing in some cases, the preparation in the quote-unquote real world, and then bring it to social media. But I feel like it's almost like the hammer has become the landscape. The house. Yeah, something like that. The hammer has become the house. Yes, that's much more eloquent and appropriate.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Yeah, I feel like with social media, the tool of social media has become the terrain in which people are living in. So that just feels like a closed loop is sort of an engineering example. So it's like it doesn't go anywhere. Like you can never actually get the relief that you're seeking. And I think we default to descriptions about dopamine and dopamine hits. And there's some truth to that.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
But the more I look at the literature on brain activation during social media events, It doesn't really speak to dopamine and reward prediction error as much as it does just sort of a mindless compulsion and kind of just passive overuse as opposed to like rewards, like, oh, this is so cool and that's so cool. I mean, it can be.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I mean, I've been watching some of the track and field races of the Olympics and there's a, I mean, I was cheering out loud for a few of them, but it's usually something quite different.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I see that in a lot of adults as well as kids. Let's talk about risk. Up until now, we've been envisioning a treatment situation or a study that you're running where a kid and perhaps parents as well are brought into the laboratory or clinic at Stanford and you're talking to them, assessing them, they're developing a custom toolbox. And that's a wonderful opportunity for
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
kids who sadly have PTSD or PTSI to be assessed and to develop tools that can really help them. That's been proven by the work you and others have done. But what about the many, many millions of kids and adults who are at risk, either because of lack of access, it could be due to finances, geography, poverty, any number of different things, or they simply don't even know what PTSD and PTSI are.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Their parents don't know. What are some of the tools and interventions that you think could be implemented at the level of schools, families, or even individuals that might help them?
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Yeah, the East Palo Alto School District, for those that don't know, Palo Alto, I guess it could be called West Palo Alto, is a separate city and county from East Palo Alto. Palo Alto is not exclusively, but is known for, at least nowadays, let's just be frank, fairly tremendous affluence relative to most places in the world, put bluntly.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
East Palo Alto, a separate county, different school district, police system, has a for as long as I can remember having grown up, um, in Palo Alto, um, has always been stricken with far fewer resources. And, uh, while there've been tremendous efforts to improve the, um, the situation there, it is still at a, um, steep disadvantage financially.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Um, but of course, um, many, uh, amazing people working there and living there. And, um, You know, and growing up there was some exchange across that East Palo Alto, West Palo Alto as it were, in the school district, but they're pretty separate domains when it comes to resources.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
And this has been shown to be effective in both children and adults. Today's discussion explores the difference between anxiety, stress, and trauma. We talk about how those things of course are related, but how they can be separated out to better understand if indeed somebody has trauma and how to best approach the treatment of that trauma.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Yeah, that area where IKEA is used to be called, do you remember? It was called Whiskey Gulch for years. Kind of terrible name, right? But it was a stark contrast right as you literally crossed the train tracks heading towards Highway 101. In that case, that portion of Palo Alto, Crescent Park, an extreme of wealth to an extreme of poverty. In literally a distance of 10 meters.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
So you needed literally physical and demographic separation. So you went with what used to be called the peninsula, the South Bay, East Palo Alto, and then San Jose, far enough apart that the kids weren't talking enough to blur the treatment groups.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Can I, sorry to interrupt, but could I ask you a little bit more about the curriculum? You said five, you said, or 15 to 50, five zero minutes, two to three times per week. And did the kids have to like, change over to their yoga clothes? The reason I ask is that I could think of a number of real world barriers to getting something like this implemented.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I feel like going jogging, usually you get a little sweaty, you need running shoes. There are other forms of exercise that require that less. But these days, as far as I know, not every school requires physical education. When I was growing up and through high school, you had to literally suit up. You had to go in the locker room and put on your PE clothes as it were.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
And then you'd run or play volleyball, whatever the PE teacher told you to do, you had to do. if you wanted to get a decent grade. Is the yoga being done, you said it could be in the classroom or at a separate location, but are the kids basically getting up out of their chairs and just right in their school clothes doing this for 15 to 15 minutes?
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Is it also possible that PTSD gets worse if we tend to look at it over and over again, ruminate on it in the absence of any structured clinical support? Meaning if people perseverate on their traumas, can the negative impact of those traumas actually root deeper into us?
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Wow. What spectacular results. I mean, 73 minutes more of sleep is like, I mean, talk about effective medicine. You know, I mean, we agreed at the outset that sleep is the foundation of mental health and physical health and all forms of cognitive and physical performance.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I mean, it's just, I mean, we know this, the study done at Stanford, albeit a small one of having athletes just get a bit more sleep or even just stay in bed a bit longer and no, not on their phones. just lying quietly with eyes closed and resting or sleeping more improved shot accuracy in basketball players. This has been shown in so many domains of cognitive and physical.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
It's like not even worth spooling off all the examples, but that is spectacular. It also makes me think I should start doing some yoga because I do get enough sleep, but that's significant. What do you think are the barriers to having this sort of thing implemented at national scale?
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Now, I always think about this, you know, okay, so the results are in, maybe it's one study, maybe it's two, but you're talking about a basically harmless intervention. And actually, it's a very therapeutic intervention. Sure, there are some people that won't be able to do all the poses, etc. But there's always something that somebody can do.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Even people that are immobilized, there are certain forms of believe it or not, cognitive yoga. And that friend of mine who works with people who are quadriplegic, they can do certain things to keep nervous system function online. But, you know, essentially anyone can do this. What are the barriers from taking it from this East Palo Alto school to a study, to another study? Okay, San Jose school.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Now, let's say you get all of Santa Clara or, you know, neighboring counties. you know, what does it take to get something implemented at national scale so that the work can really ripple out and benefit all these kids who are, of course, are going to become adults?
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
So parents and even non-parents talk to the teachers in the school, talk to the principals in the school. And I've been learning about the power of the telephone for lobbying. This has been around some decades. things I've been involved with, with the veterans community.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I mean, the ability to look up and call your congressman or congresswoman and tell them that you are really concerned about or excited about a particular program does have impact. I mean, at first I didn't think this was true, but I realized that when they start getting 50, 100, 1,000 messages about a particular topic that people are passionate about, they pay attention.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Maybe it's because they just want to get reelected. Maybe it's because they are genuinely concerned about helping people. I like to think it's the latter. But regardless of which, they run those messages up the flagpole when they bring issues.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I'd love your thoughts on something. You know, I'm so impressed that you were able to bring this from a study or set of studies to a much larger scale in Puerto Rico. I could be wrong here, but I feel like in the United States, we have such a culture of fame and popularity and reward around people who are extreme performers.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
We hear about these NBA stars, and right now we're seeing a lot about these incredible track stars, or we have these tech innovators that found huge companies. They used to be called unicorn companies, but all these incredible successes. And I wonder sometimes, if the hyper emphasis on these extreme performers has led to the conclusion in young people that unless you're going to be Michael Jordan,
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
or LeBron James, or Mark Zuckerberg, or Elon Musk, or win an Olympic gold medal, that the practices that feed up to becoming those sorts of people, like mindfulness meditation, or becoming a yogi for that matter, I feel like there's been a push towards hyper-specialization and performance to the point where people are writing off the incredible utility of
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
physical activity, mindfulness, you know, learning math, science, literature, and the arts. You know, you're talking about the arts. Yeah, music, right? Even for people like me, you know, I mean, sure, they always gave me the triangle because I could manage that one. And I don't want to insult the triangle players. I'm sure it's much more complicated than I'm giving the impression it is.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
But the point is that I feel like there's been a not so gradual disintegration of the idea that there is... utility, indeed, there's great benefit to doing things, not with the intention of becoming a high performer, but just doing them for sake of how it enriches us in a number of different ways, including our mental health.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
And I wonder whether or not the lack of PE is sort of a, well, if you're not going to run track and try and meddle or something or go to championship meets, then what's the point? But I certainly don't subscribe to that. I'm curious what your thoughts are.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Trust me, they often suffer in one or more of their other domains of life. Some don't. But I would argue most do.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I agree wholeheartedly. Let's talk about resilience. Earlier you said, you know, kids are not resilient. but you also implied, maybe you even stated it outright, that they can become resilient. What is resilience and what are some of the paths to resilience?
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I have not, but one of my good friends and... colleagues at Stanford. Sergio Pasca is one of the world leaders in organoids, and we hope to host him on this podcast soon. But please educate us on organoids. They are oh so cool and oh so science fiction-y, but they are oh so real as well.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
What a spectacular study. Goodness. And if any of you missed some of the underlying mechanics, I'll just quickly recap. These organoids are little brains in a dish that came to be by virtue of taking fibroblasts or other cells. So skin cells essentially put into dishes provided for what are called transcription factors. These are the four transcription factors that, uh,
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Yamanaka won the Nobel Prize for identifying that reverts those cells into stem cells, and then a few other goodies, molecular goodies that then allow them to become neurons in particular, then they grow into little mini brains. And then, as Dr. Carrion was explaining, are exposed to cortisol at appropriate concentrations to mimic cortisol exposure in the whole person. And then from that,
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
The genomes of those cells and the epigenomes are analyzed to identify potential targets.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
The results are brought back to these kids in Puerto Rico such that the genomes of all these kids experiencing different levels of stress and yoga, mindfulness interventions or not, maybe they're in the control group, the outcomes can be assessed and then one can address, hey, what are the genes that are protective against stress?
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
AKA what are the genes that are protective against high levels of cortisol? And a bunch of other, surely to be very transformative and important facts about how stress impacts the young brain to either give rise to PTSD or not. I must say, as you described that study, I had three thoughts. One, wow, how awesome is this that you can bridge across so many different levels of analysis?
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I mean, because you're talking about molecular genetics all the way up to yoga in school children in Puerto Rico and PTSD, you know, it's just a complex disorder. I was also thinking to myself, wow, what an incredible place Stanford is that such a collaboration is possible, right?
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
As you'll soon see, what makes Dr. Karian's work so unique is that it combines the psychological, the neurobiological, but also practical tools such as mindfulness. It relates mindfulness and cognitive behavioral therapy to the underlying biology and what's known about the psychiatry and psychology of PTSD at its different stages, depending on the trauma, the age of the person, et cetera.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Makes me delight in the fact that colleagues like you exist and Sergio and forgive me the names of the other colleagues I'm not familiar with. Alex Urban and Caroline Perlman. Thank you. And the third thing is how important it is to bridge across these different levels of analysis.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I think this is the first time on this podcast where somebody has discussed an experiment that bridges across so many levels of analysis, literally from fibroblasts, skin cells in a dish, all the way to a complex psychiatric condition and in an attempt, excuse me, to create novel therapeutics. So it's just truly spectacular. So if people are sensing a even further surge in my energy.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I see. As you describe these other aspects of one's life that can have negative impact, poverty, violence, etc., I get the impression that PTSD can be caused by a single event or trauma, but that there's a cumulative aspect to it. So is it the case that in children, because their brain is far more plastic, we know this.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
This is the kind of thing that gets me so excited because in the landscape of science, we often see a study or we hear about organoids or we hear about a yoga intervention, and these things tend to exist in silos, in isolation, but the ability to bridge across these levels of analysis, I believe, is critical. And so, yeah, kudos to you for being a part of this incredible collaboration.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I always say at Stanford, especially if two scientists meet for more than 30 minutes, what comes out of that is a collaboration. As a final question, I'm going to ask you to limit it to one answer, but I'm sure that there are many. The question is, if you had a magic wand,
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
And you could get any message out to the whole world about PTSD and PTSI, in particular in kids, in young people, but also in adults. What is that message? What do you want people to know about post-traumatic stress disorder, stress, and post-traumatic stress injury?
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Well, thank you so much for that. And Dr. Carrion, Victor, thank you so, so much for the work you do. Thank you for having me here. It's spectacular work at so many levels. It's also very bold and brave work to tackle such a big problem with such focus and to really give people agency.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
This notion of a custom toolbox, I think, is profound to give kids and adults, as it were, agency over their own interventions in an effort to really help themselves. I appreciate you coming here today more than I can express. I know the listeners and viewers of this podcast appreciate it as well. You are involved
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
with Stanford clinically, you're involved running studies, clinical studies that have great importance. So for you to take time to educate us with these tools is absolutely spectacular and is really appreciated. Please keep us updated on your progress and please come back and tell us more about that progress when the time is right. Thank you so much.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Please check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I do read all the comments.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
I mean, brain circuits are modified even by passive experience in childhood, whereas in adulthood, it requires focused attention in order to learn, unless it's a negative event, for better or worse. that in kids it takes far fewer or less intense negative experiences in order to create PTSD because the brain is so plastic? Or is there a similarity between youth and adult PTSD?
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, formerly known as Twitter, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Huberman Lab
How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media channels.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
If you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, our neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as protocols in the form of brief one to three page PDFs. Those protocol PDFs are on things like neuroplasticity and learning, optimizing dopamine, improving your sleep, Deliberate cold exposure, deliberate heat exposure.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
We have a foundational fitness protocol that describes a template routine that includes cardiovascular training and resistance training with sets and reps, all backed by science. And all of which again is completely zero cost. To subscribe, simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab up in the upper right corner, scroll down a newsletter and provide your email.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Victor Carrion. And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science. Thank you.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
Before we talk about therapeutic interventions, I'm curious about genetic predisposition. And a topic that comes up a lot anytime the letters PTSD are stated in that order is transgenerational trauma. I can imagine at least two forms of transgenerational trauma.
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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión
One is a generation of what are now grandparents or great-grandparents or parents are impacted by some trauma, either in the family or maybe in culture or even broader scale. And then discussions about that past through generations impact the children and therefore their adult life.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Lori Santos. Dr. Lori Santos is a professor of cognitive science and psychology at Yale University. She is a world expert in happiness and
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I also think, and this can explain a fair amount of human technological evolution, is that the human brain... either delights in or at least marvels in creating action at a distance. I mean, think about what went into creating that amount of action in an object with that much mass at a distance, right?
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And then you can layer through all the things where we're looking at on our phones, on our screens. I mean, all that technology is relatively recent. And to think that us human beings, as opposed to macaque monkeys could do that. Like we are the primate species that is so far ahead in terms of technological development compared to every other species on the planet.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
The only other species of life that might be besting us and we don't know is I've heard this theory. It's rather entertaining, which is that all these trillions of microorganisms that live in our gut microbiome, what if we're just vehicles for them to get around and pass to one another? And they're just...
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
they have a sort of a consciousness that is all about just propagating and that we think that we're doing all this stuff for some evolution, but it's just to keep the microbiota. I don't really believe that.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And they just want more microbiota. Yeah. So, you know, that we're being hijacked. I chuckle at that theory. I don't actually think that's the way it is.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Yeah. This is probably the right time to say that we are a storytelling species. This is what we're doing right now. We're creating story around these things that we can't quite explain. And during the course of today's conversation, I realized that this thing that we call happiness has at least three levels or layers that we filter it through when we ask ourselves, are we happy?
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
How do I be happier? This element of contrast with negative experiences seems to be a repeating theme. Memento mori being a negative sort of dark cloud from which we're supposed to see the light and act in the light. This exists in religious narratives, philosophical narratives, and scientific reality. I could imagine three layers. The first is sensory experience.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
The reason to take a cold shower, folks, in addition to the fact that it'll save you on your heating bill, is that the warm shower that follows... In fact, that's how I do it, feels so good. 10 times better than it would if you had just gotten into the warm shower, I promise. Same thing about getting out of the cold plunge.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
You know, there's a lot of debate about these things, but this is just pure sensory experience and contrast of the sort that we're talking about today. Hunger and then eating a delicious piece of food or eating a not so delicious piece of food, but you're hungry and so it's that much more delicious. Okay. million examples we could spiral towards.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
So there's sensory experience, there's raw sensory perception and experience from which the contrast creates this thing that we like feel better. AKA happiness, sort of. Then there's story. Like, God, last year was a tough year. This year was better. There's also, and I've seen this before, like we were killing it for two years. And then this year was kind of a meh year.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
This is not the case, by the way, but I'm very fortunate that the podcast has continued to grow and expand. But for some people, they... They're not as happy with their whatever salary this year because even though it's spectacular by somebody else's standards, by their standard, it's down from previous years. So there's the story that we create that has – it's not sensory experience.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
It's perception based on dopamine and it's perception based on reward and punishment, et cetera. And then there's this third layer, which is meaning. Like you said, yeah, you know, spending time with in-laws.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Like, okay, every moment of it might not be as awesome as you might like, but there's meaning in spending time with people that are extended family, especially when elders and younger are in the same room. There's something really – it layers on story to create this sort of – other level that we call meaning. And so what I'm realizing is that these are three timescales.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
So we have the immediate timescale of happiness. We have the kind of intermediate one where we introduce a story. And then we have meaning, which is kind of like this whole picture. So it seems to me that we need to approach happiness from all three levels, that it's not enough to just be like a dog, which are in the sensory experience, presumably, of Of happiness.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
If they tell stories, they don't tell them to us. Yeah. And if they have meaning, I don't know. But they seem to, like, nail the first level. Yeah.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Yeah, I mean if I had to pick between bravery and humor – I think bravery is probably more important to me.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I mean, I love humor, but if I had to pick, it's sort of like steak and coffee. I'm going steak.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Sorry to interrupt, but lately I've been saying on the basis of those findings about this Venn 75. Yeah. K per year, probably now, like you said, 100 to 125 K, let's just say something like that would be the equivalent amount that money indeed cannot buy happiness, but it can buffer stress. Do you think that's true? You're making me rethink that statement.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
That's awesome. Those are awesome stories. I also was just thinking about the janitor cleaning up the vomit, like to like, like restore some dignity to these people that clearly know they're making a mess and like, you know, humor being the ultimate bridge. And darn it, why'd you make me have to choose between humor and the other thing? But because humor is so awesome.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Sorry, now your humor is pretty good. Now I'm rethinking my answer.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Yeah. And to bring humor to a place where, you know, some people might presume humor is not allowed, but it Goodness. The signature strengths and the list of, you said, 24 of them. Where can people learn more about these signature strengths? I think this would be a really powerful exercise. And we can always find the link and put it in the show note captions.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
But is there like a place that people can find this stuff?
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Maybe it doesn't buffer stress past a certain amount.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I love doing stuff with my hands and I also love doing things that are useful to other people. And years ago, I used to go set up fish tanks for people at their homes. And I don't know why, but I just kept setting up all these fish tanks for all these people. I delighted in it. And it makes me realize that I think for everybody, certainly not just me.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
That we get tremendous pleasure from being useful to others in ways that really resonate with kind of who we feel we are and these strengths. I think that's kind of the ultimate situation, really. And if we're getting paid for it, also great. But you're saying work it into your recreational time as well.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I've discovered this in recent years. I love, love, love giving gifts. It's the best feeling. It's the best feeling.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
That's awesome. I will also say your suggestion that people fill out the signature strengths site and then use that as a first date incentive. I look forward to the day when a comment comes through on YouTube that people were married as a consequence of a first date.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Every once in a while, someone will contact me and say that they watched the fertility episode and did a male and female fertility episode and that they now have a child on the way. I don't ask questions about when the child was conceived and what the relationship to the fertility episode was. I'm assuming it was the information in the fertility episode. But the –
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
But I always, I'm like, whoa, that's wild. So I bet you that at some point in the future, I'm creating a little bit of a time capsule here. You'll get contacted or something will legitimately fall into the comments about people deciding to spend their life together as a consequence of having done the signature strength first date. You heard it here first, Dr. Laurie Santos.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And in all seriousness, Laurie, Dr. Santos. I just want to say thank you so much for doing the work you do. It's awesome, awesome work. I mean, what's more important than our emotional state and to strive to be happy but to understand happiness so that we're not pursuing something that either doesn't exist or that – is an illusion that's been created for us.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Really, I think one of the amazing things about what you do is you realistically frame happiness as attainable, but you frame it in the science of how to actually get it and what it means. as people could probably detect.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I love, love, love that you've studied this thing that we call happiness and other aspects of emotion and social cognition in the context of not just humans, but our non-human friends, cats and dogs, and use that knowledge like building up from basic understanding of how neural circuits and psychology work to a place that humans can really act on.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And you've given us a tremendous number of actionable tools today. I mean, too many to list off here all at once. We'll put them in the timestamps as tools so that people can get right to them and review them. But the social connection piece, obviously, the understanding of the contrast with difficult things to arrive at better states.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
um and different time scales and doing for others and and just so much there's too much here for me to list off without adding another 30 minutes to this podcast and no one wants to hear me um speak anymore um so i'm just going to say thank you for the research that you have done and continue to do thank you for doing your podcast i'm going to start listening to your podcast i love these issues and i think they're super super timely and important
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
for everybody. And thanks for taking time out of your schedule to come here and educate us today.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Let's do it again.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Lori Santos. To learn more about her laboratory's work, her teachings, and to find a link to her excellent podcast, please see the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Please also click follow for the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or topics or guests that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. And if you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
So that's Instagram, X, formerly known as Twitter, Facebook, Threads, and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
Huberman Lab
How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep
Huberman Lab
How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body.
Huberman Lab
How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes everything from podcast summaries to what we call protocols in the form of brief one to three page PDFs that cover things like how to optimize your sleep, how to regulate your dopamine. We also have protocols related to deliberate.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Cold exposure, get a lot of questions about that. Deliberate heat exposure and on and on. Again, all available at completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter and enter your email. And I should mention that we do not share your email with anybody.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Laurie Santos. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
You'll be shocked, indeed, I was shocked to learn that just having your phone in the room where you are trying to learn something significantly diminishes your performance on things like mathematics and the learning of other topics.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I know a fair number of very happy, wealthy people. I know a fair number of very miserable, wealthy people. I know a fair number of happy, non-wealthy people and a fair number of miserable people. Inside, they report feeling miserable on wealthy people.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
We get into all of that today, the interrelated parts, and I promise that it's all made extremely clear and actionable thanks to Dr. Laurie Santos's incredible expertise. And she is an incredible teacher. In fact, the course that she has taught at Yale University entitled Psychology and the Good Life, is the most popular course ever taught at Yale over the course of 300 years.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Let's talk about this relationship between feelings, thought patterns, and behaviors in the context of happiness. I think anyone listening to this or watching this probably wants to be happy as much as possible. I mean, I suppose there are a few songwriters, poets, and I've got some friends in those domains of life, and they do seem to derive a lot of –
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
insight and inspiration and have done amazing things through the kind of depths of unhappy human emotion. We can get back to that later because I do think there's something about the contrast of moving from these more painful emotions to happiness that's very different than moving from a state of immense happiness to slightly less, but we can get back to that.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
But most people would like to be happy as much as possible. I certainly would. Who wouldn't? And one, of course, can ask, well, should I work on my feelings, like think about my feelings, try and shift my feelings, let my feelings move through me in a cathartic way? Should I work on the thought patterns? Should I work on the behaviors? I'm a big believer from my own experience that
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Behaviors are powerful in setting the general trajectory of thought patterns and feelings. But I've also experienced it going the other way too. So what does the research say about this? And what can we do? Because everyone wants to be happier.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I love social connection. The problem I have with social connection is that if I drop in with somebody for 30 minutes or a couple of hours, when that's done, I usually have so much that I need to tend to that I end up staying up later than I need to in order to complete that.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And that popularity will not come as a surprise as you now get to learn from Dr. Laurie Santos directly. This was a remarkable episode, I must say. I learned so much.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
diminishing my sleep, and then I feel like there's an underlying kind of like sinking ship sense to my physiology, and then I have to recover my sleep. So everything's a trade-off. What's interesting about the study you just mentioned is that it's just a brief coffee, presumably. So maybe one doesn't need to spend quite as much time um, with people.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
But I think, uh, you know, I think like even years ago, actually he's dead now, but there was a, I guess it's okay to say, even though he's dead, he was a somewhat, uh, eccentric professor at UC Berkeley. I took a class from him when I was a graduate student there named Seth Roberts. He's known for some kind of bizarre theories about eating.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And if people want to look this up, I mean like really, really kind of different stuff, but I applaud his bravery and just being out there. But he was an eccentric guy. And he told us in this class when I was there that it was very important to see faces at least once a day, real faces, not on a screen. This was before social media.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And that it was important at some point to leave your apartment and see the barista and say hello and thank you and see people on the street. And And now knowing what we know about these dedicated areas of the brain, like the fusiform face gyrus and Nancy Kanwisher's work and about these brain areas, like we are hardwired for seeing faces and recognizing faces.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And I'll just highlight one big takeaway that I've implemented in my own life and that you can frame in the back of your mind as you listen to today's episode is the difference between being happy with one's life as opposed to in one's life and indeed how to achieve both. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Now, that alone doesn't mean that seeing faces is a requirement for being happy on a consistent basis. But I think they were onto something. I think Seth was onto something, even though he had some also just like – completely crazy ideas. This idea doesn't seem crazy. This has been my experience, even though I spent a lot of time alone.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
If I go a few days without seeing a face, something happens inside that shifts the way my internal kind of set point for wellbeing. And then you see somebody and it's like, it's like delightful, even if it's just a hello.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Is there any evidence that texting actually drives more of a desire for more social connection and thus leaves us feeling less well than prior to a text exchange? I realize it's very hard to separate out the variables about what's the nature of the text exchange. Totally. How often do you see this person in real life, et cetera?
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
But I could imagine that texting, I don't do the sound effect as well as you do. I like that. But that texting could be the equivalent of getting crumbs of nourishment, not full nourishment. I could also imagine that It's like putting nourishment just out of reach.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And I'm asking this really at a neurological level. Do we know? Is the reward circuitry that's triggered in real life social connection triggered but to a lesser degree by text exchange or by Zoom exchange? This would be an important study to do, I think.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
So schedule some, if possible, in real lifetime with somebody.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. AG1 is designed to cover all of your foundational nutritional needs, and it tastes great. Now, I've been drinking AG1 since 2012, and I started doing that at a time when my budget for supplements was really limited.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Now I've spoken many times before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night. That's truly the foundation of all mental health, physical health, and performance. And one of the best ways to ensure that you get a great night's sleep is to control the temperature of your sleeping environment.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
In fact, I only had enough money back then to purchase one supplement, and I'm so glad that I made that supplement AG1. The reason for that is even though I strive to eat most of my foods from whole foods and minimally processed foods, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits, vegetables, vitamins, and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And I need to do that in order to ensure that I have enough energy throughout the day, I sleep well at night, and keep my immune system strong. But when I take AG1 daily, I find that all aspects of my health, my physical health, my mental health, and my performance, both cognitive and physical, are better.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I know that because I've had lapses when I didn't take AG1 and I certainly felt the difference. I also notice, and this makes perfect sense given the relationship between the gut microbiome and the brain, that when I regularly take AG1, which for me means a serving in the morning or mid-morning and again later in the afternoon or evening, that I have more mental clarity and more mental energy.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer. If seeing faces, and I don't have evidence for this, but if Seth Roberts was right and
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
What we're talking about here is clearly based on existing data. If seeing faces somehow triggers the reward system in a healthy way that reinforces the social connection thing, like fills the vessel that like we're connected because we no longer live in small village and tribe type formats. Most of us don't anyway.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
That if we plop down onto the couch and kind of like assume the classic C-shaped position of somebody who's about to go on their phone and and you can scroll and see faces. You talked about that as a bit of like an artificial sweetener, giving the illusion of some sort of nourishment.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And then, you know, you see some stuff, you respond to stuff, you can see someone kind of dunk on somebody, maybe hear a joke, maybe make a joke, and then go into your DMs and like read a few, check a few. And then you basically got no real social connection.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
You didn't have to move to do it. And in a lot of ways, this has parallels to the ease of highly processed foods or something like that. And I think we're starting to understand this a bit through Jonathan Haidt's work and other people's work, including your own. But I don't know that it's anything but really dangerous and bad.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I don't want to sound alarmist, but I am really concerned that certainly for the younger generation, but that if we don't have an intrinsic drive to go do something,
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
We stopped doing it. And then the brain is pretty plastic throughout the entire life, especially for these low-grade, like many times repeated behaviors. I mean, we can just slowly, you know, it's like there's drift. And then we wonder why we don't feel so good.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Eight sleep makes it incredibly easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to control the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
It's interesting because I think just about 10, 15 years ago, our knowledge of most all humans was based on in real life experience. except for, I guess, famous humans, and then it was not in real life. Now, most people's knowledge about most humans is based on not in real life interactions, which means that most people's knowledge about humans generally is kind of accruing
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
through non in real life electronic experiences. And so that has to change our entire schema of like what human experience is. I'm not trying to, you know, like ratchet up to something too abstract here, but I think it's a, it's a powerful notion that what Byrne is saying that we're kind of dehumanizing ourselves through, you know, getting essentially fragments of, of in real life experience.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Maybe, and video is so captivating as, you know, as somebody who's, I was a vision scientist for a long time. I mean, if a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth 10 billion pictures. It's just the number of videos that you can access in an Instagram feed or even on an X feed is just astonishing. And then, of course, the high emotional salience stuff is going to be the.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
the stuff that you hover on, and then the algorithm knows your dwell time, as it's called, and then your basic feed and discovery is set by that. And I don't think there's anything really inherently diabolical about it. I don't take that stance. It's just they figured out some good neuroscience based on behavioral forging.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Eight Sleep has now launched their newest generation of the Pod Cover, the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity, higher fidelity sleep tracking technology, and even has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring. If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover,
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
How do we rate loneliness? I'm not dismissing what they're saying, but since they grew up that way, this sounds very cross-generational judgment, but like, how do they know they're lonely?
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
They were probably like, I want to go hide behind that rock for a little bit, get a little bit of space. I'll never forget years ago when I – there was this time when I worked with ferrets. I don't miss it. And they would have these huge litters and there were these – in these pens, they – the mom could climb up and get up on top there.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And so she'd have these huge litters and she'd kick the litter off at some point. She'd go up there and sleep. And you'd go in there to take out the moms. And that was the only time when they didn't want to be bothered, right? Because they loved to be held and things like that, but they did not want to be bothered because they just needed some peace because they had like 16 ferret kits.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
So I think that nowadays, right, if there's a lot of loneliness and people that are growing up in these electronic formats report feeling lonely, and I believe them, then what it speaks to is a yearning. And to me, a yearning is a neurological drive, the same way that a room that's too warm, you want to get to a cooler space. If it's too cold, you want to get to heat. So
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
That loneliness speaks to an underlying yearning for something that they're not getting. I'm just stating the obvious. But it says that we're – or they are doing something that's inherently against the grain of their healthy neurology.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
This is just like food. Which we talked about as the nutrition. You're not craving vegetables because they were presumably in abundance at one time in our evolutionary history as opposed to meat or sweets or things like that, fruit and meat.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
So what is the term, if there is one, or could you come up with one? I don't want to put you on the spot. For a fundamental desire that's healthy for us that we are not driven to pursue. a resolution to like for everything else, you know, there's like the hypothalamic circuits for the desire to mate, to seek warmth when it's cold, cold when it's, you know, when it's too warm.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Go to 8sleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. 8sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. Again, that's 8sleep.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN is a virtual private network that keeps your data secure and private.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Um, you know, we know what hunger is, right. Um, but there must be something about the, I don't want to get too technical here for, for those that are tracking this, what we're not tracking this, what I'm trying to say is, you know, for so many of the, um, reward punishment pathways in the human brain.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
You're trying to avoid the feelings of pain and move toward the feeling of either neutrality or pleasure. But here you're talking about being in a sort of place of low-level pain, being able to meet that pain with a truly low-level pleasure that then it doesn't mask the pain, but it fills the vessel just enough that then you drive yourself into a place of essentially more pain.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
in the science of emotions generally. Today we talk about true happiness, not in any kind of loose and aspirational way, but instead what the research really tells us about how to create lasting happiness for ourselves. We talk about relationships and happiness, that is relationships of all kinds, between friends, between romantic partners, between family members, and of course with ourselves.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Well, I try my best not to speak in tweets, which I guess they now call ex-posts. But I've been saying a lot, and I'll say it again now, that I think everyone should beware any dopamine that is not preceded by effort in order to achieve it. In other words, any fast, high inflection of dopamine that
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
does not require effort to achieve it, is going to put you in a trough and on a metaphorical lever pressing cycle that will drive your trough deeper and deeper over time. And that peak will just never go as high as it did or could, again, unless you take a period of abstinence from that behavior or substance and then introduce effort prior to a adaptive behavior to get the dopamine.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
The other thing is, I like to think of addiction as a progressive narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure. And I don't speak to enlightenment, but happiness or enlightenment seems like a progressive broadening of the things that bring you pleasure.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And I'm glad we're talking about reward circuitry because we know how to reset that reward circuitry, and it doesn't require these dopamine fasts, although that's one approach, and it makes sense why people do it. But I think this notion of having to spend effort to engage in
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
It does that by routing your internet activity through their servers and encrypting it so that no one can see or sell your data. Now, I'm familiar with the effects of not securing my data well enough. Several years ago, I had one of my bank accounts hacked, and it was a terrible amount of work to have that reversed and for the account to be secured.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
we know as a hardwired source of reward not just dopamine but other neurochemicals as well of course in the form of social connection so this higher friction thing of having to call somebody or drive someplace or deal with traffic deal with traffic on the way home yeah well worth it if it was a good social interaction but maybe it was a meh social interaction in which case you're like that was that was a lot of driving today i've now all this other stuff to do yeah other times
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
a great social interaction can set you in an amazing emotional plane for days, if not weeks. So I think what you're bringing up is really important. How do we introduce these behaviors, not asking you to put it into a standardized protocol too much, but since we started with this issue of behaviors being a path to more happiness and social connection being the
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
in real life social connection or by phone in real time, as you said, being one of the main paths to behavioral happiness, behaviorally derived happiness, excuse me, then what are the data on sort of the frequency of this? Does it vary for introverts versus extroverts? This question is getting very long, but maybe we could define introverts and extroverts.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And then if you would, if you could give us some sense of, you know, how often should people seek out an in real life interaction?
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
When that happened, I talked to my friends in the tech community, and what they told me was that even though you think your internet connection may be secure, oftentimes it's not, especially if you're using Wi-Fi networks such as those on planes, in hotels, at coffee shops, and other public places. Surprisingly, even at home, your data might not be as secure as you think.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
To make sure that what I described before would never happen to me again, I started using ExpressVPN. The great thing about ExpressVPN is that I don't even notice that it's running, since the connection it provides is so fast. I have it on my computer and on my phone, and I keep it on whenever I'm connected to the internet. With ExpressVPN, I know everything is secure.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Or maybe they don't quite understand. So I want to make sure that it's crystal clear for people. Introverts anticipate a less than great or even eh. interaction, maybe even a negative interaction.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
They anticipate a negative interaction. So it's like saying we're going to go to a restaurant and the food here, it sucks. They go in, they have a decent to maybe a great interaction. So introverts are positioned to derive more pleasure from social interactions than extroverts who enter social situations thinking it's going to be great.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Their anticipation is high and therefore they require a much bigger dopamine inflection in order to come away from that interaction saying it was great.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I love that. I'm actually pretty social, but I'm late to everything because I'm an academic. Noon means noon 10, which means starting at 12.15, which means at 1.15 when the lecture was supposed to end at 1, you're still going and half the room is full. Any academic knows what I'm talking about.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I don't want to micro-dissect social interactions to the point of becoming artificial, but... I'm fairly introverted. I love New York City and I love London. I love busy cities. So I don't mind being surrounded by people. But one byproduct of being surrounded by people in a big city is you're not interacting with everybody. You're seeing lots of faces.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
My web browsing, all my passwords, all my data, and of course, anything that's behind an account wall, like a bank account. It can't be tracked and no one can access or steal your data, which is terrific. If you'd like to start protecting your internet activity using ExpressVPN, you can go to expressvpn.com slash Huberman and you can get an extra three months free.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
So is it the case that introverts are really uncomfortable in big social interactions? Or to me, the most mentally demanding social interaction would be one where I go to a party where I know there's going to be like 20 people. Everyone's going to have to go around the room and introduce themselves. Goodness.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Clearly, I don't have a problem with public speaking, but that to me just like spikes my cortisol immediately. And then there's sort of an expectation of of like real connection. The expectation of real connection oftentimes undermines real connection. Sometimes it serves it.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
But is it the case that introverts want to avoid people or they want to avoid the requirement to really engage in a deep way? And I like engaging in a deep way one-to-one or maybe with two or three people, maybe a few more, but I don't know that it's the number of people that becomes overwhelming or daunting. or the punishing feature. It's more the sort of requirement to be pulled out of oneself.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Function. I recently became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
While I've long been a fan of blood testing, I really wanted to find a more in-depth program for analyzing blood, urine, and saliva to get a full picture of my heart health, my hormone status, my immune system regulation, my metabolic function, my vitamin and mineral status, and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors on your results. For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had two high levels of mercury in my blood. This was totally surprising to me. I had no idea prior to taking the test.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Function not only helped me detect this, but offered medical doctor-informed insights on how to best reduce those mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, because I had been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Again, that's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com slash Huberman to get an extra three months free. And now for my discussion with Dr. Laurie Santos. Dr. Laurie Santos, welcome.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification and worked to reduce my mercury levels. Comprehensive lab testing like this is so important for health. And while I've been doing it for years, I've always found it to be overly complicated and expensive. I've been so impressed by function, both at the level of ease of use, that is getting the test done,
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
as well as how comprehensive and how actionable the tests are that I recently joined their advisory board. And I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman Lab listeners.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. Today's episode is also brought to us by Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need, but nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, all in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are vital for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or your nerve cells.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Drinking element dissolved in water makes it extremely easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes. To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and therefore losing a lot of water and electrolytes. They have a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. They have watermelon, citrus, et cetera. Frankly, I love them all.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And now that we're in the winter months in the Northern hemisphere, Element has their chocolate medley flavors back in stock. I really like the chocolate flavors, especially the chocolate mint when it's heated up, so you put it in hot water, and that's a great way to replenish electrolytes and hydrate, especially when it's cold and dry outside, when hydration is especially critical.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. So you're talking about engaging in social connection in real time and perhaps even in real life. Yes, in real life as well.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I want to talk about this thing that everyone seems to want, but most everyone has trouble keeping themselves in a state of happiness, which raises the question of whether or not we should even be seeking to constantly be in a state of happiness. But just to sit back from that question for a moment. How should we think about the relationship between emotions and this thing that we call cognition?
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
With some effort to engage in it, which might just be built into modern living now. as one of the primary drivers for behavioral approaches to improve what we're calling happiness. So could we say, and I know we don't want to set up strict protocols around this, make the effort to schedule in real time over the phone or Zoom or in real life interaction with somebody maybe once a week?
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Minimum?
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Given how busy people are and given that we've established that some effort that's required to engage socially is going to be beneficial toward the reward and all of this. And we're not trying to hack the dopamine system here, folks. We're just trying to figure out what is going to be rewarding given that everyone has constraints on their time.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And everyone seems to have a device in their pocket that allows them to get the illusion of nourishment that leads to either same levels or less happiness overall. You know, what's going to be most effective? And it seems to me, I was thinking about this during one of your answers.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I was paying attention, but I was thinking about this, that my memory of prior social interactions as really great is a useful tool. So for instance, one of my best memories of time with my girlfriend was driving back from her grandmother's house with the dog in the car and we had no phone reception. So we couldn't be interrupted by our devices. She actually had some work to do.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
So she was doing some work on her computer at one point. She may have taken a nap at one point. and the dog kept jumping back and forth between our laps. And that to me was like one of the best days ever. Just ever, it was just an awesome day. That memory occurred to me now and I think could serve me well in thinking, okay, so like going on a road trip with somebody.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
But it was the lack of kind of structure around it. It was just imposed on us. We had a drive to complete. There was a dog in the car. There was some work to do. There was no phone reception. And, you know, we've had many great interactions, but that would be the one that I'd highlight as like that was an awesome experience. interaction for whatever reason.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And so can one use memories of great social interaction as kind of a compass? for how to construct these social plans. Because I think it can be a little bit mystifying to people. Like, oh, how do I get this thing called happiness by meeting up with a friend? We enjoy hiking or something like that, but maybe that's not accessible. And I don't want people to underthink or overthink it.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
But to me, it seems like, okay, like road trips, everyday things, we needed to go up there. There was some things to tend to. So like tending to life things, life requirements together. Yeah.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
It wasn't you by yourself.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Because I think a lot of where we're going today is to distinguish between feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. And as neuroscientists, psychologists, et cetera, we have to understand the difference between emotions and cognition and maybe where they overlap. So if you could educate us a bit on that, I think that will set the stage nicely for understanding happiness.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And what you just described was a dramatic performance enhancement on mathematics by not having this opportunity for distraction in the room, which is incredible.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Soon the ads are going to pop up on, they'll know you're in the aisle because they can know you have proximity to a lot of devices. I have a friend who's a very accomplished songwriter and musician. And someone does his Instagram and other social media for him. He's not on there. And we met for dinner the other day with a couple other people.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And I got there and I started telling him about something I had seen. online. And he said, I won't use it. I usually will do his voice, but I won't do his voice because I don't want to give it away. People might know who he is. But he said, I don't want to talk about what's on Instagram. In fact, I don't want to talk about what's on the internet. Let's just have dinner. And at first I was like,
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
dude that was like kind of and i thought great like he's exactly right like it's not just having the phone there it's not just being on the device it's also that you're talking about things that you saw in the world some of which are very interesting and important at times but what he was saying was i don't want to talk about things that that you experienced about somebody else's experience.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
That wasn't really an experience that you had today. That's an experience of someone else's experience that you had today. It wasn't about a news article or something. So we're playing the telephone bucket brigade game of social connection many, many degrees away from the actual interactions that we were kind of hardwired to experience ourselves. Yeah.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Now, I will say that a memory of a really terrific time I had alone was around this time of year, actually, around the holidays. Typically, I would be in my office organizing papers, maybe dealing with some end of year stuff for academics. My life's a lot different now with the podcast, even though I still teach at Stanford. But end of year is the time when you kind of get your office organized.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Everyone, every academic knows this. And over the holidays, I tended to have a lot of time in my office alone. It was a great time to come in, like parking was everywhere. You go in and I used to listen to TED Talks or I would listen to podcasts. And these days I'm trying to do more physical things, not just exercise, but I'm working on some like lighting stuff in my house.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And I like to listen to podcasts or books, sometimes music, but podcasts or books while I do that. And I do feel that when we're alone, sometimes it's nice to have other voices in the room that are not just the voices in our head. And it could be music, podcasts, books, movies, et cetera, that people seem to find that soothing. I certainly do.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And that doesn't feel like it's diminishing from my experience of being present. In fact, it allows me to just really tend to what I'm doing mechanically. And I have some plans to do some more like craft drawing type projects in the new year. And I look forward to being able to hear those conversations, but not have to participate in them. Yeah. Yeah.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
So is this, would you consider that sort of healthy or am I diminishing my experience and the depth of my, my crafts?
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
So we've got in real time and or in real life. Well, in real life is always in real time. But in real life and or in real time social interaction and if it requires some effort to plan or get to. Yeah. organize all the better. You stand to gain more from those interactions. So that's really key. Presence, obviously. Try and get the phone out of the room, at least off and put away. But
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Ideally out of sight. Out of sight. Out of sight. Love that. And shared experience, presumably, you know, actually maybe doing something, but it could even just be talking. I guess it depends on what people enjoy doing, right?
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
So these are powerful levers for shifting one level of happiness up using behavior. What about leading with thought patterns or feelings? Seems like it's a more challenging, but certainly tractable entry point.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
In fact, it probably helps drive – more motivation to go pursue resources. I mean, you could imagine an adaptive feature to lacking satisfaction. I mean, you could gain more resources in a time where resources were presumably shared more in these small village formats. I don't know, do monkey troops share resources? It depends on the monkey.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Just like humans, depends on the human, depends on the monkey.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I mean Steve Jobs and his parting words were stay hungry, stay foolish. Maybe it was stay foolish, stay hungry. But stay hungry was definitely in there. And I realize he's not going to represent the epitome of what to strive for for everybody. But he certainly held up as somebody who changed the world through the development of certain technologies.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
So we revere these people that are hungry for more.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I love the word delight.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Thank you for delighting in him. I delight in him too, even though he's dead several years now. Delight is a wonderful word.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I'm already struck by this distinction between how things are going in your life versus with your life. One requires a kind of first-person experiencing of life in your life. You know, do you wake up feeling good? Are you feeling good with your – inside of your friendships and other relationships, family, romantic relationships, school, work? The other involves a bit of a third-personing of self.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I love that. Super free. So much so that I end because I accidentally – The comments always tell me I interrupt too much. It's out of interest. It's out of interest. I promise. If I could interrupt myself, I would. And I probably do from time to time. Could you repeat what the – it's three to five things?
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Giant, high-quality photograph. He was actually standing on the table that I do my solo podcast from at the microphone. And his tag just happened to rotate a few degrees toward the camera just at that moment. so you could see his name, Costello.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
What I love about this conversation about gratitude is that I must say I do like the word delight more than gratitude.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Well, I'm from Northern California, so I'm cool with hippy-dippy even though I'm not a hippy. Punk rocker, not a hippy. You're Berkeley roots. I'm from the other end of the peninsula. I love the East Bay. Anyway, this is getting – but the point is it's not that the word feels soft. I need to think about this a little bit more. It's that maybe it's just that delight is such a powerful word.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
unselfish word. Like it's not taking anything from anybody. It's not requiring a shift away from one sort of intrinsic self. I feel like gratitude requires this like, okay, I'm going to now be grateful. It's like kind of like pulling, if you're not already in a state of gratitude, I feel like there's more effort involved. And we've been saying effort that precedes reward is good.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
We talk about all of that in the context of what to do, what not to do, and how to frame your whole notion of what happiness is and how to attain it in the context of daily to-dos. For instance, most all of us by now have heard about the power of gratitude and gratitude practices. In fact, I've done an entire episode about gratitude and the science of gratitude.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
But with delight, it feels like it's just very much in concert with Almost like who one is. Yeah. And like I delight in Costello. I don't expect everyone to delight in Costello. People who did, I delighted in their delight. So it was just amplifying all the delight. But the thing that really strikes me about delight is that – Every example you gave, it's very rapid time scale.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I will say I normally drink yerba mate during these things, which I delight in. But today I decided I haven't had coffee in a while. I took a little break from it for no particular reason. And I had a single shot of espresso and I was thinking to myself, this is really good. This is delightful. So this is a fast time scale. Maybe it was the fact that I haven't had it in a little while.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And it's just really fast. No one suffers. It's all gain. And so it runs a little bit countercurrent to what we were talking about before, which is the requirement for effort to precede the reward. Delight feels like a very smooth road to a reward that's all net positive.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
As you said, these are these delights are available throughout the day, and it doesn't it requires just noticing something inside and outside, whereas I feel like with gratitude, I love gratitude practices. The data are incredible. It is anything but squishy. It is like a real power tool for shifting one's state of mind. That's clear from the literature.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Yep. I'm looking at one's – CV, either actual CV or reflected CV through the lens of other people and kind of getting a sense like, am I doing well? Am I not doing well?
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
But the gratitude thing I feel like requires an almost like a formalization. Like, okay, I'm going to be grateful now. Whereas delight, you're just kind of on the lookout for things that spark you and make you reflexively smile. And a few things are better than that.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, David. David makes a protein bar unlike any other. It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. That's right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from protein. These bars from David also taste amazing. My favorite flavor is chocolate chip cookie dough.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
But then again, I also like the chocolate fudge flavored one. And I also like the cake flavored one. Basically, I like all the flavors. They're incredibly delicious. For me personally, I strive to eat mostly whole foods. However, when I'm in a rush or I'm away from home, or I'm just looking for a quick afternoon snack, I often find that I'm looking for a high quality protein source.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I think this is a really important distinction because it seems like ultimately the goal, if I may, is to be happy in your life regardless of the third person provided that you're not doing damage to somebody else's happiness in life.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
With David, I'm able to get 28 grams of protein with the calories of a snack, which makes it very easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight each day. And it allows me to do that without taking in excess calories. I typically eat a David Barr in the early afternoon or even mid-afternoon if I want to bridge that gap between lunch and dinner.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I like that it's a little bit sweet, so it tastes like a tasty snack, but it's also giving me that 28 grams of very high quality protein with just 150 calories. If you would like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, the link is davidprotein.com slash Huberman. I've long been interested in
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
shifting one's emotions and when that feels good, when it is good and when it doesn't feel good. I asked our friend Ethan Cross about this too. I'm not going to compare your answers as a template for who's right, who's wrong. I think there are a lot of differing opinions on this. But I know from the time we are young kids, we don't like to be shifted.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
We don't like people to impose an emotional requirement on us. In fact, my niece, when she was little – I was telling her this. She's 18 now. She was not amused, which delighted me that she was not amused. But when she was little – She was a pretty healthily stubborn kid. And you'd ask her to do anything. Like, hey, let's go downstairs for a walk. And she loved going outside for walks.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And she'd say, no, push me. And then she would get her stuff and then you'd go for a walk. But I loved her like, no, push me. I love this. It was all the Costello was like, don't push me. You couldn't. So there was this... Like immediate vocalization from the time she could speak really was like, no, I'm going to decide how I feel. Such a healthy thing too. Such a healthy thing.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
You're not going to shift me. I was like, we're going out for a walk. It's going to be fun. And she's like, no, push me. And then she'd go for the walk. Most of the times it was a fun walk. But I think that we don't like to be shifted. And in some ways we don't really like to shift ourselves. Like when we're in a given emotion –
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
when people are feeling upset, they don't want to be told they should feel happy. And yet no one really wants to be upset. Although there's this, do you know this result?
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I don't want to spin off into a long discussion about this, but Robert Heath, a very controversial neurosurgeon from the like 70s and 80s, did these experiments of stimulating in different parts of the brain, allowing people to self-stimulate different parts of their brain. And there were only three subjects because it's an in vivo human neurostimulation experiment.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
All three subjects, by far, their favorite area to stimulate was this midline central nucleus, midline thalamic nucleus, rather. All three of them reported that the The sensation that they would lever press the most for was frustration and mild anger. Humans like that shit. Excuse my language.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Toxic positivity?
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
You'd be amazed at how much suffering they report.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Americans might be surprised to hear this, but I learned this from my father, who's from South America. He's from Argentina, went to British schools when he was young. And he told me when I was 10 or 12, I can't remember exactly how old he said. You know, in the British formal school system, if you act too happy, people accuse you of being stupid. You know, to be gleeful or happy. Yeah.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And I said, now I would say, well, they're perfectly fine being happy when they're drinking. I will say that the after work alcohol culture in London.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
How much suffering they report.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I don't know if it's still the case, but they drink a lot. And then they get very like outwardly happy. But there's this idea. And this was true when I came into academia that if somebody wasn't super serious that they might be stupid. And I think in the United States now we tend to celebrate more expressions of glee. But that's usually in the context of like celebrity and wealth.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Like these people getting on their private planes or something. But I think there's still some elements to this that –
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
that we internalize that if you're happy that you're not worrying about something if you're not worrying about something then you're ignoring the woes of the world maybe even the threats that are all around you and so we're in some ways we are conditioned to always want to be happy that does seem to be one message but then
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
We also get the conflicting message that to be happy is to be ignorant of what's really happening, if not to you, then to other people. And therefore, you're not fulfilling your role in society. So who are you to be happy all the time? There's a lot of judgment written into this thing around happiness, I'm realizing.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I have a family member. She's wonderful. She saves animals constantly. And she knows that she has an excessive number of animals, but she's from the East coast. She's from New Jersey.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And the other day she told me, she goes, you know, I like your podcast, but you know, sometimes you'll have these guests on that are clearly from the West coast and you guys get into this real like West coast, California, squishy stuff. And I just can't listen to those. And I said, I won't say her name, but for sake of privacy, but
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And she said, but you know, I really like it when, even if the topic is about something kind of squishy, if the person's from the East Coast, then like, you know, like I believe what they're saying. And I said, and she goes, yeah, you know, out there, you're into this and that. And I said, well, out there in New Jersey, you know, language is kind of a weapon. It's absolutely a weapon, you know?
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
So I do think there are these even local cultural things like people from the Midwest to me, I don't want to, you know, stereotype, but they, there's a, every time I go to the Midwest, I must say that there's a, there's an etiquette. People are just so polite and kind. So the level of sort of mean level of decency is much higher than it is say in California. Yeah.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
In California, there are some other things that are wonderful that are lacking elsewhere and on the East Coast and so forth.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
But yeah, I think one can overgeneralize, but I think that the reason I raise this is that maybe we all need to pay a little bit of attention to the messages that we internalized in our family and our culture growing up and ask ourselves whether or not our degree of happiness or lack thereof is by some programming, literally social programming that we've internalized.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
It's only when they reflect on their life and they're asking, well, how's it going that they say, oh, I don't know, my stocks went down or like- When I hear about lack of happiness, let me think of some of the kind of bullet point ones that seem to come up repetitively. They are indeed not related to lack of resources. I don't hear that.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Because I grew up in a home where cynical humor was rewarded. And I've learned over the years, in part through discussions with Jamil Zaki and others, I'm working on it. not all my humor is cynical, but I don't like cynicism. It bums me out. It doesn't feel good. And I realize it doesn't feel good. I love delight, but I don't like cynicism. That's just me.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And for the cynics out there, like, cool, you do you. I think we have to pay attention to kind of like where our set point is with this stuff. Because some people are like sitting real in the, don't push me, and they want to be unhappy, right? We're heading up on the holidays here. So like Scrooge, right? And other people, they're not feeling good. They want to be happy.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And then other people really are just like, no worries. I mean, down in Australia, it's all no worries. And what do they say in Costa Rica? I always...
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Which means?
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Everyone's just telling each other, like, how great life should be all day long.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I will say they're very effective when they work. They're very proficient. I mean, I'm struck by the like average level of, operational and intellectual intelligence of somebody. Like the person, your waiter in Denmark is an awesome waiter. And oftentimes has very interesting things to say. Like the level of proficiency and the level of focus when they are working is immensely high.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
What I've heard, and this is also true for where I spend part of my time and where I grew up, which is in Silicon Valley, which is also Not everyone, but there are people there who have accrued tremendous amount of wealth. The mean has shifted very high and hence the cost of living. But it's often concerns about their kids or their mother is ill. Their child is struggling in a particular way.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
So they're not just like kicking back all day.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I love that. Like I said, my father's Latin. He's from Argentina and he married a Danish woman. And I would say much of their life is about cherishing and delighting in these small things, the everyday things. I think that's, dare I say, I think that's one of their major points of convergence. I know I'm sure there are others, but that's a major point of convergence.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I think, you know, growing up in the United States, I sort of internalized this idea that, you know, you're supposed to figure out who, you know, who you are and go do big things. You know, like that was the message that I internalized. Part of that was the high school I went to, a super competitive high school and kind of people I tended to surround myself by.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
But I think for some of us, the effort is in trying to learn to appreciate the little things. Having a dog and a We have to talk about dogs because you've actually studied dogs extensively. Dogs, non-human primates in a natural setting and the other old world primates, humans. You know, people talk about how dogs are just present. They're not thinking about the past.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
They're not thinking about the future. I'd like to challenge that just for a second. This isn't the cynic in me. This is the scientist in me. And I'm genuinely curious. How do we know that... dogs aren't thinking a little bit about the past or the walk they're going to take later that afternoon. Do we know? I mean, they have a prefrontal cortex that can anticipate things.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
They have a memory system. They have a hippocampus and a cortex that can remember things. So how do we know that our dog isn't sitting there, you know, yes, trying to glean as much sunshine as they can on their belly through the window. But maybe they're thinking like, gosh, like, when are they going to finish doing whatever it is they're doing so we can go outside and play ball?
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I will just say that. Well, first of all, dogs have, as far as I know, one of the most dramatic ranges in body size within a given species of animal. So Chihuahua Great Dane. I think it's the dosing of IGF-1 that regulates body size in dogs. It's a beautiful cover of Science Magazine that we can put a link to with a Chihuahua and a Great Dane. And it's just like, whoa, same species.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
They have relatively small brains relative to their body weight size regardless.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Not a lot of prefrontal cortex. Not a lot of prefrontal cortex. Stuff right behind your forehead. folks, is the part that allows you to say shh to your impulses, to quiet your impulses, suppress them, and also context-dependent learning and planning. So what to do, what to say, what not to do, what not to say in a given environment. There's a lot
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
in your brain about that that is, you know, controlled by so-called executive function, the sort of conductor of the whole thing. And you're saying dogs have a pretty limited real estate there.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Very often that's what it is. They're concerned about the lack of well-being in their kids related to mental health or physical health or other relatives' mental health, physical health. Or they're upset about something politically. But we won't go there. We won't go there.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Or they're still laughing at so-and-so from the dog park incident two weeks ago. Exactly. So much of human negative interaction is humans exchanging – good and bad information about other humans. Oh, totally. It's like kind of the basis of not all, but a lot of social media.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Or even better, like Costello, I used to look at him and think, what's going on in that brain of his? And then I realized it's probably, and this is a neurophysiologist, I wouldn't consider myself a neurophysiologist, but I've done some, certainly a fair number of recordings from the live brain.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And I'm guessing most of what was in there is what we call hash, not the drug, but it's just, it's background white noise. That's the sound you hear on the audio monitor when there's no clean signal to noise. I'm guessing it's just hash, like I wonder if the term monkey mind – well, I'll just come clean.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I always thought that monkey mind was this image of a little monkey swinging from tree to tree and that it's the adjective sort of superimposed on the human brain. So, excuse me, it's the verb of the moving monkey transformed into an adjective judgment about the human brain.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Yeah, exactly. You know, somebody who really appreciates raptors and diving birds. Think about the computations diving birds have to do. They have to adjust for the refractory index of the water. So where they see the fish is not where the fish is. And, you know, so when people say bird brain, I'm like – Oh, yeah.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Smartest guys. So monkeys – but you're making me realize – I always thought rhesus macaques, which are old world primates like us, or we're like them – that they had a fair amount of prefrontal real estate in their brain such that they could think and strategize and plan.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I mean, if one just watches one episode of that Netflix special, which I love, which is Chimp Empire, there's all this stuff about who's in power and then they're going to team up and then they're going to wait a few days until that one's injured and then they're not going to groom the other one and boom, there's an over... I mean, like very complicated...
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
It's chess, not checkers for old world primates.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
So they're good at short-term strategy. This fits with what a friend of mine who studies behavior in macaques told me, which is that you can set up a really nice, complicated, on paper, perfect experiment where the monkey is going to inform you about some important feature of how the brain works in terms of behavioral economics or something. But then what you realize is
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
or what the monkey realizes, even if it doesn't consciously realize, is that no matter what, they're going to get reward 50% of the time on average. And they'll just hit the lever or give an answer as fast as they can. So they get that day's ration of reward. And just that's the end of the day. And so they're not cheating.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
They're just like, why would I work any harder than this to actually do the experiment you want me to do? And so what many... primate behavioral researchers end up becoming are monkey trainers.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I delight in that a little bit. I confess just a little bit, just a tiny bit.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Yeah, so what we're talking about is they are good at figuring out the basic rules, maybe even up to the level of what you call in computer programming and gates. If this and that are happening, then I go right. If that and that are not happening... then I don't do anything. And if that and a third option are happening, well, then I go left. Yeah.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And if all three are happening, it doesn't matter. Like they can probably figure out, you know, two or three levels of and gates.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Now I'm pausing just to think about this a little bit more. As we grow up, and I realize it varies by place and lots of circumstances. But as we grow up, we are taught to pay attention to how our life is going a bit from the outside. We gain evaluations starting really young. Little stars on our pictures, or good job, or nowadays they say great effort in drawing.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I definitely want to continue along the dimension of how we construct our happiness. But I just want to make sure that I ask again about dogs. And let's just do this because I know it's so politically dangerous, but let's talk about the dog versus cat thing. My sister loves cats. I don't dislike cats, but that doesn't mean I like them. I once rented a place where there was a big cat.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I think it was one of these Maine Coon cats. Oh, yeah. His name was Baloo.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
He's basically a dog. And Costello had certain cat-like qualities, like he just wanted to lounge all day. He could really move like a dog, but most of the time he was kind of like a cat at home and it was frustrating for me. But what do you think it is? You have these feline people and you have dog people. And I'm definitely in the dog camp.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
But one of the reasons I love dogs is I assume they're in the present, but mostly it's the unconditional love. But what do you think it is, this dog-cat thing? I mean, cats are presumably in the present as well.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
But Dr. Laurie Santos today explains that by shifting our orientation toward gratitude, towards something more aligned with what delights us, we are able to better tap into the mechanisms that enable us to feel happier in a more pervasive way.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
They don't make long-term plans, and if they do, they don't actualize those plans. So why is it that some people feel that cats are like – nasty animals that are plotting against them. And some people delight in cats.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Yeah, my niece. Yeah.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
No push me.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Unless we said we were going for ice cream, it was no push me. And I remember – and I still delight in it thinking like awesome. She had just – I mean like she had such a strong spirit from the time she was little.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I don't want a cat.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
So interesting. And I like to think did not take us too far off course in our discussion about happiness because we clearly delight in this. And hopefully people do too is that we think about the different brain architectures and the different capabilities that different brain architectures have across species. And the fact that we live in such close proximity to some of these species is wild.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
This whole thing, the growth mindset language. But I don't know that in the United States we are taught to think about being happy in our life.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
When I was growing up, not everyone had a dog unless they had the space for it. Now I feel like dogs are everywhere.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Oh, when I see somebody with a bulldog, I just say, excuse me, there's a bulldog tax. Oh, yeah, bulldog tax. And then I pet their bulldog. Yeah, good.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And if you're going to meet a bulldog, just understand they're shaped like a beer keg, so they can't scratch themselves on their hindquarters. So if you give them a scratch there, they're like, thank you. Because it's got to be just awful. It's like having that scratch in the middle of your back and you can't reach it.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Right? As kids, I think all kids, all mammals seem to gravitate towards joyful experiences for them. Playing is almost always an innate joyful experience. But then as the evaluations start coming in, we get better and better at assessing our performance and where we are relative to the sort of standard goals of the third grade, the fifth grade, the 12th grade.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I love all of that. I just want to double click if it were on this idea that they can be a bridge for social connection. That's really powerful. A friend of mine who used to smoke cigarettes, who doesn't any longer. In fact, I remember when I was a postdoc at Stanford, mostly the foreign postdocs, but they used to gather outside and have cigarette breaks all the time.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Now you're not allowed to smoke on the medical school campus and I think probably on the main campus too. Most places you're not allowed to smoke outdoors. Yeah, most universities, yeah. Right, because of secondhand smoke in any case.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
But he said to me, you know, it used to be that before people either knew or fully internalized how bad smoking was, is that asking for a cigarette or sharing a cigarette side by side with somebody was a way that people engaged in casual interaction, not just outside of bars, not just to meet potential mates, et cetera, but it was just
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
It was a bridge, you know, you could walk up to somebody and say, you know, like we just call it like bumming a smoke. Like you ask for a cigarette or if someone was smoking, you go stand by them and you also smoke. And so it was this terribly health diminishing habit, but it served as a lot of social lubricant.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
So we need to be in pursuit of things. We need to work. But we also need some free time. We can't have too much free time or too much work, basically. And the sweet spot is often hard to maintain or even know what that sweet spot is.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
But at the same time, I don't think anyone ever sat me down and said, how are you going to evaluate if you're feeling good in your life? Like that you're savoring your soccer game, that you're savoring your time with friends. That was never taught to me.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Get some sunlight. Mini walk. Walk outside, right? Walk in sunlight. Huge.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Super important because I think the filling of those spaces with What I love the analogy to NutraSweet or artificial sweeteners is it's going to taste like it's providing some sort of nourishment, but it's probably just creating a more sense of craving and want at some level. Would really like to talk about reward circuitry just thematically.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Listeners of this podcast, and even if they've never heard one of these podcasts before, are probably familiar with the word dopamine. We've talked about it a bit. And as we were talking about earlier, everything about
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
the dopamine reward circuitry, which of course includes other chemicals too, is based on prior experience relative to current experience relative to anticipated outcome, what's sometimes referred to as reward prediction error. Think something great's going to happen, something great happens, great. Think something great's going to happen, something less than great happens, sucks way more than
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
you would anticipate. Think that something not so great is going to happen, something so-so or great happens, huge reward. Novelty, surprise brings the positive novelty and surprise brings the biggest rewards. And this is what I would like to kind of paint as the backdrop. Think about it as a conceptual mural behind us as I ask the question, maybe, just maybe, we're not supposed to be happy
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
all the time, or maybe even all that often. And when we're feeling not so great or even lousy, provided it's not dangerous levels of depression, maybe we should frame that as the backdrop for the greater happiness that will come when we start to emerge from that lousy state.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Now, some people would say, well, now you're just kind of using neurobiology to twist around what would otherwise be a lousy experience and tell me that it's good for me. No, what I'm trying to say is people want to be happy. I think we'd all love to be happy all the time, but we're not wired to be happy all the time.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And maybe the feelings of happiness can't exist unless they have contrast with these neutral or negative emotion states that we call, I don't know, feeling lousy, feeling anxious, et cetera.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And just, I realize I can pose long questions, but I just want to provide a little bit more context for the moment, which is that every circuit in the brain, our ability to see light, literally, depends on the contrast with the so-called off circuitry, which is the circuitry in our visual system that perceives darkness. We need contrast to be able to see light. Everything's push-pull.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Hunger satiety. Cold heat perception. Go, no-go. It's all push-pull circuitry in there. Why wouldn't happiness have a push-pull relationship with unhappiness or at least neutral affect?
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Walk into a bakery.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
It smells amazing. Spend five minutes in the bakery, 10 minutes in the bakery, you attenuate, you habituate.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I definitely agree with that. I also, and forgive me, folks, but I think I understand why Dogs are so awesome. They don't attenuate to reward. You tell them they're going to get this little piece of amazing whatever beef jerky or something, and they're like, yes. And then second trial, yes. Third trial, yes. I mean, presumably at some point they reach satiety or fatigue.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
But there's something about their reward pathways that they don't seem to attenuate much. And if there's feedback to us on that, it's like, okay, okay. You know, it's great. They'll keep – delighting in the simple little things, it seems like almost as much as the first time.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
We are not like that.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Literally, for folks listening, it literally disappears. Yes. If I set up the right experiment – Russ and Karen Devaloy at Berkeley years ago did these beautiful experiments. You look at like a grating of light projected onto a wall and if you can stabilize the eyes so that they're not moving around. It literally will disappear. And the same thing with an odor, same thing with touch, right?
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Like I wasn't thinking about my contact with the chair. And same thing with happiness, my deliciousness of salad. Habituation, attenuation, these are technical terms when you really get down into it. And the push-pull antagonism between light and dark, the smell, yes, no, on, off, push, all of it, go, no, go. Every single aspect of the nervous system functions this way.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Flexor extensor in the musculoskeletal system.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
We also discuss topics such as hedonic adaptation, that is how our pursuit of things and our whole experience of pleasure sets the stage for what's going to feel like a meaningful pursuit and pleasureful in the days and weeks to follow.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
This is the – I don't want to adhere to this, but this is the quote-unquote second place is first loser kind of mindset.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And the gold medalist is expected to get gold the next year or else it's pure reward prediction error. Yes. especially if they internalize the expectations of the audience, the spectators, excuse me, because if they come back the next year and they're second or third on the podium or not on the podium, it's seen as falling from a higher place.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
The only way forward is stay there, down, or create a new upward.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I love a good conceptual pun, especially when it's framed in an experiment. So thank you for that.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Finding, at some point I think it was Travolta says something, someone will know it, where finding it almost made losing it worth it.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Because you appreciate it in a way that you didn't before because it was taken away from you.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I love this one mostly because I think most people, including myself really, we want to avoid thinking negative stuff, especially on purpose. But what you're telling us is that it provides a wonderful contrast point. To kind of trampoline off into the reality that is our current reality, which is far better than these horrible scenarios.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I have a friend who's a cardiologist from UCSF. And he says, you know, the danger of telling people that you're going to write a book or that you're going to start a podcast or that you're going to start a company is that
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
you have very supportive friends and if you tend to be a pretty high agency person you'll get a lot of praise and a lot of reward and there's a lower probability that you'll actually do the thing because you've derived some of the reward whereas if people tell you you know yeah that seems kind of unlikely given that this and that you know it feels um doesn't feel so good and obviously we we want to encourage each other this is the complicated thing it's a you know it's a it's a it's a very narrow
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
beam to walk on. You want to encourage people, but you don't want to give them so much reward that then it undercuts their motivation. And you certainly don't want to discourage them to the point where they give up on themselves prior to even trying.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
at least in the United States, probably in other countries too, goodness, do we love a story about somebody who was told like they couldn't do it and they did it. You know, I think about the enormous popularity of David Goggins, who had a truly difficult childhood and internalized all these messages of how terrible he was and
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And then use those voices, other people's and his own, in his head to push himself to do tremendously difficult things. And then to continue to do tremendously difficult things and to self-publish one of the most popular self-published books of all time. And then to go off and become a medic. And now he's effectively doing the training of somebody going to medical school for his new training.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
For people that grow up or live in areas where – well, let's just say that have less disposable wealth. Is there – there must be data on sort of relationship to intrinsic versus extrinsic forces on happiness. I mean, I can make up all sorts of stories in my head about how people starting out from very different circumstances would be more or less happy. But what do the data say?
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Like he just refuses to stop. And it's according to him – sat in that very chair and said, it's fueled by an internal voice of you can't do it. And then he fights back against that voice, which is oh so different than manifesting this image of success.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
High schoolers run it. Yeah. Which is crazy. I mean –
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
one of the things that contrasts a country like Denmark, for instance, um, compared to the United States.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Um, and I know this from discussions with my stepmother is that, you know, in this country we have this notion because we have a lot of examples of people that went from absolutely nothing to these, uh, tremendously quote unquote high places, financially, reputationally, et cetera, performance in whatever domain, um, sometimes overnight. Um,
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
This last year, I would say two events stick out in my mind as like, whoa, like, wow. The first was seeing the SpaceX rocket get captured by the quote-unquote chopsticks. That was just a rocket landing of all things. So cool. So cool. Everybody, regardless of what else was going on with people's opinions of –
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
of SpaceX or Elon or whatever, we're just like, whoa, that was just an awesome feat of engineering, just an undeniably awesome feat of engineering. So it sets a bigger upper ceiling on what we thought was possible. We're seeing something that we hadn't seen before, at least not like that, not at that scale and resolution.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
So that changes what one conceptualize about what's possible in different aspects of life. And I think that's important. lifts the ceiling. The other was a very different example was the overnight, the Hak Tua girl, right? Who nobody knew of, right? Made a comment in a passing, you know, video on the street, you know, one of these like whatever spontaneous interview things.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And then now has a quite successful podcast. It was ranked one of the highest new podcasts of the year. Has a as far as I understand, has a staff and a thriving business now. This is a very American thing, right? To go from an unknown to one or two quick comments to all of a sudden being a famous and presumably famous and somewhat wealthy person as well. Yeah.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And, you know, wish her nothing but luck in evolving that. Good luck. Yeah, good luck. Yeah, sure. Like I love to see people win, you know, like, OK, it was an unusual trajectory, but but not so unusual for the United States in some sense, because we also have the people who, you know, climb the staircase or the people that climb the staircase fell then came back.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
You know, we we love and we cherish these stories in this country. And I think it I think it frames the the young mind in an interesting way. It sets this anything is possible. Oftentimes it takes clearly a ton of hard work, oftentimes at the expense of other aspects of one's mental or physical health or life, you know, life enrichment, family, et cetera.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
But it's a very American thing for people to be like anything's possible.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
What do you think that does to our level of happiness if we're somebody that is looking for happiness wants a good life, wants resources, but doesn't like, maybe they feel a little guilty that they're not as quote unquote ambitious as everybody else. But then you contrast that with a country like Denmark where people are very happy.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
They're certainly ambitious Danes, but they're actually, I was told that the word ambition is a little bit of a pejorative. A little bit, because you're not supposed to, you know, it's a very, you're not supposed to get that far ahead of anybody without acknowledging that you're still part of the pack.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
forgive me Danes but they're nice people so they'll likely go easy on me and I have Danish relatives so like how do we how do we take what's out and around us address who we are and reconcile those things so that we're good with what we've got and know that we are good with what we've got yeah yeah I mean I think this is a spot where you know culture plays a big role I think you're exactly right about Denmark in fact the Danes have this idea of Jante's law I'm probably pronouncing this poorly but J-N-T-E's law which is ideas like you're not really supposed to be
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Acquires a serious frame shift.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I certainly have learned to relish in the failures as well as the successes. And I think some of that also just comes with age. I've always wanted to say that. It's true, though.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Yeah, you accrue enough experiences, good and bad and neutral, and you kind of go, like, the other day I was in this kind of weird state of mind. I was like, wait, I've been here before. Like, this shifts. Like, no worries. Like, this shifts. And then, sure enough, it shifted.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I think the first time we find ourself in a place or we find ourself back in a place and we forget we've been there before for whatever reason or we try and pretend we haven't been there before, it's like, And then you go through enough of those cycles, like, okay, this is part of a larger trajectory.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
This is the amazing thing about the brain I never understood, I still don't, which is that when we're feeling happy, we don't tend to think, gosh, this feeling is going to go away.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Sometimes a little bit of that, but when we're feeling lousy, it does seem to do something to our sense of time, our time perception that makes it seem, especially in the real lows, in the real trenches, that it's going to go on forever. We can't imagine feeling differently. The this too shall pass. is very hard to internalize when we're in those states. Totally.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
This is very important for everyone to hear, especially in this modern age of so-called dopamine hits, easy to achieve dopamine, highly processed foods, and the various things that you can find online. And speaking of online, we also discussed the role that smartphones and social media play, not just in our happiness, but in our cognition.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
It's so interesting because it's kind of counterintuitive that realizing that something positive is also fleeting allows us to savor it more. Because From an uninformed perspective, one could imagine, okay, so you're at a great meal with people you love and it's been, let's even say it's been a rough month before and you're like really in it.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And someone says, well, you know, like this too is going to pass. And you're like, that sounds like kind of a downer, right? But then if it allows you to savor it more, that's key. So yeah, there does seem to be this inverse relationship between
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
sad states and happy states where when we are in sad states, we feel like it will go on forever and we'll do almost anything to get out of those unless they've completely collapsed us. In our happy states, we don't want to be reminded that it will pass. And this is why I think in part, not the only reason why people will take mood altering drugs.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I'm talking about this in the recreational sense, like to sort of forget everything else and forget that whatever they're experiencing is going to wear off.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
It's the contrast again.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
It's the contrast. And maybe it's why people watch horror movies. I'm not into horror movies, but so that, you know, maybe you feel safer.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
That stuff always made me feel terrified if I was, you know, watch some of that late at night.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
Me too.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And those are pre-tax 2010 numbers?
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I like getting out of the cold plunge for exactly the reason we're talking about.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
So what's the ideal ratio? They don't know. They didn't figure it out.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
60-40, positive, negative. You're obviously anticipating a number.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
I can attest that they're not universally positive. Sometimes they're terrifying, even in their clinical application. The thing I appreciated about the rocket landing was that, indeed, I feel awe looking up at the stars at night or just thinking about how we're having this conversation in a room and then expanding out to like we're a little object floating in the universe.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
And that can be a bit overwhelming. What's, I think, incredible is that through the harnessing of engineering and physics. SpaceX was able to create something that was so well controlled at a scale that I'm normally accustomed to thinking about things. Sure, I've seen planes and we landed on the moon, et cetera. Some people will debate that, but we were on the moon. I wasn't, but somebody was.
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How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos
To see control and harnessing of physics and engineering at a scale that is certainly not at the scale of the entire galaxies, but it's starting to approach outer space and back again, clearly. And in such a... I think it was the slowing of that enormously large object and the capture that felt so gratifying.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Stacey Sims. Dr. Stacey Sims is an exercise physiologist and a nutrition scientist and a world expert in all things training and nutrition, specifically for women.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Let's get people – sorry to interrupt. Let's get people up to speed on RPE because this is a term that's starting to circulate more outside the physical training community and to the broader kind of recreational exerciser community, which I consider myself part of. Me too now. I mean, I train regularly and have for years, but I'm not an athlete. I don't get paid to train and so forth.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
So reps in reserve, perceived effort. Let me just explain this. I think probably 95% of our listenership has never heard these terms.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
So eight repetitions in good form and the person doing the exercise could, in theory... They really dug in there, grit their teeth, could complete two more repetitions in good form before hitting failure, the inability to move the weight anymore in good form.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Okay. But they're stopping at eight, so they have two reps in reserve.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
between men and women and their needs in terms of nutrition and training. But she is also exquisitely skilled at highlighting the data showing that there are specific areas of nutrition and fitness for which women and men differ and women have specific needs. So today you will learn what those are.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
As opposed to looking at, say, percentage of one repetition maximum. Yeah. Saying you're going to move 70% of your one repetition maximum for six repetitions. Seems like that's a great thing as well, but it's a little bit more complicated because you need to know your one repetition maximum.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Doing one repetition maximums can be dangerous if you're not skilled in that, especially with compound movements like squats and deadlifts. Okay. So is there an across-the-board recommendation for most people that they should – generally train their sets in good form to failure, to leave a couple reps in reserve? What do you suggest for, let's say women, but this could also pertain to men?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Interesting. Lots to talk about in terms of exercise, but before we move on, if the bad situation is a woman fasting, drinking caffeine, and training intensely, but as you told us, not as intensely as she would be able to otherwise, what's the solution? I imagine that solution involves ingesting some fuel.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
and you will learn how to apply those specific protocols such that by the end of today's episode, you'll be armed with a tremendous amount of new knowledge about the biological mechanisms and the specific do's and do nots that can guide you towards your female-specific health and fitness goals.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
What is a good example of a, you know, a pre-training meal, if you will? And we could put some variation on that for people with different, you know, tendencies towards omnivore or vegan or whatever. But what is the timing of that meal relative to training that works best? And I'm assuming there's some flexibility there.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
I've heard of people like you. Yeah. Meaning I tend to move slowly in the morning.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Okay, so we're similar in that way. Yeah. So how do you square that?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
As a neuroscientist, I find it so interesting that at least some of what you're talking about with this pre-workout meal and perhaps most of it relates to how ingesting those calories impacts the brain, protects those cispeptin neurons. And we'll talk more about cispeptin, very interesting peptide.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Maui Nui Venison.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
As opposed to saying, okay, you need X number of calories because you're going to burn X number of calories.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Which is a very different conversation. Here what we're talking about is the neural aspects of being able to generate intensity, also blunt cortisol, and get the most out of training without putting the body into kind of an emergency state.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Right. And it has its own kind of elements of being laced with neuroticism about calorie counting and then that can drift easily into the realm of eating disorders. I did an episode about eating disorders some years ago and as I was researching that episode, I learned that people with eating disorders, women and men, especially anorexia, become like calorie calculators.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Their eyes and their brain just are constantly evaluating the caloric load of food. And it can be obviously very intrusive. It's also the most deadly of all the psychiatric conditions. So that's a long way from hopefully what we're talking about here. But there's the opportunity for drift whenever talking about calorie counting in and out. Of course- believe in the laws of thermodynamics.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
calories in, calories out. But I love what you're describing here as getting the brain in a mode that the brain and body are protected so that one can invest in that high intensity exercise and get the adaptations that one wants, but not send everything down this pathway of just becoming a computer of how much am I exercising? What did I burn? What did I earn? Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
As long as we're talking about food and food intake relative to training, What is the suggested post-training window in which one should either avoid or make sure they get nutrition? Meaning how long does one have after, let's say, a resistance training session of about an hour?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
It seems to me that's what most people are doing if they're investing in resistance training, maybe plus or minus a what? 20 minutes. And they're hitting those high intensity sets where they have maybe just one or two repetitions in reserve, maybe going to failure on a few of those sets. What do you recommend women eat after they train?
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Maui Nui Venison is the most nutrient-dense and delicious red meat available. I've spoken many times before on this and other podcasts and with several expert guests on this podcast about the fact that most of us should be seeking to get about one gram of high quality protein per pound of body weight every day.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
So women should try and get 30 or as much as 40, maybe 50 grams of protein, depending on their age, post-training, within an hour of training.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
men seem to have a longer window. They could wait an hour, two hours, maybe even three hours before ingesting protein. What about carbohydrate?
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
As many of you know, I've been taking AG1 for more than 10 years now, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring this podcast. To be clear, I don't take AG1 because they're a sponsor. Rather, they are a sponsor because I take AG1. In fact, I take AG1 once and often twice every single day, and I've done that since starting way back in 2012.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Not only does that protein provide critical building blocks for things like muscle repair and synthesis, but also for overall metabolism and health. Maui Nui venison has an extremely high quality protein per calorie ratio. so that you can get that one gram of protein per pound of body weight easily and without ingesting an excess of calories. Also, Maui Nui venison is absolutely delicious.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
There is so much conflicting information out there nowadays about what proper nutrition is, but here's what there seems to be a general consensus on.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Whether you're an omnivore, a carnivore, a vegetarian or a vegan, I think it's generally agreed that you should get most of your food from unprocessed or minimally processed sources, which allows you to eat enough but not overeat, get plenty of vitamins and minerals, probiotics and micronutrients that we all need for physical and mental health.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Now, I personally am an omnivore and I strive to get most of my food from unprocessed or minimally processed sources. But the reason I still take AG1 once and often twice every day is that it ensures I get all of those vitamins, minerals, probiotics, etc. But it also has adaptogens to help me cope with stress.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
It's basically a nutritional insurance policy meant to augment, not replace quality food. So by drinking a serving of AG1 in the morning and again in the afternoon or evening, I cover all of my foundational nutritional needs. And I, like so many other people that take AG1, report feeling much better in a number of important ways, such as energy levels, digestion, sleep and more.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
So while many supplements out there are really directed towards obtaining one specific outcome, AG1 is foundational nutrition designed to support all aspects of well-being related to mental health and physical health. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
They'll give you five free travel packs with your order, plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman. At some point, there was a lot of discussion about training fasted burns more body fat. I think now most people accept that that's not the case, that perhaps the percentage of...
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
fat as fuel is increased when one trains fasted, but that overall in terms of loss of body fat. it doesn't matter if you train fasted or you train fed.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Okay. I think that can't be stated enough by experts like you. That doesn't mean that if one prefers to train fasted or with a minimum of food in their gut that they can't do that. I like to train fasted, but what I'm hearing is that women should probably ingest at least some protein, high quality protein, and maybe drink the protein in a protein shake form if they don't want to ingest solid food.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
I love their venison steaks, their ground venison, I love their bone broths, and I love their jerky, which is extremely convenient when you're traveling. Those Maui Nui venison jerky sticks have 10 grams of high quality protein per stick at just 55 calories. While Maui Nui offers the highest quality meat available, their supplies are limited.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
I know some men that basically don't eat all day and then eat one meal in the evening and they'll train in the morning. That's inconceivable to me because within an hour or so of training, I'm hungry, which brings to mind what we mean when we say training. I'm a big believer in people, everybody getting ideally to
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
or three resistance training sessions in per week and two, maybe three cardiovascular training sessions per week. That would be ideal. One could potentially do more, probably not a whole lot less before you run into long-term health issues that you could offset. But I think most people can fit those in.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
And I'm very frankly delighted that nowadays there's such a push for women and men to resistance train. That wasn't the case when I was growing up. I recall taking my sister to the gym for the first time and I think she was the only woman in the gym when we were in high school, except for a few female bodybuilders. And she said, well, I don't want to look like that.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
And I said, well, don't worry, you're not going to look like that. But now you go to a gym and women are lifting weights, men are lifting weights.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
It's terrific.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Yeah, it's awesome. As I mentioned before, I've had female training partners and they kill it. Yeah. It's a lot of fun to have a female training partner also because – not only is it cool to see the progress they can make really quickly, which surprises them often, you know, I think a lot of women think that, okay, it's going to require external androgens or it's going to, you know, and, and what,
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
you pointed out that there are some barriers to women putting on mass quickly. I think I've noticed that strength increases can come really quickly. Why is that?
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Responsible management of the access deer population on the island of Maui means that they will not go beyond harvest capacity. So signing up for a membership is the best way to ensure access to their high quality meat. If you'd like to try Maui Nui Venison, you can go to mauinuivenison.com slash Huberman to get 20% off your membership or first order.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
You're still doing that?
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
whenever somebody, male or female, is concerned about growing too big too fast, I always remind them that resistance training is unique among different types of exercise in that because of the blood flow to the muscle during the exercise session, the so-called pump, you get a window, a transient window, but a window nonetheless
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
of what the hypertrophy could look like if you do everything else correctly in terms of recovery. So provided that the size of the muscle during the training session is not aversive to you, you're okay. You're good. Which is unique among training. It's not like when you go running, you get a sense of being much faster. You actually get the opposite effect.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
You feel the burn in your lungs and the pain of hitting the wall of your limits. And then hopefully if the adaptation takes place, then you can push past that next time. But with resistance training, you get literally a physical picture and a somatic feeling for what that hypertrophy could look like.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
So we've been talking about training, but we haven't really spelled out what you would suggest a novice... perhaps an intermediate resistance training, cardiovascular training program would look like in broad terms. I realize we don't have time here to get into all the nitty-gritty details.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
You've written about this elsewhere and we'll refer people to those terrific resources in the show note captions. But what would you like to see women doing? And maybe we can break up the age brackets because it sounds like this is something that is resurfacing again and again here. Women, let's say...
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Again, that's mauinuivenison.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken many times before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
30 and younger women 31 to let's say 40 and then let's say 41 to 60 and then maybe 61 and on in terms of how many sessions of resistance training per week is it whole body training how many sessions of cardiovascular training and what sorts of examples could could you give
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
And just to remind people, compound movements, multi-joint movements, squats, deadlifts, chin-ups, rows, overhead presses, bench presses, et cetera, as opposed to isolation movements where only one joint is moving. Yeah. And for everybody in all those age ranges that you describe,
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
One of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to control the temperature of your sleeping environment. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
are you suggesting they train the same muscle groups three or four times per week, or they do some sort of split where it's upper body, lower body, take a day off, or upper body, take a day off, lower body, take a day off, whatever might work for them?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Even some interesting literature about emphasizing some unilateral movements as people get older, not just dual limb movements or dual limb simultaneous movements. You always want to train both sides of your body, folks. So if I understand correctly, younger women should train to failure, try and generate strength and hypertrophy.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
As women get older, they should emphasize more strength training, leave some repetitions in reserve, but train heavier. It makes so much sense what you're saying. Because what we know about the nervous system as we age is that there's some atrophy or at least some weakening of neuromuscular connections and the upper motor neurons in the brain that control the
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
neuromuscular connections in the spinal cord out to the muscle. There's something really sticky about this idea in terms of longevity that I don't think anyone else has ever said.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
In addition to working at Stanford and with numerous professional athletic teams, Dr. Sims has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed studies on exercise physiology.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Eight Sleep makes it incredibly easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to program the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for well over three years now, and it has completely transformed my sleep for the better.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
For women who are not on hormone replacement therapy, and we did a previous episode about perimenopause, menopause, and hormone replacement therapy, but if it comes up again and again today, that would be wonderful because these are important under-discussed topics.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
For women that are not on hormone replacement therapy who decide to train heavier, maybe do a bit more training volume, not train to failure, they're making sure to not let their cortisol spike too much by making sure they have some pre-workout nutrition, some post-workout nutrition. Would they be wise to be very careful in how much cardiovascular exercise they add to that?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Meaning there seems to always be this risk of overtraining. And as you pointed out, for various reasons, cultural reasons, historical reasons, around exercise. My observation is that most women, unless they know better, default to cardiovascular exercise as opposed to resistance training.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
So if a woman in her 40s, late 30s to let's say 50, is doing two to four sessions of resistance training workouts per week, and they also really like cardio or they feel they want to or should do cardio, should they be careful about how much cardio they're doing? And is there a best form of cardio? Should they really emphasize the high-intensity interval training? Should they avoid zone two?
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation pod cover, the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity, higher fidelity sleep tracking technology, and it also has snoring detection that remarkably will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
We should probably also define for people what zone two is if they don't already know.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Is this things like soul cycle as well? Yeah. Okay. I've never done any of these. Yeah. But I imagine there's a lot of spinning, a lot of moving, a lot of sweating, and a lot of quote-unquote calories burned emphasis.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, you can go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep currently ships to the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Waking Up.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
I have family members who are women who are thin because they love to walk and they just walk a ton and they eat well and enough. but they are resistant to resistance training. And if they do pick up a weight, it's usually some very light dumbbells, do a few curls, a couple of tricep extensions, and aren't really leaning into the higher intensity work. I think this is pretty common.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
And my observation is that it's common, not because... They couldn't be incentivized to do the higher intensity work. But that learning the complex compound movements, like how to squat properly or even leg press properly, deadlift properly can be a bit overwhelming, especially when one walks into a gym. This is true for men too.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Like all this stuff, all this equipment, all these bodies and these people look like they know what they're doing. It's like if I were to go into an advanced like kitchen or – symphony and all these instruments I don't know how to play. So what's the best line of attack for somebody who really wants to overcome this longevity barrier? Because clearly resistance training, proper nutrition work.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
And the cardiovascular exercise piece is a little bit more intuitive. Walking, you do it faster, you're jogging, you do it faster, you're running. The bike, the SoulCycle class, et cetera, it's easier in terms of the mechanics. One can still get hurt, but it's just more straightforward.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Is there a way that in the absence of a budget for a personal trainer that somebody can learn how to do these movements and, as you said, ease into them over the course of even up to four months in a way that they can be confident that they're unlikely to get hurt and really build up their capacity to do real work that can benefit them?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Waking Up is a meditation app that offers hundreds of guided meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga nidra sessions, and more. I started practicing meditation when I was about 15 years old, and it made a profound impact on my life.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
I'm a big fan of machines, especially plate-loaded machines, but machines just create the close to correct or correct arc of movement. Yeah.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Yeah.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Yeah, exactly. And to really spend the time adjusting the seat height, adjusting the various pins on the machine, not just the weight, in order to make sure that one gets the best range of motion. I think this is something small, but that is significant in terms of its impact.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
People just plop down in a machine, especially if you're working in with somebody and feel, especially beginners will feel pressured to move quickly and they won't adjust the seat height. And so it's just all wrong for them. And all it takes is a little bit of time to, you know, and ask people, you know, how to adjust the machines.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
So you've mentioned polarized training. If I understand correctly, this would be a woman doing three or four days of high intensity resistance training for 45 to 60 or 45 to 75 minutes per session. And then at the opposite extreme, maybe just walking a lot or jogging a lot.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
So is that what you're talking about, polarized training, as opposed to these other forms of training where it's designed to get people sweating like crazy, breathing hard for long periods of time, but neither putting them in the landscape of inducing muscle strength adaptations and hypertrophy adaptations, nor really taxing the cardiovascular system enough to create an increase in longevity, for instance.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
And by now, there are thousands of quality peer-reviewed studies that emphasize how useful mindfulness meditation can be for improving our focus, managing stress and anxiety, improving our mood, and much more. In recent years, I started using the Waking Up app for my meditations because I find it to be a terrific resource for allowing me to really be consistent with my meditation practice.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Yeah.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
I'd like to take a quick break to let you know that the Huberman Lab team has launched a new podcast with host Dr. Andy Galpin. Andy is an expert in exercise science and human performance, and has long been a fan favorite on the Huberman Lab podcast.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
This new podcast is called Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin, and it dives into topics such as how to build muscle and strength, how to improve your cardiovascular health, and how to optimize recovery and sleep for performance and much more. Andy is an absolutely fantastic educator and true expert on all things human performance.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
I know you'll thoroughly enjoy his new podcast and learn a ton of useful knowledge from it. So please check it out and give it a subscribe wherever you're watching or listening to podcasts now. Again, the podcast is called Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin. Let's talk about the menstrual cycle and how that impacts training at the level of psychology and physiology. And of course, the two are linked.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
They're inextricably linked. For instance, is there a particular phase of the menstrual cycle where a woman should expect that motivation and or recovery would be more challenging?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
So this is women who have, quote unquote, normal menstrual cycles, human ureic.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
She has not only evaluated existing protocols for nutrition and fitness that are specific to women versus men, but she has also developed many new protocols that are now in practice with professional sports teams, but that can also serve people who are generally interested in fitness and longevity, and in doing so, the general public. The tools that Dr. Sims shares with us today
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
And this is probably because these studies are being done on university campuses with college undergraduate women.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Which typically is in a given age range.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Many people start a meditation practice and experience some benefits, but many people also have challenges keeping up with that practice. What I and so many other people love about the waking up app is that it has a lot of different meditations to choose from, and those meditations are of different durations.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
So for most women in the weeks before their period, they're going to feel more robust except right up until the point of menstruation or the inverse. Yes.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Got it, okay.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
So broadly speaking, the luteal phase is associated with more cortisol.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
more kind of baseline levels of stress. Would it make sense for a woman to try and offset some of that with a bit more nutrition during that phase, a bit more perhaps complex carbohydrate? We know that some complex carbohydrate can blunt some of the cortisol response, maybe just even a little bit more attention to eating.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
So it makes it very easy to keep up with your meditation practice, both from the perspective of novelty. You never get tired. tired of those meditations. There's always something new to explore and to learn about yourself and about the effectiveness of meditation. And you can always fit meditation into your schedule, even if you only have two or three minutes per day in which to meditate.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
How hard should a woman push through the mental and maybe even physical resistance to train less or not train during a given phase of the cycle?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
I also really like doing yoga nidra or what is sometimes called non-sleep deep rest for about 10 or 20 minutes because it is a great way to restore mental and physical vigor without the tiredness that some people experience when they wake up from a conventional nap. If you'd like to try the Waking Up app, please go to wakingup.com slash Huberman, where you can access a free 30-day trial.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
On the flip side, if a woman is feeling spectacularly good, should she just really push it as hard as she can? Yeah. Is there anything about the relationship between the hormone fluctuations of the menstrual cycle and feeling really, really great that training hard can somehow disrupt the cycle? And this is actually kind of the old lore, probably myth, I would imagine, that –
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
high intensity resistance training is somehow detrimental to female hormone cycles. I don't think there's any evidence for that, but I hear that from time to time. Why do you think that myth came to be? Why do you think it propagates and what can we do to extinguish it if in fact it's not true?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Wow. Very interesting history there. Is it true then that if a woman maintains either caloric balance with her basically eating enough to support her energy output or even a slight caloric surplus, that it's unlikely that her periods will cease even if she's training very hard and very often?
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
So it basically boils down to calories in, calories out.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Again, that's wakingup.com slash Huberman to access a free 30-day trial. And now for my discussion with Dr. Stacey Sims. Dr. Stacey Sims, welcome.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
appetite, body temperature, and hormones are very tightly linked.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Far too tightly for us to disentangle all of those in a single conversation here. But as you're describing the urgent need for women to fuel enough with the proper fuels, to train hard enough to stimulate the correct adaptations that they need, I imagine that the shift in appetite
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
and body temperature that occurs across the menstrual cycle is also going to play into this, meaning there will be phases of the menstrual cycle where women will be just naturally less motivated to eat enough carbohydrate, enough protein in order to get the most out of their training.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
What phases of the menstrual cycle are those so that women can pay particular attention to make sure that they're fueling enough?
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Our podcast, and I put out a lot of content about nutrition, fitness. cold exposure, heat exposure, hydration, topics that are very near and dear to your heart and for which you have a ton of expertise, but for which you have an extra degree of expertise as it relates to females specifically.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Let's talk about one of the many third rails of discussions online, which is birth control.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
And we need to define exactly what type of birth control we're talking about because there are so many different forms.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
There are IUDs, there are the copper IUDs, there's the ring, there's the, you know. Let's talk about oral contraceptives that... are designed to prevent ovulation. So this is quote unquote the pill. So we're being, let's for now limit the conversation to that so that there isn't confusion.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Share with us, if you will, your thoughts on these, how they impact any of the things that we're talking about or anything else from that, for that matter.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Please.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
So I'm excited to talk to you today because very often I will get questions in the comment section on social media or on YouTube Was this study done in both men and women? How does it differ for men versus women? And on and on. And I rarely, if ever, have answers, but you have answers.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
OCs.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Or a contraceptive. And do you recall what the direction of the effect was on the amygdala? For those that don't recall, the amygdala bilateral brain structure, meaning one on each side of your brain – literally means almond in Latin, it's almond shaped, and it's part of a larger network associated with threat detection.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Sometimes it's described the locus of fear in the brain, but it's involved in a lot of other things too, both positive valence and negative valence, but nonetheless is part of the threat detection system, elevated levels of arousal, which is why it's often discussed in the context of fear, anxiety, et cetera.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Great. So just to kick things off, because this is a question I get really often, fasting.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Intermittent fasting.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
We need to distinguish between the two, of course. Yeah. Perhaps the most common question I get as it relates to males versus females is intermittent fasting or time-restricted feeding, as it's sometimes called, an eight-hour feeding window, a six-hour feeding window, a 10-hour feeding window. Is that something that perhaps differs in terms of its impact and how well it works for men versus women?
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Is there any evidence that other forms of female contraception can be, let's just say, problematic for the types of things we're discussing today?
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Or IUD, copper IUD?
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Before we got started today, you mentioned some very interesting pioneering studies on evaluating menstrual blood itself as a window into some larger themes about what's going on physiologically, maybe even psychologically. Now might be a good time to just touch into that. We can always return to it again later. But let me just ask it more directly.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
What are some things that can be measured directly from menstrual blood that are informative for women? And it sounds like there's a new generation of at-home tests that might be interesting and informative for them to think about.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Can we talk about PCOS for a moment? Most people have heard of it by now, but polycystic ovarian syndrome, it's associated with typically elevated androgens. It's becoming more and more common or perhaps detected more based on better detection methods. I don't know which. The prevalence of PCOS seems to be very, very high.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
In the 80s and 90s, there was a lot of excitement in the neurobehavioral endocrinology fields, largely based on animal literature, but then expanding into human literature that certain forms of activities could change hormone patterns. Maybe even psychology. And that makes sense on the surface of it.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
But is there evidence that if somebody engages in, say, high intensity training or competitive scenarios, this has been explored a lot in men, but I'm wondering if it's also been explored now in women. that androgens go up. I mean, there's been these studies, I don't know how good they are, of people on the stock exchange watching their stress fluctuations, measuring testosterone.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
I think most of those studies were done in men, but other competitive scenarios, even showing, for instance, that exogenous testosterone can increase altruism in men, if men are competing for who's like donating the most money at a philanthropic event.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
But you put them in a different scenario where it's far less benevolent in goal, and then they'll, exogenous testosterone drives competitiveness towards things that are more traditionally thought of as male-male competition. In other words, it's all context dependent.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Is there anything that kind of springs to mind of interesting studies as it relates to androgens or estrogens in women athletes and as it relates to exercise?
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
As we talk about menstruation, we should probably talk about iron stores and iron. Yeah. Do women need to supplement iron given that they lose iron during menstruation?
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
If a woman is going to get a blood test to evaluate testosterone, estrogen, lipids, metabolic factors, et cetera, and she can only afford to do that at one point during her cycle and compare at various times, maybe every six months or once a year even at that specific time of her cycle, is there a best time in cycle to do that blood test?
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
And if she can add a second blood test at a different phase of the menstrual cycle, where would you place that second test?
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
And if she measures her hormones at those two times within the cycle, do you think that's sufficient to get... 75% plus of the relevant data.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Terrific. Caffeine. Yes. In the old days, meaning when I was a kid and not long ago. Ten years ago. Three weeks ago. Yeah. We would hear that he's... crazy statements about caffeine. It pulls calcium out of the bones. You'd hear this stuff. I did a whole episode on caffeine.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
I'm a big fan of caffeine, but I do warn people that if they suffer from anxiety or they're going through a particularly stressful life event, it can raise the activity of the sympathetic arm or the autonomic nervous system. You'll feel more nervous. You're more prone to panic when you're drinking caffeine. Many people love caffeine.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
I think 90% of the adult population of the world ingests some form of caffeine every single day.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Likewise, making it the most consumed drug worldwide. Is caffeine safe for women? I suspect based on what you just said that the answer will be yes. But are there case conditions where women should be cautious about their intake of caffeine independent of this anxiety thing? I mean, people probably shouldn't drink more caffeine than they can tolerate psychologically.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
No one, male, female, young or old.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Okay. I hear a lot that people who drink caffeine before a workout, you know, midway through, they're like, I don't feel good.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
For me, that just stimulates the desire for more caffeine. Or even, dare I say, a half piece of nicotine gum, which I experimented with. But I was told, and this is why I'm not going to continue to do it. Not only is it very habit-forming.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
It actually is such a vasoconstrictor that I was told by a dermatologist that it's terrible for skin, even if you're not getting your nicotine by smoking, vaping, dipping, or snuffing. So this big trend now toward ingesting nicotine as a stimulant and cognitive enhancer and performance enhancer, I think people should at least be aware of the negative effects on skin.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
I'll tell you that half piece of nicotine gum is... The first time you do it, it's an unbelievable experience. It's like your first real cup of coffee.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Yeah, and dials you in. I recommend nobody do it because it feels that pleasant if you like caffeine.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Shishandra.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Oh, I should know what this is.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
I should know. Well, I'm here to learn.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Shishandra.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Do you use it? Yep. Are you on it now?
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Okay. You just sent people down the rabbit hole of the internet. All right. Yeah, yeah. You heard it here first, Dr. Stacey Sims. I'm going to give it a try. Because the nicotine thing is an interesting one. And there are some cognitive enhancing effects of nicotine that perhaps in people 65 and older might actually be beneficial for offsetting some forms of neurodegeneration. But
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
That needs to still be explored and researched. Don't cut that and clip it and put it out there like so. That's happened already. Very interesting. All right. Caffeine, we both agree, is great. Shashandra?
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Check it out.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
All right. Will do. Cold.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
For reasons I still don't understand. People have associated me or this podcast with deliberate cold exposure. I like deliberate cold exposure in the form of a cold shower or a cold plunge or an ice bath, mostly for the effects that occur afterward, meaning more alertness, a kind of semi-euphoric buzz that goes on a long, long time.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
No, I don't think it increases metabolism significantly enough to have a meaningful difference. But the long-lasting increases in the so-called catecholamines, dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine to me are pretty impressive. And I just like the way it makes me feel. So that's the main reason I believe why people do deliberate cold exposure.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
And every time I do a post about deliberate cold exposure, I get asked, understandably so, How does it affect women differently than men? And then I usually get questions about Raynaud's syndrome.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Yeah. So is there a difference in terms of how deliberate cold exposure impacts women? I have to imagine the answer is yes, given what you said earlier about vasoconstriction versus vasodilation. But deliberate cold exposure, like it, hate it. What do you think? Do you recommend it for women?
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
So sauna?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Hot tub.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Thank you for saying that. I'm not a big fan of infrared sauna because it doesn't get hot enough.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Yeah. You can bring an infrared light into a traditional sauna if it can tolerate the heat, but finished sauna would be what, something between 185 degrees Fahrenheit and maybe 210 if you're really heat adapted.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Oh, sorry. Yeah, you're living down in New Zealand now.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Every time I've tried to do math on the fly on this podcast in my head. I know.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
My brain's in a different processing mode.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
People can look it up.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
are applicable to fitness, to changing your body composition and to overall health. Today we discuss how hormones and hormone cycles impact nutrition and fitness needs specifically in women of different ages. We of course discuss the menstrual cycle, perimenopause and menopause, but also female specific nutrition and training as it relates to things independent of hormones.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Interesting. I didn't know that. Could you elaborate on more oxidative fibers, what that is and how it relates to metabolic flexibility?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Which is chilly.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
It's not warm.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
I think some people might be confused by the idea of using sauna in order to reduce the hot flashes. So I'll just remind people that your brain has a set of neurons in the medial preoptic area that's sort of a thermostat, if you will, controlling core body temperature. And if you heat the surface of your body, your medial preoptic neurons say, oh, let's cool down the core of the body.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Now, if you stay in that heat too long, your body temperature will go up. But conversely, if the surface of your body is made cold, the internal milieu of your body will heat up because those medial preoptic neurons will say, oh,
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
This is like putting an ice pack on the thermostat, which is what graduate students and postdocs used to do in the lab side working because it was a battle over the heater, right? Some people were in hot, some people were in cold, so it was always this business. In any event, so it's not that you disapprove of using deliberate cold exposure.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
You just recommend that women do deliberate cold exposure with temperatures that are maybe in the low 50 degree Fahrenheit range as opposed to The really, frankly, just painfully cold for anybody, you know, 38 to, you know, 50 degree temperatures.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Wow, fascinating. As a cautionary note, if anyone is going to explore Wim Hof type methods, please, please, please do not combine cyclic hyperventilation or hyperventilation of any kind with breath holds and water exposure, not even in the depth of a puddle.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
There have been drownings associated with people doing cyclic hyperventilation in various contexts, not just related to Hough breathing, but basically people who are not skilled and even some who are skilled combining cyclic hyperventilation, breath holds, and water in any form, cold or warm water. Bad idea. Just don't.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
If you're going to do any kind of cyclic hyperventilation breathing, and my lab's actually published on this in a clinical trial, do it on dry land or don't do it at all. And if you're going to do deliberate cold exposure, limit your breathing to slow, deep breaths. Make sure that you're well supervised and just stay alive, please.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Cold and temperature generally is such a potent stimulus. And it's exciting that people are starting to explore this, especially the, in my opinion, the sauna work. One thing I suppose that we should discuss very briefly before we move on, since we've been talking about resistance training. we've been talking about deliberate cold exposure.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
There is evidence that doing deliberate cold exposure, not so much in the form of a cold shower, but in the form of a submersion up to the neck, post strength or resistance training, say in the four, but probably the eight hours after resistance training, because of the attenuation of the inflammatory response, which sounds like a great thing, it actually can inhibit some of the strength and hypertrophy gains that one would otherwise experience.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
So if you're going to do deliberate cold exposure, Best to not do it in the eight hours or even on the same day after resistance training geared towards developing strength and hypertrophy increases. No problem to do it first. In fact, maybe even some performance enhancing effects of doing it first. There's some athletes at Stanford doing that, but just want to throw that out there.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Is there anything else you want to add to that?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Get the vasodilation.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Oh, interesting. So after a good weight training session, if one has the luxury of doing it, get into the sauna for... Up to 30 minutes. Make sure you're hydrating.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Ooh, so now we're getting into real performance enhancement. Is this true for men and for women? Yeah. Let's walk through this protocol. I like this. This has not been discussed on this podcast. Somebody does their resistance training, finishes up, drinks eight or 16 ounces of water with a little salt in it maybe, and then hops in the sauna.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
For how long?
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Okay.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
No longer.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Okay. Okay.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
um the ranges that i've seen published in the finnish studies are as i recall and i'll double check these numbers 186 degrees fahrenheit up to about 210 fahrenheit um and the higher end only being for those that are heat adapted yeah one can cover their head with a towel and actually feel more comfortable because the brain is insulated the surprises people they think putting a you know something on their head would make it
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
excessively warm, but you actually are protecting your brain from some of the heat.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
And this stimulates the production of more red blood cells. Okay. Which then translates to what in terms of athletic performance?
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Okay. This is why when I go to Colorado, I'm gasping for air while I do a walk, but then I come back to sea level and I feel better. My endurance is better, but some people might not experience that effect.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
So this explains why when I've gone to meetings in Colorado at altitude, some people can have a drink that first night and they're perfectly fine, even though they normally live at sea level. And I'm trying to see the stairs correctly, even though I don't drink.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Very interesting. So you can use post-resistance training sauna exposure to improve performance.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Love it. Logically watertight and I'm going to give it a try.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
What other training tricks, tips do you have up your sleeve, Dr. Sims?
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Do you have any favorites besides that? I delight in these and I know other people will as well. Do any come to mind? I mean, you've taught us about Shashandra, about post-training sauna exposure to improve performance by increasing red blood cell count. Is there anything else that kind of springs to mind? No pressure.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Used to be ephedrine.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
So I'm old enough to remember when they would sell it as the triple stack with ephedrine. Yeah. But some people dropped dead and they took it off the market. Yeah.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Did it really?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
It gets... You going?
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
It's speedy. Yeah. It's dangerous.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Should anything be done in terms of recovery to make sure that you offset that additional stress? that's achieved with this track stack.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
What about sleep? We hear so much these days about the importance of sleep for mental health, physical health, performance. I think this is a great thing, a great trend. Are there female specific requirements for sleep? that vary across the menstrual cycle and or by age or just generally, do men and women need to think about the need for sleep differently?
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
That makes very good sense. We'll put a link in the show note captions to some zero-cost non-sleep deep rest yoga nidras. We've put out a couple with my voice, if you prefer another voice. I'm a big fan of the ones by Kelly Boyes, who's contributed to the Waking Up app. It also has terrific non-sleep deep rest yoga nidras out there, and there are others as well.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
You mentioned a few supplements, theanine. apigenin, which is chamomile extract. Maybe let's just have a general conversation about supplements. What's your thought on supplements? How do you place them into the landscape of nutrition? They are, after all, supplements, not replacements.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
But the word supplements, I believe, is a little bit misleading because there are food-based supplements, like a protein powder. There are supplements designed to achieve a specific outcome. And then there are supplements that are kind of a designed to be a more support for a bunch of things, kind of insurance policy.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
What are some of your favorite supplements in any of those categories, specifically for women and perhaps even specifically during certain phases of the menstrual cycle and or perimenopause, menopause? I just threw about nine questions at you. All of them.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
So five grams of creatine monohydrate per day, sort of typical? Three to five. Three to five?
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Interesting.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Like gastric distress? Yeah.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Noted.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Sorry, I just want to stop you for a moment. As it relates to creatine, I hear two general lines of concern. One, I hear more often from women.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
My understanding is that because creatine brings water into the muscle, as well as supporting the phosphocreatine system of the brain, the water into the muscle component means, yes, people who take creatine, three to five grams per day, will gain a few pounds of body weight. That's solid body weight in the form of water within the muscle, so solid in air quotes.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
It's water, but it's within the muscle. So they should know that.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Interesting.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Okay. And this is not bloat, like water, subcutaneous water. This is water within the muscles. Correct. So it will be stored within lean tissue. Correct. And then I do hear concerns about creatine causing hair loss. My understanding is there is zero evidence for that.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
There is a smidgen of evidence that it might increase dihydrotestosterone levels, but it's like one study, marginal increase, and then people linked dihydrotestosterone to hair loss. And so then the conclusion people drew was that somehow creatine increases hair loss, but you're saying zero evidence.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Okay, so we've got creatine D3, 1,000 IUs per day, 5,000 IUs. I guess it depends a little bit.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Great. Okay. So we've got creatine, vitamin D3. What are some of the other supplements that you take or that you I don't know if we say suggest, but that you perhaps suggest women consider.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
If these adaptogens blunt cortisol, because certain ones do like ashwagandha, which by the way, I do think people should cycle if they're going to take it high doses, right? Because there are some issues with liver- And thyroid. And thyroid problems if people take ashwagandha at high doses for too long. So that's important to note. But
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Assuming that the adaptogens are reducing cortisol levels in addition to doing other things, is there a particular time of day or night that people should consider taking them? Should they avoid taking it early in the day? My understanding was that you want a bit of that cortisol bump early in the day, but you certainly want cortisol lower later in the day.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
What's the story with pregnancy and training? Yeah. Is there an official word on this? Assuming a woman knows that she's pregnant from the very beginning of missing a period where she's in a position to make decisions about training or not training, training at a given intensity or not, what are your recommendations?
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
I've been asked whether or not pregnant women can do deliberate cold exposure probably no fewer than 2,500 times on social media. And I never have an answer, but I always default to the cautious answer, which is please don't until you talk to somebody who actually has an answer. Just because it sounds like a very precarious situation, but in all honesty, I don't know.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
I'm just biding time there and just saying, please go ask somebody who can give you a definitive answer.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
But probably not extreme heat.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
It's almost the inverse of what we know for males, which is if men want to conceive, they should avoid the sauna because we know that heat is detrimental to sperm viability in a real way. So much so that I tell... guys, if they are trying to get their partner pregnant, that they should bring an ice pack into the sauna. They should insulate that ice pack.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Don't put it directly on the scrotum for other reasons, but that the negative effects of heat on sperm are real. But there's also an interesting... It's not just a trend. There's actually some research showing that cooling the testicles leads to increases in testosterone, which is...
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
On the face of it, kind of counterintuitive because it turns out that it's about the vasoconstriction causing the subsequent increase in blood flow, increased vasodilation. So the inverse of what you just said, which is that during the heating process, the hypoxia induces more vascularization of the placenta. Yeah.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
So when talking about temperature, one always has to think about the surface of the body versus the brain response, as we talked about earlier. And then what's happening during the deliberate heat or deliberate cold versus what's happening after the deliberate heat or deliberate cold, right? Everything in biology is a process, not an event.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Thank you for the disclosure. I see it more as an indication of real knowledge. So thank you. This is an aspect of your training I knew a little bit about based on your publications, but I didn't realize the depth of knowledge. So we're all benefiting here, including this earlier protocol of sauna post-training. You can bet a lot of people are going to start incorporating that.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
I think we might need to name that. I've done this from time to time, named protocols, because people are reluctant to name them after themselves. Maybe we call that the... the SIMS protocol or something like that. Anyway, your discomfort will be other people's benefit. Now seems like a good time to address some specific questions related to the age brackets that you mentioned earlier.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
In anticipation of sitting down with you today, I asked some different women that I know, you know, if you could ask the world expert in exercise physiology, hormones, and nutrition, et cetera, as it relates to women, one question, what would it be? And one of the most common questions I got in the 50...
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
category was, what is the most efficient way for a woman older than 50 to train for the maximum healthspan and lifespan benefits?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
One-third?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Goodness gracious.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Super interesting. Two questions. Is there a protective effect of starting the eating window, and here I'm asking for both men and women, starting the eating window at, say, 11 a.m. or noon and ending it a little bit later? So not a six-hour eating window or seven-hour eating window, but extending that to 8 or 9 p.m. Under those conditions, do you still see the obesogenic effect?
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
It's a few scrambled eggs. It's a chicken breast at lunch. It's a small steak at dinner. Plus other things.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
I'm thinking about this and I'm thinking about my mother who's 79 years old. She'll be 80 at the end of June and is in good health. walks a lot, gardens, does some yoga, but does none of the things that you're describing. So mom, please, I'm going to send her to listen to this. In the same vein, what about the women out there age 20 to, maybe we make it the 20 to 40 bracket.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
And if we need to divide that more finely, we can. What is the most efficient way for them to train for health, vigor, and longevity?
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Now, forgive me because you've said it several times throughout today's discussion, but I really want to drive home a key point that I think for most people, men and women, is not obvious but is really important. When you say high intensity, you don't mean a class or a run where you're drenched in sweat and gasping for air at the end necessarily.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Let's disambiguate high intensity from what most people think of high intensity, which is a really hard workout, a tough class where they had me moving the whole time, doing a circuit, et cetera. What is the appropriate high intensity workout look like?
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Okay. So 400 a lap. Yep. 800, two laps.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
For instance, we evaluate the evidence that women may not want to train fasted and the reasons for that. We talk about how training might vary according to different phases of the menstrual cycle.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Pretty tough. Yeah.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Right.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
And this is high-intensity interval training. This is not what you would consider resistance training for sake of building muscle or strength.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
You're using these loads, these machines, the pike hanging from the bar and bringing your knees up or L-sit or something as a tool to get the heart rate up continually. Very different than resistance training the way most people think about it.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
On the rower, on the Airdyne bike, running if you like. Yeah, any of those things. The skier.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
So 30 seconds all out, then rest, what, 10, 15 seconds, repeat?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Oh, nice.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
And if I heard you correctly earlier, you are suggesting most women do one or two days of high-intensity interval training plus three to four days of resistance training for sake of building strength and muscle, which looks very different. It's more warm-up, do a couple –
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Work sets, you know, two to four work sets of, you know, an overhead press, two or four work sets of maybe a barbell curl, two or four sets of some dips or whatever one's, you know, personal choices. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Got it.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Very different, far and away different than what most people, men or women, are doing out there, which is a lot of Stairmaster treadmill jogging, maybe some lifting for hypertrophy.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
And in terms of nutrition, you mentioned women should shoot for 1.1, 1.2 grams of quality protein per pound of body weight. What other types of foods do you like to see women ingesting? So are you a fan of fruit?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Great. Well, these days you sort of have to ask in these circles. Vegetables. Yep. Fiber is important.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
And then in terms of starches to replace glycogen, especially if people are doing these high-intensity interval training sessions and the resistance training, what are your preferred sources?
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Ooh, I cringe at that stuff. But, you know, I prefer rice and oatmeal. And I like a really good sourdough bread with butter or olive oil.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Because GLUT4 levels are so high, you're basically pulling everything into glycogen at that point anyway.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
And there's some data that chocolate is good for us, especially the low sugar, dark chocolates.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Right.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Yeah. One has to live. Yeah. And fats. Where do you like to see women get their fats from?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
That all sounds very rational and delicious, in my opinion.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
I think if people hear it from you, they'll do it. I think people just need to hear it in the context of a non-diet context. And you've done an amazing job today of explaining how nutrition fuels training, training fuels changes at the level of the muscle, the liver, et cetera, that allow one to ingest more fuel.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
In fact, a lot of what I'm hearing is that women should probably ingest more quality fuels in order to offset these cortisol spikes and feel better while training and to train more, which everyone agrees, provided it's done properly, is great for us. Kind of a fun, hopefully fun question for you.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
If you had a magic wand and you could get all the women on earth now and going forward to make a change or changes, you don't have to pick just one, in terms of nutrition, how they think about their hormone cycle, exercise, healthspan, lifespan, what would it be?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Well, Dr. Stacey Sims, this has been tremendously educational for me and I know for everybody listening and or watching. You've taken us on an amazing tour of the best ways to train with cardiovascular training and resistance training. those tailored specifically for women, as well as touching into some protocols for both men and women that are immensely powerful.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Talked a lot about the menstrual cycle. I get asked about the menstrual cycle and how it relates to training and vice versa so many times. And thank you for providing clear, actionable answers. And you've also educated us on caffeine supplements and including revealing some supplements that I didn't know existed, which is not a common occurrence for me.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
And many wins, many, many wins, thanks to you, and on and on. So just such a rich data set here presented with such clarity and in an actionable way. On behalf of myself and everyone listening and watching, I just want to say thank you.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
I know you've come a very long way from the other side of the equator, not just to see us, but given that your time is so precious that you've come to visit us and share with us your knowledge. I just want to say a really deep, heartfelt thank you.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
And we'll have to have you back again. Maybe we'll come to New Zealand.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Thank you. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Stacey Sims. To learn more about her work, please see the links in our show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Please also subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five star review. Please also check out the sponsors that I mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or topics or guests you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media channels.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Regular listeners of this podcast will know this, but just to remind everybody, a sympathetic state has nothing to do with emotional sympathy. It's the sympathetic arm of the autonomic nervous system, which drives more arousal and alertness and at higher levels, stress, sometimes called the fight or flight response.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
So that's Instagram, X, formerly known as Twitter, Threads, LinkedIn, and Facebook. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlap with the contents of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the contents of the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media channels.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
If you haven't already subscribed to our Neural Network newsletter,
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Our neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as protocols in the form of brief PDFs of one to three pages, where I spell out the specific do's and in some cases do nots, but mostly do's related to things like how to optimize your sleep, how to regulate your dopamine levels. There's a protocol for neuroplasticity and learning.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
as well as protocols for fitness, which we call the foundational fitness protocol, includes everything, sets, reps, cardiovascular training. Again, all available, completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab, scroll down to newsletter and provide us your email. But I should point out, we do not share your email with anybody.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Stacey Sims. And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
Parasympathetic being the other arm of the autonomic nervous system, sometimes called the rest and digest response. arm of the autonomic nervous system. They work sort of like a seesaw or a push-pull, pick your analogy. In any case, it sounds like intermittent fasting or time-restricted feeding, unless it's very well aligned to the circadian rhythm, is not going to be advantageous for women.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
And we discuss how women can design nutrition and training programs that are optimized for their specific needs, not just because they are women, but because they are women of a particular stage of life and women with particular goals. As you'll soon see, Dr. Simms is exquisitely skilled at explaining the human universals of nutrition and training. That is the things that do not differ
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
That's what I'm hearing. I'm also hearing that if a woman trains while fasted, so in the non-feeding window, so wakes up, maybe has some hydration and trains, that's going to further exacerbate the stress response in a way that's not going to be good.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
And I have to imagine that if she also is drinking caffeine in order to do that training, because caffeine is a stimulant of the sympathetic arm of the autonomic nervous system, that it will further exacerbate all these issues. So this is a eye-opener for me because I've had female training partners for years. I don't eat until 11 a.m.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity
I like to hydrate and caffeinate before I train in the morning, and then I like to eat starting around noon. Several of them have hopped on that schedule with me. Some of them eat breakfast first, some of them don't. They do as they choose, of course. But now I'm thinking that's probably the worst way to go.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, we are discussing microplastics. Microplastics are an extremely interesting and important topic that everyone should know about.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
So they're getting deposited in the lower lungs. You can find them in the bloodstream from a blood draw. You can find them in human placenta. And you can find them in what's called the meconium, which is the first stool that a baby takes. This is typically taken within the, or the stool is given, given, taken. It's taken by the doctor. It's actually analyzed for various things.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
It contains bile and a bunch of other things. It's actually an important indicator of the health of the child. It turns out that this first stool that happens in the first 24 hours or so after birth, when that's been analyzed for microplastics, There too, you find microplastics and nanoplastics.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And that's really got people concerned because what this means is that microplastics and nanoplastics that mothers are ingesting or that they somehow have lodged in their bodies are making their way to the fetus. Now you could say, well, is it really a problem? Well, a few years ago, it was at least concerning enough that
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
BPAs, and we'll talk more about BPAs, bisphenol A, which is a component of microplastics. This is a known endocrine disruptor. It disrupts certain estrogen-like pathways. We'll get into this in a few minutes. Bisphenol A and BPAs were banned from sippy cups in kids and from any food containers for young kids.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
So the FDA in the United States, and there are European countries as well, had enough data on this or enough concern about this to say, listen, we are going to make it illegal to have BPA lined sippy cups or food containers for young kids, in part because the BPA is correlated with microplastics and nanoplastics. So what I'm saying here is that
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
The government has taken pretty avid measures to restrict the amount of BPA exposure through microplastics and nanoplastics to young kids. And yet the fetus clearly is being exposed to microplastics and nanoplastics.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And I don't want to be alarmist. Today's episode is not about getting you to be petrified or about developing some sort of hypochondriasis about It's designed to inform you about what they are, where they exist, where they exist in particularly high amounts, and the things that you can do to limit their impact on your biology.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
This is why at the beginning I mentioned, if you are pregnant or if you have young kids, or if you are a young kid, you want to go out of your way to limit your exposure to these microplastics and nanoplastics. But if you're an older adult, you probably want to do the same. And we'll talk about ways that you can do that.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
So I could go on and on about the various tissues besides placenta in your bloodstream, brain, testes, follicle, lower lungs. You can find nanoplastics in the liver. You can find microplastics and nanoplastics in pretty much every tissue that you look for them. The real question is how detrimental are these microplastics and nanoplastics?
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And then of course we can talk about where they're coming from specifically in ways that you can control and limit. And when I say control and limit, what we're really talking about here is Yes, trying to limit your exposure to these things.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
If I were to rattle off the different sources of microplastics and nanoplastics, you would go wide-eyed and you would probably also just say, okay, I surrender, they're truly everywhere. In fact, I'll do that, okay? I can't help but do that. But keep in mind, you do have some control in terms of the, end result of these microplastics and nanoplastics on your health. So here I go.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Plastic bags, storage containers, bottle caps, rope gear strapping, utensils, cups, floats, coolers, containers, rope, fishing nets, textiles. Sorry, I'm not laughing because it's funny. I'm laughing because it's just pretty much everywhere.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Latex paint, coatings, medical devices, automotive parts, tires on the road, degrading, giving off little microplastics into the air, microplastics raining down from the sky, literally. pipe film containers, laminated safety glass, car windshields, oh great, even the car windshield, drinking bottles, textile fibers, resins, paints, varnish, construction automotive parts.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Okay, so basically everywhere, right? These things are everywhere. So what are we to do? Well, what we are to do is to limit the long-term accumulation of microplastics and nanoplastics in our system. There are ways that we can limit their introduction to our system, but as long as you're breathing, as long as you're walking around, as long as you're near a road, you are exposed to microplastics.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
So until there's a huge movement to make better tires that don't degrade as quickly or to create filters in our home environments that remove the microplastics, which frankly, I think both of those things are not reasonable expectations, at least not in this lifetime. Well, until then, what you can do is you can try and limit their entry and accumulation into your body.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
So rather than list off all the ways that you can limit so-called bioaccumulation of microplastics and nanoplastics at the beginning or at the end of today's episode, I'm going to intersperse them at times that are relevant to what I just discussed about how microplastics get into our system and the tissues they are lodged in.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
So I'll tell you right now that a few ways that you can really do yourself a service in limiting your exposure to microplastics is to limit your consumption of water from plastic bottles. Okay, that might seem kind of obvious, but check out these data. This is pretty wild. There was an analysis of the number of microplastic and nanoplastic particles in bottled water.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And it was estimated that there were about 30,000 of these particles per liter of water, okay? And those data stood for quite a long time. Then imaging techniques for measuring the number of these different particles, in particular, the really small nanoparticles, the ones that are less than one micron in diameter, the imaging tools for those improved.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Because I think it's fair to say that we are not going to rid the earth of microplastics. They are just too pervasive. Now, the one caveat is that there are certain populations of people in particular people that are pregnant or people that have young children and those young children themselves that should really strive to limit their exposure to microplastics.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And I'll explain a little bit about that in a moment. And there was a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2024 that showed that the amount of nanoplastic in particular, but microplastic and nanoplastics that are present in bottled water was actually vastly underestimated in that previous study.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Rather than 30,000 particles per liter, the reanalysis with better methods showed that it was anywhere from 110 all the way up to 400,000 particles per liter. And the average was 240,000 particles per liter. So that means that the amount of microplastics and nanoplastics in bottled water is actually much, much higher than we initially thought.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And a very simple way to limit your exposure to microplastics and nanoplastics is to avoid drinking water from plastic bottles, in particular plastic bottles that have been heated up. Now you might say, well, I don't heat up my plastic water bottles.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Right, but you don't know what happened to those plastic water bottles en route to the store you bought them at or en route to your refrigerator, right? They could have sat in the back of a hot truck. They could have sat in the back of a loading dock. any number of different things.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Now, this is not to say that if you drink the occasional water out of a plastic bottle that you're going to harm your health. I'm absolutely not saying that. However, it's pretty clear that there's a lot of microplastics and nanoplastics that are completely avoidable, at least avoidable in terms of your ingestion of them in plastic water bottles.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
So it makes sense to me why you would want to avoid those. Also as a consumable, that's not very reusable. I suppose you could reuse those plastic bottles, but most people don't, at least they don't use them for very long. They get pretty flimsy pretty quickly.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
you're much better off having either a stainless steel bottle or some sort of ceramic mug or using glass or using some other vessel for water that is reusable. And of course that is not made of plastic. And then of course the question arises how much microplastic and nanoplastic is in tap water. And it turns out, There's quite a lot of it.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Now it varies according to location, but there are ways that you can get those microplastics and nanoplastics out of your tap water. The best way turns out to be a little bit expensive, admittedly, and that's to use a reverse osmosis filter. So reverse osmosis filters will get rid of all the microplastics and nanoplastics. Of course, it will also remove some key minerals from the water.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
So you'll have to remineralize that water. If one looks at the price of reverse osmosis filtration systems, They're not cheap. They can range anywhere from 300 to 500, even $600 for a home unit. And many of those units will remineralize the water. So basically it takes the water, cleans out the microplastics, nanoplastics, and a bunch of other bad stuff that you don't want.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And then it's going to remineralize the water so that you're getting enough minerals in your water. Now, if you look at the cost of a reverse osmosis filter, I, like you, kind of go a little wide-eyed, like, oh, that's a lot of money for water.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
But if one thinks about the total amount of money one spends in a given year on plastic bottled water that we consume and then, you know, throw away essentially the bottles or even bottled water from glass bottles, I've gotten in the habit of trying to drink water from glass bottles.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And when you go out and you buy those, you feel better that you're not consuming a lot of microplastics and nanoplastics, but They are very expensive. So the costs probably line up pretty well.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
So by the end of today's episode, you can be confident that you'll understand a lot about what microplastics are, the impact that they are currently having. some of the potential impact that people are starting to investigate and ways that you can limit their negative impact on your brain and bodily health.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And when I did that analysis, I realized, well, actually the home reverse osmosis filter with remineralization actually will save on costs provided that one is good about filling glass bottles or stainless steel bottles with that water and making sure to, you know, when you leave the house to take those bottles with you.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Again, I don't think it's possible for everyone to avoid all consumption of water from plastic bottles. That's just not reasonable. to expect. Right. You don't want to be that person that's carrying around water everywhere you go to friends, houses at dinner, et cetera. I don't think we need to be that concerned about the amount of microplastic and nanoplastic in water sources.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And certainly you wouldn't want to avoid drinking water from plastic bottles to the point where you dehydrate yourself or put yourself at risk. I'm not trying to create that kind of concern here.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
What I'm trying to say is if you are concerned about microplastics and nanoplastics and you really want to limit your exposure, one of the best ways to do that is to limit your consumption of water from plastic bottles.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
and because microplastics and nanoplastics are present in tap water, you're going to need some way to remove those microplastics and nanoplastics from your tap water if you're very concerned about them. I'm not here to say everyone should do this. I'm certainly not saying that.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
I'm saying that if you are concerned about microplastics and nanoplastics, and we'll talk about some of the reasons one might want to be concerned about them, well then installing a reverse osmosis filtration system on your home water might be a good idea. And it's likely to save you costs if you look at it in comparison to buying disposable bottles of water.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Now, there are a lot of other ways besides drinking water from plastic bottles microplastics and nanoplastics make their way into our system. And I can list off many of them, but I'm trying to create a hierarchy here of the things that are potentially the major sources and the ones that we can most easily avoid and that are likely to save us costs overall.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
So one thing that's very clear is that there's a lot of microplastics and nanoplastics in sea salt. Who would have thought? But then you think about it and it's like, well, this stuff is getting out into the ocean. There's a lot of plastic in the ocean. It's a super depressing scene when one sees the pictures of all the plastic floating out there.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
In fact, there's a book that I read in preparation for this episode. Gosh, it was so depressing, but important for me to read. Maybe you want to read it as well. It's quite good, although it will be a bit of a downer. The title of the book is A Poison Like No Other, How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies by Matt Simon. And
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Before you begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Element.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
I listened to this book and gosh, it really convinces you that there's microplastics everywhere, both on land, in the air and in the ocean, unfortunately. And of course, sea salt comes from the ocean. So a simple solution to this is if you're going to use salt and I'm a big fan of salt, not overdoing it, but salt has its role, right?
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
It's a wonderful substance, both for sake of taste and for sake of health. I did an episode about salt. Again, don't over consume salt. Don't blast your blood pressure. Don't blow a gasket, but many people would do well to have a little bit more salt, especially if you're eating a really clean diet, especially if you're hydrating very well.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Focus on something like pink Himalayan salt or salt that comes from a non-marine source, okay? It's very simple to do. It's some of the best salt out there. It's not terribly expensive. and you would do well to avoid sea salt and get your salt from those other sources. In doing so, you're going to lower your exposure to microplastics and nanoplastics.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
There's some pretty scary pictures of sea salt under the microscope and all the little bits of plastic that are in there. And you only have to see those pictures once or just hear it from me to make the shift to Himalayan sea salt. And the pink salt is pretty, it looks nice, it tastes great. So that's an easy, very low cost shift that you can make.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. AG1 is designed to cover all of your foundational nutritional needs, and it tastes great. Now, I've been drinking AG1 since 2012, and I started doing that at a time when my budget for supplements was really limited.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
In fact, I only had enough money back then to purchase one supplement, and I'm so glad that I made that supplement AG1. The reason for that is even though I strive to eat most of my foods from whole foods and minimally processed foods, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits, vegetables, vitamins, and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And I need to do that in order to ensure that I have enough energy throughout the day, I sleep well at night, and keep my immune system strong. But when I take AG1 daily, I find that all aspects of my health, my physical health, my mental health, and my performance, both cognitive and physical, are better.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
I know that because I've had lapses when I didn't take AG1 and I certainly felt the difference. I also notice, and this makes perfect sense given the relationship between the gut microbiome and the brain, that when I regularly take AG1, which for me means a serving in the morning or mid-morning and again later in the afternoon or evening, that I have more mental clarity and more mental energy.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer. Okay, so we've talked about bottled watered sources and filtering your water. We talked about sea salt.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Another major source of these microplastics that was very surprising to me is from the lining of canned soup. I don't think I'm ever going to eat canned soup again unless I absolutely need to. Sorry, canned soup companies, but there was a study, the study was entitled, Canned Soup Consumption and Urinary Bisphenol A, a Randomized Crossover Trial.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Now, I and others on the podcast have talked a lot about the critical importance of hydration for proper brain and bodily function.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
I'll describe a little bit more about what bisphenol A is a little bit later, but bisphenol A is a known endocrine disruptor. It mimics estrogen in ways that can activate or block estrogenic pathways. So it messes up hormone pathways, either by activating them or blocking them. It can also bind to androgen receptors potentially and cause some issues there. Bisphenol A or BPA is not a good thing.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Turns out there's lots of it in the lining of Soup cans. The reason is soup tends to be a little bit fatty. So even if you get the nonfat soup, it tends to have some lipid in there and it also has some acidity to it. And the lining helps maintain the flavor and the freshness of the soup in those cans. In this study, what they did is they gave people either fresh soup or canned soup for five days.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Then they did a so-called two-day washout where they took a break from soup and then they reversed the conditions. I'll cut to the chase here because the conclusion of this study is wild.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
What they found was that consumption of one serving of canned soup daily over the course of five days, here I'm quoting by the way, was associated with more than 1000% increase in urinary BPA, in bisphenol A. Now that's urinary BPA, so people are excreting it. I want to emphasize that. but a thousand fold increase in BPA from canned soup. I don't know.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
I'm not alarmist, but I only have to read this once. Think about my love of canned soup. Not that great, done. I'm not eating canned soup again, unless I'm absolutely starving and I need some soup very, very badly. My suggestion would be, unless you have a powerful reason to consume canned soup, don't consume canned soup.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
The one caveat being that if you can find canned soup that does not have any BPA, that is it says no BPAs on the container, well then go at it, have as much canned soup as you want. I should be very clear that a lot of canned products now say no BPA, but they contain other endocrine disruptors and the amount of microplastics and nanoplastics in those soups is still unknown.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
So part of my hidden motivation of this episode and perhaps the motivation of other podcasters in the health space that are talking about microplastics now, and by the way, Dr. Rhonda Patrick did a really wonderful podcast about microplastics just recently. We didn't coordinate. That's why we both ended up doing it roughly at the same time. We talked about it afterwards and chuckled about that.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Research shows that even a slight degree of dehydration can really diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes in order for your body and brain to function at their best. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium are critical for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or nerve cells.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
I guess, you know, we're both interested in some of the same themes, of course. One of the perhaps hidden agendas is that some of these food manufacturing companies and beverage manufacturing companies will start to include more thorough descriptions on their labeling of what is and is not contained in the various products such as canned soup and water, et cetera.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
not just no BPAs, but hopefully some of the other things that are problematic that we'll talk about in a moment, such as BPS, which is another endocrine disruptor. So if you see no BPAs, sometimes there's still BPS in there. Okay. We'll talk about BPS as well as phthalates, which are something that make plastic and other containers more durable and more flexible.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And phthalates have been discussed by by people like Dr. Shana Swan, who will soon be a guest on this podcast and has shown up on other podcasts talking about how phthalates are known endocrine disruptors in development and likely in adulthood as well. I guess my push for you to never consume canned soup again might be a little bit harsh. That's just my decision. Here's what I'll do.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
I'll make a bargain with the canned soup companies. If you all start putting a more thorough description about what is and is not contained in those soup cans, all right, not just no BPA, but is there truly also no BPS? Are there no phthalates, et cetera? Then maybe I'll make the move back to canned soup.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And of course, most of you have probably heard that you're not supposed to microwave plastic containers. Now, you'll see microwave safe on a number of different containers. That just means that it's not going to melt in the microwave. It does not mean that you aren't being exposed to microplastics and nanoplastics and BPAs, BPS, phthalates, et cetera.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
So in general, it's a good idea to avoid putting any kind of plastic into the microwave, at least if you're going to microwave food and then consume that food. The other surprising, at least to me, source of BPAs and BPSs, so these endocrine disruptors and microplastics and nanoplastics that's very robust is paper cups.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Goodness gracious, I would have thought paper cups are safe, but you know those paper cups that you put hot liquids into and they often have a plastic lid? Well, even if they don't have a plastic lid on them, the lining of the paper cup, which makes those cups durable,
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
when you put hot liquids in there, like hot coffee or hot tea, well, that contains typically, unless it says no BPA and no BPS, it contains lots of BPA and BPSs, microplastics, nanoplastics. And so putting hot liquids in there, actually there was an analysis that showed that if, liquid that's heated up to a hundred degrees Fahrenheit is put in those containers. It starts to leach out.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
It starts to pull those microplastics, nanoplastics, BPAs and BPS from the cup linings. So the other day I went across the street and bought a cup of coffee. Of course they sold it to me in a paper cup. And I thought, oh goodness, I forgot to bring my mug and my travel mug, my stainless steel mug or my ceramic mug. Did I not purchase the coffee? No, I'd already ordered the coffee.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
I didn't walk back. What I did is as soon as I got back, I took the coffee and I poured it into a ceramic mug. So I'm not extremist. I'm not somebody who's going to completely avoid these things, but in the future, I'll try and remember to bring my mug over. Some places even give you a little discount on your coffee. So again, these are cost-saving approaches.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise I'm doing, especially on hot days if I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
You're certainly limiting or reducing the amount of waste that you're creating in the world. So that It can only be a good thing, okay? And the plastic lids, probably a good idea to avoid drinking through those plastic lids too often. Again, I want to emphasize, I'm not one of these people that's going to freak out about drinking a hot liquid through a plastic lid.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
These microplastics and nanoplastics are everywhere. We're consuming them all the time. We can remove them from our body. And later we'll talk about ways that you can accelerate or increase the amount of removal of them from your body.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
If we're just a little bit more conscious about how they get into our body, and we're a little bit more conscious about the elevated costs and the elevated amount of trash that's going to recycle into landfill and so on, probably a good idea to just bring your mug with you, your travel mug with you, try and make those mugs and travel mugs ceramic, stainless steel, or some other vessel that doesn't contain BPAs or BPSs.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Before we move on to talk about what happens when microplastics and nanoplastics make it into say the testicle or the brain, like what the consequences of that is and are, I want to just briefly return to something that I flew past a while ago. And that's the analysis of microplastics and nanoplastic particles that are in bottled water.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Remember, initially it was thought to be 30,000 particles per liter. Then later it was discovered using better techniques that it's actually more like 240,000 on average particles per liter. how did that huge discrepancy in data arise?
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
I realize this is not a data analysis discussion, but I want to talk about this just briefly because it illustrates for you something really important about science, which is as tools for measurement get better, so does our understanding about what's going on in our brains and bodies. And it's a very simple and kind of cool thing related to the light. So you could imagine that the first paper,
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And the reason is microplastics are indeed everywhere. They are in the air. They are in beverages we consume. They are lining the inside of soup cans. They are lining the inside of paper cups made to hold hot water, coffee, and tea. And there are a lot of animal data and indeed some human data showing that microplastics, which consists of particles of different sizes,
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
was looking under the microscope at a drop of water taken from a bottle that was plastic, and then imaged the number of little plastic particles in there. You'd say, well, there's a particle, and there's a particle, and there's a particle, and there are tools that can count those particles. Well, what if you have two particles that are really close together, right?
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
If you recall, microplastics are anywhere from one micron in diameter, all the way up to five millimeters in diameter, but nanoplastics are less than one micron in diameter. So how do you know that when you see a clump of stuff under the microscope in that drop of water, that you're looking at one big piece of plastic
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
versus thousands and thousands of little pieces of nanoplastic, or even just much smaller pieces of microplastic. Well, it has to do with what's called the point spread function, and I don't really want to get into this in too much detail, but basically when you shine light on something, you get kind of a little hill of light, if you will.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
There's a peak at the center, and then it had drops off with distance. The reason why the numbers jumped from 30,000 to 240,000 is not because the researchers got much better, it's because the tools got much better, okay? There are new imaging techniques and I'll put a reference to this for those of you that are into this kind of stuff.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Element has a lot of different great tasting flavors of Element. My favorite is the watermelon, although I also confess I like the raspberry and the citrus. Basically, I like all the flavors of Element. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman, spelled drinkelement.com slash Huberman, to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
entitled Rapid Single Particle Chemical Imaging of Nanoplastics by SRS Microscopy. Okay, pretty nerdy stuff, but it's fun if you're interested in light and how light can illuminate things and show detail or not detail.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
But basically what we're realizing is that there are a lot more particles of plastic in different tissues, in different things that we're ingesting, et cetera, because we're getting better and better ways of separating those clumps of light into lots of little clumps of light and realizing, oh, that looked like one particle, right? Remember it's particles per,
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
It's not one particle, it's 10,000 particles. Now you might say, okay, well, what's the difference between a bunch of little particles and one big particle? Ah, there's a big difference. What's the big difference? Little particles can make it across barriers that big particles can't.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
These little nanoparticles of plastic are especially concerning because those are the ones that you find in greatest abundance.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
or I should say among the plastics that you find in different tissues, the ones that are in greatest abundance in the brain, the testes and the follicle, again, these tissues that nature and evolution have gone out of their way to protect with these very stringent barriers, like the blood brain barrier, like the blood testicular barrier, like the blood follicle barrier.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Those are the ones that are getting across because they're very, very small. They can sneak through the little holes in those biological fences. They're getting deposited in those tissues, brain, testicle, and follicle, and they're staying there at least until people die, which in the case of the analysis of post-mortem tissue is many, many decades later, okay?
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
So I'm not just raising this discussion about ways to disambiguate large particles from small particles just to be nerdy and technical. it turns out to be a really important issue with real biological implications. Okay, so lots of itty bitty little pieces of plastic getting their way into tissues like brain, follicle, testes, liver, lung, et cetera. What are some of the implications of this?
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Now, there are a lot of animal data, data in fish, data in mice, et cetera, that have explored how microplastics and nanoplastics can disrupt any number of different biological functions. but it's probably worth looking at how nanoplastic and microplastic accumulation in specific tissues is correlated with specific health detriments in humans, even though the data are correlative, right?
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
It's much harder to get causal data from human studies because the animal studies, frankly, are hard to translate to humans. In this case in particular, because a lot of the features of animal biology, while similar to human biology, humans are animals, but you get the point, they don't correspond so easily when looking at microplastics and nanoplastics for the following reason.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Let's say you have a little fish, that fish is a couple centimeters long, and it turns out there's, I don't know, about an aspirin's size of microplastics and nanoplastics in that fish when that fish is analyzed post-mortem. You say, okay, well, that's kind of a lot, right? An aspirin's worth in a, or an aspirin size batch of microplastics and nanoplastics in that little fish.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And then you look in humans and you realize, okay, well, there's more microplastics and nanoplastics, but not that much more. how much of a detriment is there really going to be?
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Can you look at the study in the fish seeing, for instance, and this has been demonstrated that you have disruption in neurological pathways, the formation of those pathways, like brain development is altered, reproductive function is altered, et cetera. It's hard to translate. We don't really know what it means in terms of humans.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. Now I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
So we'll turn to the correlative data in humans and I'll look to the strongest data, at least that I could find out there. And there are kind of three major cases that I think are worth highlighting. The first one is that There was a study done in humans. This was published in 2021.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
It was published in the Journal of Environmental Science and Technology that found much higher levels of microplastics in the stool samples of people that were diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome. Irritable bowel syndrome is very disruptive to people's wellbeing.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
There isn't an obvious cure for irritable bowel syndrome, although some people find relief by improving their gut microbiota, by limiting body-wide and gut inflammation through any number of different things, improving sleep and eating a low inflammation diet, et cetera.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
This is something that I'll probably cover in a future episode of the Huberman Lab Podcast, gastrointestinal challenges, that is. So I want to be very clear, there was no direct causation established, but it was established
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
that there were higher levels of microplastics found in the stool tissue coming from people who had irritable bowel syndrome than in individuals who did not have irritable bowel syndrome. And while no study is perfect, they included a number of important controls in the experiment to control for age range and some other features.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
So it's reasonable to assume that the accumulation of microplastics in the gut or somewhere along the GI tract had somehow led to or related to irritable bowel syndrome. Okay, now you could also imagine the reverse. This is very important to understand.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
You could also imagine that people who had irritable bowel syndrome perhaps are less good at filtering microplastics and nanoplastics from the food and liquids they consume than are people who don't have irritable bowel syndrome. So the causality, if it exists at all, could run in either direction or both. Nonetheless, I think it's an interesting study.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And if you're somebody who suffers from gastrointestinal distress, such as irritable bowel syndrome or otherwise, I think you'd be wise, indeed all people would be wise, but I think you'd be especially wise to take into consideration some of the to-dos and not to-dos that I'm covering during today's episode, such as avoiding consuming water from plastic bottles, some of the stuff we talked about earlier, avoiding canned soup and other BPA, BPS-containing substances.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
containers and things of that sort, or things that come from those containers. The other area where there was some really interesting correlative data relates to reproductive function and hormone health. And this is where we can start to get into a bit more detail about BPAs and BPSs and phthalates and some of their roles in disrupting endocrine, that is hormone pathways. So there's a study
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
I'll put a link to in the show note captions that's entitled urinary phthalate metabolites are associated with decreased serum testosterone. So that's in blood in men, women and children. Okay. This is an interesting study for a number of reasons. First of all, it emphasizes something that everybody should know, which is that testosterone plays key roles in men, women, and kids, okay?
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
It was a condition of being allowed to stay in high school, but pretty soon I realized that therapy is an extremely important component to overall health. In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise, including cardiovascular exercise and resistance training exercise, which of course I also do every week.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
It is not the case that testosterone is just present in men and boys. It's also present in women and girls, and it plays an important role in everybody, okay? It's involved, of course, in some of the things that we normally associate with testosterone, such as muscle mass, bone density, strength, et cetera, but testosterone can be converted to estrogen.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Testosterone is involved in libido in both men and women. It's involved in brain development in boys and girls. in genitalia development and on and on. So it's an important hormone. And it was clear from this study that elevated levels of phthalates, that is phthalate metabolites, are associated with lower testosterone levels in all those populations.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
They point out, quote, that the strongest and most consistent inverse relationships between level of phthalates and testosterone, that is elevated phthalate metabolites, lower testosterone, were found among women ages 40 to 60 years. And this is very important. If you saw the episode that we did with Dr. Mary Claire Haver on perimenopause menopause,
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
She emphasized that perimenopause menopause, which typically sets in somewhere between one's late 40s and 60s. Okay, there's huge variation there, sometimes as early as one's 30s. That would be early, however, more often in one's 40s and 50s, sometimes as late as 60s. involves reductions in estrogen, but also in testosterone.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And this has major implications for creating less feelings of vigor, lowered libido, less recovery from exercise and other life stressors and things of that sort. Now, the study also interestingly shows that quote, adult men, the only significant or suggestive inverse association between phthalate metabolites and testosterone were observed among men 40 to 60 years old.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Now, there are a number of different ways that we can interpret those data. One is that men younger than 40 have high enough levels of testosterone that, or the ranges of testosterone are great enough in that sample of younger than 40 years old, that somehow that was able to swamp out any reductions in testosterone.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
that were caused by phthalate metabolites, or rather that once men get from 40 to 60 years old, that there's somehow a vulnerability of the testosterone pathways to phthalates, or, and none of these are mutually exclusive, of course, that the phthalates had built up in those men's system over a number of years, and then were having their major effects on those men between 40 and 60 years old.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
I do find it interesting that the major effects were observed in both men and women 40 to 60 years old. And the interpretation of those data that makes the most sense to me at least is that there's a cumulative effect of these phthalates over time that reveals itself at least statistically in men and women once they reach 40 to 60 years. So what are these phthalates?
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Well, these phthalates are things that are included in plastics that house liquids and foods that we eat or that we cook with. or that simply exist in our environment and are getting broken down and that we're inhaling and then are making their way across the blood testes barrier, blood follicle barrier, or into any number of other tissues.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Now, there are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First, it provides a good rapport with somebody that you can really trust and talk to about any and all issues that concern you. Second of all, great therapy provides support in the form of emotional support, but also directed guidance, the do's and the not to do's.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Those phthalates are there, of course, to make plastic more flexible and durable, but they are known endocrine disruptors. Dr. Shana Swan has done beautiful work showing that young animals and potentially humans who are exposed to phthalates from things like pesticides in particular can actually have a, fairly major disruption in what's called the anogenital distance, okay? Withhold your chuckles.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
The distance between the penis and the anus in people that have been exposed to phthalates or mothers of boys that have been exposed to phthalates, those boys are born with a shorter penile to anal distance, okay? Typically it's of a certain distance and there's a correlation with reduced anogenital distance that is a external marker, okay? It's not that that itself is necessarily a bad thing.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
That's not what we're saying here, but that's an external marker that can be measured in mice. And there are some studies that are exploring that in humans as well, that correlates with a number of other things, including lower sperm counts, reduced sperm motility, and things of that sort. Likewise, BPAs, the bisphenol A and B, are known endocrine disruptors.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
I talked about this a little bit earlier. They're known to bind to estrogen receptors. So they mimic estrogen. Sometimes they activate those estrogen receptor dependent pathways. So they literally mimic estrogen. sometimes they block those estrogen receptors so that estrogen cannot have the normal role of docking in those receptors and causing their normal functions.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And BPA and to some extent BPS and potentially phthalates can dock to androgen receptors as well, sometimes referred to as testosterone receptors, androgen receptors. So the point is that BPAs, BPSs, and phthalates are not good for endocrine function and they are present in basically all plastics, unless it says no BPA or all phthalates removed, they're present in herbicides, et cetera.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And they're of real concern. And it's very clear, as I mentioned earlier, that you can detect microplastics in human testes. And I didn't mention this earlier, and in semen, and it is now very clear that that's correlated with reduced sperm counts and lower sperm motility. Now, I also want to be very clear. Remember, I'm not an alarmist.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
I want to be clear that just because sperm counts are significantly lower in people that have a certain amount of microplastics and nanoplastics potentially in their testes or that they've been exposed to does not necessarily mean that they're infertile.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
It is true that total sperm count and sperm motility, forward motility being an important indicator of sperm health, are correlated with one's ability to fertilize an egg. This was covered in a quite long, but quite detailed episode that I did about fertility in both males and females. There are a number of things one can do to increase sperm counts or to at least limit sperm count.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And third, expert therapy can help you arrive at useful insights that you would not have arrived at otherwise. Insights that allow you to do better, not just in your emotional life, in your relationship life, but also the relationship to yourself and your professional life and all sorts of career goals.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
There are a number of things that one can do to improve sperm motility. I encourage you to check out that episode. I'll provide a link to it in the show note captions. In fact, I'll link to the specific timestamp in the show note captions that gets to those particular strategies. But the point here is that
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Microplastics and nanoplastics are found in human testes and that's correlated with reductions in sperm count and reductions in sperm motility. I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Function. I recently became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
While I've long been a fan of blood testing, I really wanted to find a more in-depth program for analyzing blood, urine, and saliva to get a full picture of my heart health, my hormone status, my immune system regulation, my metabolic function, my vitamin and mineral status, and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors on your results. For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had two high levels of mercury in my blood. This was totally surprising to me. I had no idea prior to taking the test.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Function not only helped me detect this, but offered medical doctor-informed insights on how to best reduce those mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, because I had been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification, and worked to reduce my mercury levels.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Comprehensive lab testing like this is so important for health, and while I've been doing it for years, I've always found it to be overly complicated and expensive.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
I've been so impressed by Function, both at the level of ease of use, that is getting the test done, as well as how comprehensive and how actionable the tests are, that I recently joined their advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman Lab listeners. Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
With BetterHelp, they make it very easy to find an expert therapist with whom you can really resonate with and provide you with these three benefits that I described. If you'd like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman. Okay, let's talk about microplastics. What are microplastics?
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Now I've spoken many times before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night. That's truly the foundation of all mental health, physical health, and performance. And one of the best ways to ensure that you get a great night's sleep is to control the temperature of your sleeping environment.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Eight Sleep makes it incredibly easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to control the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Eight Sleep has now launched their newest generation of the Pod Cover, the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity, higher fidelity sleep tracking technology, and even has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring. If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover,
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman. Another study that got people's attention that I think is worth mentioning, which relates to microplastics, nanoplastics and cardiovascular disease.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
This was a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2024. So this is a fabulously good journal. And what it found was that polyethylene, which is a component of many plastics out there, were detected in the carotid artery plaques of, in this case, 150 patients, which is approximately 58% of the ones that were included in the study.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And they also found using a technique called electron microscopy. Today's fun because we get to talk about different types of microscopy. Electron microscopy allows you to look at things that are smaller than a micron. You can look... all the way down into the nanometer range, right?
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
You can start breaking up that one one thousandth of a millimeter into nanometers, and you can start to see things that are really, really small. And in this study, electron microscopy showed that there were these jagged edge foreign particles among the plaque macrophages of these cardiovascular plaques, okay? Macrophages are part of the immune system.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
These are cells that go in and try and eat things up. They're kind of like little ambulances. Later, we're going to talk about microglia, which are the brain's resident microphages, or microphages, depending on where you live and how you like to pronounce it.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
But the point here is that when using a technique like electron microscopy that allows you to look at really, really small stuff, it was very clear that the plaques that form these Now basically occlusions within the arteries, these are not good. This is one of the reasons you want to eat properly and do cardiovascular exercise and take great care of yourself, et cetera.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Electron microscopy made very clear that there were little plastic foreign jagged particles deposited in some of these plaques. Now, were they the cause of these plaques? Did they contribute to some of the occlusion caused by those plaques? Unclear.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
it's reasonable to assume that they form part of the physical substrate that could occlude blood flow through these arteries, which of course leads to cardiovascular events, which of course are not good. So I'll put a link to this study in the show note captions. Again, these are correlative studies in humans.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Microplastics, as the name suggests, are little itty bitty bits of plastic. How itty bitty? Well, microplastics range in size from one micron, which is one one thousandth of a millimeter all the way up to five millimeters in diameter. Okay, so anything in that size range is considered a microplastic.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Correlative studies are only that, they're just correlative, but I'm trying to provide a patchwork of things that suggest that it would indeed be a good idea to try and limit your ingestion, or at least facilitate the removal of microplastics and nanoplastics from your system. Another reason to do that relates to the so-called PFASs, okay?
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
These are a group of chemicals sometimes referred to as the quote unquote forever chemicals, because they are very long standing once they get into your system. These things have names other than PFAS, which is an acronym, things like perfluoroalkalo, things like polyfluoroalkalo.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
I don't know how good my pronunciation of those is, but if you look up the PFAS, you'll see that these things are known to cause liver damage. They can damage the immune system. They are considered forever chemicals because they are not broken down. They last forever. Then again, some of the other components of microplastics and nanoplastics are also known to last forever.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
So you're starting to get a picture of these little tiny bits of plastic, some tinier than others, depositing themselves in our tissues. They're everywhere out there. They are most prominent in certain sources, but they're going to get into our system. Now, does that mean that we can't get rid of them? No, we absolutely can get rid of them.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
In fact, we have a number of different ways that we get rid of toxins and foreign invaders in our body. Some of those include the immune system, right? Even if you have just some sort of foreign object, like a splinter, your immune system has a reaction to that.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Typically you get some pus around it, some inflammation, and that pus and inflammation is part of the process of isolating that foreign intruder, that splinter, and then eventually creating some tissues that extrude it or allow you to extrude it.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
You of course also have what's called your adaptive immune system, which doesn't just react to the presence of something foreign, but creates antibodies, which can combat that and so on and so forth. So your body has these frankly miraculous ways of dealing with foreign intruders of different sorts.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
but it does seem that microplastics and nanoplastics can deposit themselves in their tissues and stay there. Does that mean that you don't have any chance of getting them out? No, you have a liver. Your liver, yes, contains microplastics and nanoplastics, very likely if you've been alive for any amount of time,
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
has what's called phase one and phase two detoxification processes that allow you to break down and get rid of certain foreign products, including microplastics and nanoplastics. So let's talk about liver detoxification and some of the things that can facilitate liver detoxification that you actually have control over. Okay, so let's talk about liver detoxification.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
The liver is such a cool organ. It does so many cool things. It's not just about detoxification, by the way. It does all sorts of things related to blood clotting. It's just an amazing, amazing organ. We should probably do an entire episode about the liver and not just eating liver. I'm not a fan of eating liver. I do it every once in a while because I'm told it's nutritious.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
But let's talk about the living, functioning liver. There are two types of liver detoxification processes. So this is not about detoxing your liver. You may hear about detoxing your liver. That's a whole other discussion that I don't want to get into, at least not here. There's type one and type two liver detoxification.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Anything smaller than that, so anything smaller than one micron in diameter, one 1,000th of a millimeter in diameter is considered a nanoplastic. And indeed, there are lots of microplastics floating around in the air. There are lots of nanoplastics floating around in the air. There's lots of both of those things in the ocean. There are a lot of those things in food, especially packaged food.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Okay, there's type one, so-called phase one liver detoxification is also called the oxidation phase. It involves something called cytochrome P450 enzymes. Okay, so enzymes are involved in the breakdown of different things. It converts toxins into less harmful components that ideally are excreted from the body, okay? Type two or phase two liver detoxification.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Again, this is not detoxification of your liver. This is detoxification by your liver. is also called the conjugation phase of detoxification. It involves enzymes that attach molecules to toxins. It makes those toxins water soluble and easier to excrete from the body. in the form of urine. It neutralizes reactive intermediates from phase one.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
So phase one and phase two detoxification work together. During phase two of liver control detoxification is where toxins are broken down and those broken down components are prepared to be removed from the body. It is thought that the liver plays a primary role in the removal of microplastics and nanoplastics. BPAs and BPSs. And by the way, I realized I didn't say this earlier and I should have.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
These BPAs and BPSs are sometimes chemical components within the microplastics and nanoplastics. They sometimes attach themselves to the microplastics and nanoplastics. I should have said that earlier, forgive me. The microplastics and nanoplastics can act as what are called vectors or carriers of things like BPAs, BPSs, phthalates, and forever chemicals, okay? I should have mentioned that earlier.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
So type two, that is phase two of liver control detoxification is where these toxins that are in the body and potentially these microplastics themselves and nanoplastics themselves are not necessarily broken down because some of those things can't be broken down, but where they are prepared to be excreted from the body.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And we have some degree of control over phase two of liver controlled detoxification. Again, I'm calling it liver controlled detoxification so that this doesn't get misconstrued as detoxing your liver, which frankly is a very controversial topic and may not be possible at all.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Although simply by saying that I'm probably going to get attacked, but here we're just talking about your liver's ability to break down and remove things from your body that you frankly don't want in your body.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
One way that you can enhance phase two liver control detoxification processes is by increasing your intake of something called sulforaphane, which is present in cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli and cauliflower. Now, is there enough sulforaphane in cruciferous vegetables such that you could eat reasonable amounts, that you wouldn't have to overeat cruciferous vegetables in order to get this
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
of phase two liver detoxification processes? Potentially, yes. The animal studies that were carried out, so this would be in rodents like rats, used supplemented sulforaphane at dosages that were comparable to the amounts of sulforaphane that a human might ingest from a large serving of broccoli or a large serving of cauliflower. So this could be a few cups of raw broccoli or raw cauliflower.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Although frankly, if you're like me, that basically translates to gastrointestinal distress. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to a party and there's some like, you know, broccoli and cauliflower, maybe with some dip or something like that. I usually avoid the dip because I'm not really into dips, but we'll have a few pieces of broccoli and boy, does that disrupt my gut?
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
I don't know about you. And most things don't disrupt my gut. That's not something that I, struggle with. I prefer to cook broccoli and to cook cauliflower. If you cook broccoli and cauliflower lightly, okay, so you don't just, you know, turn into a complete mash. You don't boil it such that a lot of the nutrients are leached out into the water around it.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
There are a lot of those things lining cups. There are a lot of those things in everything that we consume, essentially. So what does it mean to have all these microplastics and nanoplastics floating around in our environment and going into our body through fluids and foods, et cetera?
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
So if you do sort of a light boil or a steam or something like that, or you pan cook it, maybe in some olive oil. This is making me hungry, by the way. you'll still maintain the sulforaphane in those cruciferous vegetables, meaning it'll still be beneficial to you. Now, some people, including me, don't tend to eat that many cruciferous vegetables. I don't know why.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
I just somehow don't make it a point to shop for them enough. I ought to. For people like me, or perhaps you're in the same boat, you can supplement with sulforaphane. And what you'll find is that it's sold by various companies and it's available at a quite wide range of dosages. You'll see, for instance, two products similarly priced. One product will contain 50 milligrams of sulforaphane.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
The other product will contain 225 milligrams of sulforaphane. Now, if you go to what I consider a really excellent website for thinking about and evaluating this kind of stuff, which is examine.com, I've talked a lot about this on the podcast before. On examine.com, they talk about the translation of the rodent studies to humans. And here's what they say.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
They say supplementation of 0.1 to 0.5 milligrams per kilogram of sulforaphane in rats has been noted to be bioactive. Okay, just bioactive. They're not getting specifically at removal of microplastics or nanoplastics. And they translate that to a human dose of, okay, if you're 150 pound person, then that's going to be anywhere from 1.1 to 5.5 milligrams for that 150 pound person.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
If you're a 200 pound person, that's approximately my weight. I think right now I'm sitting somewhere around 215. a hundred kilograms, 215, I don't know, somewhere in there. I haven't stood on a scale in a while. It's 1.5 to 7.2 milligrams for a 200 pound person. Now, then you think about the typical dosages that are found in supplements of 50 milligrams per serving
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
versus 225 milligrams per serving. And in either case, you realize that that's much, much higher than what's being discussed here. So what that says to me is that I would probably go with the lower dosage. Although according to examine.com, they say, quote, these low quantities are likely attainable through raw broccoli or cruciferous vegetable products. So that's great.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
What this means is that you don't need to supplement with sulforaphane if you're willing to eat raw broccoli. They're specifically saying raw broccoli. or other cruciferous vegetable products, while higher dosages may be further beneficial. So this is still a bit of a vague space. I realize there's some discrepancies in what I'm describing here.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Well, there is some serious concern because these microplastics potentially can disrupt cellular health, organ health, and could potentially lead to certain forms of disease. We'll talk about the ways they could potentially do that. However, I want to also emphasize that your body is incredibly good at dealing with foreign invaders. It's very good at getting rid of stuff that isn't good for it.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
I said you could lightly cook the broccoli or cauliflower. That's my read and understanding of sulforaphane, that it's not broken down at low temperatures, but perhaps you just decide to eat it raw if you can bear it. I can't, so I don't. You could supplement it if you choose what dosage. Well, that depends on your weight.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And it seems that in any case, most supplements are going to more than cover the amount of sulforaphane that's described here, translated from the rat studies. So in my case, after researching this episode, I opted to start taking 50 milligrams, five, zero milligrams of sulforaphane per day. I'm going to see how that goes. I guess.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
It's fair to say that I'm sufficiently concerned about microplastics and nanoplastics, given that I'm 49 years old. All my biomarkers seem fine, but hey, I'm always interested in doing something for my health or to promote my health, that is, if I can. And it's pretty clear to me that if one's thinking about liver control detoxification, both for sake of offsetting or removing
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
BPAs, BPSs, but also other potentially toxic metabolites from microplastics, nanoplastics, and other environmental factors that taking 50 milligrams of sulforaphane per day perhaps can be beneficial. So I don't think it's necessary for everybody.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
In fact, I think everybody should probably be getting some cruciferous vegetables in their diet anyway, at least once a week or a couple of times a week. So if you're not interested in supplementing, that would be the route to go.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
If you are interested in supplementing, I'll provide a link to this particular location in the examine.com page so that you can translate some of these dosages to your potential sources of supplemental forms of sulforaphane. The other way that microplastics and nanoplastics can be excreted from the body is in the bowel.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And one way to potentially increase the amount of microplastics and nanoplastics, BPAs, BPSs, phthalates, and forever chemicals, those PFASs from your body is to make sure that you're getting enough dietary fiber. Now, most people can do that simply by eating a fair amount of fruits and vegetables, which I always make a point to do. I also ingest starches, okay? So I'm not pure carnivore.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
things like rice, like oatmeal. I like fresh pastas, although it's mainly rice and oatmeal for me these days in terms of starches. Plenty of fruits and vegetables. That's something that I just really make it a point to do. Why is fiber good at doing this? Well, it can bind lipophilic molecules, okay? It can bind molecules that are able to cross cell membranes.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And earlier we were talking about the fact that BPA and BPSs mimic estrogen and combined estrogen receptors and potentially to androgen receptors as well. Keep in mind that one of the reasons why those so-called steroid hormone pathways, I know people hear the word steroid and they think performance enhancing steroids, but no, it turns out that testosterone and estrogen are both steroid hormones.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
One of the reasons those are interesting is that because of their structure, they're able to bind cell surface receptors and have effects on those cells. They are also able to pass through the hormones. Here, I'm not talking about BPAs and BPSs, but the hormones, testosterone, estrogen, can actually get to the nucleus of cells and can control gene expression.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
These steroid hormones, testosterone and estrogen, work in a very coordinated fashion to create what we call secondary sex characteristics, which are the characteristics of the external body and brain changes and internal changes all over the place, ovaries, testes, et cetera, are what underlie what we call puberty. And that's because these molecules can actually control gene expression.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
However, microplastics and nanoplastics have been shown to lodge within specific tissues and stay there for long periods of time. So you'll notice during today's episode, I'm going to go back and forth between the stuff that's really scary and then reassuring you that we're not sure whether or not we need to be that scared about these microplastics and nanoplastics yet. Okay.
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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
So when we talk about these molecules like BPAs and BPSs impacting these pathways like estrogen and androgen pathways, this is serious stuff because what you're doing is you're potentially activating or blocking pathways that are involved, not just in the function of those cells, but actually the genes that those particular cells express.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And this is particularly concerning for any kind of hormone dependent cancers, right? perhaps not surprising to you based on what you now know about how hormones work with gene expression, et cetera, that many tissues that turnover cells a lot, such as the testes, right, producing sperm pretty much throughout the lifespan, the follicle and eggs, right, breast tissue, right?
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
These are common sites of cancer, okay? There are other cancers that can form, of course, in other tissues like the pancreas and brain, et cetera, but tissues that turn over quite a bit because of the involvement of the cell cycle and because cancer is, among other things, a dysregulation of the cell cycle and an overproduction of cells that we call tumors.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Those are pathways that are particularly vulnerable to endocrine or hormone disruption. And this is why there's additional concern about microplastics and nanoplastics, perhaps increasing cancer rates in particular in tissues like the ovary, in particular the testes, in particular any tissue where there's a lot of cellular turnover. So the point here is that
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
eating broccoli, eating cauliflower, potentially supplementing with sulforaphane, here I'm summarizing a bit what I talked about earlier, avoiding drinking water from plastic bottles, maybe getting a reverse osmosis filter, avoiding those diabolical canned soups.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
I had no idea about these canned soups or ensuring that the canned soups that you're eating are safe in the ways that we discussed earlier, avoiding sea salts, avoiding, I'm throwing a few other things in here that I haven't mentioned yet, avoiding nonstick pans, trying to cook mainly with cast iron or ceramic and making sure that those are BPA, BPS, and PFAS free.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Just look at the packaging, do a little bit of homework there and get this one. This is a really surprising one, or at least was surprising to me. Carbonated water, okay? Mineral waters. A few years ago, there was an analysis of different popular forms of carbonated water, which is sold in glass containers, okay?
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
It turned out that Topo Chico, which I happened, past tense, happened to love, Topo Chico, had 9.76 particles per trillion of these PFASs, these forever chemicals, okay? That was an analysis done in 2020. Perrier, 1.1. San Pellegrino, 0.31. So we're comparing 9.76 versus 1.1 versus 0.31, which tells me I'm avoiding Topo Chico. I might even avoid Perrier. I'll probably drink San Pellegrino.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
I'm probably buy a Perrier and drink a Perrier every once in a while. I'm not crazy about carbonated water. By the way, this was an analysis by Consumer Reports, and it caught some attention such that the Coca-Cola company, which makes Topo Chico, said that they were going to fix this problem. And they claimed, okay, I don't know if they've done this, all right?
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
I don't want to get the folks at Coca-Cola angry with me. Coca-Cola claimed that by 2023, they were going to cut the amount of these particles in half but that would still make them 4.5 parts per trillion, still much higher, at least four times higher than any of the other brands. So I have to be direct. I'm just speaking from my own experience and choices.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
What I want to do is give you the evidence so you can decide how much effort you put into limiting your exposure to these microplastics and nanoplastics and how much effort you put into trying to rid your body of them. Okay. I'm not here to paint the picture one way or the other, because frankly,
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
until I see data that Topo Chico has reduced the amount of these foreign contaminants to basically less than 0.31, I'm going with San Pellegrino or Perrier.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Okay, I don't tend to drink a lot of mineral water, but given that you're ordering it in the glass, in a glass container that is, given that these things are not particularly cheap, right, and that you have choices, you could either decide to avoid carbonated water altogether or,
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
If you're going to be smart about it, you probably want to avoid the ones that contain more of these foreign contaminants because of their ability to get lodged in different tissues in your body. So that was very surprising to me that you would have these forever chemicals in carbonated water. What it tells us is that the water going into those products contains either microplastics, nanoplastics,
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
PFAS is from other sources or something. And so I think that we should all be aware of this. If you're going to drink carbonated water, probably going with a Perrier or San Pellegrino would be better than going with Topo Chico, because even though they've halved amount of these forever chemicals in there. It's still quite high.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Okay, so I've mentioned some to-dos to reduce your microplastic, nanoplastic, BPA, BPS, and PFAS exposure, such as ingesting cruciferous vegetables, potentially supplementing with sulforaphane, trying to avoid drinking out of plastic water bottles. There are a few other things I'll just list off here to keep it relatively short. I talked about making sure you're getting enough dietary fiber.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
I talked before about using a glass or steel vessel in reverse osmosis water, using Himalayan salt, avoiding sea salt. The other thing that you can do, oh, and I mentioned using cast iron and ceramic as opposed to nonstick cookware whenever you can.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And if you're going to microwave food, making sure that you're doing that on plates or in containers that does not or do not contain plastic of any kind, even if it says microwave safe. The other thing is to sweat, okay? We vastly underestimate or downgrade the power of sweating. Sweating is an incredible mechanism.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Now, I realize that as soon as somebody says, sweating is a great way to remove toxins from the body, that a bunch of people out there get really inflamed, pun intended. I'm not saying that. What I am saying is that there are a number of different ways for foreign products to leave the body, including urine, feces, but including sweat, okay? So I'm not saying that's going to detox you completely.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
the data just don't line up with one argument or the other, that they're extremely dangerous or that they're nothing to worry about. Let me give you an example of something that you might've heard in the media and on recent podcasts out there. Very scary.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
That's not what I'm saying, okay? I don't fall into that camp. However, there are a number of beneficial aspects to sweating. And also there are a number of beneficial aspects to doing the things that make you sweat. So I've done entire episodes about deliberate heat exposure.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
So things like sauna done anywhere from once a week to four times a week, pretty impressive data in terms of reducing all cause mortality, improving cardiovascular function. It's also for most people, pretty pleasant to sit in a sauna. If you don't have access to a sauna, taking a hot bath, not so hot that you burn yourself, but a hot bath that also will activate some of these same pathways.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
things like hot yoga, things like going out for a run in a hoodie, trying to get your body to sweat pretty robustly at least once a week is a good idea for all sorts of reasons. Also just your ability to thermoregulate. By the way, for those of you that don't sweat much, sweating is actually something that you can get better at. That's right. You can get better at sweating by what?
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
By sweating, by exposing yourself in safe ways to heat. And I talk about that in the deliberate heat exposure episode. We also have a newsletter on deliberate heat exposure. I'll put links to those in the show note captions. And those explain safe ways to encourage sweating. Why am I talking about this?
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Well, sweating may help remove some of the things that are attached to microplastics and nanoplastics that can act as endocrine disruptors. It's very, very unlikely that the microplastics and nanoplastics would actually be removed as whole particles in sweat. I think that's very unlikely, frankly.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
What's more likely is that the microplastics and nanoplastics aren't really getting removed from or broken down within our body at all. They're getting lodged in these different tissues, but the stuff that's on them and in them is potentially causing some of the biological harms that we've talked about. And so removing those more robustly is what sweating is about.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
It's what consuming cruciferous vegetables is about and so on and so forth. So those are a few more to-dos. The other two don'ts, or I should say don'ts, are things like avoiding consumption of packaged food or food that's packaged in plastic. Now, this is tough to do. I love berries, for instance. I love blueberries. I'm what you call a drive-by blueberry eater.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
If there's blueberries in a bowl, I just kind of like sweep them up by the fistful. So if there are blueberries on the counter, you're probably not getting very many. I'm getting most of them. I love blueberries, but I noticed that I was starting to accumulate, and of course I recycle those blueberry containers that are those plastic containers.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
The argument based on what seemed to be a pretty high quality publication that you may have heard is that every single week we ingest up to a credit card's worth of microplastics and nanoplastics. You might've seen that in headlines and in other podcasts. And indeed there was a paper arguing that.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
One way that you can avoid plastic packaging is go to farmer's markets, bring your own bags, bring your own baskets. I love that the farmer's markets, they have those cardboard containers. Of course, some of you may be shouting, wait, but those are colored green and the coloration is a problem and they have the microfibers with the, true, but probably better than
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
plastic containers that they use now in the grocery store for pretty much every fruit and vegetable. OK, so solution is either farmers markets or trying to bring your own bags to the grocery store. I know this is starting to sound kind of, you know, hippy dippy, but, you know, these little things make a big difference over time.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
You're reducing your plastic waste, you're reducing the amount of plastic exposure of the fruits and vegetables you eat. This can correspond to a real difference in the number of microplastics and nanoplastics and the bad stuff that comes with them that you ingest. And again, Most of the time, these things are going to save you cost as opposed to introduce new costs.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
The other don'ts that we haven't talked so much about are to reduce the number of clothes that you purchase. I know this might seem like, oh my God, where's this all going? But it turns out that one of the major sources of microplastics and nanoplastics are the microfibers on clothing that come off in washing machines that then get distributed into the oceans through the water.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
that escape into the air. There are a number of ways that you can trap those. There are the things like the Guppy Bag that you can, I love the name, the Guppy Bag that you can buy at pretty low cost. You can find those easily online that will trap some of that stuff. There are filters that you can put within specific washing machines.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Some places actually require this now that capture those microfibers. These microfibers, when I first heard about them, I thought, oh goodness, are we really talking about microfibers in clothing? Well, just, I don't know, wear 100% cotton clothing. But then you find out, because I read this book, this scary book and it is scary.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
It does kind of bum you out when you start reading this stuff that when you read a poison like no other, how microplastics corrupted our planet and our bodies, you find out that so much of the waste that exists in landfills is clothing that people have discarded. And there was nothing wrong with that clothing. The clothing has dyes, it has little microfibers.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
This stuff gets into the environment, gets into the oceans. Here's the simple solution to all this. It turns out that we replace far more clothing than we need to.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Okay, this is actually a great relief to me because I love few things more in terms of clothing anyway, the feeling of a t-shirt that I've worn many, many times and it's really, really soft and kind of worn down, that kind of distressed look t-shirt, even though that might be fashionable to some people, to some people it's not, I love the feeling of a really worn down, soft t-shirt.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
even the ones that have a little bit of, you know, sort of jagged toothing along the collar. Now, some people might loathe that. They only want the pristine t-shirt that, you know, is super crisp. That's not me. I know I own a few of these black button down shirts and indeed, the same ones, I use them over and over again.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
However, a more recent paper looked at the quantitative analysis they used, used a different quantitative analysis and claimed that they vastly overestimated the amount of plastic that we ingest every week. What do I mean by vastly overestimated?
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
can be very detrimental to our health. At the same time, it's important to realize that as of now, we don't have any causal data linking microplastics to specific human diseases. That said, there's a lot of correlative data. And today we are going to review those correlative data.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
I do own a fair number of them, but I use the same ones over and over again.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And I think that's in keeping with this other recommendation, which this book, A Poison Like No Other, said could make a major dent in the amount of microplastics and nanoplastics that are out there in the environment that we end up ingesting and that the other animals on the planet who are so very important end up ingesting and potentially suffering from. And that's to simply...
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
not buy or replace so much of our clothing, but to reuse our clothing. Now, the argument has been made and they counter it in the book. Well, then you're just going to wash the same clothing over and over. You're going to break down those microfibers and introduce those dyes and things into the ocean, et cetera, into the air.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
But it turns out that when you reuse the same clothing and wash it over and over again, you actually see a diminishment in the amount of microfibers and the amount of dyes and things that you extract from those clothing over time. Okay, so now in some odd way, we're talking about clothing purchases or non-purchases in this case on the Huberman Lab podcast.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
But, you know, in researching this episode, I discovered that these are a major source, if not the major source of microplastic and nanoplastic particles in the environment and landfills, ocean, air, et cetera. So while none of us, I believe none of us are going to go out there and create a tire that doesn't degrade as quickly as current tires, right? Most of us don't have the capacity to do that.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Let's face it, we got to get around in vehicles, all those tires breaking down, not a whole lot we can do about that. We're inhaling all that stuff, but we can make the decision to use the clothing that we've got for longer periods of time. Is it really necessary to keep buying more and more clothes and replacing the old clothes, throwing out the old clothes or even donating those old clothes?
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Who knows? I'm all for donating clothing after you're done with it, but now I have justification for just keeping the t-shirts that I have, making them softer and softer and softer over time.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And I should mention that of course, when you wear clothing that is shedding these microfiber particles, you're ingesting, or rather you're inhaling more typically, the microfibers and the microplastics and the nanoplastics and all the bad goodies that go with them. You know, as I say that, I think we need to be fair about what that means and what it doesn't mean.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
This newer analysis of the same data claims that the credit cards worth of plastic that it was argued we consume every week, well, that was an overestimate by a million fold. And in fact, it would take 23,000 years to consume enough plastic to lead to that credit card's worth of plastic in our bodies, okay?
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
I personally just don't see myself going around and looking at labels, finding only 100% cotton with no microfiber shedding, no dyes, et cetera. I mean, there are a lot of things that are now introduced to even 100% cotton clothing that make them a little bit more water and stain resistant. It's very, very difficult to find such sources of clothing.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
I know they're out there, but they're very difficult to find and they're quite costly in many cases. If you happen to know of some true low cost versions of those things, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. But I think we have to be realistic here. Plastics were introduced in the 1950s. They are everywhere.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
They are in our clothing, they're in tires, they're in medical devices, they're just everywhere. The point of this discussion today is not to try and eliminate plastics. I don't think that's reasonable. I don't even think that would be useful relative to the incredibly powerful use of plastics in just about every industry. There's always a trade-off with these sorts of things.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And I acknowledge that. What I'm talking about is trying to limit your exposure and trying to buffer yourself against this bioaccumulation in ways that can protect your endocrine system, protect your brain, protect your cardiovascular system, protect your liver, protect the organs and tissue systems of your body so that you can thrive as much as possible.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
So there are some other not to dos or things to avoid. Microwave popcorn turns out to be a major source of these things. Basically any bag or container, can, bag or plastic that has a lining that prevents oily stuff from staining it and getting through, such as microwave popcorn, very likely is a source, or I should say a rich source of microplastics, nanoplastics and endocrine disruptors.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Does that mean that if you have some microwave popcorn every once in a while, that's going to screw up your estrogen or testosterone system and make you infertile? No, I don't believe that. These things are all a matter of dosage, exposure over time, and so on. Toothpaste and plastic tubing, another rich source of microplastics, nanoplastics that people ingest.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
of course, because you're putting it in your mouth. When I did the oral health episode, I talked about some tooth tablets. I've become quite fond of these.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
I have no financial relationship to the company that makes these, but these are tooth tablets that include something called hydroxyapatite, which is great for the remineralization of teeth, because it turns out your teeth can fill in little cavities that start to form and overall tooth health. It's also great for travel, because first of all, these things come in a glass jar, so no plastic.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
You take the tooth tablets and you just chew them up and then you brush your teeth. It's great because you don't have to worry about how many ounces is going through the screening process at the airport because it's not a liquid, it's not a paste, it's a tablet. They're super convenient. I love those.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
We'll probably link to those in the show note captions, even though I have no relationship to the company. I'm just a big fan of that sort of thing, the convenience and the fact that it's housed in glass. But as I say all this stuff, right? Avoiding drinking out of plastic. Don't turn over your clothing so much.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
wash your clothes, but don't purchase and throw away clothing too much or more than is necessary. Avoiding sea salt, these kinds of things. These are all just choices for you in the buffet of options of ways to reduce your microplastic, nanoplastic ingestion and exposure and the bioaccumulation of those things over time.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
and to increase, in the case of things like sulforaphane and sweating, et cetera, and to increase the detoxification and removal of some of the more harmful products attached to or within these microplastics and nanoplastics, right? I certainly don't expect anyone, including myself, to start living a life free of microplastics and nanoplastics.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
So now we have very discrepant data, or rather we have very discrepant analyses of the same data. So you're starting to get a picture of just how confusing this whole field is, but we're going to parse it a little bit further by saying that it's also very clear that microplastics and nanoplastics are everywhere, okay? They're just everywhere you look.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
To do that, you'd probably have to leave planet Earth. I know certain people are developing plans to enable us to do that, even if we're not astronauts. And frankly, when you get out to Mars or you get it into outer space, those microplastics and nanoplastics based on everything I've learned and how incredibly sneaky, small, and pervasive they are, well, they're probably in outer space as well.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Now, the final thing I want to touch on is the potential role of microplastics, nanoplastics, BPAs, BPSs, and forever chemicals on the developing brain. And this is an area that
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
I'm very familiar with because much of my career I've focused on brain development, neural development, and one can find a lot of papers out there about the potential neurotoxicity of micro and nanoplastics, certainly the established neurotoxicity of microplastics and nanoplastics in animal models and the potential neurotoxicity of those things in human tissues.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Now, of course, because this animal literature and some correlative human literature have been out there for a while, the media and some people in particular have become concerned about and have mentioned the potential role of microplastics and anaplastics and the bad goodies that attach to them or come from them in potentially causing neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and ADHD.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
I want to be very clear. I went into this literature. I read this review. It's a quite nice review. The plastic brain neurotoxicity of micro and nanoplastics
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And sure, there's a lot of animal literature showing, for instance, that there's a disruption in certain enzymatic pathways within neurons, in particular, and this is the one that intrigues me the most, a disruption in what's called acetylcholine esterase.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Acetylcholine is a neuromodulator involved in neuroplasticity, in attention, among other things, levels of alertness, a number of things, including control of the so-called neuromuscular junctions that allow for us to move our limbs, Acetylcholinesterase is involved in the degradation, the breakdown of acetylcholine in the synapse.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
So neurons release acetylcholine into the synapse where it can have an effect on muscle. or can have an effect on other neurons if we're talking about within the brain. And indeed, there's a fair amount of evidence showing that microplastics and nanoplastics are correlated with reductions in, or just changes in acetylcholinesterase activity.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Now it is true that where acetylcholine is released in the brain, it can impinge on dopamine circuits that are involved in reward pathways and movement. But I want to be clear,
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
people have taken some of those findings, translated them to the correlative data in humans, and have started to link the presence of microplastics and nanoplastics, in their words, not mine, in their words, to neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and ADHD. And while there is some evidence that some of the behavioral components or cognitive components of autism and ADHD
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
may increase in line with increases in microplastic or nanoplastic exposure, the data there are still, in my opinion, very, very weak. So in my opinion, it's far too early to conclude that microplastics and nanoplastics have any role and certainly not a causal role in the development of autism or ADHD or other neurodevelopmental disorders.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
In fact, if I were a PhD advisor for somebody in toxicology or a PhD advisor for somebody and environmental science, and they needed to have a surefire publication, I'd probably suggest that they work on microplastics and go out there and try and find yet another source of microplastics and use a better analysis, for instance, okay?
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
That said, the presence of microplastics and nanoplastics in placenta and in that first stool from babies, which shows us that those microplastics and nanoplastics are getting into the developing fetus, well, that does, I think raise level of concern.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And it certainly should motivate pregnant women as well as people who have newborn kids or going to have kids to look around their home environment, think about the things they're putting into their body or the vessels they're using to ingest liquids, to ingest foods, and to start limiting microplastic and nanoplastic exposure, certainly during, but also perhaps before pregnancy and after pregnancy when one is breastfeeding.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
So the point here is that we can't draw a direct relationship between microplastics and nanoplastics and neurodevelopmental disorders. I don't think it would be appropriate at all to do that. However, given that microplastics and nanoplastics have these issues, both from their own breakdown, their presence, right? Their own structural presence can be a problem.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
The chemicals within them can be a problem. The chemicals that attach to them can be a problem potentially. I think learning to limit our exposure throughout our lifespan
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
learning to reduce the bioaccumulation through detoxification and excretion pathways, using the various approaches that we talked about, and certainly to pay extra attention to those things around the time of, meaning before, during, and after pregnancy is especially important because we just don't know all the things that these chemicals and these plastics are doing, but none of them seem to be very good, at least not in terms of the ways that they impact our brain and bodily tissues.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Okay, so today we've talked a lot about microplastics, what they are, where they're found, how they get into our body, where they get lodged within our body, what they potentially do in our body, none of which is good. Some might be innocuous, some might be bad, none of which, at least as far as I know, is good.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
and some ways both through some to dos and some to avoids that we can increase our excretion or our breakdown and removal of the bad stuff on and in microplastics and nanoplastics. And I realized that even though we covered a lot of things, we also just scratched the surface. For instance, we know that receipts are rich sources of BPAs, okay?
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
So if you are somebody who handles receipts a lot for your job, probably best to use nitrile gloves, okay? Not latex gloves, but nitrile gloves. Those are going to protect your hands. If you're somebody who purchases things, maybe just say, no thanks, I'll take the electronic receipt or no receipt, okay? However, we need to be reasonable here as well.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Does this mean that if you touch a receipt that you're going to screw up your testosterone or estrogen? No, but you probably don't want to be rubbing those receipts. And it's very clear that if you use sunscreen or lotions of any kind on your hands, you handle receipts, it can increase the access of those BPAs to your bloodstream.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And if you're somebody who handles receipts a lot, well, then probably best to use those nitrile gloves. The point here is that there are a lot of different sources of these BPAs, BPSs, PFASs, so-called forever chemicals, microplastics, nanoplastics. I also would just encourage you to do your research. Look at the cans that you drink from. Ensure that they don't include BPAs.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Doing a graduate thesis isn't just about getting a publication, but what I'm trying to refer to here is that wherever people look for microplastics, they find them. This is true in our environment, and this is true in food, this is true in water, And this is also true for our tissues.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Look at the different things that you cook with in your kitchen. Try and cook from cast iron or ceramic. And if you don't, look at the other pans and cans and things in your environment and see what your likely exposure to these BPAs, BPSs, and forever chemicals is. and make choices accordingly. That's what today's episode and frankly, this podcast is about.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
It's about you being informed and making the best choices for your mental health and physical health. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. In addition, please subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Please check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I do read all the comments.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, formerly known as Twitter, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media channels.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
If you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, our neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries as well as protocols in the form of brief one to three page PDFs. Those protocol PDFs are on things like neuroplasticity and learning, optimizing dopamine, improving your sleep, Deliberate cold exposure, deliberate heat exposure.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
We have a foundational fitness protocol that describes a template routine that includes cardiovascular training and resistance training with sets and reps, all backed by science. And all of which again is completely zero cost. To subscribe, simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab up in the upper right corner, scroll down a newsletter and provide your email.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
So in the last couple of years, there's been an explosion in the number of scientific studies exploring which tissues of the human body, so not just animal models, but the human body contain microplastics and nanoplastics. Okay, so by examining post-mortem tissues, that is tissues from people who are deceased, it's been discovered that there are microplastics and nanoplastics lodged in the brain.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion all about microplastics and nanoplastics. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
So if you take the brain of a deceased adult human, what you find is that they have about 0.5% of the total weight of the brain from microplastics. So this is about a teaspoon of salt or sugars worth of microplastics. Might not seem like much, but if you think about how little neurons are, a typical neuron will have a cell body.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
This is the area that contains the nucleus with all the DNA and so forth. that cell bodies of neurons vary in size tremendously. They can be as small as, you know, five to eight microns across to as much as, gosh, I've seen some neurons down the microscope that are, you know, 50 microns. I've seen some that are 100 microns across. It depends where you look in the nervous system, okay?
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
So if you start to think about a half teaspoon of powder of microplastics and nanoplastics, That's a lot of microplastics and nanoplastics that could be distributed in lots of different places in the brain.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And a little bit later, we'll talk about what the potential impact is of these microplastics and nanoplastics on the function of particular types of neurons that may impact things like neurodevelopmental trajectories. OK, the argument has been made. I'm not making this argument, but the argument has been made that microplastics and nanoplastics may correlate with things like autism.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And most importantly, we are going to discuss the various things that we can each and all do to limit our exposure to microplastics, or at least to facilitate the removal of microplastics from our body. because as we'll soon discuss, you have microplastics in essentially every organ and tissue of your body right now. And you are constantly being bombarded with microplastics.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
may correlate with things like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. I don't actually believe that the data there are strong enough to make those arguments at all.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
However, I will tell you that the presence of microplastics and nanoplastics in the brains, that is post-mortem tissue, okay, so deceased people taking the brain, chopping up the brain, looking at it down the microscope and seeing microplastics, and then quantifying the amount of microplastics in different compartments of the brain and distributed across the brain,
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
That is concerning to me in the sense that there's enough of it in there and the function of neurons in the nervous system is precise enough that you could imagine
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
given that these microplastics and nanoplastics are lodged in particular categories of neurons that do in fact impact things like reward and motivation, things like movement, et cetera, that they could be impacting the function of the nervous system, but there's no direct causal relationship, at least not in humans. There's some interesting data in animal models.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
We'll get back to that a little bit later. So there's microplastics and nanoplastics in brain. You'll find microplastics and nanoplastics in other tissues that have a blood organ barrier. What do I mean by that? Well, the brain is encapsulated in the so-called BBB, the blood brain barrier.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And that's because your brain tissue, because it doesn't turn over across the lifespan, you don't produce many new neurons. There are a few places you produce new neurons, like the olfactory bulb, the dentate gyrus or the hippocampus, a few places, but these are far and few between.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Most of your brain tissue that you're born with is the brain tissue that you're going to die with, provided you don't lose that brain tissue through the course of your lifespan, through a head injury or something like that. The neurons you have when you are born actually are far more numerous than the neurons you have at the time when you die.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
This is important and it's one of the reasons we have a blood brain barrier. Nature is very smart. It designed a barrier so that molecules that might be dangerous to the brain can't enter the brain and that's what the BBB is for. Microplastics and nanoplastics are making it from the bloodstream into the brain. Okay, this is what I mean when I say they can cross the blood-brain barrier.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Then if we take a step back and we ask ourselves, what are some other tissues in the body that have a very robust barrier from the blood? Because a lot of things get into the blood and that's not necessarily good, but it's not necessarily bad if you can excrete those things, right? We have a lot of detoxification mechanisms that include our liver detoxification, et cetera, but
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
If these particles are getting from the blood into the brain, what are some other tissues that they're getting into that have these thick barriers or these very stringent barriers? As you can imagine, two other tissues that have very stringent blood to organ barriers are the blood testicular barrier. Why would that be? Okay, why would you protect brain? Well, it can't renew.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
You don't want those neurons to get contaminated with things. So you put a BBB in, a blood brain barrier. You also put a blood testicular barrier in males. Why? Well, that's where the DNA are. That's where the so-called germ cells are. So you don't want things getting into the testicle and mutating the DNA there because then those mutated DNA could be passed on to offspring. Guess what?
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Microplastics and nanoplastics can cross the blood testicular barrier. And in fact, there was a lot of press this last year about microplastics and nanoplastics being present in every human testicle that was analyzed in, or I should say from post-mortem tissue. Likewise, there's a blood follicle barrier in females. Okay, this is where the eggs come from.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
and microplastics and nanoplastics can cross the blood follicular barrier. So this is why people are starting to get concerned, right? I suppose we shouldn't be so surprised that we're inhaling microplastics given that they are everywhere. I should mention that there wasn't much plastic around or in use prior to the 1950s. If any of you have ever seen the movie, The Graduate with Dustin Hoffman,
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
So the challenge for me and indeed for you as well is to frame this topic of microplastics accurately. It's important that we understand they are out there, they are in us, and indeed, they can cause serious issues for our health. However, we also need to take agency. We need to understand how we can limit what's called the bioaccumulation of microplastics in our organs and tissues.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
This is the only time you'll see somebody driving eastward across the Bay Bridge, all right, from San Francisco toward Berkeley on the top deck. It actually runs in the other direction. They shut down the Bay Bridge. That's in The Graduate. And the other thing that's in The Graduate is this famous scene.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
If you're old enough like me to remember the movie, The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman's lying in the pool. It's after his graduation. He's lying in the pool. He doesn't really know what he's going to do with his life. And this guy comes up to him and he says, you know, the future is plastics. And it became this kind of famous line or pseudo famous line.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
Now that movie takes place at a time when plastics were really booming as an industry and indeed polyethylene, polyurethane, these plastic materials were developed because they were very durable. They were long lasting. In fact, they are not biodegradable. They're not broken down very easily, if at all, and certainly not within biological tissues.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
These plastics went from essentially nonexistent in the 1940s and prior to in pretty much everything involved in manufacturing. OK, even in different aspects of surgical implants and things of that sort. So plastics are indeed everywhere. And that started in the 1950s, hence that line from the graduate. So it's not surprising that microplastics and nanoplastics would get into our body. Right.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
If they're everywhere in our environment and we're inhaling them all day. then of course they'll get into our lungs and then they're small enough they can get into our bloodstream. But as I mentioned, the body has these cleansing systems or these detoxification systems to remove things, but they're not removing the microplastics or at least not all of them from brain, testicle and follicle.
Huberman Lab
The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them
And I should point out that Microplastics and nanoplastics are also found in all the other tissues of the body. In fact, I don't think there's a single investigation of human tissue or animal tissue for microplastics or nanoplastics where they didn't get a positive result, meaning where they didn't find them in the tissue. You can find them in not just the upper lungs, but in the lower lungs.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Ryan Suave. Ryan Suave is a renowned expert in addiction treatment and trauma recovery.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Prior to this conversation, I solicited for questions from the internet about Addiction, broadly speaking, and got some great questions. The first question is, is addiction the problem? They put the in quotes, or is addiction an attempted solution to a different but less obvious problem?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
But for everything else, like if somebody out there is listening and they're like, well, you know, I have a hard time clicking off of social media. Even though I know I need to sleep, I need to study or have a hard time disengaging from video games, I think is a common one in a lot of young people. How do they know if they're addicted? Is there a litmus test?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
So the medicine becomes the source of stress.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Are GLP-1 agonists, things like Ozempic, Wegovy, et cetera, being used for addiction outside the context of weight loss? Interesting question. And will this happen in an official capacity or remain off-label use? They're asking your opinion. are GLP-1s being used to treat addiction to food? And do you think it can be useful for treating addiction to other things?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Can somebody be addicted to stress, meaning are habits addictions? Those are sort of two questions. Clever, this person snuck in two questions. First question, can somebody be addicted to stress?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I mean, could we test ourselves as individuals? Like, can I go an afternoon without it? Can I go a week without it? Is that the test?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Intensity addiction. That's a, you and I know some people with that. Yes. Yeah. I'd like to know about social behavior addictions, social media, coffee, sugar, even work addiction. And as always, thank you for tackling hard topics. I guess that was directed toward me, but you're the one who's about to try and tackle this topic. So yeah, Are those things really addictions?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Are people addicted to sugar, addicted to coffee? Do they meet the classic definition of addiction?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Well, I don't drink caffeine past 2 p.m. Occasionally.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Not last night. A lot of questions about Ibogaine, probably because the incredible work of my colleague Nolan Williams at Stanford with these single Ibogaine trials. for people getting over alcoholism, meaning one taking Ibogaine once or twice and mostly in veterans was covered on the Rogan podcast and Nolan's been on here. What are your thoughts on the use of Ibogaine and other psychedelics?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Let's leave MDMA out of it because that's more for the treatment of trauma and it's not actually a classic psychedelic, but things like psilocybin, Ibogaine for people seeking relief from alcohol and drugs specifically, but maybe other addictions.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
It has to be done in Mexico. They're doing the brain scans at Stanford before and after. It's not currently –
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
The rates of remission from alcohol use disorder and other substance use disorders is somewhere – there's a range, but 40 to in some cases 80% with one or two Ibogaine trials. But this is with therapeutic support. There are a bunch of other things happening there. And then there's evidence of brain plasticity in a number of brain areas. Yeah.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
If we know somebody or are close to somebody that's clearly suffering from addiction or struggling with addiction, what can and should we do? This sounds like somebody who is aware of the all too common scenario of this kid, this parent, this coworker, this significant others, clearly an alcoholic, clearly a drug addict, clearly addicted to fill in the blank.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
What can people reasonably do assuming that person is not in a medical crisis yet?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
What if it still feels good to them, however? Like family isn't saying, look, you know, kid isn't getting their schoolwork done. But it's kind of outrageous, you know, four hours a day playing video games. three hours a day. That might not even seem like that much to a lot of people, but parents can see the opportunity cost of that. This is time that kid isn't,
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Can I ask slash offer one, which is if a 12-step meeting is an open meeting, as they call it, like an open AA meeting, you could offer to go with them. When they do the around the circle thing, if you go and you don't want to say anything, you just say pass.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Yeah, as long as it's what's called an open meeting, you don't have to be an alcoholic or an addict to go to that meeting. And so you could take them. could even go and just observe, believe it or not, some non-alcoholics have come to 12-step meetings that were open meetings to learn more about it, to then be able to go help somebody that they know.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I've seen the work you do help so many people. So, so many people. And so I'm just very, feel very lucky you come on here and share with a lot more people. And I'm sure you'll get some outreach. We'll put links to where people can find you and some of the resources and things that you're up to and the papers and other things mentioned.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
But yeah, on behalf of myself and everyone listening and watching, I just want to say thank you. You're doing incredible work.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
running around and getting exercise. This is time that is eating into sleep. This is time that could be spent studying. So maybe grades haven't cratered yet. And we live in the quote unquote American dream model where kids say, well, so-and-so makes millions of dollars every year playing video games. So I'm actually on the path. I think you see that fairly often these days, right?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Thank you for that. That's extremely gratifying to hear. And I'd be remiss if I didn't say that we're not for you and your support and the many things you've taught me and our friendship. I definitely wouldn't be doing this and maybe wouldn't even be here today at all in the biggest sense. So thanks for everything. I appreciate you. Thank you.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Ryan Suave. To learn more about Ryan's work and to find links to the various resources discussed during today's episode, please see the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
In addition, please follow the podcast by clicking the follow button on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. And you can now leave us comments at both Spotify and Apple. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. And if you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, Threads, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the information on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, it's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as what we call protocols in the form of one to three page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter, and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Ryan Suave. And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Disrespectful to eggs, which I'm a big fan of.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
And some of their heroes are very public about the fact that they like smoke a ton of high THC weed.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I mean, that when I was growing up, that was associated with lack of agency and kind of being a quote unquote burnout was the idea. Nowadays, there are just as many examples of people that smoke a lot of weed are vocal about that. And by all external measures are doing very well. perhaps better than most.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
You've pretty much seen it all, although I'm sure there's more to come. I would love for you to just explain to people listening what addiction is and how you see it show up in people's lives. I know that you tend to get things like a trauma surgeon would see the human body hemorrhaging and in need of great support. But how do you think about addiction?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
No, neither do I. I think that the contrast with the video games that you played when you were younger and then you mentioned going outside, I think – I realize this is not a strict definition of addiction by any means. But if something in the electronic sphere makes, quote, unquote, real life – I don't know if that means it's addictive, but it certainly means it has a gravitational pull, right?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
And we can set this as a kind of a pillar for context when we talk about pornography, for instance, right? So when, I mean, there's a saying, right? A picture is worth a thousand words. And I would say as a vision scientist that a movie or even a reel or a clip on TikTok is worth a billion pictures, right?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
You know, never before have we been exposed to so many movies with so much richness in sound and eyes. You know, the more times we see eyes and you've got all this elaborate context of whether or not you're talking about pornography, whether or not you're talking about video games. You know, the sort of sensory richness of it, richness feels like the wrong word, right?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
But the kind of like the amount of sensory information coming in through any one of those very brief experiences in a moment. it doesn't necessarily overwhelm the brain. Clearly the brain can handle it, but then you walk out into a landscape, like a park with a couple of basketball hoops and a, and some paint drawn on the concrete and a ball. And it looks boring.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
It's the difference between eating a, you know, as a kid, you know, a hot fudge Sunday, a banana split, and then being offered a plate of broccoli. Like you have to know a lot about nutrition and care a lot about the long-term effects of nutrition on the body to, to not think that the, hot fudge sundae is the better option. I mean, it just makes sense from a, like a neural perspective.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
So I, I wonder whether or not this definition of addiction or habit forming behaviors or dependence could be expanded to include, you know, the, the ratio of kind of gravitational pull versus, you know, how it makes other things seem right. And obviously, you know, I don't believe that we should remove technology.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I think technology is wonderful, but I could imagine that for a young brain and for an older brain, right? I mean, can I just ask you, do you find any adults or do you encounter many adults who are addicted or have a habit of excessive online shopping? I mean, it's so easy to buy stuff online. I mean, just the barriers to entry are so low. Yeah, absolutely. So does that make sense?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Like this contrast between richness and dullness that exacerbates the dullness, the more that you engage in some behavior.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
So they took away his Wi-Fi and video games, and he's hiding. I'm chuckling, but it's terrible. I mean, you can only imagine what's going on inside that kid that they can't, as you mentioned before, handle the discomfort of this thing that's like their medicine.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Well, and then hot fudge sundae doesn't seem to taste so good. No, then you need more hot fudge sundae. Yeah. I mean, that's the dopamine dynamic stuff that, thank goodness, Anna Lemke, author of Dopamine Nation, made so clear that those big, fast inflections in dopamine very quickly lead to smaller and smaller peaks in dopamine from the same behavior or substance.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
And then the trough of low that comes after is just immense. In fact, there's just what I, the other day, before I forget, there was a post on AXA of a guy, he sold his company for a billion plus dollars. And he was expressing the extreme depression of not knowing what to do with himself now. And everyone will say, oh, poor guy, right?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I don't illustrate that point to make it a point about billionaires or not, but it wasn't the pursuit of pleasure. It was the pleasure of pursuit that drives dopamine. He gets the goal. There's no more pleasure from pursuit because he's not pursuing anything anymore. And you think, how could that possibly be? He can buy anything he wants.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
But the whole point is that the dopamine isn't deployed for the reward. It's deployed for the pursue the reward. So that trough is a very real thing.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Well, that's an extremely important point that people are chasing a feeling. And I had a friend who, um, thankfully is a recovered addict. I obviously won't disclose who this is, a former methamphetamine addict, very successful in life, but had a serious meth issue. Got sober and contacted me not long ago, requesting some support because they were thinking about abusing Adderall.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
And we had a conversation, fortunately they didn't do this. He's doing great, goes to meetings, has a sponsor, is taking care of that. But the description of why they were pursuing this idea of abusing Adderall was this recollection of a feeling. You know, he kept talking about like, there's, I just remember that feeling.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
It was, you know, and everything felt, and he was talking about something that I can't relate to because I've never done meth, have no intention of doing meth, but it's almost like it was like a love affair that had been spectacular that he was missing this person, but it was a thing. It sounded like love. Like I missed that feeling.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Can we dissect that a little bit? To feel the way they want to feel versus not feel the way they don't want to feel. I remember reading Augustine Burroughs' book, Dry. He's a recovered alcoholic. And there's this paragraph in there where he talks about his first drink of alcohol.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
And I'm going to get the exact wording wrong, but it went something like, you know, on that first drink, he felt, he's in the first person, he's saying, I felt it. mesh with my blood and my physiology and my physiology felt correct for the first time.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
And I thought, oh my goodness, I certainly don't have that relationship to alcohol, but I have friends who are serious alcoholics, fortunately now sober, who describe alcohol that way. From the first drink, it was like, this is, they say, this is me. It's like they're finding themselves.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
And that's very different than avoiding the way they felt previously. Most of them didn't pick up a drink the first time because they were trying to find that person or because they were trying to avoid something else. It was because there was booze at a party or booze at home.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
So how do you persuade somebody that it's a good idea to take that away from themselves? Because I imagine some of the first thoughts that go through their mind include – I can't imagine life without that feeling.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I know a number of people who are excellent parents who are super devoted to their kids. And they say, like, my kids are my life. My kids are everything. That might just be language, right? They could also have a relationship to a higher power. But do you see people suffering by virtue of overemphasizing things? their kids or their, you mentioned spouse, but as a priority in their life?
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
And can you imagine that kid later grown up looking for a partner? and the expectation on that partner or the expectation on themselves, just based on that role internalization of, you know, like that they're the center of the universe or that maintaining this beam of love from the other person is essential or else it feels life-threatening.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Ryan has spent decades on the front lines helping people overcome addictions to substances like alcohol and various drugs, as well as behavioral addictions, including gambling, video games and pornography. His approach combines evidence based protocols tailored to each person's unique family history and needs.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also contains adaptogens. I started taking AG1 way back in 2012, long before I even knew what a podcast was.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I started taking it and I still take it every single day because it ensures that I meet my quota for daily vitamins and minerals and it helps make sure that I get enough prebiotics and probiotics to support my gut health.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Over the past 10 years, gut health has emerged as something that we realize is important not only for the health of our digestion, but also for our immune system and for the production of neurotransmitters and neuromodulators, things like dopamine and serotonin. In other words, gut health is critical for proper brain function.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Now, of course, I strive to eat healthy whole foods from unprocessed sources for the majority of my nutritional intake, but there are a number of things in AG1, including specific micronutrients, that are hard or impossible to get from whole foods.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
So by taking AG1 daily, I get the vitamins and minerals that I need, along with the probiotics and prebiotics for gut health, and in turn, brain and immune system health, and the adaptogens and critical micronutrients that are essential for all organs and tissues of the body.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
So anytime somebody asks me if they were to only take one supplement, what that supplement should be, I always say AG1, because AG1 supports so many different systems in the brain and body that relate to our mental health, physical health, and performance. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
For this month only, April 2025, AG1 is giving away a free one month supply of omega-3 fish oil, along with a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2. As I've highlighted before in this podcast, omega-3 fish oil and vitamin D3 plus K2 have been shown to help with everything from mood and brain health to heart health and healthy hormone production and much more.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to get the free one month supply of omega-3 fish oil plus a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2 with your subscription. Today's episode is also brought to us by Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need, but nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, all in the correct ratios, but no sugar.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are vital for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or your nerve cells.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Drinking element dissolved in water makes it extremely easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes. To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and therefore losing a lot of water and electrolytes. They have a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. They have watermelon, citrus, et cetera. Frankly, I love them all.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
there's this thing that happens around any conversation about addiction where at some point any logical listener starts to say, okay, well, and it sounds like everyone's addicted to something and it's so hard to stay right in the, you know, between the lane lines of healthy and healthy because, yeah, I like,
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I'm not speaking for myself because I'm not a drinker, but like, I like a drink at the end of the day. It helps me relax, makes me a better parent, makes me a better spouse. And I like it. Is it my spiritual higher power? No, but I like it. Would I take 30 days off? Prefer not to, but I'm not addicted.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
You know, but then you think, okay, well, a kid that likes playing video games, it lets him connect with his friends. He's doing it a bit excessively, but is he addicted? You know, okay. Obviously, if it's harming people's profession, it's harming their relationships in very overt ways, then we place into the category of addiction.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
But there's this thing that happens in these conversations around addiction where people start to go, okay, it sounds like I can't really enjoy anything that much because then it takes over everything. Like, I'll come clean. I've worked anywhere from 10 to 16 hours a day, five to six days a week on average since I was 19. Am I a work addict?
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Maybe, but I love my work and it's done wonderful things for my life and I have a life that I wouldn't trade for anything. Did I miss out on a lot of things? Probably. But I also love the life I've lived and that I continue to live. And a lot of that comes from the relationships and experiences I've had through work. Right. So at some point, this is where diagnostic criteria become handy.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
But I do like the fact that we have a litmus test now. Could you take 30 days away from it and not completely lose your mind? Or could you just take 30 days away from it? If I didn't work for 30 days, that would be very difficult for me. But I could do it. Um, so how should we frame this, this thing of addiction and so that people can ask themselves, like, do I have it or does it have me?
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Can I ask you a question about how it's impacting things? Because one thing I've observed in myself and in others is that sometimes behaviors that if we were to just look at through a kind of tunnel vision, you'd say, wow, like this person just like works a lot or this person exercises a lot. But it provides energy that feeds a bigger ecosystem. You know, it gives me a sense of purpose.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I have great relationships through my work and relationships that are not through my work but you know, it sits not as my higher power, but kind of at the center of my life and a bunch of other things wake out from it. And to remove that thing would be to disrupt the whole web.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I think that sometimes what scares people, especially, again, I can't relate to alcohol specifically, but what my friends who have made the decision to try and quit or quit drinking alcohol, for them, it's like their ability to socialize, the lack of anxiety while they're intoxicated, the knowing there's something to do, for them as opposed to what they would fill that space with.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
So sometimes I feel like these addictive behaviors fit into a larger ecosystem so that it masks any dysfunctions. But it has this, again, gravitational pull so that, you know, it gets to bigger questions of, like, how are we supposed to live our life? And I like this quote from St. Augustine, you know, that a life well lived is a constant reordering of our lives.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
So it gets to these questions of, like, what is a good life?
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
So when somebody comes to you or in some cases is brought to you, who's in the throes of addiction, What's your first line of attack, so to speak? Are you focused on what the underlying stressor is or you're trying to stabilize them? I mean, these are people who sometimes and, you know, sadly, I've seen this in my friends, fortunately, who are now sober.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I just want to repeat these different categories. A small list of gratitudes, including perhaps some things that we're grateful that challenge us or things that we've received or whatever. It happens to be a quick list of gratitudes planned for the day, what the internal emotional weather is like, how am I feeling? Irritated, rested, whatever.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
It could be three or four things, what to watch for and what to strive for. I do think it's an extremely useful, obviously zero cost, minimal, minimal time investment protocol, for lack of a better word, that everyone, not just people who struggle with addiction, but everyone can benefit from because I think we tend to be so conscious of,
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
like what to look for, what to strive for, coming out of a morning journaling or a great night's sleep. But then it's amazing how by 3 p.m. somebody cuts us off in traffic or we're being bombarded with too many things and all of a sudden we're not necessarily unpeeled, but we're not our best self. Do you think there's value in sharing your list with somebody else?
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
During today's episode, we explore all aspects of addiction, including the relationship between addiction and trauma. Ryan shares insights from his extensive clinical work and provides clear zero cost protocols for effective recovery that leverage neuroplasticity, which is your brain's ability to change with intention and experience.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
And the brain is very different at different times of day and at night. You know, one thing that I subscribe to that separate from this conversation, but perhaps relevant is I don't believe any thoughts that occur between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. I just don't. Whatever comes up, if I happen to wake up in the middle of the night and have, I just don't, I've chosen to not believe those thoughts.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I might write something down. I might have an insight that I'm interested in or something that terrifies me or whatever, but I just don't believe those thoughts because I've had the experience thousands of times of then going back to sleep, waking up in the morning, being like, that's ridiculous. It doesn't, it doesn't, that doesn't hold any water anymore.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I think we're so vulnerable in the middle of the night. Our forebrain shut down. We can't strategize. All our safety mechanisms are, are, or at their lowest. And those thoughts just, they don't hold meaning. Now, that's not to say that some night owls might not have some brilliant insights in the middle of the night. So this just relates to me and my schedule.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
But I do think that we can make a decision to behave one way and do things at 8 a.m., And by 4 p.m., as a neuroscientist, I can honestly say that your brain is not the same brain at 4 p.m. that it was at 8 a.m. It's still you, but it's functioning so differently. What's important, how it orders priorities, how it interprets data. It's not like a computer. It's a dynamic machine.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
And at different times of day, you're working with a different set of hardware. Literally, certain circuits are more active than others. So I don't believe that we are capable of self-regulating nearly as well as we could, certainly not perfectly, if we don't have a reminder of our best self, our aspirational self that we carry forward.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
But, you know, people wrap the truck around a tree at seven o'clock in the morning, having drank a bottle of wine in it. taking a Xanax or jail or worse, right? And so when somebody comes in, what are the first questions that you're asking and what's the goal?
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Whether or not it comes through other people or enforcement or ideally it comes from inside us, but the expectation that we are going to spontaneously and impulsively be our best self is one of the biggest failures, I think, of education and psychology and medicine and evidenced by the fact that I have many colleagues who are scientists and physicians who have terrible addictions.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Some are sober, some are not. These are brilliant people who have all the knowledge in the world about the inner workings of the mechanisms that make people addicted, et cetera. Anyway, I just – I'm editorializing there a bit. But I feel very passionate about these zero-cost tools. But I have to say these tools can make a huge difference. And – What do you call this list? What is it?
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
The plan for the day?
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
what is the purpose of the shadow in your mind? And for folks that don't know, I mean, the shadow, we're using Jungian language here, but, and there probably will be some folks listening that say, and are thinking themselves, well, I've never suffered from an addiction, et cetera. But what we're really talking about here with this, can we call it an emotional weather map? Sure, that's great.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Because I like the idea of a map and the forecast component. Because it's not just how do I feel right now? It's how do I feel right now? What's coming? And how am I going to prepare? And why? there's some goal setting in it, but you're not actually writing out your specific goals. Just, you know, what am I striving for is, I suppose, a goal.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
But what we're really saying is anyone that's ever gotten anxious, anyone that's ever gotten stressed, anyone that's ever gotten angry, whether or not you yell or not, right? I mean, what you're talking about is a roadmap for the
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function. Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient levels and much more. They've also recently added tests for toxins such as BPA exposure from harmful plastics and tests for PFAS or forever chemicals.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to your physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors who are expert in the relevant areas. For example, in one of my first tests with function, I learned that I had elevated levels of mercury in my blood.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Function not only helped me detect that, but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, I'd been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification. And I should say, by taking a second function test,
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
That approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by function simplicity and at the level of cost. It is very affordable.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. You alluded to this earlier when talking about balance as a dynamic process, not a static process, that part of peace is knowing that Yeah. As opposed to there's no distress.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
And I know people like this that are constantly trying to move through the channels of life, create their own little estuaries around things so that there's never any disruption.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I think that because we were talking about addiction and now we're talking about perception of threat and distress, we want to make sure that we tie those things back to one another. No, I think this is a very important conversation because what we're, you know, at the heart of
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Addiction, but also at the heart of a challenged life, challenged in the ways that life shouldn't be challenging, is this lack of distress tolerance. And I have a question about distress tolerance specifically. What can we do to increase our distress tolerance? Like what practices? Maybe we just have to experience distress to know how to navigate distress.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Yeah, because adrenaline is ubiquitous in stressful circumstances, which is just a bunch of science nerd speak for the stress response is always an increase in autonomic arousal or alertness, a shrinking of the visual field, an increase in heart rate, a tendency to move. People will say, but I freeze. Actually, the freezing response, this is kind of interesting. My lab studied this.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Lindsay Soleil published a paper in Nature about this in 2018. She was a graduate student in my lab. The freezing response is an active behavior. Oh, yeah. Trying to hide from an intruder in your home, in the closet, you're trying not to move. So people think, oh, you know, people freeze under stress. No, the freezing response is an active response.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
You know, the adrenaline dump, as it's sometimes called, is what – Essentially creates the freeze response. It's why people can't remember things when they get up on stage if they have a fear of public speaking. And I forgot to mention in the cold plunge, cold water is a highly reliable way to elicit an adrenaline response. It's just a great training for this feels uncomfortable.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I want to get out, but I'm going to learn to control my thinking. in this uncomfortable circumstance.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
And we might be able to sense them a little earlier if we have some training. I just want to throw in one little science tidbit, as long as we're talking about using cold as a way to manage distress tolerance, is that the first 15 to 20 seconds after the adrenaline response hits, and it hits very fast, your forebrain, which is involved in all your contextual decision-making, it's...
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
clean, clear strategies of what best to do is essentially shut down for about 20 seconds. If you can make it 20 seconds, you have a far better chance of not doing something really stupid and doing something that's very adaptive. Now, there may be circumstances where you don't have 20 seconds, but...
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
if under stress and riding out that 20 seconds is generally going to be a very adaptive approach, because then your forebrain comes back, quote unquote, online, and you could really start to make strategic decisions based on those particular circumstances.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Can I interject something there? Because one thing that stemmed out of a prior conversation we had is I think, you know, these aspirational responses of, Okay, like the stressor hits. I'm going to create the gap between stimulus and response that, you know, was it Viktor Frankl or something like that referred to? Sounds wonderful. But in real time, everything's different. It's very hard.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Everything's different. And so, you know, what can we do to prepare? What are the things? I like this notion of proactive tools that we can schedule. Yeah. Cold plunge being one of them. We'll talk about yoga nidra and some other things.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
But one of the things that I've learned is that there are sensations in the body that come about, and it will be different for different people, but there are sensations in my body that come about very fast because the adrenaline response is fast. And the more that I pay attention to those, the more I'm able to pick up on them at earlier levels.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
stages of the stress response, kind of like seeing a big wave coming from further out. And the yogis talked about this. I learned about this also from you that like in meditation, we can start to see the quote, it's mystical language, but like the subtle ripples of our perception.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Whereas when we're going through life and we're just kind of around, it's like being on a train and we're just seeing stuff go by all the time.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I mean, it speaks to the unbelievably powerful aspect of human connection.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I mean, likewise, with the earlier example of the kid in video games, we think about this kid and the video game as like the – only players in the interaction, but to take a video game away from a kid is to also remove him from his social context. We know that social isolation is one of the most potent stressors for any mammal, especially humans.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
So we're talking about distress tolerance. We have an emotional weather map tool that can prepare us. There are things that are proactive like cold plunge or meditation. In the moment, we can hopefully create more of a gap. And of course, we were talking about this in the context of addiction. But as you were saying, with the behavior or the substance is the medicine that against discomfort.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Can you go back to that theme just a little bit to really hammer that home? That when somebody comes to you initially, you're saying, okay, what are you using? How often are you using? How's this impacting your life? Trying to get them to see all that. But once they move past that, are you trying to get them to see what they're really afraid of? Let me frame this a little differently.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Many years ago, you said, it's kind of incredible. We're having an academic discussion. And you said, it's kind of incredible. If we can tolerate discomfort for one second, then we can tolerate it for two seconds. If we can take discomfort for two seconds, we can do it for five seconds.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Once you start to realize that all you have to do is experience discomfort as a series of moments, suddenly you realize that you have an immense capacity to manage discomfort. And I was like, I sat with that for a long time. Why do you think it's so hard for us to do that? Even though in theory, that's exactly how it works.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
So maybe the best we can do is prepare. These proactive tools seem increasingly important to me. Can we talk about Yoga Nidra? I talked about non-sleep deep rest a lot on this podcast. Yes, I decided to take Yoga Nidra, which is a thousands of years old practice and rename it non-sleep deep rest because I wanted more people to do it.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I mean, I've taken some heat, but I wanted more people to do it. And it's a zero cost tool that I think is very valuable. I learned it from you. I went out to where you work and observed that this is the first thing that people do every morning when trying to get sober.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
This is the first thing that you have them do every morning when they're trying to identify and overcome their traumas, including full-blown PTSD. And I don't want to share some of the stories that people shared out there, but a couple of them were very intense. I mean, when I'm talking about PTSD, I'm not talking about like had a bad semester in school.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I'm talking about people who were co-sleeping with their kid and the kid died. And it was a very intense thing to hear those stories. And it was also a beautiful thing to see people's transition through their traumas, in some cases their addictions, or both. And every day started with an hour of Nidra. What is it about Nidra? How did you discover Nidra? And... How did this come about?
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Because I think it's an extremely, extremely important tool for a number of reasons. But how did you start incorporating this into trauma and addiction treatment?
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
We discuss and compare residential treatment programs, 12-step programs, self-guided addiction recovery, and more. If you or someone you know suffers from addiction, the information and tools offered in this episode ought to be of tremendous benefit to initiate and maintain sobriety from that behavior or substance.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Generally without intentions or mystical language. It involves the...
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I think the most critical part of non-sleep deep rest in yoga nidra, to me, the overlap in the Venn diagram includes self-directed relaxation, the ability to do that, which of course the incorporation of long exhale breathing will facilitate that because it pushes down on that side of the seesaw that is the parasympathetic nervous system and really gets it engaged regardless of how stressed you are, as you pointed out, getting that parasympathetic nervous system.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
That... The idea that people's mind can be active, but their body is still, I think is a very powerful state. You're not trying to fall asleep. So the end goal is in reach for everyone. It isn't like you're going to fall asleep. It's like, actually, you're going to not fall asleep.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
One of the great strengths of doing NIDRA or NSDR, as it were, is that we take ourselves out of the prediction mode and we can experience life unfold in real-time moments. It sounds so mystical, but actually it was Josh Waitzkin who was on this podcast, the former chess prodigy, martial arts champion, et cetera.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
On the Joe Rogan podcast, he said something that I wanted to share with you, which felt appropriate now, which was, he said, there are two ways to go through life.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
One is metaphorically speaking, as a passenger in the dining car on a train that's going 80 miles per hour, and you're experiencing what's in that train and you're seeing things go by, that's the non-conscious lower way to experience life, lesser way to experience life.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Where you want to be is strapped to the front of that train safely, experiencing space and time as they're happening, flowing by you and through you as a series of moments. And I really think I credit NIDRA and NSDR with an ability to see life unfold as an observer and still have the ability to participate. So you're not like dissociated. You're not stepped back. You're not ahead of yourself.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
You're like right where you need to be. Right.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I feel like most people learn how to control their body but most people don't know how to control their mind, meaning they don't know how to control their thinking.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Yeah, Laurie Gottlieb, a psychologist, was on this podcast and saying, and I totally subscribe to this, that people are more willing to stay in a bad situation often something that's not adaptive for them because it's familiar versus stepping into something that could be better for them, clearly better for them, and they can understand that cognitively, but they somehow cling to what's familiar.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I think that's just the way our nervous system is wired. Like you said, staying in the battles, repeating the battles that are familiar to us, that we know how to win.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Yeah, I love that phrase, plagiarizing from the past, even though it's something to avoid. how often should people do NIDRA or NSDR and at when, what time of day?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Definitely. I think of stress and alertness and calm, all of it as the autonomic nervous system, right? Parasympathetic being calmer states, sympathetic being more activated states. And I think of it like a seesaw. And I think you know, when we're asleep, we're mostly parasympathetic. When we're very stressed, we're mostly sympathetic. So it's the balance.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
But the way I think about things like Nidra is as a person on that seesaw, you are that person and you're learning to press on one side. And when you're stressed, the hinge of that seesaw is very tight. So it's hard to activate the parasympathetic much more than when like you come out of sleep and you're still a little bit relaxed perhaps. And then it's easier to push on that.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
So you might find that learning Nidra is easier then there's always value to learning how to work both sides of the seesaw. And actually, sometimes we need to know how to ramp up the level of stress, as in the case with the cold plunge. We're deliberately activating the sympathetic nervous system and we're saying, aha, but I'm doing it as this kind of person surfing on the seesaw.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
And so I know how to balance here so that when I'm there again, I recognize this place. So that's kind of how I think about it.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
This is what Pavel Satsulin, who is a world-class strength coach who was on this podcast, talks about greasing the groove. You know, you want to get good at pull-ups, do two pull-ups every time you walk through the doorway from a pull-up bar. I think... metaphorically speaking, that, you know, like the workout in the gym, people think of that as the end point.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
But actually, you know, we used to do physical labor as a species, right? So I look at the workout in the gym as the ability to lift boxes on moving day, to move furniture without getting hurt. I love going to the gym, but it's not an end in and of itself.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Same thing like a long run is the ability to go hiking with friends without having to train for it and not worrying about gassing out halfway through. So I think that these practices are preparation for real life stressors. They're the gym for your mind. They're the gym for your mind.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
And we don't talk enough about emotional fitness and the world is clearly metabolically ill with obesity, diabetes, etc., But we are also dealing with a massive mental health crisis that I do believe stems primarily from an inability to regulate this autonomic nervous system thing. Because we can say, well, sleep's the foundation of mental health, which it is, and physical health.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
A lot of people have trouble sleeping. How to get better at sleeping? Get better at relaxing. How to get better at relaxing? Yoga Nidra, NSDR. And then, you know, so I feel like the tools exist. And I'm so grateful that you pointed me in the directions of these tools.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I love that breath is the mind made visible. It's beautiful and so true. That was Amrit Desai, I should give him credit. Okay, wonderful.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I'd like to take a brief break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Waking Up. Waking Up is a meditation app that offers hundreds of guided meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga nidra sessions, and more. I started practicing meditation when I was about 15 years old, and it made a profound impact on my life.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
And by now there are thousands of quality peer reviewed studies that emphasize how useful mindfulness meditation can be for improving our focus, managing stress and anxiety, improving our mood and much more. In recent years, I started using the Waking Up app for my meditations because I find it to be a terrific resource for allowing me to really be consistent with my meditation practice.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Many people start a meditation practice and experience some benefits, but many people also have challenges keeping up with that practice. What I and so many other people love about the waking up app is that it has a lot of different meditations to choose from, and those meditations are of different durations.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
So it makes it very easy to keep up with your meditation practice, both from the perspective of novelty. You never get tired. tired of those meditations. There's always something new to explore and to learn about yourself and about the effectiveness of meditation. And you can always fit meditation into your schedule, even if you only have two or three minutes per day in which to meditate.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I also really like doing yoga nidra or what is sometimes called non-sleep deep rest for about 10 or 20 minutes because it is a great way to restore mental and physical vigor without the tiredness that some people experience when they wake up from a conventional nap. If you'd like to try the waking up app, please go to wakingup.com slash Huberman, where you can access a free 30 day trial.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Again, that's wakingup.com slash Huberman to access a free 30 day trial. People are probably starting to realize that overcoming addiction is about more than just white knuckling it. It's about more than just going to meetings, although that can be very useful. It's about having a roadmap of the day, having a plan, knowing what weather patterns to look out for internally and externally.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
It's about having a way to deal with distress, having a way to calm down. Let's talk a little bit more about specific addictions. Maybe I'll mention a couple different categories of addiction, and maybe you could reflect on some of the unique features of that in your experience. not necessarily neurobiologically, but in terms of strategies for confronting in oneself those things, right?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Like strategies for trying to overcome, because I hear from thousands of people really about different addictions in themselves and people close to them. So let's start with alcohol. What is unique about alcohol addiction that people should know And these could be extensive answers, they don't have to be, but that could be helpful to them.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
And if you don't do it, you catch some flack sometimes.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I like the way, by the way, that you frame alcohol. It's being offered to us all the time after a certain age. And so it, you know, it's, it's a challenging one for people that, uh, are challenged with alcohol addiction or alcohol use disorder. Um, and 12 step I think is right. It's free. It's in every city. It's, um, uh, powerful, um, program.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Certainly that there are data, I should just mention this, you know, I think people will hear, Oh, it's a cult, et cetera. Uh, there was a study actually that run at Stanford, um, Some years ago, we'll provide a link to the coverage of that study in the study, which took a very objective look at 12-step for the treatment of alcoholism and other substance addictions.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Ryan Suave. Ryan Suave, welcome.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
And actually, the investigators, the people that ran the study, were very skeptical going into it. And the results were pretty remarkable. And they changed their initial perception coming out of it that it can be very, very effective for people, especially given that you can do it when you travel, you can go to meetings in other cities.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
And as you mentioned, it's not the depressing picture that people think of a bunch of people whose lives are destitute in a basement. Sometimes people are coming in with some hard stuff, but there's often a lot of humor. There's a lot of common challenge. It's very – There's a lightness there that a lot of people might not anticipate.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
That's the danger. I've said it many times on this podcast elsewhere too. It's like any...
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
high rapid inflection and dopamine that doesn't require effort aside from being a kid and your parents get you an ice cream or it's your birthday all you all you were all you did is you were born it's and to get those presents and you deserve that it's your birthday great but in life like dopamine that doesn't require effort to obtain is um is the slipperiest slow yeah and the gambling's not for the kids isn't just an and adults but it's not just on
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
So are you seeing more people coming to you with gambling addiction?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Yeah. I was going to ask you about that. We'll talk about a few other patterns of addiction and types of addiction, excuse me. But this idea that when you remove the quote unquote medicine, there's a lot of distress and discomfort that comes up for people. And some people are able to white knuckle it as it's called.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Some people can develop tools to try and work with that distress, become more distress tolerant. Some people will transmute Distress? Sometimes, yeah, it goes into running ultramarathons, which doesn't necessarily mean that it's an addiction. But I've seen and we know some people who got sober and stayed sober basically by running a lot. Yeah. A lot, a lot.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Sure. I think that running can calm the mind over time. Runners who run a lot, most of them are pretty tired or a little bit tired. And maybe that's part of the solution. If you have a dog that needs a lot of physical movement, you put it into a small space and it doesn't get that.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I mean, you see this in zoos and animals develop these what are called stereotopies, like where you see the lion that's cutting literally a trench in the dirt. It's really sad to see. You know, that animal is designed to roam. And you give an animal the opportunity to expend this energy that's stored up in its mitochondria and it does and it can relax and it can sleep.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I mean, they still have to do the work of getting sober, these people. But, you know, moving your body through space is a way of transmuting energy out of the body. So you come home, you're like, relax, eat a meal. It's like there's a calming effect to endurance activities.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Yeah, Francine Shapiro. She was in Palo Alto walking behind Stanford when she made that discovery. As long as we're talking about this, it's funny that this is coming up because online behavior, gambling – looking for somebody to get drugs from. The foraging is where the dopamine is released. We were talking about this earlier.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
And foraging mentally is the same from the perspective of the dopamine system as foraging physically through space. Think about what the dopamine system evolved for. It's like any animal, including us, searching for water, searching for food, searching for mates. We rest at night. But it's the movement forward through space that satisfies that dopaminergic system.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
And in fact, the major, I don't want to go off on too much of a tangent here, but the major system for movement in the body, not just reward and motivation, is dopamine. That's why people with Parkinson's lose dopaminergic neurons and they can't generate smooth behavior anymore.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
And it's interesting that NIDRA and NSDR, the most impressive study in my mind, is the one that shows these big increases in dopamine from resting. So I feel like physical movement – There's like a 65% increase in dodged dopamine or something like that? It's incredible. There's something about still body, active mind that ramps up our dopamine stores and then prepares us for movement.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Does the dopamine store get ramped up when we're sleeping? Yes.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
But it makes sense. And I think, yeah, there's some truth to that basic statement or basic truth to that statement. I think that transmuting just the energy that would otherwise become distress or that starts as distress, like when we're stressed, we need to get that out of our body. And I think that... Drugs like cocaine and amphetamine, big increases in dopamine and then crashes.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
You're essentially dispelling the energy. I'm not so sure that it's always about pursuit. Like you said, it's like the gambling addict that actually wants to lose.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Well, when you're really low, the only place you can go from there is up. You know, when you're really high, the only place you can go from there is down.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. Now, I personally have been doing therapy weekly for well over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
What about, and I'll bundle these, things that really hit the dopamine system hard, like in your observation, cocaine, amphetamine being the most salient ones, Adderall and other stimulants. Is there something unique to those addictions that you see in people that come in that give them kind of special requirements for how to overcome those addictions?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
That's what we were told. You do it once and you're addicted. I don't want to say that's not true, but there was no real evidence for that. It's just smoking crack, aside from shooting cocaine, like intravenously, leads to the fastest increase in dopamine. It's the rate of increase is just as important as the peak.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
It was a condition of being allowed to stay in school, but pretty soon I realized that therapy is an extremely important component to one's overall health. In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise, which of course I also do every week. There are essentially three things that great therapy provides.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Yeah, having a mismatch between your brain level of activity and your bodily level of activity is really rough. So let's talk about some process addictions. These days, I hear a ton of really desperate stories, mostly from young guys. I've heard from maybe four or five women on this, but literally thousands of young men about porn addiction.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Every time I hear about it, I feel so fortunate that I grew up in a time where, or maybe I just don't have the wiring for it. And if I did, I would be, I'm pretty open on this podcast. It's never been an issue for me. And they're telling me that they can't stop watching porn.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I get the sense that they're not enjoying this experience anymore because they're reaching out to me saying, how in the world can I quit? And What do I tell them?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
First of all, it provides a good rapport with somebody that you can trust and talk to about pretty much any issue with. Second of all, it can provide support in the form of emotional support and directed guidance.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Well, what I'm also hearing is that anytime they are in a real life intimate scenario, which seems to be fewer and fewer times nowadays in the younger generation, that they're having sexual anxiety, sexual performance issues, which makes sense if their brain and nervous system is getting wired by porn to observe sexual behavior as opposed to being in the experience of intimate sex behavior, right?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Two different things to be in the experience versus watching someone else's experience of it, which is what pornography is.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
And third, expert therapy can provide useful insights, insights that allow you to better not just your emotional life and your relationship life, but of course, also the relationship to yourself and your professional life and to all sorts of goals.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
It seems like basically stopping completely is the answer. And people say – and I'm not trying to moralize here, right? I'm not telling people what's moral about this. I just know that any behavior or substance that leads to quick repeated inflections in dopamine is going to – create a groove in the nervous system where you're gonna crave that thing.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
And it's gonna give you a lower and lower sense of satisfaction over time. And the only way to reset that circuit is to stop and do something else in its place, ideally that's adaptive.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
BetterHelp makes it very easy to find an expert therapist with whom you resonate with and that can provide you those three benefits that come from effective therapy. Also, because BetterHelp allows for therapy to be done entirely online, it's super time efficient and easy to fit into a busy schedule.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Well, we know that accessibility – increasing accessibility increases addiction.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
This has been studied over and over again and people say, well, what about red light districts and things? And there's some caveats that have to do with when you – create areas within cities where certain things are allowed. But this has been tested many, many times.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
It's also true, and it's kind of a duh, but to quote Anna Lemke, it's impossible to get addicted to a substance or a behavior that you've never taken or engaged in. So some things are best avoided entirely. Are there specific 12-step programs for porn addiction that are separate from, say, sex addiction?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
And one of the reasons I wanted to discuss this today is because I hear about it so much is unlike alcohol – or drugs, there's a kind of extra layer of shame associated with pornography addiction for people. You know, so many times we've heard, oh, like this celebrity was an alcoholic or drug addict, you know, wrapped their car around a pole, was arrested, this and that.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Then they get sober and everyone still loves them, loves them more, right? if we knew that a given celebrity was like a porn addict or something, we look at that person differently, especially if they're male. We just look at them differently. And so reducing some of the shame around it, I think is key to helping them recover.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
If you'd like to try BetterHelp, you can go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Levels. Levels is a program that lets you see how different foods affect your health by giving you real-time feedback on your diet using a continuous glucose monitor.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Because I can tell you, the questions initially came in kind of like as is often the case with men when they're trying to talk about issues, that they were kind of cloaked in like, What are your thoughts about nofap, which is this thing where guys withhold ejaculation?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Does it increase testosterone? It turns out in the short run it does. In the long term, it's probably not good for the prostate, et cetera. But then it turned out they were really asking about masturbation. They were really asking about pornography and then...
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
All of a sudden, I don't know what changed out there, but there's been this deluge of questions from young guys of how they can stop engaging in online porn.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I believe that's how you say it, right? Yeah, one trial learning. It just takes once, unfortunately, but luckily there's plasticity in the other direction too.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
One of the most important factors in both short and long-term health is your body's ability to manage glucose. This is something I've discussed in depth on this podcast with experts such as Dr. Chris Palmer, Dr. Robert Lustig, and Dr. Casey Means.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
What comes to mind for... kind of encapsulate all of it because it gets to the underlying mechanisms, I think is, you know, beware the things that come easily and quickly, like really beware those things. If it's pornography and you can get to experience of, it's not the experience of sex, but the, the illusion of pseudo sex, right? If it's, if it's easily available, beware of that thing.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
If it's a feeling of relaxation from a drink, Beware of alcohol. Fast money. Yeah. If you are very proficient at, you know, you find you lift a weight, you build muscle, you get attention for it, beware that thing because there are all these positive reward signals that are masking what soon will happen, which is that that thing is going to make you lopsided internally and make you crave it more.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
And so I think that there's something about this – Things that come easy, it's a problem. And I think I kind of like that in the sense that – because many people are struggling and we don't often glorify the struggle. We're all, we're all trying to struggle our way out of struggle, but struggle is distress. And as long as we're struggling, we're in the distress tolerance.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I'm not saying people shouldn't aim to succeed, but, and, and forgive me for going a little long on this reflection, but I remember in graduate school, I had a paper that got accepted by the journal science, which is like one of the three apex journals, nature science and cell. And I was like, over the moon. I was like, oh my God, this is amazing. First author paper in science.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Some people never do that in their career. I was doing it as a graduate student. And my dad, who's a scientist, said, prepare for the week afterward when you wonder if you'll ever do it again. I was like, okay, kind of a postpartum crash. And then my graduate advisor, I said, do we get to celebrate? Do we get to throw a meal or a party? And she goes, no.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Like, I suppose I could buy you a pizza, but that would be stupid. And this is Barbara Chapman and very blunt. And she said, no, the pleasure was the work of doing the paper. And I was like, I got it. And that's what taught me to repeat that process. I didn't always publish in science, but certainly in other great journals again and again.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
One thing that's abundantly clear is that to maintain energy and focus throughout the day, you want to keep your blood glucose relatively steady without any big spikes or crashes. I first started using levels about three years ago as a way to try and understand how different foods impact my blood glucose levels.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
It's like that the reward is in the process, like the effort is the reward.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
What's more rewarding than raising kids? But what's interesting, Michael Easter, you know, with the comfort crisis, I mean, doing these hard, Masogi, as he calls them, you know, I mean, think about like self-imposing discomfort so that you don't get pulled into the illusion of comfort by these other things. I mean, I think it's coming clear to me now that the things that come easy are the traps.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
They're the traps. So folks, if you're really good at something, doesn't mean don't lean into it, but if something comes really easily for you, you have to be very mindful of that thing and other things around it. Sounds like you created discomfort for yourself. Maybe there's like a discomfort appetite that if we don't satisfy through healthy things, we will satisfy through unhealthy things.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
That's a very interesting concept. I mean, I don't know where that would exist in the nervous system, but because you hear, oh, we're trying to avoid pain and go toward pleasure, but those models are, that's true, but those models are too simple. So I like the idea of a ration of discomfort to experience every day.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
you know, this last couple of weeks, there's always something each year that really pops, that gets kind of viral overnight. Last year it was the Hak Tua girl. This year it's the morning routine guy, the guy that he shows his morning routine. And they got millions and millions of hits. And this guy does like cold water on the face. He's working, he's praying, he's doing all these things.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Levels has proven to be incredibly informative for helping me determine what food choices I should make and when best to eat relative to things like exercise, sleep, and work. Indeed, using Levels has helped me shape my entire schedule. I now have more energy than ever and I sleep better than ever.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
He's wearing no shirt. He's super jacked. Like he was getting attention for different reasons. Anyway, huge following. And the best comment ever was, Oh, man, this guy's going to come after me. He seems like he's got his life organized. Someone put a comment, this guy spends all day preparing for the next day, which is the worst thing about optimization, right?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
The whole purpose of tools like Sleep or Nidra and all these things that you can – and you taught me this – really good protocols let you lean into life more, not less. It's not about withdrawing and getting into a wellness loop where you're just preparing for the next day.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
It's about being able to lean into the third birthday party where you're like, oh, and the kids are sick and you know you're being exposed to all this stuff, but you're there because your daughter needs to be there and she's elated to be there. Can we put on the shelf that perhaps we have an appetite for discomfort that we can either satisfy through healthy things or unhealthy things.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I think that's a good way to put it. Can we call it the suave Huberman? We can call it that. We'll go Huberman suave. It's fine. Addiction means that somebody's already in the pit. Like they haven't done the, okay, I have an appetite for discomfort. I need to satisfy with adaptive things. They're in the pit. So if you would –
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
If people out there listening are in a place where they're like, they know something's got them as opposed to them having it, where they're wondering or someone they know, and especially if it's somebody they know, what do you suggest? I mean, this isn't kind of like call the suicide hotline. I mean, unless they're suicidal, obviously. Yeah.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
I'm glad to be here. Thank you for having me. You're the guy that people call, reach out to. cry to when everything comes crashing down. That's kind of your thing. Yeah. And you have this incredible gift really to orient people in time and space when that sort of thing is happening. And you do this for men, women, teens, kids, adults, families.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
A lot of people don't have means to start therapy with a world-class addiction therapist, trauma specialist. Some do, some don't. What do people do?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
And I attribute that largely to understanding how different foods and behaviors impact my blood glucose. So if you're interested in learning more about Levels and trying a CGM yourself, go to levels.link slash Huberman. Right now, Levels is offering an additional two free months of membership when signing up.
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Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Politically unaffiliated.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
But a kid with a porn addiction, somebody who's abusing alcohol or addicted to food, shopping, gambling, they can find a meeting.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Again, that's levels.link, spelled, of course, L-I-N-K slash Huberman, to get the additional two free months of membership. The thing you said earlier that's ringing in my brain is... Does it have you or do you have it? And I think for people listening and watching, I think this is a really important distinction. And maybe you could just elaborate on how one starts to answer that question.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Because these days we hear, you know, people are addicted to social media, people are addicted to sugar, people are addicted to, you know, all sorts of things and online shopping, you know, and on and on. let's just set aside alcoholism for the moment because that's a unique case where, as you mentioned, immediate withdrawal can cause death and it has its own kind of unique features.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Thanks for sharing that avenue for people with all sorts of addictions, not just alcohol.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Brian Keating. Dr. Brian Keating is a professor of cosmology at the University of California, San Diego.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Very interesting. I don't want to go too far down this rabbit hole, but I'm aware that there are some technologies now to use lasers to extract sound waves in a similar way. So there are technologies that exist where you can shine a laser at, say, a window on a building from very far away and actually hear the conversation inside the room by way of the sound waves hitting that
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
window, the conversion of sound waves to optical and then from optical back to sound on your computer allows that.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Also, there was a technology that was publicized a few years back, developed at least in part at Stanford, the ability to see around corners by shining lasers at the most visible location closest to what you want to see, and then capturing reflections and sound waves at that location and essentially being able to
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
reconstruct images around corners see how many objects are there so pretty wild stuff you can imagine the military and spy implications but also just but perhaps just as interesting the ability to for instance map the positions and movements of critters in the deep ocean without actually having to quote unquote see them you could hear them I had a really interesting experience a few summers back of going to somebody's pool it was an impressive pool but the most impressive thing about it was that
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
you could hear music perfectly well underwater using adaptive acoustics. And listening to your episode with Goggins. No, it was wild. You could listen to something above water, dive below water, and still hear it as if it were playing in headphones. Maybe not quite as well as in headphones, and if you sloshed around in the water, there'd be a little perturbation, but it's pretty spectacular.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
It wasn't my pool, unfortunately. I have one big question that I think everybody would like the answer to, which is, To what extent do you think there's life outside Earth or not on Earth? And when people hear this, they think aliens, but, you know, like an insect-like creature, a single or small multi-cell organism on another planet, that itself would be a spectacular find.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I mean, beyond spectacular. Yeah. Is there any evidence that that does exist? Is there any reason to think that it couldn't exist? And if it does, would it have to be in a different galaxy altogether? What's the going belief among those who are like real scientists who don't believe that there's whatever, just real scientists? Like what's the thought? Like a centipede on Mars?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I don't think too many people would be totally surprised. Right. But that would be pretty wild.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Lots of drones over in New Jersey right now. No evidence of life.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Is it in the movie or in?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Maybe some interesting microbes. Yeah, it could. Maybe some ancient microbes that are no longer extant. Yeah, it could.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Adaptogens are – it's a broad term used to describe any compound that allows you to modulate the stress response. So maybe increase your stress threshold or recover from stress more quickly. It's sort of like saying stimulant adaptogen.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
No, you know, it's a broad category. I mean, I think, you know, some people say like certain non-holocinogenic mushroom strains are adaptogens. I mean, the ability to buffer the stress response. Interesting. I mean, things like rhodiola have been described as adaptogens and these work through neurotransmitter systems. So broadly speaking, they allow you to...
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
perceive effort as less effortful, this kind of thing.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
An area with koalas, a cannon to take out koalas, they would probably protest.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Do you know this theory about the gut microbiota? You know, our guts, our skin, our eyes, our nose, but certainly our entire digestive tract, the whole way down from our lips.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
um out the other end are populated with these little microbiota that influence everything from fatty acid production neurotransmitter production etc influence more than human cells yeah oh yeah and it's powerful for modulating all sorts of biological processes and um and every time we interact shake hands if people kiss if you interact with dirt if you interact with a pet you the the microbiome changes it's a it's an inner uh reflection of of
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
all your outer behaviors.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
And then we're learning a lot about it. There's this one theory that I like that kind of turns life as you and I know it on its head, which is that humans and other species are just vehicles for the microbiome. And so you would take something like the desire to populate Mars or to land on the moon as just the microbiota
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
you know taking advantage of this weird old world primate species that we call homo sapiens that loves to develop technology almost destroy itself but then continues to to uh evolve social media etc yeah can pray they warn each other about declining birth rates and then just to basically the microbiota have a what you know a sort of quote-unquote consciousness not a brain but consciousness of their own which is like
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
all species to make more of itself and to go further and further out and populate. It's hard to punch holes in the logic of this model, but it certainly diminishes our conscious experience. We could go on forever about this trail. I'll just kind of put a kind of a cliffhanger out there.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
It'd be wonderful sometime to sit down with you and discuss the possibility of, rather than thinking about life elsewhere in the galaxy...
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Given what we know about physics and engineering, astronomy, et cetera, would it be possible to build a planet at the appropriate distance from the sun that we could spawn life by bringing things there as opposed to trying to take it, you know, figure out how to do it at a distance that it might not be amenable to life? Right. You know, maybe creating a garden planet.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Maybe we don't put humans there right away, but trying to create a garden that could thrive at – some appropriate distance from the sun and seeing what, what, what nutrients could be grown there. You know, so you could have robots, man, this, this planet, but you'd have to somehow aggregate stuff in space to build this planet or launch this planet up that it would collect things.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I mean, that to me feels like a fun experiment and a lot less risky than going up, up to other planets.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
You and I could talk about the stars, the planets, optics, animals, life here on Earth infinitely. This is what happens, folks, when two real nerds get together and want to learn from one another. And I hope you're delighted in this at least. Half as much as I did, those of you listening. I mean, you occupy an incredible place.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
And I mean that like your intellectual place since you were a child is a remarkable place that most people, I think...
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
don't occupy not because they don't have the training but because they just haven't put their mind on there on these questions and i think one thing that is so clear is that through your podcast your books and certainly through the discussion today um you've placed us in the in the position of scientist to be able to ponder these really big questions about really big, really distant things.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
This is not typically the way that my brain functions, I think. Most people are more focused on things proximal to them and here on Earth. But I'm so grateful that you did. And I'm so grateful that you continue to educate. We didn't even get to talk about, but I'll just mention that you've been an absolutely spectacular proponent for education popular science education and the importance of that.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I've been very inspired by you and your work. Thank you. Very inspired by your story. Sure, because of some similarities and, you know, fathers and sons and the tribulations, et cetera, different, but some overlap there, but also just because of the way that you approach life.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
And it's very clear to me that as a person who's focused on things very, very far away, where apparently there's no observable life yet. Not yet. that you're also very grounded in this thing that we call daily life and the delight of exploration and asking questions.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
And if ever there was a call to arms for people to get outside and look at the stars, perhaps through a telescope or perhaps through the telescopes on the front of their skull, certainly to do that and to think about some of what was discussed today, because I'm certainly enchanted and I know those listening and watching are as well. So thank you for everything you do. Keep doing it. Come back.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Let's keep talking. We didn't talk about God in the universe and the origins of life, but we'll do that before long. And Brian Keating, thanks for being you. I appreciate you.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Thank you. Well, it's a labor of love mixed with an affliction. So we'll keep going. Right back at you. Thanks, Brian.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Brian Keating. I hope you found it to be as informative and indeed fascinating as I did. To learn more about Dr. Keating's work, his podcast, his book, and other resources, please see the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. Please also click follow for the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or topics or guests that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. And if you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
So that's Instagram X, formerly known as Twitter, Facebook, Threads and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes everything from podcast summaries to what we call protocols in the form of brief one to three page PDFs that cover things like how to optimize your sleep, how to regulate your dopamine. We also have protocols related to deliberate
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Cold exposure, get a lot of questions about that. Deliberate heat exposure and on and on. Again, all available at completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter and enter your email. And I should mention that we do not share your email with anybody.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Brian Keating. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, this podcast episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Brian Keating. Dr. Brian Keating. Welcome.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
One thing that really strikes me is the fact that, at least just the way you describe it, the first clock, the first timekeeping approach or mechanism was to evaluate the position of things in the sky relative to celestial landmarks.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
So irrespective of when people are born in astrology, I could imagine a tribe of people, a group of people who have charts because they've painted them onto some surface, doesn't matter what the surface is, that at some portion of the year, the stars are above this ridge. There are three bright stars above the ridge just to the left of the front of the village, so to speak.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
This is not an unreasonable thing to imagine. And that information is passed down in the form of when those three stars are about to disappear behind that ridge, days are getting shorter. Whereas when those three stars are reemerging again elsewhere in the sky, days are getting longer. Forgive me, this will be a little bit of a long question.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Sometimes the listeners get upset with me, but I think it will frame it within the biology in a way that will be meaningful for us and for everyone. Other animals besides humans have this thing, the pineal gland that secretes melatonin. The duration of melatonin release is directly related to how much light there is.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
In other words, light suppresses melatonin, therefore in short days, AKA long nights, you get a lot more melatonin released. In long days and short nights, you get less melatonin. So this is the intrinsic clock keeping mechanism of all mammalian species and reptiles.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Most people don't realize this, but reptiles often have either a thin skull, birds have a very thin skull, so that light can actually pass through the skull to the pineal. Some reptiles actually have pits in the top of their heads that light can pass directly in to the pineal.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
It's great to meet you in person finally. I thought you were a legend. I exist in real life and you do as well. And I'm delighted that we're going to talk today because I have a longstanding adoration. There's no other appropriate word for eyes, vision, optics, the stars, the moon, the sun. I mean... animals, humans?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
These are animals that, mind you, also have eyes for perceiving things, but this is the primordial, biologically primordial timekeeping device. And you imagine why this would be really important.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
And then I'll get back to why I think that because humans have a pineal that's embedded deep in the brain, light cannot, despite what some people think out there, I'm not going to name names, but light cannot get through the skull to the pineal, nor is putting a light in your ears going to get there, or even in the roof of your mouth, very unlikely, maybe some distant stimulation of the
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
neurons in your hypothalamus with long wavelength. But in any case, the pineal of humans is embedded deep in the skull. And so that information about how much light is in the environment has to be passed through the eyes, through a circuitous circuit, through a circuitous path to the pineal. But here's the thing. Here's the conundrum. An animal or human born into an eight-hour day
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
when days are getting longer has a very different future as an infant, as an infant or baby that's born into an eight-hour day when days are getting shorter, especially if you live closer to the poles, further from the equator. So think about this. You're a pregnant woman, or you're the husband of that pregnant woman, and you have a baby coming. And
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
You need to know that days are getting longer or shorter and what that means for resources, because the probability of the survival of that child and even the mother during and immediately after childbirth was strongly dictated by what resources were available, the strength of the immune system, et cetera. Animals solve this by light going directly into the pineal.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I'm not one of those animals, so I don't know if they're conscious of this. Humans needed to solve this some other way. They needed to know whether or not days were getting longer or shorter. And so the question I have is, is the movement of the stars or planets detectable enough with these telescopes that we have in the front of our skull
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Is it perceivable enough that one could know whether or not days were getting longer or shorter simply by looking up at the sky at night? Or are the shifts imperceptible and therefore you would need to create these charts? And now I think it's kind of obvious while I'm asking this question because to me, this is the reason to chart time.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
And this is the reason it occurs to me why looking up at the sky at night is meaningful for tracking time. Absolutely.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
People are busy during the winter holiday.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
What's more interesting than how we got here and how we see things and what we see and why?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
She's got the how do you how do you OK, everybody's statistics. How do you reduce variability? Increased sample size.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Well, she buys five tests. They're probably assuming something very different than if she bought one test.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I was talking fast. The irony of that one, I'll just say for the record, I'm just blushing. The irony of that one is that we published numerous times for my lab cumulative probability, and I teach this stuff.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
You're a physicist. You're a cosmologist, not a cosmetologist.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
So it's oftentimes when you're going fast, but that one I totally deserved.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I love it. Whatever shades of red I might turn.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Please orient us in the galaxy.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
And some women are keenly aware of the ovulation event. They will describe it as a feeling as if it's breaking off and migrating within them. And I have every reason to believe them. Earlier you asked, and I know this will get some people's ears pricked up, whether or not when a child is born with respect to the seasonal cycle,
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
impacts that child there there are a lot of data around this it depends on um the environment in which one lives so closer to the equator yeah it's a very different situation because the equal day is all day long there were some data and i'd love to get an update on this so um somebody knows they can put in the comments that you know the schizophrenia was far more um prevalent as you move away from the equator and then there was a guy at caltech he has since passed but had
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
some interesting data about mothers who contracted influenza during a certain phase of the second trimester, heightened probability for schizophrenic offspring. But big, big caveat here, none of it was causal, of course. And then there are all sorts of interesting things about, you know, placental effects. And so it's a multivariable thing.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
And we know that because identical twins, even that share the same chorionic sac, one can be schizophrenic and the other no, although there is a higher concordance than say they're in a dichorionic, two different sacs. But time of birth relative to the seasons, seasons correlating, of course, with abundance or lack of food, abundance or lack of various infectious diseases, influenza in particular.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
These things are relevant.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I realize this is a bit politically incorrect to say in certain venues, but genes are extremely powerful.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, nurture matters as well, but genes are immensely powerful.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Yeah, it's time perception.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I'm an expert on happiness sitting here. And then Morgan Housel is an expert on the relationship between psychological happiness and money sitting here. And he described this cartoon, which inevitably makes me chuckle, of a guy and his dog sitting by a lake and the
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
There's a bubble, you know, sort of bubbles coming out of the guy's head and he's thinking about whatever his stock portfolio and things back home, et cetera. And out of the dog's head is just a mirror image of him sitting with his owner. The dogs are very present. But what that also means is that they are not. able to perceive their own existence within time.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I totally agree with you. I'll play devil's advocate for a moment, not for astrology per se, but for instance, there are many species that use magnetoreception. They can sense magnetic fields. I think turtles do this. Some migrating birds do this and pigeons.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
There's even some evidence that within the, I believe this is still true, that within the eye of the fly, the fruit fly, that there are some magnetoreceptors. So it turns out, there are some humans that perform better than chance in a magnetoreception perceptual task. This is very surprising to me.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
It can be trained up somewhat, but I'm sure there are a number of people hearing this that they themselves feel that they can sense magnetic fields. There is a capacity to do that greater than chance in some individuals. It's a very weak capacity. So I think humans love the idea that there is something skills or qualities beyond our reflexive understanding that we all harbor.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
This idea that we have superpowers that we just need to tap into. Sixth sense, right. Yeah, sixth sense or this person has a stroke and suddenly is speaking conversational French and therefore, you know, neuroplasticity, you know, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Certainly synesthesia exists. People who will hear a certain key on the piano and it immediately evokes the perception of a particular color, not just red, but a particular shade of red in a very consistent way.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I mean, it might be- Unusual cross-modal plasticity is what we would call it.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. AG1 is designed to cover all of your foundational nutritional needs, and it tastes great. Now, I've been drinking AG1 since 2012, and I started doing that at a time when my budget for supplements was really limited.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
In fact, I only had enough money back then to purchase one supplement, and I'm so glad that I made that supplement AG1. The reason for that is even though I strive to eat most of my foods from whole foods and minimally processed foods, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits, vegetables, vitamins, and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
And I need to do that in order to ensure that I have enough energy throughout the day, I sleep well at night, and keep my immune system strong. But when I take AG1 daily, I find that all aspects of my health, my physical health, my mental health, and my performance, both cognitive and physical, are better.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I know that because I've had lapses when I didn't take AG1 and I certainly felt the difference. I also notice, and this makes perfect sense given the relationship between the gut microbiome and the brain, that when I regularly take AG1, which for me means a serving in the morning or mid-morning and again later in the afternoon or evening, that I have more mental clarity and more mental energy.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. For this month only, January 2025, AG1 is giving away 10 free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3 K2. Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim the 10 free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3 K2.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
It speaks to what I think is one of the core functions of the human brain, which... you know, umbrellas everything we're talking about, which is the human brain is a prediction-making machine. And it wants to make predictions on the basis of things that feel reliable. And the ability for us to, well, confirmation bias, the ability for us to link A and B
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
T, as opposed to A, B, C, and work through things linearly and try and disprove our own hypotheses is much stronger than any desire to work through things systematically unless you're trained as a scientist. And so it's no surprise to me that people
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
want to understand themselves and understand others in a way that feels at least semi-reliable, and to do that in a way where they don't have to run a ton of experiments, and hence astrology. I'd like to stay within this vein of thought, but you said something earlier that's been kind of nagging in the back of my brain. You said we have two refracting telescopes in the front of our skull.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I will often remind people that Your retinas that line the back of your eyes like a pie crust are part of your brain, your central nervous system that was literally squeezed out of your skull during the first trimester through a whole genetic program that's very beautiful. And this might freak you out, but think about it.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
This is the only portion of your brain that resides outside the cranial vault. Technically still in your skull, but outside the cranial vault gives humans an enormous capacity that they wouldn't have otherwise because what you can make judgments about space and time, space based on what's next to what, what's far from what, and time based on movement of things relative to stationary objects, etc.,
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
that we wouldn't otherwise be able to perform, right? You could sense odors at a distance, smoke, et cetera, but it's a whole other business to have these two telescopes. Could you explain what you mean by two refracting telescopes? Because I think that will set the stage nicely for some of our other discussion about optics.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Today's discussion is perhaps the most zoomed out discussion that we've ever had on this podcast. What I mean by that is today we talk about the origins of the universe. We talk about the Earth's relationship to the sun and to the other planets. We talk a lot about optics.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Favorite day on the calendar?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I love New Year's Day.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Can you explain refraction for people that are not familiar with it?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Similar to, for instance, if you go and look at a fountain and you see a coin and you decide, you know, you're going to be that mischievous kid and you're going to grab that coin. So you can throw it back in like in any, you can recycle the wish and you reach down to grab it and you miss because where you see it is not where it actually is.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
What a stud.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I want to get a list of all the things that the Galileo did. I'm going to pause you for one second and please earmark where you're at because I have a number of questions that I just can't resist asking. Yeah, that's fine. First of all, if it's too lengthy an answer, feel free to say, you know, pass. But why was the best glass in Holland? What is it about the Dutch and good glass?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
You mean eyeglasses.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
It's called the Snellen chart.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
When you go to the DMV, you use the same thing. It's numbers and letters of different sizes that at a given distance, if you can read all of them, then you have – whatever, high acuity, let's just say high acuity vision. We won't get into, we won't get into, yeah.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
And if you can only read, you know, three lines down and then you're essentially blind to the rest, then you have less than average vision. And in the state of California, they'll still give you a driver's license. There are many people, by the way, there are many people driving in the United States, by the way, who qualify as legally blind.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
But because when you drive, you mainly use your peripheral vision, they are granted a driver's license. This should terrify everybody.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Galileo. But it was Copernicus, if I'm not mistaken, that was the first to say that The Earth revolves around the sun while rotating on its axis. That's right, yeah. And tilts, which gives us the equinox. Correct, yes.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Okay, so Galileo corrected Copernicus about the math, but it was Copernicus that gave us the first, like, trusted statement that the Earth and the other planets rotate around the sun?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
So who's this Copernicus guy? Was he just sort of... like an iconoclast. He was like, hey, how about we're not the center of the universe, it's the sun that's the center of the universe.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
And that raises, for me anyway, an important psychological question. So you've got these Dutch folks with great glass. Yeah. They're using that great glass to correct vision.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Basically. But it wasn't originally. That's the point. Right. It was used for something. So what I'm curious about is why do you think it is that some humans get some technology, in this case, glass. And they want to look at things that are very close up. You know, I like microscopes a lot. Right now, you know, I don't have my wet lab. We're still involved in some clinical trials.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
But, you know, I love microscopes. And I loved customizing my microscopes. I didn't like them, you know, like a plug and play. I like them sort of the same way that people like hot rods. I didn't like motorized stages. I like manual stages, this kind of thing. Nowadays, you need motorized stages, etc., But what was I going to invest my money into? It was higher numerical aperture. Yes.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Basically, you're able to see things better. Deeper view. Exactly. See smaller things better. That's what numerical aperture will do for you. So it's like putting more horsepower into a car as opposed to paying more attention to the paint job.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Humans have this glass and they have the option to look at smaller and smaller things or to resolve their vision. Why do you think it is that a subset of humans? Because I think it's a special subset of humans. Instead, I want to look at things really far away. And you're one of these humans. I mean, I delight in the stars. I delight in the moon.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I have some questions about that I think most people have who appreciate sunsets and moonsets and things like that. But why do you think it is that it tends to be a small subset of people who don't just want to appreciate the night sky, but want to figure this stuff out that is so far away? I'll be honest. It never occurred to me. I'm curious about things deep under the ocean.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I'm very interested in fish and aquatic life. But I like terrestrial things, arboreal things, things in trees. And I think most people orient to the stuff that's more of this planet.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
What do you think it is? I realize you're not a psychologist and there's probably no DSM whatever six diagnosis specific for this, but I'll just ask you, for you, was it a desire to better understand life here on earth or was it a desire to kind of leave life here on earth?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need, but nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, all in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
We did a lot of repair work, and I'm very grateful for where we're at. And I encourage anyone, son, daughter, mother, father, whatever relationship, that the repair work, to the extent that it's possible, is absolutely worth it.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish cognitive and physical performance. it's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are vital for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons, or your nerve cells.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Storms, when you say storms, what do these storms consist of?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Drinking element dissolved in water makes it extremely easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes. To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
So it sounds to me like you were – thank you for sharing that, by the way. It sounds like you were able to connect – To places distant in space, obviously, and time, Galileo. That's beautiful. I don't think the same experience occurs when one looks down the microscope. And it's true that the greatest neurobiologist of all time by a long shot was Ramon y Cajal.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
supernatural levels of ability to understand what turned out to be the correct function of the nervous system just from anatomical specimens. But when I look down the microscope and I see even a Cajal-Retzius cell, there's a cell named after him, you don't really feel a connection there. To him in the same way, although the neurons are beautiful, but it's not the same the way you described.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and therefore losing a lot of water and electrolytes. They have a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. They have watermelon, citrus, et cetera. Frankly, I love them all.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Pondering the origins of life and connecting to people who existed thousands of years before us. Do you think that Galileo, Copernicus, and others – were doing the exact same thing, that there was a bit of an escapism to it, healthy escapism, as opposed to trying to solve the position of the plants and understand ourselves for some other reason.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
So not just the neuroscience of vision and our ability to see things up close and far away, but to see things very, very far away or very, very close up using telescopes or microscopes respectively. So today's discussion is a far reaching one, literally and figuratively, and one that I know everyone will appreciate because it really will teach you how the scientific process is carried out.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
And now that we're in the winter months in the Northern hemisphere, Element has their chocolate medley flavors back in stock. I really like the chocolate flavors, especially the chocolate mint when it's heated up, so you put it in hot water, and that's a great way to replenish electrolytes and hydrate, especially when it's cold and dry outside, when hydration is especially critical.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
It's a time portal. Yes. You can tell I keep harping on this theme of the ability to see things at greater distance. That's right. At higher and higher resolution gives you a window into time.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
has enormous advantage. Exactly. There, because of the trajectory of the ship, you actually are getting a sort of crystal ball into what's going to happen later.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Whereas looking at position of the stars, some anticipation of what's going to happen based on historical charts of the stars.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
If we could do a top contour survey of the greats of astronomy, where would it start? Starting with people who got it wrong and then correct each other. Like if we were going to do a fast sprint through these, where would we start?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Charting stars on the wall of the cave. Exactly. We don't know who they are. Telling their youngsters like, okay, you know, because those stars are there relative to that ridge or that, et cetera. days are getting longer, days are getting shorter. Ergo, hunt now. Ergo, collect stuff to hunker down. Maybe even don't reproduce now. Maybe even behavioral restraint. 100%. Maybe reproduce now.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Sundial emergence.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
We have to double click on Stonehenge. How do you think it got there?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Is it reasonable to assume that people built these things?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Sort of like models on Instagram, right? Everyone's trying to attain these. What's the standard? That's right.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
So the Pharaoh's Forearm, and is this about carrying items?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Sure, a degree, right? Yeah. A calorie, right?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice. It was a condition of being allowed to stay in school, but pretty soon I realized that therapy is an extremely important component to overall health.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
It's kind of chubby around the middle, right?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
So they stumbled into pie.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise, including cardiovascular exercise and resistance training, which of course I also do every week. There are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First of all, it provides a good rapport with somebody that you can trust and talk to about all issues that you're concerned about.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I'm not convinced it came from extraterrestrial sources.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
So we have our ancient ancestors. And then at what point do we get to Copernicus and Galileo?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Second of all, it can provide support in the form of emotional support or directed guidance. And third, expert therapy can provide useful insights. With BetterHelp, they make it very easy to find an expert therapist with whom you resonate with and can provide those benefits that come through effective therapy.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Function. I recently became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
While I've long been a fan of blood testing, I really wanted to find a more in-depth program for analyzing blood, urine, and saliva to get a full picture of my heart health, my hormone status, my immune system regulation, my metabolic function, my vitamin and mineral status, and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors on your results. For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had two high levels of mercury in my blood. This was totally surprising to me. I had no idea prior to taking the test.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Function not only helped me detect this, but offered medical doctor-informed insights on how to best reduce those mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, because I had been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification, and worked to reduce my mercury levels.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Comprehensive lab testing like this is so important for health, and while I've been doing it for years, I've always found it to be overly complicated and expensive.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I've been so impressed by Function, both at the level of ease of use, that is getting the test done, as well as how comprehensive and how actionable the tests are, that I recently joined their advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman Lab listeners. Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. Today's episode is also brought to us by Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are customized to your unique sleep needs.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Also, because BetterHelp allows therapy to be done entirely online, it's very time efficient. It's easy to fit into a busy schedule. There's no commuting to a therapist's office or sitting in a waiting room or anything like that. You simply go online and hold your appointment. If you would like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Now, I've spoken many times before on this and other podcasts about the fact that getting a great night's sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health and performance. Now, the mattress you sleep on makes a huge difference in the quality of sleep that you get each night.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
How soft that mattress is or how firm it is, how breathable it is all play into your comfort and need to be tailored to your unique sleep needs. So if you go to the Helix website, you can take a brief two-minute quiz that asks you questions such as, do you sleep on your back, your side, or your stomach? Do you tend to run hot or cold during the night? Things of that sort.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Maybe you know the answers to those questions. Maybe you don't. Either way, Helix will match you to the ideal mattress for you. For me, that turned out to be the Dusk mattress, D-U-S-K. I started sleeping on a Dusk mattress about three and a half years ago, and it's been far and away the best sleep that I've ever had.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
So much so that when I travel to hotels and Airbnbs, I find I don't sleep as well. I can't wait to get back to my dusk mattress. So if you'd like to try Helix, you can go to helixsleep.com slash Huberman. Take that two minute sleep quiz and Helix will match you to a mattress that's customized for your unique sleep needs. Right now, Helix is giving up to 25% off all mattress orders.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Again, that's helixsleep.com slash Huberman to get up to 25% off. Maybe you can help me here. I've never heard a description of the of the origin of life in the universe that made a lot more sense to me past. There were a bunch of big explosions, a bunch of the elements and stuff that you needed came together. And then at some point there was water and at some point there were.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
critters that moved and then multicellular organisms. What am I missing here? I'm a man of science and I love science, but I can grasp it when it's told to me, but why is it that it's so hard, maybe I'm just not smart enough, to comprehend this idea that a star exploded Dot, dot, dot, and here we are.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I wasn't consulted at the design phase. By the way, when Brian says p-hacking, p-hacking is people tinkering with the numbers or the experiment or the hypothesis after the data are in in order to try and establish – statistical significance, which, and by the way, p-hacking is not just not good. It's bad. It's cheating of a whole.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
It's not making up data, but it's tweaking the experimental design in hopes that you'll get something where you probably didn't.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Before we get to the origins of the universe and the organization of the planets relative to the sun and their spins, et cetera, you said something that at least to me feels intuitively so true, and I think it's very likely to be true for everybody, which is that there's something about looking up into space, especially at night when we see the stars and hopefully see the stars.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Most people have heard of it on the Joe Rogan podcast.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I was 40 when I got tenure.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
We'll talk about light pollution a little bit later. When we see the stars that Yes, we know these things are far away. Yes, we know that they occupy a certain position in space. They have a diameter, et cetera. We might not know what that is just by looking at them. You probably do. But they also change our perception of time.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
When you say four-dimensional space, can you tell us the axes of that space?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
So you had a paper that essentially led you to the – realistic possibility that you might win the Nobel Prize. And then you had to retract it. Do you recall your emotional state or state of mind when you realized that you were wrong?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
And if I were to say one thing about the human brain especially is that, sure, it's got all these autonomic functions. It regulates heart rate, digestion, et cetera, sleep-wake cycles, et cetera. It can remember, it can think, it can have states like rage or anger or happiness or delight.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Yeah. Arthur Kornberg, RNA son, you know, structure of RNA.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
So you published a paper that wasn't peer reviewed because you were worried about getting scooped. Scooped is when someone else beats you to publication, folks. Correct. And gets credit for the discovery. It's a whole discussion that we could have some other time if we just want to riff on the process of science. But so you published the paper.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I should say I was at Stanford. I should say about David Baltimore, just because people might want to go to former president of Caltech. Maybe still Rockefeller. No, he's a former president of the Rockefeller. That's an interesting story.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
But what's remarkable about the human brain is that it can think into the past, it can be quote-unquote present, and it can project into the future. And I'm sure other animals can do that, but we do this exquisitely well and we make plans on the basis of this ability to contract or expand our notion of time.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
If you want to look it up, look it up as they say. Scientists are human. He landed at Caltech. So they funded you to do this?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
my wife. So let me, incredible story. You moved down to Caltech, which is in Pasadena, amazing place. And then you get the money. How much was this?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Okay. That's quite a gift for a postdoc, a million bucks. You decide the South Pole will be the place to do it. We can talk about why that is. And then you make this discovery, which turns out to be false.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
So – but it sounds like you have good feelings about the experience nonetheless.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
And are you thinking at this point, forgive me for playing therapist here, I'm not one, I'm not pretending to. No, it's fine. Were you thinking at this point, okay, you know, this challenge that I think not all but a lot of sons have with their fathers, not necessarily to best them, but one evaluates themselves relative to like their family lineage.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Sometimes it's a grandfather, this thing of having some internal friction in order to live up to something.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Sounds like that was driving you.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
He was hanging out with a lot of SEAL team members.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
So at the point where you made this discovery, were you feeling like, all right, check that box?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
What a cruel thing to say.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
As a non-biologist, but somebody who I think appreciates and understands biology, why do you think it is that when we look up into the sky, even though most people might not realize that those stars probably aren't there and occupying the position that we think they are, some of them probably are, some of them aren't, they existed a long time ago, but without knowing that, why do you think that looking up at the stars gives us the sense of an expansion of time, as opposed to just the expansion of space?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
He killed himself.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Do you mind if we go into this a bit? I realize it's a painful memory, and I feel it. Not to shift the focus, but ironically, all three of my academic advisors dead. The first one shot himself in a bathtub two weeks after we celebrated something for him. Suicide is such a peculiar thing. He did it for very different reasons, different stage of life. Let's get back to Lang. How old was he?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
So he was young.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Is his wife still alive?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Was she shocked?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
It was tragic for everyone. Suicide is such a peculiar thing because in some sense it can, quote unquote, make sense for if somebody we know is very depressed or they have a terminal illness. Yeah. it sounds like it came as a bit of a surprise.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Do you think that sometimes there's this close relationship between genius and let's just say not mentally healthy that, you know, even what you mentioned before, you know, like we have to try this experiment. I mean, there's a bit of a recklessness to that when you're dealing with millions and millions of dollars in postdoc careers.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
And, you know, that there's a, I mean, the delight of a fun experiment and an adventurous experiment, maybe as a, like a project where you kind of wade into it a little bit to see, but that's very different than like, we have to do this. I mean, there's a risk-taking element there that supersedes kind of my notions of like,
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
what an advisor's job is, which is to make sure that people progress toward, sure, discovery, but also like you want some, one of the most important thing to mentoring scientists is that they have some sense that there is a future for them. And you can't guarantee it, but you'd like to, like a parent would for a child, you want to give them some sense that like the sun's going to come up tomorrow.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
We're not going to implode or explode here.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
It will also help you understand that science is indeed a human endeavor. and that much of what we understand about ourselves and about the world around us, and indeed the entire universe, is filtered through that humanness. But I wanna be very clear that today's discussion is not abstract.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
And it's still true. And this is still true. It's more true than ever. So do you think that perhaps, I mean, who knows, Perhaps he committed suicide because he was at a peak. You know, one of the things that people talk about is the peak and trough of dopamine. You mentioned infinite games.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
You know, I've said many times before that it's very important that you not get fast, large amplitude increases in dopamine that are not preceded by effort. Methamphetamine will give you a large amplitude, you know, fast increase in dopamine, but there's zero effort involved except to procure it.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
and it sinks you into a post dopaminergic peak trough afterwards that will have you hanging on for the will to live. So what comes up goes down and it often goes down further than it went up when we're talking about dopamine. Playing an infinite game is great because it's in the motivation for answers. It sounds like he like hit a peak and you
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
wonder if maybe he was like, okay, now I'm going to check out now, it's going to be hard to keep doing this?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
: So you got to continue the project. Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
So you continued with the project?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
You get your job. You got this telescope down at the South Pole. How do you get to the South Pole? You fly to Chile and then you ride a bicycle down?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
It's very difficult. So why South Pole? Yeah. And does this take us into the realm of light pollution? Yeah. Right? I mean, when I look up at the starry night here in Los Angeles, even though I'm talking sort of back towards the eastern hills. I don't live at the coast. I can see some pretty impressive stars.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Not as impressive as when... I highly recommend people get up to the Yosemite High Country in the month of August. You can catch some great meteor showers. It's an amazing place to begin with. You have the meteor showers and you're transported to another place.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
there's a lot of light pollution from cities. And it travels very, very far. So I'm guessing you're down the South Pole because there's less light pollution.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
So for instance, knowing that a certain swath of stars is present at one time of year and not another relative to say, The contour of a mountain ridge.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Yeah, I was going to ask you about this. A million dollars given to a postdoc. That was a first tranche of funding.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
$10 million. I mean, even $10 million is a lot of money by any standard.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
To my mind, it doesn't seem like enough money to build a high-powered telescope at the South Pole, bring people there, have the infrastructure. I mean, it's not like you're rolling this thing out onto the ice and just pointing at the sky. Right. Oh, it's true. I mean, I guess you could use the bucket from the plane as a bathroom, but you need a number of things. Yeah.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
you probably need hundreds of millions of dollars to build a facility down at the South Pole.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
So you let the result out. You do this news conference.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
So it was a big press conference. That's right. And – Fast forward some years, it turns out this was not correct.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Only a few months. Well, better to be corrected quickly than collect your Nobel Prize and have to give it back or something, right? I have to say, and the pursuit of prizes is a complicated thing. I was always discouraged from pursuing prizes. Really? All my advisors. Well, my graduate advisor was very pure in the sense that she just liked doing experiments. I remember she was very, very smart.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Very smart. It's Barbara. Barbara Chapman. I mean, and, you know, it's not just her pedigree that is evidence of that. But since pedigree is something most people can at least understand internally and externally, I mean, she was, you know, went to – Harvard as an undergraduate, then she was at UCSF and Caltech.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
And she actually had a project sending zebrafish up into space, looking at, yeah, looking at development of vestibular system in the absence of gravity. And then fixing these specimens and bringing them back. Also did a lot of great work back on earth.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
She wasn't somebody who was ambitious for ambition's sake, and my postdoc advisor was exceedingly ambitious, but he also discouraged prizes and the pursuit of prizes. That's the right way to be. Yeah, I think that it's sort of like going into football to get a Super Bowl ring. These things do represent the pinnacle, but –
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
it's dangerous to be chasing that like singular carrot because you miss the journey.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
But the goal is always – I have a motto, which is go as fast as you carefully can.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
But it sounds like you were – wrong for the right reasons, meaning no one made up data. There was a confound that you weren't aware of. You became aware of it.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Roka. Roka makes eyeglasses and sunglasses that are the absolute highest quality. I've been wearing Roka readers and sunglasses for years now, and I love them. They're lightweight, they have superb optics, and they have lots of frames to choose from.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I'm excited to share that Roka and I have teamed up to create a new style of red lens glasses. These red lens glasses are meant to be worn in the evening after the sun goes down. They filter out short wavelength light that comes from screens and from LED lights, the sorts of LED lights that are most commonly used as overhead and frankly, lamp lighting nowadays.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
And I wanna emphasize Roka red lens glasses are not traditional blue blockers. They're not designed to be worn during the day and to filter out blue light from screen light. They're designed to prevent the full range of wavelengths that suppress melatonin secretion at night and that can alter your sleep.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
So by wearing Roka Red Lens glasses, they help you calm down and they improve your transition to sleep. Most nights I stay up until about 10 p.m. or even midnight and I wake up between 5 and 7 a.m. depending on when I went to sleep.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Now I put my Roka Red Lens glasses on as soon as it gets dark outside, and I've noticed a much easier transition to sleep, which makes sense based on everything we know about how filtering out short wave lengths of light can allow your brain to function correctly. Roka Red Lens glasses also look cool, frankly. You can wear them out to dinner or to concerts or out with friends.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
So it turns out it is indeed possible to support your biology, to be scientific about it, and to remain social after all. If you'd like to try ROKA, go to roka.com. That's R-O-K-A.com and enter the code Huberman to save 20% off your first order. Again, that's R-O-K-A.com and enter the code Huberman at checkout. So I want to talk about what you're working on now. Before I do that, right?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Mini segue. There are a number of questions that I have some of which I sort of know the answers to, most of which I don't know the answers to, but I think a lot of people either wonder about, or if they don't, they can quickly enrich their experience of daily life if we were to get answers on the following.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
So I'm thinking about this, not rapid fire Q&A, but maybe like one to three minute answers about the following. For instance, why does the moon look so much bigger when it's near the horizon as opposed to overhead. Yeah, my son asked me that two days ago. So that's a fun one. So let's go first with that. Sometimes the moon is huge. Sometimes the moon is small.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
And I'm not talking about when it's full versus a sliver. Tell us why.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
That would freak me out.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
You're going to learn a lot of concrete facts about the universe, about humanity, and about the process of discovery. In fact, much of what we talk about today is about the process of humans discovering things about themselves and about the world.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Oh, that's why you said pinky. So, folks, most people probably aren't familiar with thinking in degrees. If you want to understand a degree, put your—right or left, doesn't matter— arm out in front of you, raise your thumb like a thumbs up. So the width of your thumb at arm's length is approximately one degree. That's why you say for your pinky, it's about half a degree.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I should also say, and this is an opportunity to give a fun little lesson and visual acuity, if I were to draw 30 black lines spaced from one another with just the light color of your nail in between them, we'd say there were 60 lines, black nail, black alternating. Your acuity for 20-20 vision is approximately 60 cycles per degree.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
A hawk, any kind of raptor, is about 120 cycles per degree, which is why they can sit up on a lamppost and actually see the rustling of the grass below and probably make out some of the individual furs on the head of a rodent. Wow. But you can't. So what do I mean by 60 cycles per degree? If...
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
If I were to draw 40 black lines, so now you have 80 total of black and then the color of the nail black, then the color of the nail white. So you would see that as, believe it or not, as solid black. Right. It's beyond your acuity threshold. Right. When you say one degree, so this is important. So when the moon is quote unquote giant at the horizon, put out your pinky, it covers the moon.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
You can eclipse the moon, right? You can eclipse the moon. When the moon is overhead, you can eclipse the moon with your pinky. And most people are probably thinking, no way, that can't be true. But it's absolutely true.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I mean, in the sky, it seems as... I'm not talking about the arc, the band thickness from red to blue or from red... Roy G. Biv.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
It's bigger. Gosh, intuitively, I want to say it's thicker, but now you're going to tell me that... It can't be because it's – this is like the Pink Floyd album, right? This is literally just the polar – Dark side of the moon. The dark side of the moon. The rainbow coming through when you take light and pass it through a prism. I'm going to say it's one degree. So the rainbow is bigger? No.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
The moon is bigger. It seems like roughly the same size, but when I think of a rainbow, I just think of like the large... No, you're right.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Thank you very much.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
For once. Yeah. Okay. Next question. People obsess over this. I have my theories. I think it's still debated when you watch a sunset.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
you get that beautiful long wavelength, short wavelength contrast that I blab about incessantly on the podcast and social media, because that's what's setting your circadian clock. It's that orange, red tones and the blue tones of the sky. But right as the sun goes down across the horizon, especially over the ocean, there is the phenomenon known as the green flash.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
What is the basis for the green flash?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
But for those of us that don't end up at the South Pole, God willing. Yeah. Send me pictures. I don't like environments that cold. But if I watch the sunset over the Pacific or I see the green flash sometimes, what's the basis of that?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
So there's more power at the wavelengths, like somewhere between like 450 and 550 nanometers.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Because of the interaction with all that atmospheric dust. Exactly, yeah. That's wild because for the longest time, I had a biological explanation for this that I think was based on a paper that was published maybe in Nature, but don't quote me on that. Just because it's published in Nature doesn't mean it's wrong. I've got friends with a few Nature editors still.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
In a great journal, look, amazing. We could do a whole episode about nature, nature science itself.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
But the explanation that was getting kicked around for a while was a biological explanation, which is that our ability to perceive reds and greens and blues and yellows is based on our trichromacy, the presence of these three different photoreceptors, short, medium, and long wavelength, or blue, green, red, so to speak, that absorb short, medium, or long wavelength light.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
And then the comparison, there's this oponency whereby our ability to see red is really contingent on our ability to perceive green. And so like for someone who's red-green colorblind, 1 in 80 males, for instance, they still see Stuff out in the world that's red, but they see as more orangish or brown. Dogs the same way. They're not colorblind.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
True monochromats that don't see color are very rare. That is a one form. I think it's called achromatopsia. Don't quote me on that either. But in any case...
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
The idea was that if you're looking at something that's very enriched in long wavelengths, like orange, red, and you stare at it for long enough, have you ever done that like American flag optical illusion where you stare at it, then you look away from it and you see the opposite colors, right?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
And so one biological explanation is that the sun is setting and you're looking at this orange, red thing. When the sun is low in the sky, you can actually look at it without distressing your eyes, right? Because, right? as opposed to overhead when you should never stare at the sun. That's right.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
And then the moment that that reddish orange disappears, the biological explanation is that there's a kind of perception of a green flash because of the opponents in the switch to the other... let's just say wavelength channel, so to speak.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I like your explanation better because it's explained by real physics and the biology of color oponency is also physics, but not as well worked out. Yeah. Okay, cool. Earlier we were talking about the perceived relationship between the menstrual cycle, which is not always 28 days, but is on average 28 days, and the lunar cycle.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Is there any evidence that... Well, it'd be amazing if one influenced the other in the other direction, that the menstrual cycles were influencing the lunar cycle, but is there any evidence for a true relationship between the lunar cycle and the menstrual cycle? that's been documented?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Because it also correlates with the height of the problems they're chasing. Exactly. You were saying that Galileo got certain things wrong, but got a number of things right. That's right. Einstein too, Newton too. And being wrong for the right reasons is actually very important in science.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
And by the right reasons, I mean that nobody's, you know, p-hacking, p-value hacking, or fudging data, that they're not tossing data. They're really trying to solve problems. And it's almost like in sports, a great competitor wants great competitors. I mean, what's the, like, why would somebody want to, like,
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
cheat into a different weight class, knock somebody out and consider themselves the world champion at that weight class. Like it's just, it's silly. It's, it's, And in science to not try and seek the truth is anti-science. Certainly it happens. But OK, so no clear evidence that the lunar cycle influences the menstrual cycle.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
So like a lot of rodents will have like a four-day cycle. OK. So it clearly doesn't map to the lunar cycle. Yeah. But you hear a lot about these things. And humans are amazing at drawing correlations. Again, we're a prediction-making machine. We're a storytelling machine.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Where are some of the best places in the Northern Hemisphere and please don't say the North Pole, where people can go see spectacular nighttime stuff. So I think of Yosemite High Country in August for the meteor shower.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Certainly not at the level that you're accustomed to looking at things, but with the naked eye, you're going to be... Assuming that it's not cloudy, you're going to be treated to a light show that is in my experience, beyond anything I've ever experienced. Just extraordinary.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Because it juts through the field of view.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
So you don't believe in astrology?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
When I look at many of the constellations, I don't see how our ancient predecessors got to the description of a bear or whatever, is that because they saw more stars than I did? Or is that because they had a wilder imagination or were taking psychedelics or something like that?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
It depends on how you connect the dots. The Big Dipper and the Little Dipper are kind of like, okay, you get that.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Those aren't constellations. I have to be – I have to put on my very, very – Why are they not constellations?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Love it. Did you catch Haley's Comet when it came by, when you were a few years older than I was?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Comes through every 70, 70 years?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
That's very good, yeah. I remember 70-something, all right.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Yeah, I remember going out to see it. It was a part of a group that went camping, and it looked like a smear of...
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
it's hard to know did I really see it or did I not in any case your daddy probably the only other comment that I that came to mind oh is the San Diego thing was the Hale-Bopp Hale-Bopp yeah where there was a group that committed mass suicide yeah these were people that had castrated themselves had been eating a subcaloric sub-maintenance caloric diet to live forever and then decide to wear Converse and kill themselves yeah what do you think let's not go dark there um
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
What do you think is the relationship between comets and these wild human behaviors? It's so interesting you mention that.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
And does it always mark true north?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
What do your brain thinks of these timescales? As long as you're talking for the next thousand years – You're good.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
But yes, comets have always been a – So Columbus actually used the sun as manipulative barter to – That's right. To threat. As a threat.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
An important book for anyone to read who's interested in basically why we're still here, in my opinion, is the book Longitude by Dava Sobel.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
It's an incredible book. It doesn't require any science or technical background to read and appreciate about the development of the first reliable timekeeping devices for navigating at sea, even on Overcast Nights and Finding Longitude. It's a spectacular read. It is. And changed the way that I think about human evolution and technology development generally.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
I've been waiting this whole conversation to talk to you about adaptive optics. Let me give just a little bit of backdrop for how I'm approaching this. In the field of neuroscience, there's, as with any field of biology, a desire to see smaller and smaller things at higher and higher resolution.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Dr. Keating has an incredible perspective and approach to science, having built, for instance, giant telescopes down at the South Pole and having taken on many other truly ambitious builds in service to this thing we call discovery. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
And there have been all sorts of incredible discoveries in microscopy, like two-photon microscopy, one-photon microscopy, electron microscopy. You see things down to the tiny, tiny nanometer size. Some years ago, a group out of the University of Rochester developed adaptive optics. I think it was David Williams' group, which is borrowed from astronomy. And my very top contour understanding of this
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
is that you're using the presence of noise in the environment, essentially, as part of the microscope to get a better image. And this was used in the field of ophthalmology to look into the back of the eye, this incredible three-cell layer thick pie crust that lines the back of our eyes, that it gives us all of our visual perception, not alone, but allows for all of our visual perception.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
As I mentioned before, the eye has a lens, there's vitreous, there's all sorts of opportunity for light scatter. And then within the eye itself, you've got these multiple layers you have to go through before you can see the photoreceptors.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
But using adaptive optics, you can take all that noise, all that stuff between the microscope and what you want to see way, way back in the eye and use that, in air quotes here, noise and make it part of the microscope, so to speak. And without going into further detail there, I was always told that adaptive optics was borrowed from...
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
your field, astronomy, where people use the presence of atmospheric dust, of these stuff in the way, and made it part of the lens, if you will, to be able to see things at higher resolution, which I just think is so incredible. It's like saying the barrier becomes the portal through which you can see even more than had you had a clear path.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
Let's shout out to Ryan.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
All right, shout out to Ryan. Shout out to Ryan. Ryan Holiday. Yeah, never met him, but I like that book very much. Yeah. Okay, so what is adaptive optics for astronomers?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
So you're saying that the Starlink satellites are going to make your job more difficult?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
So what's his response to this? I told him that- Having internet everywhere is more important.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
So you have a specific request.
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
So should we be thinking about the light from stars kind of like a jagged line coming towards our eye?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
What's the troposphere?
Huberman Lab
Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating
So some layer of the atmosphere.
Huberman Lab
The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Tom Segura. Tom Segura is a renowned comedian, writer and director.
Huberman Lab
The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
I love that. I've got this crazy thing that I do now. You can try this. I bought a 70-pound kettlebell. It's about a third of my body weight. And I have it set in the hallway. So when I get up, because I wake up really groggy, really foggy, I grab that thing and I suitcase carry it to the end and back twice. And then I switch hands and I suitcase carry it back to the end and back twice.
Huberman Lab
The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Just trying to, like, teach my body that it can do work right away. And I'm careful how I do it. But I find that now I wake up and I've got, like, I think my body's anticipating that. carry. And so I'm more alert from go. And I was like, ah, this is, there's something because your nervous system learns to anticipate things, right?
Huberman Lab
The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Because that phenomenon is setting your, um, your alarm clock for 7am. You wake up at six 59. What happened? Like your brain is clocking things in your sleep.
Huberman Lab
The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
There was a study a couple of years ago where when people are in rapid eye movement sleep, you're basically paralyzed. The brain is very, very active. That's the phenomenon of rapid eye movement sleep. It's a very bizarre brain state. Brain is super active, body paralyzed. But people can blink and they can show some little facial responses.
Huberman Lab
The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
If you ask them to do simple math problems during rapid eye movement sleep, you say, hey, what's two plus two? They'll blink with your – wink with your right eye if it's four, wink with your other eye if it's five. People can do math correctly in their sleep. They can answer not sophisticated questions, but the brain is tracking what's happening all around you.
Huberman Lab
The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
This is why taking the phone and putting it outside the room while you sleep, people sleep better. People say, oh, it's because of the EMFs. Nobody really knows for sure, but it's because your brain is anticipating picking up the phone even while you're sleeping. Wow. So there's – I'm hitting with a lot of data here, but it's well-known now that if you give students a test –
Huberman Lab
The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
and their phone is in their bag in the room, they perform less well than if their phone is in their bag in another room. This is true for adults too. Your brain is tracking sort of potential movements, potential thoughts, potential actions. Like the way brain circuits work is to create sort of dominoes of circuit sequences.
Huberman Lab
The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
So when you're up, for instance, you've gone on stage so many times to do comedy. As you walk out, your brain is queuing up a whole library of things related to that without you realizing it. It's all context-dependent behavior. And when you get home, it's a different set of context-dependent behavior. So your brain is sort of like a magic library.
Huberman Lab
The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
I always think of this like as you get to a particular idea or thought or emotional state, the books change right in front of you to kind of match the set of things that you expect. So if your phone is in the room, your brain is operating that way even if you're asleep. That's –
Huberman Lab
The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
insane yeah what's your writing process let's talk about comedy that's um i've been i've got about a gazillion questions i'm going to try and make them really succinct what what is your typical process of capturing um you call them bits right yeah for stand-up it's a bit yeah what's your typical process of capturing ideas like do you do you voice memo into the phone do you write things down i've done pretty much every every version of it uh voice notes um
Huberman Lab
The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
my phone so let me get the process so you're heading up to sleep and you take a like an edible yeah this is comedy school 101 yeah yeah hey listen you're you're the pro um and you you go to voice memos you you're there eyes closed and you you start riffing on something yeah it's like you're
Huberman Lab
The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
But when you're trying new material, you're not doing that for a Netflix special. You're doing that, it's the term working out. You go to the comedy club on a Tuesday night and you're working out, you're trying new material, seeing how it lands. You've never, is what you're saying, that you've never actually... built out the bit. You're building it out in real time.
Huberman Lab
The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
In real time, yeah, yeah, yeah. Whoa.
Huberman Lab
The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
So it would be like, oh, like, I'm thinking about Norman, right? I won't try and do one of his jokes, but I like Norman's comedy skateboarder, too. Same non-biological first family. So he... I've heard him do things like, so my wife and I were on vacation recently, this kind of thing. Like a setup where it's very clear. I mean, he clearly knows where he's going with this. Yeah.
Huberman Lab
The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
It was great. I mean, he's a theoretical physicist by training. So we got to talk about physics, but we also got to talk about life. And I learned a lot from him. Did you? I learned a lot about him that I didn't know.
Huberman Lab
The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
We're on vacation and we're picking out rooms and then at some point there's a punchline pivot.
Huberman Lab
The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Yeah. I'll send it to you if you're ever suffering from insomnia. I would love to listen to it. He's a theoretical. I didn't even know that. Yeah. Theoristic chaos theory. And now he's into quantum internet. Jesus Christ. Where does he reside now? Northern California.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
If something works or you feel like it's a beginning, it's the start of a thread that could work. Do you end up writing it down for later? Like, like you're cuing yourself, like, uh, you know, the, the walk with my son bit or something like that, or it's just, or it's all in your head.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
If he lets us, it's, it's a bunch of Sharpie written single words. Yeah. Gitmo jail teacher, duck, Huberman, just kidding, has to kill my wife. Hitler, Tunisia, make shit. This is amazing.
Huberman Lab
The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
If you think about the range of things in this relatively short list, as a partial representation of what goes on in Tom Segura's brain, you get a little...
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
But I've done some lives and I have, you know, four things I'm going to cover and then but I don't know how I'm going to cover them. Jordan Peterson, when he goes out for his lives, I've been to them. He literally explores a topic in real time, walking back and forth across the stage for the first time.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
I know this because people verify that every night he does something different, even the same city. Yeah. He's exploring it completely in real time. And then other people's lives that I've been to, it's clear it's pretty scripted. They know exactly what they're going to say and when they have a sequence, they have slides. And so I think it can be done any different number of ways.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
How long do you go during your waking hours without making or thinking of a joke?
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Yeah, but you can make a half court shot. I saw the clip of you in Lethal Shooter. We'll put a link to it. Okay. I mean, you're an excellent basketball player. I'm not. High level. Very high level.
Huberman Lab
The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
You happen to be married to a comedian.
Huberman Lab
The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Which probably helps your home life in the sense that, you know, has she ever been offended by one of your jokes?
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Has she ever offended you to the point where you're like, you can't tell that joke in public? No. Our family will suffer.
Huberman Lab
The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
During today's episode, we explore the neuroscience and psychology behind comedy and we explore the creative process more generally. Tom shares his approach to capturing and developing ideas into narratives that are once funny and thought provoking. We discuss the interplay between daily life observations and larger cultural dynamics when developing comedy routines.
Huberman Lab
The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Are you skateboarded? Foot sports. Soccer. I'm pretty coordinated with my feet.
Huberman Lab
The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
digestible so we'll talk about like reframing material and then to me she's like yeah you're just a white guy you can apparently you guys can say anything oh yeah really on the other hand comedians and what's allowed in comedy at a given time as a powerful influence on culture yeah what you can say what you can't say has any comedian ever been cancelled for what they said as part of a bit I mean we've got these examples of these I
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
I consider them kind of sad instances where people kind of break down on stage, have an interaction with someone in the audience, and it really hurts their career, and it's super offensive. But that's clearly not part of the bit. Right. Has a comedian ever been canceled for, like, here was the bit, and they're done? Uh...
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
I always think of Canadians as so – Kind and well-behaved. And they have some amazing comedians. They also have some crazy serial killer stories up there, I discovered. Really? Yeah. I mean, this idea that Canada is just all like nicer Americans is not true.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
They're wonderful Canadians, but they're not all nice.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Obsessed. Were you good at soccer? I was all right. I played goalie. I like playing goalie or fullback. I like to wait back there and just stick people. That was fun. Maybe you should get into lacrosse or something. No, I like running. I ran cross country my senior year. You ran cross country? I did.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
thanks in large part to rogan but to others as well most comedians seem to control the venues in which they release their information podcasts yeah um you know i guess you could be thrown out of a club and not be able to present your material there but there's probably another one that you could open up and that's happened too yeah um but podcasts um people will now release um
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
their own specials where, you know, it's pay-to-view. There's Netflix. There's a bunch of different venues where it doesn't seem like comedy is as centralized anymore, controlled by the major media houses.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
I was a little lighter than I am now. I'm like 210 now. It's probably 160, 170. Yeah.
Huberman Lab
The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
I mean, if someone makes a joke or repeats a joke in, let's say, an academic setting, for instance.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Or the office place. No, your guy's world is the worst when it comes to that. The academic world is... Actually, it's interesting. In the last five to eight years, the academic world has actually, from this, around this topic, has become safer because the rules are very clear. They're what I call thick black lines, right? It's when things are murky that people got themselves in trouble. Sure.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Right? So if you look 10 years back... It was really complicated. Now, everyone kind of knows what the standard is. Yeah. Might be uncomfortable for some, not for others, but they know what the standard is. It's very easy to adhere to a standard if you know where the fences are. Where it seems to be still murky is in the workplace.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Like in the boardroom, you'll hear about, you know, like tech companies or in finance or startups, right? Because startups, when they're small, typically don't have an HR department. The HR department is kind of the standards that you create around the office, which could be a garage, right? So that's typically when things aren't well-defined is when there are problems.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
So, yes, it's rigid in certain areas like academia, law offices, et cetera, but everyone knows what the rules are.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Yeah, you have to be a professional. And part of being a professional is how it lands is as important as... You just have no say in that. I'm always fascinated by... comics who will smirk or laugh a little bit at their own joke.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
And assuming that certain jokes and bits work exceptionally well and you carry them forward from, you know, trying it out to, you know, Netflix specials or big venues, huge venues, you do huge venues, Humber do huge venues. Do you ever get tired of the material and worry that your response is not going to, that your amusement won't be there and therefore they won't respond to it?
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
This is two questions woven, I'm realizing. Do you think your own amusement with a joke has an impact on how it lands? That's question one. And woven in with that is how do you then work with the idea that every time you tell a joke, it might not be as funny as the previous time?
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
It's exactly... Only a fraction of the audience will know it. There was a song that was, like, the song for a summer. You could replace Mbop with any... Like, a song for a summer way back when.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
And then the band just disappears because the one hit wonder.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
That's so beautiful. Yeah. You know, when Josh Waitzkin was on this podcast and – He also did a conversation with Rogan, which is different. And if somebody is interested in this stuff, they should check out both because they're complementary conversations. But Joshua is this child prodigy, chess champion, and then went on to do a bunch of other things at extremely high level.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
He talks about the need and his lack of fear, which is very admirable for cutting ties with your previous self. Just being willing to say, you know what, like – That was a NBA championship. He works with the Boston Celtics, so this is very relevant right now. But that was last year. We're a new team now. We're not the defending champions.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Or musician had a platinum album, or this was a particularly successful podcast run, and just cut ties with it and be willing to just go completely now and future. You mentioned Rick. One of the things that I've benefited so much from being friends with Rick, in addition to the fact that I just adore the guy, is that...
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
He has so many stories about things from the past if you ask him, but he never brings that stuff up. You know, he'll indulge you if you say, tell me a story about Joe Strummer or something. He'll tell me. But he really lives now and forward. And I think it's the weight skin that says, you know, you don't want to be on the train of life.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
You want to be strapped to the front end, you know, experiencing space and time as it's unfolding, which is a very philosophical way to put this. But that challenge of cutting ties with your previous self to continue to evolve your craft,
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
I love it. And I think this pertains to so many, basically all creative forms. As many of you know, I've been taking AG1 daily for more than 13 years. However, I've now found an even better vitamin mineral probiotic drink. That new and better drink is the new and improved AG1, which just launched this month.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
This next gen formula from AG1 is a more advanced clinically backed version of the product that I've been taking daily for years. It includes new bioavailable nutrients and enhanced probiotics.
Huberman Lab
The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
The NextGen formula is based on exciting new research on the effects of probiotics on the gut microbiome, and it now includes several specific clinically studied probiotic strains that have been shown to support both digestive health and immune system health, as well as to improve bowel regularity and to reduce bloating.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
As someone who's been involved in research science for more than three decades and in health and fitness for equally as long, I'm constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental health, physical health, and performance. I discovered and started taking AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast, and I've been taking it every day since.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
I find that it greatly improves all aspects of my health. I just feel so much better when I take it. With each passing year, and by the way, I'm turning 50 this September, I continue to feel better and better, and I attribute a lot of that to AG1. AG1 uses the highest quality ingredients in the right combinations, and they're constantly improving their formulas without increasing the cost.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
So I'm honored to have them as a sponsor of this podcast. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, AG1 is giving away an AG1 welcome kit with five free travel packs and a free bottle of vitamin D3 K2.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim the special welcome kit with five free travel packs and a free bottle of vitamin D3 K2. Today's episode is also brought to us by David. David makes a protein bar unlike any other. It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. That's right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from protein.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
This is 50% higher than the next closest protein bar. David protein bars also taste amazing. Even the texture is amazing. My favorite bar is the chocolate chip cookie dough. But then again, I also like the new chocolate peanut butter flavor and the chocolate brownie flavored. Basically, I like all the flavors a lot. They're all incredibly delicious.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
In fact, the toughest challenge is knowing which ones to eat on which days and how many times per day. I limit myself to two per day, but I absolutely love them.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
With David, I'm able to get 28 grams of protein in the calories of a snack, which makes it easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight per day, and it allows me to do so without ingesting too many calories. I'll eat a David protein bar most afternoons as a snack, and I always keep one with me when I'm out of the house or traveling.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
They're incredibly delicious, and given that they have 28 grams of protein, they're really satisfying for having just 150 calories. If you'd like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, that's davidprotein.com slash Huberman.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
On the topic of finding the material humorous or being excited about the material, being crucial to how it lands with the audience, I'm going to make this very brief. When I was an undergraduate, I was interested in what makes something funny, the psychology and neuroscience of humor. And there wasn't a whole lot of neuroscience on it at that time.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Whoa, it's the pop. However, I've also seen you do bits and other people do bits where you're headed down a trail and I'm thinking, oh no, he's not going there, is he? And you go there and that's,
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Well, I had the great benefit of getting a sneak peek at Bad Thoughts.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Thanks. And it's amazing. People should definitely check it out. I don't want to give anything away, but the second one in the sequence that I watched, I thought, there's no way he's doing this. And it just kept coming at me. I was like, there's no way. Went to sleep last night. And this hasn't happened to me in a long time. I woke up laughing. Oh, Which is a wonderful experience.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
There are only a few states of mind and body that you wake up in and you're like, well, that was amazing. And I woke up laughing. So it seeded into my unconscious. So now I'm worried I'm going to say some of the things that you said. I hope you do. But one thing that occurred to me in watching Bad Thoughts is that you're not just a phenomenal comedian, but you're also a really good actor.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Oh, thank you. And a number of comedians seem able to act, which is surprising to me for reasons that don't make any sense to me. But, you know, if you look at... athletes often are terrible actors. I mean, some of the best acting that athletes have done is when they're playing kind of a buffoon or they're supposed to not be able to act well.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
I think of some of like the Naked Gun movies and things like that.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
I mean, he's not a good actor. Yeah. And it worked because he wasn't a good actor. Yeah.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
As they say, it was like, oh, he's acting. This isn't just, you know, stand up. Yeah. You know, stand up is its own thing. Yeah.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
in previous netflix specials but i've also seen you do these in uh these bits in smaller clubs like at the belly up in aspen that's right smaller place that's right where we just coincidentally wore the exact exact same clothing so we're same flannel same jeans same adidas that was really weird that's dna we did not coordinate that's dna that's dna and the the um cosmic correspondence of the butterfly effect that's yes i was like my dad was trying to explain to me at one point um
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
You do voices very well, in particular the voices of your kids. I always think that when somebody impersonates somebody else, it's about grabbing the key elements, not the whole piece. They don't turn around and come back. Some people can just grab a few key elements of somebody. In this case, someone we've never met. It was your sons. Yeah.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
we feel like we know them and we're getting like what clearly are key features of their personality coming through. Do you practice those or you just observe and it just is kind of embedded in you?
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Oh, no, I'd get whacked if I. Oh, yeah. No, I hit. You know, I think if I talk back. Yeah. It only happened twice in my life. Yeah. I spoke back. I won't say to which parent. And I got hit. Okay. Nowadays, people are like, oh, he was beating. I'm fine.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Okay. I didn't. I don't swear at people. Yeah. Very often. It's an extreme circumstance. Yeah. So, okay. So, but he swears all the time, apparently.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Dude, that's the age to start. There's an Instagram account of this guy. I'll dig it up for the captions. His daughter is probably 11, and she's doing pull-ups with a 45-pound plate and ankle weights strapped to her waist. Really? And she's doing pull-ups to the chest. And she's not, you know, built yet. She's clearly before puberty. And she's just, but just, oh, my goodness.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
You just imagine, like, the tendon strength, the joint strength. Going to be, yeah, a little gymnast perhaps.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Yeah. You told me a story once over dinner about your son learning piano. I don't know if you remember that. I think it was the younger one. And it was something like, you know, like, how's piano going? And you're like, and you're saying, he goes, it fucking sucks. You know, like, that's it. It sounds like that's his response.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Yeah, that is a perfect cue for me to ask what I was going to ask earlier when we were talking about when you are amused by something, you really delight in telling this bit.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
It impacts the audience and how it lands. There's a very famous patient in neuroscience, probably the most famous patient. His name is H.M. We don't know his real name. He's dead now, but he had a lesion to his hippocampus, this brain area involved in memory. And he was studied extensively for decades. And most of what we know about human memory is from this guy.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
All the other stuff we know from mouse studies, a little bit from monkey studies. Wow. So there's a very well-known study where you go in and he has no retrograde memory. He can't remember anything that you told him before. Like within a matter of seconds, he forgets it completely. And they've tested this every which way, okay?
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
His brain is now in a jar. It's been scanned, et cetera. But- So the study goes something like this. You go in and you tell H.M. a joke, and he laughs, and he thinks it's very funny. Then you leave, you come back, and he doesn't remember who you are. This has been tested again and again. He's not fibbing, okay?
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
We spend a fair bit of time discussing the neurobiological basis of humor and what data and brain lesion patients have taught us about why we find certain ideas novel, funny, or exciting. We also talk about how this relates to the activation reward circuits in the brain and the seemingly automatic way that things are either funny or not funny to people, suggesting that humor is like taste or smell.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
And there are a number of ways that you can measure this, especially if you make it, sadly, like... some survival based things. Like you tell him the joke again and he laughs again, but a little less and the next time a little less and a little less. And eventually he's like, yeah, that was not really funny. Yeah. Same joke.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
He does not remember the joke, but there seems to be some unconscious memory of the joke, which I always found fascinating. So it's like, it's almost like that the narrative around something, we get saturated to it. We're all familiar with a friend at a dinner party that tells a joke and everybody laughs. And then they make the cardinal mistake, which is to tell the joke again at the same dinner.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
And it just burns it. It burns it there and it burns it the previous time. So what do you, I mean, I'm not asking you to be a neurologist or a neuroscientist, but What do you think is going on here? Not necessarily in HM, the patient, but there's something about telling that funny punchline twice. Yeah. That you just, I feel like men, like guys seem to do this more. It's like, you got it.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
So interesting. I'm obsessed with mainly two things, time perception and state changes in the human brain. We know so much about REM sleep and slow wave sleep. We know very little about waking states, like alert and focused, or like we have these terms, but like there's so much more going on there.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
And so the question is this, we're at a club or a stadium and you're going to go on, but I go on first, which means my bit sucks. It just sucks because I'm not a comedian. Someone else goes on, let's say Brian Holtzman, I find very funny. He's good, right? I mean, when he's on, he's really on, he's very funny. Holtzman goes on and does really well. Who do you want to follow? Holtzman.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Because the crowd is in a state of being ready to receive the jokes? Exactly.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
You like running? I love working out with weights. I've been doing that since I was 16, but I love running. You love running? Running three times a week, a long run, a medium run and a short run. What's a long run? An hour, hour and a half.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
I'm thinking of giving toasts at weddings. Like if somebody gives a really great toast, giving the next toast, you're saying, oh, that's a hard act to follow. No, actually, it's an easy act to follow because everyone's just kind of basking in whatever just happened. Sounds similar.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
If the state changes, whether or not we're talking about running or you're talking about cannabis or you're talking about – whatever it is, I mean, I find that so much of the creative process or the constructive process, science or comedy or whatever, is about accessing these states.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
And we learn how to do it through what kind of becomes an unconscious process, but you know how to get there again and again. And so much of becoming a professional is about going through the peaks and valleys of, you know, bombing and coming back. Totally. You know, so I'm curious before you go out on stage now, given the size of the crowds,
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Is just the kind of memory of what's about to happen sufficient to put you in state?
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
long and slow every sunday and then in the middle of the week a 30 minute run faster and then one day a week i do that kind of max heart rate vo2 thing or you know warm up sprint walk sprint walk sprint walk sometimes on the airdyne bike but usually running yeah i love running in fact i mostly lift so that my body doesn't hurt when i run I like being strong in the gym.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Yeah, since I was about 16, I started running. I had no idea. I just found I could just go and go. Probably have a lot of slow twitch muscle. And I'm reasonably strong, but I mean, if I train just for endurance, like if I start doing two long runs per week, I just feel like I can just go forever. Really? Yeah. It's probably just a genetic bias. What do you cover in that 60 to 90 minute run?
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
I mean, so much of what we're talking about today, I just realized is emotional contagion. It really introduces this question. This is very reductionist thinking, but how much of the success of a bit or a joke is the emotion that the person telling it is carrying and how much of it is the actual words and content? It's probably that plus the rhythm and the timing. There's a lot of things.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Emotional contagion is real. You're talking about it as a comedian watching comedy. It kind of permeates you. Is that what it's called? Emotional contagion. Some people are more emotional, emotionally permeable than others. Yeah. You know, we could put this on a spectrum.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
We could even put it on the, so what used to be called the autistic spectrum, like people who really contained in their emotions, like things don't get them, but people are at the far end of that spectrum. They have a sensory sensitivity, you know, kids that are really like, like severely autistic, you know, a, a, the amount of noise in a typical room is overwhelming. It's overwhelming, right.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
They actually have discovered that that's actually outside the brain, that their sensory endings are tuned differently to the world. They're experiencing the world very, very differently. You have these certain people get scared when they watch a movie and they jump when the monster jumps out. Other people are like less of a startle response. I get startled. I get startled. Yeah. Yeah.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
I think that it's natural to get startled. I think that, some people just have very kind of flat affect and some people can run a ride. It's like a seesaw. And for some people, the hinge is tight. It doesn't necessarily mean they're calm. Some people are just like pissed off all the time and the hinge is tight. Some people they're happy all the time and the hinge is tight.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Most people that hinge can move. And so this thing of emotional contagion is largely, this is what's so interesting. It's, largely fed through the way things sound, somewhat through faces, but largely through the way that things sound.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
And then there seems to be, and not a lot's known about this yet, kind of a sixth sense where actually an energy in the room can start to literally cascade from one person to the next. And this has been studied in animals. Yeah. with the fear response.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
You can literally take an animal, scare it, take it out of that tube, put another animal in there, and it will show a fear response based on something molecular in the air. Really? Absolutely. Hormones work within us, pheromones between two members of a species. They're clearly pheromone-like effects. We haven't identified what those pheromones are. Same thing can happen in crowds.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
You can get a kind of a hysteria.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Depends on how in condition I am. But, you know, you were talking about hills. When I lived in the Bay Area... Used to do this run behind the Berkeley campus, the strawberry Canyon trail. And that's all basically winding up, winding up until you take the long cruise down. I would do that with a weight vest.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
This is why some people, including me, fear going to theater. My sister loves theater. We go to New York in the fall for our birthdays. And because she loves theater, we go to theater. And if theater is great, it's, like, amazing. If theater is bad, like, it leaves me feeling bad for the people. Like, the tone in the room is, like, ooh, it's heavy. Heavy.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
It's not, like, just, like, turn off the special. It's, like, it's...
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
If I go from there out to Austin and on a Sunday, and then, then I can cover a lot of distance in a 60 minute run. But if I just train on the flat and you get kind of used to just kind of going long and slow.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
A very important point that never occurred to me. I love art history in part because I like art. I've always liked art. Yeah. But by taking an art history class, I literally have fallen in love with certain artists and their paintings. And I look at certain paintings completely differently now, as you point out, on the basis of what I know about –
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
what the art represents, the history of the artist. Like, if a joke isn't funny to me or a bit isn't funny, I don't care what the process was for that bit. I'm like, it's just not funny to me. It's just not. Yeah, it seems like it's one of the purest kind of yum-yuck or meh Kind of things, which is another point of neuroscience.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
The nervous system has degrees of this, but it basically bins things very quickly into like, yum, like this is awesome or hilarious or whatever. Yuck, like, oh, no. And kind of meh. There's not a lot of variation. Within each one of those bins, there's a lot of variation. Love, love, love, hate, hate, hate. But then, you know, but your brain makes a decision really quickly.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
So I don't know the exact distance, but it was not unusual when I was in graduate school to head out on a Sunday morning. um, just hydrated caffeine and do 10, 12 miles. Wow. But now it's probably more like six, eight. Okay. Six days. But also with a weighted vest. Sometimes with a, I use a vest.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
whether or not it makes you laugh. And if something's not funny, if you tell me, he toiled on this for 40 years, I'd be like, well, then it especially sucks.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Whereas if you show me a sculpture, I might not appreciate it. You sort of explain what went into that. Yeah. You can develop at least an appreciation for it. Well, look, this is interesting.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Well, I think this gets back to HM and this idea that there's a subconscious –
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
um you know just an unaware process that dictates whether or not something's funny or not yeah it tickles our brain below the level of of like precise understanding and uh i'm so fascinated by this because as you point out there just aren't other things like this you could say this about people like oh liked this person right away didn't like them yes but in general the more that we learn about people this is why all the efforts to try and you know erase racism for instance the more you learn about a culture the more you tend to like the people of that culture yeah
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
even if you were arch enemies for, you know, decades or hundreds of years before. This is just the way the human brain works. But with comedy, it's like a – it feels like it's like chemistry. It does. And, of course, you could say, well, you like or don't like the comic, but I have to imagine that you, whether you like it or not, probably represent the –
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
the, like, bad boyfriend or the abusive dad to somebody or the friend that they loved in college, let's make it positive, too, or the guy they like to be around. I mean, you don't know people's relationship to you. You never know. And so the humor may land or not land depending on, like, all sorts of unconscious stuff going on in them.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
They're not a sponsor, which it's fun to always mention things that aren't a sponsor too, because I love this weight vest. It's called an amorpho and it fits pretty snug. It's not like one of these ones that looks like you're a suicide bomber or a cop or something. Yeah. Um, it sits really close to the body. It zips up. Um, and it's got these like heavy ball bearings in it.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function. Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient levels and much more. They've also recently added tests for toxins such as BPA exposure from harmful plastics and tests for PFAS or forever chemicals.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to your physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors who are expert in the relevant areas. For example, in one of my first tests with function, I learned that I had elevated levels of mercury in my blood.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Function not only helped me detect that, but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, I'd been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification. And I should say, by taking a second function test,
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
That approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by function simplicity and at the level of cost. It is very affordable.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
let's talk about crowd work yeah fascinated by it yeah very very distinct aspect of the comedy experience you know i mean at a big rock concert i mean that the singer might like put out a fist to someone in the audience or even let somebody sing for a moment but maybe let someone up on stage but crowd work is like you're really giving up a lot of control yeah right if you ask a question i mean you have to be able to work off whatever comes back do you do crowd work
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
So it's only about 10 to 12 pounds. So it's not like a super heavy weight vest, but it's enough that when you take that weight vest off on a separate run, you feel like a god.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
I go to the Comedy Cellar when I'm out there. I don't know if that's still one of the main places.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
If there's a better one, let me know. But my sister's always like, are we going to go to the Cellar again?
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
And we have our favorite nights there actually were nights where it was pretty bad and we can laugh about that. Yeah. But there have been a few nights there where it just killed. Yeah. And actually there was one night, and that's my sister, this happened. Chappelle just leaves Radio City Hall, shows up with his entourage, and just hops up on stage. That only happens in New York City.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
I don't think that really happens in Los Angeles terribly often.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Yeah, we ended up going home because we eventually just called it a night, and we were leaving, and his team was like, you're really going to leave? We'd had enough, but it was just kind of unbelievable to me that this stage of his career that he was going to wander in and start doing comedy, but I think it speaks to the intimacy of those small clubs. It does, yeah.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
I mean, it's still one of the few venues where, like, you can see greats. Like, I got to see you at the Belly Up in Aspen. That's a small-ish venue. That was fun, yeah. Or you can go to a stadium. What's the largest stadium crowd you've done? It's more than, you know.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
So huge difference of scale there. Yeah. Not many public facing things occupy those levels of scale. I have a question about kind of cultural standards. Yeah. And what's really funny. So if you look back to comedians where at a time where like cursing on stage wasn't allowed, like kind of pre Lenny Bruce. Yeah. Right. Is any of that comedy funny? Yeah.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Meaning, you know, now there's been this kind of expansion of kind of what you can say, even just cursing. And so like – If we look at – earlier we were talking about working out. You know, like bodies looked – like muscular bodies looked very different in films in the 40s. Like you'd say, well, that guy – that person isn't very big by today's standard, but you'd say they're very fit, right?
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Or she was very beautiful and very sexy in the 70s, but very different look than like 90s and 2000s. So standards change for what's considered ideal, right?
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
That's just a different time. Just a different time, different standard. And then, of course, you know, standards of women's bodies have changed sometimes more. Well, I'm sure sometimes like in the 90s it was the kind of wafey look. And these things mirror what's going on in society to some degree. But if you listen to comedy pre-Lenny Bruce, pre-swearing, Is any of it really funny to you?
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Maui Nui Venison. Maui Nui Venison is the most nutrient-dense and delicious red meat available. It's also ethically sourced. Maui Nui hunts and harvests wild-access deer on the island of Maui. This solves the problem of managing an invasive species while also creating an extraordinary source of protein.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
He's considered the best comedian ever by most, it seems.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
So it seems with comedy, unlike with music or poetry or books, there isn't that much carry forward. So, for instance, I was very, very young and in some cases not born when the Rolling Stones were doing their great work or the Beatles or Elvis, right? But that music is awesome.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
So the fact that many people have taken bits and pieces from those, like you can't create – an amazing Clash song the way that Clash did. Like, they did it best. Right. And it will always, like, Death or Glory will be, like, I don't care how many songs were derivatives of that, that song still kills. Yeah.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
As I've discussed on this podcast before, most people should aim for getting one gram of quality protein per pound of body weight each day. This allows for optimal muscle protein synthesis while also helping to reduce appetite and support proper metabolic health. Given Maui Nui's exceptional protein to calorie ratio, this protein target is achievable without having to eat too many calories.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Yeah, I once went to this thing in San Francisco around New Year's and they literally wheeled out, is it like Henny Youngman or Benny Youngman or something? He was doing these knock-knock jokes and it was probably in his late 90s. He was forgetting the punchlines, but occasionally he'd nail one. Yeah. It was not funny. Yeah.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
You really can't negotiate what works for you or what doesn't. We also discuss emotional contagion and how skilled performers like Tom become masters at reading, shifting, and dancing with the collective energy of crowds, whether in small comedy clubs or large arena shows.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
It was almost embarrassing, you know, but you were like, wow, this guy still like thinks it's funny. It was still going. So there was some amusement, but you look at the older people in the crowd. Yeah. And they were like, oh, my God, it's bringing me back. Yeah. And you're like, oh, my goodness. But, you know, no one else was laughing. Right.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
But as you're describing, some people might look at some comedy. I'm not going to name names because I'm not versed enough in comedy. But from the 70s or 80s and be like, yeah, that's just kind of like raw.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
I mean, growing up when you – I mean, I'm a little bit older than you are. Yeah. I remember, like, the first gay characters showing up in film and reality TV. It was, like, a huge deal.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Right? And then – so things have really changed. So what is – yeah, things have really changed.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Let's talk about the darkness of comedy. I once had the experience of going to the comedy cellar with some friends and this guy got up there. I don't remember his name and it was super dark. I mean, it was like clowns with vans doing terrible. I mean, it was just like so dark. And the only thing that was hysterical about it was the fact that he seemed freaked out by it too.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Like what he was saying was like horrible. He was saying horrible. Horrible things that had gone through his mind. Yeah. But the fact that he thought it was horrible was what was funny. Sure. And we're like, whoa. Like, we walked out of there just like we felt like we'd been transported someplace really unhealthy. Yeah. And I was like, man, I feel like I need a shower after that.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
That was intense and scary and like – This is my favorite thing, by the way. Whoa. And then we had the experience of running into him and his girlfriend later that night. Uh-huh. And we were like, oh, my God. And he just took off. He just like could not handle the reflection about what had just happened. Really? Oh, yeah. No, he just I'm sure he enjoyed the attention. Right. He's a performer.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
So but two things occur to me around that example. One is a guy who's really dark on stage, seemed like a very loving guy, at least out in public with his girlfriend. Almost always the case. Yeah. And the other one is that. Where he took us and where he went was so down in the dungeon. Like, I still kind of get a weird feeling in my body thinking about it. Yeah.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
But his shock at his own words was absolutely hysterical and brilliant. And it was like, hey, let's go down into the darkness of human nature. Yeah. I'm going to show you how dark it really is. And I'm going to leave. And you're just like left spinning. And it still sits in my body. We're talking about that visceral experience. It still sits in my body. I don't know what to make of it.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
And if I don't do that, I eat one of their steaks. And sometimes I also consume their bone broth. And if you're on the go, they have Maui Nui venison sticks, which have 10 grams of protein per stick with just 55 calories. I eat at least one of those a day to meet my protein requirements.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Yeah, I completely agree with you. I have a friend who's a very, very well-known musician. I won't say what genre. And what I love about his music is it –
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
encompasses every range of emotion yeah every range and i've seen him play to huge crowds and just get so pissed and i've seen him do love songs hate songs um revenge songs like just everything yeah but in person he's like the kindest yeah dude ever i mean that's and it's uh he's so grounded he and his He and his partner are like the sweetest people. And she's got it too. She's an artist too.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
And some of her art, you're like, oh, my God. And then you meet her and you're like, so kind, so trustworthy.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
So exactly what you're describing. They're in touch with it. They know how to channel it.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
A lot of comics die of drug overdoses. It's like not these days as much. It seems like there's now like the healthy comics, you're with them. And I don't know what the numbers are compared to music, like rock musicians or something.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
But if I compare it to like science or I compare it to like law, okay, one could say, you know, in law offices, there used to be a lot of drug use, especially in big cities and this kind of stimulants. But let's just focus on comedy for the moment.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Right now, Maui Nui is offering Huberman podcast listeners a limited collection of my favorite cuts and products. It's perfect for anyone looking to improve their diet with delicious, high-quality protein. Supplies are limited, so go to mauinuivenison.com slash huberman to get access to this high-quality meat today. Again, that's mauinuivenison.com slash huberman.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Do you think that comedy pulls from a group that has a larger percentage of people that are just struggling with inner turmoil and they rely on substances to kind of manage? Or are the substances part of the creative process for people? Writers, too. I mean, it used to be that many writers were drinkers. If you ever want to, like a voyage through alcoholism, read about the habits of writers. Yeah.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Not all of them, but many of them drank a lot. A lot. A lot, a lot. Amphetamine sometimes, but it was like drinking. It was like part and parcel with the writer's life, sadly. That's not the case now. But, yeah, what are your thoughts about substances and comedy and comics?
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Today's episode is also brought to us by Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are customized to your unique sleep needs. Now, I've spoken many times before on this podcast about the fact that getting a great night's sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance. When we aren't doing that on a consistent basis, everything suffers.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Along the lines of what we're calling emotional contagion, I realized... I'm not aware of any kind of like duet comics. I know it sounds kind of silly, but in every other genre, like with music, right? People play alone, they play with a band, they play together, like you offset voices.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
I mean, but maybe in comedy, stage comedy, that is, the audience is the other member of the, I'm calling it a duet, which sounds so silly, but you get the idea. That they're the one that you're resonating with and that you're playing off of and they're riding with you. Because I've had the experience of going to the comedy store. I was there last year. Tim Dillon did. A bit.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
And when we are sleeping well and enough, our mental health, our physical health, and our performance in all endeavors improves markedly. Now, the mattress you sleep on makes a huge difference in terms of the quality of sleep that you get each night.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Well, he went out for like 20, he came out for 20 minutes and just murdered. And some of that's in his recent special. Just murdered. It was just, and he like crescendoed the whole crowd. And then just like in typical Tim, when I just like walked out, you're like, whoa. And you feel like you were part of something, even though you were a passive recipient of it. what was going on or participant.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
So maybe that's where it is. Have there ever been two people that get up there and kind of like riff?
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
steps on top of it but you hear him clearly and back and forth i have to check it out those guys are like it is like a phenomenon to watch them to watch them work it's it actually is really really cool i'm coming to the conclusion that by being a audience member in comedy you one is experiencing a kind of an empathy with what the the comic is experiencing and that's kind of where we're getting here like i didn't plan this out but um
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
you know, you have to feel it. It's got to be real for the comic. The audience can sense that. The delight, the silliness that you're bringing to it, like so much of that is in the audience's nervous system as they're getting it. And And it's clear to me that, like, comedy is the one way.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
I mean, you could say it's about music, but like you said, it's so different because so much of it seems spontaneous.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
so interesting the reason i love comedy so much is that a it lets me forget about the outside world yeah while hearing about the outside world and i think stage comedy is especially powerful and before we sat down to have this conversation um we were talking about how like some people think you know they're like oh my friend is super funny way funnier than any of the comics but like a professional athlete or a non-professional athlete in this case can they do it on stage
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Do you think it helps to really like people? As a general group, you know, like, you're trying to entertain people. You're trying to be entertained by your own entertainment. Like, do you think you need to like humans?
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
my theory um as to one of the one of the main reasons why rogan is the top podcast in the world there are several reasons i believe his work ethic etc but is because he has lots of different kinds of friends and he can sit down with intellectuals he can sit down with comics he can sit down with He likes the understanding and communication with different kinds of people.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
And when you know a little bit about him, like his life is filled with these people outside of the studio. So he's very comfortable in the presence of like anyone. You put anyone in front of him.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
So if you'd like to try Helix, you can go to helixsleep.com slash Huberman, take that two-minute sleep quiz, and Helix will match you to a mattress that is customized for your unique sleep needs. Right now, Helix is giving a special offer to Huberman podcast listeners of up to 27% off site-wide, plus free bed sheets with any Lux or Elite mattress order. What about the running itself?
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
And he can be genuinely interested in learning from them. Right. And sharing with them in dialogue.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
You can't fabricate that. You can't manufacture that. I agree. Whereas some podcasters, they're not that interested in what other people have to say. So they're not the best interviewers unless it's someone like directly within their genre of interest. That's a good observation. So as a comic, I guess it depends on the range of topics that you explore in your comedy, perhaps.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
So if you're creative or you're curious about human psychology, or if you simply love to laugh, you'll come away from today's episode having learned a ton of useful information about the creative process and human nature. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
There are all sorts of theories about how people's kind of childhood issues or just their fundamental struggle like feeds their art in incredible ways. I think I saw an interview with Jim Carrey, who admittedly, I don't know much about his comedy. I was so busy in school when he was kind of through his reign of physical comedy movies. I've never seen Dumb and Dumber. I've never seen The Matrix.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
I've never seen Goonies. Sorry, I just haven't. I love Stand By Me. I love other movies, but I need to see those movies. I'm busy. I got a lot I want to do.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
I'm not going to say that. Well, clearly, just knowing a little bit about your children and the fact that they're related to you, I'm not going to try and push you to do anything because clearly you guys are stubborn. Yeah. So the question I have after seeing this Jim Carrey thing, he said, you know, the reason he did comedy is he wanted to make people laugh, to forget about their struggles.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
I was going to ask you whether or not it changes your mental frame so that you – I don't know. Do you get ideas while you run? Do you get ideas after you run more readily or are you just cursing the thing the whole time?
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
He had a chronically ill mother and he used to, like, throw himself down the stairs as a kid. I believe him. So physical comedy became his thing. How much do you think that really successful comedians tap into sort of a fundamental quest to resolve something? You know, you're trying to – whatever it is.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
So it's the friction that creates the spark. I think so. And so you don't want to do too much therapy and resolve it, seriously speaking. I mean, I've done so much. Yeah, same. It doesn't ever go away.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
It's like taking Jordan's competitive nature away. You wouldn't want that. No. That was the friction that created the phenomenon that is Jordan.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
No, I don't think it sounds pathetic. It sounds incredibly open and honest. And I think it's going to be very helpful for people who seek to be comedians and just for people generally trying to think about how their challenge, that inner friction can create amazing things. And you've managed to do it over and over again. So maybe... You almost got me to cry. We talked about it.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
You almost got me to cry. I can keep going. No, no, no. Keep changing the topic. What's happening now? What's next?
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Well, listen, I'm so grateful that you came here to share with us about your process. I mean, we talked about the art and science of comedy and humor. I hope it was good, man. I loved it. It was excellent because you share so openly and you pull back the curtain on your process and comedy in general. And I love what a deep thinker you are.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
And at the same time, how much you just pour yourself into your craft and enjoy it. Thanks, man. And your reflections are really appreciated. And I'm a fan. I'm also proud to have you as a cousin. I – and look, I look to you as somebody who really understands how to also balance work and family and merge the insanity of life into a craft.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
And people really – I can just say I speak for many, many people very confidently on this. People can really feel your benevolence even when you're pointing out like the darkness and the ridiculousness of –
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
couple miles just went by yeah there's something to be said for these states of wordlessness where you're not constructing things in complete sentences there's no sensory input like through a phone or through even i do listen to podcasts or books when i run sometimes in the long run but there's this idea that uh a lot of learning and creativity is about purging all the noise and i find that those long runs they just kind of i come out of them just feeling like a bunch of
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Thank you. It's a labor of love. And for people that know me, as you do, it's the same on camera and off camera. You're a great role model to me. I'd love to have you back to continue the conversation. I would love to.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
And I'm going to finish the rest of Bad Thoughts. Please do. It's amazing. Yep. Thanks so much. All right, Tom. Thanks so much. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Tom Segura. To find links to Tom's work, please see the show note captions. I should point out that bad thoughts is not suitable for children.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. In addition, please follow the podcast by clicking the follow button on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. And you can now leave us comments at both Spotify and Apple.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I do read all the comments.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
And if you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, Threads, Facebook and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the information on the Huberman Lab podcast.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Again, it's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
Huberman Lab
The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as what we call protocols in the form of one to three page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter, and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Tom Segura. And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
clutter just got cleared yeah more than i had some like insight during the run itself yeah incidentally 90 of the effect of exercise on improving brain function when it comes to long slow distance work is that it raises your level of alertness and arousal so you can do really great work afterwards yeah high intensity stuff has a bunch of other effects brain derived nootrophic factor etc but when you see like exercise improves brain function
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Exercise makes you smarter. Most of that is by way of how exercise increases your level of alertness. It kind of puts you in that nice state like, oh, now I can sit down and focus.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Tom Segura. Tom Segura, welcome. Thanks for having me, cuz. We'll let...
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
Yeah, this is one of the real hidden secrets of exercise that I'm trying to make less hidden and less of a secret that Jocko clearly understands with his 4.30 a.m. wake-ups and workouts that you're describing now is that
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
I won't go into too much detail here because I want to ask you questions, but there's this phenomenon where when you move the large musculature of the body, so a resistance training workout, a run, probably any workout where you're doing some big movements or you're working hard in that workout. it triggers the release of adrenaline at levels that wake up your body, make it more willing to move.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
So people who don't have energy to exercise, exercise gives your body energy by way of adrenaline. And then that adrenaline acts on this nerve called the vagus nerve, which communicates to the areas of your brain that release dopamine and something called norepinephrine. It basically wakes your brain up also. So that morning workout that you're describing wakes up your brain and body.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
for something like six hours by changing the neurochemical state of your body and your brain. And so it's not a surprise that when you work out before a long day, that long day goes better. Whereas if you hit the work of the day kind of fresh, you're generating the adrenaline drink from all that stuff.
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The Science & Art of Comedy & Creativity | Tom Segura
This is when people feel a bit more anxious, they feel a bit more irritable, they feel a bit more tired. So this whole concept of exercise gives you energy, that's how it gives you energy. It's not caloric energy. You still need to fuel, et cetera. You're talking about neurochemical energy. It fundamentally changes the way you show up to everything else.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Teo Soleimani. Dr. Teo Soleimani is a double board certified dermatologist and dermatologic surgeon.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Roca. Roca makes eyeglasses and sunglasses that are the absolute highest quality.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
What about vaping nicotine or oral use of nicotine? So nicotine gum, mints, pouches. And let's touch on vaping first because that's becoming more common.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
I did an episode of this podcast on alcohol, which somewhat to my surprise was very widely shared, only to my surprise because I've never been a big consumer of alcohol, but apparently many out there are. And the data came back, at least to my understanding, that zero alcohol is healthier than any and that up to two drinks per week
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
is probably okay as long as you're an adult of drinking age and not an alcoholic. You don't have issues with alcohol use disorder as it's now called, probably okay. But beyond that, you start running into some health issues that can be offset by better behaviors of other types. But what about the direct effects of alcohol on skin in the short term?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Does it increase blood flow and therefore improve skin? Are there long-term indirect effects? I could imagine that alcohol disrupts the gut microbiome, which then disrupts skin, et cetera. So maybe we could break this down into direct acute effects, meaning immediate effects that are really direct from consuming alcohol that day, that week, let's say.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
I've spent a lifetime working on the biology of the visual system, and I can tell you that your visual system has to contend with an enormous number of different challenges in order for you to be able to see clearly from moment to moment. Roka understands all of that and has designed all of their eyeglasses and sunglasses with the biology of the visual system in mind.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
versus chronic effects through other systems like disruption of sleep and microbiome?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Roka eyeglasses and sunglasses were first designed for use in sport, in particular for things like running and cycling. And as a consequence, Roka frames are extremely lightweight, so much so that most of the time you don't even remember that you're wearing them. And they're also designed so that they don't slip off, even if you get sweaty.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
But I'm not hearing any positive effects of alcohol on skin health or appearance.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
And what I'm pulling from all of the discussion we've had up until now is that Improved blood flow and strong hydration status are both important. Do you recommend patients drink a certain amount of fluid each day or maintain adequate hydration as a means to build or maintain skin health and appearance?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Now, even though Roka eyeglasses and sunglasses were initially designed for sport, they now have many different frames and styles, all of which can be used not just for sport, but also for wearing out to dinner, to work, essentially any time and any setting. I wear Roka readers at night or Roka eyeglasses if I'm driving at night.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
What are some of the parameters for selecting a moisturizer? People are immediately going to say, well, what constitutes a good moisturizer? What should it have in it? What are some things to avoid?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
You were telling me before this recording started, there are people who, and forgive me for those that cringe when I say this, that put placental extract
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
And I wear Roka sunglasses in the middle of the day, anytime it's too bright for me to see clearly. My eyes are somewhat sensitive, so I need that. I particularly like the Hunter 2.0 frames, which I have as eyeglasses and now as sunglasses too. If you'd like to try Roka, you can go to roka.com slash Huberman to get 20% off your purchase. Again, that's roka.com slash Huberman to get 20% off.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
I see. So when I think about something in a jar, you have something like Aquaphor or something, which is pretty thick stuff. So that would be fine for someone with eczema, not okay for somebody with acne.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. By now, many of you have heard me say that if I could take just one supplement, that supplement would be AG1. The reason for that is AG1 is the highest quality and most complete of the foundational nutritional supplements available.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
What that means is that it contains not just vitamins and minerals, but also probiotics, prebiotics, and adaptogens to cover any gaps you may have in your diet and provide support for a demanding life.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
For me, even if I eat mostly whole foods and minimally processed foods, which I do for most of my food intake, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits and vegetables, vitamins and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone. noon, or evening. When I do that, it clearly bolsters my energy, my immune system, and my gut microbiome.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
These are all critical to brain function, mood, physical performance, and much more. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim their special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Why do people wake up with bags under their eyes if they just slept for six or eight hours? Yeah.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Today's episode is also brought to us by Juve. Juve makes medical grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing I've consistently emphasized on this podcast, it's the incredible impact that light can have on our biology.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Skin cleansing is a topic that gets a lot of coverage. And I sometimes get chuckles or even attacks for saying I've always just used unscented Dove soap, the bar, not the liquid soap, or like acetophil soap. And this is because when I was younger, like much younger, I had very sensitive skin. And when I was like... kid, seven, eight, nine years old.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
I think I just started using unscented Dove soap at some point and things like it, gentle soaps without fragrances. What are your thoughts on those? And I ask not for my own purposes, I'm going to stick with it because it works for me, unless you tell me I shouldn't. I see this enormous market for skin cleansers that includes a range of costs from relatively low to near astronomical.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
If you tell me that this unscented Dove soap or Cetaphil soap is the way to go, and by the way, I'm not sponsored by either of those. I don't even know who they're manufactured by, so there's no commercial angle here. But I'll be relieved because they tend to fall on the lower end of the cost bracket relative to some of these astronomically priced cleansers.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Now, in addition to sunlight, red light and near infrared light have been shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health, including faster muscle recovery, improved skin health and wound healing, even improvements in acne, reducing pain and inflammation, improving mitochondrial function, and even improving vision itself.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
The unscented, non-fragranced versions of them.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
What sets Juve lights apart, and why they're my preferred red light therapy devices, is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning it uses specific wavelengths of red light and near infrared light in combination to trigger the optimal cellular adaptations. Personally, I use the Juve handheld light both at home and when I travel.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
He did his training at Stanford University, and he was a clinical professor of dermatology and dermatologic surgery at UCLA, that is, the University of California, Los Angeles. Today, we discuss all things related to skin appearance, skin health, and skin longevity. For instance, we discuss sun exposure and the impact it can have on both the appearance and health of one's skin.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
So does that mean that people should bathe probably once or twice a day, but the people that are Bathing three times a day, it's probably excessive. I mean, are we saying that you can't get into water? I mean, when you say cleansing, you're talking about face cleansing. I realize this is going to be highly individual, but some people are just out of habit, shower and use cleanser
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
you know, twice a day or once a day. I think for me, it's in the morning or in the evening, sometimes both. If I do a workout, I try and shower as close as possible after the workout, as soon as possible after the workout rather, because otherwise I will break out, you know? So it sounds like one has to kind of learn what their cadence is and that's going to vary by age.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
It's only about the size of a sandwich, so it's super portable and convenient to use. I also have a Juve whole body panel, and I use that about three or four times per week. If you'd like to try Juve, you can go to juve, spelled J-O-O-V-V dot com slash Huberman. Juve is offering an exclusive discount to all Huberman Lab listeners with up to $400 off select Juve products.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
including things like acne, psoriasis. Most people think about shampooing for sake of hair, but there's the scalp component. And since you're an expert in skin, we should probably spend a bit of time on this. For people that tend to have a dry or flaky scalp, what should they do about that? My understanding is that some of the more typical commercial
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Anti-dandruff shampoos can contain things that might cause issues for hair itself. So they might help with the flaking and drying of the scalp, but damage other aspects of you know, either appearance or health of hair. What are some really good options for people that have dry scalp? What are some great options for people that have oily scalp?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
And let's leave aside the frequency of use and just perhaps just put it on the shelf as much as you need it, but not more. So that could be once a week. It could be daily. It could be twice a day in extreme cases, it sounds like.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Again, that's Juve, J-O-O-V-V dot com slash Huberman to get $400 off select Juve products. Today's episode is also brought to us by Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are customized to your unique sleep needs.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
I've spoken many times before on this and other podcasts about the fact that getting a great night's sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance. Now, the mattress we sleep on makes an enormous difference in terms of the quality of sleep that we get each night.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Got it. So it sounds like the best options for cleansing skin, for shampooing, really stem from knowing whether or not your skin tends to air oily or dry, figuring out how often to cleanse.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
And then as you pointed out before, even though there's an enormous range of costs for these things, none of the solutions that you're describing sound like they fall on the high end of cost or even in the middle end of cost, which is a bit surprising to me. If I had a magic wand, I would make for all organic, non-processed and minimally processed foods to be very inexpensive.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
But it turns out those things tend to be more expensive. You can go to farmer's markets and cut back on the cost, et cetera. But there seems to be an unfortunate tradeoff between – availability and cost and benefit, or at least risk.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
But it doesn't sound like that's the case with skincare or scalp care that one can exercise really excellent skin and scalp care without having to go into a range of spending an outrageous amount of money.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
We need a mattress that is matched to our unique sleep needs, one that is neither too soft nor too hard for you, one that breathes well and that won't be too warm or too cold for you. If you go to the Helix website, you can take a brief two-minute quiz, and it asks you questions such as, do you sleep on your back, your side, or your stomach? Do you tend to run hot or cold during the night?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
It's going to be very reassuring to many people. It's also going to be somewhat destabilizing to people who are really attached to the idea that the more expensive products are really doing something that much more beneficial for them.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
So this seems like an appropriate time to ask about sun exposure. And then we'll also talk about sunscreen, sunblocks, skin cancer. Sure. But what is the relationship between sun exposure and skin health specifically? Meaning how much sun exposure is healthy for our skin? I'm a big believer in getting sun exposure to the eyes early in the day, blinking as needed to protect the eyes, of course.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Things of that sort. Maybe you know the answers to those questions, maybe you don't. Either way, Helix will match you to the ideal mattress for you. For me, that turned out to be the Dusk mattress, D-U-S-K. I've been sleeping on a Dusk mattress for, gosh, no, more than four years, and the sleep that I've been getting is absolutely phenomenal.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
But in order to set one's circadian rhythm for elevated daytime mood, focus and alertness, and improved nighttime sleep, there's just so much data to support setting one's circadian rhythm properly for sake of health. And there's so much data to support the fact that sunlight viewing in particular is the best way to do that.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
And sunlight viewing in the early part of the day in particular is the best way to do that. Beyond that, how much sun exposure to the skin is good for us? Is it zero? Is it five minutes? Does it depend?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
If you'd like to try Helix, you can go to helixsleep.com slash Huberman, take that brief two-minute sleep quiz, and Helix will match you to a mattress that is customized to your unique sleep needs. Right now, Helix is giving up to 25% off mattresses and two free pillows. Again, that's helixsleep.com slash Huberman to get 25% off and two free pillows.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
So even midday sun, maybe if there's some cloud cover or we have some sunscreen on or a physical barrier like sun and long, excuse me, like hat and long sleeves, then getting some sun exposure in your mind is good for our overall well-being, mood, et cetera.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
I'd like to take a brief break to thank one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Now, I and others on the podcast have talked a lot about the critical importance of hydration for proper brain and bodily function.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Research shows that even a slight degree of dehydration can really diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes in order for your body and brain to function at their best. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium are critical for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or nerve cells.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
And now for my discussion with Dr. Teo Soleimani. Dr. Teo Soleimani, welcome.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise I'm doing, especially on hot days if I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman, spelled drinkelement.com slash Huberman, to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
what about sunscreens and sunblocks and i think we should distinguish between those two labels you know in the old days as i understand sunscreen was the word used to describe stuff that you put on your skin that absorbs uv and then sunblock is the stuff that you put on your skin to reflect uv um
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Typically nowadays people say sunscreen more than they say sunblock or they use them interchangeably without any knowledge of the underlying mechanism. So first of all, let's clarify sunscreen versus sunblock.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Oh, well, it's an honor to have you. Let's talk about this amazing organ we call skin. So skin, of course, covers our other organs. It's its own living biological entity. And just for sake of educational purposes and to frame the rest of what we're going to talk about, how much turnover is there in our skin? Meaning the skin that I'm wearing right now
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
mineral-based sunscreens are sometimes called inorganic, correct?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Is the mechanism for these two the same? Because I was under the impression that the mineral-based inorganic sunscreens reflected back UV rays, whereas the chemical-based sunscreens absorbed UV rays, but there's a bit of an online debate about this, claiming that they all absorb UV rays.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
So what is your recommendation about protecting oneself from the sun? And maybe for the moment, let's just set aside sunscreens and acknowledge that a physical barrier like hat, long sleeves, long pants provides a pretty good barrier to the sun, correct?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Is that going to be 100%, 50% of the skin that I'm going to be wearing a year from now? I'm 49 years old.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
If I understand correctly, you're saying that the use of sunscreen can protect against premature aging. Let's say sunblock, because I think we're going to arrive at mineral-based sunscreens probably being the better option, but we can make sure that we double-click on that, so to speak. that sun exposure itself perhaps is not linked to the most deadly of skin cancers. That tells me two things.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
It doesn't tell me that I can just spend as much time as I want in the sun, but it does tell me that I should probably look into the things that cause the most deadly skin cancers. Okay. But I'm also hearing that regular application of sunblock
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
and or physical barrier will protect my skin against some forms of premature aging caused by sun exposure, but will not necessarily protect me against the most common forms of skin cancer. That is peculiar in the sense that, or even baffling to the non-dermatologist, me, because we already know that sun exposure causes UV mutations, mutations in the DNA of cells,
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
is one of the kind of core components of cancer. So how do we square all of this?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
I think most people would prefer not to have the premature aging caused by sun exposure. So what should those people do? I've taken on a practice of... Putting a mineral-based inorganic sunscreen on my face, my arms if they're going to be exposed, back of my neck, tops of my ears. If I'm going to be out in midday or late-day sun that feels intense, I'll do that.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Every single time I go out now on overcast days, not so much for viewing morning sunlight. I don't do that. In fact, when the sun is low in the sky, I don't tend to wear sunblock. That's me. That's been my choice. There were a few years there where I didn't put on sunscreen, or if I did, it was like on a camping trip or skiing or something where the sun felt very intense.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
And in that case, I would just reach for whatever sunscreen or sunblock was available because I wasn't aware. that some of the ingredients in certain chemical-based sunscreens may be problematic. So I think I fall into the typical category of a lot of people.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
But of course, there's the category of people that are like, nope, sunscreen sunblock is terrible all the time, or they're just too lazy or uninterested in applying it. But then there's this whole category of people that are putting it on Every single time they go outside in hopes that that's going to keep their skin appearing much younger and just generally are kind of afraid of the sun.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
No skin cancers.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
If you tell me that he got skin cancer on the opposite side, I'm really going to gasp.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
In reference to that, we discuss sunscreens, which ones are safe, which ones perhaps elicit a bit more concern, or perhaps should be avoided, and we discuss the surprising relationship between sun exposure and skin cancer. We discuss laser treatments for the skin, both for the appearance of skin, in order to make it appear more youthful, as well as to prevent certain forms of skin cancer.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
I mean, I guess I'm biased, but... Well, I find a 28-day turnover, just to be incredible... The skin as I understand it is innervated, that is it receives connections from the nervous system. So I think for many people, Their interest in skin is skin appearance, although we will also talk about skin health.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
But in terms of skin appearance, how much does stress, short-term and longer-term stress, impact the appearance of our skin? And how does that work? I could imagine that the neurons release certain things into the skin. Does stress make our skin age faster? Does that mean it turns over more quickly or turns over more slowly? Maybe you could link these two aspects of our biology for us.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
So the takeaway for me is, Physical barrier, no issues. Mineral-based sunscreen, safest. So that's zinc oxide, titanium dioxide.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Okay. And then chemical-based sunscreens, probably best avoided. Okay. And then you mentioned polypodium. So this is a pill. It's a supplement basically that one can take. I only call it a supplement because it's not a prescription drug, correct? Yeah. That protects your skin from UV damage from the inside.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
What are the dosages of polypodium that are useful and are there any side effects?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Interesting. And you mentioned sun powder as a potential, that's a brand name?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
I think we both agree that the mineral-based sunscreens are going to be the best option of the ones out there, if one is at all concerned about some of these chemical components and chemical sunscreens. Yeah, fair enough. Absolutely agree. Yeah, so within that category, are there particular things to look for?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
I'm not necessarily trying to aim for particular brands here, but given that I have no relationship to any skincare products, I would just like to know which ones...
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
to look for or will any zinc oxide and or titanium dioxide containing sunscreen provided there are no chemical components in there besides the inactive ingredients of course um will any suffice because in that case people can just shop for cost or availability
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
What are some, if any, of the concerns that some of the components in chemical-based sunscreens can cross the blood-brain barrier?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Another call for the mineral-based sunscreens just as a, why take the risk?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
This seems like a good time to shift a little bit of our attention to nutrition and the gut microbiome. Now, this isn't an infinitely large topic. We could spend several episodes discussing this, but if you were to provide us some of the major takeaways as it relates to nutrition and skin health, nutrition and skin appearance, gut and skin health and appearance, what would those be?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
So my understanding, and we'll get into this more as it relates to acne, is that patterns of eating, either content, food volume, that is caloric load, et cetera, that increase insulin and things like mTOR are sort of pro-acne. They're going to aggravate or increase acne. Whereas the things that tend to lower circulating blood glucose, insulin, and reduce inflammation tend to be kind of
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
anti-acne, or sorry, we pull in the other direction towards reducing acne load. But if we were to just step back and say, okay, the typical person who wants to have the healthiest, best appearing skin, who's not dealing with any specific issue, because we will get into those specific issues, can we say they should eat a vegan diet, a vegetarian diet? Is it okay to be an omnivore?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Some people are on the extreme of this carnivore type diet. Some of those people actually report elimination of certain skin conditions. I don't know. I've never tried one of those extreme diets, but you hear this, but again, you hear a lot of things. So it seems to me that the relationship between keeping the gut microbiome healthy and ingesting sufficient amounts of fiber is pretty clear.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
The relationship between keeping the gut microbiome healthy and overall, that is systemic inflammation low is pretty clear. And that eating foods that are mostly unprocessed or minimally processed keeps inflammation on the lower side as opposed to eating more processed foods. But assuming you, would you agree or disagree with that? Feel free to disagree, please.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
So assuming that that's all true, is there any evidence that the ingestion of specific foods can make skin healthier? Like you'll see this stuff, like, oh, if you have two cups of blueberries a day, your skin is going to be healthier. Or is all of that indirect by virtue of specific micronutrients that are in those foods? Yeah.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
I guess the most direct question is, do you yourself consume collagen proteins in a supplement form or make it a point to eat things like bone broth, which contain high percentages of collagen?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Is there a role for omega-3 fatty acids like fish oils and things of that sort for skin health specifically?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
What about some treatments that are known to be beneficial for the appearance and health of skin that people are not as aware of? Because I think people who are concerned with their skin health and appearance, they think about sunscreen, and we've learned a lot about that from you.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
But what are some things that really work to improve skin health and appearance that perhaps require a visit to the dermatologist, but that you don't hear enough about? Yeah.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Why do you think, given the immense interest in skin appearance and health, we don't hear more about this?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
This would be things like Retin-A.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
We discuss retinoids. We discuss supplements and nutrition, all in reference, again, to skin health and appearance. Thanks to Dr. Soleimani's incredible depth of expertise, as well as clarity of communication about the do's and do nots that relate to skin care and appearance and to avoiding and treating skin cancers.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
So this would be go to your dermatologist, ask for some, is it laser resurfacing?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
So people have this done once a year or so?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
I guess people rarely are sympathetic to presidents for aging quickly because I guess if there were a president who did not age quickly, we would worry they did not work hard enough or something of that sort. But the relationship between stress and skin fascinates me because – not just of the direct relationship.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
It's amazing. How is this different than exfoliating skin? Like if one were to just try and scrape away some of the dead skin through some semi-vigorous buffing of the skin with like a sponge. I've never done either of these procedures. Like I said, my skincare routine is very basic. It's the unscented dove soap, the shower once or twice a day.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
I mean, I feel pretty good. I mean, I think... You know, sleep seems to play a significant role for me. I do get probably a bit more sun exposure than most people. I'm conscious of checking for skin cancers and we'll talk about that because those do run in my family. But, and I try and eat right and exercise right. consumed much alcohol in my lifetime.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Like when we see people and they're stressed, like it seems like their whole, the power of their skin changes, the kind of level of gleam in their eyes change. And of course the eyes are a direct piece of the nervous system, really. They're as close to the brain as one can get. outside the skull.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Is that the IPL laser?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
I've had that actually because I had an angioma. Yeah. I've had it three times. And the third time they hit this thing, it went away, but not without a very significant bruise lasting almost a month. I mean, it was pretty dramatic. Overdone it. Right. But it did eliminate the vessel.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
So as long as we're on the topic of photobiomodulation, what about red light near infrared light? Is there any evidence that it can benefit skin health and appearance? Nowadays, you can find masks that will emit red light. Some people will purchase red lights they stand in front of.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
But it also suggests, because of the dynamic turnover of skin every 28 days, that if people were to become less stressed, that their skin health and appearance might improve. Is that also the case?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
So probably looking for something that's at least endorsed by dermatologists makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. And I should say here, I have no No angle into this. These masks that emit red light, I don't have any business relationship to them. So that's not why I bring it up. I was just very curious. I see them in my Instagram feed, probably by virtue of...
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
doing public facing health and science information and my interest in light. What about, oh, yes, excuse me.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Thank you for that. And full disclosure, I was accurate in saying that I don't have any relationship to any red light masks. companies or products, but this podcast is sponsored by Juve, which makes medical grade panels for red light and near infrared light. And I do own one of those and I use, I have a small portable one I use, and then I have a panel I stand in front of.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
So that includes my face and then I'll turn around and so do a whole body a couple times a week.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
It's interesting when people see and hear about red light and near-infrared light therapies, I think a lot of people think, oh, this is kind of like next-age biohacking. But there was a Nobel Prize given for photobiomodulation for the treatment of lupus in the early 1900s.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
So this is a longstanding thing, the use of light of particular wavelengths or combinations of wavelengths, of which red light and blue light are, of course. in order to target different layers within the skin to get some desired effect.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Well, I think it's a very relevant tangent because the relationship between immune system function and skin is very clear. And these conditions that you're referring to, vitiligo, acne, psoriasis, eczema, et cetera, have interesting relationships to the immune system. So that's actually a perfect segue for what I'd like to talk about next. So let's start with psoriasis.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
What is the story with psoriasis? What is it? What can make it worse? What can make it better?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
So these drugs that target these specific interleukins seem like the most direct way to treat psoriasis. Some people, for whatever reason, have an aversion to prescription drugs. I'm not necessarily one of those people, but I, like everybody else, would like to know what we can do to reduce symptoms of things like psoriasis without having to, quote unquote, take anything.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
That was my question since the sun emits UV. why not just get some additional sunlight exposure for psoriasis?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
What about vitiligo? This is something I did not cover in the solo episode about skin health, but I got a lot of questions about vitiligo, of course, being this typically patchy, non-pigmented regions of skin that you said is at least some... cases are related to the immune system. These people get skin cancers less often, is that right?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
It's fascinating. Again, speaking to the fact that skin is far more than just this protective outer sheath. It's a reflection of so much that's going on internally. And we know that intuitively also by observing others.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
It is fascinating. It also speaks to the value of having some immediate and long-term stress reduction techniques just as a sort of first principle of taking care of one's skin. There are some other things that cause vasoconstriction, basically the tightening of the vessels and capillaries to the skin, as I understand. Maybe we could just tick through a few of these and get your sense.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
I think this is one of several ways that parents can communicate well with their children or their children with their parents rather in terms of how they're feeling prior to language. You know, they'll look at their skin, their stool, obviously fussiness and mood and those things too.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
But we seem to have developed an intuitive understanding that a shift in the kind of like tone of the skin or some other features of the skin signal to us wellness or lack of wellness.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
It is so cool. What about acne? Acne seems very common, you know, as a We progress through puberty. There seems to be more acne. Sometimes it's transient. Sometimes it's not. What are some things that people can do to prevent or reduce acne?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Is it true that eating a diet that is – of slight excess in calories because it will tend to push the insulin glucose regulation system more into the positive as opposed to, let's just say, higher levels of insulin in circulating blood glucose than one would observe at, say, maintenance calories or sub-maintenance calories that overeating a little bit could cause acne.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
I consume caffeine every morning, usually yerba mate tea, some coffee a little bit later. Those will increase vasoconstriction to some extent, although chronic caffeine intake may cause vasodilation. So I'd like to know the relationship between caffeine and blood flow to the skin and skin health and appearance. That's the first question.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
any foods that promote increases in glucose and insulin? So sugary foods, high glycemic foods, these sorts of things. Can that actually increase acne? Fried foods?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
What about rosacea? I hear so much about this, and I'm going to assume that we can mark off at least one thing as clear, which is that alcohol can exacerbate rosacea, maybe directly. but certainly indirectly by impeding some aspects of the microbiome, disrupting sleep, rosacea gets worse.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
But what are things that people can do, do's and don'ts, that is for rosacea, if it's mild rosacea, like excessively ruddy cheeks or superficial riding capillaries that seem to bother a lot of people? I know that it bothers a lot of people because they asked about this quite a lot. in the questions when I solicited for questions.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
And then dovetailed with that question is nicotine, which is also thought to be a vasoconstrictor. It raises blood pressure because it's a vasoconstrictor. What are the effects of caffeine, both acutely and chronically, and nicotine? Let's assume that nicotine is consumed either by smoking or oral ingestion on skin appearance and health.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
By the end of today's episode, you will be armed with an immense amount of knowledge that is the very latest in our understanding of how to improve and protect your skin. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
A couple of things that you taught me that I just want to pass along in short form, and please correct me if I have this wrong. One, if you can avoid popping pimples, definitely avoid it because it can cause damage, recruitment of these matrix metalloproteases, which essentially digest some of the deeper layers of the skin, leave scars.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
I think it's to eradicate the infection type of thing.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
And if they pop on their own, I can't believe we're having this conversation, but that's a skin health and appearance episode. After all, if they pop on their own, then... cleaning it with a gentle cleanser is probably the best way to go. No topical antibiotics. Is that right? No.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
And what about the use of corticosterone cream? Like if somebody has a red bump and they're headed to an event or something and they want to – eliminate some of the redness and bumpiness.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Assuming sterile technique and other safety measures in place, are tattoos inherently bad for skin?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
That's a good segue into surveying for skin cancers. Earlier, you talked about some of the more common forms of skin cancer, squamous cell carcinoma, basal cell carcinoma, but then there's the one, no one truly wants, which is melanoma.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
So I was taught to keep an eye on my moles.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
If they change, change in border, change in size, et cetera, to notify a dermatologist. Yeah. I get my moles checked about, I don't know, I just had it done less than a year ago. But what about getting all skin checked? I mean, what do you, this is your area of expertise. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you had a magic wand.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
to help prevent skin cancers, what would you have people do?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
For the HPV that eventually becomes squamous cell carcinoma. Yeah. Is the HPV vaccine effective even at older ages?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
As I recall, planter's warts, which are these warts that burrow a kind of root into the bottom of the foot, they're very painful. That actually... can be caused by HPV. It's a form of HPV. And it's not sexually transmitted. It's locker room transmitted.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
So warts on their fingers, plantars warts on their feet.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Do you think soon we will be in the landscape of vaccines for all forms of skin cancer?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Loaded term.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Fascinating. And a good place for us to probably pause until the next time we have you back to talk about where that technology evolves. Because today you've taught us so much about skin, what it is, its anatomy, its physiology, what it reflects in terms of our internal workings, health, or in some cases, challenges with health.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Talked about various conditions such as psoriasis, acne, eczema, dandruff, as it's sometimes called, and what we can do. The role of nutrition, avoiding certain things like excess alcohol, nicotine, et cetera, but also some of the newer and more exciting treatments that exist for all these conditions. merely cosmetic and uncomfortable, some truly life-threatening and dangerous like melanoma.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
So for all those reasons, and also for taking time out of your very busy clinical schedule to come talk to us, I really appreciate it and I want to voice my
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
uh appreciation both for myself and for those listening and viewing I know people will have many many questions so we will refer them to your uh social media accounts and links to your clinic and so forth so that they can have those questions addressed and who knows maybe
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
and get the chance to work with you in the meantime i just want to say thank you for this public education gift that you've given us um i'm thinking about skin very differently now and i plan to do and not do certain things uh in light of today's conversation no pun intended so
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Well, we will certainly bring you back to further the discussion. Meanwhile, thank you ever so much, Dr. Soleimani. Thank you. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion about how to improve and protect your skin with Dr. Teo Soleimani. To learn more about his work and find links to his clinic, please see the show note captions.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
If you're learning from and are enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero-cost way to support us. In addition, please subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and on Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. please check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or topics or guests you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, Twitter, now known as X, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I cover science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Interesting. And what about nicotine?
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media channels.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, our neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes protocols, which are brief one to three page PDFs, which summarize various things that you can do in order to, for instance, optimize neuroplasticity and learning, or optimize your sleep, or improve dopamine regulation.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
Again, all available at completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter, and provide us your email to obtain the newsletter. And I'd like to point out that we do not share your email with anybody. Once again, thank you for joining me for today's discussion about skin health and appearance with Dr. Teo Soleimani.
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How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance | Dr. Teo Soleymani
And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Stuart McMillan. Stu McMillan is one of the world's most sought after coaches for teaching people how to get stronger, run faster, be more powerful and healthier.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And they're not assisted. This is one thing where I hear we're cutting between sport and we're talking about fitness. You know, the reason I mentioned the age when I started TRT is that, A, you know, Never occurred to me, didn't need it. I felt like I got great results until then. And I think the biggest thing is recovery. I do think it helps you recover better. No question, actually.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
But a real shame nowadays is that because of Instagram and people showing their bodies and this desire for people to get results more quickly, a lot of guys in their teens, 20s, and 30s taking testosterone when they don't need it, it does shut down sperm production, unless they're offsetting that with HCG or something like that.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And they may think they don't want kids now, but they may want them later, and some permanent damage can be done. In addition to that, I mean, puberty is a very protracted thing for a lot of people. It's not like, oh, you start puberty at 14, it ends at 16, your brain's still developing. So we don't really understand how all that works. Not this Olympics, but prior to that,
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
There was a female athlete who tested positive for DECA, the DECA burrito. She blamed it on a burrito meat. And I remember hearing that and I sort of facetiously said – and I'll say it again, not facetiously. Like if she got caught for DECA, I hope she took DECA because to knowingly take a banned substance and get caught –
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
then banned from the sport is one thing but to inadvertently take a banned substance as did this bobsledder and then get banned from your sport that's a real tragedy for multiple reasons and that's what happened dreadful it is it's absolutely dreadful she just she just started competing again like last month rob and i were actually talking about this yesterday at the track
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Yeah.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
I get contacted a lot, probably not as much as other people do, by... athletes at different levels, professional, amateur, et cetera, asking about ways to improve testosterone, et cetera. I got great results all through my mid thirties until mid forties. And still with like Tonga Ali, freeing some testosterone up. My blood charts told me that worked for me, may not work for everybody. Great.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Fidojia, things like that. Things like that, subtle effects, but meaningful, subtle, but meaningful. Yeah. And then athletes will ask me, well, is it allowed? I said, you have to check with your organization. You just can't take something. You have to check with your organization. The thing I am well aware of now is all the peptide use, right?
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Peptides are really, really big and they're in use in the general population more and more. And it'll be interesting to see how those impact sport. I'm not aware of any athletes, at least none have come to me saying they take these peptides, but it's going to be interesting to see how that shapes sport. I think people... overestimate how much these drugs contribute to success at the elite level.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
I ran cross country as a senior in high school. I've been running consistently since I was 16, three times a week. I don't consider myself even a runner. I just run for the pleasure of it. A long run, a medium run, and a short run. Perhaps it was the movies about Steve Prefontaine, of which there were two.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Because, I mean, what you're talking about with these athletes you work with are just the, you know, hundreds and hundreds of hours of work to get a
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
one percent improvement in some metric or 0.1 0.1 it's just you know i think people really overestimate it sure if people just want to be big with a bunch of acne yeah you can do that big acne sterile like they're you know they can you can get that in the locker room most any gym nowadays um please don't do it um but to get you know half a second off your time
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
That's awesome. And it points to the fact that more muscle isn't always the solution. The things that keep coming to mind are the ability to put away self-consciousness, to use the body to express, to find oneself. And it's so interesting because I thought we were going to sit down and talk about running.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
But I think these are much larger and, if I may, more important themes, although people should definitely skip and stride.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
I think one's called Prefontaine and the other one's called Without Limits that are quite good. They got me excited about track. And then I started going up to University of Oregon and attending track meets as a fan. But there's this dramatized moment about Pre, as they called him, and Bowerman, the coach up in Eugene, where –
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
I can't think of anything else. And you're talking to somebody who's now working on grip strength because I was challenged publicly by Paul Saladino, the carnivore MD who now talks about animal diet. And people are starting to take him more seriously, by the way, because at first it was all meat. Then it is meat and fruit. There's meat, fruit, and some dairy. I do this and I also eat vegetables.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Guy has salad in his name, for God's sake. He's a friend. I'm friends with him. I'm friends with Lane. I'm friends with Atiyah. I get along with all those guys, but some of them don't get along with each other. I'll tell you that. But he challenged me to a grip strength contest, which actually was not grip strength. And he said, this is the marker of longevity. And he- Hello, bastard.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Hung from a bar, switching hands for 12 plus minutes in the rain. Now, he had someone toweling off the bar, but that is a very impressive grip strength slash endurance. score. As long as we're on this, I mean, this has become like kind of an online thing. People want to challenge each other with, here are my biometrics. You asked, what are the markers of longevity?
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Brian Johnson is big on these are my markers. Those have become controversial lately because it's unclear the markers were all collected at the same date. You know, there's questions about For instance, it's weird that testosterone will be elevated, but not showing LH means you're probably enhanced. And if he is, cool, but people need to be very open.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
The nice thing about what Paul showed is he showed the full length video. You have to show the full length video. Folks, Brian, I'm calling you out. Specifically, you can't post VO2 max and not show the actual ride and the read off the, you have to show video. People don't trust it anymore. And so the point here is, is grip strength? Is it VO2 max?
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Is it your testosterone relative to free testosterone? It's all these things. Like you said, if I were to step back and say, is there a single physical metric? I think you got me. I think that the ability to run fast without blowing a gasket. Yeah. or injuring yourself in some way, run fast for you, would be it. And I did not think about that.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And I certainly wouldn't have said that at the beginning of this conversation. So I think it's a very important insight. And that, if nothing else, should motivate everybody to get better at it. And they can check out the video that we did. What you said earlier has become to me and will remain my goal.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
I think that wellbeing, physical wellbeing, mental wellbeing is the ability to exert, express pressure mentally and physically, like sit down, like, you know, to actually generate pressure around doing something hard. That's, you know, takes an organization of mind and body.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
It could be a physical pursuit and then to feel peace from the better expression of that cognitive or physical or creative endeavor. I think this, um, This pressure piece thing is more than non-trivial. I think it's the essence of what I've been seeking my whole life, the ability to exert pressure and to create things that are meaningful, and then the ability to feel peace. I love that.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
allegedly, purportedly, Pree wants to run the mile because everyone in the country at that time was obsessed with who's the fastest miler. But Bowerman says to him, no, you're a 5,000 runner. You're gonna run the three mile. And he said, no one cares about the 5,000. He said, you're gonna make them care. And it turned out to be the right fit. The 5,000 was the right event for him.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Well, it's yours.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
that makes a lot of sense i love that because you got to sleep at night you got to train hard 100 you got to do your if you're me you know formal education and then you got to also relax and have a good time and can you do them all at the same time that's the that's the key yeah can you structure your days in a way where the first two-thirds is just pure pressure and be okay with that because you know there's peace coming yeah because of some of the things that you pressured upon yourself well i love it and it's all it's all yours do and um i have to say i
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
It's been years. I've been wanting to sit down and talk with you for a very long time. We run into each other at track meets.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And it's a real honor and pleasure. You've taught us so much and there's much more. So I hope you'll come back at some point and we'll... Talk about other things as things evolve. Talk about sprinting. Talk about sprinting. And I'll do a dangerous thing, which is to say if folks want to go to a track meet, I'll be at the track meets.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And I'll probably be letting people know when I'll be at track meets. I go as a fan. I'm not looking for attention there. I'm actually there to just enjoy the incredible expression of the athletes, both physical and emotional expression. It's a real... It's a real beautiful thing.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Well, you're a legend, as everyone says, in the sport and outside of it too. Thanks so much for your time. It's been a real pleasure and an honor. Thanks, Andrew. Appreciate you. Thank you. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. And you can now leave us comments at both Spotify and Apple.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
So that was a moment where a coach could identify, you could be a great miler, but you'll be a spectacular 5,000 runner. Is that based on sort of times and splits and recovery and all that? Or is there actually a body type and a gait that is best? Because one of my favorite things to find on social media
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And if you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, Threads, Facebook and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the information on the Huberman Lab podcast.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
because if you like or if you don't like things like running, swimming, cycling, or other activities such as weight training or yoga, there's going to be a lot to take away from it that you can apply. Stu McMillan is a true savant of coaching how best to move and how to improve your health. It was an honor and privilege to host him and to learn from him. I'm sure you'll agree.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Again, it's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as what we call protocols in the form of one to three page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure,
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Stu McMillan. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
I promise this is not a digression, is where they'll set out a race, an animated race between like a rabbit, a cheetah, an elephant, a human. It's very interesting to see which animals are fastest over which distances. They fall out over different distances. And most people perhaps are surprised to find that the animal that wins the long, long, long, longest distance
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
and beats all the other species is us. So we're not good in the sprint compared to the cheetah, but we are oh so good at the marathon and ultra marathon compared to the cheetah or any other animal. So do you think it's something special about the gait, the personality? Times in various events.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
What funnels somebody's understanding of themselves or an athlete to say, you know, you're meant to do this?
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Stu McMillan. Stu McMillan, welcome.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
I feel like this is a great metaphor for life in general, for career. I mean, I've enjoyed different careers and I'm glad I started in the one I did, but that I've ended up in the one I'm in now, even though I still teach and I'm involved in research in some ways.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
um there's such a immense pleasure to uh finding the the thing yeah for oneself yeah but you can't get there first this is what i think is frustrating to young people now because of the internet they think like what's my calling what's what's my event what's my sport what am i built for and then you have all these examples right you've got your um shaquille o'neal's clearly built for basketball and then you have your
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Growing up when I grew up, you're Spud Webb, right? Much, much shorter than most of the professional players in the NBA, but wins the slam dunk competition. And so he's always used it as an example that you can bridge these gaps. But I do think that dedicated application to one area is the best lane from which to exit to another freeway. You can't just get onto the Autobahn, so to speak, for you.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
You have to sometimes get on Highway 101 for a while and speed a little bit or crash. I'm not being literal here. You said something that I think is immensely powerful. I'd like to use as a segue, which is that we find ourselves through movement. I think this is so true, and not just for people who are trying to figure out what athletic or exercise endeavors are best for them, but certainly there.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
I'd like to contrast jogging and running. Yesterday, you mentioned a few things that, to me, just feel like gems, because jogging Like I said, I'll try and run far-ish for me. I go by time about an hour once a week, 30 minutes on another day, and let's just say about a 15 minute, not all out, but close to all out on a separate day.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
I've tried ad nauseum to figure out whether or not it's best to heel strike and roll, whether or not it's best to land on the toe, whether or not it's best to lift the knee. I mean, for the uninformed who goes to the internet, you can get answers about this all sorts of ways. Let's start with the slowest movement possible, which is walking.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Let's forget about speed walking for sake of this conversation for a number of reasons. Race walking. Race walking. Excuse me. Race walking. See, I even forgot the name of it. No disrespect to race walkers. No disrespect to race walkers, but most people don't seek to race walk, I think. But let's talk about walking. Yeah. When we walk, do we heel to toe roll naturally?
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Thank you. Great to be here. We go back a little ways. And you're the guy that they call in to make athletes or pretty much anybody faster, stronger, healthier, and more powerful. And who wouldn't want that? Athletes or otherwise. Let's start by talking about running. You know, I think for a lot of people, they hear running and they're like, oh no, running hurts, running's painful.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Do we middle of foot to toe roll? And then let's proceed to jogging, running, and then let's step up through the various gear systems.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
We should clarify for people, dorsiflexion is when your toes come close up towards your shin. Correct. You're narrowing that angle between your foot and your front lower part of your lower limb. And plantar flexion is the opposite, pointing the toe. I think... attempting to go ballerina in point, but hopefully, unless you're a ballerina, you're not getting all the way there.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
But I think most people, when they think about running, they think about jogging. They think about running a distance longer than a mile. But even for some people, running a mile is a painful thought, let alone a practice. How should we think about running and sprinting in particular? Because when we grow up,
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Yeah, sometimes kids when they run, when they're real little, you know, like three or four, like when they're just running around the house barefoot, they'll like run on their toes. So what you're basically saying, if I understand correctly, is the speed should dictate the foot strike. Correct. Okay, I think that's a very important point for people who are interested in running or already running.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
The speed should dictate the foot strike. That unless there's a problem to resolve that a coach has told you –
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
need to resolve and how to do it you shouldn't be thinking about heel striking or toe striking you should be thinking about the speed that you're trying to cover the distance in yeah and if you're thinking about anything just think about being flat just think about being flat and the foot will take care of itself due to the velocity let's talk a little bit more about body position and running mechanics
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
There may be no hard and fast rules to this, but where should my eyes be? I've heard, oh, you want to be looking. Assuming I'm not in a race against anyone, I'm heading out for a run, doesn't matter which duration, does it matter where I place my vision?
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
then the lumbar and everything gets extended you end up standing up so more arched back a little bit more posture correct for those aren't familiar with flexion and extension um unless we say otherwise if we talk about flexion we're talking about assuming the dreaded c-shaped position that everyone seems so good at these days collapsed it toward their uh midline uh versus extension where your chin is up and away from the chest and your um right upright posture
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
We learned to crawl, walk, run, and kids naturally want to run fast at some point, fast for them. What is it about running that for you is such an enchanting thing? Why do you think that every four years or so, depending on when they're scheduling the Olympics, Everyone in this country gets fascinated with who's fastest, who's fastest in the world.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
There's a wonderful movement in yoga that's helped me a lot in my weightlifting. over the years. I did a little bit of yoga when I lived in San Diego because they had good yoga classes where they have you do this kind of rag doll hanging over at the waist position. It looks like a Jefferson deadlift for the gym rats or the Olympic lifters, rounded lower back.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And then they have you stand up from that position, but you deliberately start at your lower spine and unpeel yourself from that folded over position, never letting the head lead. But, you know, so basically like a chain coming up from the spine and then the head moves last.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
I mean, it's moving the whole time, but you're looking straight forward last as opposed to what you're saying where you lift the head first.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
That's been tremendously helpful to me in movements in the gym, which I think have helped me a lot, like glute ham raises where you're essentially in that position and then you come all the way up and then you go into a hamstring curl or a deadlift or any kind of movement where I'm going from torso bent forward to up. I remembered it, move the torso first and the head last.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And I'll just say, in my own experience, the strength increases that come from doing it that way as opposed to moving the head first and trying to then pull the weight up, it's remarkable. We are all so much stronger than we think if we engage the motor neurons in the proper sequence. So I think that's what you're referring to here.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Yeah, I was told the weight will go where my eyes go. But now I, now I. Where did that come from?
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
I don't know. I mean, some of the most useful things that have been told to me over the years that made a tremendous difference would be like this, again, borrowed from yoga guys who brought it into the gym. Then when I talked to proper, you know, people like proper biomechanics folks like yourself or Kelly Starrett, they go, yeah, of course you have to move your spine and torso before.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Um, but one of the most useful things for the squat and for the deadlift, um, has been because it's very difficult to think about many things at once, especially when you're on pulling or trying to squat heavy loads is to move, uh, my chest and my hips at the same time together so that you don't end up doing the dreaded, um, good morning back raise followed by standing up.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
So moving them in unison. So thinking about my chest and my hips moving at the same time, that's been tremendously helpful and tends to put the head in the right position. And the other one is, oh, right, when dead lifting to not think about pulling the weight off the floor, but rather pushing my feet into the ground while driving back.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And these little things end up making a huge difference, not just in terms of the amount of weight that you can pull or squat, But the safety of the movement is just so much more stable to drive the feet into the ground. And you think, why was I trying to pull a weight off the ground? All I had to do was like push my feet hard into the ground and hold onto this bar and boom, you're up. That easy.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
It's wild how... We pick up bad habits. It's also wild how quickly those bad habits can be resolved. So in keeping with that, back to running, I believe that everyone can and should run, most everyone. There are certain people who can't run for various reasons, but that people who can walk very likely can run.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And I'm becoming more of a believer with every moment I spend with you that sprinting is more valuable than jogging. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And then they tend to put track and field aside for a bit, but people can jump, they can swim, they can do all these things. But running is so fundamental to being human. What are your thoughts on running generally? And let's break it up into distances. Why do you love seeing people run fast? Why have you devoted yourself in part to helping people run faster and faster?
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Thank you. Thank you.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Today, we talk about how to do that using what for most people might seem like a rather unconventional set of methods, but for any serious track athlete will be very familiar. because they do it almost every day, and that's skipping and striding. You heard right.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Yeah, I'm fascinated by activities, both physical and mental, that facilitate the transition into a more difficult activity, physical or mental. I started to think about this when I started working on my book, In Earnest. It's very hard to just jump into writing, but I noticed that if I did some drawing, listened to a lecture while I was drawing, and I do anatomical drawings,
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
very easy to transition into writing. I enjoy drawing. I'm not trying to accomplish much with it, but it's a very natural activity for me and just very easy to drop into a deep groove for writing for hours. And then I started talking to a musician friend of mine who, he's a songwriter, very accomplished songwriter, and he does the same.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And then I saw a post from Joni Mitchell that she would paint before she would sing. And I think these transition activities that are natural for us that don't feel as constricted by distance over time or, you know, sometimes I put my drawings on social media, but they're really for me. They're a way of kind of thinking about the biology from a circuit standpoint.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
It is very personal and kind of abstract. As you talk about skipping, it seems a little bit the same, where skipping, we're not necessarily trying to become the fastest skipper in the world or beat our yesterday's skipping time. We're just trying to skip with more, as you said, more expression, more enjoyment. But perhaps, it sounds like indeed, it can help transition into a faster gait with what
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
we're doing for jogging or for running or transition us right into sprinting. And I think that these transition points for physical and mental activities are very important because these days there's so many tools and protocols, you know, dare I say. And people start to feel like, oh, I have to do all of these things. How would I do this, right?
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
How am I supposed to meditate and get sunlight and do it? You know, I'm already exercising a ton. Now you want me to skip? The way you describe it is completely different. It's saying, no, you're still doing your cardio, quote unquote, but maybe you do your zone two cardio and you incorporate some skipping, which will make your zone two faster for you.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Or your high intensity interval training, you'll feel more pliable, more explosive.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
100%.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Let's talk about concentric and eccentric aspects of running and skipping. So folks, concentric generally associated with the lifting phase, although sometimes it's the pulling phase if it's a pull-up, and then eccentric would be the lowering phase of some movement. In running, where's the concentric, where's the eccentric? For the uninformed, if you could just tell us.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
I'm absolutely struck by this stride comes before sprint thing. And I'm remembering back to cross country where they say, we're going to do a stride workout at the end of a run. We get back to the track at school and do some strides. And I'm just chuckling to myself because I always would tell myself in subsequent years, you know, okay, I'm going to sprint, but I'm going to sprint at, you know,
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
50% of my all out speed. So I always think of all out speed for me as somebody's chasing me with a syringe filled with poison and I've got to get away. Okay. That's all out speed. I don't want to die. So 50% of that, 60, 70, you know, and I'm measuring it subjectively. I'm not doing this by heart rates or anything like that.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And indeed, anytime I've done a hundred percent all out, like in my mind, imagining, you know, someone trying to, trying to,
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
really take my life and i'm running all out i end up with this lower back thing because of the you know it you get hurt yeah um but striding sounds like something that people could work up to how do you know after doing the skip workout that you described that you're quote unquote ready to stride and start doing a stride workout and i should mention that the these workouts because we did one yesterday um
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
you finish them feeling great. This is an aspect of exercise that I think most people don't talk about, unfortunately, that this leave it all on the mat, you take every set to failure in the gym, or these long runs where you're just shredded. They're not great for... teaching people how to be healthy because people are exhausted afterwards. They're tired. They overtrain quickly.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And then people say, there's no such thing as overtraining. It's like, yeah, if you can sleep all day, eat all day, and your profession is to do this. But there is such a thing as having a stressful life and wanting to be healthy and exercising and trying to incorporate that in a way that feeds the rest of your life.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And I think these workouts that we did, the workout we did yesterday, excuse me, left me feeling you know, posturally, energetically, mood-wise. I was feeling great. I slept great last night, felt great this morning. I had a great workout in the gym, as I mentioned earlier. So I want to encourage people to give this a try. And in doing that, I want to give them a roadmap.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
So a warm-up of 10 to 15 minutes. 50 meter or so, skip. Could they do it on lawn, dirt, or concrete? Does it matter? No, it doesn't. Great.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Okay. But if you don't and do it on concrete, no problem. Okay. So basically no cost to this except a little bit of time and attention. 10 to 15 of those, you have 50 meters out, walk back, repeat after a warmup.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
100%.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Always quality. So how does one transition into striding? And what does that look like? This is saying, okay, I'm going to sprint, but it's not a sprint because I'm going to hold back a bit. But how do you hold back and still have the expressive part? Because the expressive part, it's a little hard to describe in words, but...
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Yesterday, you were encouraging Rob and I to get us, you know, tall with our posture as if we were being pulled up by a string from our heads. And it has a profound psychological effect. And then you just feel your body opening up in natural movement. You don't have to think about coordinating the hand lift. It just, you're in, you know, like this full bowing out. It's really wonderful.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
When Dr. Peter Attia was on this podcast and elsewhere, he talked about one of the major causes of death, mostly in older people, is they'll fall. They'll be mobile. They'll catch some sort of infection related to contact with the bed or post-surgical lack of circulation. And that's what takes them out. I was shocked to learn this, right?
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
I mean, I thought it would be heart attack or cerebrovascular disease or that instead. But that led to this whole notion that I think is gaining more popularity nowadays that part of longevity is maintaining things like grip strength, one's ability to jump and land, and jumping and landing is eccentric control. My mom's turning 80 this year, and she's fortunately in very good health.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
My dad's already 80. He was on this podcast, and for anyone that saw that, he's clearly in very good health. But I worry about them, and I worry mostly about a step down off a curb, a step going down a stairwell. that is not controlled and then a slip and then a fall and then the break and then the immobility and then the sequence that Atiya and others have referred to.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Would skipping be a good activity for people in their 60s, 70s or 80s to undertake carefully as a way to learn eccentric control? Because I'll be honest, I've seen some wonderful inspiring videos of people in their 70s and 80s jumping off of boxes doing plyo type work in the gym. I don't know many folks in their 70s and 80s who are going to embark on that. But you can skip kind of small skips.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
What are your thoughts on folks who are in the 60 and up club skipping?
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
There's this peculiarity to anything related to health and public health in particular. For instance, a colleague of mine at Stanford, Dr. David Spiegel, he's our vice chair of psychiatry, and he and his father actually founded this area of psychiatry, which is basically hypnosis for the treatment of trauma, for pain relief, for smoking cessation.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
As you'll soon learn, skipping, what most of us think of as a kid's activity, is actually one of the best plyometric activities that we can all do at any age to build more power, speed, coordination, and to improve our muscle, fascial, and nervous system function.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And there are tremendously good data to support it as a practice. It's actually approved by the American Psychiatric Association, one of only four, I think, behavioral things, EMDR, cognitive behavioral therapy, hypnosis, and I think there's another. In any case, The problem, it's called hypnosis and people hear hypnosis and their mind goes to balking and squawking like a chicken on a stage.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
How do we compare the fastest person in the 100... meters versus the 200 versus the 400. So for you, is it coaching the 100 that's the most exciting or the 200 or the 400? Yeah, that's a good question.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
This is why we refer to deliberate respiration as opposed to breath work in our studies, our clinical trials on that, which David and I have published, et cetera. And it's not euphemism. The issue is the name, is a separator often. And that's a shame when there's a practice that's very valuable. Yoga Nidra, non-sleep deep rest, right?
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
I have tremendous respect for Yoga Nidra and all of its early creators, but the language is a separator, I'm sorry. And there's a public health mission that to me is more important than the naming. Just say that and I'll take the heat for it with no guilt whatsoever. Skipping, unless it's skipping rope, has this connotation of childlike activity, let's just be honest.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And adults doing childlike behavior while not necessarily a problem in its own right. I mean, look at all these adults with social media accounts acting like children and the children acting like adults, different discussion entirely. But what if we were to give it a different name, not with the intention of pretending it's not skipping, but to relieve people's guilt and shame about doing it?
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Is it bounding? Bounding is a little bit more nondescript for most people. I'm having this conversation with you openly in public here in front of many, many people to illustrate a couple of points. One is that the name oftentimes – people are like, I'm not going to skip down the street.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
But there's so much value to this that I think it would be a real shame to lose the opportunity to have it wick out to many, many millions of people. Yeah. Because it's called skipping. Yeah. It's plyometrics.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
I love that. Thank you. And you also saved me from trying to find a name that, you know, plyometric. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function. Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient levels and much more. They've also recently added tests for toxins such as BPA exposure from harmful plastics and tests for PFAS or forever chemicals.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to your physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors who are expert in the relevant areas. For example, in one of my first tests with function, I learned that I had elevated levels of mercury in my blood.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Function not only helped me detect that, but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, I've been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And I should say, by taking a second function test, That approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by function simplicity and at the level of cost.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
It is very affordable. As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. One thing that people will immediately realize when they go out and skip, when they do their plyometric skipping, is that's a little bit hard to understand just from hearing us have this conversation, but just trust me on this.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Well, there are two things that are very surprising and immensely positive, at least two things. One is this expressive component and the way it reshapes your psychology and your mood. I want to set that aside, but make sure we return to that. The other is the cross body coordination of movement.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
The fact that one knee is back toward the butt on one side and the opposite arm is raised up, just naturally as you skip, this is just, you know. In fact, if you're wondering now, oh goodness, do I actually know how to skip? That occurred to me a couple of times yesterday, because I had many cameras on me. I thought, do I still remember how to skip?
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
I'd been skipping the night before in preparation. I didn't know we were going to skip, but I've always worked some skips in if nobody's looking. I'm a skip in private kind of guy. Until now. Until now. Now I skip with pride in public. Plyometrics. I will. Plyometric in public. That's right. But one thing that was interesting, I would think, okay, we'd get back after walking.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
I'd think, okay, we're going to skip again. How do I do this? It's basically, I would think about lunging, kind of a fast lunge out. And then it automatically would put me into that motion of skipping. Yeah. But this cross body coordination is incredible for purposes of motor neuron coordination across the body for the fascial component.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Can we talk a little bit more about cross-body coordination? Because I'd like at some point to talk about sprinting a little bit, because even if people aren't going to sprint, this idea that when we're sprinting, we're not just turning over our legs faster.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Of course, the arms are pumping, but the arms and legs are coordinated in a very interesting way that the forces are actually running like an X from across from one shoulder down the leg and from the other shoulder, which is going to sound very complicated to people, but you'll explain it. So cross-body coordination. When we walk, we do this. Some people don't. They're kind of robotic.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
But most people flow their arms as they walk.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Well, think robot dance versus somebody who really knows how to move their hips and shoulders in coordination. We'll talk about dance a little bit later. You have an interesting relationship to music that I think is very relevant here. We'll get back to that, but I'm seeding the conversation. But yeah, when the shoulders and the hips are moving in unison, it's like magic.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Yeah, naming matters. It does. Especially in exercise and anything related to, dare I call it wellness, anything mental health, physical health, and performance. The naming matters because it can take people's minds off track from the major point. It can be a separator, as we mentioned before. In the best case, it can be an aggregator.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
I have to wonder, with people walking around looking at their phones all the time, are they losing the cross-body coordination? I snuck in to one talk at South by Southwest. I got a ticket. I got a pass. I don't mean I snuck in. I mean, I went there for just one talk the other day. And I was walking through the hallways. This is a big meeting, tons of people. And it was incredible.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Everyone was walking, looking at their phone. Now, of course, there's a program that's on an app these days. So you're saving paper. So that's good, right? But it was remarkable. People were like walking. and reading at the same time. So I don't want to make more of this than we have data for, but this can't be good.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Let's talk about expression through movement. And let's use the extremes as a starting point. I find that useful in any kind of scientific conversation. You take the extreme outcome. So the person who is trying to take up as little space as possible, chin toward the chest, folded in, thumbs toward the midline, so-called internal rotation, eyes down, trying to make themselves small.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
I don't need to spend another five seconds explaining all the psychological phenotypes that's associated with and the way it makes us feel. Now, of course, it's possible to curl up in a small ball and think amazing things about the world and oneself, but generally those things are not happening at the same time. Let's think about the other extreme and let's talk about him, Usain Bolt.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
This will also be a fun opportunity for people to learn a little bit more about Usain. Let's start there. What is so special about Usain Bolt besides the fact that he's still the fastest man in the world? And what about his willingness to express himself do you think contributed to becoming the fastest person in the world?
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And every four years, people become obsessed with it. That person is generally, the winner is characterized as the fastest person on the planet. Because like you said, it's all out. And at the same time, I think most people can't really conceive in a concrete way what sprinting 100 meters really is about. And the world record is held by... Usain Bolt. And the record is somewhere... 9.58 seconds.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Not just feeling great that he's the fastest guy in the world and therefore who wouldn't feel great?
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And yesterday you told me that means it's about 40 strides to cover 100 meters.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Our Place. Our Place makes my favorite pots, pans, and other cookware. Surprisingly, toxic compounds such as PFASs, or forever chemicals, are still found in 80% of nonstick pans, as well as utensils, appliances, and countless other kitchen products.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
As I've discussed on this podcast, these PFAS or forever chemicals like Teflon have been linked to major health issues such as hormone disruption, gut microbiome disruption, fertility issues and many other health concerns. So it's really important to avoid them. This is why I'm a huge fan of our place. Our place products are made with the highest quality materials and are all PFAS and toxin free.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Stu McMillan has coached over 70 Olympians across nine Olympic games, and he has coached the players and coaches of every major professional sport. He explains how skipping and something called striding are zero cost activities that we all can and should include in our weekly fitness routine.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
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Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Two very different things. One, there's a self-conscious awareness piece, the showing you. I'm going to show you this, as opposed to just doing it for the feel of it. Is that the distinction?
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
The design allows for the eggs to cook perfectly and without sticking to the pan. I also cook burgers and steaks in it, and it puts a really nice sear on the meat. But again, nothing sticks to it, so it's really easy to clean and even dishwasher safe. I love it, and I use it constantly.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Really was. Really feel blessed to have been there. And by the way, folks, if you have never been to a track meet, for many reasons, it's one of the most wonderful things. First of all, it will give you an example of what real coordination is all about. And I'm not talking about physical coordination, although that too. You'll be watching the pole vault.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And then you'll shift your eyes to the right and there'll be another event starting right as the pole vault ends and then another one. It's a beautifully orchestrated event done properly as they do in Eugene and elsewhere. The other piece is that nobody goes to track meets unless they love track, although hopefully a few people who are not familiar with track will try it.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And so the amount of spirit there is incredible. And There's also, I don't know, there's a lot of identification with individuals there that even if you've never seen them run or anything, you pick up on the different personalities of the runners and the jumpers and the throwers. And it's really special. Check out a track meet if you can. You won't be disappointed. You won't be disappointed.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And I don't work for USA Track. People are like, do you work for Big Track? No, actually I don't. I buy a ticket like everybody else.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
This notion of pressure and peace, you know, it brings me back to this thing about these transition activities, like for songwriters even, you know, who are so skilled, Joni Mitchell or, you know, I was referring to earlier, you know, Tim Armstrong, you know, having these transition activities, you know, trying to...
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
to get into one's craft and the pressure, and then it kind of opens up into peace. And I feel like anytime Rick is talking about working with musicians and I was like, how'd it go? You know, he's in the studio and it's like, they work super hard. They work extremely hard. And then it's always, the story I always hear is, oh yeah, in the last two days, it all came together, right?
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Because they set real deadlines. And I think this is why deadlines are important. This is why writers and artists who have no deadlines oftentimes don't do as well, and maybe athletes as well, that the pressure piece of getting everything organized around an activity, and then the nervous system just kind of takes it. The commonalities here are fascinating to me.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Maybe we all could approach our exercise that way too, that it's okay to be rigidly attached to detail at the beginning, but the goal is peace in the final minutes of it, right?
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Again, that's fromourplace.com slash Huberman to get 10% off. Today's episode is also brought to us by Wealthfront. I've been using Wealthfront for my savings and my investing for nearly a decade, and I absolutely love it. At the start of every year, I set new goals and one of my goals for 2025 is to focus on saving money.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
100%.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
I came up in part through skateboarding. That was my main focus in high school, up until about mid-high school, and then I got into other things. In skateboarding, everything you're saying is especially true. The personality matches the way they skateboard, level of aggression, level of technicality, personality. I mean, sometimes there's a mismatch.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Since I have Wealthfront, I'll keep that savings in my Wealthfront cash account where I'm able to earn four percent annual percentage yield on my deposits. And you can as well. With Wealthfront, you can earn four percent APY on your cash from partner banks until you're ready to either spend that money or invest it.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Every vert skateboarder, big ramp skateboarder now will attest. I mean, everyone from Tony Hawk, because I've heard him say it, to everyone i know that there's there's a kid um jimmy wilkins um who does everything faster bigger with more technical ability than anybody's ever seen he's a absolutely remarkable um addition to the sport and a super nice kid. His mom's a ballerina.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Amazing. And he's got very loose hip joints. He actually guides the board with his back knee, so he can do a lot of things with no hands that most people have to grab to do. And his dad is an orchestra conductor. So if you were to make up a story about a highly technical, powerful, precise athlete, it would be Jimmy Wilkins. And he's won X Games. He's astonishing to watch and so much fun to watch.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
So skateboarding, it's very apparent. But then I was trying to think of some daily activities. So getting away from sport and exercise for a moment. And I was just thinking in my own life, if you wanted to understand my mom, You just have to see her gardening. The way she moves about her garden, the way she tends to it, she loves gardening. It's like her...
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
greatest, I don't know if it's her greatest joy. It's one of her great joys. And so if you could just see her gardening for 10 minutes, you would understand her as a person completely. It's amazing. And I think she's a very good gardener, but it's not that the garden isn't the point. It's how she moves about the garden.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And I think that's true for certain people, how they cook, certain people, how they dance. And I was going to say, you know, if you want to understand people at a wedding or a party, Just when the music comes on, you get a lot of insight into people's personality. And the best is always that like older guy or gal or couple that look like they're just kind of sitting there like turtles.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And then they get up and you're like, oh my goodness, they can really dance. Or they're just enjoying it completely, even if they're not great dancers. So let's talk about music and dance for a second. I think we can't avoid this any longer. Your Instagram handle is, was, maybe still is, finger mash.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
I thought that had something to do with sprinting, but I learned right before we sat down that you're a reggae DJ and you grew up around that. And sprinting has a lot of Jamaicans in it. What's the deal? Educate us.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
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Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
How much of how you understand athletes and how they move and people generally in the general population, how they move relates to your understanding of kind of music and rhythm because this pressure piece, right? I mean, like, that's a great song. That's a great concert. That's a great album.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
What athletes nowadays, which athletes are you excited about? Because they seem to have this essence. We don't want to make them self-conscious, but that you're like, wow, like there's really something there. Yeah, who are you excited about?
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
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Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And so who's the greatest soccer player in the world in your mind, for you? Like the one that, not necessarily the one that everyone agrees is the best, but... Messi is the best player.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Yeah, as the son of an Argentine, my dad's first generation immigrant to the United States, I really put myself to shame by not being a huge soccer fan, but I've got cousins that listen and watch at the dinner table and you couldn't distract them if an atom bomb went off, and his kids.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Such an interesting sport because of this notion that different teams and different players play it differently, right? Like the Brazilians, like the rhythm to their game versus the Argentines are considered a little bit more traditionally more rigid among South Americans as a culture.
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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
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Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
They take them, Argentinians take themselves very seriously. I can say that as a half Argentine. We're taught to take ourselves seriously as people and at the same time to enjoy life, but to take ourselves seriously.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
I'm just soaking this in because my mind immediately goes to like art. One of my favorite movies is... the movie Basquiat about Jean-Michel Basquiat, not the documentary. I mean, the cast is like Gary Oldman, David Bowie. I mean, it's Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken. It's just an unbelievable cast.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And the fact that Basquiat was part Haitian, he was in New York in a time when New York was pretty gritty and like brought that together in his art. It was like... One part graffiti, modern art, and had this kind of tribal component that people made more of than they probably should have. And you could say the same thing about, you know, Andy Warhol or about Chuck Close.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
You know, when people are just being themselves, but they're also taking their ancestry and they're taking their personal history, which includes their ancestry, and they're putting it into their art or their sport. spectacular things happen. So along those lines, and this is a somewhat controversial topic, but I'm just gonna go right into it because I think everyone wonders about this.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
I'll say this directly. Why are there fewer white strength and speed champion athletes? In fact, if you hang around track and field long enough, you'll hear that's the third fastest white woman. That's the second fastest white guy. people are using very specific language, but we could put it differently. Yeah, a lot of fast Jamaicans. Mm-hmm. What's the deal?
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Is it genetic contribution to fiber type? Let's also talk about calf belly length, which turns out to not be about calf belly length at all. What I'm saying there is people with, quote-unquote, small calves tend to be fast runners. Mm-hmm. What's the deal? And I realize why this is a controversial topic, but it's like so obvious that it's almost silly to avoid at this point.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
How can you not have a conversation? Yeah, let's have a conversation about it. It's obvious. So what's the deal?
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
For more information, see the episode description. Yesterday, we were out at the track at Malibu High School. He were teaching my producer Rob and I some bounding drills, some skipping drills. And we'll get back to this because there's such immense value for everybody. not just people who seek to be competitive runners, but for everybody to, I realized this morning, it's hop, skip, and jump.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Let me ask you, sorry for interrupting, but I think, has a white person ever broken the 10 second mark in the 100 meters?
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
They not only will have you moving better and having better posture in all your activities, but they also take minimal time and they can help protect you against injuries and improve your longevity. We also talk about the best strides for running at any speed. So if you're into jogging or sprinting, we talk about all the best ways to do that.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
100%.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Yeah. So we're taking those into play.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
We were always told to hop, skip, and to jump away from, but to learn how to move properly at speed, to move properly not at speed. I mean, there's just so much value in these drills and what we went through. And so we'll get back to that. But there was an interesting moment yesterday, I recall, where some of the kids were getting out of school and started running around the track.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
It's so interesting how these different cultures shape the future of a sport or an endeavor in China. Kids are highly incentivized to learn a lot and test a lot in math and sciences. And they're really big on neuroscience in China. I think these nature and nurture questions are super interesting.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
It sounds like Jamaica is still churning out a lot of excellent sprinters because of the huge numbers that are fed to the sport and can be, you know, essentially grow up, their nervous systems are shaped around sprinting. Couple that with any number of different features. And we were talking about, you talked about short calf bellies, right? This is the fear of every bodybuilder, right?
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
They want long calf bellies, but short calf bellies make people faster and better jumpers, not because the calf is short, but because- Because the tendon is long.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
So, you know. So what serves aesthetics sometimes doesn't necessarily serve the sport and vice versa. So if you had to pick one, you'd want to be able to jump and run faster. Would you? Sure. I mean, I don't, I'm not, yeah. I mean, I,
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
suppose that having very short calves would be weird but who wouldn't want to run faster or jump higher you know uh for all sorts of reasons just be so much fun yeah absolutely i i don't have a lot of hops but um this is actually a time to talk about knees over toes guy ben patrick yeah he um uh
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
fought a lot of adversity to encourage people, including a lot of exercise physiologists and the people who do rehab from various aspects that, you know, putting your knees out over your toes is okay. Caught a lot of heat, but I think the fact that he's so skilled at jumping and dunking and landing and backbends and things of that sort puts them all to shame, frankly.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
I think most people understand now that Ben is really onto something with this. One of the things that he's a big proponent of is a lot of eccentric loading, but also not being afraid to get that knee way out over the toe. What is the deal with running form, as it were? Is the idea that if you can get your knee higher, you can stride further? And then when we talk about knee back toward butt,
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And I had this question in my mind to ask you, which was, hey, can you spot any of those kids as likely to be really excellent sprinters? But I didn't even have to ask. We watched them go out in a few rows, and then you said, that kid right there. You said, that kid right there, he's got it. What was it about the way he was running? Kid probably was eighth or ninth grade.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
How far back are we supposed to like kick our own glutes when we stride? I mean, what is a proper running stride or is it gonna vary by structure? Well, that's a big question. Yeah, like explain that in five seconds. I'm just kidding. But, you know, for those of us who want to run a bit faster, do some stride work, should I be reaching with my front leg and pulling myself forward on the ground?
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
100% not. Please do not do that. And I shouldn't be just quickening my turnover of a jogging stride.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Took one run away from us, and you said, that kid's a sprinter. What was it? Was it his speed? Was it the form? What was it?
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Thank you. Thank you.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Which, by the way, folks, we're taking a couple of jabs at Rob. He's in the room with us now, although off camera. Rob has run multiple triathlons. He's an incredibly impressive athlete. And as an incredibly impressive athlete, we can jab at him every now and again.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
We talk about the sport of track, which both Stu and I happen to love, and why certain groups of people excel in different sports due to genetic and environmental reasons. We also have a very direct and open conversation about the use of performance enhancing tools in the athletic and wellness worlds. This is a really special episode.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
One of the things I learned from you yesterday is, well, I'll double click first on this, the staggered stance. So this is one foot slightly in front of the other. I've been doing this with various lifts in the gym for a long time. I would say the exception would be if I'm belt squatting or hack squatting, I don't do that.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
But for everything else, overhead presses, anything where my feet are in contact with the ground, that is, not on pull-ups and dips, of course, but curls, tricep extensions, and I make sure to vary the stance so one foot is in front for one set, one is in front.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
run for the sometimes even in the middle of the set i'll i'll switch them up after um and i found that to be tremendously helpful for building core stability and a number of other things um and it sounds like it might help running gate as well the other thing that you said yesterday that i think is really important i've not thought of before but now i'm doing is anytime you have a
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
a foot elevated in the gym to get onto the toe. Front foot can be flat.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Could you send a kid like that out for a 400-meter run and then meet him at the line and say, you know what, you're meant to run the 200 or you're meant to run the 100? Is it possible to tell whether or not somebody is meant for a particular distance based on how they do in a slightly different distance?
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And with respect to stretching, I'm thinking again of yoga, because this is probably the first time I've done this, where one would lunge. So front foot planted flat, rear foot up on the big toe if possible. The knee back of that rear foot
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
or rear leg excuse me back behind the butt and then the opposite arm raised above that's that fascial um sling that cuts across from and you know an anatomy nomenclature contralateral across the midline and then essentially trying to learn to feel that um
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
100%.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Distant topic from the one that we're on. but one that I and I think a number of people are curious about is drugs in sports. Performance enhancing drugs. There's a new, potentially new,
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
sports league track league which is the enhanced games who knows if that will go through um but right now using performance enhancing drugs most performance enhancing drugs is banned in track but because of the ben johnson thing that was 88 olympics where he was like jaundiced at the eyes and you know it turned out he was taking windstraw and he was stripped of his metal but
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Um, and then the discussion is they're all using it. Some just get caught this kind of thing, or they're using in the off season. How common is, um, people usually say steroid use, but androgen enhancement, right? Cause performance enhancing drugs could be drugs to lower the heart rate for the biathletes. They do that too, right? Keep your heart rate lower.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
You know, there's all sorts of drugs that are banned that are not
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And there I should say, because some people might not be familiar with this, with distance running or cycling, triathlon, it's probably not increasing androgens like testosterone, dihydrotestosterone, et cetera. It's probably... on the things that increase red blood cell count, ability to deliver more oxygen and fuel sources to the cells, EPO, and things like that.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
That's encouraging to hear, especially for young people who are watching Olympics. And, you know, it's a terrible thing if they were to think, oh, you know, they're all using. And I think one good trend in the last few years is there's a lot more openness now in the kind of fitness world.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Because when I was growing up, of course, those like veiny bodybuilder people, they were all juiced to the gills and they'd say they weren't, but they absolutely were. And nowadays, you know, if people are doing TRT or something, they say it, right? You know, I've talked about it, microdose every other day since I was 45, never before then.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
but I've relied on other things to keep testosterone in range. And I take HCG, maintain fertility. That's all checked out. But I'm very clear about exactly how much. The internet has it wrong. It's 25 milligrams every other day, by the way. I'm staggered with 600 IUs of HCG every other day. I said that early on because I was like, I'm not a competitive athlete. I got nothing to hide.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And I'll say that, was it TRT? I'll say not really because my testosterone was in mid sevens, but I was getting fatigued a lot and bumping it up a little bit higher, which is what this has done. has been great for me, but it's the people that lie like the liver King situation where he looked at the camera, unfortunately, and filmed himself saying that he doesn't. And then he gets caught.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
It's like, duh. And then you've got people that are juicing really hard. And it's tricky in sports because, or in movies, right? Like when an actor suddenly is like big and shredded and you're just like, oh, you know, the telltale signs. It's probably not testosterone. It's probably oxandrolone or something a little bit quote unquote lighter, but there's not.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
Nothing light about oxandrolone on your liver or your hairline, folks. So, but this is a bigger discussion, but I think it's important to just be open about it. You know, because we want to see people run faster than ever before. We want to see people jump higher than ever before. We want to see people run marathons faster than ever before.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan
And it sucks when we find out that they were enhanced and that was breaking the rules.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Esther Perel. Esther Perel is a psychotherapist and one of the world's foremost experts on romantic relationships.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Do you think that's perhaps one reason why people who are in these cornerstone relationships, of whom I've known many, even family members of mine, met in university, met their significant other, and then had their first jobs, moved in together, all the things you described, that there's this-
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Yeah, and I think it probably happens at a stage of life when there's still a lot more neuroplasticity, frankly. I mean, everything I know about neuroplasticity is that it exists across the lifespan, but that it tapers off significantly in one's late 20s. And, you know, fortunately, it's still available, but... The notion of being set in our ways is a neuroplasticity phenomenon, right?
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
The fontanelle is still... Exactly. It takes a lot more to open that plasticity later than it does earlier, certainly. And yet it's inversely related to the self-awareness, right? I mean, the younger we are, the less self-aware we are about our patterns because we... just have less data over time.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
So I could see how it would be more difficult for somebody in their 20s to say, hey, listen, I think I have a good many virtues, but I have this severe issue with something, or this particularly frustrates me, or here's my laundry list of issues, right? Whereas somebody in their 40s or 50s or older, if pressed, could probably make that list if they were really being honest with themselves.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
So it seems like- I think it's a good point. You know, so it seems that maybe there's a sweet spot, but that these earlier relationships, I've always been impressed by them and kind of romanticized them in my mind because that wasn't the trajectory that I took.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
You can find a link to that course in the show note captions, as well as links to her books, her podcast, and other resources about romantic relationships. Before you begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
That just feels like such a true statement to me because in my professional life as a developmental neurobiologist, there's a saying, people always think of development and then adulthood, but all of life is one big developmental arc.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
And the great psychologist Erickson spoke about the different sort of challenges that people face from birth all the way until death, which nowadays hopefully will extend into people's 80s, 90s, or even beyond.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
I agree. If people haven't seen those stages, we'll put a link to them in the show note captions. But the idea is that you're basically grappling with some basic struggle that you either reconcile or you don't at every stage. So you could imagine that these, let's say these three marriages, let's imagine a couple that meets in their 20s and does three marriages together.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
which implies a couple of divorces in between, maybe not legal divorces, across their lifespan. They really are, according to the Erickson theory of development or any neurobiological examination of brain development, different people in their 20s versus 40s versus 60s, 70s, 80s.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is David. David makes a protein bar unlike any other. It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
So this notion of three different marriages to me seems both logical and very grounded in what we know about the biology of the the brain and the self.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
And yet it's also kind of a radical idea when one hears it for the first time. It framed in the context of with the same person, it sounds kind of lovely and romantic. Okay, they meet, it's lovely, they have their first marriage. Then there's some challenge, they overcome... They do a second marriage, then some challenge and a third marriage.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
And maybe there's even grandchildren you imagine, maybe even great-grandchildren. There's all this kind of romantic notions built up around it. But then there's also the reality that for many people, more than half, there's a fracture of the first marriage and that they either remain single or marry again. And so what do you think dictates whether or not a person can go through these
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
series of evolutions and actually find and create love again and again and again, either with the same person or with someone new or in some cases, I guess, three different partners. I mean, what is the sort of requirement? Is it a willingness to accept this model and understand that who they are at 50 is going to be very different than who they were in their 20s?
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
That's right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from protein. This is 50% higher than the next closest protein bar. These bars from David also taste incredible. My favorite bar is the cake flavored one. But then again, I also like the chocolate flavored one and I like the berry flavored one. Basically, I like all the flavors. They're all incredibly delicious.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Okay, so when I hear your answer, what comes to mind is that, again, as a neurobiologist, I think the brain, the human brain has this amazing capacity to focus on past, present, or future. And sometimes two of those three things, it's kind of hard to think about all three at once.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
But it sounds to me as if one of the more functional attributes that somebody can have if they want to navigate relationship in a healthy way is is to be able to at least temporarily discard with one's story about one's past and even their past identity. And the word that was coming up over and over again in my mind as you answered was this word you used earlier, which was curiosity.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
And I'm wondering if what you're referring to is a curiosity on the part of hopefully both people in the relationship as to what the relationship could become and who oneself could become And my definition of curiosity is an interest in finding out, but without an emotional attachment to what the outcome is. This is what we train scientists to do.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
You want to get the answers, but you can't get emotionally attached to the answer being A or B. That's anti-curiosity. Real genuine curiosity is about the process, the verb action of wanting to figure out something, but... not being attached to a particular outcome.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
And as you were describing sort of functional trajectory of relationship, I was thinking, okay, so if one could approach relationship with a willingness to discard kind of stories about one's past, and maybe even a sense of one's identity of past, be willing to let go of that a little bit, and just be curious about like, where could this go if I let the relationship guide my evolution of identity a bit?
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
And that takes some, as you said, some boldness because it's kind of scary, right? Not knowing who one is going to become if they let the other person, you know, maybe lead for a while or if they were to lead for a while. Are these the sorts of dynamics that you're referring to?
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Now for me personally, I try to get most of my calories from whole foods. However, when I'm in a rush or I'm away from home, or I'm just looking for a quick afternoon snack, I often find that I'm looking for a high quality protein source.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
And with David, I'm able to get 28 grams of high quality protein with the calories of a snack, which makes it very easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight. And it allows me to do so without taking on an excess of calories. Again, I focus on getting most of my food from whole food sources throughout the day.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. AG1 is designed to cover all of your foundational nutritional needs, and it tastes great. Now, I've been drinking AG1 since 2012, and I started doing that at a time when my budget for supplements was really limited.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
In fact, I only had enough money back then to purchase one supplement, and I'm so glad that I made that supplement AG1. The reason for that is even though I strive to eat most of my foods from whole foods and minimally processed foods, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits, vegetables, vitamins, and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
And I need to do that in order to ensure that I have enough energy throughout the day, I sleep well at night, and keep my immune system strong. But when I take AG1 daily, I find that all aspects of my health, my physical health, my mental health, and my performance, both cognitive and physical, are better.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
I know that because I've had lapses when I didn't take AG1 and I certainly felt the difference. I also notice, and this makes perfect sense given the relationship between the gut microbiome and the brain, that when I regularly take AG1, which for me means a serving in the morning or mid-morning and again later in the afternoon or evening, that I have more mental clarity and more mental energy.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer. I am a firm believer that when we are in a stress response,
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
that we become locked in a time domain and not to spin off into a tangent about this, but you know, put differently when we are relaxed, we can think about time and our life and other things happening around us and others in a far more dynamic way. The stress response is about solving for the feeling now.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
It has no sense about or it doesn't allow us a window into the cognition or emotions that are related to what could be, even though we desperately want out of there. And there's all sorts of evolutionary reasons why this would be the case. Of course.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
But I feel like a statement that you made, which is that a curiosity and a willing to discard with one's own narratives, and in particular what you said about the – that people perceive their own experience as fact when in actuality, it's just two different stories.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Neither person is correct or one person, you know, but people have these stories which are almost confabulation at some point, but they feel so true to all of us. when we experience them. I also feel like that's a lot of what's happening in culture at large. Diametrically opposed camps really believe that the same thing is a reflection of two completely different series of facts.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
But I typically eat a David Barr in the late afternoon when I get hungry between lunch and dinner, sometimes also mid morning if I get hungry then. And sometimes I'll use it as a meal replacement, although not a complete meal replacement, it can get me to the next meal. So if I need to eat in a couple of hours, but I'm really hungry, I'll eat a David Barr.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
And it seems almost unsolvable at the level of culture, there's just too many people, but at the level of two individuals, I feel like it ought to be tractable.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
As I mentioned before, they are incredibly delicious. In fact, they're surprisingly delicious. Even the consistency is great. It's more like a cookie consistency, kind of a chewy cookie consistency. which is unlike other bars, which I tend to kind of saturate on. I was never a big fan of bars until I discovered David Bars. If you give them a try, you'll know what I mean.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Yeah, people are incredibly prone to confabulation based on these unconscious things going on. And it's kind of a scary thought.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
She's also the author of bestselling books such as Mating in Captivity and The State of Affairs. Today's discussion focuses on what it means to be in a truly functional romantic relationship.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
I mean, and in reality, most people... are terrible at understanding how they themselves feel, let alone someone else's intentions. I mean, if somebody apologizes and says, listen, I'm truly sorry, I screwed up. And the other person says, I don't believe you. I think what they're really saying You can tell me if I'm wrong, is I don't feel better as a consequence of your apology.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
So if you'd like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, the link is davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, but no sugar.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
So let's say that the apology also includes that I really messed up. it makes total sense that you would be upset. You know, we had an agreement that we would meet at 7 and I didn't get home until 9 and I didn't notify you until 8. I would be upset too. That's totally justified. That sucks. That's got to really suck. At that point, if the other person still feels like it's still frustrating,
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Presumably it's because either this is a pattern So this one apology doesn't encapsulate all the other, the sort of litany of other things that relate to this, of feeling unseen or unappreciated. There's often a lot more behind the event.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Right. Or, yeah, it could be a pattern of apologies that don't equate to change, or it could be a pattern of an apology that doesn't encapsulate all the other things that weren't voiced. Because sometimes people won't voice their grievances. because they, for whatever reason, but there's a lot of resent that's built up, right?
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
So in that moment when somebody tells another that they are not convinced, emotionally convinced, what are the tools that you give each in order to be able to navigate that sticking point?
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and bodily function. In fact, even a slight degree of dehydration is known to diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes in order to stay hydrated. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium are vital for the functioning of all cells in your body, especially your neurons or nerve cells.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Interesting.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
I'm just going to hover there for a second because I agree that apology is such an interesting and important concept. And you mentioned that accepting somebody's apology at an emotional level, not just saying, thank you, I accept your apology, but really internalizing that and allowing space for it to shift your experience of the thing that hurt.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
I appreciate that distinction now that you've given it. I mean, I appreciate you giving that distinction. I did not make that distinction before.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Is that right?
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Because to do so would what for them?
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
I find that so much of being an adult, again, in quotes.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Yes, yes, you would hope.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Involves the disambiguating two things. One is we're taught to really trust our own experience to some extent, to stand our ground when we know A is true and B is false. But then also part of being an adult is admitting when we're wrong. And there's no rule book, no real time rule book for that, especially given that people have different versions of the same thing often. But it seems to me that,
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Drinking element dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate amounts of hydration and electrolytes. So to make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of both, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I first wake up in the morning. I drink that basically over the first half hour or so that I'm awake.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
One of the great challenges, not just in romantic relationship, but in relationships of all kinds, is to really be able to slow down and enter the state of mind and body that allows us to do the kind of processing you're talking about. So at a very practical level, I'm curious.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Let's say a couple comes into your office and they're dealing with either a single hurt or a litany of hurts or something like that. Do you believe it's important for them to shift out of their emotional state to be able to process differently? Do you have them at the beginning of a session, do you have them do a couple deep breaths together?
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Do you have them recall a time when they felt particularly bonded? Is there an effort to shift their somatic state in order to bring their mind to a place of more curiosity? Or is going straight to the issue often the best way in?
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
And I'll tend to also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and I'm losing water and electrolytes. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Again, that's drinkelement spelled L-M-N-T.com slash Huberman to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, drinkelement.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are customized to your unique sleep needs.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
What a great question.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
I've spoken many times before on this and other podcasts about the fact that getting a great night's sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance. Now, the mattress we sleep on makes an enormous difference in terms of the quality of sleep that we get each night.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Function. I recently became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
While I've long been a fan of blood testing, I really wanted to find a more in-depth program for analyzing blood, urine, and saliva to get a full picture of my heart health, my hormone status, my immune system regulation, my metabolic function, my vitamin and mineral status, and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors on your results. For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had two high levels of mercury in my blood. This was totally surprising to me. I had no idea prior to taking the test.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Function not only helped me detect this, but offered medical doctor-informed insights on how to best reduce those mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, because I had been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification, and worked to reduce my mercury levels.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Comprehensive lab testing like this is so important for health, and while I've been doing it for years, I've always found it to be overly complicated and expensive.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
I've been so impressed by Function, both at the level of ease of use, that is getting the test done, as well as how comprehensive and how actionable the tests are, that I recently joined their advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
We need a mattress that is matched to our unique sleep needs, one that is neither too soft nor too hard for you, one that breathes well and that won't be too warm or too cold for you. If you go to the Helix website, you can take a brief two-minute quiz, and it asks you questions such as, do you sleep on your back, your side, or your stomach? Do you tend to run hot or cold during the night?
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman Lab listeners. Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. There's something that I really want to revisit that you said. You said it incredibly clearly. but I have never heard this described.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
And I think it's so, so very important for people to hear and internalize, including me, that I'm going to ask us to visit it again, but not because you weren't clear, but just because I think it- No, I'm curious, what is it?
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
As a biologist, when we teach biology, the good biologists, good teachers, we emphasize names only because people need to know them. This is called that, this is called that, but it's all about verbs. It's all about processes and dynamics. And what you just described as the three verb states of conflict, I think I've never heard articulated that way.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
So you described, if I understand correctly- Pursuer, pursuer. Right. Either one person pursuing another.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Loggerheads.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Okay. Two arrows pointing at one another.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
And not in a good way.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
We discuss this from the standpoint of identity, that is how people both try to hold onto and evolve their identities within a relationship and how a truly functional romantic relationship indeed evolves over time from a standpoint of curiosity and adventure, but also one in which people need to hold on to certain components of themselves.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
And in each of those cases, it seems that the first step to getting to a more functional dynamic to try and sort this out, whatever the conflict is, is to somehow change one's mindset from talking about the story of what led there or stories of what led there to really starting to parse the feeling states of ourselves and hopefully empathy for the feeling state of the other.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Things of that sort. Maybe you know the answers to those questions, maybe you don't. Either way, Helix will match you to the ideal mattress for you. For me, that turned out to be the Dusk mattress, D-U-S-K. I've been sleeping on a Dusk mattress for, gosh, no, more than four years, and the sleep that I've been getting is absolutely phenomenal.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
It's almost like a psychosis of sorts.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
It's almost like we lose our theory of mind, our ability to place ourselves in the mind of another in a healthy way when we're in these stress states.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
If you'd like to try Helix, you can go to helixsleep.com slash Huberman, take that brief two-minute sleep quiz, and Helix will match you to a mattress that is customized to your unique sleep needs. Right now, Helix is giving up to 25% off mattresses and two free pillows. Again, that's helixsleep.com slash Huberman to get 25% off and two free pillows. And now for my discussion with Esther Perel.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Right. And my mind immediately goes to what you just described as a shift from focusing mainly on the past and how it's making us feel in the present to how we're feeling in the present, acknowledging and understanding something did happen that was real, as you said, and yet with this curious eye toward the future of what could unfold.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
I don't know if it's a bug or a feature as the engineers say, but it is remarkable to me that the very same neural machinery that forms the underpinning of infant primary caretaker relationship is repurposed for romantic relationship. I mean, I marvel at that, right? I mean, the brain doesn't have like, oh, here's your developmental wiring circuits. And then guess what?
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
You get to hit adolescence and you go through puberty and then you get this new circuit for forming a romantic attachment. The brain imaging shows us that it's repurposed. So it's like if you got a two plus two equals four algorithm in that circuit, let's call that securely attached, although I realize that language is not sufficient, but for just purposes of discussion. Okay, well then great.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Then you get healthy romantic attachments as adults or you as an adult, and perhaps you can navigate in and out of things that are unhealthy more quickly. However, if you got a two plus two equals five algorithm wired into that circuit, well, then you're forever looking for something that is essentially dysfunctional. That's the simplest version of this.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Yeah, so beautiful work by Alan Shore and others, his work I know you're familiar with, has shown that you image the brain of infant and typically it's mother, but they've done other caretakers as well. And you see this incredible mirroring of Sure, right brain, left brain activity, more dopaminergic or serotonergic activity. Basically, the takeaway is that you see a lot of coherence.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
What's going on in the mother is going on in the child and vice versa. And there's a lot of reciprocity. But sometimes in unhealthy caretaker-infant relationships, the so-called anxious, attached, dissociative, or avoidant type scenarios, the ABCD baby type thing, People can look that up. If they like, we can provide a link.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
You see a mismatch in the neurochemistry and the activation of these brain areas. In other words, the brain circuitry for attachment is set up so that anxious states are evoked when calm states should have been.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Have there been better parenting? Okay.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
But then you take those... You essentially run the same sorts of studies on romantically attached young adults or older adults. And what you see is it's the same sets of neurons, the same circuits. I mean, this is remarkable. Nowhere else, to my awareness, nowhere else in the nervous system do we repurpose neural circuitry.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Esther Perel, welcome.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
from early in life, you know, it's as if there's a neural circuit for sensing thirst and drinking early in life, and then later it's used for sensing how to navigate a city. Okay, now those are two very disparate things. But this is like outrageous, right? And so I say it's either a feature or a bug, we don't know, but it is the way it is, right? I would say I wasn't consulted at the design phase.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
There are so many questions and curiosities and puzzles and challenges around the topic of romantic relationships. But what I really want to know is to what extent is the decision to even think about being in a relationship of the romantic type? a extension of our identity or is it really a willingness to potentially embrace a new identity?
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
I like to think in a kind of romantic way that... some of our most important work in our lifetime is to try and resolve these developmental miswirings that are the consequence of faulty caretaker-infant relationship. And you can't blame the infant. Now, does that mean we blame our parents to the point of ostracizing them? Well, one would hope not. Maybe in some cases that's necessary.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
But I think... I like to think that what we've observed over the last 10, 20, 30 years, in no small part, seriously, thanks to your work, reflects an evolution of how we are thinking about attachment, that we are actually getting better at understanding the self. And there's something about the human brain that wants to understand itself. So I like to think that in a hundred years,
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
not only will there be more models of relationship as functional, healthy relationships, but there will also be a deeper understanding of what this whole thing of love and attachment really is. And the parallel I use is one of biology. We understand so much more about brain function now than we did just 10 years ago.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Addiction, for instance, not just a condition of failure of willpower, but this understanding about dopamine and other molecules. I think we now look at a fentanyl addict or a heroin addict very differently. They're caught in a neurochemical algorithm that is not serving them well.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
It doesn't remove their responsibility, but there comes a point where they can't recover themselves and they need certain supports and those supports are starting to emerge now. So my hope is that this is built into our evolution as some sort of vector toward
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Right. The repetition compulsion. You get the same thing over and over again. Lord knows I've had that and some wonderful partners. And by the way, as I say that, I'm also taking 50% of the responsibility, or 100% of the responsibility for the choice. As they say, you didn't have six hard relationships, you had one hard relationship six times, right? And I think Paul Conti says it that way.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
But that, yes, that the repetition compulsion is a unconscious attempt to resolve the core conflict that arose during early attachment.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Do you subscribe to that view?
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
I love that answer.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
we hear a lot these days about the different attachment styles or languages of love. You know, the love languages, you know, people will say, I, you know, emphasize, you know, gifts feel very rewarding or acts of, what is it? Words of affirmation, you know, unstructured time or et cetera, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
And I asked this somewhat abstract question for a very specific reason. And the reason is the following. I think everyone who's been in a romantic relationship or even who just wants one is familiar with the kind of yearning or interest or curiosity. And then also with the fact that
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Or people will, I think nowadays, if they look into it a little bit, they'll realize that they are either, you know, more avoidant or more anxious. These things can shift. I mean, I think it's wonderful that people are thinking about these things in the same way that I think it's wonderful that people understand that there's a molecule called dopamine
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
They can do certain things, serotonin, certain things. But I'm curious as to whether or not you feel that the naming of things and the assignment of oneself to a category can sometimes be limiting in terms of one's ability to really embrace this curiosity.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
And you also use the word invitation and you are describing couples therapy and healthy relationship as a bit more of an art form than a reductionist protocol oriented science, which I love because to me, you know, despite being a scientist, some of the great mystery of life and certainly of romantic relationship is when you find yourself in
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
happy places that you didn't anticipate finding yourself or in a place of forgiveness and close friendship. When at one point you can recall being, as you said, like you just, this person is like embodies the worst things in your mind. So I think I wonder if, the processes that you found useful in your clinical work, is it possible to formalize those in a way that people can start to adopt them?
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
In other words, Do you think that we can learn to navigate relationship in more healthy ways? Not just by saying I'm anxiously attached or avoidant or securely attached. I'm looking for someone that has that or my love language is this and they love to do that. And so therefore we're a perfect lock and key.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
I think people are starting to think about relationship in a more nuanced and sophisticated way. And yet also what I'm hearing is, It's a lot more dynamic than that. And that some of those categorizations that we assign ourselves can really perhaps be limiting to what could be.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
just like the development of our physical body, it has an arc across the lifespan that a relationship has a sort of developmental arc. There's the first meeting, the first week, the first month, et cetera. And so much of what I've seen in your work and in the discussion about relationships in the public sphere seems to be trying to understand how we change
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
in terms of what we want and what we ask for, what we feel willing to ask for, et cetera, across this arc of the relationship. But what I want to know is, is the decision to enter a romantic relationship a willingness conscious or unconscious, to actually change who we are? In other words, are we entering a relationship to just be ourselves and find someone with whom we go lock and key?
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
that expands one's understanding and maybe even lends itself to a hint of curiosity stands a chance of having some rehabilitative quality to it. I feel that nowadays there's such an overuse of psychological terms like narcissist, gaslighting therapy terms. It's almost the way that if people were to talk about neurobiology as neurosurgeons, right?
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
I'm not a neurosurgeon, but I have friends who are. And neurosurgery is like... It's something people train for many, many, many years for just as being a clinical psychologist, people train for many years for and have a ton of in-office experience, real world experience. Nowadays, the naming and the attachment of names to particular top contour features of people out there.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
seems to be largely for the purpose of closing off possibility as opposed to increasing possibility. However... It's both.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Well, amen to bringing people together more. Yeah, such an important mission right now.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
I'd like to explore the possibility of something that I've heard, but I don't know if it's true, that sex, which of course doesn't just include intercourse, but the things that lead into and out of sexual intercourse, but that sex is a microcosm for the relationship at large, meaning that the dynamics that show up in intimate interactions are somehow reflective of a larger
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
working out or dynamic in the relationship. To what extent do you think that's true? It's a concept that I've heard. It sounds interesting. And any discussion about sex tends to, you know, get people's ears bricked up because it's, depending on where you live in the world, it's either something that people talk about casually, openly, or with a lot of you know, electricity around it.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
But I always like to say, you know, as a biologist, we can all agree on one thing, which is that we're all here because sperm met egg, if not in human, in dish, and then eventually in human. So we're still at that point in human evolution. So what are your views about intimacy and sex as a reflection of the relationship.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
And here, what I'm thinking of again are these, when you described conflict, you described these three different positioning of arrows, towards one another, away from one another, one chasing the other. Is there a parallel for healthy relationship that we can offer up?
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Yeah. Before talking about this question of whether or not sex is a microcosm of the larger relationship, the health of the relationship.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Or are we really saying, hey, even whether or not we realize or not, if we're pursuing a relationship, are we really basically saying, I'm willing to become a different person by virtue of being in a relationship?
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
And am I correct in interpreting what you just said as that... love and desire are fundamentally separate, that they can exist in parallel, but that any goal of society, much less a couple to try and unify those as one thing is not going to succeed?
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
I'm relieved to hear you say that. Maybe I grew up on too many, I don't know how many romantic comedies I saw, but I grew up in a home where love sex and romance were discussed in very, almost ethereal terms.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Do you recommend that couples exchange these documents?
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Because somehow in them, there's a split between these two things.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
What percentage of infidelity do you think reflects somebody's inability to integrate this love component from desire component such that they find that they only experience infidelity desire or strong desire outside their committed relationship.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
We explore what conflict in relationships looks like and the dynamics that underlie those conflicts. So focusing less on specific scenarios, but rather the dynamics that exist in conflicts in romantic relationship across all different situations and different combinations of people.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
What you just said brings me back to this idea that we were exploring at the very beginning of this conversation, that it seems that so much of navigating relationship in healthy versus unhealthy ways depends on this internal dynamic within ourselves of an ability to be in close, intimate relationship with another.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
and yet hold on to enough of our own identity and evolve that identity within the relationship to the other.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
This is a recurring dynamic that you see. And does it swap back and forth across couples, male, female?
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
I'm assuming in that example, heterosexual relationship, but even homosexual relationships, you'll see it switch back and forth, or it tends to be a pretty stable feature, meaning one person in the couple tends to be afraid of abandonment by the other, the other person more deeply afraid of abandonment of themselves.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Indeed I have. So interesting. Again, not because you weren't clear, you were incredibly clear and concise about this, but I think this is such an important concept. Maybe you'd repeat it for us again, just so that people can really drive it into their consciousness and maybe ask themselves the question, are they more afraid of abandonment by the other or abandonment of themselves?
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
And my mind keeps flitting back to this parallel construction of these circuits were built in infancy and childhood and adolescence. And what kind of flashed to mind is when we are adolescents and teenagers, there's this fundamental question that we ask that rarely do we ask again later on. I mean, maybe people do, but the question is kind of, who am I?
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Teenagers try on a lot of different identities often, and how they dress is one of the ways in which they self-identify. Their music, I mean, the music we listen to when we're teenagers and young adults is forever stamped into us as like some core part of our identity.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
It has an emotional weight that music that we arrive to later doesn't, unless it resonates with that early music or recapitulates that rather. So in my mind, I'm thinking, I wonder if these circuits that are struggling with holding on to self versus a kind of playful, curious exploration of new things, novelty, which is so fundamental to relationship.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
And they're not, they're, as we say as neurobiologists, are really antagonistic, that they're really in a push-pull. I mean, there's so many things that we're discussing today that really feel as if these are like circuits that can't be co-active easily, that they're like, we're in this internal grappling match. And what keeps coming to mind- But they also need each other. Right.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
They're like the front axle and the back axle of a vehicle. You can't exist without both.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
So if I understand correctly, we seek out others in order to try and initiate the process of change that we want. Right. But then when we hit the friction point, meaning the point where it challenges where we are.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Fascinating.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
I get it. I get it. And it makes me think that this earlier discussion we were having, you know, is sex a microcosm for the larger relationship? It sounds to me like the answer is yes, but especially the relationship to self. And especially like there's a lot of information in one's desire template or blueprint about how one was cared for or not cared for.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
right? I couldn't agree more. And I think that there also seems to be this attempt to directly translate from, well, if somebody had issues with their mother, then they're going to have issues with women as an adult. Or if they had issues with their father, they're going to have issues with men as an adult.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
But in reality, it's the algorithm. It's the algorithm. It's that these algorithms that are laid down in our neural circuitry earlier, they don't care about male-female-ness. I mean, it doesn't change whether or not people are heterosexual or homosexual. It ain't to them, I believe. I think these are frankly, biologically driven.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
But the idea is that our ways of being don't translate directly that way, that these are deeper processes. So if one had issues, for instance, male and heterosexual, but they had issues with their father, they could have the same issues with women as an adult, right? That it could translate, that it's not always mapping male to male, female to female.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
then there's a form of resent or frustration. Defensiveness. Defensiveness.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
It cuts across our preconceived notions that if somebody had a good relationship with their mother, they will have a good relationship with women. If they had a good relationship with father, with men.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
I hadn't heard that, but that one's going up on X. Repair work is something that is so fundamental to healthy relationships.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
What is your recommendation for how couples think about repair work? Let's assume that they're still together and there's some at least hint of a hope to recover the relationship. Should repair work be framed as repair? in a particular way to facilitate it. You know, how does one begin?
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
I mean, I can sort of been, we've been doing a lot of threes today, so I can imagine mistakes, misunderstandings, and betrayals, right? There are mistakes like I accidentally step on somebody's toes, there's misunderstandings, two people thought the same thing, and then there are outright betrayals. And my understanding from your work is that
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
You've seen many couples, indeed helped many couples, recover from all three of those categories to the point where they are quite satisfied with their relationship.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
So a very practical question then. What are the... necessary but not sufficient elements that somebody should have in themselves before they go seeking a romantic relationship. Meaning, what is necessary in order to be able to embark on the process with any chance of success? Barring extreme pathology, right?
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
And of course, we also talk about what healthy conflict resolution looks like, what a truly effective apology looks and sounds like, and we explore the erotic aspects of relationships, comparing and contrasting, for instance, love and desire, how sometimes those things run in parallel in the same direction, how sometimes those run in opposite directions, and how people can explore their own notions, their own models of love and desire in order to have more effective romantic relationships.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Beautiful, aspirational, and realistic too. This notion of, not notion, forgive me, this act of, Truly getting outside of oneself to be present to the way the other person feels, irrespective of who was right or who was wrong, if it was a misunderstanding, betrayal, but especially in cases of betrayal.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
The exiting of, as you said, either a stance of not wanting to look at it for oneself or of self-flagellation. Both are self-centered. So really getting into... genuine care for, if not caretaking, were the offer of care for the other person.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Assuming that both people entering the relationship have the best of intentions to make the relationship work, in quotes, is it both a sense of one's own identity as well as what specifically they would like to change? Or is it some other constellation of factors?
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Yeah, absolutely. And what you're describing also perhaps at least partially explains why sometimes, not always, apologies are insufficient. Necessary but not sufficient because there are certain modes of apology that don't show us that the person who's apologizing is really outside themselves.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
They're in their own guilt, they're in their own shame, and therefore they're not really present to how we feel.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Who is ready for relationship? And for people who are not in relationship or who are, what sorts of questions should they be asking themselves? What sorts of things should we all be doing?
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Great question. My answer is far too long to give here. Everyone will be relieved.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Well, I want to make clear that before what I say next, that if I had my way, we would continue this conversation for many hours, if not days. Perhaps there's an opportunity for that in the future. But I was told, and not surprisingly, that you're in tremendous demand. You're on a live tour now.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
i can't wait to see this it's all sold out so i'll have to wait like everyone else but um sounds like an incredible experience indeed i know some people have spoken directly to them uh who attended one of your lives recently and they sound like a completely immersive and um experience like no other. So I'm very excited about that.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
My only regret about your tour is that we have to halt this conversation in the next couple of minutes. And there are a couple of things I just want to reflect back to you that are all from a place of real deep appreciation. First of all, for bringing forward what you've brought today. You're one of these exceedingly rare people with whom when they speak, like gems just fall out of them.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
And I know I'm not alone in this sentiment. I mean, just in today's conversation, you've transformed the way that I think about relationship, self, identity, neurobiology, love, sex, so many key topics. And in a much larger way, As you pointed out, and I completely agree, the themes that you're talking about are not just fundamental for us to resolve as individuals.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
They are not just fundamental for us to resolve in couples or whatever relationship configuration people happen to be in.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
They're societal. That we can look at anything, an election, two countries battling one another, political groups, whatever. At every level, this is what it means to be human, built up from the same fundamental circuit, same fundamental dynamics. And I really see you as...
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
You hear that a lot.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
not just a pioneer, but the pioneer of this parting of the veil from what has, I think, until this point in human history, been a lot of descriptions of things, of what's right, what's wrong, this and that. And some of that might be true. I don't know. I'm not qualified to know.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
but that you represent a real parting of the veil into the next evolution of what it means for humans to interact in more healthy ways and with curiosity and sense of invitation toward more love, connection, and peace. So, you know, there really aren't words to express how enthusiastic and appreciative I am of what you brought here today and what you're doing.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
And so I just want to say, you know, deep heartfelt thanks. And I know I speak for many, many people.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
Thank you for joining me for today's discussion about romantic relationships with Esther Perel. To find links to Esther's new course on intimacy, as well as links to her books, her podcast and other resources, please see the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
In addition, please subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. Please check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
So that's Instagram X, formerly known as Twitter, Threads, Facebook and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media channels.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
If you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, our neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as protocols in the form of brief one to three page PDFs. Those protocol PDFs are on things like neuroplasticity and learning, optimizing dopamine, improving your sleep, deliberate cold exposure, deliberate heat exposure.
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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
We have a foundational fitness protocol that describes a template routine that includes cardiovascular training and resistance training with sets and reps, all backed by science. And all of which again is completely zero cost. To subscribe, simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab up in the upper right corner, scroll down a newsletter and provide your email.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Esther Perel. And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
If you don't mind defining those for the audience.
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
What happens when people are mismatched in terms of age?
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
So that's shifting now towards more often people are observing older women with younger men?
Huberman Lab
How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel
By the end of today's episode, you will learn from the world's foremost expert on romantic relationships, how to find, build, and revive romantic relationships that feel most satisfying to all partners involved. I'm also pleased to announce that Esther Perel has just released a new course on intimacy.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Bernardo Huberman. Dr. Bernardo Huberman is the vice president of NextGen Systems at Cable Labs.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Lara lives much more in the moment than you do for reasons, okay, it's her view of the world.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
It's her demeanor. Huh? It's her way. Her demeanor.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
It's very good.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I'm focused on what she's going to do this weekend. Yes. I'm focused on what I'm going to do this weekend, next week, the next month, and for the next eight months.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And I would personally like to see you enjoying today and this weekend, and that's it. And everything else is going to come to you. I believe, and now I'm speaking in a way that is more paternal than anything else, you have a charmed life. And everything came to you since you were very little.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And you exhibited behaviors and so on that everybody was even smilingly impressed with you from the very beginning. I mean, it's not that you were a genius at chess or Rubik's Cube or anything. I know some kids that are like that. But there was something, something in there. And so I think that, you know, learning to just relax and rest. But it's part of your behavior.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Since you were little, you had these problems. Yeah. I used to take, put you on my lap and say, it's going to be fine. And you say, well, what if I cannot do my homework? Okay. But you could. Or even my stuffed animals.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
It doesn't, it didn't captivate you the way that like, it sounds like physics, you know, made you think that there's something kind of bigger, that there's something more universal, which indeed physics is, right? It's not, it is, it explains most everything.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah. Yeah.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
They're saying that. Needed to be organized. Well, I probably have. Remember I had the grunting tick?
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yes.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Oh, yeah.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
That was... It drove us nuts. Well, I probably have a little bit of an OCD type thing. I mean, not diagnostically significant, but when I bite down into something that I'm pursuing, it's very hard for me to think about anything else.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, we talked about it. When you were at Berkeley, once you told me that you were starting to run, but you wanted to run like everybody else was running, I don't know how many miles.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I heard there was a guy who had been in the department, Randy Nelson. He's now a professor in Ohio. Somebody just like... off, you know, just in passing said, oh yeah, you know, Randy worked, you know, like 80 hours a week or 90 hours a week. And I was like 95 hours. Yeah. I remember that. You know, but what's interesting is I'm not a naturally competitive person. It was just this idea.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Like I've tended to want to know how I've, and I've since stopped this, but there was a long time where I wanted to figure out what my body and mind were capable of. Right. I just wanted to see like, how high is that ceiling?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And it was only when I almost suffocated on a scuba dive or when I was working to the point of exhaustion or, you know, where, and then I also realized that, you know, I published a number of papers to get tenure. Like I didn't need that many, but I enjoyed every one. It's not like I'm not having fun.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I'm having fun.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
This idea of pushing oneself to limits. The question is why? I mean, I think there is so much to enjoy on a, on a regular life and the things that we have already. We have to work to get them the way we want. But I don't think that worrying for the sake of worrying or just worrying.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, I don't tend to worry. Well, you know what changed that for me in a major way? I mean, I've had moments. I've had moments. I think I can recall like I have a favorite best day of my life moment. I won't share it here. It's not relevant right now. But Costello helped bring me into the moment.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Like he would do these things that like I would delight in that were just so simple, like the way he would like fall over or something. You know, I think that like having another creature there that is very much in the moment brings you into the moment.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Right, and you were very connected to it too. I mean, I think that if you were connected to someone that has that property of bringing you down and so on, you would start enjoying it.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, the people I've had amazing partners, as you know, some less – than amazing, but many amazing partners. And they tended to be also kind of into the future, like focus on what's not quite there yet. But I must say, I think women in general do it better than men, that they're better at grounding to the present. Well, it depends.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Most everything. Yes. And I also think that I was a bit of a loner. It was very hard to find people that, you know, children or young people that thought like me. So eventually I became part of a group. We were four or five guys that used to get together on Saturdays and, you know, go to the movies and so on, and then afterwards discuss, you know, whatever we were interested in and so on.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I think that my wife tends to be more anxious than I am about the future. So maybe it's not generally related. Well, in trying to sort of tell her that she shouldn't worry so much. I think that I also suddenly reflect, what am I doing here? And I try to also slow down myself.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I think that, you know, yeah, I think you're someone who's running from one thing to the other, I mean, to say colloquially, but it would be nice if you said, okay, I'm fine. You know, you have a podcast that is doing well. You don't have to worry what the podcast is going to be doing in five years.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
No, I don't think out that far. I don't think about the career piece. I think that I, I mean, I often don't have a plan. I know what we're going to do this year. I don't know what we're going to do after that. But professionally, I think, look, I think part of it was science. I mean, we're talking about a lot of things.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But for many years, right, from the time I, like, squared my life away when I turned 19, it was like, okay, I'm going to get things right now. There's always been these milestones. You're going to finish your undergraduate degree. I did a master's. Then you do the PhD. Then the postdoc. Then you need to get tenure. You know, I think the academic system –
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
was a system of two to five year bursts, like sprinting marathons in many ways to try and grab the next thing to get to the next level. And there was a lot of uncertainty for a long time. I think I'm finally now coming into a place of certainty, like feelings of like, oh, things are good and they've gone great. But yeah, but it's hard.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Oh, of course it's hard, especially if you have that kind of temperament. Yes. And I think you need to train yourself almost to, I just had a set of words that are, it's a matter of bringing elegance into your life almost, to live it in a way that is elegant, is nice in itself, you know. That is important.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
One of the things I learned, I mean, you know, living with the Danes, Danes don't like you to eat standing. They sit at a table and they light a candle. And, you know, it's very nice. It creates a pace. Yeah, the ritual. The ritual. Rituals are very important. And also the other thing that is very important, and I discovered, is to have something to look forward to.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
You cannot just wake up one day and say, and now what? Right. There has to be something. Okay, that's important.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I mean, you know, we all have that. So Rogan talks about this thing about, you know, because he has a podcast, he does four episodes a week, plus he's an announcer of the UFC, he has a comedy career, he has three kids, he's in a happy marriage. you know, he's really into working out and all this. And he, I heard something recently, it was actually the forward to Cameron Haynes' book.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I was listening to it and he, it was amazing. He said, you know, you have to approach your life, no matter how busy or how simple, as a kind of work of art. Like you can't just think of it as daily life. You have to have some macroscopic view of this so that you know where to put things. And it's a lot of what you're saying as well.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
What I say, elegance, yeah. Life has to have elegance, otherwise it's just, these joint moments. Sometimes it would be like that, and it can be very creative too. But most of the idea is to really get into something. I mean, I personally think that when you describe me as being very steady or whatever, sounds very boring too, for that matter, right?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I was only 16 years old, you know, and deciding what to do with my life. Of all four of us, We committed. Some of them came from incredibly wealthy families, two of them. We committed to really be true to ourselves and pursue what we liked. But I was the only one. The other two ended up running the business of their parents. And one of them essentially, I don't know what he did.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I mean, yeah. I don't know. I mean, there's a beauty in steadiness because from places of steadiness, you can take good risks, right?
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, right. I mean, and I think that my mind is not, you know, in a steady, you know, state. But I don't have this notion I have to see things. Everybody's talking about something. I have to see it. I never felt like that. No. I mean, I like to see things. Don't misunderstand me. But it's very important for me to be in the moment and do things the way I like them to do.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, you don't seem to need to go on like jungle adventures or like ice skate across Antarctica. Like you've never been one for like the kind of wild outing.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
No, the wild outing is here. That's my wild outing. Yeah, I can have very wild thoughts about things that I would like, you know, sometimes they're totally wrong and so on. But yeah, in a funny way, I am a little bit of what the French call an armchair philosopher or whatever.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
There are these people who write articles about France and Africa without ever having left France or something of that sort. So I'm not like that. But I don't necessarily crave this physical adventure for the sake of adventure. I like beautiful things. And I don't mind repeating the same beautiful thing every year if necessary, going vacation to the same places and so on.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, you like to go back to the same place.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, there's a difference between tourism where you see new things and so on. I like that. There's also the idea of vacation where you just sit and enjoy what you have.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I confess I've not ever done it. And you know this about me. I've never taken a vacation.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
You should go to the summer house in Denmark. You can spend a week there just enjoying it. That's it. I don't know if I show you pictures from the window. They see the deer in the garden. You know, they just sit there, you know, it's nice. So there's nothing, you know, it's nice. It can be, you cannot spend a life doing that. You know, I'm not a monk, okay?
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I'm not a meditator that will spend hours on this. But, you know, it's nice to rest, you know, it's very important, I think. And the rituals are important to you. Very important, yes, yeah. The rituals have a, it's also very reassuring because then you know it's predictable, right? You don't want a totally unpredictable life all the time. That's what people create rituals, you know?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
You early on taught me about etiquette. It's something that years later, I think it was probably in the mid 90s, for some reason we were at the movies together and we saw some people at the movies and they were wearing their bathroom slippers and more or less their pajamas to the movies. And I'll never forget, you grabbed my arm.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Like you didn't grab it forcefully, we grabbed you and said, you see that? I said, yeah. And he said, people are coming to the movies in their pajamas. I said, yeah. And he said, that's the beginning of the end to any society. And I thought you were joking. But, you know, it's something I thought about a lot.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
You also said, and I'll never forget, you know, you're always better off being overdressed because then at least your class that you're speaking to or your hosts, et cetera, they know that you took them seriously. Right. And... I don't think we really appreciate etiquette. As Americans, especially, we've somehow confused freedom of choice with discarding etiquette.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
It's not something that you hear discussed very much, but what about etiquette?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I saw him years later. Money becomes a pretty bright beacon for a lot of people.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, there are many components. I think the most important one is a societal one. I mean, one of the things that I like, for instance, if you go to England, how polite people are. Politeness is a virtue. And politeness, the higher the social class, the higher the demand to be polite. It's behavior, it's being nice to people, it's understanding what they are.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And associated with that, there are codes. Some of them are behavioral, some of them are dress codes. I had a brilliant economist, an Italian economist working with me, and now he's in the East Coast. who told me he went to a wedding in Italy after living in the United States and he went to his cousin's wedding and his uncle said, you show no respect, you're not wearing cufflinks.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
He said, well, but my shirt is all, but no, no, no, go home and get cufflinks because you're showing lack of respect for not dressing the proper way to this wedding. So I think that there are expectations that people have about certain kinds of behavior.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I mean, if you look at, say, the pictures of what's going on now in Washington and so on, you notice that Mr. Elon Musk, who's always in a t-shirt that says, let's go to Mars, suddenly he's wearing a tuxedo because now he's part of it. group of people that are behaving like government officials should behave. You know, you don't go in sandals and shorts.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. I'm grateful to you that you... never pushed me to go in any particular direction. You pushed me to not go in particular directions, but never with respect to academic choices. In fact, I don't recall you telling me or Laura, that by the way, folks, that's my sister's name, that we had to do anything except attend our classes and do our best
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But Silicon Valley is famous for the flip-flops and the hoodie. Right, because the problem is that people confuse the style with the message. They think that because you wear a hoodie because Mark Zuckerberg was wearing hoodies makes you brilliant. Okay. And I think that the issue of dress codes elicit a certain sense of behavior in people, as you said.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I mean, you know, how would you feel if you went on a first date with someone that comes in, you know, slippers and a bathrobe and said, let's go to the movies? It's not happened yet.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, okay.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So what I'm saying is you don't have to overdo it. You know, that's another issue. And you have to also conform to the roles of the society. I noticed, for instance, that in the East Coast, people dress much more properly than in the West Coast. You go to New York and you see men wearing suits and ties. You don't see that here, perhaps in LA, not in the Bay Area ever.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, one thing that you pointed out is that at any wedding in Argentina, men keep their jackets and ties on the whole night. I've always kept my jacket and tie on the entire night. In the United States, it's almost like moments after people arrive at any party in a suit, they start undressing. Yeah, right. Why did they dress up then?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah. Okay, so that's my view. So I am not necessarily someone that advocates wearing a tie when I go to work and so on, but I really believe that there are codes of conduct that sort of reflect many things. And you're also, you're projecting a message, right? I mean, the idea of a hoodie, at one point or the other, first of all, was hurting behavior.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Everybody had to wear one because, you know, then you're cool or, you know, whatever. Okay. In adolescence, I understand it. I mean, that's what you do as an adolescent. You do what others do. But as you grow up, you can also signal whom you are by the way you dress and you behave.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
What do you think about the discourse on platforms like X where you can see a mix, including a lot of academics and high-level thinkers, acting kind of like teenagers?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, okay, they want to be popular. They want to draw attention.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, this is kind of a new thing. I mean, I won't name names, but some people who are considered some of the smartest people in the world, like what their discourse on social media is like. I mean, they wouldn't last two seconds on the schoolyard, so they'd get hit in the face. It's weird, like grown men acting kind of like teenagers.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Okay, well, they have a problem because they want to be thought of as young. That's a whole different story, okay? That's a different story. Now, having said what I said, I respect that some people eventually reflect on whether or not the rules... The rules that say how you should dress to do one thing or the other do not operate for you. And then you decide to be very different.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
There are many people who are like that and like to be iconoclastic. I heard many stories about, we were talking about Richard Feynman, who actually made a case. I mean, Mary Gell-Mann used to say that about him, to be so different that people will talk about it because he was very interested in people telling stories about it. Bongo drumming naked on the roof, not brushing his teeth.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Exactly, all that. Okay, so- So, but he was very good at drawing attention. Okay, that's fine. You can also draw attention by dressing very nicely. You know, it's all a matter of, I mean, I was reflecting, you know, we go to the symphony in San Francisco regularly and we are donors and so on. Sometimes you go to a concert, it's an amazing thing what you see there.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Some people nicely dressed, some people dressed as if they just woke up, they didn't have time to get dressed and everything. You know, go there, you know, and whatever.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But do you think that, going back to the initial, you know, ping of the question, do you think that we have societally gone, that we're sort of drifting towards, like, for lack of a better word, chaos? So, social interaction chaos.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, you know, I think the pendulum will swing again. Hmm. The other day I was talking to someone, reading actually, that suddenly not only in New York, but in the Midwest, men are starting to wear jacket and ties, not just for work. Okay. They go on dates like that. So, you know, it's a pendulum. It goes back and forth, back and forth.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I don't think we're going to end up in a time when, you know, you have to wear tails to have breakfast or something. I think only the aristocrats used to do that. But I think that, you know, it's an issue of how also how we perceive the world through the eyes of television and movies, okay? If movies start showing that everybody's dressed whatever, you know, people are going to do the same thing.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But I never felt pushed to go into science.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
If movies start showing, you know, the trends that we see in movies are the trends that essentially society follows, okay? Definitely. So I think that we, this is, I don't think we're going to chaos. It's going to revert. California is a particular place because it has always been a place where people, in order to feel free, they had to dress differently and who cares and all that stuff.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
No. No. Although you had a little bit of a curiosity about it. Animals. Animals. And I remember I was going through a period in which I started getting convinced that there was very little to do in physics. And I wanted to change. And one day on a bike ride, I think I was carrying in the back of my bicycle. You were young. You asked me, what is the unsolved problem?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But it's not everywhere.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah. It's kind of interesting that now counterculture is conservatism. Right, right. We're back to that. The anti-war group is the more conservative anyway.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I mean, also people like, you know, it's interesting how Americans are fascinated with English aristocracy and traditions. I've been to high table dinner at King's College in Cambridge twice. You know, everybody dresses properly. They wear gowns and the fellows are sitting at a top table and everybody else. And people love it. And we like to see that in the movies.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, it's theater. I mean, it's academic theater, a little bit of pomp and circumstance, but it's theater. And it's nice. Well, we have the same thing on commencement, you know, traditions and so on. Yeah, no parent wants to go to a graduation that's, you know, kind of a free-for-all. They want to see some order.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Absolutely, absolutely. And I think that, you know, there is a place for that. And some people will, I mean, there are designers and so on of clothing and so on that exploit this nostalgia for that kind of elegant world. You know, Ralph Lauren and so it's always, you know, 1960s fancy, you know, club type clothing and so on. So. Do you plan to ever retire? I don't know what it means.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I mean, if retired, no, no, because I'm not a postal worker. I'm not a cook at a restaurant that eventually says, okay, I cooked it long enough that I collect my retirement and go home. I have a mind that it works, and I need an environment where that mind can thrive, and I need an environment where...
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
For one year when I left Hewlett Packard, I took a course in generativity and so on, but I was really a bit idle. So suddenly I'm in a context where people have problems and so on that I really like to listen to. There's a social component to work, as you know.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So retirement means you're a postal worker and one day you stop delivering mail and you stay home watching the paint dry, and that's not me. Okay. So to me, I'm working and I enjoy it. And, you know, the day that will come that I cannot enjoy it, I'll stop.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And I think that, again, goes with this issue of getting bored with things that you don't like to do, you know, because you've done it for a long time. No, I enjoy my life. But I don't think in terms of—I'll say something. The CEO of my company is a great guy, Phil McKinney, said, Bernardo, I don't work for the money here. I said, I don't either.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I mean, I like to get paid, but if I don't like it, I'll walk. And I can do that. So it's not that I'm doing this for the income. That's what I'm trying to say.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Seems like you've never pursued money for its own sake.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
No. Nor did you ever encourage me to pursue money for its own sake. But as my cousin, the physicist, used to say, money doesn't bring happiness, but it points in the right direction. I would say money doesn't bring happiness, but it can buffer stress. Right. And it allows you to have the things you want to have and you don't have to. Absolutely. Absolutely. Right.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, I think money is an important aspect of our lives, you know, having it and so on. I lived for many years as a graduate student with no money, and it was very painful, I'll tell you. Sometimes I didn't eat dinner because I didn't have any money. So I like having money to do the things that I like, but I don't work for money.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Many people say, well, you know, I invented so many things, I could have started in some of these companies and make a lot of money. I don't really, I don't regret that at all.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And I said, I don't think it's in physics, but it's the brain. And you said, okay, I'll go into that, you said. I'll never forget that.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
The ultra-rich people that I know who are happy are still working every day.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Right, because beyond a certain amount of money, you still have to brush your teeth like everybody else. Okay, you can dream of having 150 toothbrushes, but so what?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I must say, for me, it was an immense pleasure and privilege to have this conversation, not just because Dr. Huberman is my father, but because I believe the knowledge and indeed some of the wisdom that he shares will be useful to everybody about what it is to carve one's own unique trajectory in terms of career and life, and at the same time, how to savor the simple everyday things that make life so worth living.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Right.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And you can only eat so many steaks. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that we all covered. The question is, what do you do with your life? Now, you want to travel? Well, you can travel. It's nice if you can travel, you know, in better ways than being an undergrad with the backpack, although it can be adventurous.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I had fun backpacking. Yeah, okay. on a limited budget where, you know, part of the joy of traveling that way is you're thrown into kind of street level interactions. And youth hostels and things like that. I went through Europe like this. I wouldn't change that for anything.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
No, I went through Europe as a graduate student. I quit everything. I went to Europe in winter. And it was quite an adventure. In the winter? In the winter. It was horrendous. I had very little money. I stayed in places where, in Paris, where the lady in the little hotel would turn off the light if I turned it on in the middle of the night. It was awful. And yet... To save energy?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, it's interesting. I'm fascinated by human memory, as you know. I know you are as well. And I recall that story as well. I recall it slightly differently, but we're really closely aligned. She says, I remember you used to walk me to school in the morning and you would drop me off at the cut through to the path behind Gunn High School.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was very funny. But I met people that were interesting, and I engaged, you know, it was... I still, every once in a while, I hear from one or two of those people I met years ago. in trains, I went by train everywhere. I ended up in Denmark in the middle of winter, you know. Everything seems to lead back to Denmark. Yeah, it's a nice country.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, now you have a Danish wife, and have for a long time.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And have for a long time. Yeah, many times, yeah, yeah. No, I like, it's a very different contrast to Europe, the central Europe and so on, you know, Northern Europe, Denmark, Sweden, Norway is a very special kind of country and people. Yeah, I like them a lot. Life is very easy there.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I like Scandinavia. Yeah, yeah, it's very nice, yes. Good-natured people. Yes. Good saunas. Yeah, everything, yes. And sunshine, at least in the summer. In the summer only, yeah. Any plans for the next couple of years? Anything that we should put on the calendar, make sure that we get in? No, because I cannot plan that well. I don't plan. Me either. Maybe I inherited it from you.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, I just move. I just move and intuitive. I'm very intuitive about these things. I suddenly see something, you know, this quantum stuff. I don't know. I started hearing about it. I talked to a brilliant guy who was in my lab. I said, hey, Gene, what do you think about this? He said, oh, sounds interesting. Let's do it. And we're doing it. I am lucky that I get paid to do that.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But no, I don't have plans like that. We would like to organize our life a little bit differently now that we have a summer house in Denmark and so on. I still plan to travel there. I like Europe a lot, but I don't know if I can live there. I like Switzerland a lot. I want to go to Argentina every year, and I feel very close to my family. That's very important. We are all going for an event there.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I hope that you can join us if you can. So those things are very important to me. But, no, I don't have plans for anything. I don't know. I'd like to be surprised.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, Dad, I want to extend a real – sense of gratitude from me, from everyone listening and watching. Although you may argue that they're not going to be interested, this has been our back and forth over the last months as I've tried to convince you to do this podcast. I can assure you that they were, they are very interested. Your story is a really unique one.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And I can say that both as your son, but also as somebody who's sat across from scientists from all different you know domains and backgrounds not just neuroscientists i also really appreciate your ability to explain complicated things in ways that at least um and we can start to get an understanding because these are hard concepts.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Because that's, I would pick up Kristen Harnett across the street and you told me it would be better if I picked her up by myself and walked her to the end of the street, which is where class was. You were teaching me chivalry. And I remember asking you what you do I was probably five or six years, let's see, first grade. So it'd probably be somewhere around six or seven years old.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And I think what comes through so clearly is that somehow you've been able to grab these high level, really abstract concepts and work with them and try and understand them. But you've also been able to lead a life where you're really grounded in the day to day and in reality. And I have to say your wish for me and for Laura, and I assume for everyone else to be joyful. I'll work on that.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And also, I must say, it just hit me like square in the face during this discussion that I get such peace and I can really focus on being joyful knowing that you're joyful. Like it's so clear, like you have a joyful life at so many levels and that you've pursued what you wanted to do over and over. And...
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And, you know, some people may have tuned into this podcast thinking that we were going to get into our issues and things like that. I'll just briefly say that, yeah, we've had our ups, we've had our downs, and we've certainly landed up and much, much higher than we ever would had we not had all of that.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I told you last year around this time on your birthday when we all got together to celebrate, like, we're not just good, we're beyond good. So anything that comes up around that, I want to just go on record saying that, like, that's water under the bridge, and I don't ever think about it.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
All I think about are the incredible gifts that you've given me about curiosity and pursuing my curiosity about... putting new footprints on untread beaches, the early discussions around the excitement that science can bring. I mean, I remember all of it. I really remember all of it and in immense detail.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And I love your stories about scientists, both how they soar and also how human they are and how they're fallible like the rest of us. So, you know, there's not a day that goes by where I don't thank God, because I do believe in God, that you're my father, that you and mom created me. and Laura, and that I've had the life that I have and that I continue to have the life that I have.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So I just want to thank you for the example and the nurturing and for coming here. There aren't words.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, thank you. You know how much I love you. I think that these words are the biggest gift that I get. And I think any father listening to that, to his son or daughter saying that would also feel the same way, or a mother for that matter. It's a very fulfilling feeling, you know, to have that notion that you feel that you owe so much to what you got.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And also the fact that you've done incredibly well and the kind of person you are. Yeah. So I wish you all the wisdom that you need in order to just go through life the way, you know, you're going. But I think that it's nice to also that we are sort of on the same wavelength and many things. In you, I see more of a reflection of what I always wanted to be as well. So that's easier in a way.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Perhaps it's because fathers and sons have that. We certainly relate. Yes. Well, thank you. Thank you. I love you. I love you too. You know that.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Bernardo Huberman. To learn more about his work, please see the links in the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. In addition, please follow the podcast on both Spotify and Apple.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. Please check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I asked you what you do and you said physics. And I said, well, what is that? And you said, well, let me tell you the feeling it gives me instead. You said, you know, the night before your birthday, And I said, yeah. And he said, you know that feeling? And I said, yeah. And you said, well, that's how I feel every day when I go to work. And I remember, I'll never forget that.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, formerly known as Twitter, Threads, Facebook and LinkedIn.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
If you haven't already subscribed to our Neural Network newsletter, our Neural Network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries as well as protocols in the form of brief one to three page PDFs. Those one to three page PDFs cover things like deliberate heat exposure, deliberate cold exposure. We have a foundational fitness protocol.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
We also have protocols for optimizing your sleep, dopamine and much more. Again, all available, completely zero cost. Simply go to HubermanLab.com, go to the menu tab, scroll down to newsletter and provide your email. We do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Bernardo Huberman.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And I said, what do you do? And you said, I'm a physicist. And I said, well, then I'll be a physicist. And then I recall, so maybe we had the conversation twice, you saying, well, most of the big problems in physics are solved. So you should pick something perhaps a little less untread like physics. And I said, like what? And you said, well, the brain is pretty interesting.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And then I said, okay, I'll work on that.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
No, that's true. This issue of feeling like before your birthday is something I remember saying to you. I don't recall feeling that way every day. I do recall feeling like this when I had an idea and finally worked out and we wrote a paper and so on. You know, it was an incredibly exciting time. You know, well, you know about it. You've done it yourself now. Yeah.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And so I wanted to convey that to you. It was very, very interesting and important to me that you understood that. On the other hand, it made me feel very isolated as well, not only with you, with everybody. I mean, it's a very esoteric field. You know, you used to walk into the study, look at me, you know, writing equations and so on. And when you say, what's that, you know?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I was thinking about your study, which was just a door down from my childhood bedroom. I still remember the way that your study smelled. I can still smell it. I have an incredible sense of memory for certain things. I can still remember. But I remember how your books were aligned, where your stereo was placed, your photos, your photo of Einstein, your photos of me and Lara and mom.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I remember all of it. And the sofa that was just off behind it because you're a nap taker, which I inherited from you. But I remember that, yeah, you would spend a lot of time in that office and listening to classical music. Do you listen to music while you work or did you listen?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
All the time, all the time. Yeah, classical music for me is something I discovered very young, very young. My parents also loved classical music, my brother too. And it's something that I, to me, has a tremendous emotional resonance with the way I feel. Sometimes it's background music. Sometimes I really listen very carefully.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
It's something that I, yes, I've always had in my life and still have it. I mean, it's very, very important to me. But not many musicians in our family. No, unfortunately. Yeah. Although there is a very famous one.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
We've all tried. Huh? We've all tried. Yeah, yeah. You in particular. Yeah, yeah. We all failed.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There is a very famous Huberman, the great violinist Bronislav Huberman. I mean, there's a picture I think I sent it to you, Ian Einstein. Yeah. He was one of the greatest violinists in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, an incredibly interesting man. He's the founder of the Israel Philharmonic.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Helix Sleep.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And that's one of the reasons that the name Huberman is in some street in Israel, because of him. Are we related to him? Unfortunately not.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Which explains the lack of musical prowess in our family. We all love music, but none of us are good musicians.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
No, right, yes.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Except my cousin Diego.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Diego, he has a perfect ear, so he can really do interesting things, yes. So going back to...
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
your childhood, this teacher, right? So, I mean, what was it? You already had a sort of seeded an interest in finding order, in things that made the world make sense. What was the political situation in Argentina at that time?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
quite horrible parts of it. I mean, there was a dictatorship that lasted for a long time, this Perón thing and so on. He was really a follower of Mussolini and people of that sort even in World War II.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So what did that mean like out in the streets? Like you grew up in the heart of Buenos Aires, but like what did that mean in terms of, I mean, was there poverty everywhere? Were people, I mean, was there violence? I mean, what does it spell
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, it was a very oppressive regime. I mean, you had to be careful what you talked about. You know, in my family, like most of that social class, we had maids and a cook, and so you had to be very careful what you said. Because they would run that information back? Absolutely.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And your grandfather, my father, at one point of the day, was prevented from coming to visit me in the United States because he was classified as a communist because he did not join the Peronist Party. Okay, for the record...
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
We are not communists. We are both big believers in capitalism sitting here at this table.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So it was terrible. It was a terrible time. It was a very oppressive time. But he wasn't a communist either. No, of course not. Of course. No, no. He was on the other side. But the idea at that time, it was to be classified as such. Eventually, that information leaked, obviously, to the American authorities. So when he asked for a visa, they denied him. It was a very complicated story.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I don't think we should waste time to know how it got eventually resolved through a friend of mine who was a priest and a Jesuit here in the United States. But the point being that during that time, You had to be very careful the way you spoke, the way you said things. There was a dictatorship that was very much like the fascist in Italy.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Actually, that dictatorship lasted until a few years ago, because as you know, as you heard, the new president we have is one that actually ran against this whole ideology, Peronism and so on.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Millet.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Millet, yes. I was not political at all, but you have to be careful. But it was a funny time. And when he was overthrown through a military revolution, my parents were delighted, and I remember the celebrations and so on. But that was considered the minority that was against him. It was a social class movement. The working class was behind Perón and what he promised and what he gave them.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But that eventually died. So the real problem was that there was no real commitment to science as an investment that a country should make. Yes, it was nice to have Nobel Prizes and it's culturally good, but they didn't have the pragmatic notions that we have here in the United States of doing science means solving concrete problems.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
This was in the 1950s. The 60s, too. Right. So this was the, like, one of the biggest and fastest progressions of physics and its implementation in the U.S. Yes. So were you hearing about that?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Of course. I was following it all and I wanted to, you know, I wanted to buy books about it and so on. I had some conflicts with my father about spending money on books that he thought that were not going to take me anywhere and so on. I mean, he was a very pragmatic lawyer. He didn't understand why I was doing these things. So, yes, I was aware of everything.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And actually, the university was very good. I entered the university. You had to choose what you wanted to do. And after a tremendous crisis, personal crisis, I decided not to go into... law or engineering, which was the alternative my father offered, and decided to study physics. And I didn't regret it at all. It was a very impressive time.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I got a good education in physics, a little bit too abstract. So this was experimental physics or theoretical physics?
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Both, both.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
In the lab, I was okay. I mean, I was better in classes on advanced. I took a lot of courses in advanced mathematics and calculus and beyond that and, you know, complex analysis and so on. So it turns out you were good at math after all. Yes, I understand math. I'm not a whiz. I mean, like many of my students have been.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I have guys that can do incredible things, you know, that I can do them, but slowly. Okay, I understand. Yes, yes. So, but yeah, physics, yeah, is something that I knew how to be intuitive about it. I had already interesting ideas that perhaps didn't pan out, but yeah.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So the teacher in high school, were they the one that told you that there was, like, a career in this thing?
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yes, he said, you know, you should devote yourself to this if you really care about it. He was a man that, obviously, he was sort of tormented on many levels and so on. You say that because of the way he carried himself physically? Yes, yes, yeah, yeah. He was troubled, but was interesting, intense man. I still remember his name. He was a philosopher.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
His name was Egersland, which is a German name. And he started talking about discovering Christianity and what it meant to him and what it is to be authentic and so on. And then I had a very large exposure to the great thinkers of the antiquity, the Roman and Greek. So it was all, to me, fascinating, interesting. And it was good to have friends that I could discuss these things with.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Do you think it's a disservice that nowadays in the United States, and even when I was growing up, but especially now that we don't force kids to be exposed to all these topics, like we try and track people into something early on. Actually, a recent guest told me that many schools are now just giving knowledge but not expecting kids to do problem sets.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
how soft that mattress is or how firm it is, how breathable it is, all play into your comfort and need to be tailored to your unique sleep needs. So if you go to the Helix website, you can take a brief two-minute quiz that asks you questions such as, do you sleep on your back, your side, or your stomach? Do you tend to run hot or cold during the night? Things of that sort.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
You know, teaching them about physical activity, but not expecting them to do physical activity. Seriously. Well, that sounds a little bit funny. Well, no, but that's, I mean, that is the direction that education in this country is going.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I was a visiting professor in France, actually. You live there because of that, in Paris. And I discovered, you know, the French intellectual tradition is also very, very abstract compared to the American.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I mean, the English and the Americans are the ones that took physics, and the Russians too, into a very, very practical realm and made progress that are very, very concrete, almost engineering-like.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. AG1 is designed to cover all of your foundational nutritional needs, and it tastes great. Now, I've been drinking AG1 since 2012, and I started doing that at a time when my budget for supplements was really limited.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
In fact, I only had enough money back then to purchase one supplement, and I'm so glad that I made that supplement AG1. The reason for that is even though I strive to eat most of my foods from whole foods and minimally processed foods, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits, vegetables, vitamins, and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And I need to do that in order to ensure that I have enough energy throughout the day, I sleep well at night, and keep my immune system strong. But when I take AG1 daily, I find that all aspects of my health, my physical health, my mental health, and my performance, both cognitive and physical, are better.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I know that because I've had lapses when I didn't take AG1 and I certainly felt the difference. I also notice, and this makes perfect sense given the relationship between the gut microbiome and the brain, that when I regularly take AG1, which for me means a serving in the morning or mid-morning and again later in the afternoon or evening, that I have more mental clarity and more mental energy.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
When I came to the United States, I must tell you, I came as a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Let's talk about that. So how did you end up getting into the United States as a graduate student?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
You applied. Yeah, I was graduating. And, you know, the future looked rather gloomy. I had a girlfriend whose father was very wealthy. And she said, no problem. You're going to work for my dad. And, you know, she got a factory or whatever.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Why do I feel like that is not the kind of offer that you'll go for now? No, no, not at all. Not at all. I've never known you to work for anyone except you. Yeah, in a way. You're right. I'm a bit the same.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Maybe you know the answers to those questions. Maybe you don't. Either way, Helix will match you to the ideal mattress for you. For me, that turned out to be the Dusk mattress, D-U-S-K. I started sleeping on a Dusk mattress about three and a half years ago, and it's been far and away the best sleep that I've ever had.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, yeah. So, yes, yes. Just the idea of, you know, running a business was not. I was truly idealistic and irresponsible too. But I had a cousin who was already, you know, got his PhD in theoretical physics at Columbia University. He was a professor in France, then Sweden, and so on. So I felt that perhaps I should go to the United States. And so I started applying to this.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
My father was saying, you know, I won't even help you with this. He didn't like it. My parents didn't like it. You know, I was very close to my family in many ways. And so I applied to many places. I remember being accepted at, I think it was Cornell. And I said, oh, New York, that's great. Till someone said to me, you have to take a plane to go to real New York. I mean, you know.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
He loves New York City. We both love New York City.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So in any event, I got this very, very nice fellowship to go to University of Pennsylvania. Who is the fellowship from? The Navy, the United States Navy. Yeah. I'm very grateful for that. And I actually wrote that in my PhD thesis. I was very grateful. I think it was incredible that they were supporting that kind of research. They wanted to bring you to the U.S. to build weapons? No, no, no.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Not at all. Not at all. I came to the United States working for Professor Burstein, who just died at the age of 101. And no, but I was supported by the United States Navy. It was a fellowship by the University of Pennsylvania. But I remember...
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
In my first interview with some of the teachers, professors, there I am talking to them about the foundations of quantum mechanics, and the guy says to me, let me give you an interesting problem. You have a ping-pong ball, but instead of being a classical ping-pong ball, it's a quantum one. Could you tell me at what heights will it bounce? I had no idea what to do.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I had no sense that you could turn all this knowledge into something implementable, practical, and so on. So it was quite a struggle the first year. So you had... Theoretical understanding.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yes.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Not experimental understanding. Right, right. Yes. Or empirical and so on. I didn't know how to calculate things very well. Yeah. Despite being good at math. I was good. Yeah. Math, understanding the math is a different thing between understanding math. Implemented. Implemented and, you know, creating things. Well, you learn that. I had four years of graduate school. Mm-hmm.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I got my PhD in physics, so obviously I learned how to do it. But what I'm saying is that I had this very, very vague theoretical understanding of what the world worked, but not really practical. You know, I didn't have it at my fingertips. That's what you learn when you go to graduate school, as you know yourself, okay?
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So much so that when I travel to hotels and Airbnbs, I find I don't sleep as well. I can't wait to get back to my Dusk mattress. So if you'd like to try Helix, you can go to helixsleep.com slash Huberman. Take that two minute sleep quiz and Helix will match you to a mattress that's customized for your unique sleep needs. Right now, Helix is giving up to 25% off all mattress orders.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, it's one thing to learn about the brain as an undergraduate, but in graduate school is where I learned how to slice brains, stain brains, trace connections, record from neurons. And it's a whole other business to get your hands dirty in the thing.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Absolutely, absolutely. And the same thing for me. Yeah, I'm taking courses and discovering what you like and dislike. I was a little bit bound to my professor because he was the one who gave me the fellowship, but I didn't like what he did, which was always very problematic. Did you have a good relationship? It was funny. He sort of tried to become my surrogate father.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But on the other hand, intellectually, I always felt that the guy was not quite there. I mean, he was very famous. He's a member of the National Academy. He was not, but he was very famous, very famous. But I always felt that there was a lack of depth into what we were doing. It was not just him. It was just the solid state physics.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
There was a very famous, you know, Mary Gell-Mann, who had total contempt for solid state physics. She used to call it squalid state physics.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah. For those who don't know Murray Gilman, we'll get to Murray later because I had the interesting experience of meeting him as a child, but he discovered the quark, he won the Nobel Prize, in many ways is considered at least as superb a physicist as Feynman, maybe better. Yeah. Lesser known, but among physicists, you know, would evoke great fear in everybody.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
We'll get to Murray in a little bit. So did you enjoy graduate school?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yes, but it was incredibly hard, very hard, the first year in Toba. And also, personally, I was very lonely. You know, I was transplanted into a whole different world. Philadelphia is not a city I would recommend to many people to live in. I escaped every weekend to New York, and my professor was always upset about that.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And you went from being pretty well off financially to basically having no money. I had no money. I lived on very little money, as a matter of fact, yes. My parents, my father felt that, okay, this is what you're going to do. You're going to survive on this. They paid for a ticket once a year to go back to visit.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And it was incredibly nice and soothing to be back and to be taken care of and everything else, you know, the life in the family. And then going back again to Philadelphia and the reality of just being a student.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Unlike many people and foreign students that were with me in other places, I did not enjoy – I mean, it was quite a cultural adventure for me to meet people from all over the world, to learn what they – I became very close to a Japanese postdoc, a very interesting man. But I was quite miserable. So this was in the mid-'60s? Yes. Yes. Late 60s. Yes. Yeah. I did not like my life there at all.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I mean, I lived for four years. I didn't have a single girlfriend or anything. I, you know, I dated and so on. But I just felt that I was transplanted into an environment that I didn't like. Okay. And that's it. And on top of that, my conflict with my advisor was not serious because they were not overt, but they were there all the time.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
That can be tough for those listening. The relationship to your graduate advisor is a potentially wonderful, potentially hazardous one because they exert enormous control over your future, not just through letters of recommendation, but opportunities. And I got lucky in that sense.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Prior to that, he was the director of the Social Computing Laboratory at Hewlett-Packard, and he is, as his name suggests, my father. Today, we discuss various topics in science, including relativity theory, chaos theory, and quantum computing.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
You were very lucky. Yes. My advisor was the kind of person that if you went out to dinner with him, he ordered for you. Are you kidding? I'm not kidding. He was that kind of guy. He would take the whole group to a Chinese restaurant. And before you said, I don't like this, he just ordered. Once he took me for a whole weekend to his summer house to finish a paper. The guy couldn't finish a paper.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Again, that's helixsleep.com slash Huberman to get up to 25% off. Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. Now, I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice. It was a condition of being allowed to stay in high school.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And it was a mess. And his daughter was there. She was 16 or 17. And she said, are you two going to talk physics? I was going to say, no, let's go for a walk. He said, that's all we're going to do. But the physics consisted in him regurgitating whatever we were doing. I mean, I remember I was so miserable looking at my watch, seeing how the heck do I get out of here? I didn't have a car.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So I was sort of his prisoner from Friday to Sunday night. So it was hard for me. I never really felt that happy. On the other hand, I had no other options at that time. But then as soon as I graduated, I got out.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I was just thinking about how different your graduate school experience was from mine. I delighted in my advisor, as you know. She was amazing. Fantastic people. Yeah, I got lucky. And I got a lot of that from you, which was to, for those who don't know, I left a program at Berkeley, which everyone thought I was insane. insane to leave Berkeley to go to Davis. That was by choice.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But I remember what you said. You said, how big is your incoming class at Davis, right? Because by all standard criteria, Berkeley is the better institution. Davis is great, but Berkeley is considered exceptionally strong. And I said, are there three of us? And you said, well, either you're making the best decision of your life or the worst mistake of your life.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And then I think you asked me what was driving the decision. I said, well, there's this person there Her name is Barbara Chapman, and she just seems to be working on things that if I don't work on these problems, I'm going to regret it. And I can't imagine working on anything else.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And he said, well, go for it, which I really appreciate because any parent, if I were a parent and my kid said, I'm going to leave Berkeley and go to Davis halfway through a PhD and start again, I think... I probably would have balked, so.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, Barbara's also played a very, very nice, supportive, emotional role in your life. I mean, it was obvious that she had tremendous preference for you. Yeah. You were like her son in many ways.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I smile and well up a little bit only because, well, she passed away young, but... She's just an amazing person. So I feel very blessed for that. That wasn't your experience with your advisor. So during that time, I did want to ask about this. I asked about it being the mid to late 60s because it was the counterculture movement.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And one thing that people should know about you, I'll just offer this up, is that in the entire time I've known you, which is a while now... You've been very clear, like you never had any interest in recreational drugs. No. Never did them. No. Even though that was super common then. I've never seen you have more than a glass of wine. Yes. You've never been drunk in your life. Never.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And you don't like football despite being from Argentina. It occurred to me on the drive over, like peer pressure is just not something that impacts you. You're not going to do something because people around you are doing it.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, no, you're absolutely right. I always felt this sense of uniqueness or whatever. But I became very humble because of it. I'm not arrogant. It's not that I feel that others are worse and so on. But yes, when I came to the United States, there was a decision I had to make, which is I remember explicitly thinking about it.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But pretty soon I realized that therapy is an extremely important component to overall health. In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise. Now, there are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First, it provides a good rapport with somebody that you can really trust and talk to about any and all issues that concern you.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
It was the first time that I was beyond the control of my parents and family and the social environment in which I was in Argentina. So you could do whatever you wanted. And I was not the only one who came. There were three or four brilliant mathematicians and physicists that came with me. And I saw them within a year just losing it all. One of them never graduated. They got into drugs.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
They moved to the village in New York, and they decided that that was the life they wanted to have. Problem is that 10 years on, what are you doing, right? I mean, getting to be an old hippie is not that interesting anymore. So I really had that notion at that time that I needed to be very disciplined, and I had to internalize a set of values and to ask myself what I want and what I don't want.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And so, yes, indeed, I used to go to parties. To me, it was quite a surprise. You know, in New York, Philadelphia, you know, people smoking pot and all sorts of other incredible things, getting drunk and so on. It was something that I, you know, I would say, no, thank you, and that was it. And I felt quite okay with it.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And I never felt the need to satisfy a group of people that were like this in order to be included.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
You know, there's only one person that I've ever met in my entire life, now that I'm 49, I can say things like now that I'm 49, who has never been drunk, never done drugs, basically has never really had a sip of alcohol except for once, and that's Rick Rubin, my good friend who's- I like the meaning. Yeah, by all standards is,
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
you know, probably the greatest music producer of all time across, you know, a dozen different genres, right? Not just rock and roll, but classical, country, all this. And I once asked Rick, you know, you worked in music where, you know, drugs and alcohol are everywhere, or at least used to be. And he just said, Yeah, it never really interested me. I could be around it but not participate.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And so the two of you are the only people I know that have ever had that kind of relationship to what's going on around you where you don't feel pulled into it.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I also didn't understand, I mean, for instance, the role of drugs and alcohol in young people, I was a graduate student, to a large extent plays a role of relaxation and, you know, getting rid of stress and anxiety and so on. To me, it was very interesting that people would actually come sometimes to my place and ask, you know, do you have something to smoke? Why? Because I'm nervous or whatever.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, you know, deal with your state of anxiety, but you don't have to drink to do that. And I was always a little bit also concerned about my brain. I mean, I was afraid that these things would just take me over the edge of the rails. So I just, but I think I was also, I need to say this, I was also rather judgmental of people who did it at that time.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And it was a way, by being judgmental, by saying this is wrong, then I was able to stay on my track, okay? Today I'm much more understanding. I mean, I hear people and that's what, you know, it works for them, it's fine, although I still don't like it. And it was even worse when we came to California because here everything was going on, not just drugs and everything else.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Second of all, great therapy provides support in the form of emotional support, but also directed guidance, the do's and the not to do's. And third, expert therapy can help you arrive at useful insights that you would not have arrived at otherwise.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, let's talk about that, but not that specifically right off the bat. So you finished your PhD. Yeah. You could have done a postdoc, become a professor.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I was playing with that. I was playing with that. My dream was to go to Cambridge University in England, not only because the Cavendish Laboratory was fantastic. There was the whole thing on DNA. I mean, Crick was there and so on. So I thought that perhaps I would just start inhaling some of those vapors. You wanted to get into biology. Well, I was interested.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I mean, because I read the famous book by Watson, you know, the double helix, and I couldn't sleep. I mean, I read it one night and said, it's incredible what this guy did.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Amazing book.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Amazing book, yes. So I said, oh, the whole thing is becoming like physics. It's no longer all these complicated names and so on.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, it's crystallography, which is, you know, I mean, physics and chemistry are so interesting. Crystallography is boring because you have, it's like botany. You have to learn all these crystals and stuff. I'm just chuckling because the spaghetti model folks, as we call them, the crystallographers, are probably covering their eyes right now. But that's all right.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
They love what they do and thank goodness for them. No, no, of course. Because they design novel drug pockets and receptors. I mean, they're doing some cool stuff.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So I thought that being in Cambridge was okay. I mean, you would suffer from not even heating in the rooms and so on. But then... What happens was, I mean, you know, I met your mother. And then, you know, she brought a little bit of reality into my life and said, you know. How so? Well, she said, you know, it's time for you to graduate. Time.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Because I was just staying there as a, you know, PhD student. You know, I was fine, you know. Okay. The money was a problem. But, you know, I got to live like this. You met mom in New York. I met your mother in New York, yes. And she had her feet on the ground and said, it's time for you to graduate and so on. And she actually was right. And so I decided to look for a job.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And my professor wasn't necessarily letting me go. He wanted me to stay as a postdoc with him.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Insights that allow you to do better, not just in your emotional life, in your relationship life, but also the relationship to yourself and your professional life and all sorts of career goals. With BetterHelp, they make it very easy to find an expert therapist with whom you can really resonate with and provide you with these three benefits that I described.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
This is something people don't often understand is that if a student or postdoc is very good, the advisors are de-incentivized to move them along to their job. But it's a tricky game because you want the support of your advisor, but oftentimes your advisor, if you're very good, they want to keep you.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So there was also another aspect at that time. By then, I started thinking that I wanted to live a much more comfortable life. I mean, I come from a family that lived a very comfortable life, and I wanted that very badly. And so I started looking for jobs and so on. My advisor was not... I'm too keen to, you know, tell me what to do.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So instead of going, I could have gone for a postdoc to a couple of places, but I wanted to be a little more independent. And I discovered that there were research institutions like IBM and Xerox in the West Coast and so on. There were, you know, people could do science, you know, good science. And, you know, Bell Labs was the most famous one of all. That was in the East Coast. In the East Coast.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I went to Bell Labs for an interview and I felt that they were running that like a Russian internment camp almost. I mean, it was unbelievable. We were 10 of us and they took us around and people were taking notes of what you were saying and asking and so on, telling us that was an elite place. It was an elite place.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So East Coast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The East Coast institutions, I mean, it makes sense to me now why, having been raised in the Bay Area, that East Coast institutions and I are just never going to mix because they love tradition, they love hierarchy, and they love history, whereas on the West Coast, It's all about the startup, the IPO.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
It's about what happened in the last three years and what's going to happen in the next 10 years.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Right. Well, on the other hand, there is something nice to be said about the European model of universities in the sense that the biggest contrast, you say this, I remember when professors came to colloquium and so on, they were wearing suit and tie at the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school and so on. I came to Stanford.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I went to the first colloquium and the students were coming in shorts with their dogs into the auditorium. I couldn't believe it. I mean, it was such an incredible, you know, change, cultural change. But smart. But smart, I mean. Oh, incredibly smart. Incredibly smart. No doubt about that.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So, in any event, I discovered something which historically became incredibly important, although I was marginally involved in it, which was Xerox Corporation had invented a copier, decided that they were going to get into the information age, and they decided to establish a new research center in Palo Alto next to Stanford.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
where they would recruit people that would work on this whole thing, computers and information and physics and so on. And I came in and the guys, you know, whoever interviewed me, they said, oh, this is exactly the place for you. So that's what I did.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Also, because BetterHelp is carried out entirely online, it's very time efficient and easy to fit into a busy schedule. So if you'd like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman. And now for my discussion with Dr. Bernardo Huberman. Dr. Bernardo Huberman, welcome. Thank you, Andrew.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And the interesting thing was that while I was there doing what I thought was interesting things, there was a whole group of people, very small, that invented the personal computer. Steve Jobs saw it and built the first Mac out of the alcohol.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I had a classmate in high school, Becca Canara. Yes. I remember because she wrote a Vespa at a school. Yeah, her mother was involved in that stuff. And her mom was involved in creating the, it was Adele. Adele, yes. Adele Goldberg, yes. Adele Goldberg, and developing the ability to move what appear to be pages on the screen.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Object-oriented languages. I had no idea that was going on. I'll be honest with you. I mean, it was going on the second floor. They were all hippie-like. I mean, it was a scandal of the life that they had there. It was the 70s. And still, the Bay Area was not what it is now. I mean, everybody went to risottis, you know, take long lunches. And there was a lot of stuff on drugs and so on.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, can I ask a question about that? So Xerox PARC was this incredible place. I remember going there when I was a kid to your lab. Actually, one of my earliest recollections was you took me into your and Jim Boyce's lab. experimental lab. You told me to pick a piece of fruit. There was a bowl of fruit. I picked a banana.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
You took out the banana, you peeled it and you dipped it into liquid nitrogen. And then you told me to throw it on the ground and we shattered the banana. And I thought that was like the coolest thing ever. I remember that. So that was happening. But you mentioned the stuff that was happening about developing computer interfaces.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And that indeed Jobs borrowed or stole, mostly because Park didn't protect the intellectual property well. I mean, he didn't do it illegally. I mean, he saw it. They basically gave it away. They basically gave it away, right? Xerox was thinking that, you know, copiers were the future. That's it.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But I also recall, because I overheard the conversations between you and mom when I was a kid, perhaps, that there were... It was pretty wild at Park. Like, there was this whole, like, the room with the beanbags. People were taking...
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
lsd and other drugs that wasn't your scene though no no no not at all i was in the physics lab and we can talk later a little bit about it with gene boys was a very very interesting collaborator of mine and so on we had a lot of fun but not not on that level as a matter of fact we were considered very square people uh you know doing what we were doing i mean this is a group of people that were truly they i mean books have been written on on this whole class of people that became really
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
the embryo of what Silicon Valley became. There were brilliant people trying to do new things, Adele, Alan Kay, there were many of them.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Did you ever want to get involved in that stuff?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I used to see them as so, I'll tell you how I got involved. The head of the group, Bob Taylor, a very charismatic man who was responsible for the development of the personal computer, He was the head of the computer science lab. He once heard that I played ping pong. So he started challenging me to ping pong. So we used to play ping pong.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And the conversations were so odd because I would say, oh, you do computer science. I have some mathematical problems. I would like some guys in your lab to help me. He said, we are not the kind of computer scientists you imagine, like at IBM with a white coat fixing machines and solving math. We want to revolutionize the world. We want to change the way you think. He used to say that to me.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And I sort of understood a little bit of it, but quite frankly, it seemed totally out of whatever I was doing.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
This is when Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape, et cetera, A16Z, now when he was sitting in the very seat you're sitting in here, he described this notion of wild ducks, that at companies you have these people that are small groups of people that are really kind of wild and outrageous and really testing the outer limits of what's possible. Do you think they serve an...
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Tremendous, tremendous. And I was a little bit of that in my field at that time. I was the first one to realize, you know, that once I saw these machines, I could use them for doing things even in physics that no one could do. And the kinds of fields that I chose to work on were totally out of what people were doing at Xerox or IBM and so on. I think that these people are essential.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And also great to see you, Dan. Same here. I guess no premonition would have foreseen this one. No, absolutely not. And people might notice today I'm drinking out of a mate gourd, in part in honor of my father's father who drank out of his loose leaf mate every morning. My first sip of mate was taken sitting in his lap when I was maybe four years old. Yes, yes. In my Spider-Man pajamas.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Now, the question is, what does a company or a university do? What do they do with those ideas and so on? Xerox lost it completely. I mean, they showed them the stuff and there's a whole books that have been written about it.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, one thing that I think I'm realizing now I inherited from you consciously or unconsciously is that while I've been more of a risk taker with various aspects of my life than I probably should have been, but that I've always enjoyed being near people
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
um people who are really pushing the boundary on something like my love of like skateboarding but not just skateboarding but our friend anyway jumping the great wall of china building mega ramps in his yard i knew i wasn't going to do that but there's something about being adjacent to people like that yes that changes the way that you that i've approached things that um were more um
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
pedestrian, to make them less pedestrian. And maybe we'll return to this because I think that being around people who are real mavericks and real iconoclasts can be very beneficial, but it doesn't mean that you have to jump in and do what they're doing.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, I decided at one point to take huge risks. And as a matter of fact, my first piece of work after I got my job at Xerox PARC, which was supposed to work on some solid state physics or whatever, was I had this notion, this fantasy of Einstein in the patent office. So I would start working on things that were crazy.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
There's a whole notion in physics, which is called tachyons, particles that are faster than the speed of light. How do you say it? Tachyons. Tachyons. It's from the word tachyons, which means fast, swift, means particles that are faster than the speed of light, which is impossible. But some physicists were playing with that idea. And I became very interested in that.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
As a matter of fact, my first paper, out of graduate school was on tachyons, and I had the pride of getting the paper accepted in the top physics journal. His physics review letters? Physics letters, yes. And I remember my cousin Hector sending me a note or something saying, well, now I see the road to perdition, he said. But I was so proud of it.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I really thought that I was doing something incredible. And it had nothing to do with the work I was doing on a daily basis. And I published several papers on things that were very important to me.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
You have a lot of single-author papers. Yes, yes. This is something that is especially rare in biology, but you have a lot of single-author papers. Yeah, yeah. I was very proud of that. Yes, yes. I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. We should all know that proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. In fact, even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance to a considerable degree.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
It's also important that you're not just hydrated, but that you get adequate amounts of electrolytes in the right ratios. Drinking a packet of Element dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate amounts of hydration and electrolytes.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of both, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I'll also drink a packet of Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
There are a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. I like the watermelon. I like the raspberry. I like the citrus. Basically, I like all of them. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim an Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement spelled L-M-N-T.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Today's episode is also brought to us by ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN is a virtual private network that keeps your data secure and private. It does that by routing your internet activity through their servers and encrypting it so that no one can see or sell your data. Now, I'm familiar with the effects of not securing my data well enough.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Several years ago, I had one of my bank accounts hacked, and it was a terrible amount of work to have that reversed and for the account to be secured.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
In any event, let's talk about science. You're born in Argentina. As I recall, because once we had a conversation about it, you had a teacher, maybe it was in high school, who turned you on to physics, which became your field of choice. But prior to that, were you interested in different subjects?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
When that happened, I talked to my friends in the tech community, and what they told me was that even though you think your internet connection may be secure, oftentimes it's not, especially if you're using Wi-Fi networks such as those on planes, in hotels, at coffee shops, and other public places. Surprisingly, even at home, your data might not be as secure as you think.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
To make sure that what I described before would never happen to me again, I started using ExpressVPN. The great thing about ExpressVPN is that I don't even notice that it's running, since the connection it provides is so fast. I have it on my computer and on my phone, and I keep it on whenever I'm connected to the internet. With ExpressVPN, I know everything is secure.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
My web browsing, all my passwords, all my data, and of course, anything that's behind an account wall, like a bank account. It can't be tracked and no one can access or steal your data, which is terrific. If you'd like to start protecting your internet activity using ExpressVPN, you can go to expressvpn.com slash Huberman and you can get an extra three months free.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Again, that's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com slash Huberman to get an extra three months free. Can I ask you a question as a slight departure, but as something I've always wanted to ask you? And feel free to say no if it's not something that could be done in a couple of minutes. So many people hear Einstein's name, they think of the hair, they think of relativity.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Is it possible to explain relativity in a way that the everyday person can get it a little bit better than they perhaps understand it now?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yes. As a matter of fact, I learned not long ago that Einstein himself wrote a popular book on relativity that seems to be very, very accessible. Now, there are two aspects to relativity. I mean, there are two things that our brains were not made by evolution to understand intuitively. One is relativity, and the other one is quantum physics.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
We know we have intuitions, like an animal, for instance, if you see a lion running after a zebra and so on, the lion can actually calculate intuitively the speed at which he can move and so on. We can do the same. But if you start thinking about what happens when you get to near the speed of light, we have no intuition whatsoever. Time almost stops.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
There are all sorts of complicated things, length contract. I mean, it's a very complicated set of things, and that's why it's very hard to understand, although the math works. Then there is general relativity that is even worse because there is some kind of a warping of space-time that is responsible for gravitation. But I'll go into that in a second. The other one is quantum physics.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Our brains are not... Not only are they not wired to understand near the speed of light, because no one moves near the speed of light. I mean, we move at speeds that are fairly small compared to the speed of light. And quantum mechanics is at such a microscopic level that is below, basically, the level of a molecule. It's molecules, atoms, and inside the atom.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So it's very, very hard to visualize or even understand some of the very counterintuitive ideas like entanglement and also, you know. Relativity can be understood in the sense that you can explain certain things, but people say, well, how can counting work like that? And then you have to get into the math, okay?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But I think that—I took a course a few years ago on generativity, and I just— It's profound? Yeah, yeah. I wanted to learn it finally. It's profound, deep. And it makes you feel that this man, Einstein, he had help from a lot of people, but still, it's an incredible thing. I mean, you know, it's on a level of Beethoven's symphonies and Mozart's piano concertos.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But I'd like to assure you that even if you have zero background in physics, computer science, or mathematics, that entire discussion will be clear to you as to what those things are and even some of how they work.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I mean, it's something that comes into your head and you're able to do you know, through a lot of struggle. I mean, it took him years to do that. Okay, so, but it's profound.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I don't recall if you had an avid interest in academics or you just did it because you were supposed to prior to that teacher. Then we'll talk about him.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Now, when you say, can you explain, I mean, the point is Einstein one day discovered that if the speed of light is the speed of light, no matter how fast you move with respect to a beam of light, it's still moving at the speed of light. That means that the notion of simultaneity between two events is relative now.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So you and I might say, yes, now is 1.10, but if you are moving very fast with respect to me, instead of 1.10, you'll say something else, okay? Just because time for you and I are not synchronized. And that leads to all sorts of very interesting effects and practical effects, too, because from there comes the idea that mass and energy are the same. From there, nuclear weapons came out of that.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
All sorts of very interesting things, you know. And today, you know, we can even detect gravitational waves that are coming from almost the beginning of the universe. We can detect that. because of those theories they can calculate. So it's profound, yes. I mean, Einstein, I think, stands on... I mean, Newton, too, by the way.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I mean, you know, Newton, Einstein, I think they're top people, you know. But they talk to God, in a way, as they say.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yes, yes. I was always very interested in ideas and so on. Science at that time was a bit vague, but I read a lot of philosophy. I didn't understand much of what I read, but nevertheless, I kept reading it. I was interested in psychology. I was an avid reader. As a matter of fact, I embarrassed my father or actually made him disappointed for a birthday. I think I was 14 years old.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
We'll get back to God a little bit later. Yeah, it seems to me that even though it's very hard to grasp... It's worth asking for those of us that don't have an intuitive sense of relativity theory that is starting to peer into these things a little bit, trying to understand them. Do you think that it gives one's mind an ability to tap into forms of cognition that we don't normally think about?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
when we're looking at macro mechanics of the world around us, that objects fall down, not up. And, you know, a helium balloon goes up, okay, and you can learn something about helium. But it's all pretty straightforward with just a few simple bullet points.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Whereas when you get into quantum mechanics, yeah, it challenges the mind in a way that it really feels like for most people there's a cliff, and we just kind of go, okay. And obviously there's trust there, but for people that are curious about understanding the really tiny bits of the physical universe linked up with the really big bits of the physical universe, where's the best place to start?
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, OK, you're asking a very, very interesting question, which is, for most of us who are training physics, we learn how to calculate. We learn how to operate with these things. I just got a patent on using quantum mechanics for communication and so on. But it is still the puzzle is why does it work the way it works?
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So what I'm saying is you learn an operational way of doing these things operationally. I don't know what happens in your brain because I have ideas that come out of intuitions, not just formulas and equations, and yet I don't necessarily think I understand deeply why these things are the way they are. They are the way they are. And there's no reason why they shouldn't be like that.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Our brains, as I said before, they are essentially conformed to understand the macroscopic world, not high speeds and so on. physicists who work in general relativity, I don't, can do incredible calculations. Can you tell you what a black hole collapsing into another black hole would do? And, you know, they're using general relativity things, and so they can do it.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Now, what it does to your brain that allows you to operationally work with these equations and solve it and have new ideas It's something I don't understand. Namely, for instance, the example that I gave about quantum mechanics, that's a very simple one because I talk to a lot of people nowadays that work on this, is I can give you two dice, okay, you know, just dice.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
You can go to Mars and I stay here. The dice are, let's assume they are quantum mechanically entangled. I throw my dice, I see three, you got three. And we don't communicate. They're entangled. They go, this is faster than the speed of light. I throw again five, you get five. I do one, you get one. I mean, it's an amazing thing. What is the origin of the entanglement?
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
It's a property of quantum systems that they can get entangled. That's the word. And somehow what happens to your system affects mine, but doesn't affect it in the sense of signal. No signal. They're entangled. Now, this becomes rather— They're not entangled through other bits of the universe. No, no. They're totally independent? Totally independent, yes.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
They are entangled in the sense that quantum mechanically they started like this. Now, there are ways—I mean, there are trivial things. There's a famous example of the socks. Okay, so you take a trip and you took a pair of socks. Let's assume they are blue socks and so on. And then you open your bag and you—oh, I forgot one sock. So this is my blue sock.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So you know that there is a blue sock at home. So knowing that is a correlation, but that's trivial, right? I mean, you can do that with anything. In quantum mechanics, imagine that you look at a sock, but the sock is changing colors all the time. So now you observe it is red. The other one is red. I observe it is green. The other one is green. Okay, randomly.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So little bits of the universe are entangled.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I asked him to buy me the 12 volumes of Freud's Really? Yeah. And he said, what for? But I was very impressed with it. Of course, I couldn't even understand half of what these books had in them. So I was very interested in many things. And I must say to you that my interest in science, in particular physics, doesn't come from the standard thing that you see here in the United States mostly.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, some people, and a friend of mine who's a Buddhist claims that there is a whole religious or Buddhist way of saying that everything was entangled. Yes, originally, all atoms, all electrons, all elementary particles were entangled. Yes, because the universe started very, very tiny and everything was entangled. Okay, so you could imagine... that the universe is entangled.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So what happens here affects others. But the entanglement gets lost when perturbations and noise appears and so on. So we are not today entangled with, I don't know. I mean, we don't think that we- Some people think that- Yes, yes, yes.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
People are entangled. Yes, yes, yes. Well, that gets to a maybe- But that's a whole, yeah. That's a whole thing. That's poetry. That's poetry, exactly. There's another example that brings us to a very salient aspect of my childhood, which is chaos theory. Okay. Right. So I'll say it so you don't have to. You're one of the founders of chaos or certain aspects of chaos theory. We'll talk about that.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But, you know, for those of us that grew up in the 80s and 90s – I was born in 75 – you know, who saw the movie Jurassic Park. You know, there's a moment in that movie where I think Jeff Goldblum is explaining, you know, what is it, chaos theory, and maybe it was the butterfly flapping its wings in one location and impacting something someplace else.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
For the poets in the world, right, that was a very captivating example because I think the human brain can naturally understand that things around us, we can have an impact on them and they can have an impact on us. But the notion that a small insect thousands of kilometers away can impact something that's going on more adjacent to us, it seems outrageous sci-fi.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
you know, the notion that one thing impacts another and impacts another, that's pretty straightforward, right? There's just a dominoing of the physical world. Chaos theory is different. Yes. Okay. Could you explain chaos? Yes. And I'll just add one more thing just for context for you to, you know, sort of the paints in the palette.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Around the same time, I remember the book Chaos coming out and where... There was a lot of excitement around chaos and this was coming up. There was also a lot of discussion about fractals. The idea that when you zoom into things at a very, very small level, you start seeing some regularities. Now we know this about crystal structures, right?
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Like you could drop a water under a high powered microscope, you see structure there. It's not random. The angles are very consistent, at least around certain nodes, et cetera. So I think people love this idea that we have repeating patterns and numbers in nature, that things at a distance can impact us more closely. Like this is the kind of stuff that the non-physics brain can understand.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And it does enchant, right? We sort of poked at poetry. I love poetry. You love poetry. Yeah. I think it enchants because I think humans are naturally interested in how the randomness of life might not be as random as it appears. So what is chaos? Where does it exist in our lives? Not emotional chaos, and what is the relationship between fractals and chaos, if any?
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Okay, let me say first of all about why chaos is what it is, and it's not quantum, and there is quantum stories, and there's a quantum chaotic field, but I won't go into that. Chaos is a very interesting idea, which is, it flies against our intuitions.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Since the times of Newton, we know that if you give me the position and the velocity of the initial particle, I can use Newton's equations of motion to tell you where that particle is going to be anywhere with an incredible precision.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
When we launch a rocket, we want to go to the moon, we can calculate and predict exactly where that rocket is going to be after so many hours, after so many days, and so on. Actually, we use the equations of motion to predict that trajectory, and it's a precise trajectory.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Namely, I was not always a kid in math. I was not one of these people that can really do things very, very quickly and so on. But I was interested because I thought that physics was gonna compliment my attempt at understanding how the whole universe is put together. The philosophers were saying all sorts of things. I went to a very special school that I learned six years of Latin and so on.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
This is how Elon was able to capture the rocket with the chopsticks recently. Something of that sort.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, that's, yeah. Okay, now, the idea of chaos is, so that's, okay, it works. There are some cases where, let's assume, now I'm going to give you a simple example. So I take a ball, I put it on a billiard ball on a billiard table, I send it out, and at the moment I can know exactly the position of velocity, I can tell you exactly where it's going to go.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
that a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny difference in the initial position or velocity of that ball will take it very, very far from the other one, which is ridiculous. I mean, if I tell you that, you know, two cars start at exactly the same speed in the same position and one of them has a little more, you know, they'll stay parallel to each other.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
In some systems, and I'll tell you in a second, that actually those two trajectories diverge completely. So it's what we call sensitivity to initial conditions. That's what chaos is all about in classical mechanics. What is really weird about it is that it happens in systems that also undergo friction. Because let me give you an example that I used to teach chaos at Stanford for many years.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So imagine I give you a beaker full of molasses. And you take a very big ball, stainless steel ball, and you just throw it into the thing. Well, after a while, it will just drift with the thing. It goes so slow because, you know, friction slows it down, and it just goes. And now you throw another one from another altitude, and all of them are going to do exactly the same.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Some systems that are chaotic do exactly the opposite. Even though there is friction, everything tends to just slow it down. They just keep going far apart from each other. Amazing. Amazing thing. So that's chaos, okay? And I can tell you a little bit why I got so involved in this and the work we did.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Does chaos exist in every physical system? Mostly, yes, yes. Maybe even in neurons or the brain.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Oh, yes, absolutely. I mean, this is why I don't want to get into a controversy here about issues of whether we live deterministic lives or not. But, you know, if things that are a little bit random and so on, or even just a tiny difference in initial conditions can take you to very different outcomes. But this, we're not talking about many particles. We are talking two. Okay, so that's one.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Now, fractals is a different story that comes out of a guy who I knew very well, Benoit Mandelbrot, a very, very, very funny character, brilliant too, but very strange, who discovered that certain things are so similar that if you look at the coast of Britain, he used to say that, you look at the coast of Britain and you say, okay, tell me how long is the coast of Britain?
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
You go with a meter and you measure it. Now, suppose that the meter that you're using now can measure up to an inch. Well, you're going to get a different distance, even though you are adding the same, because there are all these little things in the coast of Britain that are essentially so similar that add a tremendous amount of length. That's what a fractal is all about.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
These are structures that are not just a simple line, but they have all these other things. He thought that it was a whole new geometry. As a matter of fact, and I tell you this because I knew Benoit very well, I met him through a talk I gave on chaos. He used to hang out with chaos physicists. He was a mathematician, brilliant man in many ways.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I was having dinner with him in Copenhagen in a restaurant. And the very pretty waitress came to us and so on and served us. And, you know, we were talking. He's a Frenchman. He spoke with a very heavy French accent. And so she says something. What are you doing here? He says, we're at a conference. But I'm not just at a conference. I'm a very special man, he said to her. And she said, how come?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And he says, do you know who Euclid was? And she says, sort of. She said, well, he was a Greek man who invented geometry. I said, oh, well, guess what? I am better than Euclid. I invented a different geometry. He said that? Yeah, he said that. Points to the waitress in Denmark that knew about Euclid. That was very funny. The Danes are smart. Yeah, OK.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
That was very funny that he would talk about it. So he would give a talk. And he would say, my equations can generate anything. Indeed, he could generate any patterns. So he would say, you want a mountain? Here goes a mountain. You see a mountain, beautiful graphs and so on.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And I had to read things like Kant and Cosmogonies and so on that really didn't mean much to me. But suddenly I started discovering that physics might be interesting. And I had a cousin, Hector, who was a physicist, a particle physicist already. I mean, he was living at that time in France. And so there was a little bit of other influence.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So self-similarity is a very powerful idea in physics because it allows you that if you know something at a certain scale, you can predict what's going to be at different other scales. And I use that. But chaos and fractals are not always the same. As he used to say, because he didn't like physicists, because we never liked his talks.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
We always said, okay, so you're telling us that, you know, things are... He used to say, I'm not interested in pulleys. I'm not interested in things that move things up and down, he used to say. He's thinking about elementary physics class. Something of that sort, yeah. But fractals are very interesting because these are self-similar structures. At all levels, they look the same.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
You look at them big, you look at small, they have the same type of geometric behavior. Chaos is all about dynamics, how things evolve in time. And the chaotic systems, they tend to diverge from each other for a long, long time. The man who invented the idea of the butterfly effect was a man called Ed Lorenz, who was a very famous meteorologist at MIT.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And he was solving the equations of the atmosphere, trying to predict the behavior of the weather. And he noticed, in these very old computers and so on, that sometimes he would get different behaviors. He thought there was something wrong about the computer. And he discovered that the only thing that was wrong was that the initial conditions that he was giving them was very, very tiny different.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And he would get different things. From there, he went into that. And there's a very beautiful... I mean, there are ideas that are very beautiful, like strange attractors and so on. I mean, we don't have to go into that. But so chaos is really a field that essentially explains why things that seem to be simply, you know, explained by classical physics tend to diverge from each other.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And they give rise to random outcomes. That's the important thing. You can use chaos... in order to generate random numbers. You can use chaos to generate random patterns. I've done that. And chaos exists at the quantum level and the macro level?
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Okay, so I was working on something, and I don't think it's interesting how I got into this, because I was doing something else, and suddenly I decided I was going to do this, and I really started going very fast at this. But then I had a very bright student, you met, Ted Hogue, and we decided, let's see if we can see chaos in quantum mechanics.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And we started doing it, and there were a couple of papers by the Russians actually showing that this was the case. And we discovered that it was not the case. We actually proved that quantum systems are not chaotic. There's some kind of interference between them and so on that makes them recur back and forth periodically.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Why do I find that reassuring, that if you get down to a small enough level that you can really predict what's going to happen as opposed to small perturbations leading to big differences in outcome. That was the whole point.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
We discovered that quantum mechanics, there are waves and interferences and so on that make the system recur, you know. As a matter of fact, I had quite an exchange with Dick Feynman about it, you know. When I met him, I went to give a talk at Caltech, and I was in his office, and he said, so what are you going to talk about? Because I don't want to waste my time. And I said, about chaos.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But my interest was in things that had to do with fairly abstract ideas. I cannot believe that at one point or the other I was very good in geometry class, being able to prove theorems. I mean, the teacher would just say, let's prove this. And I was somehow able to reason through and come to, you know, some proofs.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
He said, okay. I said, you know, some things are very, in particular in quantum mechanics. So I'm smiling because he was so sharp and so on. So he said, okay, give me the problem. And he said, what is it? I said, well, okay, I give you an electron, and you have it in a potential, and I give you a laser. And he says, is the laser inside or outside the apparatus, just like that? So I said outside.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So you turn on the laser, and I said, so what happens to the electron? And I knew he was going to give me the answer that was already in the literature, but he appeared to be thinking, stood up and walked around and was making all sorts of noises. And then suddenly he says, the energy grows linearly in time. I said, no, it doesn't. How do you know? I said, we measure it. I can show you and so on.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And, you know, he was very impressed because that means that there is no chaos, actually. Then he said, oh, you know why I got it wrong? I said, no, because I wasn't thinking in colors, only black and white.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Was he trying to be funny? Of course.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
He was always funny.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Let's talk about Feynman and Gell-Mann and Mandelbrot and all the rest as a collection for a moment. You know, one of the great... gifts of my life has been that you would talk about scientists. It really enchants me. I'm like, I'm so delighted when I hear it. Like I grew up hearing the stories about these scientists, right? And not athletes, right? Which is great, but scientists.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And it seems to me that every time you talk about another scientist, you both revere the work they did You see something unique about them. And something I learned very early on, and I've certainly internalized is, and forgive me because I'm assuming here, is that there's a certain aspect of, like... their quirkiness or something about them, like to take them seriously, but not too seriously.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Like I never learned to assume that because somebody was a Nobel Prize winner that they were perfect, for instance. Like you would tell me, you know, like Einstein had, you know, he was amazing. Like there's relativity, the patent office, all this stuff. And he like had all these problems with women. Or, you know, and I read the books, right?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Or, you know, or this person, I won't name names because these people are still alive, Silicon Valley, you know, like actually when you and I used to take walks when I was a postdoc, we used to see Jobs walking around, right? No feet, no shoes. He had feet, no shoes. And you would say, you know, I mean, like, he's amazing. Like this guy's brilliant.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But then we would chuckle about some of the Jobisms, you know? And so one thing that I learned was that scientists are just people. that these founders, the creators, they're just people. And they often have very challenging areas of their life as well. Like they're not perfect, they're not gods. Some of them have almost godlike access to the universe and understanding it.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But it seems to me that you hold people up for their contributions, but you never actually, thank goodness, put people on a pedestal to the point where you're like, this person is spectacular in every way. And I'm not saying you cut them down to size, but I learned very, and this has served me well in my life and now public facing,
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Or on Twitter, like if I make a mistake and someone comes at me, it's somebody that I respect. I go, oh, but then I remember like this person has a lot of issues in certain domains of their life. So, you know, to realize that, you know, like we're all human, like this notion of like, like none of us, none of us are gods. Right. And yet there are people like Feynman.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So I think that I was very interested in ideas and not necessarily in the very concrete aspects of science at that time.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
like Gell-Mann, like Einstein, who have almost supernatural levels of ability. So what's that about? How do you hold knowledge, insight, and stature in your mind alongside the humanness, the inherent flawed nature of all of us?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
During today's discussion, we also talk about a life of science, that is, what it is to spend one's life in curiosity, in trying to understand the universe around us and how to understand ourselves. Indeed, today we also talk about neuroscience, how the brain works, and the different sorts of questions that I do believe everybody asks. whether you're a scientist or not.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, okay, it's complicated. There are many ways to think about it. In some of these names, for instance... These people are built into giants by the media too. I mean, you know, Feynman, I mean, if you go to Quora and so on, everybody's asking, you know, what did Feynman do? What was he wearing? And so on. As if, you know, he was a god. I mean, obviously what he did in physics.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
He, and I interrupt myself here because he really worked very hard, very hard, according to Gelman in particular, to creating a myth about himself. He worked very hard. When I met him, I can't even tell you the anecdotes. I only met him for an hour, but he was obviously the kind of man that wanted to leave an impression with you.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Can I ask you a question about early schooling? So if I remember correctly, you were born naturally left-handed. Yes. They forced you to learn to write with your right hand. Yes. You went to a very strict school. Yes, yes. Like military levels of strictness.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
R-rated and X-rated anecdotes.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Exactly. But I remember the good one was that, you know, I was going to give the colloquium and he said, should I come? I said, I think you should come. And then he said, well, then I'm going to give you a piece of advice. Do not look at me because if you look at me during your talk, you're going to get confused and so on, you know? And actually, that's exactly what happened.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I started, you know, the colloquium at Caltech, you know, the marine boot camp of science. And there I am starting to talk. And suddenly I said, instead of saying the next hour, I said something like in the next week or something or so, because there he was. And then he started saying, you know, like, look elsewhere, elsewhere, you know, that kind of guy, you know.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
For anyone who hasn't lectured, there's a tendency sometimes when one is going fast to fill in without thinking. It's just something that one learns. I mean, I've had to learn it the hard way when we missed it in the recording and this kind of thing. It's a humbling moment. But yeah, I think that, well, Feynman would have been canceled by, by the standards of the last few years.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I took even my father once to a lecture he was giving in San Francisco. And he was giving a beautiful lecture to, I don't know, get some award for teaching and so on. And suddenly a bunch of women walked into the front of the big room, you know, and they started coming.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Because it turns out that in one of his lectures, he said something like, you know, if you do it this way, you're as bad as a woman's driver. As Feynman said. And then all these women were saying things. And then he said, I love women. They're all smart. He was very clever.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So he would have lost his job by the standards of recent years.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But regardless of that, because I really want to go back to this issue, people like Mary Gell-Mann I mean, to me, he was the most intimidating person I've ever met. I mean, now eventually I got to know him because he liked what I was doing. And as a matter of fact, he and I organized a workshop, an incredibly luxurious place in France, at the estate of Madame Schlumberger, one of the oil people.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Actually, it was an incredible meeting that he and I organized. So I got to know him a little bit personally. And all he was complaining at that time is he couldn't get a date. He was a widow and he wanted to, you know, women were intimidated by him too.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
As I recall, because I remember meeting him when I was a kid and we both shared a love of birds, but he was perhaps one of the world's most obnoxious people. Right.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But you impressed him. As a matter of fact, I still, you know, I don't know if you want me to remind you of this because we had two stories there. Your mother and I were taking a hike in Aspen and we saw a bird that looked incredibly complicated and so on. So we looked at the bird. The next day we went to him because he loved birds, as you know. And I said, I saw a most unusual bird.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
He said, describe it. So I did it. And he gave me the name in Latin of the bird. And then he said, that's the most common bird in the Bay Area of California. As a matter of fact, you should see it when you pick up the newspaper next time you're there. And indeed, two weeks later, I went to pick up the New York Times and there was the bird. But... At the same time, I said, Andrew likes birds.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Almost, yes, yes. This is a very interesting type of education. They have it in France. It's called the lycée in France. And this is a very special school in Argentina. It was actually founded in the 1500s by the Jesuits. And my father went to that school. And so he wanted me to go there. And my brother went there, too.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And he asked you, what is your favorite bird? And you said the rainbow lower keet. Still is. And he said, this kid knows. This kid knows, he said.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I know my birds.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Huh?
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I know my birds.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
No, no, but it's amazing. I never heard, you know, because if you could have said a parrot, he would have not been very interested, okay? So, but he was intimidating, very intimidating. And he was nasty too when he wanted to be. So he enjoyed the power he had. I was a member of the board of the directors of the Aspen Center, so we had to decide what programs we had every summer.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And he would come to me and say, whom do you want me to insult today? He had all sorts of very funny names for all sorts of physicists and so on.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
The downside of people like that in science, because I've known some too, there's a very famous neuroscientist now in his 70s who has a Nobel Prize, who also is... known for generating anecdotes about himself. And in recent years, because of political correctness, wokeism, and so forth, tends to do that less, because they have sort of a trucker's mouth.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Brilliant guy, but this guy known for being outrageous and trying to create tales about themselves. This is something that scientists do. Yeah, right, right. In order to maintain their legacy.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, also to feel good about themselves. By the way, I mean, Gell-Mann, I mean, I work with him. It was incredible, I mean, you know, and the way he would interrupt people and so on. And there are two things I can tell you that are interesting. Once he was announcing some new results. He was working on this whole thing on quarks and other things, and actually it was a string theory.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And he announced a seminar, and everybody goes into the garden, you know, and the seminars are nice. I need to remind the audience perhaps here that the Aspen Center for Music was right next to it, the tent they were rehearsing. So the seminar was supposed to start at 3, and there's Gilman comes with all his notes under his arm. He always had notes, walking, pacing, and nothing happened.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And suddenly, they were rehearsing the Beethoven's 15th symphony, which just says, ta-ta-ta-ta. And then you heard the sound, and then he started. I will now tell you about a new theory of how the universe works. That's the way he spoke.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So what strikes me is that these people take themselves very seriously. Absolutely. Absolutely. Do you think that's important in life?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I don't. I like to, I mean, as you know, I like to have a good sense of humor about myself and be self-deprecating. I think some people, you know, have issues and they do that. I mean, it all depends on how you, you know, see things.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Metina. Metina makes loose leaf and ready to drink yerba mate. Now, I've often discussed yerba mate's benefits, such as regulating blood sugar, its high antioxidant content, the ways it can improve digestion, and its possible neuroprotective effects. It's for all those reasons that yerba mate is my preferred source of caffeine.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And in six years of a very strict education, mostly humanistic, I learned Greek and learned Latin. I learned immense amounts of history, which I loved. And there were other courses in French and so on. In French, we had to memorize incredibly long poems that we had to recite.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I also drink yerba mate because I simply love the taste. And while there are a lot of different choices out there of yerba mate drinks, my personal favorite far and away is Matina. It's made of the highest quality ingredients, which gives it a really rich, but also a really clean taste. So none of that tannic aftertaste.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
In fact, given how amazing Matina tastes and their commitment to quality, I decided to become a part owner in the company earlier this year. In particular, I love the taste of Matina's canned zero sugar cold brew yerba mate, which I personally helped develop. I drink at least three cans of those a day now. I also love their loose leaf matina, which I drink every morning from the gourd.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So I add hot water and sip on that thing, and I'll have some cold brews throughout the morning and early afternoon. I find it gives me terrific energy all day long, and I'm able to fall asleep perfectly well at night, no problems. If you'd like to try Matina, you can go to drinkmatina.com slash Huberman.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Right now, Matina is offering a free one pound bag of loose leaf yerba mate tea and free shipping with the purchase of two cases of their cold brew yerba mate. Again, that's drinkmatina.com slash Huberman to get a free bag of yerba mate loose leaf tea and free shipping. Let me ask you about the... about this.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So further down my list of things I want to talk to you about is that you've always loved, it's clear from a young age, high level concepts, deep concepts, order in the universe, working on hard problems. You just filed another patent. I mean, as long as I've known you, you've been pursuing some new area of knowledge or implementation of knowledge.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And yet you, like your father, I know you delight in everyday things. I mean, since I was a kid, you've taken a walk after dinner. You've biked to work if you can that day because of the weather. You love a really good espresso, a really good meal. The high and the low are checked off boxes for you.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
That's different, I think, than the way most people think about scientists, especially theoreticians. Theorists, excuse me. Which one is it, theoreticians or theorists? Theorists, they say, yeah. Theorists. That we assume the academics that are always somewhere else, like they're up here, they're not grounded, they're not feet on the ground, but you like everyday things. Oh, absolutely.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
You very much like where we're going to eat dinner tonight is every bit as important as this conversation about relativity.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Absolutely. I think that there is a myth that sometimes gets perpetuated at universities. My first meeting with my advisor when I got to University of Pennsylvania, he said, I want you to know one thing, you're going to live like a monk. I said, what does that mean? No fun, nothing, you're going to work. I want you to work. You're getting paid to do something. I was so scared.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Do you still remember some of them?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And then I told him that on weekends I had to escape to New York City to take a walk on Central Park and look at nice things. You know, I always enjoyed the good things of life. And, you know, at that time, I couldn't afford them. But that doesn't mean that I didn't, you know, enjoy them. And I do believe that I inherited this from my father, a tremendous enjoyment of life in general.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Because sometimes early memories are embedded so deeply.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yes, I am very physical and tactile about things. I like to surround myself with things that are beautiful. I enjoy, as you said, good meals and the daily things of our life. I'm not just living in some stratosphere and not being able to, you know, enjoy a meal I'm having and so on. No, the opposite. And, yes, in that sense, I am very much like that. And, you know, Mary is the same way.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yes, yes. And my brother and I sometimes tell each other some of the pieces of these poems.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And so that's why we enjoy that. Your wife. Yeah, my wife, sorry. Yes, we really enjoy, you know, she in particular being Danish, you know, they have this idea of slow eating and enjoying the good things of life. And I'm very much like that. Yes, very much. I don't feel guilty about it. You know, if I can afford something.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Nor should you.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Huh? Nor should you. Well, there is a certain aesthetic component to science and the idea that they sell you that, you know, Einstein didn't care about anything. Actually, if you look at the negotiations that Einstein had with the Institute for Advanced Studies for salaries, you'll see that he really cared a lot about these things, too.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yes, yes.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I'll just say something right now to foreshadow what will likely happen several times throughout today's discussion, which is anytime that my father is in the presence of his brother, my uncle, Carlos, they start laughing about jokes that they've been telling over and over back and forth with one another since they were a young kid.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Oh, so our notion of him is just kind of like it was just science and he had no interest in material things. Right, right.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yes. I had an uncle, actually, Hector's father. You know, there was a branch of the family that was very much into culture. They had beautiful collections of paintings and so on. And once I was, what, 14 or so, and I remember at a party, we had big social parties in my parents' house, and he was lecturing me that I should never care about anything but truth and concepts and so on.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I was a little bit scared. Yeah. I wanted to enjoy life as well, okay? So it was a little bit complicated. No, no, I enjoy everything, of course. I think I got out of my father mostly, yes. My mother was a little more ascetic in a way. But yes, the tiny little things of life are what makes one's life, you know? I'm slowly starting to get that.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I think I've been a little like rabid about my interests almost to an obsessive level to the point where I've sometimes overlooked like how many opportunities for just like lovely daily interactions I have. I try. but I feel like I've just been chasing the carrot of knowledge. Like I love doing what I do. I've always done that, you know, but.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, but you have to be careful indeed. I, you know, as you know, I meditate and for many years and so on and being in the present and being able to just, you know, be there and nothing else is the tremendous source of satisfaction and calms me down and so on.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
When did you start that?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, I started actually out of the discovery, I mean, a trivial thing that many people have. I discovered that every time my blood pressure was taken by the doctor, it was just going through the roof. You know, it's called a white coat phenomenon or something of that sort. And I got very, very upset about it because I tried to control it. And it got worse and worse and worse.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And they told me to do one. So I want one or the other. I have a friend, a colleague more than a friend, who's a Buddhist, who started telling me about, have you tried, first of all, biofeedback? I tried for a year. I did biofeedback. And then he started telling me about meditation. So one day, actually, he's a physicist as well. He was visiting me in my lab. And he said, let's do it.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I did a session with him on meditation. I couldn't believe it. My hands suddenly were warm and felt incredibly nice. So I decided that I really wanted to learn how to do it. And I started doing it at a time when I truly needed it because I realized that without being aware, I was anxious. Like, for instance, I would see myself walking down the street holding my fists this way.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
That's not a very relaxed way of living, okay? So I really started doing this meditation on a fairly continuous basis, and I really enjoy it. And it's very important, as a father, I say this to anyone, too, that you have to enjoy life. I mean, pursuing these things, you know, eventually, what, you know... The value is in the pursuit, not in achieving them anyhow.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So just the mere mention of his brother will bring a bit of a smile and a chuckle to both of our
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So you might as well pursue many things at the same time. I mean, a good meal eaten properly can be very, very nice too.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I love that about you. It's something I'm working on. I remember when I, along those lines, I remember when I was in graduate school, we published a paper and then we published a second paper in science. And I remember thinking like, this is like such a proud moment, a first author paper in the journal science. And I told you, and you said,
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, enjoy it and just be aware that by tomorrow you'll be worried that you'll never do it again. Exactly.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And fortunately, we published in Nature and a few other journals a bunch of times after that. But you also warned me about the postpartum. of post-excitement, like something great happens. You know, at that time, we, as a field of neuroscience, didn't really understand dopamine dynamics, but now we do.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
What you were describing is this trough in dopamine that we get a day or two after some big event. Yes. Typically postpartum is associated with the birth of a child, but it could be, you know, getting a degree or a great party or a paper in science or nature, first author paper. And you said... a couple of days from now, you're going to feel low and you just have to wait.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yes, yes. So I learned a lot of French. And also my parents decided, my mother mostly, that I had to learn French and English. And I went to Allianz Francaise, where for five years I went there. I was essentially the only boy in the class, which was very nice in a way. And in order to graduate, essentially, you know, to be fluent in French.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And I'll never forget what you said. You said, just go back to what inspired the first project, pick a different problem. It'll happen again. And the second time it happened, I was like, he was right. It happened again. And again, and again, I know I haven't had an infinite number of those papers in those journals, but I learned about the dopamine dynamics associated with pursuing a goal.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And then you get the thing and you're very excited and then you feel the drop.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yes, yes. And that I think that is something that even ancient philosophers knew about it. The Buddha, many, you know, the Greeks and so on, this idea that the things we pursue They are ephemeral in a way, in the way the feelings that they elicit in us, you know. And I think that you're right.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And there is also another tendency one has to try to avoid, which is you're successful in something and you continue doing exactly the same thing because, you know, by now you know how to do it with your hands tied.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And I always felt that I want to go elsewhere. And, you know, I have sort of a reputation for changing feels. And, you know, I don't do that in order for others to be puzzled by it. It's just that I'm curious and I want to have a feeling again that like falling in love, you know, the new thing, you know, is nice at the beginning.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But eventually, whatever you're doing, it becomes, you know, trite and so on.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, let's talk about that because after Chaos, which brought a lot of, you know, I remember we had reporters in our house and there was like a TV and the book by Jim Glick and then you switched to something completely different. Yes, yes. And you got into computer science.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah. Well, computer science is a fun— Computers. Computers. What happened was that a lot of the success that we had was because I was at PARC. We had phenomenal computer facilities there, things that we could visualize at a time very few people could do. And so—and one of them, actually, someone suggested I get a patent.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
There is a patent for the chaos that sometimes people have in T-shirts that actually we discovered for the first time with guys from UC Santa Cruz, with Jim Crutchfield and so on. He was actually very instrumental in getting me into chaos and so on. But what happened was, okay, so we did this, we did quantum. And then one day I said, okay, so what do I do now?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Okay, well, you can go and publish one paper after that in chaos. I mean, you can produce 10 PhDs with this. But then I said, why don't I do the opposite? I'm using computers to help me in the physics. Why don't I use the physics to study computers? Well, that's an interesting idea, but you know, I mean, so why don't you do that? So what happened to me
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I was at a meeting on chaos in Copenhagen, and I couldn't sleep one night. And I had a book called The Computer-Led Brain by John von Neumann, perhaps someone that was a true genius. I don't know if you've heard of him. He invented computers. He was a phenomenon at all levels, and he was part of the Manhattan Project.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
He was perhaps one of the most brilliant people who ever existed, at least that we are aware of. I mean, he was at the Institute for Advanced Studies for Neumann. There are all sorts of anecdotes about him. He had a photographic memory. You could give him a page of a phone book. He would look at it, close it, and then he would recite the phone numbers from bottom to top. Totally useless skill.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, but he was a genius, a genius, true genius. He invented computers. He invented game theory in economics. Useful skill. Yeah, exactly. Okay. In any event, so he wrote a very little book called The Computer and the Brain. No equations, nothing. And one night, 4 o'clock in the morning, I cannot sleep. I get down, you know, it was summer, so the sun was still setting.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But in the special school I went to, the discipline was very strict, very strict. You know, we were supposed to do things you don't do in the United States. The moment the teacher walks in, everybody stands up. And if you're late and standing up, you're just kicked out of the classroom and things of that sort.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And I went there to read it. And I said, this is what I'm going to do. I don't know anything about brains, but I can imagine, you know, if the brain is like a computer, I could do something like that. But I also want to apply some of what I know to these things. And the first thing that occurred to me was to start looking at the computer network we had at PARC.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
These computers were communicating with each other as we nowadays, we know it as the internet and so on. So there were many, many aspects of this. And I decided that because I was very influenced by one or two students that were very much into economics and libertarian ideas and so on, and one of them had taken two courses in econ at Caltech.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So we decided to start looking at this as a market where computers essentially buy and sell programs to execute and their machines and so on. So we started really doing what we call the ecology of computation. It was a big effort, which married economics with artificial intelligence and computer. But it became a big thing. And so I became, again, it's like falling in love again. It's a new field.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I thought it was great.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
The discovery process of falling in love is half the fun.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Absolutely. Yeah. And I also was able to understand, I mean, there is a lot of formalism in economics and some of it is really, I mean, sort of academic. But there are some ideas that are very profound to the extent that some people consider me an economist sometimes because I think in terms of utility rewards and risk and all this stuff.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And as a matter of fact, a lot of the work I'm doing now in resource allocation in networks comes from ideas from economics.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
When you go into a new field, in order to learn about the field, is that mainly through talking to people in the field, reading books? Both, both. And it doesn't strike me that you have ever tried to ingratiate yourself into any field. It's not like you're trying to be a member of the field. Like you go in as an observer and a learner.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yes, I need to say this. I don't think that many people have said if I stayed in one field, I would have done much better in terms of reputation and so on. As a matter of fact, I can tell you an anecdote that is... You mean like awards and stuff? Yeah, like for instance, not long ago, I was already doing computers after chaos and so on.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I won't name the person, but a very good physicist professor at Berkeley came into my office and said, Bernardo, we have an issue here. I said, what is it? that your name for membership in the National Academy of Science is coming up. I said, oh, that's nice. He said, well, there's a problem. You're not writing papers in physics. You're writing papers in computer science.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But it was a lovely experience in many ways when I reflect on it because it gave me a humanistic education that has been incredibly useful in my career. Most people don't realize that. I mean, I tend to think of things in a very broad context and it's because of the education I had. Okay. So, and I loved history of Rome and I'd learned to recite things in Latin.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And, you know, we need a physicist because otherwise the chemists will get that job. The physicists don't. Yeah, welcome to academia. Yeah. So I said, well, you want me to do? He said, well, can you perhaps write one or two more papers on this so we can show? I said, no, I cannot do that. I can't.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, isn't there a famous story about Feynman and being elected to the National Academy? He refused to. Yes. Right. I think they told him he was in the National Academy. And then he said, well, what do I do? And they said, well, you elect in other members. And he said, I quit.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, yeah. So in any event, I never became a member of the National Academy. But you never sought prizes. No, I mean, I would have liked to get them, why not? I mean, you know, I'm not, it's not that I said they are meaningless, but there was nothing that I could do about it.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And I, since I was not, as you said, I was always a little bit of a, always moving on to the next thing, never staying long enough, going to these meetings where by now you heard it all, you know, over and over and over again. So, yeah.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, I mean, I have to say that, you know, like, I mean, as you know, I still have my position at Stanford and teach, I'm involved in a little bit of research. But one of the great advantages I had is that all my advisors died or killed themselves. So I was orphaned in science. And so there was never an expectation from my advisors that I do the next thing because they were dead.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So I thought about that. But I remember when I launched the podcast or started going on podcasts, I remember you being a little bit concerned. You're like, what are your colleagues gonna think?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And I think at that point, the way that science was going and the structure of academia relative to what my needs in life were, and just a passion to wanting to do something new, I put a lot of thought to the fact that you've changed fields many times. And I just felt absolutely compelled to get into science communication. And there was no stopping that. But I have to thank you.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
A lot of the reason I was able to take the step to do the podcast, in addition to being supported by Lex Friedman's suggestions and a lot of help from others, Joe Rogan and others, but is that, I was like, well, that's what you're supposed to do. When you hit a point where what you're doing isn't as compelling, you wait for the thing that draws you forward.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Seems like you were always drawn forward. I was thinking of carrot and stick. It's not like you disliked where you were. It's that there was some carrot that you identified and you go towards the carrots.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And also something very, the other day, my wife was actually mentioning. I've been, in a sense, an orphan. I never had mentors. It's very interesting. Except this, frankly, not terrific graduate advisor. He was not my mentor, really. I mean, you know, he didn't even want me to do the things that I wanted to do.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So I never had someone who was whispering, Bernardo is the guy to you should be considering for this or that. I mean, I had the fortune to really get to the top of many of these fields and I'm interacting with the top people. I mean, we talk about Feynman, there are many very famous people that I respect immensely that I met When I was in France, you know, as you know, I was teaching there.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I met people that are brilliant and so on. I felt treated with tremendous amount of respect as a colleague and so on. But I never had mentors in that sense. And also, as I said, I am a little bit restless. I am very curious about everything. And so, you know, sometimes I see something and I say, oh, there's an opportunity to do something interesting.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I think that the issue of being curious is extremely important. And it's interesting because I reflect a lot on, say, my father. My father was an immensely curious person, but all about details. He never liked abstractions of any kind. He was very proud that he went to the same school I went, and the only course he flagged was philosophy. because he said it doesn't make any sense.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And so it was very, very, I enjoyed that very, very much. My brother didn't actually, and so. Well, you two are very different.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Now, perhaps he was right about that. You know, sometimes you wonder about what these philosophers talk about. A couple of months ago in Denmark, we were invited, my wife and I, to a dinner with philosophers talking about artificial intelligence. I thought that these people were, they didn't really know what was going on. But nevertheless, Yes, I am curious and sometimes I move on to things.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And I feel that the reward, the internal reward you get from doing something new and interesting and exciting is much better than a recognition that someone will come and say, you know, whatever. I mean, don't misunderstand me. I will not say no to a recognition. But it's not really that I do this in order to get that. That's not me at all.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, I mean, the whole thing is sort of, It brings my thinking back to the early discussions about other students are not interested in physics, you're interested in physics. Other people are smoking a lot of weed and partying. No, like you said, you've not had mentors. That's one area in which you and I have been very different. I've always attached myself to mentors, many of them, many of them.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I have great, great adoration for Carlos, but you two are very different. And along those lines, I was just about to ask or mention, and some of our Argentine and South American listeners generally, and perhaps even European listeners, might be shocked and perhaps disappointed to learn that you're one of the few Argentines that I know who doesn't care much for the game of football, soccer.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, there might be a psychological reason too. Yeah. Yeah. that you need this, or needed at one point or another, these parental type figures. I said, yeah, there might be. I wish I had them. Don't misunderstand me. As a matter of fact, I mean, my influence on my students, I produce more than 15 PhDs. It's also strange because none of them stayed in physics.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Now, the department at Stanford was not too happy with that. It's not that I told them not to, but they all smelled that, you know, I was doing something else. I mean, you know, from computers, I became very aware of what was going on very early on with the Internet. As you know, I started doing all this stuff on social long before anyone was doing it, economics of attention and all that stuff.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And many of the students the other day, I found one of them. I met one, Lada Damich, who, you know, I think you— This is early at Google. No, she went to Facebook. And the other day she wrote me a note. I was so lucky that I met you. She was going to do a thesis on I don't know what, solar, collecting solar.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, you've collected some pretty interesting students. We won't name names other than Lars, but some of them are very well-known people in the tech industry now. Oh, yeah. And I think that it seemed like the people that would gravitate towards you. It's interesting, your laboratory is off campus. So anyone that decides to be off campus is already making a choice.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
They don't want to be part of the standard culture. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So let me I want to get back to this issue of like Internet and Silicon Valley. I recall it was the early 90s. So it'd be like 89, 90, 91. Remember, I had this this girlfriend, Gretchen, remember, and her dad was the editor of Guitar Player magazine.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And I'll never forget, he told me, he said, you know, it's going to be all about multimedia. Remember that? No one talks about multimedia. He said, your television is going to be, your computer is going to be, your stereo is going. I mean, he was right, right? He was basically, everything was going to be synthesized into common devices. And we now know that that borne out to be true.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But at what point... did you decide that things like computers were mainly going to be a route to industry and not to academia? This is really important, I think, for people to understand because Right now, it's kind of happening in biomedical sciences. But you see this at Stanford.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
People get degrees in computer science, but not to become computer science professors sometimes, but really so that they can go into industry. So how do you see nowadays, like for people that are interested in science or technology, do they need to go to graduate school? Like is a PhD useful anymore?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Peter Thiel says that you shouldn't even get a bachelor's. I think that's what he, you know.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I mean, I have great respect for Peter. Great respect for Peter. There are a lot of things that are easier to say when you're already a billionaire. No, no, no. I know.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Like Steve Jobs saying, you know, passion is everything.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Right. I mean, necessary but not sufficient. Right, right, right.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Necessary but not sufficient. So I think that what's happening today, I mean, technology, we are going through a technological revolution. There's no doubt about it. We used to learn about the printing press, and now it's the same thing with computers. I still remember, and I, you know... This is amazing because, you know, today is so obvious.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I mean, people didn't know much what was going on, apart from everything. One night we were having for dinner, I remember, you know, Emmanuel Mignot, who was, you know.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
They discovered the orexin-hypercretin relationship. That's the cause of narcolepsy is a mutation.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, he was a friend of ours and his wife. They were at home at our dinner, and I was telling them. I was telling them that you could go to a computer and go through the – Louvre Museum in Paris. And they say, what are you talking about? And so we finished dinner and we all drove to park at night.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And I turn on my computer and there was a man, I still remember his name, something Pioch was the last name. He had gone taking pictures of every painting at the Louvre and put them online so you could just navigate Through the Louvre. Today is obvious, trivial. At that time, they couldn't believe it. There you are in Palo Alto on an evening going through all the rooms of the Louvre.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
They just couldn't understand what was going on. What year was this? I don't remember.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
It doesn't seem to concern you much at all. No, no.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Must have been like 94? When the web started coming, you know, that was right before. We all had to get email in college in the final year of 97. So it must have been somewhere around like 94, 95. Something of that sort.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Right before, right at the time Andreessen made the web available to everybody, basically, you know, Netscape. You know, so in any event, so it was an amazing thing. It was amazing. Now, all these developments were really done in companies, not necessarily in academia. Okay, that is an interesting point.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
The reasons for that are sort of interesting, I think. I've reflected on that because my own wife likes to watch soccer. I mean, she's Danish. She likes the European tournaments. I never liked mob behavior. I never liked this whole passionate involvement in these things. I don't know why.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And I think that today, an immense amount of the advances that we see in biotechnology, in computers, in everything are essentially done I would say for profit by companies. I think social networks, we started doing social networks at a time when no one even thought of doing it.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I used to say I do social science with a capitalist because sociologists used to study the behavior of five widows in some Norwegian village and write a paper. We could look at 150,000 people. How did they visit this site or that site and predict how we were able to predict behaviors. So I think that today everybody knows that that's the case and the same thing with artificial intelligence.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But for a kid in high school or kids in college or kids in, I mean, is it worth getting a graduate education? Well, it all depends on what you want to do. I mean, law, medicine, you need the professional degree. I mean, these are ultimately professional degrees, so you need the training. I don't want a surgeon that didn't go to medical school.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Okay, but the danger is, and I remember a very, very bright guy I had in my team, you don't want to become a blue-collar worker. See, what I'm saying is the following. Being a hacker or being able to deal with software, it was an incredibly profitable profession. Now you have these large language models that can actually program for you. You need to write a program.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
You go to ChatGDP and he'll write it for you. So suddenly, you know, if you don't have a set of talents, a way of imagining things, of doing something, you become basically just someone that just hacks for so many dollars an hour. Now, it's true that they can give you options. If the company does well, you get rich and so on. But I still believe that you need some contextual cultural part to this.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Questions like, where do we come from? Is there a God? What is our use or purpose in the universe? And how is it that we can ponder these super high level abstract questions about how we got here and what our purpose is and how things work at the quantum level, tiny, tiny bits of things that we can't even see. And at the same time to lead an everyday life that is meaningful and joyful.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Now, I personally believe that humanities and all sorts of other things are very important, and to understand where is your cultural environment, where are you coming from, and where is this society going is important. But on the other hand, as you said, you can just finish high school and start hacking and become very good at it, and it doesn't require much more than that.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Do you think the examples of like Zuck, Elon, and others, you know, going from, you know, essentially departing standard education to start companies? Do you think they've served, I mean, certainly not talking about the companies, but do you think those examples are good examples for people to internalize or are they just, are they unicorns?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, I think that they are unicorns and you have to be very careful. We only talk about the success stories. We don't go and interview the guy that is loading a landscaping truck because his startup didn't go anywhere. Okay. So it is a very, our tendency to see these people as heroes and to try to imitate them is a very dangerous one, I think.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Now, that doesn't mean that you should not be working on the things you care and gamble. But these are the guys who played a lottery and won. Do you remember there were many other social websites before, you know, Facebook? And they all died. And Facebook could have died too. I mean, Zuckerberg might disagree with me, but, you know, it could have died. Okay.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I was never, you know, able to understand it to the point that I never went to a soccer game till the week before I left for the United States. My brother insisted that I had to go to a soccer game. And this is sort of embarrassing, but at one point or the other, it's someone, you know, there was a good goal. And so I stood up and said, this is great.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And, you know, all these things are like that. Apple, when almost under, they brought Steve Jobs again, and the guy put them onto, you know, onto the stratosphere. And the same thing with Elon Musk. He's a high-risk taker. And so far, every time he flips the coin, he comes the right way. But to say, I want to be like him, you have to be very careful and to calculate the odds, okay?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So when you say this, how many of these kids really make it? I mean, it's a very complicated thing. So I think that to have a strong background in something will help you when suddenly the field switches from being a programmer and making a lot of money to suddenly programming a dime a dozen or becoming a technician, basically.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I mean, I had a perfectly thriving career as a lab scientist with grants and private funding and a bunch of other things, publishing regularly. And when I decided to switch to this, were you worried?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
No, because I saw it as a very slow departure from what you were doing. And I saw the success very early on. I mean, I realized that you were essentially satisfying two things that are very important to you. You like to explain things. You're incredibly good at explaining things since you were a little kid. okay, you were always explaining everything to people and you have a talent.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Let's face it. I mean, you know, I'm not saying this because I want to flatter you. I really believe that. Everybody says that. The success of your podcast is a success at explaining things in ways that people understand. They don't have to go and buy a book on neuroanatomy to understand what you're saying. So I knew that this was a path. Now, I didn't realize how incredible the path was.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And there was a lot of randomness in it. For instance, you started podcasting at a time when very few people were podcasting. If you start today... the story would be a very different one.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
The timing was the pandemic. People were home.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
They were listening to podcasts. And this brings something to me that many times people have asked me about me. What makes me do what I do? I believe in the idea of walking on beaches with very few footprints. When you go into a crowded field, it's a mess.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So many of the times that I move into something else is when I realize that there's a mob scene of scientists working at this and the chances of doing something interesting... are very, very small, okay? The internet has allowed information to go everywhere. A guy in Zambia can actually read the same things that I read here. So it's very hard to compete against such a crowd.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And many people are brilliant and many of them are smart. So you started something very early on, and you were lucky that you chose a field that resonates with the needs of people. There are also other people who do podcasting and it goes nowhere. So I think that I never worried. I actually was elated to see the trajectory of your podcast.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And the only thing is you have a tenure position, and that is a nice safety cushion if everything else were. Today, you're beyond the reach of justice, as I say. So no problem. You don't need it, in a sense, unless you need it.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And I turned out I was on the wrong side of the audience, of the audience. People got very almost violent with me, you know. So, yeah, soccer to me is something that I watch, but I'm not passionate about. Right. Yeah, I never really felt that it was that interesting. Although, you know, I was in a rowing team. I learned boxing. I did a lot of sports.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
No one's beyond the reach. of justice. But yeah, I still maintain my tenured position. I spoke to my chairman in ophthalmology this morning and I'll teach this spring or in the fall.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And it's good for you too, to really interact with young people and to hear what they care and so on. But I never worried in the sense that I thought that you have enough talent to do well and you chose to do it. I mean, I remember during COVID at the beginning, we were at your sister's house and you were drawing all these little diagrams.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I used to put my drawings.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, yeah. And so I think you put them on Twitter or something of that sort. And it was the beginning of something much more interesting and important. And so I never worried about it. I think that all of us, the whole family and those who know you are sort of impressed at the explosive success of this story here. You know, your podcast is amazing. I mean, I don't have to tell you.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
That's what reflects a kind of an early compulsion more than anything of... Learn and teach. Learn and share.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, but there's also, I need to say something. The other day, actually, we were watching your interview with Esther Perel. And regardless of the fact that I think it's a great interview, both my wife and I were reflecting on the fact that it's also an incredible tribute to the way you conduct an interview. Okay, so there is a talent there.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I mean, not many people can take someone and talk for, and make it interesting, let's put it that way. So you have that. I inherited your curiosity. No, but it's more than that. It's also a way of drawing people out and so on, which is also part of your practice. So I never had any doubts. They are the opposite. I mean, the issue is, you know, obviously you're taking it to many, many places.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
long beyond what you started, which was essentially explain to people how neuroscience works, right?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, we've gone into a lot of health domains and other things. And I'm also been blessed with an amazing team. This is something that I think while we share a lot of things in common, if I may, I mean, I've always been kind of a pack animal. If it was skateboarding, like draw friends together.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
If it's birds, I have my bird club with Eddie Chang, who now, as you know, is chair of neurosurgery at UCSF. It's kind of wild to think about. But yeah, I've rarely gone alone. Like I'm just struck. I mean, we've had many conversations over the years, but I'm just struck at how you've been able to be, you've been a bit of a lone wolf with these different camps.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
You make friends, you have colleagues, you maintain long-term relationships.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I have groups of people who collaborate with me. I don't do this alone. Right.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Right, right. But I haven't changed crowds very often. And it seems like you've had to go into economics and theoretical physics and all these things. And yeah, that's an interesting difference.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And it's daunting and thrilling at the same time. Sometimes when you start giving talks in a field that you've never done much before and you see this audience, it can be intimidating too. Even when I started doing Chaos, I thought I was doing very well until I gave a talk at Berkeley and there was a mathematician. I regard mathematicians as the top, top people in the world.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And I was saying something and a guy, he's a very famous mathematician, he said, that's a lie. I said, what do you mean? He said, can you prove it? No, because, you know, physicists don't prove theorems. He said, well, then it's a lie. You cannot prove it's a lie.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
It was quite a, you know, a cold shower. That happens to me on Twitter every now and again. Well, they'll find something where I misspoke and they do it and it's super embarrassing. You correct yourself, you move on. No, no, and then you learn things too. You have it coming. And you never forget those things. This is what I learned. Like you never forget the errors you made.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But I don't like that much of spectator sports like tennis. I played tennis since I was a teenager.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Like on a qualifying exam, most people will never take a qualifying exam, but they basically ask you questions until you get something wrong. The moment you say, I don't know, or you get something wrong, that's an important moment because it's also the thing that you go look up and you never forget.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, right. And also the tiny humiliations can be very good too for you. I mean, this is very important. I've had 20 of those.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I've had 20 of those. I did too.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I mean, I think it's a very, very important part of growing up and discovering that you don't understand something. But I always need to say this. I mean, in spite of the fact that you paint me as a lone wolf, I'm not. I'm very social, and I love interacting with people. And I've always been very lucky that I surround myself with groups of people, including today,
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
that are brilliant and resonate with the kinds of things I want to do. And so it's very stimulating. I'm not the kind of person that sits in a corner and does theories and publish it. I publish papers on my own. That was my romantic period where I needed to be Einstein in the patent office. And not that I thought I was Einstein, but it was very important. I was the only author.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I'm not a spectator sport fan either. The other day, someone asked me what my favorite sports team is. You'll like this. And I said the Harlem Globetrotters because they're undefeated. They have the best record. And that was actually the one professional sports team game you took me to when I was a kid. We'd always go see the Globetrotters. They're undefeated. Yes, unbelievable, yes, yes.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Today, I don't mind putting my name, whatever, and I don't need it. I mean, I have hundreds of papers and lots, more than enough patents and so on. So I like interacting with people. It's very, very important to me. When I have an idea, I need to tell people about an idea. So I can relate. Yes, yes, yes. So that's very good.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And I still see some of my old students and collaborators like, you know, Tad and so on. And we take walks every once in a while and discuss things, you know. And so I learn a lot from him too.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Right now you're working, as I understand, on quantum internet. Yes.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
is a mysterious term to most everybody yes yes um you alluded to it earlier about quantum entanglement what about entanglement yes but my understanding is that foreign governments countries and um and our our government and country are very interested in quantum internet yes that it might actually be at least as important as ai maybe more important for security reasons etc
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Can you explain quantum internet in a way that I can understand and the listeners can understand? Yes, I can explain.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I mean, I'll tell you the original thing. Quantum mechanics was essentially finished in 1925, so we are not reinventing new physics here. Okay, there's the physics of the gravitation and quantum, but that's not really what we are talking about. What happens is the following. The basis of all secure interactions in the internet on computers
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
are based on the idea that there are certain mathematical equations or functions that are very hard to resolve.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So when I send you something encoded, if someone is listening to that conversation that is encoded and tries to read it, it's very, very hard to do because in order to decode that code, it's some kind of symbols and so on, you need to, I don't know, months or years of a computer to do it, okay? but it can be done.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Computer codes get broken all the time because the basis of these codes are mathematical functions. You have a mathematical function, you can create a computer program that will try to unravel it and it can be unraveled. Okay, so that's one thing. Now here comes quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics provides security that is not given by mathematics, but by the laws of physics.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So if you have a way of sending messages from one computer to the other, encrypted using quantum mechanisms, They cannot be broken. Can you give me an example of a quantum mechanism for encoding information? Imagine that I'm sending you messages. Every message is encoded in binary, ones and zeros. So I'm sending a message which is a string of ones and zeros.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
That string of ones and zeros could be, hello, Andrew, or it could also be something that is secretly encoded into something. If it's classical encryption, which is what we use today, a computer in principle can look at those symbols and unravel them. Now, let me show you how it works in quantum.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
In quantum, when I send you a quantum message, the act of touching it, trying to look at it, destroys it. That's what happens in quantum, not in classical thing. I can look at strings of ones and zeros, and I look at them, and I can make a copy of it, and then I read them, I take them to my lab, and I decrypt them. Okay.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
My father took me to see them too. They're fantastic, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it. So your father was not a scientist. No. Your brother's not a scientist. And you were feted, according to them, to join the family business. But then you had a teacher. who exposed you to physics?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
If I look at a string of qubits, quantum bits moving, they are not ones and zeros. They are different things. These are moving parts? They are moving parts. They are usually photons. They go on, you can use fiber optics. You can use- So these are like, I know what photons are.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, photons.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So they're little bouncing energy of light. Yeah, little bunches of light because photons. If they're going around- There are also, you know, the photon could be polarized up or down or whatever, but if it's in a quantum state, which is in the intermediate between, the moment I look at it, the moment I capture it, I collapse it into one or the other and I destroy it.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
The interaction with it changes it. The measurement destroys it. This is the mystery of quantum mechanics, that the measurement collapses, we call it the word collapses, into one state or the other. Before that, it was anything. We could be anything. So when I use quantum signals, I'm sending qubits, quantum bits that are called qubits.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
The act of observing the qubit renders into a classical one or zero. So then there's no way you cannot break it.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So does that mean that the practical implementation of this equates to... Unbreakable code. Unbreakable code. Exactly. Which is why, of course, other governments. I mean, what I've been told is that in China, they're working very hard on this. Oh, absolutely. And that here, we're working very hard on this. We are working. I'm working too. And you're working very hard on this.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But wait, wait. But who's there? Has anyone gotten there yet? Okay. The problem is the following. In order to decrypt Remember that I told you that you can use mathematics, okay? Some of these functions are incredibly complex. It might take the age of the universe perhaps to decode them mathematically. Let's not talk about quantum.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But if you have a quantum computer, now we're talking about a quantum computer, it can do it in a couple of hours. A quantum computer could decode any mathematical function of the ones that are used in encryption in hours. Whereas you would take the age of the universe for a monster computer, standard computer you can buy,
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
to do it. So in theory, whoever gets this ability first can read essentially all the information that's being sent around the world.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Not only that, and many people are doing, the Chinese, the Koreans, and we're doing, they are grabbing everything now that is encrypted. They cannot decrypt it and they store it because someday they'll be able to decrypt it. But who knows if it will still be relevant? Oh, but it may be. And we don't know what they have. Imagine if you can get...
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Remember when North Korea hacked, what was it, Disney? And then they discovered all these emails where people like George Clooney, I don't know who, they was complaining about this or that. So imagine- And worse.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And worse. We just didn't hear about that.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, yeah, okay. So if you grab all this information, we cannot decrypt it today, but if quantum computers become available and there are people working on quantum computing, they'll be able to decrypt it. In the meantime, People are working on deploying these quantum networks. We're working on that too. Not to deploy them, but just to see whether or not it's feasible to do that, okay?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
To physics and to the notion of being authentic in what you want. There were two parts to it. He was a very interesting and tormented man, I felt. But it was very interesting. He would come into the class, most of the students, you know, really didn't care about what he was saying and so on. I was fascinated, not only by what he was saying, but his whole personality.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
The Chinese are ahead of almost everybody. They have two satellites already in orbit that are sending these qubits. So these are impossible to decrypt, okay? Wait, so they're sending the qubit.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So you can already communicate in quantum.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Oh, yeah, yeah. We communicate all the time.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, yeah. I have a lab in Colorado that does that. Yeah, absolutely.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Over 100 kilometers. But that's not what standard internet is. No, no, no, no. But eventually we will have a quantum internet based on all this. Because in order to talk to these quantum computers, you have to send qubits, not just normal bits.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So this is a race.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, it raised. We are not really, I mean, since we are not a, yeah, yeah. And there are a lot of people, I need to tell you that a lot of people, including this government, that claim that this is not really that relevant or important. But in Europe, for instance, they're really putting a lot of money into that.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Why would our government not think it's important?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Because there is a sociological phenomenon here. Cryptography has always been the promise of the mathematicians because there are mathematical functions, you know, like discrete logarithms and so on. They believe the moment they heard about quantum computers, they said, oh, we can solve the problem. We can create algorithms, mathematical algorithms that are going to be even harder to break.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
They call that post-quantum. But they don't know it's true. The United States government is following this post-quantum because they think it's easier and so on. Already they published two of these very, very fancy algorithms. Two students with a laptop were able to decrypt it within a week. So obviously you cannot prove that no one will ever decrypt these things.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So the cryptographers, they don't like physics. They don't work as physicists. So they say quantum key distribution, that's the name of this thing, It's esoteric. It's not important and so on. And also, it won't work. Well, they say it's going to work for short distances, about 10 to 20 kilometers.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
We just published a paper that got tremendous publicity and an award and so on as best paper that we were able to send this stuff over 100 kilometers, okay? So, I mean, and the Chinese are sending that from satellites, okay? So, impossible to decrypt. Military communications based on these kind of things are impossible to decrypt. So, they are very important. But there is a whole...
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
group of people that are saying, no, post-quantum is what we want. And so NIST, the National Institute of, I think, Science and Technology, they are really pushing the post-quantum thing. In Europe, it's the opposite. They're really embracing quantum. I mean, Denmark, for instance, is very far ahead into these things. NATO just gave them a pile of money to work on quantum and so on. So
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
It all depends. It's a complicated thing because the crypto people are all mathematical people, so they don't care about quantum.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Is any of this going to be useful for trying to understand, I don't know, how the brain works? Well... Or is it... I mean, you know, there's still debate as to whether or not the way that we're thinking about brain function is even, like, the right way. We think about neurons, action potentials, and chemicals, and... But the physicists, whenever they, like, poke their noses into this stuff...
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But I need to say something here that is important. I also was rather irresponsible. You see, I grew up in a family, a well-to-do family, that I never thought I was going to make a living. So it was easy to be interested in science or anything because, you know, it's what you do. You know, you're interested in culture, you read books, you do things.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
they tend to think about it a little bit differently or they start to think about, well, you know, state dependence, like the brain that you have at 8 a.m. is very different than the brain you have at 2 a.m. or 4 in the afternoon. Like maybe everything's happening differently and maybe some of this actually gets down to the quantum level. Like we can't say...
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
this neuron talks to this neuron, and when they talk in the following way, you get a certain output. Like, is there relevance here?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Okay, there are two things I want to say. Beware of physicists getting into brains, in brain work. I mean, they always end up- It's like the new thing now.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I know, I know.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Neuroscience swung the doors open. He was into neuroscience for a while.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I think recently neuroscience has made a good move of including people from psychology, computation, even philosophy, economics, and biology, basically all levels of analysis.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
The other thing you asked about quantum and the brain, there is Roger Penrose, who just got the Nobel Prize in physics. He's one of the few people who have very esoteric ideas about the brain being totally quantum. He's an incredibly brilliant man. He was the advisor of Hawking.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I heard him on Lex's podcast. Yes, yeah. And yeah, he does have interesting ideas about how neurons might be communicating maybe as bound networks as opposed to independent entities.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But no one really follows it, and I'm not an expert in that. So Rachel Penrose is the one that's pushing this. Many of the physicists who go into brain science are not very clever at doing brain science because, you know, I heard a story, I think it was Francis Crick or someone who told me, I was at a conference and he was saying this, that a physicist came to him and said,
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I decided to go into brain science. And so he said, okay, what have you done? And the guy says, I measure the specific heat of the brain. What do I do with it?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, I think it's good that computationally minded people have joined neuroscience because it was getting too modal, too descriptive. That said, I do think that, you know, math... is so important, but it's often used to intimidate biologists into thinking that their ideas either might not be true or that there's better ideas out there.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I will say that when computational neuroscience first started, it seemed like the attempts to model the brain were pretty feeble. And actually, I'll just say it, they were pretty lame. But now, I think with AI and LLMs, the biologists have had to step back and say, hey, you know, these math, physics, engineering AI types, they have the potential to really evolve the field.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
At least that's my stance.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I was at conferences where people say things like, the brain is a massively parallel machine. And I say, wait, wait, are you sure of that? That's a meaningless exercise. Yeah. So I said, if I show you a row of trees and I said, tell me how many are they? Do you really take the whole thing and you say 75? Or you have to go sequentially? It's not parallel, it's sequential.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But LLMs are pretty interesting, right? I'm working on them. You can take four or five large language models, essentially sort of pseudo brains and have them work on the same problem. It's hard to work with five people in parallel in a way that's coherent, right? You can only talk so much over one another.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
It's very interesting. That's exactly what we're doing now. Years ago with Jeff Frager, we wrote a paper on the idea of showing how programs collaborating with each other could solve problems very, very fast that human others cannot do. And it's a basis of a lot of the work we want to do now. Yes.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And there are people who are already thinking of putting many, many of these LLMs together and then see whether or not they do better than a single one or better than a human.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So you think AI is going to improve life for the typical citizen?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But my father used to say, what are you going to do once you graduate? You don't want to start teaching in elementary schools or something of that sort. My brother used to say, if he does physics, I'll have to support him because he still says that. So scientists were considered poor. Yeah, they couldn't get a job. I mean, science in Argentina. Argentina has a big tradition in medical sciences.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yes, because you can use these things in order to do things that were very hard to do before. I mean, I use them, and it's amazing. We just published a paper on hallucinations in LLMs and so on, because they hallucinate. Everyone says, oh, they say anything. But yes, yeah, they are very useful, very useful.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And I think that the companies that use them will make more money than the companies that produce them, like OpenAI and so on. Yes, yeah, it's a very, very important field.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But 10, 15 years ago, whenever I'd bring up AI, you would chuckle and say this stuff is like...
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, the funny thing is that the other day, well, I don't want to name him, one of the managers at Xerox PARC. When I was at PARC, I started playing with the idea of using machine learning to see what they can do. And the AI people at that time said, that's nonsense. We need to think about logic. How does the brain think? How do we do cognitive psychology? We were just doing neural nets.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
That's exactly it. And the other day I was meeting with some of these people and they were saying to me, we used to laugh at you, you know, doing this stuff because we could do only very little. And today is the rage. Now the difference between what I was doing and what is being done today is a scale.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I mean, you know, I don't know if you know that they are now using nuclear power reactors in order to power the data centers. I didn't know that. But it's an immense cost of computing. You have no idea the amount of work it takes to one trillion tokens in order to get one of these things to work.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
it strikes me you've always been very open-minded and very willing to adopt new technologies. But it hasn't changed your daily life very much. Like not much at all. I remember early on you said, you showed me the internet And you said, be very careful. And I said, why? You said, it's like mental chewing gum. You chew and chew. Those were your words. You said, you chew and chew.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And at first, it tastes good. Then it doesn't taste very good at all. Then you don't taste it at all. And then you realize there's no nutrition. And I always think about that in terms of phone usage or web foraging behavior. And you still bike to work. You take a walk in the afternoon or after eating. You...
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
You know, you've always been incredibly regular with your routine despite the evolution of all these technologies. Like, you're not the guy in Silicon Valley who's, like, tricked out with all the gear. No, no, no. Well, there is another— Actually, I've never seen you at a cafe with a laptop.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, sometimes. But, well, there's another aspect to this. As you know, in the last— Up to five years ago, I spent four years working on the economics of attention and why is it that people attend to things. And I really believe, and I'm not an expert, that there is a tremendous resonance between these machines and our human brains, and they are addictive.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
The former CEO of Hewlett Packard, where I was directing the labs, Meg Wickman, she used to say, you know, I wake up in the middle of the night to look at my phone. And I know people who do that, and there are members of my family who do that more often that I would like to see them do that. You don't do that. No. I mean, I do it, but I don't have this compulsion to see what's going on.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I had a student that he said, I love spam because at least something is happening.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
He said that. Spam? Spam. He said, I get spam and I look at it because something's happening, he used to say. He's now a very successful financial guy. Stop doing stuff. Brilliant fellow. Brilliant fellow. But that's because maybe your internal world is rich enough that you don't... No, but I look at news. I like to look at things. I look at videos. Don't misunderstand me.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I think two or three Nobel Prizes and so on. But in physics, they produce some very good physicists. One of them lives in the United States. I mean, he's very, very famous, Maldacena. I haven't met him, but I know he's one of the top people in the field. But I just got into this because I was interested. It sounded, you know, fascinating and abstract, and the ideas were so powerful.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
It's not that I ignore it. But yeah, I'm not... I mean... I mean, I like the latest things and so on, especially if they are beautiful and so on. But yeah, I'm not into whatever the latest is and so on. And I remember I got some Oculus things that I got for free from Facebook and gave them to you. And I never used them once or twice.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I mean, I've used VR in my lab, but I don't want to spend time in VR. And also, as my conversation with one of your collaborators here revealed before this podcast, I love mechanical things and the details, the analog world. Okay.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So, yeah, digital is interesting and fascinating in some ways, but I like things, you know, like mechanical watches, cameras that click when you press them and so on, but not artificially. Okay. So I really like that. I like things that are very classical and so on in many ways. And I enjoy that. I like technology. Don't misunderstand me. And I use it a lot.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And I use it and I do new things with them and I get patents and so on. But yeah, I'm not a techie guy in the same sense. I like to have an analog life, not a digital life. Riding a bicycle is analog. Walking is analog. Sitting and meditating is analog. Of course, you can also listen through the Internet to a good thing that helps you meditate or go to sleep. Don't misunderstand me.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But I don't have this fascination with things and so on. I mean, some people do, but...
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
It seems like a lot of people have a fascination with the future. You seem very grounded in the present.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I've never read a single book of science fiction. Most of the people I work with, and I admire them, they all come with ideas from books in science fiction. They always say, did you read this or that? And I say, I have no idea. I never liked it. I like to read about real people with real blood and real feelings. Science fiction, to me, is devoid of that. It's imagining droids doing this or that.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I couldn't care less.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Because I always think that physicists must love science fiction.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Never, never, never read a single book or looked at it in a movie or science fiction. I couldn't care less. I don't relate to that. I don't think that these people display human-like behavior anyhow. So, I mean, I'm not saying that it's not interesting to others.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
You're not a futurist.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
No, no, even though they call me a futurist because I always anticipate things.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Right, but you're not somebody who, like, thinks about what life is going to be like 100 years from now.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
No, no, I like to know life is now. Yes, yes. And I also, as Niels Bohr once said, it is hard to predict anything, especially the future. Okay, we all predict the past very well. I don't know what's gonna go. I mean, you know, we've seen things happening, unbelievable things. I mean, the technology that allows you to become such a worldwide known phenomenon is because of the technology.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Imagine if you were just declaiming the Roman Senate centuries ago. I'd be doing exactly what I'm doing now, but with no microphones or cameras. Right. Okay. So yeah, I'm not a futurist and that's it.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
People tell me I am because I anticipate things, but not because I imagine a world in which... I couldn't care less about going to Mars, for instance, even though Elon Musk thinks it's very important. Do you think it's a cool project? I don't know. I want to ask him why. And then he tells me things like, he says things like, well, you know, civilization is going to die here.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And I think, and, you know, I reflected a lot on this, when you're psychologically in adolescence, because my parents made me jump two grades, so I was much younger than my classmates. And that created a lot of problems for me. I mean, at the time when, you know, you're developing and so on, all the boys were talking about girls and so on.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
We are going to asphyxiate. And so I don't know. I mean, let it happen. I don't know. Just enjoy now, you know. You're not worried about the future? In that sense, oh, I'm an optimist. I believe that technology will solve the global warming problem, everything. It's obvious how to solve it. There's nothing very mysterious. Nuclear power is going to do it, you know? Absolutely.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Once we get over our preconceived notions of nuclear power.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Right. I mean, very few people have ever died of a nuclear accident, let's face it. Yeah, they need to name it something else. Maybe, yeah. Like many things that at once were thought to be dangerous, when renamed, turn out to not be so dangerous that when renamed, people are willing to adopt them.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, right, yeah. So, yeah, I don't worry too much about the future. I think that people are ingenious and wise enough to steer away from the brink, hopefully.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
You don't seem to worry too much generally. You're not a big worrier. No. Yeah. You and I are different that way. Huh? You and I are different that way. Yeah. You worry a lot, yes. Not if I keep busy. Oh, okay. These days, a lot less. I think at the transition points between different circumstances and at the transition points between different career things, I think it makes sense to worry.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
It sort of drives some of the urgency to make sure that, you know, you... you know, reach for the next rung and grab it, right? And not, you know, not miss. I mean, there's been, I think there's been elements of uncertainty in my life where I felt like, okay, I'm gonna ground to the things I can control, but no, I don't stay up at night worrying about things.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Also, I think meditation is profoundly effective at this. Suddenly, you're here, and that stays. The past is the past. You cannot do anything, and the future hasn't arrived. So what the heck? I really believe that, and it has helped me immensely. The few things I'm very proud of, I went for my medical checkup a year ago, and the doctor says, I'd love to hear you breathe.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I said, what's so wrong with my breathing? He said, it's so slow and complicated. So you got over the white coat syndrome.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yes, because of meditation. You sent me your lab results this morning, so everything looks great. You've always been regular about exercise, not excessive. You're never one of the marathoners or the 5 a.m. in the pool people, but no. I tried runs to run a marathon, actually. Yeah. I mean, it's very common in the area where, you know, in and around Stanford to be pretty extreme about athletics.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
That was never your thing.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
No.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Steady, long-distance runner.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, I told you that once. I'm not a sprinter. Yeah, some people are, and by the way, I admire them immensely. You mean in life, like we're speaking metaphorically?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, in general, yeah.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I still was really interested, understanding why the excitement and so on, you know, I was very young. It gave me a sense of order. You know, reading a book about physics and understanding that there are laws that tell you how things work gave me a tremendous sense of order and power.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
There are some people who really can do things incredibly fast and they move from one thing to the other and so on. Yeah, I like people who reflect some wisdom. For instance, I have a, it's very strange for someone like me, but I see a Buddhist monk and I just suddenly, I feel calmer by just seeing that person, you know.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I don't know, there is something, it's not just the spirituality, the power they have to be here, totally and absolutely. It's impressive to me. I mean, some other people say, okay, he has funny robes or something, you know. I like that a lot. It's not necessarily a way, I mean,
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
My therapist used to say to me that to use meditation to move away from trouble and troubling thoughts is not a good idea. So you have to embrace the world too. But I use it just to stay calm and to enjoy and to see things for what they are. And I think it's, yeah. Yeah, the future is the future. I don't know.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
You can only control what you can control.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Right.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But, you know, there are some people who are worried all the time about the future, you know. Given your understanding of quantum mechanics, relativity, and the real world, and perhaps just generally knowing what you know and experiencing what you've experienced, do you believe in some sort of higher power organizing force? Or let's just be blunt, do you believe in God?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, okay, the word God has a lot of implications, right? I mean, I don't necessarily, I don't believe in a God that keeps track of what you and I are doing at this point. There are too many people and so on. So I don't believe in this notion of, you know, of an agent there that is somehow knowing what everybody on this planet is doing, you know, and so on.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I do feel sometimes, and especially because of the studies I have, and actually from reading people who have been very, very deep, you know, in particular the thoughts of people like Einstein, Heisenberg, and so on, that there seems to be at times a sense of an organizing principle in the universe and to learn those rules.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So there is this notion, I mean, philosophically it's called pantheism, that God is in nature already. Spinoza and all these people studied this. That is very appealing to me. The notion that there is something, that this thing is, if it's evolving, it's like an entity, but not an entity that says, oh, tomorrow, you know, you'll die or so on. I mean, you'll die, you'll die.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
There are lots of events that lead to death or to happiness and so on, but not because someone is out there checking. I mean, I don't believe that it's enough memory to store all this, although today I saw you can buy SanDisk memory terabytes that is this big. So I don't believe in that, but it's a matter of belief, not anything else.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Unfortunately, these beliefs are translated sometimes in complicated action. I do believe that there is a sense of mystery. Sometimes I once heard, I don't know who said it, but it's a very good sentence that if you listen to Beethoven say, I mean, the man struggled, but it's amazing he was able to create that music.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So, you know, everything else was a little bit in flow and the family and my own relationships with friends and girlfriends or whatever. And going back to science, it was just a sense of order. And I still remember those days. It was very, very soothing in a way.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
On the other hand, Mozart seems to have been getting the messages from heavens, you know, on a daily basis, just wrote it down. So some people are given this connection to something much bigger. And you have access to that through listening to that music, the experiences we have.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
There is this idea out there that consciousness doesn't just exist within our brains, but as sort of a collective network and things come through us, not just as individuals.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Jungian thing is a lot of that. I'm very interested in the word spiritual and what it means, you know, to see that things transcend our particular needs at any point. But the idea of a God that tells you one thing or the other is funny. You know, if you look at any movie, you know, Braveheart or whatever, you see that one group of warriors has a priest saying, God is with us.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And the other one is about to engage and says the same thing to the other group. That's a little bit funny, right?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, I think humans and human brains in particular are amazing. Amazing what human brains can do. This computer in our heads is spectacular. And yet it also has limitations. And I think, well, put differently, does it make you nervous or worry you that I seem to have an increasing interest in... God and religion?
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
No, I think that is a beautiful journey in which you're in. And there are two pieces to this, provided you don't start using this to somehow spout arguments why people shouldn't do this or that. No, no, it's only my own exploration of my own life.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I respect that.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I think it's a very important thing. You know, there is an issue here that I read reading Wilson, actually, E.O. Wilson, which, you know, he wrote this beautiful book on human nature. And he claims that the religious instinct comes from a submissive component in us that animals have. Dogs are submissive.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And we believe that we need to be submissive to a king and to something beyond a king, you know, some deity or something else.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
That's his theory. I certainly don't feel any compulsion to be submissive to other humans. I mean, I think in knowing the limitations of the human brain and cognition, I don't care how smart, I don't care how successful an individual or a group is, it's very clear that the human brain is limited in parsing the universe that we're in.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So it's like a touchstone. Yes, yes, yes. And what grade were you, this teacher, was this like middle school, high school?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Otherwise, we wouldn't continue to have the same issues over and over. Although I do like to think that we're falling forward, we're evolving forward as opposed to devolving as a species. But we tend to repeat a lot of the same mistakes over and over again.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
There's also a technical thing here. We sometimes confuse randomness with premonition or God doing something. I mean, dodging a bullet... by turning your head, as our next president did, is an incredible thing. The probability is so, so, so small. But that doesn't mean that there was someone who said, turn your head, do it, and so the bullet will pass.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I mean, we ascribe causality to something that was truly random. It could have also, in another scenario, the same turn of the head would have been to the other side, and this person would be dead. But sometimes we are confronted with these incredible coincidences.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
that we cannot explain and we say, oh, it must be God that made sure that you and I met or that we thought the same thoughts and so on.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Although as a biologist who started off as a neurodevelopmental biologist, I think I just had to see – there are two things that changed my understanding of what might be possible. One was Barbara Chapman, my advisor, once treated me to an experiment. It was kind of a funny thing. Typical Barbara. You know how nerdy she was. She said – are you willing to stay up all night?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, high school, yeah. I was 13 or 14 years old, yeah. When I finally, I started listening to this and I said, wow, this is impressive. It's powerful. There are ways to know what's true and what's not true. You just don't speculate on things. But most of this stuff, I didn't really understand.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And I was like, okay, yeah. And she took zebrafish eggs and fertilized them. And I sat for 11 hours with food. I got up to use the restroom and I watched a zebrafish egg duplicate and become a fish. like in real time with my eyes. Not some movie on YouTube, although that's impressive too. People can look these up.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But to just actually see life emerge from a set of cells through its own organizing principles, all of which can be explained by genes, transcription factors, the physics of the mitotic spindle. I mean, math and biology and chemistry can explain all of it. But there was something truly spectacular about it that seems so non-random because it's not random. And then the other one is that
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I mean, I guess I've had enough experiences with prayer and the consequences of prayer in my real life that I just, I sort of can't get my head around the idea that there's not a God or some sort of organizing force. I just, I can't accept it because there's, yes, there's causality, reverse causality, correlation and mistaking correlation and causality, but somehow, like...
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I mean, I like to think I'm grounded in science and reality, but I don't think science can explain it all. Oh, no.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And I think that this experience of this spirituality, for instance, I remember, it still happens, spending a night outdoors and looking at the sky. I mean, it's an incredible thing, the stars, and you feel so small, and yet there is order to all that. It's not just random stuff.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I mean, they move according to laws that fortunately we humans were able to discover, which is an amazing thing when you think about it. Dogs did not discover gravity, you know?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Certainly not Costello.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
We talk about this in the context of understanding oneself in relation to others, family, community, including scientific community and what it is like to come from a different country. My father immigrated from South America. What it was like to do science in the United States then and now. cultural differences. And of course, we touch on some of our relationship as well. How could we not?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Costello was gravity. Yeah. So I really think that there is something to be said about these spiritual experiences. And I really believe that very importantly. And I listen to people talk. I recently have been looking at some stuff that C.S. Lewis, you know, he was a man who was studying the...
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
the sagas and the mythology of the Vikings and so on, and eventually became a devout Christian, thinking that this was the only answer because all religions have the same element. So I understand that. I respect it. I experienced that at times in my life. But when I think seriously about it, I think that the moment we have this computer and we can get glimpses of all this,
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But I don't believe that it's this notion. No one can prove to me that there is someone there organizing my life minute by minute or second by second. I don't believe that. I do believe that there are fantastic chances in life and randomness, beautiful ones, okay? And, you know, Having you and Lara as children is a fantastic randomness in my life. Hopefully it wasn't too random. No, no.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
In the sense that, you know, children, you know, you know children that come unhealthy, whatever. I mean, you know, it's a very impressive thing.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, the number of things that have to organize to create a healthy child is, it's truly a miracle. Yeah, true, true.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, and I think, but a lot of it is random, too, you know? I mean, the same set of parents can produce two different set of children, too, okay? I mean, that's a very, very important... Laura and I are pretty different. Oh, absolutely, but in very beautiful ways, too.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So, I mean, neither of you does behave or conducts a life that, you know, I would be unhappy or your mother would be unhappy with. But going back to this, I believe that, indeed, spirituality is important. I have a lot of access to that through classical music. There are times... That I really believe that I can get very, very emotional listening to music. Very emotional.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Then I had this cousin of mine, Hector, who was already gone, but I would go to his parents' house, and there there were his books, all these incredible books on quantum mechanics, relativity. And I would just take them home, and I didn't really comprehend a lot of the math, but somehow it seemed impressive. It was like looking into a mechanism or something.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
My wife always notices it when I do that. And I think that then you're having access to something very different. Of course it can be explained physiologically by all sorts of resonances and so on. But who cares?
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
You mentioned that you can peer into the future with ideas that you're working on and yet you don't get too far ahead. Like you're not thinking like 100 years from now, what's it going to look like? Do you spend a lot of time thinking about the past?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Sometimes, sometimes. I'm very safe. Because I left my family when I was still very young, I always had a certain nostalgia for things. I became friends with a very impressive guy in France, Claude Jopard. I think he was the director of the Geophysics Institute. And both of us had very similar parents in different – French and Argentina, but still – And similar educations.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And I have sometimes a certain nostalgia that is almost melancholy about the way we grew up and so on.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Melancholy. A little bit of that. I recall your stories about growing up in Argentina, like you would have 10, 15 cousins over for lunch every Sunday. Yeah, yeah. That doesn't sound melancholy. No, no.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But there were moments, moments of loneliness, moments of times where I felt very misunderstood. I had, unfortunately, a very punishing mother experience. But I still remember her and I think about her in ways that are not necessarily always very happy. I was looking at photos a while ago and there are pictures of her that is, you know, she's smiling coming out of the Pacific Ocean in Carmel.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
She took a walk and so on. But I reflect back in the past in that sense. I mean, and sometimes, you know, I'm asked, you know, how did you grow up? My wife being Danish, she grew up in a very different way from, you know, upper middle class Argentines. So, you know, we reflect on that, you know, the kinds of childhoods we had and so on.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But not in the sense that, you know, oh, I wish I had that now. No regrets. No regrets. Well, not many, not many. That's good. I mean, there is one regret that is more theoretical than anything else, which is if I look at my family, my brother stayed, produced family, children, grandchildren, and so on.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I came here and I produced children, grandchildren, and there are going to be two diverging branches of the family.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
We still get together. We got together last year for your birthday.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, no, I know. That's what is so important to me, yes. But I think about it sometimes. And when I go back and I see the lives very similar to what I had, different perhaps, there is a certain sense of thinking about the past.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But I also realize that if I didn't take the steps I took, I would be as miserable as some of my old friends that are really struggling even to find meaning in what they do or even surviving economically. So I was really lucky.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So was I because I wouldn't have existed because you wouldn't have met mom.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, maybe you would have. No, no, no, no. But I'm grateful I didn't grow up in Buenos Aires. I love the city. I love the country. I couldn't have done any of the things I've done in South America given maybe, but the landscape was just completely different.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And I used to take them to school, and one of my teachers once said, you know, you seem to be interested in this, but you don't understand it, so you need to learn it. And he was the one who started pushing me into this. On the other hand, my family was saying you should become a lawyer, just, you know, my brother and father. And that never interested you? No.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Oh, I go there and after a week I want to come back.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
So you love this country? I love this country. I feel very much part of this country. I'm very grateful to what this country has done for me, for my family, and that includes you and your sister, okay, and my wife. When did you become a citizen? Oh, many, many years ago. And I really did it consciously, not because, I mean, there were practical things, but no, I really believe in it.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I really believe it's an incredible country and it gives incredible opportunities to people. As Elon says, Elon Musk, I'm also an immigrant. I'm very happy to be one. Yeah, you've always been a patriot. Absolutely. And on the other hand, as I said, Argentina is complicated. I go there and a lot of smells and things, you know, bring memories that are amazing. The food's not bad either. Huh?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
The food's not bad. Yeah, yeah. But it's also the whole atmosphere. And the first two, three days are an incredible experience of meeting friends and talking with them and so on. But after a while, I also see a darker side to it. I must tell you that, on the other hand, my country-in-law, Denmark, is also a country that I like immensely.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
These nice people and pleasant and soft, very soft, especially in summer.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But the Danes are also strong people. The average Dane is so smart. I think the high school education there must be among the best in the world.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, there is a notion of proficiency. I mean, people are proficient at what they do. Yeah, you go to a store, you have a problem, an airline or whatever, you'll get someone who really knows how to solve it. But there's also a very, it's a small society, very homogeneous, tremendous sense of humor, which I enjoy. And it's very soft. People, you know, enjoy life.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
They have notions like slow food movements and things of that sort. So I like it. I could not live there because it's, you know, it's a very homogeneous way of behaving. You know, the Lutheran ethic is there. They're not religious, but they're Lutherans. So I feel very comfortable in Europe and so on. But I like being here, yes.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, I feel like our family now includes so many different nationalities and religions and backgrounds and philosophies and political stances. Well, it's good too. Yeah, it's great. It's starting to look like the UN with some extra.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, I grew up in a family that had an ideological diversity. It was incredible, incredible. That's good. Yeah, so that was also good to be as a child to hear these arguments about politics and so on.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yeah, I hear a few of those now. arguments about politics. We won't get into politics. One thing that I did want to say, however, is that I remember a long time ago, and I'm certain because I wrote it in my journal, you said politically incorrect views are often right. Is that true still?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yes, yes.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Still true for you, I should say.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Because this has only to be judged in time. Okay. I think that the issue of political incorrectness is some kind of a mob behavior that says you should think like us. OK, we should be able to express our views with respecting others and so on. And we should be respected for that.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I think that this whole notion that others are telling you what to think or not to think is a little bit complicated. And I must say something, which I hope it doesn't get me in trouble with my Danish side of the family or friends. Societies like the Scandinavian societies that are extremely uniform in thinking, the word should is used all the time. Yeah, you should do this. You shouldn't do that.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
It's interesting because now I'm very interested in aspects of constitutional law and so on when I hear about arguments against, you know, the Supreme Court and so on. I became very interested in law and economics later on, I mean, just to read about it.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Good that you did it. It's a very, they enforce behavior in a very, very particular way. It's not a hurting instinct, but there is a very, very strict Lutheran tradition of telling you what you should and you shouldn't do. So I know very few people and I've been going to Denmark for many, many years, that really have iconoclastic ideas that are away from the mean, and they're considered odd, okay?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Very few, including the physicists, and they have fantastic school of physics there. Niels Bohr was there. So it's a society that conformity is the issue there, right? So on the other hand, I think that it's good to think differently, and, you know, There's a man, perhaps you heard of him. I know, I mean, I admire him. He died, Freeman Dyson.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
He was on a level with Feynman and Engelman, by the way. He used to have very strange ideas too. He used to say global warming. What's wrong with it? The Sahara is going to be a garden. Yeah. You know, the Sahara Desert will become a garden.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
People will be able to eat all that food. Well, I think people hear that, but then they counter it against these, you know, very heart-wrenching pictures of, like, polar bears on ice caps that are shrinking, this kind of thing. There are more polar bears today than when Mr. Al Gore said that we're going to die.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Listen, I'm not going to argue climate change with you because I have no knowledge there. No, no. I'm not countering. I'm just saying, you know, like, I mean, this is getting very intense on the Internet now because the arguments on both sides seem pretty strong, at least as they're presented. So who's right?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
No, the question is what can we do about it? That's the issue. And I think that technology and wisdom are going to solve it. I think so. I really believe that very strongly. I'm an optimist when it comes to that. But what I'm talking about being politically incorrect is this idea of saying things that a group of people say you shouldn't be saying or thinking those thoughts.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
And the question is, can we debate those things rationally or nicely, respecting people's beliefs? Okay. And yeah, I believe in that very strongly. And I think being politically incorrect is a way of saying you're smiling at them, but It's okay. Why not? Who said that we shouldn't be like that?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
But what my father was talking about at the dining room table was all about strategies of, you know, getting something done half an hour before the opposition so you win a case. I mean, I was totally interested in that.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I remember encountering the first libertarians when I was already working as a physicist, and they were saying to me, why are we afraid of the Russians? I said, well, you think they're going to invade the United States? Can you imagine Russia invading? I mean, if they invade, how are they going to control us? They had these arguments. They were very funny arguments. Why do we need an army?
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Why do we need taxes? And I really thought that was so provocative or so interesting. Do you consider yourself a libertarian? In many ways. I like the idea of liberty. I believe very strongly in it. I mean, this country was founded on that. I think that our founding fathers really believed in it, and I admire them for that. You know, reading Jefferson and so on is really inspiring to me.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I think that some of the political movement is a little bit odd. They always end up with political candidates that go nowhere and so on.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Why do you think that is?
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Why do you think that is? If they're so rational, they're often among the smartest people in the room. But they are not strategically smart. I've met at times libertarians that think incredible thoughts and they live in Silicon Valley and they're poor. I mean, even though they are the ones who are supposed to know. Some are poor. Some are. Some are not. But I'm saying it's very interesting.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
They choose presidential candidates no one ever heard of.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I think many of them are, you know, they are on the spectrum in a way that doesn't allow them to get into the minds of other people in a way that would allow them to convince other people about their arguments. Yes. I mean, a lot of politics, as we know, is show business. I mean, in this recent election, it was all posturing. It was all about grabbing emotion. It was not about logic.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
It was about emotion. Yeah, I have several of my people that, you know, they put all their money to freeze themselves.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I'm sensing a bit of a theme, which is that social dynamics and what other people do, regardless of whether or not they like it or it earns them a particular living, didn't capture you. Like the idea that people and their groups and their ways of thinking and behaving, while that they may not bother you.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
You gonna cry over yourself? No. My dad and I have had this running joke for a lot of years because someone we know very well and several people we know well have set aside significant amounts of money to have their heads or entire bodies frozen on the idea that they're going to be brought back later Han Solo style. You've always laughed at this idea.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
No, but not only that, there's a colleague of mine at Stanford who accuses me of being friends with a guy that is like that. And I told this guy, I said, you know, he thinks that you're a bad influence on me. And the guy said, well, tell him that we are the ones who are going to come back and do what we believe. He's going to be gone. You're not interested in living to be 200? No.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
It's not an issue. These people are interested in living for another thousand years. So when they wake up, they see how the world looks. They read science fiction. So they are very interested to know what the world looks like once they wake up.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, there are people in the health space that are trying to not die, you know, Brian Johnson and others.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
That's a different story.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
I mean, what's your thought on trying to live to be 150 or something like that?
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Well, if you can live – the issue is not the age. It's the conditions of your body and mind, okay? That's the issue. I had the misfortune and unfortunate of having two parents that lived very long lives. One was incredibly – my father was incredibly lucid until the end.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
My mother had everything, you know, every dementia and complications that came from, you know, being an anorexic all her life and so on. So my father enjoyed being lucid until the end. And so he didn't take care of himself physically so well. So the idea is if you live up to 100 or 150 or 200 and you can still do the things you enjoy in life is one thing.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
To be like my mother, who couldn't even comprehend what was in front of her when you put a cup of tea, You know, then it's very sad, but it can happen at the age of 35, you know. So yeah, I'm not into a race to live forever. I want to live healthily. I want to enjoy life. Enjoyment is the most important piece.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
What's the point of being, you know, tethered to tubes all over the place, you know, flat on a bed and you say, oh, I made another year of my life. I mean, that's not really a life, at least for me.
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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
do you worry about and or wish for anything for me, for Laura?
Huberman Lab
How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman
Yes. To be super happy people. No, I don't want to use the word happy. I want to see you joyful. Joy. Joy is more important than happiness. Joy is a state of mind. Happiness is, okay, yeah, I said a list of things I want to have and I have them and I smile a lot. Joyfulness is this sense of being in yourself, and I would like that. I mean, you two are very different.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Stuart McGill. Dr. Stuart McGill is a distinguished professor of spine biomechanics at the University of Waterloo.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
That's the plan. Well, I've certainly had a blast today, Dr. McGill. This has been amazing. I mean, you've given us such a wealth of knowledge about the back, its anatomy, neurology, the sources of pain for those that have back pain, avenues to relieve back pain, avenues for people to stave off back pain, including the big three, but not limited to the big three.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
You also gave us a wonderful window into the precision with which you approach assessment. And during the introduction and also in the show note captions, I mentioned and linked to the many clinicians that you've trained all over the world so that if people want to try and access direct coaching and rehabilitation, they can do that.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
I also really appreciate the books you've written, and we linked to that as well, Back Mechanic. And I really just appreciate your devotion to public education through your own channels, through your students, the many, many, many peer-reviewed papers that you've published. I mean, I can't overemphasize this enough. You have a vast number of high quality peer reviewed publications in these areas.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
And it's just wonderful to sit across from somebody who's devoted their professional life to this really important area that so many people confront, whether or not they be athletes or conventional exercisers, or just people who are experiencing some pain or want to get in shape or all of the above.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
So on behalf of myself and everyone listening and watching, I just want to extend a really deep, heartfelt and genuine thank you. Thank you so much.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Well, thank you for those words. It's a labor of love for me, and that's extremely gratifying to hear. And God willing, I'll be in your kind of shape at your age. Let's do this again.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Thanks. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Stuart McGill. To learn more about his work, as well as to find a link to his excellent book, Back Mechanic, The Step-by-Step McGill Method to Fix Back Pain, please see the show note caption.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Also in the caption, you'll find a link to backfitpro.com, which is Dr. McGill's website, where he has links to specific practitioners you can work with if you're experiencing back pain. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Please also subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.
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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five star review. Please also check out the sponsors that I mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or topics or guests you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab Podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media channels.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
So that's Instagram, X, formerly known as Twitter, Threads, LinkedIn, and Facebook. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlap with the contents of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the contents of the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media channels.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
If you haven't already subscribed to our Neural Network newsletter,
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Our neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as protocols in the form of brief PDFs of one to three pages, where I spell out the specific do's and in some cases do nots, but mostly do's related to things like how to optimize your sleep, how to regulate your dopamine levels. There's a protocol for neuroplasticity and learning.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
as well as protocols for fitness, which we call the foundational fitness protocol, includes everything, sets, reps, cardiovascular training. Again, all available, completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab, scroll down to newsletter and provide us your email. But I should point out, we do not share your email with anybody.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Stuart McGill. And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Dr. McGill is a true encyclopedia on the topics of back physiology and anatomy, sources of back pain and treatments for back pain. So it's truly a special opportunity to be able to learn from him in such immense detail and in such a clear and actionable way.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
So facet angles that are too close together, basically, a small angle.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
I mean, is it fair to say that if we are naturally flexible, For instance, like my sister can, you know, like her fingers can bend back really easily. Her shoulder extension, which I guess for people that aren't familiar with shoulder extension, you know, she can like let's say you're leaning up against a railing with your back to the railing.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
The railings just let's just say is just above lower back height and you can put both hands on it. parallel. So your arms are close together, like very close to the torso. And people don't do this quickly because you can tear something or injure something. But then with feet about, I don't know, a foot or two away from that bar, you can do a knee bend and basically the arms go back behind you.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Like I happen to have a fair degree of just natural shoulder extension ability. I'm not particularly flexible, quote unquote, but that's just how I'm structured. Yeah. I have some friends that can't do that to save their life. But I wouldn't consider myself hyperflexible. My sister is a bit more flexible. We're related, obviously.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
By the end of today's episode, you will have a quite thorough understanding about the anatomy and physiology of the back as it relates to a healthy back, to back pain, and of course, you'll have various remedies for dealing with back pain, preventing back pain, and for strengthening your back for all sorts of different kinds of movement, not just for exercise and sport, but also to move through your daily activities pain-free and with ease and mobility at any age.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
So would people like her or people that tend to be pretty flexible naturally, would they be wise to avoid certain activities if their goal is to remain pain-free? I mean, you talk about the St. Bernard running program. on the Greyhound track, you know, we all can enjoy things recreationally, but of course we don't want to injure ourselves.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
So is somebody who's naturally flexible, should they avoid certain sports and activities? And conversely, if somebody is naturally stiffer, thicker spine, thicker joints, should they avoid certain activities?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Helix Sleep.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
As many of you know, I've been taking AG1 for more than 10 years now, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring this podcast. To be clear, I don't take AG1 because they're a sponsor. Rather, they are a sponsor because I take AG1. In fact, I take AG1 once and often twice every single day, and I've done that since starting way back in 2012.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
There is so much conflicting information out there nowadays about what proper nutrition is, but here's what there seems to be a general consensus on.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Whether you're an omnivore, a carnivore, a vegetarian or a vegan, I think it's generally agreed that you should get most of your food from unprocessed or minimally processed sources, which allows you to eat enough but not overeat, get plenty of vitamins and minerals, probiotics and micronutrients that we all need for physical and mental health.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Now, I personally am an omnivore and I strive to get most of my food from unprocessed or minimally processed sources. But the reason I still take AG1 once and often twice every day is that it ensures I get all of those vitamins, minerals, probiotics, etc. But it also has adaptogens to help me cope with stress.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
It's basically a nutritional insurance policy meant to augment, not replace quality food. So by drinking a serving of AG1 in the morning and again in the afternoon or evening, I cover all of my foundational nutritional needs. And I, like so many other people that take AG1, report feeling much better in a number of important ways, such as energy levels, digestion, sleep and more.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
So while many supplements out there are really directed towards obtaining one specific outcome, AG1 is foundational nutrition designed to support all aspects of well-being related to mental health and physical health. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
They'll give you five free travel packs with your order, plus a year supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman. Unless somebody is seeking to be a world-class athlete in something, in which case they should probably pay attention to their genetics and see whether or not it lines up well with a given sport. Although there have been...
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
exceptions where people who are incredibly genetically, let's just say, biased toward not being able to perform well in a sport have nonetheless succeeded in performing at a world-class level. Those are exceedingly rare exceptions.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
for most people who want to do things recreationally, like the heavier set person with a thicker spine who wants to golf or do ballet, perhaps, or the thinner willowy person who wants to get into powerlifting, for instance.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Are there certain things that they should each consider and embrace as activities in order to make themselves more resilient, more pain resilient and more apt to have higher performance? For instance, would the willowy person, so to speak, do well to build up some of the musculature around the spine to compensate for the thinness of that spine?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are customized to your unique sleep needs. Now, I've spoken many times before on this and other podcasts about the fact that getting a great night's sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance. Now, one of the keys to getting a great night's sleep is to make sure that your mattress is suited to your unique sleep needs.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
And would the person with the heavier or thicker spine do well to try and encourage more pliability of their discs somehow?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
The people on the podium look very similar in structure.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
What does that mean? Well, if you go to the Helix website, you can take a brief two-minute quiz and it asks you questions such as, do you sleep on your back, your side, or your stomach? Do you tend to run hot or cold during the night? Things of that sort. Maybe you know the answers to those questions, maybe you don't. Either way, Helix will match you to the ideal mattress for you.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
For me, that turned out to be the Dusk mattress made by Helix. I started sleeping on a Dusk mattress about three and a half years ago, and it's been far and away the best sleep that I've ever had.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
So if you'd like to sleep better by sleeping on a mattress that's customized to your unique sleep needs, go to helixsleep.com slash huberman, take that brief two-minute sleep quiz, and Helix will match you to a mattress that's ideal for you. Right now, Helix is giving up to 30% off mattresses and two free pillows. Again, that's helixsleep.com slash Huberman to get 30% off and two free pillows.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
So I know that you loathe and avoid generalizations with good reason. But given that most people listening to or watching this are probably not aiming to become elite athletes. I know I'm certainly not. Can we safely make at least one or two generalizations about what we each and all can do to try and avoid let's say back pain and injury by either diversifying
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
our training or avoiding certain types of training. For instance, let's take the three major phenotypes, and this is obviously not how the world works, but the classic ectomorphic phenotype, very thin, very willowy, small joints, long and lithe, or lithe.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
the mesomorph, thicker, more muscular, and then the so-called endomorph, the more heavier set, maybe even carrying some extra body fat, et cetera. You don't really know what's under there. They could fall into either of the other two phenotypes. I could imagine, based on everything that you're saying, that a good rule of thumb would be avoid the types of activities that
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
are outside of your natural genetic propensity based on body type, at least in the extremes. Like if you're not very bendy, don't do seven days a week of yoga, okay? But I could also imagine the opposite, which is if you're not very bendy, do seven days of yoga because that's going to allow you to become more bendy.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Or the person that is naturally shaped more like a shot putter, let's say the mesomorph or endomorph, and you could say, well, Um, there'd be great power lifter. I mean, I knew kids like this in high school, you know, PE class, they're like, okay, weight training today. None of us had done weight training.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
And then the kid, you know, lies down and, you know, and pushes, you know, three 15 and you're like, Oh goodness, you know, like that's, that's wild. Um,
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
But maybe they shouldn't be weight training if their goal is to be all around fit, which I think is the goal of most people, to be able to carry some luggage at the airport without having to stop every once in a while and suck for air, to be able to lean down and grab something out of a cabinet, pick up a kid, do some hard work.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
labor in the yard, move some logs and things like that, to be able to do stuff without getting injured and without being so sore in the following days that you feel like you need extensive rehabilitation. So again, I know you like to avoid generalizations, but should we make it a point to train against our predisposition in order to offset the imbalances that would otherwise occur?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Or would we be wise to lean into our strengths and just not touch stuff that taps into our weaknesses? I understand the question.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice. It was a condition of being allowed to stay in school. But pretty soon I realized that therapy is an extremely important component to overall health.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
As a professor for more than three decades, Dr. McGill has analyzed the spines of injured people as well as healthy people and developed methods to treat spine injuries and pain as well as to improve spine biomechanics in anybody. He has authored more than 250 peer reviewed research articles on these topics, making him a true world expert.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
I just meant oops, because clearly that's not the way you went. Not that going to plumbing school would be a bad decision for some, but in your case, you went a very different direction.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
There are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First of all, great therapy consists of having good rapport with somebody that you can really trust and talk to about the issues that you're dealing with. Second of all, that therapist should provide support in the form of emotional support or directed guidance.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
And third, expert therapy should provide useful insights, insights that allow you to better understand not just your emotional life and your relationship life, but of course also your relationship to yourself and to career goals and school goals, meaning excellent therapy should also inspire positive action.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
So if somebody has pain in a given movement, say standing up, um, after they sit for too long, um, um, a particular style of hip hinge, deadlift or squat, or when they run, for instance, would it be wise for them to think about the exact movement that makes the pain the worst?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
in the moment that they're doing the movement or afterwards, because oftentimes pain will arrive after we engage in a certain activity, but during the activity, that pain is shut down, which by the way, is an interesting phenomenon in its own right. And, you know, might be worth some mention as to, a couple of the reasons why that occurs.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
We always think, oh, blood flow, it's warm, but clearly it's more. It's much more than that. It's much more than that. Yeah, for sure. So let's say I've pain in a knee when I run. Should I avoid running in that gate that causes pain and work around it? Seems to me that would be the logical choice. Right.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
BetterHelp makes it very easy for you to find an expert therapist with whom you really resonate with and that can provide the benefits that I just described. If you'd like to try BetterHelp, you can go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Waking Up.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
It must be humbling for adults to get down and do a baby crawl.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Does he wear one of those elastic lifting suits when he does that?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
The neural aspects are fascinating. When he does that incredible squat poundage, does he... take the bar off a standard squat rack and then walk it back? Or is it one of those ones where the bar is suspended from two hooks and then he takes it from there?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
So that particular lift was lifted off a monolith where he didn't have to walk it out. So he takes it off. So it's hanging from hooks, then the hooks are brought away. The reason I ask is it sounds like he's optimized for one very specific movement in a couple of you know, a couple of planes and nothing else.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Waking Up is a meditation app that offers hundreds of guided meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga nidra sessions, and more. I started practicing meditation when I was about 15 years old, and it made a profound impact on my life.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Because walking with a thousand plus pounds on one's shoulders is also a feat in of itself.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
So best to not be carrying a willow spine for that one. You want to be like a Muir Woods, a redwood trunk.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
I love the analogy to dog breeds. I love going to dog shows. I've only done it a few times, not to actually see the prancing around of the dogs. That doesn't interest me at all. The best part about a really excellent dog show is you go back behind the the arena where all the different breeds reside. So you can see the lineup of the finest Irish Wolfhounds, the finest English Bulldogs, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
In recent years, I started using the Waking Up app for my meditations because I find it to be a terrific resource for allowing me to really be consistent with my meditation practice. What I and so many other people love about the Waking Up app is that it has a lot of different meditations to choose from, and those meditations are of different durations.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Hundreds of different breeds. And you really get to see these genetic extremes, not just of structure, but of temperament. And you get to see the similarity in temperament of the Bulldogs. And of course, there's variation. Some of them are a bit more jolly, others more stoic. You know, the terriers are magnificent in their own right.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
And as you pointed out earlier with respect to the podium, more similar to each other within breed than across breeds in terms of temperament. But there's variation within breed. The reason I bring this up and the reason I bring this up now is that
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
If you look at the movement to those animals, even just the way they walk, whether or not they enjoy a flexion of the paw as they stride or whether or not they tend to stride differently. I don't have language for this. I'm not an expert in this, but I have a visual system that works and I can see that they may move differently. They actually walk differently, even at the same pace.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
And then you look at human beings, shorter, taller, medium, more lithe, more heavyset. And it's amazing that we don't take this into consideration, that we all move very differently, even within species, but that we've been into these groups.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
So when someone walks into your laboratory, as it were, your clinic slash laboratory, are you paying attention to how they move into the room, irrespective of pain? 100%.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
So it makes it very easy to keep up with your meditation practice, both from the perspective of novelty, you never get tired, tired of those meditations. There's always something new to explore and to learn about yourself. And you can always fit meditation into your schedule, even if you only have two or three minutes per day in which to meditate.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
I recall seeing Michael Johnson sprinting very upright. Yes. So when I think upright, I think either flat lower back or a little bit of a... of an arch in the lower back, this kind of movement.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Well, I think he was 200 and 400. He was. Which is unusual, someone that could win gold in both.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
I also really like doing yoga nidra or what is sometimes called non-sleep deep rest for about 10 or 20 minutes because it is a great way to restore mental and physical vigor without the tiredness that some people experience when they wake up from a conventional nap. If you'd like to try the Waking Up app, please go to wakingup.com slash Huberman, where you can access a free 30-day trial.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
I'd like to take a brief break to thank one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Now, I and others on the podcast have talked a lot about the critical importance of hydration for proper brain and bodily function.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Research shows that even a slight degree of dehydration can really diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes in order for your body and brain to function at their best. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium are critical for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or nerve cells.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise I'm doing, especially on hot days if I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman, spelled drinkelement.com slash Huberman, to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. I love where this conversation is going because there's tremendous variation in body shape and form out there.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
And I'm certain that by now everybody listening is starting to think about, oh, am I more likely to have a willowy spine, a thinner spine or a thicker spine, the kind of pliability or what you called vertical stacking resilience that one spine or the other would have. And it brings me back to this question of,
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
What can we each and all do to try and create the strongest back as well as limit the propensity for pain assuming we don't have it yet? Okay. So I would say I'm kind of in the middle. I'm neither extremely lithe nor am I shaped like a – you know, like a kettlebell, kind of somewhere in between.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
So for me, I make it a point across my training week to include three resistance training sessions, three quote-unquote cardiovascular training sessions, one long, one medium, one short cardiovascular session. The lifting sessions are geared toward building or maintaining strength in a balanced way for me. Everyone is going to have different requirements.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
In other words, nothing is skewed toward one particular outcome like endurance or strength or power. And I think most people probably want something similar because they'd like to be able to meet the various demands of life. So I frame the question I'm about to ask that way because as people start to assess themselves, the question arises again,
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Should we try and compensate for our weaknesses by emphasizing a certain style of training a little bit more? And if so, what does that look like for the spine? You said earlier, and I love this quote, and I want to make sure I attribute it to you now and going forward, that all systems in the body require stress for better health. Optimal health. Thank you. For optimal health.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Again, that's wakingup.com slash Huberman to access a free 30-day trial. And now for my discussion with Dr. Stuart McGill. Dr. Stuart McGill, welcome. Thank you, sir. Great to have you here. I'm a big fan of your work. I've watched a lot of your other content.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
So assuming that somebody has a thinner stature, they're more bendy, would they be wise to build up the muscles of the core, not just the abdominals, but the obliques and the lower back muscles, all around the spine in order to give it more stability? And would the person who has a thicker torso, thicker spine, thicker joints...
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
do well to emphasize some additional yoga training, some additional anything that allows them to be more bendy.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
So backtracking a little bit, but making sure that I'm doing that with purpose. You need to know what generates the pain in order to try and localize the pain.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
But then the goal is not to repeat whatever creates the pain. Correct. Perhaps, what I'm hearing, the goal is to get... near the proximity of the pain, but not go there. Not generate the movement that recreates the pain, but take the movement as far as one can without creating the pain. And then think about where the instability or weakness or biomechanical failure is contributing to the pain.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
read your books, and I'm excited to discuss today what makes for a really strong, resilient back, what causes back pain and how to relieve it. And perhaps the bigger issue is what all of that allows for in terms of mobility and functionality, not just in sport, but in everyday life. So to kick things off, I'd like to ask a question that I think is on a lot of people's minds.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Well, and there's some wisdom to not pushing into pain and extremes all the time. If the goal is to have a long arc of fitness or athletic career, a good friend of mine who's very accomplished in the fitness community, he says one of the best ways to get and stay in excellent shape your entire life is to train consistently, train reasonably hard. And we can talk about what his recommendation is.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
I'd love your thoughts. But as best as one can to not get hurt. You know, we forget about this. We hear so much about training consistently and pushing hard, but the not getting hurt part is key as well. Here's his recommendation on intensity. Can I share it with you and just get your thoughts?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Yeah, there's some neuroscience, certainly some psychology, but certainly some neuroscience to support that in terms of how we reset our... kind of a reinforcement threshold.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Most people aren't thinking about their back unless they have pain. So what causes back pain? You start with the easy questions.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
No, it's excellent recommendations for everyone. His suggestion, and by the way, this is not for competitive athletes. This is just for exercisers, if you will, is to make 85% of one's workouts across the year at about 85% of muscle. Maximal intensity and output.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
So still constraining the total length of a session to whatever the goal of that session is, whether it's resistance training or cardiovascular training, but to not go all out, to go at 85% of one's subjective understanding of what all out on that day would be on that day. to make 10% of one's workouts across the year at somewhere between 90 to 95% intensity of what one could generate that day.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Again, 100% all out being subjective for that day. And then 5%, or even less, of their workouts all out, everything you could possibly give, quote unquote, leaving it all on the mat, whatever phrase one prefers. And I like that recommendation because it keeps things in check and it also creates an awareness of how intense one is training and it allows us to not
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
let the great night's sleep or the extra cup of coffee that we had or the great song that happens to be playing or the competitive spirit that's arising because someone joined you that day or asked you to join a workout to take you into the domain of harming yourself.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
In fact, I can look to the times when I've been injured training and almost always it's because somebody invited me to join their workout and we got into a little bit of a competitive spirit. And I'm not an ultra competitive person, but you push yourself to 100% on that day.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
And two weeks later, you've got something you're dealing with, or two days later, you've got something and you go, God, was that really worth it? And I think unless one is a competitive athlete and that's competition day, it's probably not worth it.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
During today's episode, we discuss spine anatomy, as well as the common sources of back pain. And we discuss some of the controversies as to the origins and different treatments for back pain. As you'll quickly learn, there is no one specific source of back pain, nor is there one specific solution to back pain.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
That's pretty heavy. Here I'm thinking about intensity, meaning, well, for resistance training, let's say that one could complete six repetitions at a given weight. But if they had a gun to their head, they could complete nine.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Okay. Well, then you're doing six. Again, this is crude calculations, right? But six, maybe seven, maybe cheating a little bit on that seventh repetition. If it's a run and like for me on Sundays, typically there's a long, slow jog, but maybe the slow in that component is a little bit subjective. So am I pushing a little bit harder than I'm comfortable or am I hitting kind of a cruising pace?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Right. Okay. So 85% of max intensity for me would be staying at cruising pace and occasionally bumping up the, the speed a little bit. But on all out day, if it happens to be one, then it's, long, quote unquote, slow distance, but I'm trying to increase the speed of what I'm referring to as slow.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
So again, this is all very subjective, but we know on a given day, whether or not we're pushing past our comfort zone or not. And I'm not somebody who relies heavily on heart rate monitors and things like that. What I rely on is my consistency. This is the way that I've decided to stay in all around shape for, you know, more than three decades. I feel like I'm in decent shape.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
I'm not a great athlete. I'll never be the strongest person in the room or have the best endurance or the most speed or explosiveness, but I'm pretty sure I can keep up with most things pretty well. And I don't have pain. And I feel very grateful to not have pain. And I think it's because I've adopted a stance of, I don't wanna call it moderation, but of modulation.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Yeah, Dr. Sean Mackey is our head of the, essentially the pain division at Stanford School of Medicine. He's an MD and PhD, and he's a big... proponent of the biopsychosocial model of pain, which probably makes sense for us to discuss now. As the name suggests, it incorporates psychological elements. It incorporates, of course, physiological elements.
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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
And it points to, as I recall, seven or more sort of paths to dealing with pain, some of which include thoughts about one's emotional state. stress level, sleep. I mean, all of these things clearly play a role in pain and rehabilitation from pain.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Yeah, surely the nervous system is involved in generating movement and feedback from the muscles and proprioception. And as you're describing, the nervous system creates our sense of pain. There's an emotional component to it, as Dr. Mackey pointed out and as you're reinforcing.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
The neural circuits that control quote-unquote pain or give rise to pain involve the confluence of all of these things at some level. And I appreciate that you're willing to go into this biopsychosocial model of pain and acknowledge it because I think all too often in this space of biomechanics and pain and back pain in particular, people –
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
you in some cases get labeled as only subscribing to one particular pattern of remedy or one particular framework, and that's simply not true. It's just not true. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that that's actually a reflection of other people placing a singular lens on you and your work, as opposed to your work having a singular lens.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
I know that you look at things through the rather complex prism that is back pain and back rehabilitation. So thank you for touching into the biopsychosocial model. And we'll put a link in the show note captions to that episode with Dr. Mackey because he went into this in some depth. And so it is the case that we've covered that model in pretty extensive detail.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
There's something that you said to me. ones that I really want to make sure we highlight, which is that people who embark on a particular style of training, not just sports selection, but style of training, like resistance training with heavier weights versus endurance training, running longer distances or swimming longer distances, will sometimes cultivate a certain, what should we call it,
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
personality style or reactivity style that is probably independent of who they started off as. I mean, you can never separate these things completely. I mean, we could argue people who have a lot of mental endurance pick endurance sports or people that are rather ballistic in their personality, here I'm playing psychologist, pick sports with a lot of speed and ballistic motion involved.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
But perhaps the reverse is also true, that the more we engage in activities for which the nervous system is required to generate a particular pattern of movement, ballistic movement or endurance or strength, that we exacerbate certain aspects of our mental self, our emotional self as well.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
I realize this is not the stuff of detailed peer reviewed studies necessarily, or at least I'm not aware of them, but in your experience, working with a variety of different people from the general population who engage in different activities, as well as athletes who engage in very different activities, And let's keep in mind the discussion we had earlier about dog breeds.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
They are selected for not just based on physical phenotype and movement, but also personality type, temperament. What sort of broad correlations have you observed in, say, endurance runners Do they have more mental endurance for other activities versus, say, strength athletes or sprinters? Do they tend to have less but tend to excel in other domains of their mental life?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Sure. So when you say genetics loads the gun, what comes to mind, because it's my experience, is that I have a right shoulder that sits a little bit lower than my left shoulder, unless I'm mindful of that. My dad has the same thing. And I can put an ankle on my other knee a bit more easily on one side versus the other. I tend to pronate one foot a little bit more than the other when I run.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
I find that really interesting. And I can think of a number of self-experiments that I'd like to embark on, including more endurance training at particular times of year and seeing how that correlates with mental focus and endurance for athletes. say, writing or preparing podcasts, things of that sort.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
But of course, now that I have some sense of what the answer could be, I'd be biasing the outcomes. But if it's a self-experiment and the goal is simply to shift one's mental life or behavior, then I don't know that it matters that much.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Do you think that if somebody has pain, that they should have the capacity both to like lean into and push into the pain, not exacerbate it, but to sit with it and feel it as opposed to just avoiding it. How should people think about their own pain and how to work with it? That's the reason I'm asking.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
These are subtle things. They don't necessarily result in back pain. But I'm guessing that a lot of that is... either developmental overuse, particular sport, I'm regular footed, I skateboarded a bunch, so I push with my right foot, I kick a soccer ball with my right foot, those sorts of things. But let's assume that genetics played some role, created some bias.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Yeah, that answers the question. It's follow the advice of the clinician. It gets back to this issue of predisposition to move a certain way, to therefore avoid other forms of movement, to engage in certain activities but not other activities.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
I realize that I'll get in trouble if I say, you know, 70% of the training that we do should be in line with our predisposition and 30% should be countercurrent to that. But I'm kind of veering towards numbers more or less like that, right?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
I mean, we know, for instance, in the machine learning algorithms that relate to learning in the nervous system that a rough – this is a rough estimate of difficulty should be about – 15% of questions or challenges, so these could be cognitive challenges or physical challenges, should lead to failures, non-injurious failures.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Getting the answer wrong about 15% of the time tends to optimize learning across a number of different domains. Okay. Is that true for everything? Is it true for language, math, dance? No, but it's true for a lot of things.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
If I were to tell you that, which I just did, would then you immediately think to a particular intervention if I told you, okay, you know, I have a little bit of lower right side pain, which I occasionally do. I know I've got this imbalance that was loaded by genetics and presumably experience as well. And would your mind immediately go to a particular intervention origin of that pain?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Yeah, you're in great shape at 67. Yeah. Just remarkable shape. For those listening and not watching, I encourage you to take a look at the top card of the YouTube video. I mean, Stu moves around great. I mean, well, your posture is great and you're in awesome shape for any age, much less 67. So that's a testament to your methods. Well, the point was, it's okay to push when you're younger.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
I'd like to ask you about... McGill's big three. I know that again, you loathe to impart generalizations on people, but at some point you realize that people need something to do to work with in order to try and quote unquote, pain proof their back or reinforce their back. So we did a video that included the big three.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
We'll provide a link to those in the show note captions where I perform the big three, probably not perfectly, admittedly. I should have invited you to critique my form and we can always shoot another one of those, but I think it captures the big three well enough. The bird, dog, the roll up and the side plank.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
designed to build strength and stability around the spine and to stave off back pain, or in some cases, rehabilitate back pain. An enormous number of people wrote to us and commented how much the big three have helped them. So I just want to make sure that it's clear that despite
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Or perhaps even more importantly, a particular remedy to that pain? Or do we need to drill a little bit deeper and really understand more about what I do, what I don't do, if I'm more thin set or heavily set at the level of bone structure? You know, what are some of the other questions one would ask in the investigate category?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
The fact that you are appropriately reluctant to say that the big three is the solution to everything in terms of back pain for everyone, they have helped a large, large number of people avoid and in some cases rehabilitate back pain. If you were to add a fourth exercise to the big three, what would it be?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Let's say somebody has a willowy spine and they want more spine stability. They want to be able to generate more spine rigidity for whatever purpose.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
They have a lower back pain that's unilateral. And when they sit too long and then stand up, it feels like that side is locked up and there's some pain shooting down the leg.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
But as Dr. McGill spells out very clearly, there are things that anyone and everyone can do in order to strengthen their back and to reduce the amount of pain they may be experiencing. He explained some specific ways to self-diagnose your back pain, which of course is critical for understanding what specific things to do as well as to avoid in dealing with any pain and,
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
And when they walk a bit, 10, 15 minutes, they tend to feel better.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
What are your thoughts on inversion tables and anti-gravity boots and things to deload the spine?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Well, I started doing the big three on the basis of your book. And it certainly has helped my lower right side back pain that occasionally flares up. I also noticed I've gotten stronger in various lifts, but the most salient consequence has been when I run, I feel like my torso can stay more upright as I can kind of cycle my legs underneath me like I'm pedaling on a bike.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
And I feel like I have endurance for days.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
I do. Yeah. I had a whole body scan for just, you know, for fun, I guess is the sort of thing I do for fun. And indeed there's a, I think it's like an L3, L4 bulge on one side, which is fully consistent with the pattern of pain that I've had. Right. And I've managed to avoid for a number of years now doing Cobra type pose, these kinds of things.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
The Cobra doesn't work for everybody, but it is a powerful thing.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
I noticed if I travel and it forces me to sit for long periods of time and then the next day I train with any kind of hip hinge movement, it flares up again.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Don't forget to use your lumbare on the airplane. Right, yes. Dr. McGill gave me this little pillow called lumbare that inflates you putting in lower back and it's a wonderful tool. Right. That gives you resilience for travel. If one didn't have access to that, they could just roll up a towel and put in their lower back. Absolutely. Yeah, or sitting in a lecture.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
You might get some funny looks, but you'll be the person still mobile and not complaining about your pain when everyone else is grunting.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
That's an advanced neuroplasticity trick that comes with age. I'm right there with you. I have a question about walking. These days, we're hearing more and more about benefits of walking after meals, walking several times per day, blood sugar regulation. I think it's all wonderful. Anything that gets people moving in healthy ways, I think is terrific.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
When it comes to walking, none of us want to be the person paying careful attention to our gait, especially when we're not in pain and things of that sort. But if you were going to recommend a daily walk, is there a duration and speed that you think could be beneficial in terms of staving off back pain, just general posture, things of that sort?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Are we talking about a brisk five-minute walk or a brisk 20-minute walk, this kind of thing?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
If ever there were two exercises that bring to mind notions of back strengthening and potentially back pain... It's the deadlift and the squat. What are your thoughts on deadlifts and squats as a function of one's age, one's perhaps phenotype, ecto, endo, or mesomorph, or any other factors that would lead you to say, yes, deadlift and or squat.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
No, don't deadlift and or squat, or maybe you should deadlift and or squat.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Yeah, that's something that I both encourage and discourage people from searching for because it can scare you appropriately, but it also can be traumatizing to see.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
He's a willowy bendy guy who can just keep bending up and down off the ground. Bingo.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
What are your thoughts on glute ham raises? I'm a big fan of Nordic curls and glute ham raises for the posterior chain. To me, a glute ham raise, folks can look it up, is basically a deadlift into a leg curl, into a hamstring leg curl, except that your feet are, instead of being on the floor for the deadlift part, you've rotated yourself 90 degrees.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
so that the feet are effectively at the wall, right? And from the bottom position up to the parallel to floor position, that's more or less a deadlift, right? Stiff-legged or partially stiff-legged deadlift. And then the rest of the way is the Nordic curl or the leg curl.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
To me, that seems like almost the perfect exercise for the posterior chain, hamstrings, and glutes, which is why I do them regularly. What are your thoughts about them for back strengthening and for people that are trying to avoid back pain, both in the present and in the future?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Because they can't generate that kind of twist and snap with the throwing a football, for instance, like the stiffening up of the body at precisely the right moment and the relaxing of the arm. It's a pulsing strength. The flicking and spiral.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
There's a very mundane example for you. Could I ask you a question about the willow versus thicker trunk example? Can we look to torso thickness or wrist thickness or ankle circumference as a way to assess ourselves as to whether or not we are likely to be more willowy or redwood-like. I mean, it should be obvious just by looking at ourselves, knowing ourselves.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
I mean, some of those guys back when were known for having a few alcohol drinks plus smoking cigarettes on the course.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Well, that's okay. I mean, I've gone on record saying that I'll do and... genuinely do heavy hack squats, hack machine squats, leg extensions, those kinds of things, alternatives that for me have just led to progressively more of what I'm looking for in training legs. And back, of course, lower back. And I do the glute ham raises. And I can do all of those without pain.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
I don't know the last time I ever did a deadlift. I was never particularly strong in the deadlift. But if you're telling me that avoiding deadlifts as I get older, heavy deadlifts, that is, is going to help me avoid pain. back and hip pain, then I'm all for avoiding heavy deadlifts.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Do you see how- Do I need to flare my elbows back? You can do, yeah. Okay.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
But for instance, I have a short torso. I'm kind of thick through the torso front to back. I always have been since I was a kid. And my wrist circumference isn't small, but isn't huge. I had a bulldog mastiff and he would often look at me and I knew in his mind he was thinking My wrists are really thick compared to yours, Andrew. I knew that's what he was thinking.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
as it relates to applying in sport and in everyday life. Dr. McGill and I also discuss several of the avid controversies within the field of back pain and the treatments for back pain.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
You've talked about the so-called biblical training week. I love this. It's something that I plan to adopt for myself. It's not too far off from what I do now, but it's distinctly different enough that I'm excited because it's going to require some psychological adaptation, physical adaptation. Tell me, what is the biblical training week and why is it so useful?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
He had forearms like a longshoreman. And of course, he had never done any work whatsoever. Actually, primary goal of the bulldog is to do as little work as possible in life. But I have friends who have thick knees, some have smaller joints, smaller ankles. Can we make some general assessment about our spine without imaging it by looking at some of these peripheral markers?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Is there anything that can be done to offset the shrinking? Not that I know of. People will ask whether or not hanging or anti-gravity boots. Oh, well, I've measured that.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
I feel like every tissue in the body has been the target of an attempt to either restore its more youthful state or somehow augment its, I don't know, resilience over time.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
So these days we hear a lot about FDA-approved treatments using so-called platelet-rich plasma, PRP injected into the knee or PRP injected into an ovary or PRP injected into whatever tissue it is that people are attempting to restore youthful state to. Is there any evidence for any compounds or injectable drugs that can restore the tensile strength and thickness to the discs?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Yeah. Could you walk us through... your biblical week training with some examples of what one could select from the buffet of training options.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
And of course, the discs are in repeating fashion throughout the spine, top to bottom. Correct. And the discs are the soft tissue that allow for mobility of the
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
vertebrae the uh the bony segments exactly they are the joints but they're not a ball and socket joint they're actually a fabric of layer upon layer of collagen fibers and we can talk about that as well what a beautiful adaptation right take a bunch of bony if you want to be able to bend a bone right you need to um break it up into segments kind of like beads on a necklace and um and then in between those beads you put some pliable yet um uh it could like
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
We talk about the so-called biopsychosocial model of pain, which points to the various sources that pain can arise from, everything from emotional to lack of sleep, to specific locations in the spine and brain and elsewhere in the body, and the ways those mesh together to give us what we call pain, as well as to direct us towards specific treatments for pain that tend to be especially effective.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
I appreciate the neck work that you do, though. I have a four-way neck machine, but I don't require one. I've actually found that taking a plate and wrapping it in a towel, lying on one side, making sure to hook my foot under the wrench and stabilize with my other hand on the ground. and then just gently doing repetitions.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Jeff Cavaliere from AthleanX has a great set of videos on this, where he really spells out the dangers of things like neck bridges. They can be done, but there's a risk there that probably outweighs the potential benefits for most people. But every once in a while, I can't help myself and I do some bridges.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Yeah, I get teased for saying this too often, but the value of having a strong neck is just hard to overstate. You don't have to have a big neck, but a strong neck for sake of stabilizing the whole shoulder girdle during pressing and pulling lifts, for posture, for, you know, Feeling like your head is stably placed on your body.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
My bulldog was alive. He had the larger neck in the house. But again, it's not about building size into the neck. It's really that strength and stability that I just think translates to so many things that are valuable.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Yeah, this is interesting. I love older exercise books. And recently I came across one called Heavy Hands. This must be from the 70s. And the entire book was centered around people I'm being encouraged to carry some dumbbells during exercise, not all the time, and doing some lunges or walking uphill and getting the weights out from their body. And I was kind of chuckling about it on the one hand.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
pun intended. But at the same time, you know, we know based on a number of really good studies using neuroimaging and functional scoring of neural system function as one ages, that the innervation of some of the distal muscles and the fine control of the
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
the digits, the fingers and toes and toe spreading and things like that, even calf size and atrophy are fairly reliable markers of the extent to which there's been degeneration of the upper motor neuron pathways, other brain areas or not. So the idea of keeping the nervous system and neuromuscular
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
connectivity youthful by, quote unquote, heavy hands or maybe ankle weights, provided they're not going to induce injury, makes a lot of sense. Weighting the most distal portion of our body in order to generate adaptations, I think is going to be something that returns to the kind of modern sphere of fitness and longevity.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
I guess, a tissue that you can still compress. So it's both pliable and it can squeeze down and become more narrow in the vertical direction. And it can also squeeze down on one side or the other to some degree.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
And none of these things require fancy equipment. One could imagine just... grabbing a hold of some other... Well, an iron bar. An iron bar. Yeah. I really think there's something to this loading of the distal limbs cautiously, right? Properly. But there's something there in terms of keeping the neural pathways healthy and alive. Because we know they atrophy with age.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
And that explains in part the calf muscle atrophy, which, as you point out, is a well-known clinical marker for for neurodegeneration.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Well, certainly when I resistance train, if I'm doing anything standing, I make it a point to stagger my stance. Yes. And at the same time to make sure that my belly button is pointing forward so that I generate some anti-rotation energy. effort so that most of my abdominal work can be placed within the workout for other things.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
I do some pikes and some direct abdominal work as well and the roll up and things of that sort that you've recommended. But I find that from a coordination standpoint and especially from a balancing the musculature and the strength on both sides of the body, this is extremely important.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
And I know this because after years of skateboarding where you push with one leg, that was when I was younger, boxing where I'm traditional stance as opposed to southpaw, You know, you start getting into all these imbalances that goes way beyond anything aesthetic.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
I mean, the aesthetic stuff is my concern in certain people, but it was more the feeling that I could turn to my right very easily without pain turning my left. I felt stiff and it was just an imbalance in some of the muscles controlling me.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
So I think that weaving a symmetric stance, weaving the requirement for symmetric balancing of the musculature on both sides of the midline just makes all the sense in the world to me, especially if one is going to be a regular exerciser, which hopefully people are.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
Yeah, let's talk about those because you talked about the strength days. What about the two days of mobility?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
If you could just repeat the cardiovascular days.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
I have a feeling I'm naturally inclined to do endurance work because once I start running distance, I can just run and run. And then eventually it just feels like the stopping comes from
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
you know, I don't know, some nagging little injury or something like that, or pain, as opposed to anything stopping me from continuing to run, which is unfortunate because I tend to like the shorter workout type stuff. But it brings us back to what we were talking about earlier, trying to do a balance of those. everything in between. I love the biblical training week.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back
And given that currently I've been doing three days of resistance training total per week and three days of cardiovascular training, all it requires is shifting one each of those days toward mobility training, still taking the full day off each week.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Ari Wallach. Ari Wallach is an adjunct associate professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
So by the end of today's episode, you will have a unique perspective on how your brain works, how you frame time perception, and indeed how you frame your entire life. Before you begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
I love this concept of empathy for self because I've heard it before in other contexts, but I haven't heard it operationalized the way that you describe it. I think, yeah, there's two phrases that come to mind. There's a book called A Fighter's Heart by Sam Sheridan. And it's a pretty interesting account of all the different forms of martial arts and fighting.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And there's an interesting part of the book where he says, you know, you can't have your 20th birthday until you're 19, which is a big giant duh. But it's actually a pretty profound statement. And by the way, he went to Harvard. He's a smart kid. His father was in the SEAL teams. He has an interesting lineage in his own right.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And I think at Harvard, he claims he just painted and smoked cigarettes. So, you know, it's a bit of an iconoclast. In any case, I think that statement, you can't have your 20th birthday until you're 19, is something that we forget because of the immense amount of attention that we pay to trying to be like others and satisfy external metrics.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And so I like to think he was in agreement with you, if I may. The other thing that happened to me recently that comes to mind is that I, like many people, peruse Instagram. I teach on Instagram, et cetera. And there are a lot of these quote accounts, like life inspiration accounts. And I would argue that the half-life of any one of those posts is pretty short. But some are pretty interesting.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And there's a guy, I'll put it in the show note captions. I don't remember off the top of my head. Not a huge account, not a small account. I think he lives in Austin. And He goes through this long discourse about the challenges of the human mind for a lot of the reasons that we're talking about, its ability to flip from past to present to future, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is David. David makes a protein bar unlike any other. It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
But then he says, it basically distills down to one actionable step per day or per morning, which is at some point, if you want to grow and be more functional, you have to ask yourself, what am I going to do today to make my day better? Not to be better than I was yesterday, right?
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Which is also a fine statement, but that one never really resonated for me because like yesterday could have been an amazing day. You might not be as good as yesterday, right? Every day is kind of its own unique unit. And our biology really does function on these circadian biology units of 24 hours. There's no negotiating that.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
So I like this concept of what can I do today to make my life and hopefully the lives of others better? Because it implies a verb, an action step, and it's really focused on the unit of the day, which is really what we've got. So that resonated. So according to your definition, empathy for self starts with understanding that we're always doing the best we can with what we've got.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
but that there's a striving kind of woven into that statement, that there is a need for striving. At what point do we start to develop empathy for others? And what does that look like? Like, is empathy for somebody else feeling what they feel? I mean, that's the kind of traditional definition.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
I agree completely. If we were to break that down...
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
into the requirements for empathy and connection uh one it seems like presence like we need to be present like we're going to appreciate a fern a beautiful fern or a dog or a significant other or another human being that we happen to encounter we have to be present we can't if we're going to have empathy we our mind can't be someplace else can't be wandering right can't be in the past can't be in the future or we're not going to be
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
That's right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from protein. This is 50% higher than the next closest protein bar. These bars from David also taste incredible. My favorite bar is the cake flavored one. But then again, I also like the chocolate flavored one and I like the berry flavored one. Basically, I like all the flavors. They're all incredibly delicious.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
able to really touch into the details of the experience. So that seems like requirement number one. The second is that we need to be able to leave whatever kind of pressures are on us to tend to other things, right? Like every neural circuit we know has a push and a pull. Like in order to get A, you need to suppress B. And this is the way neural circuits work generally.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Flexors and extensors in the muscles are a good analogy for which by the way, you know, like if you're going to flex your bicep, your tricep is essentially relaxing and vice versa in so many, so many words. The PTs are going to dive all over me for that one. But that's sort of how neural circuits in the brain work.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
We can actually see all around us by virtue of neurons that respond to either increments and decrements in light. And their difference is actually what allows us to see boundaries, borders visually. So we need to suppress like our thoughts about where we need to be that day or other things that are going on for us.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And then we need to be able to return to our own, you know, self-attention in order to be functional. And I think that, I think this is where the challenge is and where the next question arises, which is on the one hand, I could imagine that, okay, we've got so many pressures upon us every day, all day.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
that it's getting much harder to be present, to be empathic, and to build this idealized future or better future. But on the other hand, I hear you and other people saying, well, things are so much better than they were even 50 years ago in terms of health outcomes, believe it or not, in terms of status of people having shelter, et cetera. And this is a shock to a lot of people.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
They're like, wait a second, I didn't see homeless people on the street when I was a kid, and now I do. Well, they were people suffering... were elsewhere. You didn't perhaps didn't see them.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
So there are a couple of levels of question here, but the first one is perhaps are we much better off, but we are worse off in the sense that there's so much incoming that we miss the fact that we're better off.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Like, you know, is it like notifications preventing us from seeing that we actually have so much that we're, we're, we're, you know, a hundred times better than off than we were as a species 50 years ago.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Because I feel like a lot of the debates that I see online about climate change, about health, about longevity, it's overwhelming because I feel like people aren't agreeing on the first principles. So let's start with this. Are human beings better off in terms of health and longevity than we were, let's go short scale, 50 years ago?
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
I mean, according to what metrics, like happiness?
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Now for me personally, I try to get most of my calories from whole foods. However, when I'm in a rush or I'm away from home, or I'm just looking for a quick afternoon snack, I often find that I'm looking for a high quality protein source.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Not this media company. Not this media company. I'm just saying. I'm not kidding.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And with David, I'm able to get 28 grams of high quality protein with the calories of a snack, which makes it very easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight. And it allows me to do so without taking on an excess of calories. As I mentioned before, they are incredibly delicious. In fact, they're surprisingly delicious. Even the consistency is great.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
No, I love this idea. I mean, we could map it to neural circuits, but I love this idea of high-level concepts and then neural circuits that are very – what Dr. Paul Conti was on this podcast – psychiatrist, brilliant psychiatrist said, you know, the limbic system, the emotional system doesn't know or care about the clock or the calendar. It just elicits feeling.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
It doesn't care about whether or not that feeling is relevant to the past, the present, or the future. It just has a job, which is just to bring out a particular feeling.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Shelter, health care.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
But the general public tends not to, sorry, I keep interrupting you, but also it's what does the kid say? Sorry, not sorry. In the sense that I want to make sure that I highlight something.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Martha Beck is somebody who I think has done some really brilliant work creating practices where when one is not feeling what they want to feel, you know, there's this kind of question, like, are you supposed to feel your feelings? Are you supposed to create new feelings in place of them, especially if they're unpleasant? And it's like, there's no clear answer to that because it's complicated.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
infinite number of variables. But she does have this interesting practice whereby it's a bit like a meditation where if you're struggling with something, like maybe you're struggling with boredom or not knowing where to go with your life, or you're not happy, or you just feel some underlying
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
It's more like a cookie consistency, kind of a chewy cookie consistency, which is unlike other bars, which I tend to kind of saturate on. I was never a big fan of bars until I discovered David Bars. If you give them a try, you'll know what I mean. So if you'd like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, the link is davidprotein.com slash Huberman.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
to think back to a time when you felt particularly blank, like a time when you felt particularly empowered or particularly curious. It can be very specific, particularly amused because, and the idea is that in anchoring to the emotion state first, you call to mind a bunch of potential action steps.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And the reason I like this approach is that that is at least one way that, quote unquote, the brain works, which is that the emotion states are linked to a bunch of action step possibilities, kind of like a magic library where if you go into the room called sadness, there are a bunch of action steps associated with that go beyond crying. It's like curling up in the fetal position, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
You go into the room that's called you know, excitement, and there's all this idea about getting in vehicles and going places and things of that sort. So what you're talking about is, I believe, thinking about the emotional states of others, and then from there, I think this is where you're going to go,
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
cultivating some action steps that you can take to ensure that that future generation can access those emotions yes but with a slight correction because it's not about thinking about their future emotional states it's actually feeling them i see so it's not saying i want my kids to be happy i want them to feel i want them to have no trauma it's um
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
It's feeling what it would be to be happy, no trauma.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Today's episode is also brought to us by Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are customized to your unique sleep needs. I've spoken many times before on this and other podcasts about the fact that getting a great night's sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Quasi-long-term. Six months. What I've learned in life is it's important to define the relationship.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. By now, many of you have heard me say that if I could take just one supplement, that supplement would be AG1. The reason for that is AG1 is the highest quality and most complete of the foundational nutritional supplements available.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
What that means is that it contains not just vitamins and minerals, but also probiotics, prebiotics, and adaptogens to cover any gaps you may have in your diet and provide support for a demanding life.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
For me, even if I eat mostly whole foods and minimally processed foods, which I do for most of my food intake, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits and vegetables, vitamins and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone. For that reason, I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012, and often twice a day, once in the morning or mid-morning, and again in the afternoon or evening.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
When I do that, it clearly bolsters my energy, my immune system, and my gut microbiome. These are all critical to brain function, mood, physical performance, and much more. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim their special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3K2.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer. I really like this because it gets to so many themes that have been discussed on this podcast previously and that exist in the neuroscience literature. Yes, emotions don't know the clock or the calendar.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And that sounds like a bad thing. And oftentimes it's discussed as a bad thing. Like, oh, when you're feeling stressed, you're not able to access the parts of your brain that can make better decisions. We know that's true, except in light of what's immediately pressing. I mean, I would say that stress in the short term makes us much better thinkers and movers for sake of survival.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Now, the mattress we sleep on makes an enormous difference in terms of the quality of sleep that we get each night. We need a mattress that is matched to our unique sleep needs, one that is neither too soft nor too hard for you, one that breathes well and that won't be too warm or too cold for you.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
In the long term, it's problematic. But the way that you're describing emotions as a Kedge anchor, is that what it's called? Kedge with a K? Kedge anchor, interesting. As a Kedge anchor, to pull us forward, also leverages the fact that emotions don't know about the clock or the calendar. And that the order of operations here seems to be emotions first,
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
then action steps born out of those emotions, and then future state hopefully arrived at if it's set along the right path. I like that a lot. And again, it maps to some of the work that has largely existed, at least to my knowledge, in popular psychology or whatever you want to call it, self-help.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Again, I'm a big Martha Beck fan in part because of an exercise that she's included in, I think, several, if not all of her books of this perfect day exercise. Have you ever done this exercise? It's a very interesting exercise. You first sit with your eyes closed.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
and you imagine like really terrible stuff and you experience it in your body and you experience it in your mind and you just pay attention to how it feels and it sucks. It doesn't feel good. Most people don't have too much trouble doing that exercise. Then you shift over. I think you're supposed to take a little break or maybe move around a little bit.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
He is also the host of a new TV series, A Brief History of the Future. Today's discussion focuses on perhaps one of the most important questions that any and all of us have to ask ourselves at some point, which is how is it that we are preparing this planet for the future? Not just for our children, if we happen to have children or want children, but for all people.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And then you do a perfect day exercise where no rules. You lie down or sit down, close your eyes and You can imagine your day includes anything you want. You can be anywhere you want. The room can morph from one country to the next. It doesn't matter. And you also experience the sensations in your body. And in that second exercise, it's remarkable. I've done it several times now.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
There are little seeds of things kind of pop out where you go, Oh, like I didn't realize that would be part of my perfect day. And they're not, um, outside the bounds of reality. And those are things that then you write down and that at least in my life have, um, all borne out. So this is something, an exercise you do routinely.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And when I first heard about this, I was like, okay, this seems like, like weird self-hypnosis, self-helpy woo stuff. Like, I'm not like, come on. I'm like, I'm a, At that time, I'm like, I'm a neuroscience professor. Like, I'm not going to like, you got to be kidding me. And it's a remarkable exercise.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And the reason I bring it up now in discussion with you is I think you and Martha arrived at a similar place or a similar avenue. But in your case, you're talking about specifically toward building a future that's not necessarily for you to live in, but for someone else to live in.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
If you go to the Helix website, you can take a brief two-minute quiz, and it asks you questions such as, do you sleep on your back, your side, or your stomach? Do you tend to run hot or cold during the night? Things of that sort. Maybe you know the answers to those questions. Maybe you don't. Either way, Helix will match you to the ideal mattress for you.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And I love it, and I love the notion of cathedral thinking, just the visual there, or mosque thinking. I went to the Blue Mosque years ago. Yeah. I mean, I've seen some amazing architecture. I love architecture. And I was like, okay, it'll be a beautiful building. And I was like, whoa.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
For me, that turned out to be the Dusk mattress, D-U-S-K. I've been sleeping on a Dusk mattress for, gosh, no, more than four years. And the sleep that I've been getting is absolutely phenomenal. So if you'd like to try Helix, you can go to helixsleep.com slash Huberman. Take that two minute sleep quiz and Helix will match you to a mattress that's customized for your unique sleep needs.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And I think what I realize is that I don't know who built the Blue Mosque specifically. I don't know who the architect was. I should. And even earlier this year, we were in Sydney. I went to Sydney Opera House. We did a live there. It's a beautiful building. I learned they had been built over a very long period of time. I can tell you that the architect was Danish, but I can't remember his name.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
So part of what we're talking about here is giving up our need for attribution, giving up our need for credit. Gosh, this is the opposite of social media, right? Social media, it's all about getting credit, you know? And yet in science where people care a lot about credit while they're alive, and my scientist colleagues hate this, but they know it deeply too.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Right, which is that with the exception of Einstein and a few others, most people will not be associated with their incredible discoveries, even the textbook discoveries 20 years out. And I know this because my dad's a scientist and I know a lot about the scientists that were ahead of him. And he taught me this early on.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
He just said, you know, with rare exception, you know, the discoveries are not, um, you know, no one's going to say, oh, that's the discovery of so-and-so. Talk about the discovery, people will build on it. So you're part of a process for which you won't get credit in the long run. You will get credit in the short run.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And that brings me around to perhaps a point that's more relevant to everybody, not just scientists, which is that We are all trained to work on these short-term contingencies, reward schedules, where we achieve something, we get credit. You get an A, you get a B, you get a trophy. We just came from the Olympic track and field trials in Oregon. It's like podium, bronze, silver, gold.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And so, yes, you're part of a larger legacy. You're building toward a larger legacy in the examples that you give. But part of it is understanding that you're not going to get credit. You're not going to have your name huge on the side of the building. I mean, I don't want to give too many examples, but I work at a university for which there's an endowment the size of a country, right?
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
We're very blessed to have that endowment. the buildings have names on the side of them. The reason they have names on the side of them is because people gave money, typically gave money to the university to have their name on the side of a building to be immortalized. What's interesting for many reasons, both sociopolitical, but also other reasons, those names change over time.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
So if people knew that they gave half their wealth and their name might be scraped off a building in 200 years. They might feel differently about it. So short-term contingencies are important. Then again, we call it Rockefeller Plaza, right? Is Lincoln Center named after a Lincoln?
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
You're the New Yorker, you know, and so on and so forth. So like if people, how do we get the everyday person And I consider myself an everyday person. How do we get ourselves working on short-term contingencies for a future that we can visualize as better for the next generation and let go of our need for credit.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Right now, Helix is giving up to 25% off all mattress orders. Again, that's helixsleep.com slash Huberman to get up to 25% off. Today's episode is also brought to us by Roka. Roka makes eyeglasses and sunglasses that are the absolute highest quality.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
You went to Berkeley. I went to Berkeley. You went to a bunch of places, but he bounced around, folks. Proof that you can bounce around and still be successful, but maybe you should eventually finish. We'll talk about that later. But Sproul Plaza. Yes, yes. Sproul Plaza, seat of the free speech movement. Although now you could argue, not so free speech movement. That's my, I said that.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Yes, I said that. Sproul Plaza, like, I can't tell you who Sproul was. Do you know who Sproul was? No. Exactly. I can tell you the Arches. I can tell you that it was a free speech movement. I can tell you that I saw certain bands play there. I can tell you that it's supposed to be a place where you can say anything and be exempt from, you know,
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
This is an exciting thought.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Yeah, no, please do that. Please do so.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Philanthropy at universities and elsewhere. People think of it as like, oh, people, egoic legacy. Sure. Also pays for hundreds of thousands of scholarships, the opportunity for people to- And research, and you need to do it 100%. It's vital. It's vital.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
I've spent a lifetime working on the biology of the visual system, and I can tell you that your visual system has to contend with an enormous number of different challenges in order for you to be able to see clearly from moment to moment. Roka understands all of that and has designed all of their eyeglasses and sunglasses with the biology of the visual system in mind.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
I totally agree. And I think, you know, I'm old enough. And frankly, I'm excited to be old enough that I can make statements about being old enough to know that, like, I believe that our species is, for the most part, benevolent. I feel like most people, if raised in a low trauma environment, with adequate resources will behave really well. There are exceptions and
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
there may be sociopaths that are born with really disrupted neural circuitry that they just have to do evil or feel, you know, but I think it's clear that trauma and challenge can rewire behavior and certainly the brain to create, you know, what we see as evil, right? So, but I think most people are good. Most people are of genuine goodness. And I do think that we model behavior.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
I think that etiquette, is something that I guess as a 49 year old person, I guess, does that make me middle age? I'm of middle age. I'll probably live hopefully to be about a hundred, but we'll see. Bullet bus or cancer, I'm going to give it what I got.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Right. There's a response to that that could go either way. I like to think that reading the book fully will extend life as opposed to shorten life. Yes. If nothing else, maybe it'll cure insomnia. The idea here is that if we're going to invest in being our best selves, one would hope that other people will respond to that the way that you said, that we'll kind of mirror each other.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Roka eyeglasses and sunglasses were first designed for use in sport, in particular for things like running and cycling. And as a consequence, Roka frames are extremely lightweight, so much so that most of the time you don't even remember that you're wearing them. And they're also designed so that they don't slip off, even if you get sweaty.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Good behavior breeds good behavior. In my lifetime, I've seen a real increase in the number of rules and regulations and a decrease in etiquette. Like what I would call, and I don't, this isn't a real term, I don't think, but like spontaneous etiquette or genuine etiquette, like people being kind just to be kind, not because they're afraid of a consequence.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And I have a theory, and I'll go through this quickly. I saw a documentary recently about the history of game shows. Mm-hmm. where I learned that the first commercial was during the World Series when DiMaggio was making a run on the home run record. So they used a sports game that was televised and on the radio to have a first commercial.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Then they had game shows, which were basically commercials for the products. That's what they were. And they used human interaction as a way to make it more interesting between the contestants and the host. And then came reality TV shows. And then now I would argue that social media is the reality TV show and we're all able to opt in and cast ourselves in it.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And that the way that people get more, let's just say presence on the show is to do things that are more hyperbolic. Like it's very hard, I've tried and I think managed to some extent to do so too. It's very hard to create a very, very popular social media channel
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
in this reality TV show that we are all in on social media by just being super nice to everybody and being, you can, but it's much harder than if you're a high friction player because it's less interesting. There's less drama. It takes more attention. But I do think that there are pockets of that. So Lex Friedman used to talk about this. Like, is there a social media platform where people are
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
rewarded for being benevolent, for modeling good etiquette, because they genuinely like that. And I say social media because I think so much of life now is taking place there. And that's the opportunity to reach people across continents and far away in time as well, right? To timestamp down things. So here's my question. Is there a version of social media that
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
that is not just on the half-life of like 12 hours, what was tweeted, et cetera, what was retweeted. Because I would argue that even the highest virality social media posts have a half-life of about six months to a year. Maybe not even that. There are a few memes, like the guy looking at the other girl, walking the other way, those kinds of memes that seem to persist, but most of them don't.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Now, even though Roka eyeglasses and sunglasses were initially designed for sport, they now have many different frames and styles, all of which can be used not just for sport, but also for wearing out to dinner, to work, essentially anytime in any setting.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
So is there a time capsule sort of version of social media? Because I look on the internet, like on YouTube, and I would say there are probably three or four YouTube videos, namely the Steve Jobs commencement speech at Stanford in 2015, maybe last lecture by Randy Pausch before he died of pancreatic cancer, maybe Benet Brown's Ted talk on vulnerability.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
I'm thinking mainly in the self-help space, personal development space here. And frankly, Aside from that, most things, as popular as they may seem, 100 million views, 200 million views, compared to literature, compared to music, compared to poetry, compared to visual arts, it's going to be gone. I like to think that these podcast episodes are going to project forward 30, 40 years into the future.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
But if we look at the history of what's on YouTube... and we look at the half-life of any social media post, it may not be the case. In fact, it's very likely it's not the case. One would hope that they morph into something that lasts. But the question here is, is there a version of social media that acts as a time capsule to teach the sorts of principles that you're talking about?
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
I wear Roka readers at night or Roka eyeglasses if I'm driving at night, and I wear Roka sunglasses in the middle of the day anytime it's too bright for me to see clearly. My eyes are somewhat sensitive, so I need that. I particularly like the Hunter 2.0 frames, which I have as eyeglasses and now as sunglasses too.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
But at the advent as we – I guess it could be argued I've done a lot of things that my father did. He is a scientist and there are other domains of life, but yeah.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Yeah, so I might tell you who'd say you'd open the paper and poke it from behind when I wanted his attention.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
If you'd like to try Roca, you can go to roca.com slash Huberman to get 20% off your purchase. Again, that's roca.com slash Huberman to get 20% off. And now for my discussion with Ari Wallach. Ari Wallach, welcome. Andrew Huberman, thank you for having me. You and I go way back.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
I'd like to take a brief break to thank one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Now, I and others on the podcast have talked a lot about the critical importance of hydration for proper brain and bodily function.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Research shows that even a slight degree of dehydration can really diminish cognitive and physical performance. it's also important that you get adequate electrolytes in order for your body and brain to function at their best. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium are critical for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or nerve cells.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise I'm doing, especially on hot days if I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman, spelled drinkelement.com slash Huberman, to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. I mean, one of the reasons I fell in love with biology is that
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Yes, we are evolving as a species, but I would argue slowly enough that any fundamental knowledge about biology of the human body is a core truth about us way back when and now and very likely into the future. And of course, technologies will modify that. Medicine will modify our biology, et cetera. But I get great peace from that.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
and most of the so-called protocols that I described on the podcast about viewing sunlight, et cetera, circadian rhythmicity, et cetera, has been core to our biology and our wellbeing 100,000 years ago, and very likely it will be core to our biology 100,000 years from now. I therefore worry about any technology that shortens up our ability time scale of motivation and reward.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And I use social media, so I am not anti-social media by any stretch. In fact, I'm quite pro, provided it's kept in check, a la Jonathan Haidt's ideas. I really like those. let me put it this way. If I go to Las Vegas, which I do enjoy doing from time to time, I'm not a gambling addict.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
I guess if I say that enough times, people are going to say I'm a gambling addict, but I enjoy playing a little bit of roulette or a little bit less slots. I play all the low level stuff that doesn't require any thinking. And I often do pretty well for whatever reason. Cause I know when to leave probably. But Vegas is all about short-term thinking and short-term reward contingency.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
It's actually designed in every respect to get you to forget that there are these other longer timescales.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
There's no lights. There's no clocks in many of them. The random intermittent reward schedule that's there is designed to keep you playing. And I would argue that a lot of social media is like that. Not all of it, but a lot of it is like that. likes and responses. In some cases, fighting is what people want. They want to fight because they like that emotion.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And I think that's a good way to frame today's conversation, not by talking about our history by any stretch, but because... Really what I want to understand is about time and time perception. So without going into a long dialogue, the human brain is capable of this amazing thing of being able to think about the past, the present, or the future, or some combination of the three.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
The algorithms figure you out so that they shorten up your temporal window. And so when people say, oh, we're walking around with a little slot machine in our pocket all day long with our smartphone, I actually think that's right. I think it's right. It's more like a casino, however, where That casino harbors all sorts of different games and they're going to find the one that you like.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Some people like playing roulette. I happen to like playing roulette. Some people like crap. Some people like poker. Some people like to bet on a game where you get to sit the whole game with the possibility of winning. A friend of mine who's actually an addiction counselor, he said, you know, the gambling addiction is the absolute worst of all the addictions. Why?
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Because the next time really could change everything. Unlike alcoholism or drug addiction or other forms of addiction, where the next time is just going to take you further down. In gambling, there is the realistic possibility that the next time could change everything. And that destroys lives.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
So if we are walking around with a sort of casino in our pocket, how do we get out of that mindset, much less use that tool? in order to get into these longer-term investments for the future? This is what I want to know. How do we get into the metaphorical cave painting scenario?
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Because what it means is that the stories that I'm seeing on social media today probably are meaningless toward my future. Probably. More than likely, yes. But I need to be informed. But, you know, I saw the debates. Like how much more do I need to hear about what was happening at the debates from other people? Probably zero. Like there's no new information there.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
The only thing that can happen is I can get caught in the little eddy of the tide pool that is the debate about the debate or the debate about the debate about the debate. So, I mean, it takes a strong, strong mind to – Divorce oneself from all of that, much less get into this longer-term thinking.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And maybe this is why David Goggins is always out running and hates social media so much even though he's used it to good end to share his message. I mean what is it that we can do to disengage from that short-term contingency reward mindset? and behaviors and what in the world can we do instead? Is it go paint like on the side of a cave? Is it write a book? Is it, I mean, how do we do that?
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And then let's check off the box of like, we need to tend our kids. We need to tend our health. We need to get our sleep. We need to get, let's just assume that we're taking care of the fundamentals of health and wellbeing, which doesn't leave a whole lot of time afterwards anyway, what do we do? Where should the stories go? Where do we put them?
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
I feel really impassioned by this because I devote my life to this, right? And I teach biology because I believe it's fundamental and transcends time. But I care about the future. And I'm well aware that in 30 years, The idea that there was a guy on the internet talking about the importance of getting morning sunlight. Sure, that might happen, you know, but probably no one will care.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Just like I realized about halfway through my scientific career that, sure, I was tenured at Stanford, won some awards, enjoyed the research, enjoyed the day-to-day. But I realized, okay, there's some – I feel good about the research contributions we made. But that I knew – that people weren't going to be like, oh, Huberman discovered this because I had already forgotten the people 32 years ahead.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And I know the literature really well. So like, how do you square these different mental frames? It's a conundrum.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
If other animals and insects do that, I wouldn't be surprised, but we do that. And we do it pretty well, provided all our mental faculties are intact. One of the key aspects to brain function, however, is to use that ability to try and set goals, reach goals, and that's a neurochemical process.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
But I don't believe that. I mean, I believe in God. I mean, I've gone on record saying that before. And there are many people who believe in God in the afterlife. But it still is difficult to navigate the day to day.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
So science destroyed religion?
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
What I'm saying is – You're not going to argue you can tell God what to tell us.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
But the term you just said, that science and technology cannot tell us where we need to go.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And I would say these days, more than ever, we operate on short timeframe reward schedules, meaning we want something, we generally have ways of getting it pretty quickly, or at least the information about how we might get it pretty quickly, And we either get it or we don't. And of course it involves dopamine and a bunch of other things as well.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
But there are still many people on the planet who believe in God and are religious.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
More than there are that are religious. So does that mean that they're immune from this confusion?
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And I would say that for every major religion. Yes. I would say for every religion, like the essence of it is about love.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Like with anything.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
That's reassuring. Yeah, we're in the- Because I keep hearing about, you know, the fact that we're almost done. So we're about a third of the way through. We're in the bottom of the third inning. Oh, goodness. All right, well, you finally said something that gives me, I'm just kidding. Lots of things that you've said give me confidence in our future.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Most notably that you're talking about this, sorry to interrupt, but I'm going to compliment you. So maybe it's okay. I'll stop talking now. That most notably that, you know, I think you're the first person
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
outside of the sub-branch of neuroscience, which is a very small sub-branch, people that study time perception, to really call to people's consciousness that the human brain can expand or contract its time perception. And we do this all day long and high salience, high stress, high excitement, life and thinking shrinks the aperture, right?
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
It contracts the aperture and makes us very good at dealing with things in the present, get to the next day or the next hour, collapse, go and continue, repeat, repeat, repeat. It's the opposite of what the Buddhists traditionally said, which was to be present in order to see The timelessness is why I'm a big fan of the I forget the name. It's Rob.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
We'll have to add this in the the Asatoma prayer, which talks about release me from the time bound nature of consciousness to timelessness. Sounds very mystical. But what they're really talking about is get me out of the mode of stress into the mode of relaxation that allows me to see how the now links with the past and relates to the future.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
impossible to do when we're under stress, trying to figure out like how we're going to get someplace in traffic to pick up the kids so they're not waiting outside the school alone. Impossible. You just can't, the two deep breaths and the long exhale, like it works to bring your level of autonomic arousal down, make you navigate that situation better.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
But it is the hyper rare individual who thinks, well, look, you know, this is linked to some larger timescale. Like when we are stressed, the horizon gets right up close. So you're one of the first people to talk about this dynamic relationship with that horizon. Is there a way that we can leverage the immediacy of our experience, that fact, to actually create useful tools for the future?
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
A lot of your work is focused on linking our perception of what we're doing in the present with knowledge about the past and trying to project our current decision-making into the future to try and create a better future. And
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
So for instance, before we started recording, we were talking about the notion of time capsules. I've been keeping a time capsule for a long time. The first idea for this came when I was a kid. We used to build skateboard ramps in the backyard.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And I'll never forget that right before we put down the first layer of plywood, we put a time capsule in there and we all like wrote little notes and did things. I think someone put some candy in there or something. It's kind of a cool concept, right? But, Social media to me does not seem like a time capsule. I feel like it's just going to get turned over, turned over, turned over.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
What are the real time capsules of human experience? So you said religion, religious doctrine, Bible, Koran, Torah being the big three. And there are others, of course. But those are the big three. Bible, Koran, Torah. Those are big three time capsules. Okay. Then we've got literature, music, poetry, visual art. So paintings, drawings, and sculpture. What else do we have?
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
The human brain, as we know, is capable of orienting its thoughts and its memories to the past, to the present or to the future. But few people actually take the time to think about the future that they are creating on this planet and in culture, within our families, et cetera, for the next generation and generations that follow them.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
I've been to your home. Yeah, but, you know. It's been a while. It's been a while. That was a complaint.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Whenever I make it to Manhattan, I have a hard time getting out of Manhattan.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
that's some pretty heavy mental gymnastics, especially when many, perhaps most, but certainly many, many people worldwide are just trying to get through their day without feeling overly anxious, without letting their health get out of control, without, or I should say their illness get out of control, and on and on.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
How far, so just a few questions more specifically about you, because I think what you're doing here is you're concretizing a process, a protocol, if you will, that anyone can use. And I would argue that the shift from printed photos, largely from printed photos to electronic photos has made this problematic, you know? Um, I mean, it's made certain things simpler.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Like if you change relationships, you can just delete a folder as opposed to having to actually take photographs from a previous relationship and make sure they're not around in case your next relationship would understandably take issue with that. I'm not speaking from experience here. But how far back do your photos go?
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
49. Thank you. But you seem to be in good health. Yes.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Yeah. You have energy. You've always had a lot of energy. You used to call yourself Ari Ferrari. You said you're like a Ferrari. That's why the name is Ari.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Ari and I have known each other since we were little kids. He's always had a ton of energy. Actually, he hurt himself when he was younger and he was in full traction, like cast of his whole lower body. And he would dance on the floor on his arms, kind of like David Goggins will treadmill on his hands, even when he can't move his legs. Okay, so chances are you'll meet your grandkids.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Yeah, God willing, you'll meet your grandkids. But probably not your great-grandkids. Probably not. Okay, well, I have a different tool.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Yeah, I get it. And it's interesting because I think that – well, and you're on the internet. So people will see you on the internet probably at least, you know, I think 30, 50 years out if you Google your name or whatever it's called at that point. Yeah. I get in trouble whenever I say Googling. People go, why don't you talk about a different – because that's the one everyone uses.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
So to kick the ball out, I've got this long-winded question, and it is indeed a question, which is how do we navigate this Like if we really care about the future, what do we want to do? Where do we want to place our mental frame? And how do we start going about doing that?
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Unless you use DuckDuckGo because you're afraid of what people might – so – when someone comes up with a bet, like a truly better one, maybe it'll get replaced. But meanwhile, Google, um, so they'll get to your great grandkids could possibly know you there. They could hear this conversation.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
This very conversation. I think that's part of the reason why people go on social media, not just to be consumers, but they want, they want to leave something. They're probably not thinking about it consciously, but they want to leave something for the future. I use a tool, um, that I learned from a friend. He has this, um, your life in, in, uh, it, your life in weeks, I think it's called.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And it's this, you know, you fill in chart where you, you put your birthday, you put your predicted lifespan. So for me, I put a hundred, it feels good to me. I'm not interested in living much past a hundred unless there's some technology that would allow me to do that with a lot of vigor and my friends would be around. So, and you mark off the, the, that you fill in these little squares.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And I did this morning actually. And, you know, I'm not quite halfway through, but I'm about halfway through. And it's a, it's an interesting thing to see your life in that representation. You go, oh, wow. It can inspire better decision-making because we can lose track of where we are in time. And some of us, including me, are not very good at tracking time.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
People that have ever waited for me on an appointment know this. I track – I'm very oriented in space, not well-oriented in time. So the problem with these charts is that – or photos on the shelf, I would argue, is they have great utility. But the problem is that They're not in the forefront of our consciousness throughout the day, right? Like I filled out that chart.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
I didn't even think about it again until now. And when we are pressed with a decision, in some cases, we have the opportunity to step back and say, okay, look, in the bigger arc of things, I got to go left here, even though I want to go right. This is the right thing for my- The bigger arc. The bigger picture. The bigger picture. The long path, yes.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
So, you know, is there a way, is there maybe a technology that actually serves us to anchor us to best decision-making for a given best time bin, we would call it in neuroscience, best time binning, mode of time binning for a given decision.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Yikes. I mean, and cool. Very cool.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
No, you need to floss at night.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
We did an episode on oral health. Yeah, I know. And I learned from the dentist.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
It's actually true. No, it's true. It's so key for brain and body health.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
The dentists are going to thank you.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Yeah, I definitely want to touch on that. Can I just ask you a question real quickly before here?
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
This notion of – let's say a protocol for imagining future self or actually visualizing future self, not as a way to scare yourself into better health habits, although if it works, great, but as a way to really get your mind into the reality that if you survive, you're going to get older by definition. And that person needs care and in an environment and your kids are going to grow up too.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
We know this. Okay. So that's all obvious. I feel like Barring accident or injury or disease, most people have a kind of intuitive sense of how long they're going to live. And the reason I say this is I remember when Steve Jobs was alive because I was a postdoc in Palo Alto then and would see him occasionally around Palo Alto. And then read the Walter Isaacson biography about him.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And it seemed like he had a very clear sense that someday he would die. And he lived his life essentially according to that principle. And in some sense may have justified being a little bit outrageous at times and a little bit high friction at times through the sense of urgency.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Like it was important to get things done and get them done right and to discard with a lot of kind of like popular convention. And he's kind of celebrated for it. I'm sure a few people dislike him. I think most people celebrate him for it. I guess he had some sense of how long he was going to live. And then at one point maybe that sense was inflated and then boom.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Your dad died when you were very young. Do you think that that gave you a perspective that, you know, at any moment you could be four months out, you could get the four months notice that you're going to be dead in four months? Like, did it shape your thinking about the future?
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
I mean, my dad's now – I'm not saying this as a – I mean, no, it's interesting that there may have been a distinct advantage, of course, not to his dying, of course, but to the idea that it really creates this sense of urgency about not just the present but the future. I remember when we were very young, you're like, I want to have kids.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
You got going on a family like I think first among all of us.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Really early. And for those whose parents are still alive and seem to be vigorous, maybe they feel less of a sense of urgency. Which sounds wonderful. Parents are alive, vigorous. Okay, that's a blessing. But if it prevents you from living your life in a way that's really linked to your futures, that's not good.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
So do you think that we have an intuitive sense or an unconscious sense of how long we are likely to live, like a kind of a range? Because Steve kind of argued that in some of his writings and speaking.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
I could not agree more. And I'm so, so grateful that you mentioned this book and this idea from Becker, because I would argue that every addiction, every single addiction is is based in a fear of death and an attempt to shorten the timescale of thinking, shorten the timescale of reward, shorten the timescale of everything to avoid that reality.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
How do we do this? I mean, like we can do it conceptually. Like you want to set the stage for that. Whoever ends up in that empty frame to have a better life. But it's hard to do.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Like I think most people assume once it's lights out, who knows what happens next, but it's very hard to get them working for something that they don't have the ability to imagine and the people that they don't even know. So in other words, if we have a hard enough time imagining ourselves in the future, you gave us a tool. Look at the aged version of yourself. I love that.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And if there's a website that will do that, we can put a link to it in the show note captions. Put a reminder that you will get older. You are getting older in this very moment and try and live for the wellbeing of that person and the people around them and look at it. So that creates a protocol for the self
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
How do we protocol the future setting, the futures approach, the verbing of the future or into the future for people around us and for people that we don't even really know and that we probably will never even meet?
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
You have a – Yeah, yeah.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Yeah, I can't. I mean, maybe once or twice.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And what does the letter include?
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
He calls me Andy, folks. Sorry, okay. No, it's okay. Just stick with Andy. I'm going to stick with Andy. I'm giving you permission for at least the duration of this episode.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
That that could actually be – Are those three still in touch or they've been canceled yet?
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Right, and the autobiographies are, of course, through their own lens. Through their own lens.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Yeah. Or that we do need and it's just a shorter timescale reward thing. Like I don't believe that everything that happens on social media or that we buy or the pleasure that we get in our lifespan or day is bad. I don't think – I'm a capitalist too. What I think is that it's just one – it is but one time window of kind of operations. I just think it's good to have flexibility, right?
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
It's sort of like in nutrition, they talk about metabolic flexibility.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
So I love it. And I also know that a lot of people love it, even if they don't know they love it, meaning they perhaps haven't heard it framed the way that you describe it in your book, on your show, and today. But I think a lot of people just are hoping that these super high achievers, right, the Steve Jobses, the Elons, the...
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
I don't know how people feel about politicians nowadays, but, you know, but the people building technologies who seem to really care about the future. I mean, say what you want about Elon, but the guy is building stuff for the now and for the future. I mean, he's doing it. That they will take care of it for next generations, right? Just like,
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
there were those, the Edison's and the Einstein's and the, you know, the, I don't, you have to be careful with names these days because almost everyone has something associated with them where you're going to trigger someone, but I'll just be, you know, um, relaxed about it and say like, I would even say like, uh,
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
You know, even like a Jane Goodall, like the appreciation of our relationship with animals and what they have to contribute to our own understanding of ourselves and our planet, that kind of thing. So, you know, those people ushered in the life that I've had and I feel blessed. pretty great about that.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
So many people are probably saying, okay, makes sense for my family, but what do I have to contribute? And you give the example of the fact that children are always observing, they carry forward the patterns and the traits, and certainly the responses that they observe in their parents, what's okay, what's not okay.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Starting in the 80s and in the 90s in this country, there were many more divorces and fractured homes than there were previously. As a consequence, there's also been a fracturing of the kind of collective celebration of holidays. Like the things that have anchored us through time are happening less frequently now. Many of these have become commercialized, but that was always the case.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
You know, people were getting Christmas presents one way or another. So... You know, do you think that the kind of fracturing of the family unit has contributed to some of this lack of, of, um, let's just call it longer path, um, thinking and decision-making?
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Okay, so you mentioned religion. Maybe for a moment we could just talk about universities. These days, in part because of the distrust of science, and in part because of distrust in government, and in part because of the distrust in traditional media, there's more and more ideas being kicked around that, you know, formal education is not as valuable as it used to be.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And people always cite the examples of the Mark Zuckerbergs and others who didn't finish college, but I would argue they got in and chose to leave. They took leave of absence. They didn't drop out. And they are rare individuals. Ryan Holiday said it best.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
I think if you are struggling in college, you're absolutely the kind of person that needs to stay in college with rare exception, unless there's like a mental health issue or some physical health issue that needs to be tended to because nowhere else in life, except perhaps the military, is there such a clear designated set of steps that can take you from, you know, point A to point B with a credential that you can leverage in the real world for builds.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And I completely agree with that. But I would also argue that academic institutions and financial institutions have changed. Political institutions have changed and there's a deep distrust. So we are having a harder time relying on them to make good decisions. You saw a lot of presidents of university – major universities fired recently, including Stanford. There, I said it. It happened.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
but also Harvard and other places for different reasons. And fired might be not the correct term. They decided to resign. Whatever it was, they're no longer there. They have new ones in. And so there's a lot of distrust. So what can we rely on? Like if it's not, if people are having less faith in religion, less faith in academic institutions, less faith in, like what do we got?
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Ari Wallach is an expert in this topic, and he has centered his work around what he calls long path labs, which is a focus on long-term thinking and coordinated behavior at the individual, organizational, and societal level in order to best ensure the thriving of our species. And while that may sound a bit aspirational, It is both aspirational and grounded in specific actions and logic.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And it tells us a lot about – it's sort of like declaration of values. It's one thing to say – which is scary for a lot of people because it's one thing to say that doesn't work. That's no good. That's no good. It's easy to be a critic. What you're describing has incredible parallels to health.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Like when I started the podcast and even before when I was posting on social media, it was during the lockdowns. And it was like all this fear about everything. And I said, listen, like I can't solve this larger issue related to what may or may not be going on. But what's obvious? People are stressed. Stress is bad when it's chronic. People aren't sleeping.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
That's bad, especially when it's chronic. And I've got some potential solutions, some tools, some zero-cost tools. So a lot of the backbone of the Huberman Lab podcast is about the things you do more so than the things you don't do. So what you're describing is essentially a field that consists of like breaking things down, but isn't offering solutions. So it sounds very similar.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And I think that people love potential solutions, even if one acknowledges, look, this might not solve every sleep issue, it very well could make, you know, positive ground towards some of it or make it 50% better or 20% better, in some cases, 100% better. And of course, there are those for whom the tools don't work, and they need to go through more to more extreme measures. But
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
I hear you saying that religion provided the solutions, not just pointing to problems. People are not looking at that as much anymore. The big institutions like academic institutions, political institutions, let's face it, regardless of where one sits on one side of the aisle or the other, they're constantly fighting.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
It's like 12-hour news cycle designed to just point fingers so that nobody actually has to say what they really believe in a clear, tangible way. There are those that do that a bit more than others, but it's a mess. And then in terms of the family unit, this is what I was alluding to before.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
I feel like family units and values and structures are becoming more rare, at least in the traditional view of the family. Two parents, kids, et cetera, which is by no means a requirement to call something a family.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
So are you saying that we all have to look at it like it obviously starts with the individual, but that part of the work of being a human being now and going forward is to learn this futures approach?
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
This is the baby. baby Bjorn thing?
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Yeah. If the brain had completed development internally, you'd have only stillborn. I mean, presumably there was a branch of our earlier version of species that... Many mothers and babies died in childbirth because of this. They were deselected. That's not the proper term.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
But maybe it's also the propagation of story, as you said earlier, that can inform better decisions. So we need new stories. Wisdom is like spoken cave paintings basically.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Wait, are we so messed up? Because you said we're about a third of the way through. Things are better than ever.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Kids read that stuff now?
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
how do we do it at scale? Because I think a lot of people listening to this will say, okay, that all sounds great.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Like I, for one say, you know, the shift from the notion of building a better future through self-sacrifice, rather you can make it almost like pro self and others endeavor, the way you've described it, empathy for self, empathy for others, getting some control over the, you know, contraction and dilation of your time window.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
making sure that you take good care of yourself, but you take care of the future generations as well, like for that empty frame, the now empty frame. And then moving from dystopia to protopia, that all sounds great. But I think a lot of people might think, okay, well, at best, I could do that for myself and the people that
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
that I know it's going to be hard to do that as a greater good for the greater good. And you could say, well, that does contribute to the greater good. This is actually very similar to what we tell graduate students when they get their first round of data. You go, okay, well, the data oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes you say, oh, the data are cool.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Like if it continues this way, that'd be an interesting story. And they get the sense and you already have the sense because you have the experience to know like the best case scenario is a nice solid paper that your three reviewers and maybe 20 other people will read. And you're going to spend the next five years of your life on this thing. Maybe three, but probably five years of your life.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And you'll get your PhD. And there's always this question, like, do you ditch that project and go for something else? Or do you stay with that project? In other words, what you're saying is you get to put your brick on the wall, but it's a brick. Whereas, you know, there are other projects and you go, whoa, like that's, you know, that's like one wing of the cathedral.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And, and it's a rare instance where that happens. And a lot of it's luck and it's doesn't always work out anyway. But yeah, You know, what we're saying here is, you know, how hard people are willing to work is often related to what they feel the potential payoff will be.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
If they can sense the payoff, and by the way, I love the protocols that you offer, the empty frame, the journaling to future self, this notion of time capsuling your present thinking into the future. The aging of self, these are very actionable things. I plan to do them, and I think they're very valuable.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
But if I understand correctly, you are interested in creating a movement of sorts where many, if not everybody, is thinking this way. Because the other model is, okay, well, the Elons will take care of it for us, or the Or the system is so broken like there's nothing I can do. I'm just trying to make ends meet.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
So how does one create like a reward system or a social media platform or – how does one join up with other people who are trying to do this?
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Thank you. There will be no bumper stickers.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Yeah, we have one. We have a Huberman Lab AI. There you go. We haven't advertised it very heavily, but it's there. You can ask me questions. It's pretty good. It sounds a bit like me. The jokes are dry. They're dry. And not funny.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Well, amen to that. You know, they're, was a former guest on this podcast, uh, or there was a guest on this podcast previously, uh, Dr. Wendy Suzuki's professor at NYU. I think now she's the Dean of, of, um, arts and sciences, I think is the correct title.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And, you know, she's trying to bring some of her laboratories data on the value of even very brief meditations to stress management in college first to kind of, to help students manage the stress that is college and being in your early twenties. Um,
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
But I think there's a larger theme there, which is to try and teach emotional development, to teach self-regulation, because many people don't get that. I mean, or they get it, but then there are big gaps. And I love the way that you're describing this. Basically, it's a lens, if I may, it's a lens into human experience that's very dynamic and is really in concert with the fact that
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
the human brain has the capacity for this dynamic representation of time, like focus on like solve for the now there will be parts of your day, no doubt today where you just have to solve for the now you're not thinking about the greater good.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
I really appreciate your answer for a couple of reasons. Through the 90s and early 2000s, and maybe even until 2020, there was a growing movement within science, but also outside of science, towards encouraging people to be mindful, this whole notion of being present, right? But what you're describing is actually too much being present, what you're calling presentism.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Um, and then the ability to dilate your, your consciousness, um, in, in the temporal sense and, and to solve for things that are more longterm, make these investments towards the future. Um, I wonder though, you know, how can we incentivize people to be good, to do good, um, And how can we incentivize people to do this on a backdrop of a lot of short-term carrots and short-term horizons?
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
I think you've given us some answers, and they're very powerful ones, such as the aging self-image exercise, journaling into the future, writing to future self, the empty frame exercise, linking up with our ancestors and thinking about where we're at now and where we want to go. Is there anything else that... you want to add? Meaning, is there anything that we should all be doing?
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Should we all be reading more biography? If I look back through history, it's both dark and light. Is there anything else that you really encourage people to do to be the best version of themselves for this life and the ones that come next?
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
So glad you're going to tell me it's not because then people can still watch Monday Night Football.
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And of course, it depends on what's happening in the present. But in the 80s, in the 90s, in the 2000s, up to about 2020, so of course we're still in the 2000s, there was this notion of future tripping. Like people are future tripping. They're spending too much time worrying about the future, too much time worrying about the future. I feel like the horizon on our
Huberman Lab
Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
I love it. And I also just want to highlight the importance of record keeping of putting things down on paper or maybe an electronic form, creating time capsules for the future generations. Because I think a lot of what people probably are thinking or worried about a little bit is like, okay, I can do all this stuff to try and make things better. And
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
even give up the desire for any kind of credit, but not feeling like it will be of any significance. But what I've learned from you today is that it starts with the self and then it radiates out to the people we know and that maybe we cohabitate with. But even if we don't cohabitate with anybody, it radiates out from us.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
that it is important to get a sort of time capsule going so that people can feel like they have some significance in the future that they may not ever have immediate experience of, but to really like send those ripples forward and get the sense that those ripples are moving forward.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
So for that reason, and especially given the nature of this podcast, for the reason that you gave these very concrete protocols, if you will, that we've highlighted in the timestamps, of course, as tools, as protocols, I really want to thank you because oftentimes discussions about past, present, and future can get a bit abstract and a bit vague for people.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And you've done us all a great service by making them very concrete and actionable. That's so much of what this podcast is about. It's one part information, one part option for action, right? We don't tell people what to do, but we give them the option for action. I'm certainly going to adopt some of these protocols.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And also for taking the time to come to talk with us today, um, share your wisdom and share what you're doing in many ways. Well, it is not in many ways. It is absolutely part of what you're describing, which is, um, putting your best self toward how things can be better now and in the future. It's also a great pleasure to sit down with somebody I've known for so many years and learn from you.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
So it's a real honor and a privilege. And I know everyone else listening to and watching this feels the same way. So thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Ari Wallach. To find links to his book, to his television show and other resources related to Long Path, please see the show note captions.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. In addition, please subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. Please check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, formerly known as Twitter, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
cognition has really come closer in now. And as you said, we're in this like sort of hall of mirrors where it's constant stimulus and response. And I don't want today's discussion to be doom and gloom. We're going to talk about solutions.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media channels.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
If you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, our neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as protocols in the form of brief one to three page PDFs. Those protocol PDFs are on things like neuroplasticity and learning, optimizing dopamine, improving your sleep, deliberate cold exposure, deliberate heat exposure.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
We have a foundational fitness protocol that describes a template routine that includes cardiovascular training and resistance training with sets and reps, all backed by science. And all of which again is completely zero cost. To subscribe, simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab up in the upper right corner, scroll down a newsletter and provide your email.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Ari Wallach. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
But I think between what you're saying and what Jonathan Haidt, who is on this podcast, author of Anxious Generation, Coddling in the American Mind, professor at NYU, et cetera, has said, I'm starting to really believe that yes,
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
the human brain can focus on past, present, or future, or some combination, but that something about the architecture of our technologies and our human interactions, because those are so closely interwoven, that's taking place now has us really locked in the present in stimulus response. And I'm gonna just briefly reference a previous episode of the podcast I did.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
It's one of my favorite conversations ever on or off microphone, which was, excuse me, with Dr. James Hollis, 84-year-old Jungian psychoanalyst, where he had many important messages there, but one of them was, We need, we absolutely need to take five to 10 minutes each day to exit stimulus response mode, typically by closing one's eyes and just looking inward.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
It doesn't even have to be called meditation in order to understand what our greater wishes are, how to link our current thinking and behavior to the future and to the past. And I think he's qualified to say this because he's an analyst that. that process actually is a reflection of the unconscious mind.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
So during today's episode, Ari Wallach spells out for us not just the aspirations, not just what we want, but how to actually create that positive future and legacy for ourselves, for our families and for society at large. It's an extremely interesting take on how to live now in a way that is positively building toward the future.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
So to link these concepts in a more coherent way, is it possible that we are just overwhelmed with notifications, either the traditional type of notifications on your phone, but that we're basically just living in stimulus response all the time now? And if so, what direction is that taking ourselves as individuals, as families, as communities, and as a species?
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
I'm basically validating what you just said, even though you don't need my validation and just asking, like, how bad is it to just be focused on managing the day to day? Or maybe that's that's a better way to go about life.
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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach
Yeah, maybe we could just parse each of those one by one. So how do you define empathy for self?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Mark Hyman. Dr. Mark Hyman is a medical doctor and an internationally recognized leader in the field of functional medicine.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And now for my discussion with Dr. Mark Hyman. Dr. Mark Hyman, welcome. Thanks, Andrew. It's so good to be here. Great to see you. We go back a few years. Yeah, like almost 10. Yeah, it's been awesome to see your arc and you were at it long before I met you. I think to kick things off,
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, and a lot of physicians, unlike you, frankly, don't look very healthy, which people can say, okay, well, it shouldn't be about looks. But, you know, if I was at the dentist and I look up and my dentist is snaggletoothed and decaying teeth, it doesn't bring me a lot of confidence.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
You look great and you're super vital. I think, you know, this idea of systems biology and health, is really important for people to understand because, you know, I always say, well, there are two sayings. I didn't say the first.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
The first one was taught to me when I was a graduate student, which is, you know, a drug is a substance that when injected into an animal or human produces a scientific paper. Meaning anytime you manipulate a variable, there are two things that if you, oftentimes if you inject a drug at a high enough dose, you'll see an effect. If you deprive sleep, you'll see an effect.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And that points to several things, but I think both of them have a vector in the direction of this system's biology. You know, if everything modulates everything else, so if your gut is off, it's going to modulate your sleep, which is going to modulate your cognition. And
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
If you were to boost some vitamin level ridiculously high or have it ridiculously low, it's involved in thousands of processes in the body. And so if you look at any one of those, you might see a subtle effect. I think the challenge of reductionist science and reductionist medicine is...
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
probably best if you explain to people what functional medicine is and what your orientation towards health and medicine is. Because I think there are a few misconceptions out there, both about functional health and you, but I think also you provide a very unique perspective. You've been at this vista that no one else has had where you,
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
because the goal in good science is to isolate variables, you can't, by definition, actually look at a whole system. Although now with AI, maybe you could explore how adjusting one variable impacts pretty much every major system of the brain and body. But it's just very hard to do. And as somebody who has done laboratory science for, gosh, well over 25 years,
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
and instructed other people how to do it and graduate students and postdocs. I mean, it's an art, but it's limited in terms of what it can reveal. And we work as a system. So I think this is what we're getting at here.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, yeah, let's say you come into my lab and I want to study how increasing L-carnitine, for instance, impacts your mood, immune system function and sleep. I can do that study, but even that is just an infinitely complex study. I could do dose response, I'll probably do oral versus injectable.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And then I can't control, unless it's in laboratory animals, on a same genetic background, I can't control whether or not one person's having a Snickers and the other person... is having a Snickers and telling me, and then one person's lying. I mean, it is so hard to do controlled science.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
So what we end up doing is we end up creating very artificial environments, very artificial conditions and isolating variables and outcomes. And at the same time, genomics, sequencing, proteomics have allowed us to identify interesting genes that have a potential role in longevity or stem cells and Yamanaka factors. And so I feel like it cuts both ways.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And so as a physician, when somebody comes in and I'm asking this question so that people can think about their own health, if people are feeling like not well, right? Where do you start? Like this thing, like where do you start? You start with how you're sleeping, how you're eating, skin tone. I imagine you can look at somebody and kind of get a sense of their vibrancy at the level of their eyes.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Like where do you start?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
There you go. So where do you start? Like what should we... When we look in the mirror in the morning, what are we looking for?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
know people who are deans of medical schools, you know people who are biohackers, you know the general public, you've treated and treat patients, and you also are an experimentalist with yourself to the extent that you find and can make suggestions about things that can help people.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
But we've had a number of people talking about the relationship between mind and body and stress, and certainly it's a profound connection.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
So this generally means eating foods that are single ingredient foods or foods that combine only single ingredient foods.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Can I just ask you, we'll just quickly double click into there. What's your view on seed oils? Oi. No, just, you know, I mean, I'll say mine. I like olive oil and butter, coconut oil, and things like avocados and some Brazil nuts and walnuts and stuff.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
So since I don't count calories, I kind of have an intuitive sense of what I'm taking in, how much fat, how much protein, how much starch, how much, you know, fibers, carbs, et cetera. So for me, like, I wouldn't pick canola oil because I could pick olive oil. Right, right. Then I make sure it's real olive oil. And, but...
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
So yeah, tell us how you parachuted into this whole thing and how you look at this whole thing that we call health and medicine.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
I don't think seed oils necessarily will kill me, but guess why I know they won't kill me? Because I don't eat them.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And what it's replacing. Sorry to interrupt here, but, you know, I'll see the data that seed oils are better for people than butter. Okay, I like grass-fed butter, but I don't eat it in excess. I once joked about that, and I, like, bummed it. I made some jokes early on in having a podcast, not realizing the implications. But anyway, I'm very careful now. I have some butter in moderation.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
So I could imagine that if you're eating a lot of lard and butter and bacon fat and you replace it with seed oils, you'll get healthier. Maybe. Maybe. But you could imagine, I guess it depends on what else you're ingesting. Because the starch-fat combination is the one that gets people, in my opinion.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
But right, somebody could be eating a lot of meat and fruit and doing okay.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
I wish people would really hear you on this. It's not fat per se. It's not starches per se. It's the combination of fat and starch, and in particular, fat, starch, and sugar.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
So if I put a pat of butter on a bowl of white rice, is it that bad? No, not really.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
But if I put a pat of butter on a muffin, it's bad news bears.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah, well, we evolved under the major constraint of sunrise and sunset.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And artificial lighting is a wonderful thing, but I think there's highly processed light. It's devoid of long wavelengths. The eradication basically of incandescent bulbs and all these LEDs and- Highly processed light. Daylight savings times. It's really messing people up. It means, oh, it's just an hour. No, actually it's your mental health.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
When it comes to the seed oil thing, I actually predict that seed oils will lose. I think in the end, it's just obvious. Why wouldn't people just say, you know what? The seed oil thing may or may not be a problem. I'm just going to eat olive oil and a little bit of butter.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
If you had a magic wand and you could get rid of seed oils or you could get rid of highly refined sugars in a modern American diet, which one would you do?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
So where do we go wrong? Because I was a teen in the 90s. I don't... Until I discovered fitness, I didn't eat Poorly at home, my mom cooked whole food.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
We had Pop-Tarts, crab macaroni and cheese.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
We weren't allowed that stuff, but we had our like honey nut Cheerios and that kind of stuff. We had our honey nut Cheerios and things like that, but we ate mostly whole foods. And then not from, there wasn't a whole foods market back then, but whole unprocessed, minimally processed foods. But I ate my fair share of pizza slices and burritos in college and stuff like that.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And I was active, but I wasn't a serious athlete. But then somewhere around 2010 forward, I feel like everything, again, just to be very direct, there was probably one kid or two kids in my school that were obese. Now, depending on where you live, you see 60%, 70%, 80% of kids are obese. Yeah. So, I mean, what happened?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function. I recently became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
While I've long been a fan of blood testing, I really wanted to find a more in-depth program for analyzing my blood, urine, and saliva to get a fuller picture of my heart health, my hormone status, my immune regulation status, my metabolic function, my vitamin and mineral status, and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors. For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had an elevated level of mercury in my blood.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Function not only helped me detect that, but also offered insights on how to best reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, And frankly, I had been eating a lot of tuna at that time while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And by the way, it worked. My mercury levels are now well within healthy range. Comprehensive lab testing like that is super important for health because basically a lot of things are going on in our blood and elsewhere in our body that we can't detect without a quality blood and urine test.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And while I've strived to get those tests for many years, it's always been overly complicated and frankly, quite expensive. Function dramatically simplifies all of it and makes it very affordable. I've been so impressed by Function that I decided to join their scientific advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring this podcast.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. For this week only, April 14th to April 20th, 2025, Function is offering a $100 credit to the first 1,000 people to sign up for a Function membership. To get this $100 credit, use the code Huberman100 at checkout. Visit functionhealth.com slash Huberman to learn more and get started.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
He is a practicing physician and the head of strategy and innovation at the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Today's episode is also brought to us by Roka. I'm excited to share that Roka and I recently teamed up to create a new pair of red lens glasses. These red lens glasses are meant to be worn in the evening after the sun goes down. They filter out short wavelength light that comes from screens and from LED lights, which are the most common indoor lighting nowadays.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
I want to emphasize Roka red lens glasses are not traditional blue blockers. They do filter out blue light, but they filter out a lot more than just blue light. In fact, they filter out the full range of short wavelength light that suppresses the hormone melatonin. By the way, you want melatonin high in the evening and at night, makes it easy to fall and stay asleep.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And those short wavelengths trigger increases in cortisol. Increases in cortisol are great in the early part of the day, but you do not want increases in cortisol in the evening and at night. These Roka Red Lens glasses ensure normal, healthy increases in melatonin and that your cortisol levels stay low, which is again, what you want in the evening and at night.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
In doing so, these Roka Red Lens glasses really help you calm down and improve your transition to sleep. Roka Red Lens glasses also look great. They have a ton of different frames to select from, and you can wear them out to dinner or concerts, and you can still see things.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
I don't recommend you wear them while driving just for safety purposes, but if you're out to dinner, you're at a concert, you're at a friend's house, or you're just at home, pop those Roka Red Lens glasses on, and you'll really notice the difference in terms of your levels of calm and all the sleep stuff I mentioned earlier.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
So it really is possible to support your biology, be scientific about it, and remain social at the same time, if you like. If you'd like to try ROKA, go to roka.com. That's R-O-K-A.com and enter the code Huberman to save 20% off your first order. Again, that's roka.com and enter the code Huberman at checkout. So the 90s low-fat thing. Yeah.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
I mean, do you think that nutrition is a very straightforward subject? It should be.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. And I confess, I've had some pretty diametrically opposed views from guests on this podcast. We had Robert Lustig on the podcast. We had Lane Norton on the podcast. You get those two on separate podcasts, and they are like at loggerheads with one another, right? Now, Lane's correct in that total caloric load matters. It's not everything, but it matters.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
I would say many people have a hard time limiting their intake of starchy carbohydrates, especially if you put a little bit of fat on there. It just becomes a different food entirely. Eating a bowl of white rice is pretty tasty. Eating a bowl of white rice with a pat of butter and a little bit of salt on there is a completely different experience. A piece of sourdough bread,
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
It's one thing, a piece of sourdough bread soaked in a little bit of olive oil with some salt, I'm eating half the loaf. And I have pretty good self-control. So this is where I think the debates have become almost silly. And I appreciate that you're being very direct with us here. So take us back. So you said there are ingredients for health and there are impediments to health.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
The mind is incredible. I have a colleague at Stanford who works in the sleep... in the sleep division, sleep medicine. And he said, and I shouldn't tell people this because everyone's supposed to get enough sleep, right?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
But he said, if you positively, they've done, he has a study that shows that if you positively anticipate next day events, your sleep need is actually reduced pretty substantially. And the quality of sleep that you get is, Well, that's why I slept so good last night.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Because we all know the experience of like, I only slept five hours, but I got this thing today I'm really looking forward to. You feel great. And so I'm not, I don't think people should only sleep five hours.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Before we move to health metric monitoring, I do want to ask about ingredients for health.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
They're your protocols.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
I think what's so terrible about traditional medicine, it has many wonderful features, is that at least the way it's communicated in this country, is that it assumes that people are lazy and uninterested in their own health. And I fundamentally disagree, hence this podcast, your podcast, et cetera. I believe people want and are willing to take care of themselves if they know how.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Okay, so let's just assume that the pillars of health, right? Like sleep, sunlight, exercise, nutrition, social connection, stress modulation, microbiome, et cetera. Okay, assuming that people are making some effort to do those things correctly or a lot of effort, what are some of the things that you believe cannot be accessed through diet and behaviors that warrant supplementation.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And I've been interested in supplements and taking supplements for 35 years. So to me, when people say, oh, supplements aren't regulated, I say, actually they are regulated to some extent, right? monitored. You want to find ones that are third-party tested. Indeed, there are a lot of junk supplements out there. There are probably a lot of supplements that don't do much.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
There are probably a lot of supplements that are only use cases for certain people who have a major deficiency. But what are some of the things that are just very difficult to get from food and from sun? Because We hear, you know, the soil's depleted magnesium. It's hard to get enough D3.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Like if you were to list out, let's just say about 10 things that you feel like, listen, you probably could get it from food, but it's just hard to get these micronutrients. What are those things? And by the way, folks, this is not a preloaded conversation. We've never had this conversation.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
I know what I take, but I'm just curious, what would you, because people will try hard to get things from food. But what are the things that they can't get from food or can't get from food easily that you believe everyone should take?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Today we discuss what is functional medicine, how the different systems of the body interact to improve or degrade our health, the science of mitochondria and metabolic health, nutrition, inflammation, and how you can leverage these factors to improve your physical and mental health and cognitive performance at any age.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
So I think- Yeah, I have a lot of friends who are physicians and I'll tell you, they come to me for health advice. So that tells you something. That's right. I'm not an MD. Yeah, folks, magnesium, magnesium citrate, great laxative. Malate for muscles, glycinate and threonate for brain and sleep.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Most people won't do that. So it sounds like magnesium, getting a gram of EPA omega-3, 3,000 IU minimum of D3 per day, some iron, some zinc, selenium. Sounds like the basics.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And would that be true for teens?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
But I also totally know that a lot of people won't blood test. So the argument against supplements has always been you just are creating expensive urine, which is a silly one, because that's based on water soluble vitamins only, right?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
It's a silly one. But the list that we just talked about, D3, omega, magnesium, maybe some iron if you're not an older guy, zinc selenium, it seems to me those would be good things for most everybody to add to their already healthy diet that has enough prebiotic, you know, postbiotic fiber.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
We hear a lot nowadays about methylated B12. I decided to just start taking methylated B12. Is there a danger to taking methylated B12 if you, quote unquote, don't need it, if you're not a poor methylator?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. I want to make sure that we talk about the impediments, things like mold, air, water, cleanliness, things of that sort. But I want to spend just a little bit longer on this supplement thing. Maybe because it's so near and dear to my heart and because it has sparked a lot of confusion for me, not supplements per se, but the reaction to them. By traditional medicine? Yeah.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Why is it that supplementation has received so much pushback from the medical community, and yet I would argue that since 2020, you're going to find vitamin D3 and omegas, essential fatty acids, and magnesium in many, many more people's kitchens than meaning they're taking it then prior to that. And this reminds me of yoga, resistance training.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
You know, yoga was for yogis, resistance training was for bodybuilders and people in the military. Now everybody knows, men and women, maybe even young people should do it. Is there some argument that they should? I have my thoughts about young people lifting really heavy, but in any case, the breath work, you know, There's a lot of science now, meditation. There's tons of science.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
So these things that at one point were considered niche, biohacking, woo, and unsafe, inevitably have seemed to become mainstream. And I think supplements is starting to happen now.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
There's a whole generation of physicians and scientists that I do think in the current shift in funding for science, different conversation entirely, are going to retire. And I'm not sure it's a bad thing. I don't mind saying this. I don't mind saying it. I think they've done a really wonderful job, and now it's time to pass the baton. The younger generation and the forward-thinking generation
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
you know, people in their sixties and seventies are changing the game. It's a very different game now. And I think it's hard for them to understand that. And it's gotta be scary, but the younger generation is much more versed. I will say that I actually would like your reflections on something.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
For someone that's listening to this conversation and you think, oh goodness, now I have to buy organic foods and buy all these supplements. And let's say somebody has a limited budget. Do you think it's fair to say, okay, if you have a limited budget, you would be very wise to get cardiovascular exercise at least three days a week, do some resistance training, which can be done with body weight.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And could you say, eat eggs, fish, meat, fruits, and vegetables? Nuts and seeds and olive oil. And you're there, right? And if you look at the cost of buying food out, versus that, you're probably coming out ahead. Because I'm thinking about the college student. I'm thinking about me in college or as a postdoc or a graduate student.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
So I think for people that have more disposable income, it makes sense. You eat as well as you can, organic, you supplement, you blood test. And I want to talk about those things. Let's talk about some of the impediments. And I do want to keep budgetary restraints in mind, because I think people fall into the category of poor, some disposable income, and lots of disposable income.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And all too often in the bio, you know, the biohacking sphere, we're talking about that last category and we don't want to, we don't want to lose anyone along the way. So air, we had fires here in Los Angeles. It was dreadful. The beach now all the way down to Marina del Rey. I ran down there yesterday. It was completely littered with chunks of charcoal. They mow it under the sand.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
It's going out to ocean. Um, Most people listening to this probably don't live in Los Angeles. How bad is our air in the United States, Northern Europe, Australia? Is there any clean air left?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah, I need to get tested again because I haven't been tested since the fires. I mean, I feel fine.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
But I got out of town, I drove up to San Luis Obispo, parked myself at a big pink hotel called the Madonna Inn and looked at the horses and worked on my book. That's good. The air felt clean, but is the air clean when there isn't a fire?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
So is it a separate unit air filter?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
I love to exercise outside. Is running and breathing harder outside? In L.A. ? Or in general. Well, I like to do that wherever I go. But when I'm in New York City, I love to run along the freeway, probably breathing in a lot of junk.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Do you think that one of the reasons food and nutrition is so complicated in this country is that with the exception of the hamburger, the hot dog, apple pie, and ice cream, that there isn't really an American cuisine? What's wrong with all that? Hot dogs, hamburger, apple pies.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Years ago, I had a girlfriend who was from the south of France. She did – she grew up very modestly, did not have wealth at all. But her family ate very well. They put a lot of effort into food. They put a lot of time into food.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
They had animals. And she knew about – she was in her early 20s. I was in my mid-20s. And she knew probably 200 recipes for soups and soufflés and like – I mean it was like – It was amazing. I ate very well. So I feel like one of the things that's really missing in this country is a sense of pride in the healthy food that we can produce here. And there's never really been a history of it.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
We have kind of a picture of the farmer and the rancher. And then on the West Coast, you have more of the kind of like natural food movement or the healthy food movement. Alice Waters and Michael Pollan and that kind of thing, but that's considered kind of hippy-dippy. I lived in Berkeley, so I can say that. And they've made great effort to try and popularize that.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
But I think that's one of the reasons that we've commoditized food now. And so American food is junk food, cotton candy.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
But I feel like that came by way of people's ethnic past because they were first and second generation immigrants.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
It's a lot less than a latte.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also contains adaptogens. I started taking AG1 way back in 2012, long before I even knew what a podcast was.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
I started taking it and I still take it every single day because it ensures that I meet my quota for daily vitamins and minerals and it helps make sure that I get enough prebiotics and probiotics to support my gut health.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Over the past 10 years, gut health has emerged as something that we realize is important not only for the health of our digestion, but also for our immune system and for the production of neurotransmitters and neuromodulators, things like dopamine and serotonin. In other words, gut health is critical for proper brain function.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Now, of course, I strive to eat healthy whole foods from unprocessed sources for the majority of my nutritional intake, but there are a number of things in AG1, including specific micronutrients, that are hard or impossible to get from whole foods.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
So by taking AG1 daily, I get the vitamins and minerals that I need, along with the probiotics and prebiotics for gut health, and in turn, brain and immune system health, and the adaptogens and critical micronutrients that are essential for all organs and tissues of the body.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
So anytime somebody asks me if they were to only take one supplement, what that supplement should be, I always say AG1, because AG1 supports so many different systems in the brain and body that relate to our mental health, physical health, and performance. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
For this month only, April 2025, AG1 is giving away a free one month supply of omega-3 fish oil, along with a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2. As I've highlighted before in this podcast, omega-3 fish oil and vitamin D3 plus K2 have been shown to help with everything from mood and brain health to heart health and healthy hormone production and much more.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to get the free one month supply of omega-3 fish oil plus a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2 with your subscription. The confusion for me has been the pushback on self-directed health. I had something come to mind as you were saying all this, which is that I do believe that until health
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
becomes a point of national pride for Americans, that we're going to become the sickest nation in the world.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, we're going to continue to be, right? But there's this thing that happens when you start taking care of your health. And I know this because in college, I decided to stop drinking as much as everyone else around me drank. It was insane. It was unbelievable, the amount of binge drinking and just the frequency, like Wednesday, Thursday, Fridays. I was like, this is crazy.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And I got really into working out and sleep and studying. And I had to be a bit lonely in order to preserve that life. But I got teased a lot for being healthy. But the point being that it still takes some... self-confidence, rigidity, and kind of determination to push off the people like, oh, it's so self-focused to, you know, focus on your health.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
You know, you're spending money on these, on vitamin D3, you know, or, oh, you can't have a slice of pizza. It's like, no, you can, but the point is maybe you don't want to because you have a certain amount of self-pride, not because pizza can't be amazing. There are some amazing pizzas, by the way, but most pizzas crap and some pizzas amazing.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And it's worth it to wait for the amazing pizza, in my opinion. So I guess the idea here is what we really need, it seems, is it's kind of a psychological, cultural, medicine revolution. And a true revolution, given the way things are going with the obesity rates. And so- I do want to talk about Maha, Make America Healthy Again. I'm not formally involved in Maha. I know people involved in it.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
You know people who know people who know people. Yeah, I know people who know people. And I am in discussions with them. They've asked questions. I've provided answers where I could provide answers.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
But the pushback on Maha is what I'd like to understand, because you and I sit from a unique vantage point, and you in particular, where you have a lot of colleagues and understanding of the traditional medical community. So as they always say, like, that's not the guy you got to get. You don't need to get the guy that's like watching podcasts and taking supplements.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
We also talk about how to confront any health challenges you might face by taking a systems level approach. Dr. Hyman's work is unique in that it integrates conventional medicine, because after all, he is an MD, with what he calls good medicine, which is an amalgamation of the best practices from both traditional and alternative approaches.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
But what about the guy or gal... who was like, I don't know, my doctor says this is crazy. They want to like get rid of vaccines and they want everyone doing pushups and, you know, and they don't want to take Ozempic. And, you know, and so maybe, because I see you, Mark, as somebody who can potentially bridge this divide. Knowing people on both sides, I really see you as somebody who can do that.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
I'm not saying that just because you're sitting here and large part you're sitting here because of that. So how do you change people? millions of people's mindset about health, when now Maha has become a red label thing. How do you do it? Either Republicans are going to get healthy and Democrats aren't. It's crazy to me. Or there's an opportunity here.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And I do think that I know they're drawing you in for this, and I'm so glad they are, because I do think that you're somebody who really believes in inclusivity in the real sense of the word. So what do you think it's going to take to make America healthy? And this is not Maha propaganda. This is just, can Maha do it? What do they need to do better? What can you do? What can we all do?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And before you dive in, I just want to seed this answer with one thing. Forgive me, audience. They don't like it when I interrupt. But The goal of the left, if I may, seems to be to make anyone associated with health and Maha on the right, a jock, not a scientist. That's what I'm seeing. They're trying to take away their science credential and make them a jock.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Now, Bobby Kennedy is not a formally trained scientist, but the scientists that are going into NIH directorships, who I can't share who they are besides Jay, it's been announced, the other ones, but you know who they are. These are serious scientists. These aren't jocks. These are people that may or may not lift weights.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
But there seems to be this effort to say, we're going to strip Maha of its power by making it a bro science biohacking jock thing. Real science is about reductionist stuff. And I just say, listen, it's all valuable. And so I'm fundamentally frustrated and it hasn't even begun. So educate us.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
There's bipartisan caucus that – Well, on the psychedelic issue, I was at a meeting where – You know, Governor Rick Perry, former Governor Rick Perry, Texas, like who describes himself as a knuckle-dragging Republican. Those are Rick's words, by the way. Rick's a very nice guy. And there were several members of the Dems there.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And you got Rick Doblin, who was like a, you know, counterculture conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. And they're all up there. being proponents for psychedelics for the treatment of PTSD in veterans. So they've joined hands. I think that's one area that's very exciting. It's not happening in nutrition. It's not happening on this thing of get exercise. Those have become red labels.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
If insurance is private, how does that work? How is it that my money is going to take care of somebody who has heart disease?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Okay, let me ask you a question about toxins, because I've been watching this very closely online recently. And folks who are more of the traditional science background, who are kind of like to spend a lot of their time
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
trying to debunk folks like you, or people that talk about food additives, say that these are infinitesimally small amounts of these dyes, that the amount required to kill a rat is 3,000 times higher. My stance on this is the same as going through the x-ray machine at the at the airport, which is true. You can walk through and not get cancer.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
But if you're going through it multiple times per month or year, then, you know, and it's compounding with other things. So it's, like you said, dose, frequency, and duration.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Things are changing slowly, but they're, but they're changing. I think, which sort of dovetails with the question I was going to ask, which is how did the medical establishment view this stuff? You know, these days it's so complicated without, you know, taking off on a tangent here, you know, the word expert is gated politically.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
The other day I saw something on X that if true, and I'll put a link to it, was probably the most troubling thing I've ever seen in public health discourse. And I want that to lead to a question for you. This was an example of a hearing in Washington where a young woman, I believe she's from Austin, who's a kind of like health...
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
health food advocate, but with training from a university down there, was lobbying against soda in the government-funded lunch program.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
This young woman advocating for healthier food was arguing for getting sugary soda, this wasn't diet soda, sugary soda out of the SNAP program.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And she made her case. It was a terrific case, well articulated, I think, and was well received by both the blue side and the red side of the room. And then someone tapped into the microphone. This was a gentleman representing the American Heart Association, the American Heart Association. And he proceeded to say that he opposed the removal of sugary soda. Do you know why?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
I thought, okay, this has got to either be AI generated, it's fake. But then one of the women on the panel who was listening, okay, one of the people making decisions or at least running it up the flagpole for decisions said, wait, do you realize what you're saying? And he just kept repeating this like a broken record.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Like one side feels like they, you can only be called expert if you're with their camp. The other side is now associated with kind of more of a, like a wellness aspect. And, you know, and I don't even have to say which side I'm referring to here.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And I thought, okay, the American Heart, if it was the American Soda Association or Beverage Association or Hydration Association even, I would have thought, okay, maybe there's something here. But he was there representing the American Heart Association. I have no skin in this game.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And I was shocked. And I will provide a link to this in the show no captions. I was shocked. You shouldn't be. And I thought to myself, this guy's arguing for sugary soda on behalf of the American Heart Association. And these are sugary sodas that the American taxpayer is paying to try and help some of the least healthy people. and lowest income people in the country drink more soda.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And it wasn't like take away soda and don't replace it with anything. It was, you know, replace it with some other food. There's double bucks for fruits and vegetables. Or even water, right? So I... was shocked. I verified it's real. And okay, so I'd like your thoughts on that, but I'm guessing what they are already. But here's what I want to know.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Is the FDA and our government so strongly impacted by these food companies? You hear this, but it always sounds like a bunch of conspiracy stuff. Like is General Mills like, and really like, like, lobbying behind scenes? I mean, is there really a network of people trying to harm us for profit?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And it's become a real clash of, you know, we only believe in randomized controlled trials or, you know, there's clearly evidence that, you know, nutrition matters. And it's like, of course, Both things are important. And so what you're describing here is that you- This intersection. This intersection. And there really isn't a political home for the intersection, unfortunately.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
But what is the basis for sugary soda? There's no single argument for sugary soda.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Maybe diet soda. Then we could argue artificial sweeteners, but at least we know it can help people lose weight. They're ingesting less sugar. No.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And so they're like, and you know, I remember- What's confusing, even as somebody who is fairly versed in health and nutrition, like I'm- I'll give you an example.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Maybe in this new- I didn't know cells had a political ideology. That's right. That's right.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
I got the red cell and the blue cell.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
If I take a step back from this, I say, okay, well, Mark's – I haven't tried Primal Kitchen, but I hear good things, right? Mark seems like a very health-conscious guy. So Mark Sisson, right? Yeah, yeah. So if his brand was bought up by one of these major companies, why aren't they promoting the healthier foods in their catalog?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And that's what I love about you is that you have friends in both camps and you're willing to trudge forward. What did the medical establishment think? Yeah. And how many of you are there now?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, there the opposite problem exists. As the child of a first-generation immigrant, my dad always said, the United States is the one country where the poor are overweight because calories are cheap. You go to Argentina and you see These neighborhoods are of immense poverty, right? And people are not overweight. People are struggling to find food.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Same thing with chronic fatigue, by the way. I remember when chronic fatigue syndrome was considered psychosomatic. Yeah. It's, you know, people are crazy if they think they have this. Yeah.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, single ingredient or minimal ingredient foods solve that. I'd like to take us from one controversial topic. And thank you, by the way, I should say before moving on from that, for being involved and staying involved. I know you're- inherent goodness and your desire to keep things non-partisan and to do what's best for people and to keep it out of the politics as much as possible.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
You're not putting on a new hat. Government's putting on a new hat, getting involved in these things. I'm hopeful.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Let's talk about something almost as controversial, something that I have kind of a neutral opinion on. that I think is a beautiful scientific story, um, which is GLP-1 agonist, um, you know, discovered on the basis of the, the Gila monster, which doesn't need to eat very much over, um, or synthesizes a lot of this peptide, which limits its hunger.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And we now know, like fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, and leaky gut, this all used to be, for those that are listening that are a little bit younger than Mark and I, that that was considered pseudoscience, just the whole notion. There are now departments at major university medical centers devoted to each one of these. Maybe not whole departments, but sectors within departments.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And, uh, it works at the level of the brain and at the level of the gut. Um, There are, however, lots and lots of cells, including neurons, outside the appetite system that use and bind GLP-1.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
The drugs that increase GLP-1, we had a guest on here, so Zachary Knight came out on here and beautifully explained how the drugs that increase GLP-1 increase it many thousand fold above natural levels to have it exert its effect. of reducing hunger. It is reducing obesity. Yes, people lose muscle. They break it down for us. Let's assume that somebody has just had a terrible time losing weight.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
They don't even feel like they can exercise for either motivational reasons or they're structurally, but we all know they should exercise and maybe they'll get there, one would hope. But you can't exercise your way out of a bad diet. Right, right. Do you think there are use cases for GLP-1 that warrant its prescription? And what's the controversy with GLP-1 all about?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Is it the dependents, the insurance? I mean, we don't have three hours to parse this, but- I can give you the quick- Yeah, what's your view on GLP-1? Because I think some people have clearly benefited from it. Other people probably don't need it at all. I don't take it. I wouldn't take it, but I'm pretty good at regulating what I put in my mouth.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
What if they exercise using resistance training to offset that?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
They're very inexpensive.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
During today's discussion, you'll see that Dr. Hyman's expertise on a diverse range of topics really comes through. For instance, we talk about food, both sourcing, micronutrients, macronutrients, timing. We talk about exercise and we talk a lot about supplementation and which supplements can provide tremendous benefit for certain people in particular.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
I'm impressed. You're working on one, I know. I mean, it's big enough to serve as a workout for lifting. No, it's not that thick. It doubles as an advice book and a training book. It's got a lot in there. But you have an impressive catalog of really terrific books.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
What about other diets? So ketogenic, a lot of people think of that as high protein. It's really more high fat, moderate protein, very low starch, right? What about for cancer and cancer avoidance?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
I will say Stanford, sorry to cut you off, now has a division within our department of psychiatry on a metabolic psychiatry in large part, thanks to Chris's work.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Is that true for all cancers? Are there any cancers that react negatively?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, I remember The Emperor of All Maladies. Yeah. I read that and I read The Eight Day Creation in roughly the same time period. Both were super impressive books. I didn't realize he was involved in a ketogenic diet.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah, I'll tell you, having lost some friends to cancer, pancreatic cancer and glioblastoma are the two. I mean, I don't want any cancer, but those are the two I really don't want to get. Yeah. These are all super important topics. It seems to come back over and over again to these pillars of health. Food, circadian rhythm, meaning sleep-wake cycles.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Obviously, the last 50 years in this country were characterized by smoke less or don't smoke. We now know alcohol is problematic for cancers and other things, not to say that one can't enjoy it. I drink every once in a while, but you know, I don't personally drink, but I don't have a propensity for alcohol either.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
So it's easy for me to say, I've had to become a little bit softer on my stance on this because I think like, if you told me that caffeine was bad, I'd tell you I'm drinking it. I'd say, how long do I have?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Right. So, you know, some people like a drink now and again. And I'm – sure. I always say do as you want but know what you're doing. But I'd like to talk a little bit about markers that are – an outgrowth of this conversation about food. So blood markers. So ApoB is one that gets a lot of attention nowadays. For years, all we heard was you want your HDL high, you want your LDL low.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Now we also realize that elevated ApoB can be problematic. And I and many people I know who eat some meat, it's not meat heavy diet, but some good quality meat, we're not talking about deli meats and things like that, fruit, vegetables, and limit starchy carbohydrate intake to some extent, maybe not completely, but to some extent, have observed elevated ApoB when we do that,
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
including olive oil, butter, coffee, yerba mate, this kind of thing. It's a healthy diet, largely anti-inflammatory diet. Noticed elevated ApoB as compared to when some of that red meat, even if it's grass-fed meat, is replaced with things like fish or chicken and so on, which makes me wonder if there really is a red meat again, quality red meat, ApoB link.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And should I worry if my ApoB is elevated? My ApoB is a little bit elevated, but I haven't yet gone on any prescription drug to lower it. I'm taking some other approaches. Yeah. It's a great question. And I learned that from Function. And yes, they're a sponsor of this podcast, but I hadn't had an ApoB test. And that was the problem.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
I'd go to the doctor, I'd get a blood panel and it didn't include ApoB.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
So what do you advise somebody if their ApoB is 90 or above?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Nick has great online content. Folks should check out Nick Norwitz's X and Instagram handle.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Very smart kid, very spirited. I've encouraged him from the first time I saw his content to keep going.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
He just goes with his experience and the data.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
So what do we do? Let's say someone takes an ApoB test, a function or from their doctor, and they've got an ApoB that's like 110.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
I started eating more tuna. and eating a little bit less beef.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
By the way, I learned something the hard way also a few years prior to that, which is, I know this sounds crazy, but check your dishwasher. Some of them have mercury thermometers that are leaky. Now, I was told the mercury from the mercury thermometers in dishwashers is biologically inert, but I'll tell you, it's not pleasant to see a bunch of little mercury beads floating around on your dishes.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor Juve. Juve makes medical grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast, it is the incredible impact that light can have on our biology.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, as long as we're on this, I love the range of topics we're touching into today, by the way.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Are you a fan of sulforaphane? When I did the episode on microplastics and P-classes, I started taking sulforaphane and increasing my cruciferous vegetable intake.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Okay, I'll do three or four times that if I feel a cold coming on. but I don't take it daily. I should probably take it daily.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And acetylcysteine, we already talked about the omegas and the basics, magnesium, et cetera. What are some things that when people start to hit their 40s, 50s, 60s, that you think they should add in for their health? And is there anything female specific or male specific?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Now, in addition to sunlight, red light and near infrared light sources have been shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellar and organ health, including faster muscle recovery, improved skin health and wound healing, improvements in acne, reduced pain and inflammation, even mitochondrial function and improving vision itself.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And a lot of guys are getting on TRT young. I'm an on a bit of a campaign now to discourage that. I think that if they're doing everything right, like eating and exercising, and that doesn't mean over-exercising. If you over-train, like if you're running, running, running, your testosterone is gonna be diminished for sure.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
But encouraging them to do everything they can with behaviors and include nutrition and some supplementation before getting on TRT because of the reduction in sperm count. that comes from TRT, unless you offset it with HCG. So, you know, I've said before in the podcast, I take 25 milligrams of Cipionate every other day, staggered with HCG, 600 IU every other day.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
I've been open about that from the beginning, but I started at age 45. And I do free sperm every year just because there's some age-related effects on sperm and like, why not? It's very inexpensive to cryopreserve. But I think young guys are, it's scary that their testosterone is so low, especially if they're not overweight.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Shauna Swan was on this podcast, and gosh, if it wasn't for her and her incredible work and the fact that she's such a skeptic of any data that I don't think people would respect the...
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
the data on pesticides as much as they do, because I think it took somebody with her kind of front facing image to, you know, she's not like, she talks a lot about the environmental working group and the real hardcore science types are like, oh, they're anti-environmental working group.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
I was shocked to learn that a lot of people in the scientific community are like anti-environmental working group. I thought, how could that possibly be? They call it woo science. I mean, the politics and all this are really complicated, but what do you do to remove heavy metals?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
What sets Juve lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy device is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning specific wavelengths of red light and near infrared light in combination to trigger the optimal seller adaptations. Personally, I use the Juve whole body panel about three to four times a week. And I use the Juve handheld light both at home and when I travel.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Can insurance cover a blood test like FOMO?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
How does one take charcoal? I've been a little bit cautious about taking charcoal.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
This is gallows humor that only a physician could laugh at. I know a number of physicians and they all have this gallows humor. I think it's a survival tactic.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
let's say I want to remove some heavy metals and toxins from the body, I could take a charcoal tablet?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
I hate all those. But is there anything I can take?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
If you'd like to try Joovv, you can go to Joovv spelled J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman. Joovv is offering an exclusive discount to all Huberman Lab listeners with up to $400 off Joovv products. Again, that's Joovv spelled J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman to get up to $400 off. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Do you believe in gut cleanses? There's this, I don't know if I, I'll want to just talk about it. There's this fermented plum. product that someone gave me. No, it comes in a beautiful packaging, like this orange and black packaging.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
It's a fermented plum or pomelo that a friend of mine said, listen, you have to stay home the next day, but you take this before you go to sleep, you drink like 16 ounces of water, you go to sleep. You wake up in the morning and you're not going anywhere that day except a few trips to the bathroom, but it completely empties your digestive tract.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, then you got to colonoscopy and get that too through the prep. So it's not something that I, well, I tried it because I was like, all right, I'll give this a try. Is it healthy or unhealthy or neutral to do a complete digestive tract checkup?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, this thing is a hammer. It was sort of given to me as a joke, and I thought, all right, well, this is going to be no big deal. You're going to be fine, don't worry. I only did it twice on separate occasions, and I was like, okay, that wasn't super pleasant, but... I just want to know, is it a valuable tool?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And I wasn't interested in taking a drug and it's like this fermented fruit or something like that. I did hear that from a colleague at Yale who studies the microbiome, that if we fast or if we evacuate our digestive tract in kind of an aggressive way like that, that the healthy microbiome needs some time to replenish itself.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
It's not like when you fast, you start eating away at the unhealthy and healthy microbiota or they aren't fed. And so it's not across the board a good thing necessarily.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each and every night. Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. you truly have aged backwards and you look great then, you look super vibrant then, like you have a ton of energy. I mean, I think you embody a lot of the things that people would like for healthy aging. And I know you also exercise and you do all the things.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
I'd like to talk about some of the kind of more cutting edge things that are happening that I've not tried, but that I'm curious about. And you wanna know if I've done them or not? Well, or maybe, or just- I've tried everything pretty much. Actually, something I have tried, but that I'm not an expert on, but we've done a couple of podcasts about, but I'd like your thoughts on peptides.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
What are some of the peptides that you think can be useful to people if they can afford them and work with a doctor where they can get it safely? Let's just assume all that. What are the peptides that you think are of real value to people who aren't like really sick, but are doing everything they can?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah, optimization and just, yeah, generally trying to point all the boats in the direction of health.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees. Eight Sleep automatically regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your unique needs.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
But it's FDA approved for women.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
What's the pathway for thymus and alpha? We don't have to go through every biochemical step, but is the logic there that you're increasing the number of T cells and B cells?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Dr. Hyman grounds all that knowledge in the latest discoveries in human biology to provide you with actionable tools that you can apply in any case and at any age. By the end of today's episode, I'm certain that everybody will glean at least one and very likely several important protocol updates that they can incorporate to improve their general health.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Do you, do you take it? Um, you don't have to share what you take, but do you, um, think any of these are kind of mainstays for people over 40, if they can afford them?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Now, I find that extremely useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night, and warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow-wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
I worry about BPC-157 because in my experience, it is effective at treating minor injuries and things like that. But people now just take it continuously and it increases angiogenesis, growth of capillaries and vessels and things like that. And if you have a tumor, you do not want to increase angiogenesis to the tumor. You just wouldn't know if that was happening.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
There's no way to know until that tumor starts creating problems.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
What's a better cancer screen?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
The pushback on this early detection was surprising to me. Not this one in particular, but like a few years ago, I paid for a ProNovo scan.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Then I started seeing some of the pushback on whole body MRIs from people in the standard medical community. So I asked my good friend, a neurosurgeon at UCSF, Eddie Chang, I said, hey, what do you think of these whole body scans? And he said, I get people coming in all the time who have identified brain tumors and aneurysms and issues.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
that they were completely unaware of that they would probably be dead in the next five to 10 years. And by the way, I don't get paid by Prenuvo. I don't have any deal with Prenuvo or any other of these whole body imaging things. And I realized there's a cost.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And I know that because Eight Sleep has a great sleep tracker that tells me how well I've slept and the types of sleep that I'm getting throughout the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
So I think the implication is from the people that give pushback, like, oh, these things are expensive and we're gonna kind of push back on them as a tool. because we don't want people to feel badly if they can't get them.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Their latest model, the Pod 4 Ultra, also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees in order to improve your airflow and stop you from snoring. If you decide to try Eight Sleep, you have 30 days to try it at home, and you can return it if you don't like it. No questions asked, but I'm sure that you'll love it.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
That's a great question. I mean, Alzheimer's is a tough one. I followed this field for a long time. I had people working in the bench right across from me as a postdoc. There have been so many hypotheses, not just the plaques and tangles thing, not just the beta amyloid hypothesis. But I'll tell you, my friends who are neurologists are not optimistic.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and the UAE. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, about a year ago, somebody who's probably one of the finest cardiologists in North America contacted me, of all people, and asked, what do I know about ketogenic diet for the treatment of Alzheimer's? And I said, I've known him since I was a kid, because he's a family friend, a phenomenal cardiologist.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And I said, you know, this is an odd moment, because I remember years ago, I said I was going to go into neuroscience. And he said, why would you go into neuroscience? Like, there's nothing to the, like, neuroscience is a ridiculous field. Why would you do that?
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
So- but he was very curious because his father had Alzheimer's and he was exploring the ketogenic diet for the treatment of Alzheimer's for his dad. And he was observing some really impressive results. So here's a cardiologist among the best asking me what I've seen about this. And I said, well, I know of Dale Bredesen's work and I'm learning as I go, and we will cover this on the podcast.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
This is very informative. I want to make sure that we hit the other kind of cutting edge things. I'm curious if you take anything to augment NAD. I take sublingual NMN every day. I don't get paid by a company that makes NMN. I take it, the most noticeable effects that I've observed are increased energy. My hair grows super fast when I take NAD and my nails grow super fast.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Those are not effects I was trying to achieve, but that's what I've observed. Do you take NMN, NR, or do you do NAD infusions? Yeah, I do.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Okay. So you take that daily? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I do the sublingual NMN and occasionally I'll get an NAD infusion, but it's so unpleasant as it goes in. It's like you're getting stomped on by an elephant slowly, but you do feel great afterwards. Yeah. Exosomes, have you had them? I've had them, I've given them.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
You can. You can give exosomes in the United States. So it's FDA approved?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
That's awesome. I mean, I've heard great things from many people. I haven't felt a need to do stem cells, so that's why I haven't done it. But I'm curious about exosomes and been, you know, cautiously exploring the peptide space. We talked about some other supplements. Mark, we've covered a ton. It was a whirlwind. And at the same- I'm ADD.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
At the same time, I mean, we talked about food as medicine. Yeah. Talked about core supplements that people really should perhaps not even think about as supplements anymore, but that's sort of up to the, that's in the ear of the beholder.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
So, yeah, things like D3, omegas, I like that answer. Magnesium, selenium, iodine, a case, you made a case for table salt in addition to all the fancy salts that we all enjoy.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Seaweed and fish, but not tuna. And thank you for touching on air... and lack of cleanliness and air, heavy metal poisoning, things to be cautious about, there's ways to detox and for illustrating that detoxification is possible through known pathways that anti-aging longevity, whatever you want to call it, and bodily repair pathways are inherent in us. And so we can encourage them.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
I also really want to thank you for being willing to wade into the swamp that is the public health debate right now, but especially the corner of the swamp that is, for lack of a better way to put it, the big food FDA relationship and what you and Bobby Kennedy and others. I hope that they will recruit from the left. I know Cory Booker's been actively involved in this.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
He's on the left, clearly, and trying to clean up the food supply, give people options. What I heard is that it's not about forcing things, but it's about giving people options and knowledge.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Like, I really appreciate you and the entire population of people that care about their health, whether they realize it or not, they appreciate you because you're a real pioneer in this field and you've trudged some really challenging waters. And I happen to know, and I feel very good saying that it is your inherent good nature.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
I think that's allowed you to go through one swamp after another, after the other with your like optimism and your, your, your kindness of spirit intact. So, you know, thanks. You're a real role model to everyone who cares about their health and who's trying to help others care about their health. Yeah. I'm a pathological optimist, but the good news is optimists live longer, even if they're wrong.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
I was thinking about this the other day, I met your new dog and forgive me for saying this, but, but Lenny's got a great attitude. You know what my first thought was? It's kind of like Mark. He like came in there, he crawled up on my lap. Although you didn't crawl up on my lap. I just want to make the point that he has no stranger danger. But he's a really wonderful and beautiful dog, by the way.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
He's an impressive dog. And you just have that good nature about you. And I know you want the best for people.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
I feel that. I know everyone listening feels that. And thank you for everything that you've done. And again, for being such a pioneer and keep going. Thanks. Thanks, Andrew. Thanks, Mark. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Mark Hyman.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
To learn more about Dr. Hyman's work and to find links to the various sources discussed during the course of this episode, please see the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. In addition, please follow the podcast by clicking the follow button on both Spotify and Apple.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. And you can now leave us comments at both Spotify and Apple. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. And if you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, Threads, Facebook and LinkedIn.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the information on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, it's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as what we call protocols in the form of one to three page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure,
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody.
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How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman
Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Mark Hyman. And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Becky Kennedy. Dr. Becky Kennedy is a clinical psychologist and one of the world's foremost experts in parent-child relationships.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
It's because of those damn Star Wars movies. Oh, no, actually, Star Wars incorporated some frustration, but it's because of movies. Boom, you're supposed to just have the skill because you picked up the rock or the sword or the pen or the wand.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Look, I love, love, love this concept, which I believe to be entirely true, that the learning space between unskilled and skilled, if you will, is characterized by the feeling of frustration in mind and body. Yes. I don't want to rattle off another experiment, but there is just oh so much data. I'll share this with you offline.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
The papers that is showing that brain plasticity changes in neural circuitry only occur when the chemical milieu of the brain is different than it normally is. Otherwise, how would the brain know it should change? So what sets the context for... massive change in our neural circuitry is when there's a lot of adrenaline in the body. Sorry, folks, it's true.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Adrenaline, also called epinephrine, and norepinephrine released in the brain. Now, you don't want to be in a state of panic or stress to the point where you're debilitated, but that shift in the chemical milieu sets the stage for rewiring of connections between neurons. I mean, this is known at the molecular level, it's known at the cellular level, it's known at the circuit level.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And I'm excited to share that literature with you because it just basically is a bunch of nerd speak and numbers to support the fact that you're nailing it right in the bull's eye, which is without frustration, there is no rewiring of the neural circuits. And if you think about it, it had to be that way. Otherwise, why would the circuits change?
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
So that the error signal is what sets plasticity in motion. Now the actual rewiring occurs during sleep. So this is my reminder to make sure that your kids get enough sleep because that's when the actual, this is the phenomenon of not being able to do something coming back a few days or weeks later. And you're like, can do it.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Well, it's because it happened in sleep, the final portion of the rewiring.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I think 75% of people between the age of 7 and 18 are massively sleep deprived. And, you know, there's the neural rewiring deficits associated with that are serious. And these are what we call sensitive periods. I like sensitive periods more than critical periods because critical periods imply an open and shut. Sensitive is there's a tapering, but it does taper. So, yeah.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
This unskilled to skilled and frustration in the learning space model, this is part of something that you're putting together now. Could you expand on that?
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I'm realizing as you're saying this, that the literature that I'm aware of about stress and trauma is actually relevant here in an interesting and perhaps surprising way whereby, you know, this thing I said earlier, you know, the brain only changes under conditions where norepinephrine and epinephrine are released.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
You know, there is such a thing as one trial learning and it's associated with negative experiences. And the reason negative experiences create such robust learning in only one trial is because there's a massive amount of epinephrine and norepinephrine and other neurochemicals released. So it's stamped into the nervous system. But learning of things we want to learn
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
relies on the same neurochemicals. I mean, there's a wild and really cool literature from a guy named James McGaw who showed that like if you spike adrenaline before learning, the learning is much faster and much more durable. If you spike adrenaline after learning, turns out the learning is more durable.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Now, we can't start getting into kind of, you know, biohacking experiments on kids or themselves, but the adrenaline is supposed to come during the learning itself, which is what you're saying. But the problem is if we stop once we're frustrated, we get the increase in adrenaline and norepinephrine and, again, other neurochemicals as well. Right.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Then the perception is that the plasticity loop is closed there. So what did you learn? When I do hard things, I get frustrated. When I stop, the frustration goes away. That's all you learn. In the same way that somebody exposed to trauma, this underlies the basis of almost all modern trauma therapies. It's in the right setting. Take people back through it sequentially.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Let them experience that and start to desensitize to it so they can complete that loop.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And so I think it's so important to push through frustration. And I think it's so important, I'm disagreeing with you here clearly, but that oftentimes that frustration can last more than just the learning session. It can be weeks or months or in some cases a year of a really challenging course or a sports course.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
sports uh participation and so that's where it gets tough because as empathic creatures one hopes we hate to see members of our own species suffer especially our kids and so it becomes this thing of like do you let them opt out like what did they learn by opting out and that's where it gets really complicated because we also got a forebrain which can set all these different rules and so um
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I love your use of story in narrative with your kids. It seems like you use that a lot.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Like instead of saying, you know, and forgive me for, I'm not, I'm not an analyst, but I feel like it starts with an observation like, okay, you're behaving this way. Maybe what's behind the behavior or you're expressing this, what's maybe deeper to that. But
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
when talking about your own experiences towards your kids, as you've been doing here in these pseudo hypotheticals, I'm sure some of them exist. We'll interview your kids later and find out. No, I'm kidding. It's clear that you use story as a way to kind of share genuinely, but also probe for what might be going on with them.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And I have to say, I find it really delightful because it raises lots of questions. that I think anyone would have. And I think it's part of your gift, clearly, because so many people, you know, follow your advice. But the advice you give is also, it's interesting, it's like an observation. Like, frustration is key. I want to increase frustration tolerance.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
But then you're not like, okay, you're going to hammer... down their throats, frustration tolerance in the following way. It sort of becomes a question like, where's their frustration in your life? And then you put it into your own narrative as opposed to necessarily asking them questions. I think asking kids questions or asking people questions generally is great. Like, hey, how can I do better?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
As you pointed out earlier. But it's really, I don't know if the word is disarming, but it's really in an entirely positive way. Like you use your own narrative to allow people to start going, oh yeah, like where am I experiencing frustration? Where can I tolerate that better? And so I think that there's this incredible triad of like, or tripartite narratives
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
of like observe, consider, like the deeper layer, and then offering a narrative that's really a bunch of questions where you're speaking from your real truth. It's really elegant, I have to say.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
It's spectacular. I hadn't realized it until right now.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I feel like kids are, as you said before, kids are so perceptive about what their parents are experiencing and they'll create or move towards all sorts of emotional gymnastics in order to work with that. Years ago, I saw, I think it was a YouTube video with Jim Carrey, who basically revealed that he became funny. as a way to make his sick mom laugh.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
That he grew up with a very sick mom, which is chronically ill. And so he would throw himself down the stairs and try and make her laugh. And he was an incredible world-class physical comic, among other aspects of comedy. But that his whole career was born out of this childhood tendency to notice that his mom was really hurting and try and basically make her laugh, make her feel something good.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
So you're acknowledging that inside him there might be a piece that still wants to do the wrong thing.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Whether or not you have children, I assure you that today's episode is going to be immensely beneficial for all of your relationships. You will notice during today's episode that our studio backdrop is different. You will notice that for once, I was not wearing this particular style of shirt.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I mean, is pretty far away from the parenting dynamic, but the understanding and actual data from like 12-step programs and group therapy generally, including trauma therapy that is of a group therapy nature, fully supports everything you said. Hearing the...
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
terrible and or humiliating things that people have done or have done to them, as awful as that sounds, is often what underlies people's willingness to recover, ability to recover, and then they become the teachers over time.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Like you said, I think you said so many incredible things there, but right at the end, you said something that I hope everyone internalizes, that when you do something embarrassing, Maybe even humiliating. The last thing you want to hear is, look, it's all going to be fine. The thing that actually helps is somebody who has experienced something similar and is doing fine.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And, you know, now I'm thinking about this because it's just incredible the way that kids can pick up on something and then try and find a solution to it.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Love it. And I feel like the story of your son bringing those puzzle pieces back is like, there's so much there.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
You know, I could imagine that for kids who have a sick parent, it could be mental challenges or physical challenges, that they've got to notice. Yes. And in the case of Jim Carrey, one could argue whether or not it was adaptive or not adaptive. He had this, you know, meteoric career, but eventually just left it, decided that wasn't what he wanted to do.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And the fact that there was a delay and then he brought it back on his own accord and that you had already kind of let it go. That's I feel like a really interesting piece. It wasn't to like appease you. It was really something internal for him. Like he got the lesson there. for him, it wasn't just about like making mom feel okay about him.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Like he clearly understood you still love him, but it wasn't about like fixing something externally as much as it was about fixing something internally, which I think is the, the addressing and overcoming the shame piece.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Yeah, if ever there was some core truths about brain plasticity, it's that frustration is associated with the chemicals that foster brain change. We know that. And that questions have a really interesting impact on learning. Which sounds kind of like a duh. Well, of course they do.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
But when we ask questions, it creates this open loop in the brain that the brain wants to solve as opposed to hearing a statement. That's why I always felt like those pictures on office walls, like motivation, when you blah, blah, blah, like the motivational statements don't mean much.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
in terms of because they're not about verb states when we ask questions that we put our brain into kind of a process of verb states of asking what behaviors are going to lead to which outcomes there's an interesting literature about this that um you know probably isn't fully relevant here but it gets back to trying to learn basic motor tasks and the same things are applied to basic cognitive tasks of like how do i solve this and a puzzle is a great um
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
But leaving that extreme example aside, let's say a parent is sick with the flu or is grieving the loss of, God forbid, a spouse or... Or something really major. Yeah. At what point does the parent need to say, listen, I'm really hurting. This is bad. And I can handle it. When that might not actually be true. So the question is, you know, how much information to give kids.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I love it. You taught a process through song, and there actually is a lot of data on music in the brain and how it organizes things, mostly in the form of a story of a beginning, middle, and end. And just the quickest example I can give is when we learn our ABCs, we learn them in song. right? It's A, B, C, D, E, F, G. You never forget that, right?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
It's much easier to learn things through rhythmic song motifs than it is through a list of letters or numbers.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Yeah, so it fragments it into a beginning, middle, and end, and then there's an underlying repetitive sort of wave. A, B, C, D, E, F, G. Okay, here I'm now. I'm singing. So, you know, at risk of you know, inducing all sorts of bad neural responses in listeners. But you get the point. It's a waveform that the brain can recognize. I actually have a friend who's a very accomplished musician.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And I know the lyrics to his songs very well. And I said, remember that song? And he goes, well, I have to hear the... underlying melody and then he can remember all the words. He's a singer. He's a lead singer in a very well-known band. He doesn't even know the words to his own songs if you just ask them for him. But you give him the music and he's just out the gate.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And he can do this in front of tens of thousands of people.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
It becomes a verb process. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off there. It's almost like saying like, oh, the mechanics of writing are you pick up, you put the pen between, you know, there's a whole rhythm to writing. There's a whole sequence of a motor sequence that we learn or eating or anything for that matter.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
No one who's an expert piano player thinks about playing the individual keys at the point where they've learned it. They've batched it into, it's sort of like chunking, but it has an underlying rhythm that's carried by a neural circuit that allows the expression of the movements of the fingers or the,
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
the words out the mouth, or in this case, overcoming frustration to just kind of ride on top of all of it. So, um, there's an unconscious genius to, to what you, uh, what you did. And I love it. And maybe, um, as long as nobody hears me saying, I'll need to sing more to get through frustration. Um, I have a question about Ms. Edson.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
People are gonna be like, what? Before we started recording, you shared with us something I think is entirely appropriate to what we're talking about now, which is learning and learning hard things and frustration tolerance. And... You've evolved these concepts, you know, in the course of your work and through your own parenting child relationships, clearly your own and then yours with your kids.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Who was Ms. Edson and what did she teach you? Because when you told me this, I was like, whoa, that's super valuable. We all need to know about this.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Because you don't want to lie to them. On the other hand, you don't want them to feel the burden of... Yeah. of needing to worry about a circumstance. And I'm framing this in the context of sick parent, but I'm also raising this thing of financial worries. I have a close friend who told me that growing up there,
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
parent was like constantly dealing with you know moving from one job to the next it was like this issue of whether or not we're going to have enough resources to get through the next year was a constant question and this person is now in their mid-30s and you can tell it still haunts them and it's completely shaped their relationship to work and finances yeah yeah i mean i think we can we can think about this compared to what would i want for my boss
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I'm going to thank you and Ms. Edson. Yes, thank you, Ms. Edson. I think the idea of lowering the stakes to be able to move forward is just spectacular in everything. I notice you do that. By the way, I'm not like analyzing. I'm just saying you do that with parenting. I think there's so much tension around this notion of like creating healthy, productive, functional kids.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And I think there is a lot of shame for parents when things aren't going great and people know it or they know it. Yeah. The idea of creating lower stakes in order to be able to make pretty big moves over time where they're required or just do nothing when sometimes that's what's required.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I think it's spectacular. I was going to ask you, and I never do this, but I was going to ask you if there were one thing that people could start the process of trying to be a better parent, better to themselves, if it's more about emotional containment, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Maybe it's this thing of, you know, asking, you know, at the end of today, like, what would be one thing that would allow me to have said it was a better day? Would that be it? Certainly that's powerful.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Awesome. Well, this whole thing that you've attempted to take on is also really hard and you're doing incredible work, educating people on how to parent. There's so many things that you've said today. I'm not gonna recap them all. You know, we do timestamps and all that so people can find them, but in no particular order.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I mean, you know, this concept of, you know, telling your kid you're right to notice when they notice something important in you or in others or in themselves. That rigidity is the enemy. Asking like what's this really about when they're doing or saying something or expressing themselves in a way that feels confusing or maybe especially when it's irritating.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Encouraging frustration as a route to learning, like incredible. And then you said the more that you can locate somebody, the more you respect their values. which I think is incredible and on and on.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I mean, there's just so many gems in today's conversation and so many actionable gems that you provide on social media, through your courses, through conversations like this and others that you're holding in other podcasts. And I just wanna thank you so much. You're teaching people how to parent others
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
how to think about their own parenting oh yes that's the other one you said the the only kind of parenting that we do reflexively is the one that was done for us which will evoke um you know feelings of relaxation in some people and feelings of dread in others and um but it all just speaks to the importance of paying attention to this thing that we call parenting and
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I think the way that you're merging this with a thoughtful eye on technology, where it's taking us and where there are concerns, as well as, you know, where it can be utilized, it's just fantastic. I can't say enough good things about the work that you're doing, and I'm just so grateful that you're doing it. And I'm saying that on behalf of myself and everyone else.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
You're making the world a better place. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining today and for sharing so much. We'll, of course, point out where people can find you, but just keep going. It's awesome. I've learned a ton. I know everyone else has as well.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Likewise, we'll do it again. Thank you for listening to today's episode with Dr. Becky Kennedy. I hope you found it to be as informative and as actionable as I did. Right now, Dr. Becky has a 20% promotion going for her fantastic online program on parenting. Becky was kind enough to extend this discount until this Friday, January 17th, 2025 for Huberman Lab listeners.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
The reason for that is that this episode was recorded during the LA fires, what was initially called the Palisades fire, and then spread to multiple fires throughout LA County. So we were not able to access our normal studio.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
You can find more on that along with links to Dr. Becky's book, her terrific social media handles and more through the links in our show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. Please also subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and Apple by clicking the follow button.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Becky Kennedy. I hope you found it to be as informative and as actionable as I did. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
So I want to express extreme gratitude to Rich Roll, our good friend in the podcasting space, who allowed us to use his podcast studio, which is where I'm seated now and where I held the discussion with Dr. Becky Kennedy. First off, our entire team, our homes and our studio are fine. I can assure you of that.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Paul Conti, who came on this podcast to do a series about mental health, not just mental challenges, but also mental health, which is an interesting concept in its own right, has been quoted as saying that, you know, that if you were to list out the 100 most important things for romantic relationships, it would be self-care and communication repeated 50 times.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And I'm thinking about that now because it sounds like a pretty good model for pretty much every relationship.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Self-care, communication. And I must say, the first time I heard him say that, it wasn't on my podcast. It was on a different podcast. I was sort of surprised. I thought, self-care first? But the way you're framing it seems to me that if self-care comes first, or at least very high on the list of what parents should do, It frees up the kids to live and experience life with a lot more ease.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
A lot more peace.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And to basically unburden them of about 50,000 jobs.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I don't know the psychology literature or clinical literature around this, but I'm thinking about speed of emotional shifts.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
But most importantly, our thoughts and our prayers go out to the people who have lost their homes, lost pets. And sadly, there have been fatalities during the L.A. fires. So our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families, and we hope everyone remains safe. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
In my own experience of life, I've known moody people and I've known not as moody people. I define moody as people whose moods fluctuate quickly and sometimes spontaneously. But this idea that some people are like steady as a rock is a great concept, but we also know that we need to feel our emotions, express them to some extent.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And yet there are people where if we were to plot this, it would look like a high frequency wave where some people are really upset, then they're feeling better again. They're upset, then they're feeling better again. I'm not talking about extreme pathology here. I'm talking about, you know, someone cuts them off in traffic and they're pissed, but then they're fine.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
They're very, very happy about something they see. So it doesn't always have to be negative. But then they're kind of like flat affect and then they're into something negative. I think that experience of emotions is so far and away different from the experience of emotions emitted from somebody who... You can kind of see the emotion coming. It's like a slow swell.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
It's like a expansion and then a contraction again that you have time. And I feel like I keep coming back to this theme of time perception. Anytime we have time or we hear about like in all the Buddhist traditions, like space, like you're trying to create mental space and you know, this gap between stimulus and response. It all sounds great, but with some people...
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
you have to really be on your toes or perhaps you disengage. And so I've never heard a satisfying answer to this, probably because I've never asked it out loud. If you're a kid or if you're a parent and somebody is experiencing something, let's say they're really angry or really happy, You can imagine riding that wave in with them. You could also imagine sitting back from it.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And some of this is probably what we'd call temperament. But maybe you could talk about this a little bit in the context of having one or both parents. It's kind of like a high frequency shifts between emotions versus kind of a slow expansion and then settling of emotions. Because I feel like those are two completely different experiences of life.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Becky Kennedy. Dr. Becky Kennedy, welcome back.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
How useful is it to talk to kids about emotions when they're not happening?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Grateful to Rich Roll for lending us his studio under the duress of fires in Los Angeles. I'm praying that his home is okay. It's unclear at this moment, but in any event, Let's talk about emotions, both theory and practice. And if we can place it in the context of parenting, that would be great, but I'm certain that this has a broader theme that pertains to everybody.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And as far as we know, a uniquely human thing, I could be wrong about this, but a colleague of mine at Stanford and psychiatrist called Dicer off talked about this, um, that humans are the only species that we are aware of that sheds tears for sake of emotion.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Other animals, they have lacrimal glands. They produce, you know, water, so to speak, salty water that comes out of their eye region, but not as it relates to emotions. At least we don't think so.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
My reflex would be to tell them the biology of tears. Noam Sobel, who was on the podcast, told us that tears contain hormones that signal to other people, pheromones, excuse me, that literally change the biology of the people around you. We can actually smell tears. We don't realize we're doing it. See, here I go. So I realize I spend enough time with kids that if you tell them that, they're like,
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
So I love the theory of emotions or how we would theoretically respond to something, but then there's the reality. So as a parent, let's say you have a stance in your home and in your family that it's okay to be sad. Like sadness is normal, it happens, it passes, et cetera. But let's say you're feeling particularly sad about something.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
It also seems that here we're not defining the age of the kids, but if one presents themselves as perfect or close to it in any kind of relationship, work, romantic, parenting, et cetera, sooner or later, you're going to fall from grace because they're either going to be looking for the mistake or the moment you make a mistake, it's going to be this fracture in the picture that people see.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
had of you. And I have to say, and I think some people might get irritated or even, dare I say, triggered by the language I'm about to use, but I feel like the real ninja move in all of this is to acknowledge that there are power dynamics between parent and child, but then to try and dissolve the power dynamics.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Now you may or may not have children. If you do, today's episode is absolutely for you. If you don't, well, you were once a child. Perhaps you're even still a child. Today's episode also will have valuable knowledge and tools that you can apply to your life.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And I say this in the context of having run a lab for a long time, which is very different than raising small children. But you have people who are coming into your laboratory. They are, if they're your graduate student or postdoc, they're staking their whole career on your ability to teach and mentor. And a lot is at stake. Nothing is for certain. They might not get a job.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
The papers might not work out. And so there's just so much tension around it. And so as a PI, as a principal investigator in our lab, I remember feeling that pressure of like, it's gotta work out. And one of the best things that ever happened to me as a graduate student was that my first paper took forever to get accepted. And we almost got in and then it didn't get in.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And then finally it got in such that every paper after that felt like a breeze because it took so damn long the first time. And I got to see that my advisor couldn't like make magic happen. And fortunately, that's the way the scientific process is supposed to work.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And I think about this in the context of parenting, like if you're seen as invincible, you know, we hear about this, like people say, I thought my dad was Superman. I thought my mom was Superwoman, you know? And then, but you can imagine how disappointing it must be when they discover anything about a lack of capacity or a break in emotional stability, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
So how does one present themselves as both powerful in the positive sense of the word, such a thorny word, but powerful in the positive sense of the word, but human and vulnerable to making mistakes in a way that... you don't give up the essential, let's just call it what it is, a power dynamic with your kids so that the kid then doesn't feel they have to parent you.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Do you express that and show that in front of your kids? Because I've also heard that young kids in particular, younger than eight or nine, perhaps shouldn't be aware that their parents are experiencing, say, extreme sadness because it can be scary to them or they might feel like their world is destabilizing. And then we also hear a lot about kids feeling like they had to parent the parents.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
You asked your kids this.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And then this whole thing becomes pretty complicated. So while there's no perfect world where one knows what to do every single time, How do you look at this business of modeling emotions and also encouraging kids to be able to experience and express their emotions?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
So powerful. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. AG1 is designed to cover all of your foundational nutritional needs, and it tastes great. Now, I've been drinking AG1 since 2012, and I started doing that at a time when my budget for supplements was really limited.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
In fact, I only had enough money back then to purchase one supplement, and I'm so glad that I made that supplement AG1. The reason for that is even though I strive to eat most of my foods from whole foods and minimally processed foods, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits, vegetables, vitamins, and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And I need to do that in order to ensure that I have enough energy throughout the day, I sleep well at night, and keep my immune system strong. But when I take AG1 daily, I find that all aspects of my health, my physical health, my mental health, and my performance, both cognitive and physical, are better.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I know that because I've had lapses when I didn't take AG1 and I certainly felt the difference. I also notice, and this makes perfect sense given the relationship between the gut microbiome and the brain, that when I regularly take AG1, which for me means a serving in the morning or mid-morning and again later in the afternoon or evening, that I have more mental clarity and more mental energy.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. For this month only, January 2025, AG1 is giving away 10 free travel packs and a year supply of vitamin D3 K2. Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim the 10 free travel packs and a year supply of vitamin D3 K2. Today's episode is also brought to us by Juve.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Juve makes medical grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast, it's the incredible impact that light can have on our biology.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Now, in addition to sunlight, red light and near infrared light have been shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health, including faster muscle recovery, improved skin health and wound healing, improvements in acne, meaning reductions in acne, reduced pain and inflammation, improved mitochondrial function, and even improving visual function itself.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
What sets Chuve Lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy device is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning specific wavelengths of red light and near infrared light in specific combinations to trigger the optimal cellular adaptations.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Personally, I use the Juve whole body panel about three to four times per week, typically in the morning, but sometimes in the afternoon. And I use the Juve handheld light both at home and when I travel. If you'd like to try Juve, you can go to Juve, spelled J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman. Juve is offering an exclusive discount to all Huberman Lab listeners with up to $400 off select Juve products.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Again, that's Juve, J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman to get up to $400 off. I love, love, love this thing about asking for a request. It's different than asking for feedback, which could quickly lead to a list of all the things that one does wrong as opposed to a request for how one could do better.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I think there's an important distinction there. And it seems that the question that the parent or who knows, the boss or whatever, maybe it's with a romantic partner, needs to ask themselves is, what is this request really about? Like what's underneath it? I'm just paraphrasing essentially what you said. And what's it really about?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Is it a request for more autonomy, for more social connection with other people? And then one starts to realize, certainly in this example that you gave of a child asking for more time with their phone late at night, is that it actually has nothing to do with your relationship to them. It's really about their relationship to their friends.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And the fact that they might feel as if they're missing out.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And that leads me to another question, which is what if you as the parent, partner, boss, et cetera, keep your phone close to you until midnight? And they know that. Yeah. So one of the worst things that I believe anyone can say is, you know, do as I say, not as I do.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
It's just such a blatantly arrogant stance of you're supposed to do what I say because I say so, but I'm not going to do it because I don't want to. And yet there are times like in parent-child relationships or boss-employee relationships where you're telling somebody to do something and you yourself are not going to do it or no longer do it or choose not to do it. And
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
in reality you don't have to yeah and maybe there's a good reason why you don't or don't have to that's the nature of that's why i use these uh words um power dynamics yes which which everyone hears and goes oh boy here we go but but it is an issue of power dynamics you have more power than the than the kid so what you're doing is you're giving the kid power to express where they want more agency i like the word maybe agency more than power yeah um
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Did you grant your son the right to use his phone later into the evening?
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Not to pry into your personal.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I didn't mean to pry into your family dynamics.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I had something come to mind, which is not a phrase that I've ever used before or heard before. But what comes to mind is kind of statements of stance.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I feel like statements of stance in parent-child relationships, families, workplace, romantic relationships, et cetera, are great when they're about actions or about sort of overriding themes. Like, no matter what, I'm trying to keep you safe. I might not get everything right, but like that is like non-negotiable internally. And I'm going to try and make it non-negotiable externally.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Like it's a statement of stance about actions like or, you know, keeping you healthy and safe is my number one priority. Those are facts. Those are things that one can really say and believe and understand. you know, until the end of time, be trying to incorporate into one's behavior. But I feel like statements of stance about emotions are very dangerous. Like, um, we don't yell in this house.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Um, you know, uh, it's okay to cry, right? There's always a caveat. Of course it's okay to cry, right? But there are times when crying is less appropriate. There's times when yelling might be appropriate. There's times when emotions need to be expressed or not expressed in a particular way because I, look, I don't think I'm alone in thinking that, you know, the kid tantruming in the
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
in a public environment is an embarrassing thing for them, for their parent, for people around. And it's not the end of the world, right? It's a tantrum, for goodness sake, right? Like people will survive. But I feel like statements of stance about emotions kind of hold us to this standard that we'll never be able to meet. But that statements of stance about action... Mm-hmm.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
are, you know, until we fail and, you know, hope we don't, we can say things like, you know, my job is always to keep you safe. I'm always going to try and make the best decision for you and for your sister, for instance.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
But I think that many people, I'm not just speaking from my own experience, but in talking to friends and others that they grew up in homes where like there were these philosophies, these like statements of stance. And the moment that things didn't match that statement of stance, like the whole concept of what parents and children are supposed to be about just kind of started to dissolve.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And it creates that underlying fear. Like, do they even really know what they're doing?
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Or maybe they don't know what they're doing, but maybe they're trying. So in any case, it's just something that maybe we could talk about for a moment.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Yeah, on the refrigerator.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
What about we don't swear in this house? So what I was about to say- And then you're on the phone and then you screw up and then the kid goes, you swore.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Today, Dr. Becky Kennedy teaches us an immense number of extremely valuable tools for the workplace, for romantic relationships, for family relationships of all types, not just parent-child relationships, and of course, also for parent-child relationships.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Let's talk about guilt and shame.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I've heard some kind of catchphrase-y stuff, not from you, but like, oh, you know, guilt is about the thing you did and shame is a feeling about who we are. And, you know, while I'm not against those sort of 1990s, early 2000s kind of psychology-isms, I feel like they're not very useful.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
in the same way that hearing that there's a gap between stimulus and response. And if you identify that gap, well then goodness, you're gonna be the kind of person that can feel stressed, but not be reactive. You're gonna be responsive, not reactive.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
That's just a bunch of words that doesn't, here I'm a biologist, so I'll just say, doesn't take into account the fact that the biology of stress changes your perception of time and a whole bunch of other things that basically make that gap between stimulus and response much, much smaller.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And I think once people understand that, they go, oh, so like the kitchen refrigerator magnet or the poster on the wall that says, you know, like there's a gap between stimulus and response. It was supposed to save me, but it didn't. Of course not. We're just in different states of mind at different times. So how do you define, no pressure here, but how do you define guilt versus shame?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And what about guilt and shame?
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
The picture I get in my mind is sort of like having antennae cast in every direction. That's right. Except perhaps at the exclusion of paying attention to the antennae that are inward. Exactly. And we are, you know, attentional resources are finite. I mean, we just don't have the capacity to... That's right. Like...
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
respond to other people's emotions and feel at the same time to the same degree that we would if we just concentrated on theirs or our emotions. I mean, that's just a fact of how humans work.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need, but nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, all in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are vital for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or your nerve cells.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Drinking element dissolved in water makes it extremely easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes. To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and therefore losing a lot of water and electrolytes. They have a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. They have watermelon, citrus, et cetera. Frankly, I love them all.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And now that we're in the winter months in the Northern hemisphere, Element has their chocolate medley flavors back in stock. I really like the chocolate flavors, especially the chocolate mint when it's heated up, so you put it in hot water, and that's a great way to replenish electrolytes and hydrate, especially when it's cold and dry outside, when hydration is especially critical.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash hubermanlab to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash hubermanlab to claim a free sample pack. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Now I've spoken many times before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night. That's truly the foundation of all mental health, physical health, and performance. And one of the best ways to ensure that you get a great night's sleep is to control the temperature of your sleeping environment.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Eight sleep makes it incredibly easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to control the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Eight Sleep has now launched their newest generation of the Pod Cover, the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity, higher fidelity sleep tracking technology, and even has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring. If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover,
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Go to 8sleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. 8sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU and Australia. Again, that's 8sleep.com slash Huberman. Wow. I say wow because I think the lens that you're looking at guilt through and the way you're defining it is so very different than the way it's been discussed ever.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And I think this is a super, super important topic. So I'd like to lathe into it a little bit more. Yeah. In some ways, the way that I think many people experience guilt, at least according to your definition, which by the way, I love, it's when we've act out of alignment with our values versus feeling pressure
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I think about, I mean, Lord knows I don't have the best reputation as having a short text response latency. It's variable. Sometimes I'm quick on the draw and other times I'm like, oh goodness, it'll be days or weeks. I mean, over the holidays, I was spooling through it. I would respond to people like a week later.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And, you know, I do my best, but I do often feel, quote unquote, guilty about not being as responsive in text to a number of people because I care about them.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I value them. Yeah. But I get overwhelmed by text messaging very easily to the point where I have to put my phones out of the room when I work, etc., etc. So the way I experience a bunch of text messages coming in is as pressure that then I feel guilty. I'm not trying to make this about me.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I feel quote unquote guilty. But what's interesting is I believe in cognitive dissonance. And then what I notice is that then my brain tries to bridge that gap. I come up with these like justifications with like, well, when I text people and they don't respond for like two weeks, I don't get upset, which is true unless it's in a particular sort of category of circumstances.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
So how come the way they view this whole dynamic is not the same as the way I view this dynamic? Maybe this is a more male-centric view as opposed to feeling porous, like I feel they're upset. But I will say, you know, in fairness to all the chromosomes and their arrangements, I do feel upset. bad. Yeah. Like it sucks.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Like I love these people and they're reaching out to say whatever, happy new year or something. And I'm feeling pressure as opposed to feeling how wonderful it is to have people in my life.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
From me or to me?
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
The truth is, if I'm really honest, I hate shallow exchange of any kind, except maybe a fist bump to somebody you just kind of feel some kinship with on the street and you have that connect and you just give them the fist bump. Great. But I like... more in-depth, lengthy connection.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Three-hour-long conversations or drop... A friend came by the other day for New Year's. He was on my list of people that... And yes, I made a list of people that I want to deepen my friendship with in the new year. He came by. We had a two-hour lunch. We chatted. And I feel like It was awesome and worth a million single line text messages.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And I'm also the kind of person where like I'm good to not see him for a while, not because I'm tired of him, but because I also have other friends and things to do.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
So I'm more of a depth, not breadth kind of guy.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Again, not- It's not an atypical response. I've heard parents do that.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Like, don't you want me to have a social life?
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I love it. And I can't help but recall when I was a kid, after dinner, my dad would sometimes take a walk by himself. Now, granted, he's a physicist and he's a theoretical physicist, so he's like all his experiments were in his head. I mean, he did work on paper, too, but...
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
So he would take these walks and occasionally I'd see him coming back from these walks and he'd be smoking a cigar, something he doesn't do anymore, fortunately. I'm grateful that he's very robust. He was actually a guest on the podcast recently, talked about science and life, et cetera. And one of the things that I remember thinking and still to this day think and feel is that
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
It's kind of awesome how he takes this walk and he looked like so happy with the cigar and his thoughts and he'd walk. And I wanted to be on those walks with him. He was very, very busy. In fact, I wanted a lot more time from him than I got. It's kind of interesting because now it's oftentimes that I'm the busier one. The tables turn, kids.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
But in all seriousness, I didn't think of it as self-care, but it was so clear that that was his time.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
That was absolutely his time. And I knew when I could and should join for things and when I didn't. And so when you say the more you can locate someone, the more you respect their values, I feel like bells go off. It's like exactly that. And there are other examples of my mom, et cetera. But it's kind of interesting when we see somebody
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
adult or child, like really in their element of their thing, it's almost like we love them for it and through it. And it fills us, I think, with a healthy sense of safety. Like they're right there. Kind of like the pilot flying the plane really well. We're like, actually, we don't really want to know about the pilot. I want to hear the thing at the beginning. We're about ready to take off.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I actually don't like it when we're landing and they say, we'll be on the ground in just a few moments. I'm like, we're at 10,000 feet. Can we make it a little bit longer than that? But you get the point, which is that I don't want to hear from the pilot. I just want the pilot to fly the plane.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
We discuss themes that have not been discussed previously on the Huberman Lab podcast, topics such as guilt, which Dr. Becky Kennedy offers a completely unique perspective on, one that I've never heard before and that frankly, I don't think anyone has heard before. In fact, she distinguishes between what most people think is guilt
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And you do become a parent overnight.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I'll remember my graduate advisor had two kids while I was working in the lab saying that there were all these books back then about pregnancy. And she was like, it's wild. There are all these things of what you should eat and shouldn't eat and how you should, you and your partner and how you should prepare for the birth and all this.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And then they're like, and then at the hospital, they're like here. And you're like, Now, granted, that was in, you know, the early 2000s.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I assure you that your legacy extends far beyond that, but includes it as well. You've had a tremendous impact and continue to. I mean, it wasn't long ago that, you know, the power dynamics of parent-child relationships where, you know, you do what I say and I'm the parent, you're the kid and like that kind of thing. And I grew up in a different era.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I'm 49 now and I've been wanting to say I'm 49 now so that I can actually say something with having had some experience when things were truly very different. They were just so different.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
It was like you... Took what you got and you worked with it and, you know, things are so different thanks to your part in all of this. And one thing I do want to return to, because I realize I took us off track with it, is this idea of kids, but perhaps adults as well, feeling isolated. or thinking they feel someone else's feelings, taking that on. Yeah.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
This difference between real guilt and, gosh, it's really hard to come up with a word for it. At one moment I thought, well, maybe it's faux guilt. But, no, you're not pretending. You're actually feeling something, which feels like guilt, smells like guilt, tells you it's like guilt.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Yeah, it's a whole landscape.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
It's a whole landscape. But, you know, one practice that I'm familiar with that I know exists in a couple of different realms of let's call it modern psychology tools is this idea of creating a frame separation. So like after you come together with somebody, say, to like do therapy or something or you've had sort of an emotional break. bind or entanglement doesn't have to be negative.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
That one way that you can learn over time to differentiate their needs and wants from your needs and wants is this idea of in your head, I know it sounds kind of corny, but there's a clear neuroscientific basis for this, at least to my understanding, of in your head, you say, for instance, like if we had just done this, like we had some resonance around something, maybe an argument.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Okay, like Dr. Becky and I got into a fight. that in order to really be able to move away from that and see it clearly, how much of that was yours, how much of that was mine, there's this idea that you tell yourself, okay, what are five ways in which you and I are clearly distinct entities? So you say, and I know folks might chuckle at this, but you say like, okay, I'm a man, you're a woman.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I live in California, Dr. Becky lives in New York. You could even make it, like, first person. You could say, like, or third person, rather. You could say, I, Andrew Huberman, am wearing, you know, a black shirt and a black over shirt, and Dr. Becky is wearing black and white. Okay, so some people might think, like, what's the use of that?
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
But to me as a neuroscientist, whoever came up with that, and it wasn't me, is... nothing short of brilliant because the brain organizes emotions in these broader schemas of physical objects and physical distance and distance in time. And that's the way that we can differentiate between ourselves and everything around us.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And there's a whole discussion to be had about this, but so it's something that, um, I've been playing with a little bit, um, because I don't claim to be this ultra empath, um, or anything, but I think, uh, It's clear that sometimes we take in our thoughts and feelings about what other people are feeling, sometimes accurate, sometimes not. And it can become very difficult.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Whether or not someone's a one of these, I guess you call it deeply feeling. Deeply feeling kids. Deeply feeling kids or not. I mean, anytime you get into an emotional resonance, good or bad.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I think we're porous. We're porous, and that's part of what makes humans so beautiful. But I've found that practice to be very useful, even if it's just in my own head. Like they're over there and I'm over here, but not even necessarily pushing off them, but thinking like, oh, like I'm me and you're you. And there are a bunch of ways in which we differ in time and space.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And I think the nervous system – comes to understand that as a felt thing, as opposed to just a statement like, hey, like you own your emotions, I'll own mine. That's just a statement. Is this any of this?
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I love it. Can we talk about projection for a second? One of the things that drives me insane, people close to me know this, because of this issue of porousness versus non-porousness, is when people tell me how I feel. And so I've talked to a few people very qualified psychiatrists about this, and it's called projection. Sometimes it's, if in anger, it's evacuative projection.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Like, you think I'm crazy. Someone will say, like, you think I'm crazy. Or you're upset with me or something like that. I feel like projection is one of the kind of litmus tests of how porous we are. Because in theory, somebody should be able to tell us that we feel whatever. And if we first look inside, and by the way, I love this concept of do you first look inside or outside?
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Do you listen to what's inside or outside first when something kind of arises emotionally outside you? Love, love, love that. It's something I'll have to explore. But if we don't do that, then you could see how projection would be very effective. And I'm not accusing anyone of using this in any kind of diabolical way.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I think people just do it because it worked and they're doing it because they've always done it. But if somebody says, you know, like, you don't care about me as a friend or... you know, telling someone how they feel is so very different than telling someone how we feel. Duh. All right. It's kind of an obvious. And yet once you start watching for projection, you see it all the time.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
So it's the absence of information that causes the harm.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Not just at you, but like in between people. Right. Like, you know, like I know this stresses you out, but you know, people start doing it all the time.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And it's very interesting to see how people kind of divide into a couple of different groups on this, maybe two or more groups in terms of whether or not it affects them and if it gets in their head or somehow they're like, no, no, it's ridiculous. I don't, I don't feel that way. And for me, it's very context specific, but I love your thoughts on projection, both towards kids and from kids.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And it's the lack of coherence between what they're observing and feeling and kind of this like open loop. If I kind of place it in neuroscience-y terms, I feel like the brain does think in terms of stories. Stories have a beginning, middle, and an end, and they kind of want to know where they are in that story.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
You know, when I was a kid, I used to push every button in the elevator.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Does that mean I'm a sociopath?
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
No, I'm kidding. You just want to push them. I'm joking. I'm joking.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
To be right in an argument?
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Not if you want an effective outcome, no.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
It took me many years to learn, but someone taught it to me in one hour. I feel very grateful that she taught me this, that she didn't tell me to do it, but I just realized if you just like, I don't have any word other than just like soften. If you just kind of like, um, imagine becoming more like a noodle than a, like a rigid bar of iron. I just like go.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And I actually, I think of, um, the way that like my, he always comes up, but my, I had this bulldog mastiff Costello and he was like super lazy. The contract with him was he would protect me with his entire life. But if my life wasn't on the line, noodle.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And I remember just thinking, like, if I just go there, then the basic contract of, like, I care about you, I'll protect you with my life is still there. So I guess I learned it from my bulldog, but it sort of played out in a romantic relationship. And it was just really beautiful. It was one of the best things I learned from the two of them.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Is how I just, like, literally, like, physically softened. then, like, everything becomes apparent. Somehow, for me, it allows me to get back into my own eggshell.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
But still have optics out. Now, that's me. I realize it's, you know, and that doesn't mean in the heat of the moment I'm not, like, feeling like I want to be reactive.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
But for me, a physical change to my body, self-directed physical change to my body, is what just kind of, like, changed everything.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Amen to that.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
These are super important and novel approaches to things that I think everybody deals with, kids in the picture or not. My audience sometimes gets angry with me when I – I ask very long extended questions, but could I just share with you something I learned about an experiment? Because I think it blew my mind. I won't take long. There's a imaging experiment.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
So you put people in a scanner, they image their brain, see which areas are active, fMRI. There's a really wild experiment where they bring people in for the scan. They don't tell them why they're there. And they tell them they're going to be paid $30. And they set out three $10 bills. Maybe you know this experiment. I don't know. And they go into the scanner. And then they come out.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And then the researcher leaves. And there's a discussion, et cetera, et cetera. And at some point, one of the $10 bills is removed by the researcher. And people are told at the end of the experiment, you took one of the $10 bills. And they're like, no, I didn't, because they didn't. Nobody says you're right. But then they reimage them.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And they compare that to a condition in other subjects where people actually did a little sneaky steal during a money game. And the same areas of the brain light up that we think are associated with guilt. In other words, if somebody is told that they did something, Even if they know they didn't, there are aspects of brain circuitry that reflect a quote unquote feeling of guilt.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
It's like it introduces this question about reality. And so they can know with 100% certainty, you can know with 100% certainty that you did not do something. And yet it starts to introduce these questions about how you gauge reality.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Simply because somebody you just met a few minutes earlier, yes, in a position of authority, they're the researcher, you're the subject, et cetera, told you that you did it. I think this has huge implications for parent-child relationships, for romantic relationships, workplace relationships, for... real bias in the outside world.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
You can imagine if you're told your whole life that you're a piece of garbage or that you're part of a bad group or something like this. I'm not trying to get political here. You could come to believe that at a level that is biological, even if cognitively doesn't make sense.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
So this is where I think about this challenging boundary between knowing what we know, being a container, staying in our frame, pick your favorite lingo around this, And the fact that words and the emotions of other people really do have the capacity to rewire us on the inside.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Wealthfront. I've been using Wealthfront for my savings and my investing for nearly a decade, and I absolutely love it. Every January, I set new goals for the year. And one of my goals for 2025 is to focus on saving money.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Okay, so you reminded me. So this is the wild part.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
The distribution of kind of like people who have this... By the way, folks, there aren't single brain areas for whole emotions, but let's just for sake of simplicity here. That have the guilt area activated even when they didn't take the money.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
The entire population of subjects doesn't experience that to the same degree. You have these people for whom it's very high amplitude response and others who aren't.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Now, I don't recall, and I need to go back and look at the study, if it divided according to male-female because earlier you said that this tendency— I would bet a million dollars that if I got to know those people, the people who really light up—
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
of kind of a lack of validation or even in the face of criticism i would bet my money on that psychological kind of is that a moderator a mediator i don't know you would tell me so i'd be very curious about that great well i have no skin in the game like i didn't run this study and i'll go back and check it out it's a collection of studies and i hadn't known about this i mean i read the neuroscience literature but i hadn't known about this i find it fascinating
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
and an entirely different set of emotions and offers you very useful practical tools for when you experience guilt and how to work with guilt. We also extensively discuss frustration or what she calls frustration tolerance.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
like a complete yes, of course, on the one hand, and also super surprising on the other. Yeah. And just oh, so cool. Yeah. In the sense that it's informative. And it's making me think that some people really need to do the work of paying more attention to other people's emotions and feeling them a little bit more. And other people probably need to do the exact opposite.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Since I have Wealthfront, I'll keep that savings in my Wealthfront cash account where I'm able to earn 4% annual percentage yield on my deposits. And you can as well. With Wealthfront, you can earn 4% APY on your cash from partner banks until you're ready to either spend that money or invest it.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Yeah, I think there's clearly a distribution and whether or not it's a binary distribution or it's kind of like a normal distribution, I don't know, but there's clearly variants here from one person to the next and probably even depending on how well rested we are and all the rest. But I do think that
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
we do kind of fall into phenotypes of prone to reacting to other people's emotions without hearing and listening to and responding to ours first, like truly ours first, versus people who are just really out there.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I realize it's very different than any other kind of relationship, but when I first went from being a postdoc to having my own laboratory, the chair in my department, my chairman in one department anyway, he said, you know, you should get a great big desk that's like really thick I was like, yeah, like, why? I mean, I get it.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
You don't want to be sitting, like, right next to your employees or something, but, like, why so? And he goes, so that when they cry, you won't feel like you need to cry or take care of them. You'll just slide the Kleenex across the desk. And I was like, are you kidding? And he was like, no. And then... Years later, I looked back and I realized I understood what he was saying.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I mean, he didn't know me at all, but he was just saying probably something about himself, which is, people are gonna come into your office, they're gonna cry, it does happen, and you're going to need to be the boss.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
which is to be supportive and empathic, but like you can't get pulled into it because they might be crying about something they don't like about the lab or about something not happening the way they want it. I mean, who can imagine any other reason to cry in your boss's office? But maybe they have a family issue and, you know, so you have to remember you're the boss.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And I thought, oh, that's interesting. I ended up with a desk that was kind of medium in width. But I think that nowadays there's a lot more – kind of bleeding of roles. And, you know, it used to be that everyone got really dressed up for work. Now dressing down is like common in certain circumstances and not others. I think that there's a lot of kind of lack of clarity about
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
here we go again, you know, power and authority and, but also kind of staying in our own frame versus taking on someone else's frame.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
You know, I have a friend who runs a pretty large business and he did the same experiment that you did of asking people, you know, how he could do better. But First, he unfortunately made the mistake of asking people how they felt about being there. And they ended up making one of these emotion clouds where they took, everyone filled out a thing and wrote what the most dominant emotions were.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And then he told this story, like, call me late at night. He sits down and they're going to present this as data in front of everybody. And this emotion cloud comes up and the biggest bubble in the middle just says stress. And he was mortified, right? But he learned that they all feel really, really, really stressed. That sort of exercise would never have happened 10, 15 years ago.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
It's like, yeah, like I won't say what profession he's in for sake of privacy, but like it's a profession where stress is part of the process and you don't kind of get the certificate at the end, so to speak, if you don't experience stress.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
That makes sense. I have a rule, which is if my pulse rate goes above a certain limit, my thumbs stop working, meaning I won't allow myself to text. I don't talk on the phone. I'll just go in the bathroom and just sit for a second if I have to. But that's rare. Typically, I just I'm like, I have a rule. My heart rate goes up. My thumbs don't work.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I just do nothing. I follow the do nothing thing. I just wait. I mean, I also have a rule, which is unless somebody's hemorrhaging right in front of me, it usually can wait. Drives people crazy, but they thank me later. Like unless somebody is literally hemorrhaging, like I can pause my response. Because I'm a kind of like move fast, get things done person.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And actually it was taught to me by a chairman of a major university in your home city of New York City. He said, there's always more time. And I said, that's ridiculous. He said, unless somebody's hemorrhaging right in front of you, there's always more time.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I, amen, a thousand times over. No, I, I don't think we can be efficient in relationships. It's like efficiency and other things is beautiful. Um,
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Yeah, slowing down is rarely a mistake. That's really true. I guess occasionally, but rarely a mistake. Really true. I'd like to talk a little bit about technology. I know this is a growing interest of yours.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
For more information, see the episode description. Today's episode is also brought to us by Our Place. Our Place makes my favorite pots, pans and other cookware. Surprisingly, toxic compounds such as the PFAS or forever chemicals are still found in 80% of nonstick pans, as well as utensils, appliances and countless other kitchen products.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I've been thinking a little bit based on our earlier discussion about people who are in their own container or sensing what's going on inside them prior to paying attention to and sensing what's going on in other people, because clearly both are important. I don't like this idea that it's like one or the other. Yeah.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
But with the advent of text messaging, so here I'm not going to talk about social media. This is not about social media. With text messaging, first of all, this is the first time in human evolution that humans have written with their thumbs. That's weird, been kind of quirky reflection.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
But the other one is this is the first time in human evolution, meaning very recently, that we are aware of what's going on with so many other people and we're expected to at least know it and perhaps even respond to it. I mean, it's just, I know people younger than 30 are probably going, wait, no, it's always been this way, but it wasn't always this way.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Clearly our brain has adapted to this new format, but it did not evolve in this format, whereby you're getting on a plane and you look at your phone and you are aware of the movements and requests and maybe kind statements, et cetera, from other people. We're tethered.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
in so many ways, and that means that our brain is really tethered to the states of others, their emotional states, their physical states, where they are. You said, and I'll keep repeating it because I love it so much, the more you can locate somebody, the more it reflects their values.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
So being able to locate somebody in space and time and understand how bounded they are or not to their own emotions or yours, fantastic. But the fact that you have 10 people in your phone that you're aware of, you're not even supposed to be aware of 10 people at once, except the 10 people perhaps around you on the, you know, boarding a plane.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
So we're being forced to navigate a new landscape with all this.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
After this conversation folds, we'll look at our phones. You couldn't have that many... I guarantee you one thing, no matter how many text messages or few text messages you have, it's far more conversations, if you will, than you could possibly have by phone at once. Yep. So in the old days, you left messages and you'd get on the phone when you could.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I'm not saying we go back to that, but I think we might be asking ourselves to do something that is impossibly hard and maybe even bad for us.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And my colleague Anna Lembke, who wrote Dopamine Nation, cited some data that humans have more free time now across socioeconomic groups, more free time for everybody than ever before, more expectation of immediate gratification. And it's not just the texts that we're getting. It's, for some people, the texts that they're not getting.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Frustration tolerance is an extremely important theme for everybody to understand and apply in their lives because frustration tolerance, as Dr. Becky Kennedy so aptly points out, is central to the learning process of anything at every age.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
They're thinking about the people that they haven't heard back from, etc.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
The number of tethers. Right, exactly. The number of tethers is just astonishing. I had a conversation with somebody recently that popped to mind where it was a little bit, it was like a low friction one that ended in a really good place where I said, you know, the problem is, you know, I was talking about, there's a little bit of an age gap.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And I said, you know, the problem is you think slow is low. Like, what I was saying was I like to just chill. This is something I haven't done enough of in my life, because I'm a pretty ambitious person and always have been since I was little about everything. But I've learned that, like, slow isn't low. Like, I love just, like, sitting down and, like, hanging out with the dog or just...
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
It's like slowing down. And it used to feel like slow was low. It used to feel like, oh, nothing's happening or this is depressing or it's boring. And I think in recent years that became more and more the case as I got more and more pulled into technology. And then I did a little bit of a technology distancing experiment, if you will.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I have this wooden box that someone made for me and I put my phones in there. And it's so amazing how once you put the phone in a different container, it's it like completely changes the relationship to it. I don't get it, but anyway, again, physical barriers to take emotional steps, always a good idea. And I just realized like slow isn't low, like slow is awesome.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
So I totally agree that the circuits of our brain have now adapted to expect immediate gratification. I like to think, and maybe this is a false wish, but I like to think that there are components of our brain that are hardwired enough through tens or hundreds of thousands of years of evolution
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
that might be able to recognize and appreciate the slow moments and not feel like slow is low, meaning slow is depressing. But I do think that if one is weaned in, raised in an environment where you expect things quickly, well then, you know, it's going to feel like the horse and cart compared to the car at some level.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I also cook burgers on it, and it really puts a nice sear on the burger without the meat sticking to the pan. It's extremely easy to clean, and like all Our Place products, it's nice to look at when sitting out on the counter or stove.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Yeah, it's awesome. You know, I said it last time we spoke, I'll say it again. You know, if you're thinking of adopting, I'd be happy to put myself up for adoption. It's such a beautiful philosophy and stance to take around effort and frustration. I mean, again, this isn't about my life, but I feel so blessed that I came up in science where things take forever.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
You can work two years on a project and then discover you do the right control experiment and you're like, we got nothing. Like literally, we have nothing. Yeah. There wasn't and there still isn't a tendency to publish what are called negative results, which aren't bad results, but where you basically got nothing. You can find a flaw in the reagents you're using. You get nothing.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
You're starting again. And to have that, you know, a few times and to have some papers take two, three, four years to get accepted, other papers six months. I'll tell you, the six months feels really short. But these days we get so much immediate gratification. The other day I was staying at a hotel and I ordered food in. I don't do it that often. I was like, I really want like a poke bowl.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
There's that poke bowl place. I ordered it. It was there in 11 minutes. Wow. I was like, whoa, like, this is so wild. I was like, I got to be careful. Not because I'll overeat pokeballs. You can only have so many pokeballs. But it's like, you just, it's there.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Yeah. It's so, you know. It's incredible.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And sad and scary and exciting and all the things, you know. So I think having variable durations of effort, reward in one's life. And being able to see where like the latency is very short. Yes, social media, but, you know, other things that where you have longer duration effort to reward contingencies.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I'm sounding kind of, this is like nerd speak, but I've gone on record saying before, and I'll say again that, you know, dopamine that is achieved without, you know, effort preceding it is just be really careful. Doesn't matter if it's amphetamine, cocaine, social media or anything else. You get used to the schedule.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And I think we need to be able to tolerate and enjoy and lean into and savor variable schedules of effort and reward.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Well, I think about it as a friend used to call it years ago, birthday money. There's one time each year, okay, maybe a couple because of the holidays, when you're supposed to get presents just for being you. It's called your birthday. Or if you're a kid, you know, or whatever holidays are where we celebrate kids by giving presents or we celebrate each other.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I can't help but put this neuroscience lens on this because I find it so interesting that what you're basically saying, if I understand correctly, is that until we can place things into a story, which is really a sense of beginning, middle and end, a sense of time, it just reverberates in us. I mean, I think I can't help myself. You know, we've
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
But every other day, you're not supposed to get rewards necessarily just because, not just for being you. The rewards are out there in life and appreciating things. I'm not trying to be too stoic here. But there's only one day each year where you get literally presents just for being you. The other stuff is supposed to require effort.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Now, I have a friend, very, very successful, who told me that he wasn't until, you know, until he was in his 40s that he had like kind of a major difficult life, a major business disappointment. And it almost crushed him. Like, you know, but he had never had that before. He had been so successful over and over again.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
You know, it was fun for me to talk to my dad recently on the podcast because we haven't had a conversation like that ever. And we were talking about sort of mistakes that one makes in the context of, you know, work and et cetera. And he said, it's still ringing in my ears. He said, well, you know, those humiliations are actually good for us. He called them humiliations. I was like, really?
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And he was like, yeah, you know, they, they humble us and they keep us thoughtful about what we're doing next. And I was like, yeah, but it was kind of wild to hear that. I don't know why I need to hear it externally because I know it's true. I knew it was true, but yeah, it's not just making mistakes.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Like sometimes, listen, I'm fully against bullying where I understand how that can be very destructive, but Like, there are going to be times when we're going to feel humiliated. And to be able to bounce back from that is pretty awesome. I actually think that builds character strength. I do.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I don't want to give the impression we've got fires burning all around us in terms of this building, but with some distance between us and the fires, that's actually true. And I think one of the things that's so destabilizing for kids and adults in this kind of circumstance is that we don't know how this is going to work out. We just don't. And of course, none of us have a crystal ball.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Right. Now, I love the analogy of flying because I, you know, I'll never forget driving in really thick fog for the first time. This happens if you grew up in the Bay Area. Just being able to see one reflector at a time and being terrified. Now, like driving in fog never feels great, but I've been there.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Yeah. Yeah, I've been thinking a lot these days about this whole thing about proficiency and our expectation of kids nowadays, you know, that we have been told for a long time that we need to guard against kids feeling terrible about themselves. On the other hand, we want them to be proficient.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And what you're really talking about here, if I understand correctly, is proficiency at being human, at being really good at certain things, less good at others. I can also tell any kid, because I was this kid, like in a group of musicians, I'm the least proficient. I mean, you really just don't, talk about wanting someone to do nothing. I'm best off not even playing the triangle.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Okay, like just doing nothing would be the best thing I could do to any musical effort. It's just, but I realized that at some point, even though every kid in my school played an instrument, they had like the youth symphony and all that kind of stuff, because it was also a time when I could just kind of relax. Like you don't have to be certainly best at everything.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
But I also believe that in order to really find what you're kind of quote unquote meant for, you have to try a bunch of things and find out what you're never going to even approach partially skilled at. You still have to try. I guess that's the point. So on the one hand, I guess I'm saying do nothing. On the other hand, I'm saying you still have to try.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
We can't peer into the future. But it's the not knowing that, you know, really extends our brain resources. And I can imagine that for a kid, seeing their parent upset and then hearing, well, no, I'm okay, I'm okay, would create this kind of open loop where then the kid has to worry about it. Like, when will this come to an end? Yeah.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I guess you have to try to find out that you're really as bad at music as I found out I am.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I'm good with it. I'm good with it. I love music, but I don't need to play it.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
What's your favorite board game to play as a family?
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I don't know it, but I'll check it out.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
That's a fun game.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I love it. We're back to theory versus practice.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I feel like as long as there are kids and adults that seem, I want to emphasize seem, to do everything well, the athlete, academic, musician, good dancer, charming with other people, as long as those people exist or seem to exist, we're going to have to all overcome our sense that we should be at least partially good at a wide variety of things, maybe not everything.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
One question about expressing sadness in front of a child, and if, let's say, somebody expresses why they're sad, is it okay to accept consolation from the kid? Because we hear so much that we shouldn't have to parent as children, we shouldn't have to parent our parents. And this is a big theme, especially on social media nowadays. Like, were you the parent to your parent?
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
No, I know they don't exist. I know that there are people that apparently are like that. They're fakers. Well, I don't know. I will say that, and this is, I don't get paid to say positive things about the university I work for or not, but I will say occasionally I'll meet a student from Stanford And I'm like, goodness gracious. Like this kid, right, can apparently do everything.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Like they're an athlete and they're a musician. They have all these things. There are those people. And I will say, but this is important, the pressure that the perception of those people creates on them Without fail brings them to immense challenge in their life, if not then, later. I've seen it every single time.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I know because I grew up in the town where I'm now a professor and I went to school with many people who ended up there or, you know, other places like that. And of course, there are people like that in every environment. They are outliers. They tend to be very salient. We tend to notice them. And they create this, you know, false internal pressure. This is the reason I raise it.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And I want to say it's not like they eventually, you know, fail and dissolve into a puddle of their own tears like that. Hopefully they're resilient and they push forward in life and some of them do amazing things and some of them do less amazing things. But the point is that there are people among our species that seem to do many, many things very, very well.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And I think when we hold ourselves to that standard, we suffer and we hold ourselves back. I think that, I believe, I just have a central belief that we all do have some unique gifts that we're meant to bring to our life and to the world, and it shows up in different forms. And one of the worst things we can do in trying to find that and express it is trying to be really good at everything.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I just think that's the most poisonous idea in the American mindset that we're supposed to be really good at everything. On the other hand, I personally believe that we should try a variety of things so that we experience frustration and fail and eventually find what it is that is, you know, we're quote unquote meant to do. I do.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
But I feel also very fortunate that I was never really pushed to be excellent at everything. I have terrible hand-eye coordination. But I'm pretty good at sports with my feet. But when I say pretty good, I mean passable.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
So I gave up on the idea of becoming a professional athlete very, very young. So I think we have to know that we have to play games with our hands and our feet in order to figure that out.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
You know, were you the one that took out the trash when someone else should have done it and therefore you took on more responsibilities? I don't want kids to think they shouldn't take out the trash, but you know what I mean? But if you're consoling a parent about a lost job,
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Oh, goodness. And it's very sad.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
If you can understand this concept and you apply some of the very simple rules and tools that Dr. Kennedy explains during the podcast, I assure you, you can learn many more things much more quickly and with much greater satisfaction, if not during the process, certainly at the end when you master that learning. And those are just a few of the themes that we discussed during today's episode. Again,
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
If you're the kid, rather, that is sort of the go-between between the parents, sort of acting as therapist, we hear about this a lot, a lot. And I think a lot of people peer into their past and say, yeah, I grew up way too fast.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Oh, I really appreciate you sharing. And I want to be clear, if I was at all unclear, that I certainly don't hold up these ultra performers in all domains on a pedestal. I think they're in a very precarious place inside and outside. They've essentially given up all their power and agency to one incoming failure. And maybe they never experience it and they get to the end without having done it.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
But what a terrible way to live anyway. I've always looked up since I was little to people that really took a unique path. I've always found that they, yes, accomplish tremendous things and they have interesting, sometimes painful flaws. Like I'm a huge fan of the late neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks. Very, very incredible man. Very complicated life.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
You know, if you read his books, his autobiography, which I highly recommend everybody do if you're interested in science and just animals and a life uniquely lived. He's a really good example. And there are a bunch of other examples that are meaningful to me. Certainly not somebody who, you know, he... couldn't do an experiment to save his life.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
So on the other hand, I think we would all agree that being an empathic person, teaching our kids that if somebody's crying, you want to walk over to that person, perhaps, and just say, you know, Do you want me to sit with you or maybe do nothing at all? Maybe offer a solution, maybe not, but at least, you know, provide some sort of support that seems healthy.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
He was moved out of multiple universities and places, you know, very, very complicated character, had a methamphetamine addiction, was a closet homosexual, came out later in life and was then long periods of time on his own. And anyway, had a great relationship later in life. Very interesting person.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
became that way and found his passion by realizing how terrible he was at certain things, including certain branches of medicine. So I think that trying many things and being really realistic about whether or not something's for us or not, but is the key.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
But then I guess the question becomes, and this must be so hard from the perspective of parenting, but also just in terms of guiding ourselves through life is, you know, how much friction do we experience before we say, you And I'm cool with that. I love music. But I'm going to put my efforts into these other things. And, you know, this thing comes more easily for me.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
You know, I do think we have a lot of natural tendencies. And I feel like, especially in the United States, there's been this complicated relationship with parenting and education whereby...
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
we we don't want to push people to their own you know like suffering and demise but we also have to avoid not pushing them because then they don't ever find what they are proficient in and they don't learn that overcoming friction thing um so it's it's tricky i do believe everyone has a unique expression of themselves in life whatever that is doesn't have to be in professional life but to try a lot of different things and you know how at what point you uh you bail out
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I mean, I've had few in my lab, but I've spoken to graduate students and postdocs where I had to say, you know what? I actually had this conversation with a postdoc. I was like, you know what? You're a really good scientist. You're never going to be a professor. Let's get you a job in biotech. And they were like, oh, they thought their whole life they were going to be a professor.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I'm like, you're not. And the data are the following, which point to that. And it's kind of devastating. But then years later, they thanked me or they thanked me in that case.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
A few others probably cursed me, but yeah. So how do you know when to keep pushing your kid to even engage in something? Like maybe they're the kid that always is picked last for the team, but you know they should play sports.
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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I guess I grew up in a town where a lot of kids got pushed.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
But the basic question is, should parents accept consolation from children when the parent is sad or experiencing some other negative emotion?
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Christopher Gardner. Dr. Christopher Gardner is a professor of medicine and director of nutrition studies at Stanford University.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
So if this conversation and others that are sure to stem from it get people thinking about interacting with their food differently and thereby eating more healthily, that would be great. So thanks for taking time out of your busy, busy schedule, tackling the hardest issue in science, in my opinion, to get your arms around. and coming down here and having a conversation. I really enjoyed it.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Amen to that. Thanks, Christopher.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Christopher Gardner. To learn more about Dr. Gardner's work and to find links to the various resources we discussed, please see the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
In addition, please follow the podcast by clicking the follow button on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. And you can now leave us comments at both Spotify and Apple. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Throughout today's conversation, we focus on food quality and not just macronutrient ratios or calories and how those can impact health outcomes. As you'll hear, Dr. Gardner and I don't agree on every nutritional recommendation. particularly how much protein people need and the discrepancy in views about animal-based proteins versus plant-based proteins.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. And if you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the information on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, it's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as what we call protocols in the form of one to three page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure,
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Christopher Gardner. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Before you do, I want to know, did raw milk help?
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
So I just have to know.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
But by the end, I do believe that we converge on themes that everyone, regardless of their dietary preference, ought to be able to benefit from. As always, we provide you with science-based, actionable information that you can apply to your daily life. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
A different issue altogether.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my conversation with Dr. Christopher Gardner. Professor Christopher Gardner, so nice to meet you and to have you here.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Yeah, very interesting. And I know a lot of people listening are extremely curious about this issue of real versus not clinically diagnosed food allergies, but just... negative experiences with food. So how many people are actually gluten intolerant? You hear about celiac disease. I mean, people will also now know what the names of these things.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
So they just kind of throw them out there, whether or not they have them or not. And how many people do you think actually struggle with a wheat intolerance, like a wheat sensitivity? Seems like there's millions and millions of people.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Let's talk about processed foods. That gets a lot of attention nowadays. And there, I think we need to parse what we mean by processed foods. I'll just ask this in a very direct way. There are the so-called food additives, the dyes, the binders, the other things that are in processed foods. We should talk about that.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
There's also the issue of caloric density relative to macro and micronutrients, right? A lot of calories, but not a lot of nutrition, so to speak. And then there are probably 10 other things about what processed food is and what it isn't, like tends to be low fiber, high calorie, low fiber. for instance. So let's start with these food additives.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
This is very much in the media space now, and it's controversial. The dyes, like they just banned another red dye, number 40, I think it was. But the fact I can't remember which one just tells you that there are a lot of them. What about these dyes? How bad are these dyes? That was on the basis of a rat or rodent study, rather.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
How much do food dyes concern you as somebody who's spent so much time studying this stuff? Nutrition.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
That's right. Even though we've both been there a very long time, it is a big place, and so we haven't had the chance to interact directly. But of course, I know who you are, and I'm very familiar with much of your work, but you'll tell us about more of it today. To kick things off...
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I want to know, is it possible that even though all human beings are, I presume, the same species, that some of us might thrive perhaps on one form of diet and others might thrive perhaps on a different form of diet? In other words, how do we justify talking about the quote-unquote best diet for a given age demographic, level of activity, etc. ?
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
That's super informative. I appreciate it for several reasons. One that I'd like to highlight in particular is how now several times you've described that to do a proper study, you need to manipulate variables one at a time.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
You just can't do the sorts of studies that one would like to do where you manipulate 10, 20, 40, 100 variables of dyes and colors in people and do that in a reasonable amount of time. As you mentioned, either people would all be dead or there'd be no more funding for the government for any purpose after a study like that was done. It's just too expensive, too time-consuming.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
if one were to look at social media or even just the history of nutrition in this country, one can almost reflexively lean on the idea that maybe we all need something different and some experimentation and discovery is needed. So do we need different diets or is there a best diet?
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
The other thing is, given what you just told us about these additives, wouldn't it just make the most sense to just ban them all?
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Yeah. No, it's a wonderful, sad, but important, excuse me, example of – the challenges that people face in terms of how to feed a family. And at the same time, we could wage the argument that people in Europe you know, have families. They work very hard. And their grocery stores include a lot of ultra processed foods and processed foods, but also a lot of fruits and vegetables.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
And as we talked about before, maybe more variety of grains, et cetera. So we don't want to paint a picture of like the French countryside where everything is grown and harvested and you know, searching for truffles during the morning. I spent some time in the south of France and they actually do this.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
People there spend an immense amount of time and energy thinking about what they're going to eat, preparing that food, eating it, and talking about other great meals they've had while they eat it. And even people without large budgets, at least at that time, ate exceptionally high quality food in reasonable amounts. And it was incredibly delicious.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Dr. Gardner has conducted groundbreaking research on dietary interventions for over 25 years, focusing on what dietary interventions reduce weight and inflammation and for generally improving physical health.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
So there are areas of the world where people do this, but Northern Europe, There's a lot of processed food. And at the same time, we don't see the same sorts of issues with obesity, at least not to the same degree that we do in the United States, the same chronic health and metabolic issues that we see here.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
So if we were to compare and contrast just because they're closest, a northern European grocery store and family and the North American grocery store and family, which you just – described, illustrated for us, I think a fairly representative example. What's different? What are they eating for dinner that's different?
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Is it that the tomato sauce doesn't contain these dyes, that it doesn't contain sugar? And what are they replacing those foods with if they're replacing them at all?
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Why is it that there's this discrepancy in ingredients? This became very much – in the media recently with Froot Loops. It was argued, I don't know if this is true, but it was argued that Froot Loops in Canada are colored with carrot juice and beet juice and Froot Loops in the United States use artificial dyes. And I can't verify that.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I don't know that to be true, but I think a number of examples pointed to that possibly being true. Why would you have a system like ours if other people can do it presumably for same or lesser costs?
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I should ask directly for your research. Do you take funding from companies in the food industry?
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
People love their red meat, including me.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Yeah. I'll go easy, but I'm not going to go completely easy.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
So I'm hearing two things. One, we need to pressure the food industry to reformulate, get rid of these additives, dyes, what you call cosmetic additives that may or may not be deadly, certainly not in the short term, but that in the long term could very well be problematic. We need to do something to make sure that that stuff's removed. It just doesn't make sense to hedge on that one.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
And we can look to Europe and other places that don't. Clearly, if nothing else, they've proved that you don't need these things in the foods for them to have a stable shelf life, etc., Okay, so that's one. The other is this issue of food industry funding of studies because I'm not an expert in nutrition, but I pay a lot of attention to the way that nutrition and health is discussed online.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I mean, that's my business more or less. And every time somebody hears that a researcher took money from a company to run a study, they assume that there's bias. In fairness to you and to the process, I'll just ask, are they able to influence the question certainly not the collection of data. I mean, you know, the data are the data.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Your graduate students and postdocs are the ones who actually run these experiments. Presumably have a hypothesis at the beginning. They ask you a question and then try and disprove that hypothesis. But does the company say we want you to test a given hypothesis or is it funding for you to test a hypothesis that you select? In other words, is there a good separation of concept?
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Clearly the money issue gets people inflamed, but... It's a very different thing when a company says, hey, can you test whether or not our product outperforms in terms of cardiometabolic markers compared to red meat versus, hey, listen, you want to study cardiometabolic markers in people that consume Beyond Meat versus cow meat? Okay, we'll fund that.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
It seems subtle, but it's not so subtle because in one case, they have an endpoint that they're interested in. In the other case, you have an endpoint that you're interested in. Yeah.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
In theory, they could market with this supplement maintains high levels of cognitive performance and be truthful but not giving the whole picture.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
This is the 2018 study?
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim the special welcome kit with five free travel packs and a free bottle of vitamin D3 K2. Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. I've been doing weekly therapy for over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
When it comes to – well, let's just close the hash on the industry funding part because I know that's going to get some people's hair standing up a little bit. Is there a world where – You don't have to rely on industry funding to do these studies. I mean, my first response is like, why go there? Why not just, I mean, we have a National Institutes of Health.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
They fund studies on everything from developing novel molecules for the treatment of Parkinson's to studying the effects of breath work on cancer outcomes. I mean, it's a... Nowadays, it's a very wide range of topics that the NIH embraces, but I think most people don't realize this. And everything in between. So why not just go to NIH for the money?
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I would like to know, because of what you just told us, that people prior to food making its way around the world from different cultures to other cultures, food largely centered on what was grown and hunted and harvested locally, is it possible that even though people have dispersed across the planet,
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I guess Robert Kennedy would be a fan of that sort of thing. I'm not speaking about this with any political affiliation, but he seems to care a lot about getting – dyes and additives out of food and cares a lot about the food supply, at least he's stated that. And NIH is currently in a state of massive revision right now, pause slash revision.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
And I would imagine they would allocate more funding for studies of nutrition given who's in charge now.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Yeah, that's an important point. And I would say that the public is also doing these experiments. You know, the health and wellness community catches a lot of flack from the standard scientific community. They'll say, you know, supplements aren't regulated. They are regulated. There is variety...
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
qualities across brands and probably even supplements within brand but um the experiments are ongoing you have people who are carnivore you have people who are vegan you have people finding what works for them they eliminate this or they add that and they're becoming scientists for themselves and we've really decentralized nutrition science in my opinion that's just my little editorializing um
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
You mentioned this 2018 study and I'm so glad that you mentioned your efforts to remove investigator bias by making the vegan diet not like crap vegan food and not making the meat diet all processed meats because that's happened in a lot of studies. And then that's why the headlines are so confusing over the years or even within a year.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
So could you just share with us the major results of that study, what the key takeaway was so that people who heard, oh, I heard paleo, vegan, vegetarian, Mediterranean and omnivore, which diet was best, if any, and for what purpose?
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Wait, plant-based but includes meat?
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
sort of going back to this first question, that there is a quote unquote best diet, meaning not that we can adapt to any diet, but that for some of us, high meat, high fat, maybe even high, let's say high protein, high fiber, just to make it a little bit less extreme, high protein, high fiber, low starch is better.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Well, and then it gets into issues whether or not a vegan is wearing leather shoes or not wearing leather shoes. And the vegan community historically was very closely tied to the animal rights community, some of which were radical animal rights activists that blew up buildings and worse. I know people who have been targeted by those explosions.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
He is known for doing extremely well controlled studies of nutrition where calories, macronutrients, so protein, fat and carbohydrates and food quality are matched between the different groups and not simply comparing one intervention to the so-called standard American diet, as so many other nutrition studies do.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
And for people that are descendants of people with genes from another part of the world, that high starch, high fiber, lower protein would be advisable?
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
That just means it was the wrong probe. You're using the wrong test to try and address this correlation.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
What's he best known for?
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
The keto diet did better at lowering triglycerides?
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Than Mediterranean? Yes. That surprises me.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
But the Mediterranean diet carbs generally are pretty quote-unquote healthy carbs.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Yeah, that's a good incentive. I would like to just offer the opportunity. You don't have to take it, but offer the opportunity to finally at least start to do away with this ridiculous naming, which is plant-based. I mean, I have to say that, again, I've spent a good amount of time in the public health sphere and public education sphere. How things are named means everything.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
If there's ever a hope to get people eating more, let's just say fiber from vegetables and maybe fruit also, that sooner or later this plant-based naming, I'm going to say, has got to go. It just is never going to work because people hear that and they hear vegan. It's just been too long. It's been too long. It's just –
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
sort of defies any kind of logic to think that the public will eventually think that plant-based includes meat. I think there just needs to be a new name. So I don't expect you to come up with one on the fly, but can we call it plant-biased, perhaps? Or just omnivore. What's wrong with healthy omnivore?
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I think as long as it's just plant-forward just sounds like no meat.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
It sounds like a psychological problem.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I really appreciate that answer because as somebody who's tried various diets, I never had any serious health issues, thank goodness. But I know what I thrive on. I'm an omnivore. Not that people need to know this, but I like to eat meat, fish, chicken, eggs. lots of fruits and vegetables, I eat very little starch.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I love hearing that. I completely agree, by the way. And I think that there is a theory, right? I forget the name of this theory, that one of the reasons why people in Europe especially Southern Europe, can eat all these foods that we consider kind of bad for us. They'll have a dessert, they have bread, they have butter, they have olive oil, they eat meat.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
In fact, they have a fairly pork-rich diet in certain parts of Southern Europe that on average, the obesity rates are much lower. And the argument I think is that the nutrient density is so high in these well-raised, appropriately raised and farmed foods that people end up eating less of them. It's not just that portion sizes are small.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
It's that the food tastes really good and it's satiating it at a level that's different from volume or caloric intake. I think so much of what people think tastes good actually is just relative to the fact that they've never tasted like a real strawberry. And I think... So what we're talking about here is revising the entire food supply. And I'm all for it. I really am. I'm all for it. Because...
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Addressing this from the level of following this diet or that diet, at least according to your work, doesn't really seem to be the best approach, assuming that what people really are after is the experience of food.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I wouldn't say I'm low carb because I eat a lot of fruits and vegetables and some limited amounts of starch. But having tried many, many different things, including vegetarian diet, lacto-ovo vegetarian many years ago, and more extreme keto type diets that lean more heavily on meat as opposed to the way perhaps keto should be done, which we'll talk about.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I've just found this works really well for me. So I fully embrace the idea that different people thrive on different diets. How is it that's true? Meaning, do you think this is because of genetic, you know, our inheritance of genes from people that
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are vital for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or your nerve cells.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and therefore losing a lot of water and electrolytes. They have a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. They have watermelon, citrus, et cetera. Frankly, I love them all.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I didn't think we were gonna land where we happen to be now, but I'm excited that we are because I came into this conversation wanting to talk to you about, and we will talk about, for instance, protein recommendations or food additives, which we touched on. What I'm hearing now is really surprising and exciting, but very practical.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
And here's what I'm hearing, that we can talk about macronutrients, micronutrients, food supply environment, long-term and short-term health until the end of time, And ultimately, people are going to try different things or not try different things and go with what works for them.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
However, if we want to create a wholesale change in everything from the food supply to what people consider appetizing and what they consume, we need to focus on taste. As you were describing this thing with chefs, what I heard in my head was, well, that's great for me because I'm near Stanford, at least part of the time, and I can benefit from all this great tasting food.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
But I could also hear the many millions of people listening to this who are going to say, yeah, that's great for Stanford, but how do I access this delicious food? Like, kind of like FU. So, but then...
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I came to the clarity, and I think this is what you're getting at, which is if you can cook really well, healthy, great tasting food that's great for the environment, et cetera, for a big group of people, hundreds or thousands of people, five days a week, then certainly there's a version of that for a family that's affordable.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
As such, his work has been published in prestigious journals such as the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine. Today, we discuss several important nutritional controversies and we examine what the science actually tells us.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
know came from different parts of the world and to what extent can a different diet pass through generations have epigenetic effects maybe i thrive on that and somebody else thrives on something different because of where their ancestors are from and what they've been eating for the last maybe even 300 years that's not long for a an evolutionary event to take place but some things can happen in 300 years
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
And what it takes us to is less a focus on like one form of diet versus another, but to the... kind of return to, or maybe it's never good to talk about going back to something, to look toward people getting more involved in preparing their food again. Yep, absolutely. Right?
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
It's really about, you know, it's sort of like a discussion about health where you have to tell people, listen, I can't take away the need for you to get your heart rate up You got to do cardiovascular exercise. There is no peptide or even hormone that we can give you in pillar injection form that's going to offset the sarcopenia. You have to do something.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
It's called do resistance training of some sort. I tell my 80-year-old mother this. She lifts weights, and I'm so grateful she does. 30 years ago, I should point out, you and I know this, but for a lot of the audience, the idea that a woman would lift weights, much less an 80-year-old woman in service to her health, it would just be outrageous.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
It would be all like just thoughts about bodybuilding and like football players. It was just no one went to gyms besides those guys. So what I'm hearing is we need to get back to interacting with our food differently and that the convenience of ultra-processed food is really what was the entry to this whole thing.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
And maybe what we need to do is get – is figure out how preparation of quality food, acquisition and preparation of quality food – can be more accessible and can be commoditized in a positive way, in the positive sense of the word.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I like this idea. about chefs in schools. I never thought about that, mostly because it seems reasonable to have one or two per several hundred students, because the issue is always scalability.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I love the small farm thing, you know, but, you know, there's only so many Napa counties and there's only so many, I mean, Montana's got beautiful areas for cattle to graze and things like that, but they're We just don't have the land, as you pointed out. And it's hard to do things properly at scale. That's, I think, the fundamental issue here. But this sounds like it's scalable.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I didn't know this. I mean, it makes sense now that I hear it.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
These are new concepts to me in the sense that I've –
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
not heard before what the what the um sort of tractable model is um but certainly these um issues have been on my mind for a long time as you know it's become clear that uh you know mega farms and factory meat i mean i don't think anyone in the world would say that um factory farmed meat like these you know cattle houses are are good i don't think anyone would except maybe even the people who own them um it just seems that
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
what to do become instead becomes excessively challenging. So I'm really grateful to hear about this chef's program. I'm hoping that folks in the new administration will pay attention to this. They claim to be very interested in these sorts of issues and they wield a lot of power to be able to make this kind of change possible. So were they to ask you to advise or help?
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Would you be willing to do that? Things have become so partisan now. I'm just curious, like, are you willing to work with the new administration, if they said, hey, listen, Gardner, we need your input, would you?
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Let's talk about protein.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
No, but we're going to make it simple. Okay. I'll try. I'll just start off by saying that I and I would say essentially every guest that's touched on nutrition, Peter Attia – Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. Stacey Sims. Stacey Sims, Lane Norton, who is degreed in biochemistry and nutrition. So he probably, of those people, has had the most formal training in nutrition and biochemistry.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
and several others have made a, what I consider a reasonable argument for, and try not to gasp here, Christopher, one gram of quality protein, so high bioavailability, high protein to calorie ratio, one gram of that
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
per lean pound of body weight not kilogram per pound per pound oh and of lean body yeah of lean body weight dr gabrielle line is very precise about this um sometimes her words get twisted when uh when the media the mainstream media which is now no longer mainstream um talks about it but they've contorted her words a little bit it's per pound of of lean or desired body weight
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Because that adjusts for this, you know, for body fat percentage, right? If you're carrying a lot of muscle, it's very different than if you're carrying less muscle under a lot of fat. So even so, those numbers are pretty high compared to the numbers that you've written about. Yeah. it's not per kilogram, it's per pound, right? So I weigh 210 pounds.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I loosely aim for somewhere between 175 and 215 grams of quality protein per day. So What are your thoughts about those recommendations? And then we'll kind of go back and forth and hopefully come to some sort of conclusion that people can make their own decision about.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I mean, maybe a little muscle here and there. But yes, stable weight, stable muscle. So I would say very little is going to go into their sort of maintenance levels of protein synthesis. Anything that I simulated by exercise, still very little. I'm perfectly fine with the idea that much of that protein intake is used as energy.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
In fact, I'm delighted with it because the conversion of that protein to energy is metabolically costly in a way that conversion of other caloric forms is less costly. And I'm also happy with it because it tastes good. The meat I eat is very dense, meat, eggs, et cetera, that I eat is very dense in other nutrients, like healthy fats, especially for fish or for things of that sort.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
And I have to eat something. I have a caloric need. And if I eat too many starches, I get sleepy. I feel lousy. I don't tolerate dairy. I love fruits and vegetables. But if I eat too many fruits and vegetables, I feel lousy because my gut can only take so much fiber. That's what's worked for me because it basically establishes all the things that I'm looking for, right?
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I want enough fiber but not so much that I'm bloated or gassy or not feeling well or I have to run to the restroom all the time. I want enough protein for – protein synthesis and to cover any exercise-induced needs. But I also like the way it tastes. Yeah. And I like what it brings with it. And I source it from quality sources. So – It's hard for me to punch a hole in that argument.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
And I like rice as much as the next person. But if I eat two big bowls of rice, I feel like garbage. If I eat one bowl of rice with a nice little piece of grass-fed meat and a big salad and some vegetables and some berries for dessert, I feel like a king. Yeah. That's pretty good. Yeah. Where am I going wrong with one gram?
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Because the recommendations that I've seen in your papers and others are much, much lower.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Thank you for that clarification. I have a couple of questions I know are popping up for people. I just would like to tick off if we can. Who were these subjects? Was it men and women? These were conscientious objectors, so I would presume at that time we weren't sending women to Vietnam, so it would be just men.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
And they had to call it the penthouse to get people up there because what happened in there sounds anything but pleasant.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Yeah, at least for the Berkeley study. These guys are up there. Guys and gals are up there. They're in these suits. They're collecting everything. They're not exercising. They're not breathing fresh air, presumably. They're not – are they walking around? Are they getting even like a couple thousand steps a day? I mean my concern is that – Oh, absolutely. Yeah, their concerns.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
My concern is that they turn them into mice.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
essentially um and as somebody listen i've i've published work on mice rats uh i no longer do this but non-human primates uh something that i have no interest in doing anymore and um the other primates us humans and i i know how hard it is to do a well-controlled study it's extremely difficult so i understand why they did this but then it becomes a very artificial circumstance
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Now, the buffering with two standard deviations above this nitrogen balance amount, I think that's something really important to double-click on for people because most people hear, oh, it was just the minimum amount required to maintain nitrogen balance. But in reality, it's much higher than that.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Is Stu Phillips like a carnivore guy?
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
First, we explore protein requirements, how much protein we actually need and do those needs change based on activity levels, age and health status. And I should say that even though we started out with rather discrepant stance on this, we converge on an answer that I think will be satisfying at least to most people. And then you can tailor that answer to your unique needs.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Well, because I need a certain amount of calories. I would also – and I'm not just playing devil's advocate here. I feel, first of all, lucky that at a very young age I started paying attention to what I ate for – not in a neurotic way. I just did that. And I will say that when you have a certain amount of caloric need – everyone does, you ask, where's it going to come from?
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
And, you know, you eat enough vegetables, great, but it's hard to get your ration of calories, fruits, quality protein. So I'm referring to that as, you know, let's just put the taste, taste good to you. So, you know, beef, fish, chicken, eggs, and I guess for the vegetarian, some combination of like beans and rice, that type of thing, where you get enough leucine, this sort of thing. But,
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
The key thing I believe is that you can, that one, I'll just speak from my own experience, I can eat those and feel satiated. Most starches on their own don't taste good enough. I mean, I like oatmeal with some salt and some cinnamon, but most starches don't taste good on their own unless you add lipids, you add fats.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
And so I would argue that most people are struggling with too much body fat because they overeat starches combined with fats.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
not because they overeat steak or they're overeating. It's not the hamburger. It's the hamburger bun that includes sugar, the cheese, and we don't even need to talk about sugary soda. It's just kind of a duh now. It's loaded with all sorts of things that aren't nutritious.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each and every night.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
So I think that the key issue with this, you pointed to this idea, and I'm not trying to protect the protein crowd, but I think that one of the reasons that they are proponents of one gram per pound of body weight roughly or lean body weight is that we need to eat something.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
We ideally should eat something that tastes good, that provides some nutrition for us, and that is not something that requires a bunch of other things in order to make it palatable. And I love fruit, but you can't just live on fruit. And I love vegetables in their raw form, but they taste better with some olive oil on them.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
It doesn't take much to make a vegetable taste really good because I love vegetables. Same for fruit. I'll eat them on their own all day. But the starches are a problem because of the quote unquote requirements and preferences they bring with them. The problem isn't a loaf of sourdough bread. The problem is the immense amounts of butter and olive oil get sopped up and brought down with it.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Most people I would argue are overweight not because they eat too much protein. That's the point I'm trying to make.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
It takes attention. It takes attention.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Unfortunately. I completely agree with you there.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
We can provide links on the show note captions.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Sorry to interrupt you, but I'm going to do it intentionally. The idea is to get, when I say quality, is to get the protein that one seeks without overdoing caloric intake. That gets tough with starches. Very tough. I mean, half a bowl of rice. is not very satiating, at least for me. I'll take a quarter of a bowl of steak over two bowls of rice to survive on now and forever.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Eight Sleep automatically regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your unique needs. Now, I find that extremely useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night, and warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow-wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I looked at this prior to this, and I will say that the proportions of, let's just concentrate on leucine, perhaps, since most listeners will be familiar with leucine as kind of the critical one for muscle building. I've got that in air quotes for those just listening. How do the different sources for protein play out in that case?
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Was this... made equivalent for calories? Was it 100 calories of beans versus- No, this is proportion. This is proportion. Proportion. But if I took, let's just say 100 calories, which just for sake of example, and we took your chart, which shows, and again, I looked at this prior to our conversation today, and it did hit me square in the face that all these plant sources have a lot of
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
And I know that because Eight Sleep has a great sleep tracker that tells me how well I've slept and the types of sleep that I'm getting throughout the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
They have all the different amino acids that beef does in different proportions, but they have them. But if we said, okay, now we're going to make that chart, but for 100 calories of food. So it's either 100 calories of ribeye or 100 calories of red beans or 100 calories of quinoa. You get the idea.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Can we use that protein?
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Oh, yeah. Because bioavailability gets lumped into quality protein. So there are these charts that say that egg is the near-perfect protein or beef is the near-perfect protein because of the bioavailability. Our ability to use the amino acids as opposed to the amino acids being bound up by fiber or somehow not accessible.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Their latest model, the Pod 4 Ultra, also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees in order to improve your airflow and stop you from snoring. If you decide to try Eight Sleep, you have 30 days to try it at home, and you can return it if you don't like it, no questions asked. but I'm sure that you'll love it.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Levels. Levels is a program that lets you see how different foods affect your health by giving you real time feedback on your diet using a continuous glucose monitor. One of the most important factors in both short and long term health is your body's ability to manage glucose.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
This is something I've discussed in depth on this podcast with experts such as Dr. Chris Palmer, Dr. Robert Lustig, and Dr. Casey Means. One thing that's abundantly clear is that to maintain energy and focus throughout the day, you want to keep your blood glucose relatively steady without any big spikes or crashes.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I first started using levels about three years ago as a way to try and understand how different foods impact my blood glucose levels. Levels has proven to be incredibly informative for helping me determine what food choices I should make and when best to eat relative to things like exercise, sleep, and work. Indeed, using Levels has helped me shape my entire schedule.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I now have more energy than ever and I sleep better than ever. And I attribute that largely to understanding how different foods and behaviors impact my blood glucose. So if you're interested in learning more about levels and trying a CGM yourself, go to levels dot link slash Huberman. Right now, levels is offering an additional two free months of membership when signing up.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Again, that's levels dot link spelled, of course, L.I.N.K. slash Huberman to get the additional two free months of membership. I really appreciate all that information. Very illuminating. And I'll just remind myself and everyone that I love vegetables. In fact, these days, I'll say this for anyone listening. One of the great things about getting older is I actually eat less.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
but I just try and focus on eating quality food. And I just find that I don't need to eat as much food to maintain my body weight and feel good and have energy. In fact, I'm eating less and less each year. Once I start eating, I like to eat.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Go to 8sleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra. 8sleep ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and the UAE. Again, that's 8sleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra. Today's episode is also brought to us by Matina. Matina makes loose leaf and ready-to-drink yerba mate.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
But I think one of the markers of health, in my opinion, is the ability to wait to eat or to, you know, to eat a slightly larger meal and not have it, you know, crater your sleep or something like that or to have some, you know, eat less one day and more the next day. And maybe we don't need as much protein every day.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I've played with this idea before of, you know, limiting the amount of protein I eat for a few days and then eating – going to a barbecue and eating like two ribeyes and enjoying that more. I think we think of things in this very static way, like best thing to eat each day. And you also illuminate for us that there's a lot of nutrition in beans and legumes and other plants.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
And again, I'm starting to explore this more and more because I'm not a great cook, but I love to eat when I do eat. And I do think there's a real dearth of variety in the American diet that we can all work on. As long as we're talking about meat, I'm going to pick on Beyond Meat a little bit. Sure. I think it's the child of a Stanford professor that started this company, right?
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
No, that's impossible. Impossible. Then I'm going to pick on them both. I'm going to pick on them both. I don't know these people. I have nothing against them. But I will say that I saw some pretty convincing arguments against these, for lack of a better word, artificial meats, fake meats. You put up the list of ingredients for Beyond Meat or Impossible.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
meat and then you compare it to the ingredients in beef and you don't have to be a nutrition expert to say there's a lot of ingredients i mean it reads like an encyclopedia of ingredients in the fake meat which aligns with processed which aligns with people's notions of fake and bad for us so that kind of hits any
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
potential consumer square in the face so just because there are a lot of ingredients doesn't mean they're all bad for you but you mentioned earlier in the context of dyes and cosmetic additives you know a lot of things that can't be pronounced that we've never heard of i mean i have a formal training in science and half of the ingredients in that in beyond impossible meat are completely foreign to me no not today go to the website right now and look at the ingredient list okay well initially it was
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
But just because the cow was fed something, how much of that is making it into the meat? Because the issue is how much am I consuming?
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Unless it was sourced the way I would like, which is grass-fed, pasture-raised.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Right, so that's the point where I personally make an effort to eat grass-fed meat whenever possible. I do.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I've often discussed yerba mate's benefits, such as regulating blood sugar, its high antioxidant content, and the ways that it can improve digestion. It also may have possible neuroprotective effects.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
But they can't, I totally acknowledge that. So is the argument that Beyond and Impossible are the better option, let's set aside the cardio metabolic metrics, even though that's very important, that it's better in terms of quality of what you're consuming in terms of, I don't know, sort of health,
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
health status of the animal versus health status of what came out of the Beyond or Impossible factory?
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
It's for those reasons and the fact that yerba mate provides, in my opinion, the most even and steady rise in energy and focus with no crash, that yerba mate has long been my preferred source of caffeine. I also drink yerba mate because I love the taste. And while there are a lot of different yerba mate drinks out there, my absolute favorite is Matina.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I definitely salt my food.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Yeah, I would agree. You swept their knees on that one. I'd like to talk about this study that you did. I think it's called the Twins Study. Yes. Where, correct me for any errors here, but you basically gave twins, identical twins, the opportunity to follow one diet, or was it a pure vegan diet? Vegan, totally vegan. Totally vegan diet.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I'm going to tell you at the outset what my takeaway from that study was, and then I'm going to let you tell us what actually happened. I'm doing it in this order on purpose. My takeaway was, wow, what a cool study. You know, having studied rodents for years that are on the same genetic background, you'd love to be able to do this in humans.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
You studied humans with the same genetic, essentially the same genes, as close to it as possible. Identical twins, awesome study. And The takeaway, and forgive me, I'm not trying to pick on you or this study.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
What I grabbed from the news articles about this was at the end of the study, the group that followed the vegan diet said, great, a bunch of things improved, but I don't think I can stick to this. I'm not going to stick to it going forward.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
This was reported by Stanford Media, that the takeaway was that they thought it was great, but that they didn't see themselves sticking with it, that it's too hard to stay with. So that was my takeaway is this adherence issue. You can give people the ideal circumstance, but the question is, will they follow it in the real world?
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
And that's a tough one, but a critical question because what we're talking about here is how to scale health, right? I mean, that's why we're here, right? We're not here to argue beef versus vegetables. Frankly, I don't care what you eat as long as it works for you. I know it works for me, but I'm willing to modify it based on the evidence.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
So the reason we sit down is to try and help people make better decisions on their health. And that was my takeaway. Now, tell me what the study was with a bit more detail. And if I'm completely wrong about this, like I like to think like any good scientist, I'm happy to be completely wrong.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
This was interviews with the participants. So that's not scientific.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I mean, it was eight twins. How many twins were in this?
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
22 pairs of twins. And so each one was assigned to either omnivorous versus vegan?
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I'm excited to share that Matina has recently launched a series of new flavors of their cold brew, all zero sugar yerba mate. There's a raspberry flavor, there's a mango flavor, there's a mint flavor, there's a lemon flavor, and a peach flavor, and they are absolutely incredible.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Great. No, and you would know. You ran the study.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
If I had to pick one that's my absolute favorite, it would probably be the mango or the raspberry, but frankly, I cannot pick just one. and I end up having basically one of each every single day. Again, all of these flavors are made with the highest quality ingredients, all organic, and again, all zero sugar. If you'd like to try Matina, you can go to drinkmatina.com slash Huberman.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
You want to just remind people what that means?
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Again, that's drinkmatina.com slash Huberman. What do you say to all these people who have wheat allergies or gluten reactions? And I want to be really careful here and distinguish between full-blown wheat or gluten intolerant versus people that just don't feel good when they do this. I recently took a blood test that revealed to me I have a mild wheat allergy.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
And that was a strict vegan diet. Strict vegan versus... Not a single egg.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
We then examine the ongoing debate between vegetarian, vegan and omnivore diets for optimal health. And we dive into whether plant proteins are truly inferior to animal proteins, as is often claimed. We also discuss the role of fiber in the diet and the emerging science on fermented foods and their powerful anti-inflammatory effects.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Anytime you get that many eyes on something, you're going to get critique. It's also a beautiful demonstration of how science and new form media are starting to intersect.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I wouldn't say allergic reaction because they didn't do the allergy test, but I have antibodies against it and dairy. And it's true. I don't like drinking milk. It makes me feel lousy. I get all, you know, mucusy and puffy. But I like some sourdough bread. I'm sure there's wheat and a lot of sourdough bread out there. Some yes, some no. And I can eat Parmesan cheese and feel fine.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Yeah, that's the challenge with merging with forms of media where there aren't preset criteria. Yeah. It's true of social media. I mean, we've decentralized public health discussion. people no longer look to what's coming, no longer just look to what's coming from universities.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
The word expert doesn't mean anything anymore because no one knows who to call an expert and who not to call it, who's the better expert. The experts don't agree. As soon as people heard the experts don't agree,
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
enough times they basically um that went from capital e expert to lowercase e to italicize to in quotes to you know what's an expert now i'm not saying science doesn't matter i'm a scientist i care about science obviously but i think that new form media can be leveraged in both directions and i i will say that um game changers did something very um clever
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I disagree with the conclusion, but you know what most people took away from Game Changers? The penis thing. The penis thing. The penis though.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
And anyone that knows anything about the relationship between, you know, nutrition and testosterone, testosterone and erections, by the way, it's also important that estrogen levels be sufficiently high in men as well for libido. You know, it's like there's so many misconceptions about all of that. But what did they take away?
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
They took away the penis stuff, which just speaks to the slippery slope of any kind of public health discussion.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I would say you're doing awesome given that people hear vegan and it's going to make 90% of people kind of brace because they think they're going to get an earful of a bunch of things that they should be doing and about how they're evil because of all the animals that are being tortured. And look, again, factory farms, terrible.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I just want to just say before I forget, earlier you used the term protein flip, right? I actually think that's a great way to describe the diet because it includes, and you notice there's nothing about plants in there and it has protein there.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
So I don't know how many Google employees it takes to come up with a discussion where everyone can agree, but I'm putting in a vote for the protein flip diet because it also has a kind of a, it sets a conceptual idea of what you're trying to do. You put the meat on the outside as opposed to central. So I'm voting for protein flip. I'm not sure I'm going to do it, but I like protein flip.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Are you going to make me defend my good friend Peter Attia?
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
But I know people that even though they're not clinically diagnosed as gluten intolerant, they feel absolutely dreadful when they have any kind of gluten. So- What we're trying to do here, I guess, is there's the science, which we'll get into, and then there's people's experience. And as you pointed out, people can't get around their own experience, and they probably shouldn't.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I don't know if it was that extreme.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Was this on YouTube or something?
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I think the whole world is done listening to people tell them that their experience isn't real. And that's what a lot of, I think, the confusion in the world of nutrition is about.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
This is one of the great things about social media.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Yeah, having been involved in various online... you know, points of friction and subsequent relief, resolution, I should say. It's a very satisfying feeling when that happens. In fact, that's how Lane Norton and I got to know one another. He critiqued something I said. We disagreed about it. I wrote back. I invited him on the podcast. This happened in a discussion around cannabis.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I did an episode on cannabis that I still hold to, you know, what's in there. There was some critique from the cannabis research community. I invited the guy on. He came on here. We debated those things. Turns out the discrepancy in interpretation turned out to be relatively minor overall. That's how science is done.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
And social media has that opportunity, but it has far more opportunity to just kind of cast stones over walls and that kind of thing. I'm glad you highlighted those points of rebuttal and resolution. I wanna make sure that we talk about fermented food, but in the context of fiber also. I think by now everyone knows fiber is super important.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Anyone that disagrees with that, to me, should see a neurologist because it's just so very clear that if you follow the protein flip diet or the more meat, less vegetables, whatever, you need fiber. It's anti-cancer, it's pro-digestion, it's all sorts of great things. But you did this study with our colleague, Justin Sonnenberg. I love, love, love this study.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
And there's some interesting footnotes about fiber in there, but maybe you could just highlight the top contour of the study for people. And I will say this study convinced me to eat low sugar fermented foods every single day.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
And I have been ever since. And I recommend that to everyone who asks me for health advice. I think it's extremely important and effective.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Might as well just be drinking out of the udder of the cow.
Huberman Lab
How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I've tacked low sugar onto it because when people hear fermented, they go, oh, yogurt, yum, cherry, sugar flavored.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
And in some cases, as I recall, they even increased. Increased.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
It's a really influential paper. I mean, I talk about it as often as I get the opportunity. I think few papers have changed my behavior so radically. We should probably talk about the six servings per day. Do you think people can benefit from a couple spoonfuls of kimchi or sauerkraut? By the way— It's got to be the stuff that you need to keep refrigerated. Yes.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Because you can find many things like sauerkraut and kimchi on the – probably more sauerkraut and pickles on the shelf not refrigerated. That's not going to benefit anyone. There's no live cultures in there. And they're often paired with sugar and the stuff that's kept at room temp. I'm a fan of salt. I like salt. I drink enough water. My blood pressure is low. So I benefit from having salt.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I have a lot of family members that unless they get enough salt, they feel a little lightheaded. I think maybe low blood pressure runs in our family a little bit. So I'm a fan of salt. But you make a good point for people with hypertension. They should be cautious about that.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
They taste great. I love low sugar fermented foods. They're a little bit costly for many people. I'm fortunate that I can afford them. Like a really good Bulgarian or Greek yogurt. Kombucha can be expensive. I say that because many of the listeners, you know, there's a range of disposable income.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
But I will say that most processed foods are actually pretty expensive when you look at what's going into, you know, like a latte that you purchase or something like that. Anyway, people love their lattes. I'm not trying to take away anyone's lattes. I will say that eating low sugar fermented food, I strive to do it every day.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I gulped down some scoops of kimchi out of it with breakfast sometimes. I have found it has made me feel... from a level of digestion, just sort of general feelings of like gut feeling nice and happy after a meal, but also, and this is correlation, this isn't causation, of course, but just overall levels of energy and immune function. I mean, I haven't been sick in ages.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I do a bunch of other things, but I see significant improvements in my health when I travel. So I have this rule that when I travel, I double down on my health practices. My team knows when we arrive in the city the first time, I won't eat in a restaurant. I'm finding a Whole Foods and I'm just eating raw foods in my room. And people always think it's crazy.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
It's kind of antisocial, but then I can go through an entire meeting or week feeling really, really good. I never miss workouts when I travel ever. I believe that when you're at home, you have all these conditions that make sleep easier. When you travel, some of the things are outside your control. So control what you can. Anyway, I love the low sugar fermented food thing.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
And thank you and thank Justin for doing that study.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I would love for you guys to do a study about low sugar fermented food intake, microbial diversity and mental health, depression symptoms. Because everyone here is like 90% of the serotonin is in your gut. The gut is influencing neurotransmitter levels, but I've never seen a quality study. Maybe I just didn't find it.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
A quality study of, okay, you eat some low sugar kimchi or you drink some kombucha and kefir and you do that- five, six servings a day for six weeks and look at depressive symptoms. I would love for that study to be done.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
All right. Well, or consultant. We have a philanthropy arm of this podcast that funds science. We have a collection of donors through our premium channel that we could talk about offline. Bring it. Christopher. This was awesome. I confess I was a little braced for the vegan versus son of an Argentine who likes steak conflict, but we didn't do that.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
Actually, I credit you for navigating this really difficult space that used to be called nutrition that is now called food patterns with incredible grace and incredible dedication to figuring out what people can do to make themselves healthier. It's so clear from today's discussion that you're not trying to ram veganism down people's throats, nor are you disparaging of people's food choices.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
You've really highlighted how the food supply and these kind of systemic issues are problematic, but you pointed to some real potential solutions. And I'll be amplifying all of those solutions as broadly as I can, because I agree with them. I also love this notion of the protein flip, if I may. Plant-based has got to go. Protein flip is coming in.
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How Different Diets Impact Your Health | Dr. Christopher Gardner
I think it's really important that people think not just about what they eat in terms of calories, but in terms of everything from sourcing to how they interact with food. And as you highlighted so beautifully, taste is vital.
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Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Lane Norton. Dr. Lane Norton did his training in biochemistry and nutritional sciences, and is one of the world's foremost experts in exercise and nutrition.
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Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Yeah, I'd be extremely hungry. I mean, I consume artificial sweeteners, for the record. But there are enough data, and I have enough experience with them to know that
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Sometimes they will curb my appetite, like they'll get me over the bump, but I've come to associate, it's probably just pure paired placebo association, if there is such a thing, where if I drink a Diet Coke, pretty soon after that, I want to eat something. Now I've challenged that by not eating something because I have pretty good discipline and it passes. But I think I've come to associate that
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Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
the sweet taste with wanting to eat something. And nothing to me is more delicious. Well, there are many things there, like a diet coconut slice of pizza if I'm in New York, or a diet coconut burger, or, you know, there are these food associations. But I don't think, for instance, that sweet taste necessarily stimulates appetite.
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Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
But I can imagine if I only had, as you said, 1200 calories a day to eat, and I'm getting You know, 400 of those calories from sugar. Like you said, there's not going to be much. I better be eating a lot of broccoli as well or else I'm going to be pretty hungry. Just based on my learned relationships between sweet taste and food consumption.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
No, but I know about the Twinkie defense.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
There does seem to be a kind of a requirement in books, sometimes even in podcasts, or to take a stance, like to be anti-something. Because saying, you know, what I personally believe based on my read of the data is that most people should strive to get anywhere from 70 to 90% of their food from non-processed, minimally processed quality foods, and then allow some space for the
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
you know, some processed food, highly processed foods and sweets and things like that, but mostly to get the macros right, as we've described them earlier. And what the range will depend on age will depend on activity level will depend on prior health history.
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Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
I mean, there are some people who have enough issues that relate to diet and lack of exercise that when I've seen them get it right and undergo such incredible transformations that like I also know these people's capacity to fall off the train. Right. And you want to say, you know, maybe make that number a hundred percent. So you never go back.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Cause I've seen them slip before and then, and then the guilt and then they come back, excuse me. So there are two ways to look at it. One is you tell people, listen, you don't have to be perfect. Right. Cause if, if perfection is the goal, you're going to fall off. But then there are those individuals like severe alcoholics who quit drinking.
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Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
You don't say like, Hey, like you can have a beer on Christmas. You don't say that.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
It's all or none. But anyway, here we're getting into the psychology of it.
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Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Yeah. Oh, and, and everyone struggles with different things and everyone finds certain things easier. Like I, I'm not an alcoholic, I'm an adult, so I can have a drink or two. I just don't like it. So everyone assumes because I did this episode on alcohol that I'm like anti-alcohol.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Like I'm like, if you're an adult, you're non-alcoholic, you don't have issues with, you know, alcohol use disorder or something like, you might guess, like just know the data. Right. But there are certain things like steak, I'm never giving up. Like you could tell me it takes 10 years off my life and I'm not going to give it up.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
I'll do other things to offset whatever that, you know, decrease in longevity might be. I don't think that that's a real thing, but I'm just not going to give it up. It's central to my enjoyment of life. Period. Speaking of which, when, if one really wants to wade into the waters of strong opinions and conflicting data, we covered this a bit last time you were on the podcast, but
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
the questions were replete with requests to discuss seed oils. Seed oils. And I must say this whole thing about seed oils has really gotten in my head. Even though I'm a scientist, like the other day I went to my sister's for dinner and she made a really nice dinner. It was from our mom's birthday. And then she made a really nice salad and I love fruits and vegetables. So it was like salad.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And then I looked and I was like, she's made this out with like grapeseed oil. And I was like, why do you use grapeseed oil instead of olive oil? And she's like, well, I ran out of olive oil. And I found myself like looking at the salad like, is this safe to eat? I was like, I heard your voice in my ear. I also heard Paul's voice in my ear. Saladinos, all these people.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And I thought, well, I ate the salad, by the way. I really enjoyed it. It was good. Grape seed oil doesn't taste as good to me as olive oil. I generally try and use olive oil, butter, things like that when I cook. But what's the deal with seed oils? I understand that they are calorically dense. You told us that last time.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
I understand people tend to over consume them and then blame them for a bunch of things that are not related to their seed oil-ness rather than their calorie containing-ness. These aren't real words, of course, but you get the idea. But are there any data out there that have your ears kind of pricked up to the possibility that assuming equal calories, that there might be something
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
bad about seed oils or is there zero? And there's no pressure here to answer one way or the other. Not that you would respond to pressure from me anyway.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
What about swapping with monounsaturated fats? Why are we talking about seed oils versus lard and butter? Why aren't we talking about seed oils versus olive oil?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Terrible way for me to pose the question. Is there any reason to think, like for the person who isn't sure about seed oils because they've just heard enough negative things, even if there's no basis for it, like me, who's like, I like butter. And I also assume that eating too much butter might not be good for me just because I'm a rational human being based on my read of the data.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Anyway, so I have some butter, yes, but I like olive oil. Olive oil is tasty. I'm told it's good for me. Is there any knowledge about anything in olive oil that says, listen, even if you consume it in concert with your caloric thresholds, meaning you're not eating too many calories, is there anything bad in olive oil?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
People on X. When I put out questions for your coming on this episode, literally there were multiple people that claim that you are paid off by this, by them, by big seed oil. And I was just like, I have to laugh out loud. I was like, there might be a lot of companies that are large that make seed oils, but I I guarantee they're not paying Lane Norton to say what he's saying.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
But yeah, I would agree. I think that people make errors. I do think that a lot of quote unquote bad papers, or let's just say false conclusions arise from elimination of data that did not fit the person's desired outcome. And the reason I say that is I think it's impossible to control for.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Okay. So that would be trading out butter and lard and meat fats for more olive oil.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
So you've got the student or postdoc doing the experiment, the results don't come out the way they would have preferred. And then they're, you know, let's just say I've observed before, never in my laboratory, fortunately, but
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
You just described the way that I eat and that anytime a friend of mine, and this happens a lot, It comes to me and has, you know, 20 to 50 pounds to lose. Well, make it as easy on yourself as possible. You can eat meat, eggs, vegetables, and fruit, and that's all you're going to do for two months. And most of those guys in this case, they were guys, lost weight.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
a substantial amount of weight and kept it off. They all exercised as well. And of course it's caloric restriction related, right? But they're not touching pasta. They're not touching bread. They asked me all the things that, can I do this? And I just said, listen, if it wasn't in the list I just gave you, you're not eating it. It sounds restrictive.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
cases where people come up with reasons why that particular experiment wasn't valid because, you know, the mice were initially sick or the drug, the lot of drug that they used wasn't, it was heading towards expiration. They come up with reasons to exclude rather than outright data fabrication where people literally create results that aren't there.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
The good news about something like that is that fruit generally tastes good and steak is very satiating. It's delicious. If you don't like meat, I suppose this wouldn't work, but... But I don't think there's anything magic about that diet. It just gets people below their maintenance calories with relative ease.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Eating more fruits and vegetables can only be good for you.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Matina. Matina makes loose leaf and ready-to-drink yerba mate.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And, you know, there are a number of different examples throughout history that where people have done that, but I like to think that those are more recent.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Usually end up reading about that in the form of retractions in journals that come out nowadays more close to the publications because of AI's ability to scan images and things of that sort.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Thank you for that very thorough and very clear answer, and I just will highlight that You ate a steak last night. So you were by no means anti-meat or saturated fat.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Not to aggravate them just because they stuck to their principles. You stuck to yours.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Fair enough. Fair enough. Let's talk about artificial sweeteners. Sweet. Those are the other people that pay me. Um, that's right. Uh, he's kidding folks. Good. Um, you and I got into it. It wasn't a scrap.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
We got into a little disagreement about this, um, years ago, so long ago that it's probably not even worth mentioning that, you know, I was, um, somewhat enticed by the data from Dana smalls laboratory. Then at Yale, I think now she's up at McGill, um, looking at some kind of Pavlovian conditioning of artificial sweeteners. So basically, um,
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Children, children in that case, consuming a high amount of I think it was either sucralose or saccharin in combination with a meal, kind of standard meal and look at the insulin response and then removing the food component sometime later. And what they essentially observed was a conditioned insulin response. So then you then have these kids just have the the
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
sweet tasting, non caloric drink minus the food. And they still and they then saw an elevated insulin response. In other words, the same way that Pavlov got dogs to salivate in response to a bell. that was paired with food, then you remove the food and then they just simply salivate in response to the bell.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
The idea was, well, maybe you can create a conditioned Pavlovian-like response to artificial sweeteners. Okay, I thought it was kind of a cool study. Looking back, I probably wouldn't have covered it the way I did because it's not a typical scenario. I think the more important questions are,
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Is there any evidence that artificial and low calorie or zero calorie sweeteners like Stevia, we have to be very careful here, that they are somehow dangerous in any of the following ways? One, do they alone increase insulin to levels that are problematic? Two, do they stimulate appetite in a way that's problematic, independent of insulin or maybe as a consequence of insulin?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And then three, what's the story with their potential effect on the gut microbiome? I think those are the three categories that come to mind. There are probably other categories. And I just want to say, for the record, then and now, I'll consume some aspartame every once in a while in the form of a Diet Coke.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Stevia seems to be in a lot of the things that I consume, and I don't have a problem with that. So I'm not anti-artificial or low-calorie sweetener. for reasons that are entirely personal and have no scientific basis whatsoever. I avoid things with sucralose in them. I don't really like the taste of it. And I have kind of an aversion to it for an interesting reason.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Yeah. If I see something, I'm like, eh, no. Aspartame, fine. Stevia gets the thumbs up by me. And I will choose low calorie or zero calorie sodas or drinks or energy drinks. when I have the option to have something with sugar. It's just kind of, but I'm not anti-sugar either. I just developed this as a habit. I prefer to get my calories from food.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Well, and what nobody talks about where it's not discussed enough is that a lot of times the way the paper is written poses a question after the results are in. I mean, and this is a really a not correct way to do science. I mean, in clinical trials... one has to wager a hypothesis from the outset. And you go test that hypothesis. You're not asking a question.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Steak, strawberries, blueberries, oatmeal, rice, butter, olive oil, and all the other delicious, wonderful things, as opposed to a Coke. I'd rather just have a diet Coke and eat a bit more steak.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
So we have insulin, we have, does it stimulate appetite in ways that may or may not be related to insulin? You ruled out insulin increase. So like, could there be a pairing of like, okay, every time I eat, I have a diet soda. Then if I have a diet soda on its own, does it stimulate the desire to eat? a la the Dana Small study. And by the way, that study was halted.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
This is the problem with that study is it was being done in kids. The increases in insulin that they saw in a subset of the kids were so dramatic. This is the way she described it in a talk, so I feel comfortable saying this.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Maybe she's changed her tune, but in this online talk, an academic talk, the increases in insulin were so dramatic that they were concerned about the kids becoming pre-diabetic. So they halted the study, which means the totality of the data never came in, means it's hard to draw a conclusion.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Yeah, and usually, as I recall, a pretty significant amount of diet drink, like two liters a day even. Like the person will carry around a liter or a two liter of diet drink and sip on it whenever they get thirsty or hungry.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Right, exactly. Whereas in more typical laboratory science, people will design an experiment. They have hypotheses. But then depending on how the experiments work out or don't work out, oftentimes they'll change the question, they'll modify the hypotheses. And one would, as a reader, as a journal, as a reviewer, one will never know.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Well, I'm not quitting, but that's ridiculous.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And so that's a slight of hand that is, I would say, unfortunately, is very common in better science.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Are you saying that the potential that those subjects – had to believe that zero-calorie sweeteners or low-calorie sweeteners could be bad for the microbiome, might have actually made their gut microbiome more dysbiotic?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And only for sucralose. So stevia, no change.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Saccharin and sucralose are the ones that seem to always show the biggest effects, quote unquote. And I don't know how often those are used in diet drinks these days. I mean, less and less. I mean, it's usually aspartame, stevia, more in the kind of wellness, health, fitness crowd drinks.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Yeah, the names of bacteria are really difficult to pronounce. Yeah.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
It's also safer to when the media warns people off things as opposed to towards things, because if they push people towards things, there's more liability. Right. Push people away from things where rarely are they responsible for the opportunity cost there or the trade off as you as you refer to it.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Love it. You've dealt with some injuries. You've dealt with pain. You talked a little bit about how reducing your stress and interpretation of the pain could help. I want to talk about pain and pain management. But before we do that, a more general question that relates is about recovery tools. Many, many people want to know, okay, if we were to create the pyramid of recovery,
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Yerba mate has long been my preferred source of caffeine, not just because it tastes great and provides that stimulant effect that caffeine provides for focus and alertness, but its other many benefits that are unique to yerba mate, such as regulating blood sugar, high antioxidant content, and it can improve digestion. And of course, I drink yerba mate because I simply love the taste.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
the hierarchy of tools for recovery after training. And here, let's change out or let's use resistance training and cardiovascular training interchangeably. Some people run hard, other people lift hard or do both. From the moment that session ends, what do you have in your kit of things to maximize recovery over the shortest possible amount of time?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And I can immediately think of sleep as critical, but what are the things that you can do starting from that final repetition?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
You could do it immediately after you can.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Absolutely. Quick. I'm going to layer in an additional question. Is there any evidence that fruit is not good at replenishing glycogen as compared to starch? Because the reason I ask this is that, you know, like if I finish a workout and I have some like a whey protein shake with a
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Assuming equal calories, is that going to replenish glycogen the same way as if I have a couple scoops of whey protein and a bowl of oatmeal or rice?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Okay. And then typically I'll do a meal that includes some starch a little bit later in the day.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Great. So nutrition post-workout or in the hour or two post-workout, making sure you eat enough in the following hours. Do you include any kind of stress down regulation? Are you... Do you do anything else besides nutrition and sleep to accelerate recovery? Sure.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Viewing horizons, we know. Put you into panoramic vision. We know this from stuff my lab has done.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Oh, yeah. Panoramic vision is a – will come off the accelerator of the sympathetic arm of the autonomic nervous system, which is just nerd speak to say enjoy those sunrises and sunsets. They are very calm.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Awesome. Earlier, we were talking about protein. Actually, several times we talked about protein, and I neglected to ask a question that is very timely because I just did an episode, a solo episode of this podcast recently about skin health and appearance. And I looked at the data on... ingesting collagen. It could be from bone broth or other sources of collagen.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Typically, it's powdered collagens, anywhere from 5 to 30 grams of collagen. And I was kind of surprised at the results. I also talked to some dermatologists. Basically, the results say in these papers, the meta-analysis I looked at, and in speaking with these dermatologists that
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
The conclusion was that regular consumption of collagen on the order of anywhere from five to 30 grams per day with a little bit of vitamin C, a couple hundred milligrams of vitamin C for whatever pathway-related reason, seemed to improve skin appearance. Fewer wrinkles, reduction in wrinkles, more skin tautness, appearance of moisture, et cetera. These are subjective measures, right?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
I don't think they were calipering the skin and looking at tensile strength and things like that. But people felt they looked younger, et cetera. And-
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
I was surprised, really surprised because without making this too long a question or story, a few years back, there were some claims by not to be named individuals on Instagram saying, well, if you want to improve the function of your liver, eat liver. If you want to improve the function of your heart, eat heart. And you and I were just like, no. Okay, you're the nutrition biochemistry guy.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
I'm the neuroscience guy. I have a little bit of a background in cold physiology that I rarely talk about, but in any case... 05.20 But you know physiology. 05.21 Yeah. I mean, there is... We both agree.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
There's like zero evidence that ingesting a protein, which of course is broken down into its amino acid constituents in the gut, would somehow lead to selective shuttling of those amino acids from liver that you ingest to your liver. That just is like a... There's only one word for that. It's like a crazy unsubstantiated... 05.25 Right. claim.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And then some papers were sent my way, which were in a different language. And like I was trying to anyway, zero minus one evidence, as I would say. And yet the whole notion that consuming collagen protein, which Dr. Gabrielle Lyon told me is actually a pretty low quality protein on the kind of protein quality scale. It's like tendon and toenails and all this stuff. Gross.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
But yeah, that's what it is. Somehow leads to improvements in actual collagen, which is, of course, is a native protein of the body.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
So I went digging, I just wanna, before I get your answer, I went digging and I found, again, a not to be named individual has this kind of wild story on the internet that, ah, well, this is because it's broken down into the dipeptides and tripeptides in the gut that,
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
somehow inform the body that there's an injury in the collagen and we have quote unquote breakdown of collagen aka injury i don't know breakdown of collagen and elastin in the skin all the time and then the body recognizes the presence of those dipeptides and tripeptides so little groups of twos or three peptides not just one and sends those selectively to the skin and so it's like once again it's like it makes sense as a mechanism if it were true but at
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
I just had to like roll my eyes. I was like, oh no. Okay, I'm going to pitch this over to Lane as I am right now. So Lane, take it away. What's the story? Does ingesting collagen improve skin appearance? And do we have any idea what the mechanism might be? Sorry for the long question, folks, but I had to set the stage.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
So why aren't we just suggesting that people take glycine instead of collagen?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Thank you for that very thorough answer and very clear answer. If nothing else, it tells us that Collagen protein is going to be least ideal for post-workout protein because of the fact that it lacks significant amounts of leucine, et cetera. So it might be good for skin. Definitely not a great protein for dietary protein reasons.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And a quality whey protein would be the highest leucine available?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Great. Well, Dr. Lane Norton, thank you for coming back here for the second time on the podcast. I must say it's a true pleasure to sit down with you and discuss training, nutrition, supplementation, recovery, pain management, stress, life advice.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
for so many reasons a you're you know a serious scientist you know in our business of science um that that that really means something you're serious about the science and you're a light-hearted guy in the right context and you're but you're you're a serious scientist you you believe in the process and you provide the nuance even though that might not be convenient
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
to what somebody wants or convenient to the discussion.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
I'd rather this stuff be so simple, you know? Right. Sure. Sure. You're like the rest of us. And at the same time, I really appreciate it because we are now also colleagues in the public health, public facing landscape, social media, it's sometimes called, but a lot of landscapes, podcasts, YouTube, et cetera. And- It's required. It's needed that people like you exist.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And I will go so far to say that, you know, and I'm not alone in this, right, because I've talked about this with with Rogan and with Gabrielle Lyon, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, excuse me, and others, you know, in an ocean of noise. some of which has validity, right?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
But in an ocean of noise about nutrition and training and all these different things and how to evidence-based blank and science-based that, you really clearly are pure signal. Like you're gonna take as much time and as much effort to communicate the real signal. And you today have really defined for us, for you, what is real versus not real versus a maybe.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And I just want people to hear that loud and clear because I think sometimes people pay attention to how spirited you are and they miss the fact that in that spirited nature and in the nuance and in the, look, we're both long-winded at times. Like I know...
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
because I know this for myself, but I certainly know it for you, that that comes from a place of respect for the science and respect for your audience. That is not being dismissive. That's actually respect for them. It would be disrespectful to just give them the answer they want or give them a quick answer without the explanation.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
So I just really want to extend like a real voice of gratitude for you, for what you did for us today, just far too much to list off. It's all so valuable, just so, so valuable. And also what you do on social media and the way you do it. And look, I also really love and respect your fighting spirit because you're fighting for truth, you're fighting for good.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And I also love the posts and the pictures of your kids. They're delightful. And it's great to see that the balance in your life you've created. So I could go on and on, but I'm going to cut this short by just saying A giant thank you for being the signal among all the noise.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
It's been a true pleasure and you're absolutely more than net positive on the world. And we'll just have to have you come back and talk to us again before long. Thank you so much.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Lane Norton. To learn more about his work, please see the links in our show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. In addition, please be sure to follow the podcast on both Spotify and Apple.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, Twitter, now known as X, Threads, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools, some of which overlap with the contents of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the contents of the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
If you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, our neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes what we call protocols, which are brief one to three page PDFs that cover things such as neuroplasticity and learning dopamine optimization, how to get better sleep. things like deliberate cold exposure. We have a foundational fitness protocol.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
We have a protocol all about habit forming and much more. To sign up, again, at completely zero cost, you simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu function in the corner, scroll down to newsletter, and you provide your email. I should point out that we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Lane Norton.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
While there are a lot of different choices out there in terms of yerba mate drinks, my personal favorite is Matina yerba mate because it's made with the highest quality organic ingredients and it has a very rich but clean taste. And given Matina's great taste and commitment to quality, I recently became a part owner in the company and I've helped design some of their drink products.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
It sounded like a worse and worse idea by the moment.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
In particular, I love the taste of Matina's canned zero-sugar cold brew yerba mate, which has a slight taste of lemon, and I personally helped develop that drink. I drink two cans of Matina yerba mate cold brew in the morning, and I often drink a third can in the early afternoon. If you'd like to try Matina, you can go to drinkmatina.com slash huberman.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Maybe explain what cohort data are. Comparing two groups.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
These people decided to be vegan. These people decided to be, let's just say omnivores.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And they weren't assigned to this experiment. They agreed to join the experiment. They've been eating this way for a while. Right. You ask them a bunch of questions.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Right now, Matina is offering a free one-pound bag of loose-leaf yerba mate tea and free shipping with the purchase of two cases of their cold brew yerba mate. Again, that's drinkmatina.com slash huberman to get a free bag of yerba mate loose leaf tea and free shipping. You can also find Matina at all Sun Life locations and Erewhon locations.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Right, consuming five to 10 grams of creatine monohydrate per day is going to benefit strength and muscle mass and likely cognition to some extent. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. By now, many of you have heard me say that if I could take just one supplement, that supplement would be AG1.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
The reason for that is AG1 is the highest quality and most complete of the foundational nutritional supplements available. What that means is that it contains not just vitamins and minerals, but also probiotics, prebiotics, and adaptogens to cover any gaps you may have in your diet and provide support for a demanding life.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
For me, even if I eat mostly whole foods and minimally processed foods, which I do for most of my food intake, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits and vegetables, vitamins and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone. For that reason, I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012, and often twice a day, once in the morning or mid-morning, and again in the afternoon or evening.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
When I do that, it clearly bolsters my energy, my immune system, and my gut microbiome. These are all critical to brain function, mood, physical performance, and much more. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim their special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3K2.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
So please be sure to look for it both at Sun Life and at Erewhon. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken many times before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
I wouldn't even call it a diatribe. I think for those listening, this is pure gold because... Never before, certainly on this podcast or other podcasts, has anyone ever really spelled out how to discern differences in quality of evidence. And it's mostly a free world, most places, and people can do what they want, but I think they need to decide what their thresholds are for quality.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
One of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to control the temperature of your sleeping environment. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Eight Sleep makes it incredibly easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to program the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for well over three years now, and it has completely transformed my sleep for the better.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
I love that description, but now my curiosity is peaked and you got to tell me. So if 90 minutes after ingesting protein, protein synthesis peaks and then it drops to baseline at three hours, but leucine, one of the key amino acids in mTOR, which is in the pathway of cellular growth and protein synthesis are still elevated at three hours. What is the conclusion that explains the discrepancy?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
He is also an expert in the topic of supplementation and other tools to augment health. Today, we discuss a large number of very important topics in these categories, and we start the conversation by establishing what Dr. Norton's thresholds are for what he accepts as evidence, in particular, actionable evidence.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation pod cover, the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity, higher fidelity sleep tracking technology, and it also has snoring detection that remarkably will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Yeah, and if people didn't follow that, don't worry about it. What Lane's describing is that the presence of a bunch of molecules involved in protein synthesis is necessary but not sufficient for the protein synthesis. Right. A few other things have to happen. Correct. And apparently those other things are not happening after... 120 minutes.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Right, because for many decades, it has been – purported believed and propagated that the maximum amount of protein that you can utilize after a meal is 30 grams became the holy number. And this study essentially showed that more than 30 grams can be used not just as energy, but for the sake of protein synthesis in muscle. Correct.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, you can go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep currently ships to the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Maui Nui venison.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And it, and how did that study land with you, given that it's one study without going into all the details that did that inspire you to change anything about your protein intake after training?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
now. And in the continuous feeding groups that, uh, do you recall what duration they were eating their meals over? Was it probably 12 hours or so?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
I'd have to go back more than eight hours for sure. You know, I'm so glad we're landing here because my first, um, let's just call it sort of operational or actionable question, which came from, um,
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
you know, asking on social media for questions for you was many, many people, if not in the thousands, asked how to make sure that they're getting enough protein if they're doing something like intermittent fasting. And I myself fall into this category. I don't do it for any specific purpose.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
This was long before Sachin Panda started doing his work on time-restricted feeding, aka intermittent fasting. But I don't tend to want to eat any food until about 11 a.m., Occasionally I wake up hungry like this morning and I had some eggs, I was particularly hungry, but I think that's representative of a lot of people. I want hydration and caffeine in the morning.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
I want to train in the morning and then I want to eat pretty soon after I train. But what that means is that I'm eating during an eight to nine hour feeding window. And if I only manage two meals in there and a snack and I can only assimilate or excuse me, I can only put 30 grams of protein per meal toward protein synthesis.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
We have to be careful not about using it for energy, but toward protein synthesis. Does that mean that I'm not going to hit my target of one gram of protein per pound of desired lean body mass? Because I'm 100 kilograms. I weigh about 220 pounds. I can easily eat 220 grams of protein in a nine hour period. Like give me three ribeyes. I'll eat all three. I love ribeye steak. Right.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Maui Nui venison is the most nutrient-dense and delicious red meat available. I've spoken before on this podcast about the fact that most of us should be seeking to get about one gram of quality protein per pound of body weight every day.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
That protein provides critical building blocks for things like muscle repair and synthesis, but also promotes overall health given the importance of muscle as an organ. Eating enough quality protein each day is also a terrific way to stave off hunger. One of the key things, however, is to make sure that you're getting enough quality protein without ingesting excess calories.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Brutal. They did. Or at least for somebody like me. I can't think of anything worse. I'd rather fast for three days in a row and then eat for four days in a row simply because I know that by day two, it's probably going to get easier, not harder, but on, off, on. Fasting, eating has got to be just torturous.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Also, can you imagine training on a day of complete fasting? Three hours after that, you're going to be dying. And then you can say, well, you could just train on the days when you eat. But then if you ever train legs hard, which I know you do, or if anyone does, and then the next day you're not going to eat anything. The day after training legs properly, my appetite's increased.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And so for you just personally, what time of day do you wake up and when is your first meal?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Maui Nui venison has an extremely high quality protein to calorie ratio, such that getting that one gram of protein per pound of body weight is both easy and doesn't cause you to ingest an excess amount of calories. Also, Maui Nui venison is absolutely delicious. They have venison steaks, ground venison, and venison bone broth. I personally like and eat all of those.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And does each one of your meals include approximately 30 plus grams of quality protein?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Some starchy carbohydrate, fibrous carbohydrate, and some fat?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
So you're- Not everyone's watching. I just drew an asymptote. Right, yeah. An asymptote plot. But for those not watching, just think about a plot quickly rising very, very high and then essentially stays stable at the high level. Yeah. Maybe with a slight bit of taper.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Okay, so you're running in the opposite direction.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Still asymptote going from high to low.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
So asymptote can go from low to high, it can go from high to low.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
In fact, I probably eat a Maui Nui venison burger pretty much every day, and occasionally I'll swap that for a Maui Nui steak. And if you're traveling a lot or simply on the go, they have a very convenient Maui Nui venison jerky, which has 10 grams of quality protein per stick at just 55 calories. While Maui Nui offers the highest quality meat available, their supplies are limited.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
One gram per pound of body weight, which is what Dr. Gabrielle Lyon also essentially recommended.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And we should probably point out, not just for muscle building, um, unless you disagree, uh,
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
and feel free to, of course, not that I need to tell you that, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, when she was here, made a really key point, which is that ingesting sufficient quality protein each day isn't just about building muscle, even for folks that don't want to build muscle, and perhaps even particularly for women who assume that, you know,
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
building muscle can be a runaway process that maybe they're going to build too much muscle. That's a false assumption, of course, that ingesting one gram of protein per pound of body weight or ideal body weight is going to be beneficial because it's going to improve muscle quality, one's own muscle quality, the health of the muscular tissue.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And then she did an excellent job of relating the health of muscular tissue, skeletal muscle that is, to overall health and longevity. So I just raised that because I know that many people listening to this probably want to add a little bit of muscle here or there. Some perhaps want to keep the muscle they've got and lose fat. And some, of course, want to add a lot of muscle.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
But it sounds like the recommendation is always the same. Since we need to eat sooner or later, one gram of quality protein per pound of lean body mass or current body weight or desired body weight, that's going to be a good starting place.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Responsible population management of the access deer on the island of Maui means that they will not go beyond harvest capacity. Signing up for a membership is therefore the best way to ensure access to their high quality meat. If you'd like to try Maui Nui Venison, you can go to mauinuivenison.com slash Huberman to get 20% off your membership or first order.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
With weights and lift them in between stretches. No, I'm just kidding.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Again, that's mauinuivenison.com slash Huberman. And now for my discussion with Dr. Lane Norton. Dr. Lane Norton, welcome back. Thanks for having me back. Before we jump in,
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
I'd like to take a brief break to thank one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Now, I and others on the podcast have talked a lot about the critical importance of hydration for proper brain and bodily function.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Research shows that even a slight degree of dehydration can really diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes in order for your body and brain to function at their best. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium are critical for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or nerve cells.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise I'm doing, especially on hot days if I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman, spelled drinkelement.com slash Huberman, to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
since we're sort of in this realm of protein, maybe we build out from there, because a lot of questions related to something akin to the following. So, okay, so somebody strives to get one gram of quality protein per pound of body weight per day. And I realized that whether somebody follows a pseudo intermittent fasting thing where their first meal does a
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
you know, around 11 and they end, you know, and they finish up eating around 8 PM or a more traditional eating schedule really is just the addition of one more meal, like in the morning. It's like whether or not you eat breakfast. And of course, some people shift it the other way. They start with breakfast and they don't eat dinner, but
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Um, I would argue that in order to, if you have kids or a social life of any kind, the, the most people can deal with, um, sitting across the table with someone just having a cup of coffee for breakfast, but it's sort of awkward. You limit yourself a lot in life. If you, if you can't eat dinner with other people, I don't know, at least.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
I want to get your stance on what constitutes evidence, because I think a big reason why you are considered one of the, if not the most trusted person in the realm of nutrition and training is that you set a very high bar for what you consider science-based fact that motivates action. So to just kind of break this down based on my read of the landscape online,
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Great. You answered a future question right there. You're telepathic. That's what you didn't know about them. The So the scenario here is whether or not meals are distributed evenly through the awake day or stacked a little bit more toward the morning or stacked a little bit more toward the evening. If somebody gets that one gram of quality protein per pound of body weight,
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
then they need to make up the rest of their calories with other stuff. And we have, broadly speaking, starches, fibrous fruits and vegetables, starches, and of course fats. And weight gain and weight loss, I think we both would agree, or weight maintenance, is going to largely be dictated at this point by whether or not you consume more calories than you burn or not.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
So assuming somebody is getting that one gram of quality protein per pound of body weight, Is there any data that support, or do you believe just by your own experience that there's some value in stacking the starchy carbohydrates toward the earlier part of the day versus the later part of the day? And this has been an ongoing debate.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Like I, for instance, like a nearly pure protein and fat meal for the first meal, plus maybe a salad, some fibrous carbohydrates. And then as they get towards evening, I like more starches. And I actually taper off the protein. I find personally that matches what I need to do with my brain. I'm more alert when I'm drinking caffeine and hydrating on a backdrop of slightly lowered carbohydrates.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
But then as I get towards evening, taper off the caffeine, of course, for me, because I want to sleep well, start ingesting some more starches. It's not starch heavy, but I sleep like a baby. But everyone would tell me and does tell me eating starches late in the day is going to make me fat. Eating starches late in the day is going to do all sorts of terrible things.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
I find the exact opposite for me. So is there any real evidence that where one places their starches throughout the day matters? And let's just forget resistance training for the moment because there is this post-training window where if I train first thing in the morning, I will eat starches at that time. But let's just remove resistance training for the moment.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
It seems that there's a group of people, I don't know what to call them, purists or something, who, unless there's a randomized controlled trial, so that means in humans, or several, that points in a particular direction, they are very unlikely to adopt a new practice, say removing a given food or nutrient, adding a given food or nutrient, training a certain way, not training a certain way.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Thank you, thank you. I knew I brought you here today for reasons. No, I brought you here for many reasons.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
So what follows is a description of what Dr. Norton really believes is worth paying attention to versus what he believes is worth ignoring in the realms of nutrition, training, and supplementation.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And could I add, in terms of not focusing on a blade of grass, but something that I consider a major lever, if eating fewer carbohydrates in the afternoon and evening doesn't impede your sleep, then you're okay. But I would argue if anything is interfering with your sleep on a consistent basis, you've got a serious problem.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Okay, that's one group. Then there are the people who, if they are told something could be of value, they hear it's worked very well for somebody, maybe they see some before and afters, and it gets mapped to a mechanism
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Yeah, I would say eating, eating the way I eat now, I'm leaner at forty nine even than I was ten years ago or ten years before that. I was pretty lean then. And I don't put a ton of attention to tracking calories, although and I want to be very, very clear this I was not paid to say this like I I've purchased and use Lane's carbon app.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
He happens to be wearing a shirt that says carbon today, but I've talked about this before on other on other podcasts and social media. And it's absolutely true that there's no endorsement relationship. But I love the app because that was really the first time probably since college. So I started lifting when I was 16. Running and lifting has always been my thing since I was 16.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
But since college that I – used a tool, in this case, Carbon, to basically track what I'm eating, exactly what I'm eating. And what I like about it is that I can just click on different boxes of things within the app. And really, it makes it very easy to say, oh, I ate this thing, white rice from this package. It generally knows products. It knows brands.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And it did a really good job of letting me check in and just see how many calories I was consuming, how much protein, how much fat, and from what sources. But one of the major takeaways that at least I got from carbon was that you can arrange your diet any number of different ways.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
In fact, it has like a really nice little slider where you can put in, you know, you want to eat more carbohydrates and less protein even, or you want to have a vegetarian diet, which I don't. I'm an omnivore. I'm an omnivore. My dad's Argentine. I like... I like meat. I like meat. I don't even really like fish that much or chicken.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
I just like, I like eating meat and eggs, like my preferred sources and whey protein. Okay, fine. But you can arrange things within the context of different types of diets. And I think there's real value to tracking precisely what one eats for even short periods of time. And then I confess, I stopped using the app for a bit, then I went back to it, you know, and not because things went adrift.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
I think some people really need that consistent checking. Other people... need to perhaps just kind of eyeball it for themselves. But for me, I've found that knowing exactly what I'm doing for some period of time allows me to explore things in a way that's really effective. And so I just want to give a nod to Carbon. And I don't do product endorsements on this podcast.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
I do ad reads and that kind of thing for things I love. But I say that because I think it lands squarely in the context of what we're talking about, which is that I know what works for me. I also know that some people really love like a giant carb meal in the morning. Some people don't like meat.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
that exists in humans and animals, like, oh, there's this molecule, and if this molecule increases, X, Y, and Z happens, and training in this way or eating this way increases that molecule, for instance, but no randomized control trial, then they're willing to try it or adopt it. And then there's a third, probably a fourth category as well, where people say, They don't trust science anyway.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And I think what's so beautiful about the way that you've been talking about science and nutrition in particular over the last few years and still here now is that you don't really seem to care whether or not people are vegan, vegetarian, omnivore, or even carnivore, dare I say. It's just a matter of how people are couching the advice.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And the reason I keep coming back to this is that I really think that you, this discussion, but you in particular, are best poised in this whole field of public-facing health nutrition advice to really change the way that the messaging occurs and the way that people hear that messaging. And I say that with the utmost respect.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Because most people are not going to go read the meta-analyses.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And most people don't know how to parse data. But I think that paying attention to the words that are spoken right before the advice should be – we need to come up with something like that. It's like the Norton method. Pay attention to the words provided right before the advice.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
We need to distinguish this because people nowadays like kind of put TRT – well, as long as it's keeping someone's testosterone in the normal reference range, which is somewhere between 300 and 1,200 nanograms per deciliter, then they're like – They're not – you've never injected a synthetic version of a hormone.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Yeah, you don't need it. You're well – you're on the upper – you're high normal.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Science is flawed or the controls required to design a really good experiment are so constrained that they don't mimic the real world well enough. And so they're really just interested in what works. So they look to people that seem to have achieved the results they want. feel free to add another group, but which group would you consider yourself in personally?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
I love it. Do you do cardiovascular defined as because people get I'm starting to catch flack these days when I say cardio, believe it or not. repetitive motion movement designed to elevate your heart rate for 12 minutes or more?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And then where does your evidence that you put out online and today come from? And I already know the answer to the last question, but I think it was important to kind of spell out the landscape.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
I would argue it might be related to you're not getting sick very often. You know, it's very clear that activation of the sympathetic nervous system is one main driver of the immune system. This is why often people... observe that they go through a very stressful period of life and then they go on vacation and they get sick or they're taking care of a loved one.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And, you know, that person either gets better or passes away or, you know, there's some ending to that caretaking and then they get sick.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
When you think about human evolution, I mean, these are just so stories. Anytime people talk about human evolution, by the way, like no one really knows. But the idea that, you know, if there was a famine or you need to take care of children in famine, the idea that you would be more vulnerable to disease at those moments, sure.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
But it's also true that the catecholamines, dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, activate certain components of the immune system that protect you against things. I mean, it's not going to protect you against everything, but it's when you relax and rest finally, that you are more vulnerable to incoming infections.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
It makes sense. I mean, those catecholamines, I mean, there are other molecules involved too, but that, you know... Dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine cocktail is driving us forward in motion and thinking all the time. And if you're putting thoughts into one set of things, they're not going elsewhere. Like you said, it's all trade-offs.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Just like nutrition, just like training.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
So you can be certain that as we start to go through the topics of sugar, GLP-1 agonists, things like Ozempic, artificial sweeteners, whether you should train to failure or not during your resistance training sessions, how much volume of training you need to do, cardiovascular training and its different forms in terms of how they benefit health span and lifespan and body composition, protein and its different sources, and on and on.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
That's a very… But these individuals had not trained previously.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
They seem to enjoy life. I have a grandfather on one side that died earlier, but a grandfather on the other side who lived into his 90s and he ate a steak every day. He smoked till pretty late in life before he eventually quit. He had... Ice cream dessert after every dinner. He's Argentine, so they stack their meals toward the end of the day, definitely. He liked walking.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
I guess the point is that he was always interested in what was in the newspapers, but he wouldn't get riled up about it. He liked walking. He really enjoyed life. Like if there's one key characteristic to describe him is he really enjoyed life. Now, he didn't take the best care of himself in the sense that had he perhaps never smoked or quit earlier. or dropped the excess calories.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
He might have lived an additional two or three years, but he was really happy until the end.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
I love it. And I love this example of the creatine experiment, because just to repeat the conclusion, because I want to make sure that people don't take away the wrong conclusion. Creatine works. Absolutely. But your belief about creatine works more in this case. So two things can work, one more than the other. And the placebo AKA belief effects are very, very powerful.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
I completely agree with you there. Wonderful way to set the stage for some of the specific questions that were asked when I said on social media, I'm going to sit down with Lane Norton again. And I'm very curious about some of these as well. So I'll inject some of my own experience and questions. Training to failure and reps in reserve. We should define these a little bit.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And before we get into it, it's fun to have these kinds of conversations nowadays about resistance training, knowing that both men and women should resistance train people who want bigger muscles and who don't should resistance train. Because in the past, it was always about like bodybuilding and preseason football and people going to the military.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
I think thanks to the great work that you've done, but I'll just give a particular shout out to some of the women in the nutrition and fitness space, namely Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, in terms of menopause, perimenopause, Dr. Mary Claire Haver, and women in that sector really emphasizing the key need for resistance training, their other names as well.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
really championing the importance of resistance training. Training to failure in my book means when you can't move the weight, by whatever means, anymore in good form, in proper form. that's failure. So we're not talking about forced reps.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
We're not talking about, um, swaying the upper body or using momentum when, so trained to failure, you can't move the resistance anymore in good form and reps in reserve. My understanding is one's own subjective understanding about how close they are to that point of failure. Do I have that right?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Okay. So with those definitions in mind, is training to failure more effective at generating strength and hypertrophy increases than if one keeps a few reps in reserve? And of course, we have to balance this against all the factors related to recovery, et cetera. But Assuming that one follows a program of doing, and I'm really just trying to cut us right through the middle here.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Let's say two or three exercises per muscle group and does after a sufficient warmup, let's say two to five sets that we're going to call work sets. You could imagine an extreme scenario where every single work set is taken to failure. You could imagine, taking only the last set of each exercise to failure. You can imagine taking none of them to failure.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Assuming adequate volume is achieved across the week. My understanding is this is 10 to 20 sets per muscle group across the week. It could be distributed across different workouts or all done in one workout. Is training to failure going to generate more strength and hypertrophy than leaving some repetitions and reserves? So let's start with the extreme scenario.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
I go to failure on every single set and I do what I need to to recover. It doesn't matter if it's only doing that muscle group once per week or spread out multiple times per week. I'm doing what I need to to recover in between. My genetics, my hormone status, my sleep, my nutrition, on and on. Is going to failure more effective than not going to failure?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And did they control for total volume of work? Because I can imagine not going to failure, you can do more sets because you've got more, quote unquote, gas in the tank, right?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
So this is gun to the head type failure.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
I think you make a very important point, which is that occasionally training to failure gives you a sense of what failure really is for you. And no one can really tell you that. Only you can tell you that and experience that.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
But if I understand correctly, earlier you said once you know what failure is for you, then if strength gains are your goal, and I think more and more people, by the way, are training for strength who don't want hypertrophy, at least not across every muscle group. I think when I talk to the general public, which I do a lot, I get the sense that men and women are like, yeah, I'll lift weights.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
I can see the value of that. Would love a little bit more muscle here, a little bit more muscle there, but they don't want to be generally larger. Yet they can understand and appreciate the value of getting stronger everywhere. Because being strong across your whole body is one of the core definitions of health.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
No, but I think a lot of the audience would like to be stronger and not necessarily grow their muscles bigger, except in a few specific places on the body.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Interesting. That's the concentric phase, the lowering phase, the eccentric phase. Yeah, we're not sure about that yet.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And the research shows anywhere from. Five to 30 repetitions can generate hypertrophy as long as the final few repetitions are really hard and volume is adjusted.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Also, if you work out in a... That's a little boring for me. Yes. And if you work out in a gym where there are other people, be kind. Other people are going to need the space and the equipment. So it could take forever. 10 sets of 30, that's impolite. So we're only half kidding there. One of the more common questions... is about training for people 50 years old and older.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And I love the fact that we're talking so much about strength. This seems to be one of the key evolutions in this field. Again, in my opinion, the people who've come through this podcast as guests, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon,
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
yourself, Andy Galpin, who now has his own podcast, the Perform podcast, like more and more discussions about strength and training for strength for the general public, not just people who want to be power lifters. So I think there's a lot of carry over there.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And I think the more that people hear us say that resistance training can be really powerful for health and longevity and getting strong is one of the best things you can do for your health and longevity, injury protection, et cetera. Peter Atiyah has talked about this and it's not just about building muscle. want to know how they should adjust their training, if at all, if they are 50 and older.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
So obviously one of the key things to getting and staying in great shape over time, I always say is avoid getting hurt. Could we say, okay, don't try anything too novel and crazy without easing into it.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Okay. Could we also say perhaps find the movements that you can do without injury and just keep doing those over and over? Is there any evidence that mixing up the exercises is important, meaning doing new movements? Or if you find two or three movements that work well for you, can you just stick with those and just work on progressive overload?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Right. And it feeds back to that consistency principle that you talked about before.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
We used to just think that there was brown, beige, and white fat cells, and subcutaneous, and intravisceral. Now they've done sequencing of different white fat cells, and like 25, probably now 50, different genetics among those cells that respond differently to insulin. I mean, fat is a very interesting and heterogeneous tissue. It's really interesting.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Yeah. Using, thinking about muscle as an organ, thinking about feeding muscle. We talked about that earlier. Thinking about moving muscle and in particular training for strength, resistance training of different kinds. Hypertrophy, yes. But I, you know, I'm kind of given a little bit of a, biased vote for more strength training out there across the population for really for the longevity reasons.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
I mean, Peter Atiyah has pointed out that the percentage of people who die after a fall, not because of the fall itself, but because of a hip injury or a wrist injury, and then they go immobile. Or they're just not exercising as much anymore. Then they get an infection and then it cascades. In fact, I had a conversation with one of my parents recently on their 79th birthday.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
I said, you know, in the next five, 10 years, your biggest risk is probably going to be going downstairs or stepping off a curb, not going up. But as Peter's pointed out, going down so that that eccentric movement break, you know, being able to sustain a fall, being able to not fall to catch yourself, so to speak.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Exactly. And this and that pattern of falling while going down precedes a lot of infections and that end up deadly. Right. So, you know. Hats off to Peter for really pointing out the relationship between those things and to you for encouraging people to strength train.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Also, I love the idea that I don't have to go to failure if I'm in strength training, because I like training heavy, but the training to the point where the muscles are quaking, even though that's how I initially started training, because I came up in the Mike Menser camp, I actually find that it eats into my recovery in a way that maybe is a little more subtle, but meaningful.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And nonetheless, which is that I feel fatigued later in the day. Whereas if I complete a training session where I can complete every rep, I notice I don't get into that quaking thing. I actually have a lot of mental and physical energy later in the day.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Maybe this one could be out of a brief answer or maybe not, I don't know. Are there true age-related changes in metabolism that are independent of decline in muscle mass? You know, I saw a paper, I think it was published in Science a few years ago that said that metabolism actually doesn't slow that much as we age. Of course, total muscle mass.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
BMR, basal metabolic rate. In general, well, I should just say up until that paper came out, I thought, okay, as we get older, our quote-unquote metabolism slows. Then, of course, we have to remember that puberty and childhood is sort of like being on performance-enhancing drugs in the sense that protein synthesis is just massive and ongoing.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
But let's just say from age 30 onward, let's say between 30 and 80, assuming that somebody is doing things to maintain muscle mass, Is there any reason to believe that their basal metabolic rate actually goes down just as a function of age?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Indeed, we cover many topics in this episode. you can be sure that all of the information you hear from Dr. Norton is being filtered through that extremely stringent filter that Dr. Norton is so well-known for.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
But my guess is that it would also drive more activity, feeling better, more activity, sleeping better, more activity.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
All right. So speaking of Ozempic, Munjaro and similar drugs. Let's talk about these drugs that are reducing appetite and in fairness have allowed millions of people to lose substantial amounts of weight and keep it off. This topic tends to get people a little bit riled up on social media because I think for some reason people believe that
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
If one gives these drugs the nod, you're essentially saying you don't need to exercise. But I didn't see anywhere or hear anywhere that the use of any compound, drug or otherwise, is mutually exclusive with taking good care of oneself in other ways too. So what are your thoughts on these compounds and what you're seeing out there?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
It's about a pound per week of increase in body weight.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Do you want to just explain for the general listener what a meta-analysis is? Just in kind of top contour.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Like as if it's going to take their jobs away. It's like the same way that people fear AI. Like it's somehow – like this stuff is here to stay. It benefits many, many people. I feel this way about these GLP-1 mimetics and I feel the same way about AI. It's like these things could be, yes, potentially used for evil but also for good.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Right. One study with 10 subjects would have a very small doc compared to a subject with 500 subjects.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Yeah, I think also when people hear about these drugs, they think about the person who's slightly overweight or who is already fit, who wants to be even thinner. And that's not what we're talking about here. And I have a good friend who is an air traffic controller. He works very, very hard. very stressful job, obviously, high consequence job. And he's very overweight.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
And thus, by the end of today's episode, you will be armed not only with the latest information on nutrition, training, and supplementation, but you'll also be armed with your own filter to determine what sorts of health protocols are actionable for you. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
He's gotta be more than 300 pounds by a significant margin. And he's really struggled over the years. And for years, he talked about getting his, you know, quote unquote, stomach stapled, you know, sometimes referred to that way. Couldn't afford the surgery, this sort of thing. And I asked him about it. I was like, you know, what's that about?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
He's like, I just need something that's going to allow me to move without pain or a little bit less pain. Every time he tries exercising, he injures himself. And he's probably going about that incorrectly because he doesn't have a lot of time. And he literally has lives in his hands. He's married now. You know, he may have kids soon. So I haven't spoken to him recently about these drugs.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
But to me, it seems like that's like the perfect candidate for these drugs. If he could eat less. with more ease and lose some weight and then also start exercising, I think that'd be a significant win for him. So scenarios like that are what I think of. And then also, you know, it's a mostly free world in many places, not all.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
So if people can afford these things and they want to take them, like who am I to say they shouldn't take them? You know, I just like, I feel like the amount of judgment involved to say that somebody should or should not use a drug is that's, safe and potentially helpful for them is like kind of, I mean, that's, that's almost offensive in, in a way.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
I love that. On the other side of the coin, you've been pretty vocal elsewhere about the fact that sugar is not a drug. You know, because sometimes people will say, you know, sugar is a drug. I would sort of put in the soft argument for my side, soft argument that highly processed foods, or let's just call them high density of taste foods, right?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
That combine, you know, processed carbohydrates and fats that, you know, at high heats that can be consumed in, you know, where you can easily consume several thousand calories that, you know, almost unconsciously, right? I mean, unless you're asleep or in a coma, you can just pop these things in your mouth and keep going. I don't even know if they taste that good, but people just keep going.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
That there's a bit of kind of lack of awareness and compulsivity to them. Very different than addiction, of course, because people aren't necessarily going out and robbing Robbing people. But maybe just touch on your view of sugar as a substance. We're not talking about the sugar in fruit. We're talking about candy, ice creams, desserts, quote-unquote hidden sugars.
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
What are the real risks of these things if people are consuming them still within the confines of their daily caloric needs? So they're not eating excess calories. What's the deal with sugar?
Huberman Lab
Tools for Nutrition & Fitness | Dr. Layne Norton
Right. Self-report. People sneak. People forget.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Alan Shore.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
And the transitioning back and forth between those states, as Dr. Shor explains, is critical to our emotional development and how we form attachments later.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
So if you've heard, for instance, of avoidant attachment or anxious attachment or secure attachment, today you'll understand why those particular attachment styles develop, how they translate from early life to your adolescence, teen years, and adulthood, and in fact, how those childhood attachment patterns, which of course we can't control for ourselves, but we can control for our children,
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
how we can modify them through very specific protocols in order to achieve better relations with both others and with ourselves. It's indeed a very special conversation. And to my knowledge, unlike any other discussions about relationships, neuroscience, or psychology that certainly I have heard before, and I fully expect that for you, it will be as well.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
So just so I'm clear, in avoidant attachment, the baby, which is now, let's say, two and a half years old, three years old.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
That's a toddler, excuse me. The toddler is auto-regulating more often than seeking another to help do coordinated regulation.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
I think this is a really important thing to hover on for a moment, just given some context about hundreds of thousands of questions that I get about avoidant versus secure versus anxious attached. And you stated it all incredibly clearly. But I want to make sure that we double click on this, as they say, the idea that.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is David.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
if a child and mother did not coordinate their autonomic- Use the word synchronize. Synchronize. Do not synchronize their autonomic regulation in the proper way that there would be a non-secure attachment. I'm using that language for a specific reason. Makes total sense. But this idea that if the child, which soon the baby, which is a toddler at three or so,
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
is avoidant, then they're going to have to learn to auto-regulate and they're going to seek others to help them regulate less than a secure attached. And the anxious attached, baby, toddler, adolescent, adult, will do just the opposite.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
They're going to have a hard time self-soothing, but they are going to feel, let's say these might be the kind of people that don't well tolerate a text message not getting responded to at a very short latency, for instance. And we all, depending on context, we have this, right? But I find this to be incredibly important, which is why I wanted to go back through it, because I think nowadays,
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
We hear so much about anxious and securely attached, avoidant, et cetera, in the context of adult romantic relationships. But I hope that people are realizing the truly incredible importance of your work, which is that the same circuitry and mechanisms that are used to establish infant mother attachment are repurposed later in life for adult relationships.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
I think that when we hear that, it makes sense, but I don't think that most people know that. They assume somehow that there's circuitry in our brain and body for adult romantic attachment that is distinct from our attachment circuitry that we had with our parent. And I think your work speaks very loudly that they are in fact the exact same circuitry.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Dr. Alan Shore is a clinician psychoanalyst, and he is the world expert in how childhood attachment patterns impact our adult relationships, including romantic relationships, friendships, and professional relationships, as well as our relationship to ourselves.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
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Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Basically, I like all the flavors. They're incredibly delicious. For me personally, I strive to eat mostly whole foods. However, when I'm in a rush or I'm away from home, or I'm just looking for a quick afternoon snack, I often find that I'm looking for a high quality protein source.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Think, let it be, so to speak. I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is an all-in-one vitamin, mineral, probiotic drink with adaptogens. I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring this podcast.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
The reason I started taking AG1 and the reason I still take AG1 once and often twice a day is because it is the highest quality and most complete foundational nutritional supplement. What that means is that AG1 ensures that you're getting all the necessary vitamins, minerals, and other micronutrients to form a strong foundation for your daily health.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
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Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
So I've consistently found that when I take AG1 daily, my digestion is improved, my immune system is more robust, I rarely get sick, and my mood and mental focus are at their best. In fact, if I could take just one supplement, that supplement would be AG1. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
With David, I'm able to get 28 grams of protein with the calories of a snack, which makes it very easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight each day. And it allows me to do that without taking in excess calories. I typically eat a David Barr in the early afternoon or even mid-afternoon if I want to bridge that gap between lunch and dinner.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
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Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Tell me more about surrender. And I just want to make sure I understand this is surrender on the part of the therapist trying to, yes, listen to the narrative that the patient is sharing, but also paying attention to the underlying emotional state. Is the person quaking? Are they angry? Is there feelings of anxiety? despair, shock, disgust. So they're carrying this in their parallel tracks.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
And then is the goal of the therapist, if they're an effective one, to then soothe the patient? Or is it to allow the patient to have some sort of catharsis, some release of this? At what point does the therapist intervene and try and coordinate and show the patient a different way to think about and feel about the topic matter?
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
I like that it's a little bit sweet, so it tastes like a tasty snack, but it's also giving me that 28 grams of very high quality protein with just 150 calories. If you would like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, the link is davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
So the therapist can literally and somatically show the patient what auto-regulation is like or what coordinated regulation is like.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
So often nowadays, I think we hear that adult romantic relationships can provide a healing of some of the failures of childhood attachment. And there's also a phrase thrown around a lot that we need to learn to parent ourselves.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
This is more of a pop psychology, online, social media thing, you know, that people need to learn to mother and father themselves at some level, to self-soothe and to, you know, who knows what that means. I'm not going to try and define it. It's not operationally defined.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
So the question I have is to what extent do you think the process that you just described with a therapist can start to rewire some of the – the capacity to auto-regulate or coordinated to regulate.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
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Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
It's fascinating. There are a couple of questions I have before we move forward about mother-infant attachment as opposed to father-infant attachment. So that's one. And I'll ask these again in a moment, but I think you'll see where I'm going here. And then I'm fascinated by the idea that these circuits get established early in life, then are repurposed for adult relationships.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
They can be modified in the way that you just described. but that they cross gender and gender lines. So for instance, a female baby can form these patterns of attachment. with their mother, female caretaker, but then assuming that baby grows up to be a heterosexual woman and she has attachments to men, then these things can be reactivated across gender lines, right?
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
So this formation of the circuitry is not gender specific, although it sounds like it's important that be the mother to child in some way. You keep saying mother-child as opposed to caretaker.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
So to just spell them out one by one, first question, are there any data about the formation of these circuits in the baby where the mother is either not available, if it's an adopted mother, if it's a child raised by extended family? I mean, there's so many different configurations, but you get the point.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Eight Sleep makes it very easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to program the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Could be dad, could be mom. Could be.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
For a second there, I wasn't sure if you were joking. But I don't know, maybe that's reflective of a natural right brain.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
So more activation of the sympathetic autonomic. Yeah. So sort of more up, let's call it up-level play. Yes.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation of the Pod Cover called the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity. I find that very useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night. warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
What about under situations where there's really just one primary caretaker? This is increasingly common nowadays. And in some countries, like in certain Scandinavian countries, people opt to do this and elsewhere, of course, but this isn't always a divorce situation. Sometimes people decide to have children on their own.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
What are your thoughts about some of the modern exploration of compounds that can facilitate more right brain synchrony between therapist and patient? I've done a few episodes about MDMA. assisted psychotherapy. These, of course, were just recently not approved by the FDA, so these are not legal. Nonetheless, there are interesting clinical studies showing that these are in pathogens.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
One could imagine that they could be useful in the proper context to improve patient-therapist right brain synchrony and accelerate some of this process. But It seems like it would also require both the patient and the therapist taking the compound. And that seems like it would have all sorts of ethical issues.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
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Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Can adrenaline pass across the placenta? I should know this. I know adrenaline doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier, but the brain makes its own adrenaline. But do we know if adrenaline crosses the placental barrier?
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Function. I recently became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
While I've long been a fan of blood testing, I really wanted to find a more in-depth program for analyzing blood, urine, and saliva to get a full picture of my heart health, my hormone status, my immune system regulation, my metabolic function, my vitamin and mineral status, and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Eight Sleep currently ships to the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman. And now for my discussion with Dr. Alan Shore. Dr. Alan Shore, welcome. Nice to be here. To kick things off, I have a simple question, which is what percentage of our thinking and our behavior
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors on your results. For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had two high levels of mercury in my blood. This was totally surprising to me. I had no idea prior to taking the test.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Dr. Schor is on the faculty in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine. He is also the author of several important books, including Right Brain Psychotherapy and Development of the Unconscious Mind.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Function not only helped me detect this, but offered medical doctor-informed insights on how to best reduce those mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, because I had been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification, and worked to reduce my mercury levels.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Comprehensive lab testing like this is so important for health, and while I've been doing it for years, I've always found it to be overly complicated and expensive.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
I've been so impressed by Function, both at the level of ease of use, that is getting the test done, as well as how comprehensive and how actionable the tests are, that I recently joined their advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman Lab listeners. Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
As I recall in your book, Right Brain Psychotherapy, there was a description, beautiful description of, you know, these up states and then these more calming state coordination between mother and child. And I started to, I actually read this book When I was living in Topanga, I would walk on the road. I don't recommend this. There are no sidewalks in Topanga. And I would read the physical copy.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
And I recall very distinctly thinking about this image of the baby and the mother. And the baby is a little bit hyper aroused, is upset. And so the mother would make sort of sounds, not necessarily words like shh. These kinds of things or humming or, you know, or bouncing lullabies, these sorts of things. That's the prosody. That's the prosody.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
And then the related release of things like serotonin, perhaps oxytocin as well. We can talk more about those. But then also how critical it is for... the mother to be able to regulate the baby's transition to upstates.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Like looking at the baby as it comes out of a nap and saying, you know, good morning and really wide eyes, lots of gesturing, lots of gesticulating that is, you know, bringing the voice level up and the baby, you know, really waking up in a kind of a steeper slope of arousal and how important that was. And then that being slightly more related, and this makes perfect sense to norepinephrine,
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
adrenaline at low healthy levels and perhaps dopamine as well. Is that the right way to think about this? And if so, is that what's going on when we form adult friendships, adult relationships? Are we oscillating back and forth between the ability to hang out and relax and soothe each other and the ability to kind of get excited about something? Is this the basis of all relationships and relating?
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
you think is governed by our conscious mind versus our unconscious mind.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
You can have anxiously attached narcissistic?
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
You said a vulnerable attachment?
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
These people constantly need praise?
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Yeah, because I believe that's a primary feature of borderline personality disorder. Yes. Which I think we should also touch on.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Yeah. So my understanding about splitting is that it's the I love you, I hate you phenomenon brought on by not just an internal switch, which is sometimes seen in like bipolar disorder, but rather somebody with a borderline personality disorder will see something and be very upset.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Like suddenly the fact that a glass is empty of a drink meant that they didn't think enough to refill a glass or something. Whereas a few minutes before it was perfectly fine. It was not an issue, right? There needs to be a trigger and then they split. Is that right?
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Does it sometimes go the other way? That person's all good, I'm bad?
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Are these people with borderline personality, I don't know if you still call it a disorder nowadays that gets a little bit into the... Let's call it borderline with borderline. Do they exhibit the same sort of splitting idealization and then the idea that somebody is terrible and they want nothing to do with them in the context of work relationships, friendships?
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Does it extend out into other domains of life or is it unique to certain types of relationships?
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
The caregiver doesn't want anything to do with that.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
I'm pausing because I'm just taking all this in and thinking about what are the ways that people can start to tap into this right brain health or lack of health and ways to repair their right brain circuitry, so to speak. without a therapist, or is that just simply impossible?
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
I think I just got it. I think, if I'm not mistaken, what you're describing is interactive dynamics that create or elaborate on circuitry that exists in all of us, but that for some people might be atrophied because of the lack of proper emotional nourishment early in life, but that we can engage these right brain circuits. But then when we're not around these people,
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
There must be something about the right brain circuitry that provides a sort of a soothing function so that we must know at an implicit level that like we can do this. Like we know how to attach in healthy ways to people. We have a close friend we can rely on. We have maybe friends, plural. We maybe repaired a relationship with a sibling, this kind of thing.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
So it's not that these circuits need to constantly be engaged every moment with the barista, but that we somehow at an unconscious level, it must be that we come to realize that this circuitry has re-elaborated or is elaborated in a way that we know, quote unquote, we can do it.
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How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
And they can't read the face of voice, and they can't synchronize well. Can I stop you and ask one question, which is, let's say that, let's take this conversation for instance. I'm listening to your words very carefully. If I make an effort to listen especially carefully to what somebody is saying, the content of their words,
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Is there a competition between left and right brain such that I'm now not getting as much right brain listening Yeah, okay. This to me feels like the surrender aspect. Whereas I can... And I do this during these interviews slash discussions where I'll sit back sometimes and I'm still listening, but I widen my gaze.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Let's start thinking about and talking about this right brain versus left brain thing. And what I'd like to know is when we come into this world, How much lateralization, as we call it, how much right versus left brain specialization is there at the time when we exit the womb, when we take our first breath?
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
I don't look around, but I widen my gaze and I'm trying to just feel something coming in. I'm not a therapist, obviously. No one would ever suspect that I was. But... I only do it for a few seconds and then I reengage. And I used to think that it was like a relaxation of sorts, but inevitably I feel like it's a different way to, the conversation takes a different direction.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Is that more or less what you're talking about?
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
So if I'm listening very carefully to exactly what you said, and I'm tracking everything you said, like we're in a courtroom situation, then my right brain is suppressed.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
I haven't heard that, but that's beautiful.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
I always remind people these are two little bits of brain outside your cranial vault. As weird as that might seem, they are two bits of brain. Your retina is central nervous system. And you're looking at – that's about as close as you can get to looking at somebody's brain state as anything.
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How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
So this is prosody. This is what the Italians do so well.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Today's discussion with Dr. Schor is an extremely important one for everyone to hear, to understand themselves and to understand the people in their lives. Why? We all go through the first 24 months of age. You wouldn't be listening to this if you hadn't.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Fascinating and makes total sense based on the newer imaging tools, revealing synchrony, et cetera. I have two questions that can be asked in parallel, music and dogs. Why music and dogs? Well, some of what you're describing reminds me of the state shift that occurs when I hear particular pieces of music for which I'm not paying attention to the lyrics or in some cases the lyrics matter.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
I'm listening, but they don't make any sense. Like if they were read out as a paragraph, it wouldn't make any sense. but it feels like there's some fundamental truth there. So this is, I could state specific musical preferences, but it's highly individual.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
So for some people it's classical music, for other people it's music that contains lyrics, but there's this feeling like, yes, like there's a truth there and I feel that truth, even though the content of the words, let's take, couldn't help myself, like a Bob Dylan song, for instance, he's certainly could be considered a poet, right?
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
And if you read the lyrics just as a paragraph, you'd be like, this is nonsense. But the way that it's sung, the meaning behind it, the timbre in the voice, the prosody, et cetera, and presumably the emotion that he was feeling at the time when the music was recorded communicates with us and we enter a synchronous state.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
And then in parallel to this, I mentioned dogs where, sure, they have a left brain and a right brain. But I think with animals generally, if they're domestic animals and we have a very close relationship to them, we can really feel a resonance with them and presumably them with us. And for anyone that's experienced it, some people might be chuckling now, but it's nothing short of profound, right?
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How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
The extent to which we really feel like they see us and we see them and there's a bond. Clearly not the same magnitude as a parent-child bond, but nonetheless. So music and dogs, do you think it's tapping in to this same right temporal parietal
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Okay, so we're basically going from anterior to posterior, just there's structures the whole way back.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
So not so much paying attention to the content of the words, the logic behind them, the logical flaws that might exist, the analytic part, but rather how the words sound, how the words feel, literally.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Or playing music with others. This is something I'm incapable of because I have no musical ability. But playing music with others, you can see that when we talk about the chemistry of a band, it's so incredible to witness that and then to feel it in mass with thousands maybe of other people.
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How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
You mentioned earlier Stephen Porges' work. And we know that brain and body are connected in both directions. And I should know this, but I don't know if the right brain has preferential communication with the parasympathetic or sympathetic or other aspects of Well, vagus is parasympathetic, but I think it's probably both.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
I think the more we discover about the vagus, it's likely to be mixed, sympathetic, parasympathetic, but I'll catch some heat for that, but that's okay. But bodily sensing is a real thing. There are ways that our diaphragm and our core relax when we're happy. I mean, all of this is obvious to anyone, but I'm just curious how right brain links up with bodily state.
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How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
um incidentally i'm gonna do you know the name ian mcgilchrist yes i know the name and many people have commented on our youtube channel that i need to talk to ian um um that's all that i have gotten that far but i've been busy um get him get him uh great ian we'll send you an invite yeah i mean uh
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Yeah, so I'm curious as to how people can start to sense these right brain, left brain shifts. We talked about how paying a little less attention to the content of words and a little bit more to how a conversation is feeling
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
independent of the word content might be part of it um we hear a lot these days about you know how body posture matters you know that you know like if people are closed up with their arms crossed i don't know but sometimes i'm just a little chilly so i'll cross my arms and sometimes i'll cross my arms and lean in and i know that i'm in a much more attuned state so i don't put too much weight on that but maybe i should put more weight on that and what are your thoughts yeah
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
I love this. Forgive me for interrupting, but I love this because people, especially on social media, they take a piece of information like, you know, if you're leaned back, you're disengaged. You're leaned forward, you're engaged. But you could also just turn it right around and say, if you're leaned forward, you're impending, and then the person doesn't have space.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
And so it becomes, frankly, it becomes a bunch of BS. Right.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Does that mean that everything about attachment is occurring in the first 24 months?
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
I appreciate you saying that. I feel the same way. Text messaging has become a dominant mode of communication these days. I've hosted a few guest expert in emotions in the brain, Lisa Feldman Barrett, for instance, and others. And she and others have talked about how the emojification of emotions, you know, just like a smiley face or a crying face or, oh, goodness, or, you know, mind blown.
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How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
These things are convenient, as is shorthand text, lack of punctuation, et cetera. But Today's conversation also highlights the extent to which text messaging is pretty much devoid of most everything that you're talking about. A green bubble or a blue bubble, seen or not seen, read or not read, depending on how you set your settings.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
The latency, the turn-taking, sometimes people layer in multiple conversations and you're going back and forth about a couple of different things and then your food order comes. sure, the human brain can handle this, but this seems either not good, neutral, that is, or bad for building and reinforcing communication.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
It actually concerns me, but of course I'm now 49, so I can say things like now that I'm 49, I can say things like that, you know, but it concerns me because I think that you can imagine the young brain and older brain essentially not being good at interpersonal dynamics because of text messaging.
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How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
So I have a rule. I don't argue over text. I don't like to argue over text. I don't like to argue, period. But I don't, you know, I'll pick up the phone. I'm of the generation where we called one another. I find text to be completely devoid of what I'm really seeking in terms of connection.
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How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
And I think that there's an entire, I know there's an entire generation of people that grew up communicating mainly through short message.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Jonathan Haidt, the author of The Anxious Generation, has been encouraging young kids to put away their phones and get out and interact more, encouraging parents to let their kids be more what they call free-range kids and do this kind of thing, arguing that there's far fewer dangers in the physical world than there are in the online world for young brains. He makes a convincing argument.
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How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
For those of us that are seeking to have better connections, Maybe even do some healing of the right brain circuitry that you're talking about today. Do you think that there's a hierarchy of effectiveness such that, you know, like text would be perhaps at the bottom? voice memo, maybe next level up, I'm thinking here, a phone call.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
There was a time when we wrote handwritten letters and those felt very meaningful. I kept handwritten letters from people that I cared about and that cared about me. The handwritten letters proves that it doesn't have to be a real-time exchange, but there's something about handwriting. A typewritten letter, by today's standards, would also be a significant thing. But
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
You know, there really seems to be something special about a letter, a face-to-face conversation.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
These are people that walk around with left brains that are hypertrophied?
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
That's a spectacular list, making the right brain circuitry at least among the most exciting circuits, certainly important circuits.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
I love right brain psychotherapy. Love, love, love it. I own a hardcover copy. I've owned it for a couple years now. I highly recommend it. We'll put links to your books in the show notes.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Okay, will do. What are some activities that allow us to, quote unquote, drop into our right brain circuitry a bit more? One that immediately leapt to mind, as you mentioned nature and interacting with nature, and we were talking about music, is walking. And earlier we talked about, you educated us on, rather, this notion of wide range attention, this energy.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
evenly suspended attention that is associated with the right brain, this kind of widening of gaze as opposed to narrow gaze and narrow attention that is associated with left brain circuitry. When we're out in nature and when we're ambulating, when we're walking, provided we're not looking at our phone, one hopes, or looking for something specific like a bird that we've spotted,
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
We tend to be in panoramic vision. I'm a vision scientist, so I can't help myself. You know, what we call magnocellular vision. These are like big pixels. I'm aware. Yeah, taking it all in. And it's more spherical than kind of a cone of attention. I would imagine that might be more right brain associated. What are some things that you, if you...
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
suggest to your patients like, hey, you know, until our next session, you know, do you encourage them to journal, free associate journal, to listen to music, to take walks? Or do you restrict the activation of this right brain circuitry to the session and then let it just show up as it were?
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Yeah. So you let them sort of just default to what's happening?
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
And during that first 24 months of age, your brain develops in a particular way depending on how you interacted with your primary caretaker, namely your mother, but also your father or other primary caretakers. In that first 24 months, your right brain and your left brain mediate very specific but different processes. For instance, today you'll learn from Dr. Shore that your right brain circuitry
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
I have a friend, he's a songwriter, and he told me that He has this process whereby he writes music every day, but he starts his day by painting or drawing. I think he's sold some paintings and drawings, but that's not his main vocation. But he told me that he draws and paints as a way to sort of grease the gears to songwriting.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
And then I learned that Joni Mitchell did this too or something similar. And I can't help but wonder whether or not they've unconsciously tapped into a mode of bringing right brain circuitry up in terms of its activity. Neither of them are known as painters or artists, but of course musical artists and quite accomplished ones at that. Does that sort of tool or technique make sense?
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Amazing. I love this. And I'll refrain from sharing my personal use of such a sort of, I guess we call them avenues into the right. But I want to make clear, I understand you're in the stacks of books in the library. It feels and sounds like a cognitive endeavor, a left brain endeavor.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
but then it just came to you, I want to play the piano, or through the research that you were doing, this 10-year self-research, amazing, by the way, I'm like so struck by that, then did it just come to you in a flash? Like, I want to play the piano again. And was it because playing the piano contrasted so much with looking through the stacks or they were aligned?
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How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
So important. I often get asked, you know, what's your note taking process? How do you prepare a solo episode? I do these long solos that, you know, I have only a few pages of notes, but I could describe it. But the process is so specific to the way that I learn.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
across the whatever six, eight, 10 weeks that it takes me to prepare for one of those, sometimes more, that it wouldn't really translate. Like it doesn't matter.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
given the extreme importance of this right brain circuitry and of this autonomic synchrony between mother and typically mother, primary caretaker that is, and infant, what are some things that are known from the literature as critically important about that stage in terms of amount of time spent with the child
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
You know, oftentimes parents are working, there are nannies or any number of different things. There are a lot of different structures nowadays for families and balancing work and family. But is there anything known about how to, I hate to use the word optimize, but maximize the health of the relationship?
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How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
It is a shame. What's wonderful, however, is that you're highlighting these issues. So many people are hearing about this. And I encourage anyone, everyone listening to really take in the ordering of importance of what Dr. Shore just shared, that IQ third on the list, emotion regulation, number one.
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How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Conduct. Yeah. So the idea that we need to train our kids up as little memorizing computers is clearly the wrong idea. Clearly, there's important information that needs to be committed to memory to be a functional human being, but that we're missing not just critical knowledge transfer, but critical emotional transfer.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
And for that reason, and for so many other reasons, I really want to thank you for coming in today and having this conversation. It's unlike any conversation I've had on this podcast for several reasons, not the least of which is that you have this incredible
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
knowledge of the neurobiology, which for me is a delight, and I'm sure for the listeners too, but also the clinical experience, which is so rich. And it's clear you've also done your own work in exploring these ideas. And you've been here for and participated in the evolution of this whole right brain, left brain thing, the advent of neuroimaging and how that's really shed new light.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
I just love, love, love the way that you braid all this together in terms of actionable things with patient and therapist, but also just in terms of one's understanding of self. I'm certain people are going to take this knowledge into their lives and into the world, and it's been really enriching for me, and I'm certain it's going to be immensely enriching for them.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
So thank you for the work you do. Thank you for taking the time to come here today. And I'm excited about your new book. So keep us informed as to when that comes out. Maybe we'll have you back on for another discussion if you're willing. And just thank you so much for entering this left brain, right brain dance and dynamic. It's been thoroughly enjoyable for me.
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How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Alan Shore. To learn more about his work and to find links to his books, please see the links in the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Another terrific zero cost way to support us is to follow the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.
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How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep, to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
So that's Instagram, X, formerly known as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Threads. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-based tools, some of which overlap with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content covered on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, it's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries as well as brief one to three page PDFs that cover protocols for things like deliberate heat exposure, deliberate cold exposure. There's a protocol for for managing your dopamine.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
There's a protocol for optimizing your sleep, for neuroplasticity and learning, and much more. To sign up for the newsletter, simply go to hubermanlab.com. There you provide your email. I'd like to emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody. And as I mentioned before, the newsletter is completely zero cost. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Alan Shor.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Yeah, just to remind listeners, I've talked about this on previous podcasts. I'll provide a link to that segment, but a strange situation can briefly be described as parent and usually mother and child come into the clinic. They deliberately leave the baby with a caretaker. This is sort of a pseudo daycare type situation.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Mother leaves, and then there's a lot of attention paid to how the infant or young child, toddler, whatever age they were looking at reacts. Are they nervous? Are they able to engage in play? And then they look at the return of the mother and how they react to that. And there was this classification of behaviors along the lines of secure attached, insecure attached.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
There was a categorization of kind of an amalgam of different things, these so-called D babies that were kind of a bunch of other things. And this is where we hear a lot nowadays about secure, insecure, and anxious and avoidant adult relationship styles. There's been a lot written about that and talked about that.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
We don't have time to go into all that in detail, but this is what Dr. Shore is referring to. I'm really intrigued by this idea that there's a right brain, left brain dominance that takes place throughout the lifespan.
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Has it been carefully mapped into adulthood such that we can say as a function of chronological age, you know, when somebody hits their early 30s, that they're more right brain or left brain dominant? Or is it more developmental milestones as opposed to chronological age?
Huberman Lab
How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
That is, specific circuitries on the right-hand side of your brain are involved in developing a very specific type of resonance with your primary caretaker that transitions from states of calm and quiescence that you both share simultaneously to states that are considered up states of excitement, of enthusiasm, of being wide-eyed.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. John Cruz. Dr. John Cruz is an MD, PhD, and practicing psychiatrist who specializes in the treatment of ADHD in both kids and in adults.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Does that carry over to other domains of life? Do you see, for instance, that people with ADHD have a harder time with parenting? Not that kids aren't super interesting, but some of their activities might be less interesting to parents than others versus people who are just – I think of this word importance-driven as just kind of like really dutiful.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Like you do it because you're supposed to do it.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
So by the end of today's episode, you'll be armed with a ton of new knowledge and you'll have a lot of practical tools you can apply. And now for my discussion with Dr. John Kruse. Dr. John Kruse, welcome. I'm glad to be here today. Let's talk about ADHD, and probably best if we start off by just kind of laying out what it is. Is the H, is the hyperactivity component always in there?
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
I can relate. I mean, I spent 20 plus years training to become a bench scientist and run a lab. And then now I still teach and hold my appointment, still involved in a bit of research, but I'm in a, second career now-ish. And I imagine there'll be a third. We can talk later if you think I have ADHD or not.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
I certainly consume a lot of caffeine and we'll come back to the idea, the relationship between levels of caffeine consumption and possible ADHD. We're seeding the discussion for later on that. We hear pretty often that social media and scrolling or scrolling Instagram or TikTok is quote-unquote giving people ADHD.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Are there any data, either clinical or otherwise, that suggests that the mere practice of looking at 10,000 different contexts or even 15 videos for a minute while standing at the bus stop is somehow creating – more a distractibility in other domains of life.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Childhood ADHD, adult ADHD, maybe if you would just give us the top contour of this, and then we can get into ways to combat ADHD depending on different circumstances, different needs, this sort of thing.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Very interesting. I didn't realize that ADHD carried this lifespan liability. And 10 years is certainly significant.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
My understanding, and you'll see how this weaves into the previous question in a moment, my understanding is that people with ADHD have the ability to focus quite intensely on things that really capture their interest. I don't know if I have ADHD or not. I suspect if I do, it's rather mild or I just feel lucky that I went through the educational system at a time when there were no smartphones.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
I'm really grateful for that. I actually used to unplug the phone in the laboratory where I was a PhD student so that I could just do experiments from 5 p.m. on because that was the only way people could reach me. And I certainly am familiar with the it's almost a drug like effect of dropping into an activity. Sometimes people call it flow. But for me, it just is dropping into an activity.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Did some early morning writing this morning and gosh, the feeling of pleasure just everywhere from head to toe after doing 20 minutes of focused work or 30 minutes of focused work is so striking to me. And yet I like, I think most people find it difficult sometimes to just get rid of all the distractions unless there's a deadline, which is one of the reasons I love deadlines.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
So the question is this, is it true that people with ADHD can in fact focus, but that somehow whatever neural or neurochemical thresholds are there to allow them to drop into focus. They're just much higher thresholds. It just takes more fear of a deadline or fear of a consequence or excitement about the activity. Is that true?
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
No one can pronounce his name. Even fewer can spell it, so we're okay.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
I sometimes use the absent-minded professor excuse, but only half-jokingly. There's a photograph that I love of the great Oliver Sacks, the neurologist turned writer, man who mistook his wife for his hat, awakenings and so forth. People may be familiar with Oliver's work. And it's a photograph of Oliver at a train station. Lots of bodies moving around him, some blurry. So there's motion there.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
And he's standing there with – I think he's got his pipe in his mouth. And he's writing outside the train station. His bag has fallen to the floor. Some items are coming out. And he was a known and self-professed methamphetamine addict for a great portion of his life. medical and writing career. And, you know, sort of alluded to the idea that he had these tendencies.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
And I raise this as an example because I see that photo and I see somebody who's in hyper focus in a very busy environment. But he wrote, I've spent a lot of time with his work and his autobiography, etc., and talk to people who knew him.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
And it seemed that he was constantly seeking novel environments where there was a lot of stimulation and somehow that allowed him to drop into these tunnels of focus. Whereas when he spent a lot of time alone, there were bouts of focus, but the quiet actually became a distraction. It was as if somebody in here were speculating, um, uh,
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
about diagnoses, but that there's something about external anchors and internal anchors and that finding that sweet spot is really about knowing ourselves and where we work best at particular times. And this is something I'd like to transition into here is talking about the fact that there isn't just one environment that works for somebody.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
It seems like it's often the case that it's certain environments for morning, certain environments for afternoon, certain environments having returned from vacation. You can probably see where I'm going with this. What are your thoughts on people trying to, with ADHD or not, trying to identify sort of best conditions for them and how important is circadian time here?
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
I know you have, and of course I mentioned in the introduction that you have a lot of background in circadian biology, which I think brings in a really additional and unique dynamic to your understanding of ADHD.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
So having a regular meal schedule.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Are these people with ADHD sometimes also starting a meal, taking a few bites, and then going back to work? And then like the meal never really ends. It just sort of fragments into the rest of the day.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
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Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
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Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Your gut microbiome consists of trillions of microorganisms that line your digestive tract and impact things such as your immune system status, your metabolic health, your hormone health, and much more. So I've consistently found that when I take AG1 daily, my digestion is improved, my immune system is more robust, and my mood and mental focus are at their best.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
In fact, if I could take just one supplement, that supplement would be AG1. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. They'll give you five free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2 with your order of AG1. Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim this special offer.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
So we've got sleep, eating, exercise or movement and relaxation. Maybe before we start talking about some medications and some other factors that modulate ADHD, if we could maybe step through each of those and you could share with us some of your favorite tools that you give your patients and that you teach online.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Realizing, of course, that each one of those is a vast topic that we have done entire podcasts on, but I'm curious about your favorite go-to tools. We were talking about a few of these before we started. So sleep, regular to bed and wake-up times?
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
As you'll see during today's episode, Dr. Kruse is among the world's top experts in understanding the various treatments for ADHD and tools for helping to overcome non-clinical issues with focus and attention. We, of course, discuss the drug treatments for ADHD. So those include Adderall, Ritalin, Vyvanse, Modafinil, Welbutrin, basically all the drugs that are used to treat ADHD.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Can I run something by you in that context before we jump back? I don't consistently take stimulants except caffeine, and I limit my caffeine intake to prior to 2 p.m., and I stack it pretty heavy in the early part of the day. But on occasion, I'll take 25 to 50 milligrams of Welbutrin. which, as you know better than I, is slightly dopaminergic, but certainly triggers noradrenergic release.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
So epinephrine, norepinephrine, it's a stimulant. On the days when I take that, which again is very rare, and I track my sleep every night, I notice a significant improvement in my sleep and significant increase in my rapid eye movement sleep. It's extremely consistent. So from that, I sort of reverse engineered the major effect being norepinephrine.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Epinephrine, I decided, well, I would do something else that I know raises epinephrine, which is I'll do a cold plunge first thing in the morning of one to three minutes long. And the effect isn't quite as strong, but on those same days when I do that
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
clearly adrenaline-raising activity, I also see, for me, a significant increase in my rapid eye movement sleep and the quality of sleep later that night. So I think there really is something to this epinephrine, obviously going hand-in-hand with stimulants. Epinephrine spike early and throughout the day with better results. rapid eye movement sleep at night. Does that logically hold for you?
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
It's just a story, but you know.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
That's a remarkable thing because many people, including myself, have very little trouble falling asleep, especially given how I stack caffeine in the early part of the day and then stop in the afternoon. It allows me to fall asleep within seconds. Somewhere for me, typically around 10 p.m., somewhere between 10 and 11 p.m. is my typical bedtime time.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
But then I consistently wake up at, you know, three in the morning, usually get up, use the restroom and then go back to sleep most of the time without too much trouble, provided there isn't a lot of stress in my external life and provided the phone is not in the bedroom.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
But as we were also talking about before we turned on the microphones, this idea that our bladders get smaller as we age is complete nonsense, right? So that can't be the explanation why people wake up more in the middle of the night as they get older.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
How much cyclic sighing are you doing before sleep and how long before sleep is the cyclic sighing done?
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
I'm delighted to hear that it's worked so well for you. As people know, I'm a huge fan of the physiological sigh, and I take no credit for having discovered it. It was discovered by physiologists in the 1930s.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
So you mentioned that there can be a lot of environmental dependence. One thing that I and I know a lot of people wonder about is with the advent of more people working at home, and certainly during lockdowns, kids were at home for school as well.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
So we're talking about sleep. You mentioned earlier, um, encouraging people with ADHD or who think they might have ADHD to keep a somewhat regular eating schedule, or at least to make sure that they're eating, um, and to not let their meals get fragmented into starting a meal, then finishing it later.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Like have for some people it's breakfast, lunch, and dinner for some people like myself, it's lunch, snack, dinner, whatever it is, keeping a regular schedule. Um, Exercise, aside from encouraging people to not exercise too late in the day, certainly not caffeine and exercise late in the day.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Are there any data about specific types of exercise being better for ADHD independent of effects on sleep? I realize they're hard to tease apart.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Is there a relationship between ADHD and addiction because of the impulsivity component?
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
But is it the case that when somebody with ADHD is in their home environment where there are typically, you know, more options of things to do, that the symptoms get worse, as opposed to when they go to, say, a restaurant or to school or to play a sport or to work where
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
And that's for substance abuse, not behavioral addictions.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
This is a really important point that I think maybe we just hover on for a second because I think many people... including myself, assumed that, well, if you were, you know, putting these kids on amphetamines, of which, you know, many of the medications for ADHD are, that we're creating kids that are addicted to amphetamines or to a hyperstimulation period.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
But you're telling me it's actually protective to put kids with real ADHD on medication for ADHD.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
I have this model in my head that is perhaps completely wrong, maybe partially wrong. And it goes something like this, that we know that the neural circuits involved in executive control and directing attention and maintaining attention and avoiding distraction, this kind of thing. use dopamine and epinephrine and norepinephrine, at least to some extent.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
And we know that people with ADHD are capable of focus. As you said, it's a failure to direct that focus, maintain, et cetera. So I've heard from you before this discussion that people that tend to drink lots and lots of caffeine or who can drop into an activity but have a lot of distractibility that they might have ADHD.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
So what I'm imagining here is that the threshold to get dopamine, epinephrine and norepinephrine released is either much higher or more complicated for people with ADHD. And so what they're seeking is these catecholamines, these three chemicals, dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine. that if they're given a medication that puts them in that range where they're getting it, then they're good.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Sure, there are multiple things you can do in those environments, but they're more constrained in terms of the different sides of oneself, the different activities that one tends to engage in. Is that common?
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
They can stop seeking it, so to speak. And I'm raising this now because we're talking about addiction. Addiction is a you know, pursuit of things essentially.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
And I guess what I'm saying is it seems to me that the model of ADHD that we hear about is that, you know, people can't focus, you know, their dopamine circuits are all out of whack and then you put them on this dopaminergic drug and, you know, basically you get them addicted to that tunnel vision or something.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
But I have this model in mind now that what we are all seeking is to have portions of our day where we are directing our focus towards a meaningful bill, the things that are generative in our life, work, school, relationships, et cetera, and that whether or not it's pharmacology or exercise or or what have you, that it's just about getting into this plane of consciousness.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
And I say that in no woo or abstract terms. Is that right? I mean, are we really talking about here is a failure to access enough of these neuromodulators and these medications, which we're about to talk about, are really about putting us in the realm where those neuromodulators are just more accessible? I'll just say I can go with that. Okay. Well, you're the expert.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
I mean, I'm putting this together based on kind of what we're talking about, like getting enough sleep to me is a way of being able to have enough arousal during the day. you know, exercise or these medications, just different ways of being able to access arousal. Like if you don't sleep, you can't access arousal during the day.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
So, okay, well, I'm going to hold that model in mind and I'm going to keep testing it to try and destroy it as we go forward. Let's talk about the medications since you raised those. And, you know, the first one I ever heard about was Ritalin. Let's start with Ritalin. How often is Ritalin used nowadays and what is Ritalin doing neurochemically?
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
And what are your thoughts on Ritalin as a useful drug for childhood and adult ADHD? And I'm happy to repeat those questions.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
So does that mean that if you're an identical twin and your twin has ADHD that there's a sort of essentially a 0.8 probability that you'll have it as well, or is this through the... Yeah, I mean, heritability is a little more technically sophisticated and it's about the variance due to... Sure.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
So these are, as you said, straight white males who have psychotic episodes on their ADHD meds and continue to seek those meds because they, quote unquote, like the experience. It feels like a manic high, the high dopaminergic state.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
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Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
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Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of both, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I'll also drink a packet of Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
There are a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. I like the watermelon. I like the raspberry. I like the citrus. Basically, I like all of them. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim an Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement spelled L-M-N-T. So it's drinkelement.com slash Huberman
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
What are the options for people that think that they may have ADHD? Let me phrase it differently. Someone comes in and you, they have, you know, let's say an adult, they have five of the 18, um, well, criteria, they meet the criteria for ADHD.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Do you tend to, well, after telling them about sleep, food, exercise and relaxation, after that's squared away, if the decision is to medicate, do you, and assuming they're not on any other medications,
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
which cluster in this two sets of clusters that you described before the amphetamine type, the Adderall, Vyvanse, et cetera, versus the, I realize you put Ritalin at the top of the bottom cloud, Welbutrin, Ritalin, Modafinil, you mentioned Cymbalta, which cluster do you go to first?
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
And we cover their relative advantages and disadvantages. We also talk about the use of caffeine for focus and how caffeine can interact with those various drugs. Dr. Cruz also educates us on how specific behaviors like our sleep timing, so not just the amount of sleep we get, but when we sleep, as well as our meals, our exercise, how all that can shape our levels of attention and focus.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Do you worry about strain on the heart with amphetamine products? Just even if it's relatively low dose over time, just the strain on the calcium channels and on the on the heart. Is it true that stimulant-based medications for ADHD can, quote-unquote, weaken the heart?
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
So if somebody presents as having ADHD as an adult and they've never touched stimulants, would you start them on Ritalin, Welbutrin, or something in the Adderall Vyvanse cloud?
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Could we go so far as to say, and I suspect the answer is no, but because nowadays we're hearing more about the possibility, I want to highlight possibility, of high THC cannabis causing psychotic episodes. This is something I've stressed on this podcast on social media. I took a lot of heat for this from the traditional press.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
And then ironically, they're now putting out information that essentially speaks to the same. I'm not saying this happens in everybody, but there's certainly a possibility there. Would you say that if somebody is a regular high THC cannabis user, that they are at greater risk to developing psychosis if they're taking these stimulant form ADHD meds?
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Especially as I understand, we had an expert from the cannabis research community on an edible form in particular. It's harder for people to control the dosage. Whereas when people use inhalation as a means to deliver, it seems like they kind of find the right plane without going overboard more often than with edibles in any case.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
I've heard this, that for some people, cannabis can help them focus. And I'm certainly not one of those. But It certainly is interesting. As long as we're on cannabis, excuse me, as long as we're discussing cannabis, neither of us are on cannabis to my knowledge, maybe I could just ping you for kind of the relationship between various compounds.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
that people use that are available over the counter or with sort of online access to these compounds and ADHD symptoms specifically. And then at some point I'd like to return to the amphetamine-based drugs. So let's just start with nicotine. So these days there's increased use of nicotine pouches, gums, not just smoking, vaping, dipping, and snuffing. And it's certainly a stimulant.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
And certainly a lot of people, in particular young males, are using it more often. The traditional media is now trying to create this kind of picture of nicotine being part of the kind of wellness and fitness community. But in my observation, Many, many more people outside of that category are using it.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
So what in your experience happens when somebody with ADHD, let's assume they're not medicating in any other way, starts dabbling in nicotine use. And let's assume they're going to do this in ways that do not cause cancer because the smoking, dipping, vaping, snuffing part is what causes the cancer. Let's just talk about the compound nicotine.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
What about caffeine and in particular energy drinks? These days, there's just seems to be an explosion of drinks that include caffeine, but also fairly high dosages of things like taurine, alpha GPC, theanine, you know, so tyrosine. So, you know, things that are thought to generally amplify the production or release of neuromodulators like dopamine, acetylcholine and so forth.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Very interesting. I mean, as I've said several times in this podcast, I think caffeine is a wonderful drug, mostly because I love the things that comes in. Yerba Mate being my preferred source of caffeine, but also coffee. And it certainly increases my focus. It's a narrow plane though. Two sips too many, and I can start feeling myself veer toward more lack of focus.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
It doesn't seem to have a very... pervasive effect and and dosing it on an empty stomach versus after eating it's it i mean i'm not that precise about it but i don't see it as a very um reliable stimulant it's more to get to a plane of just normalcy for me given how much i've been drinking it since i was a teen really I think most people are similar. They drink it to feel normal.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
L-theanine certainly is being added to a lot of caffeine-containing drinks because it seems to take the jitters off, and the assumption being that people can consume more of that. that drink has a consequence.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Yeah, this is in keeping with the green tea hypothesis, which I believe green tea is enriched with theanine. You are somebody who quite refreshingly to me has talked not just about prescription drugs and behavioral tools for ADHD, but also actually, I think years ago, you were the first person to first share with me the data about fish oil and the EPA. omega-3s for depression.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Those studies were starting to come out. We were talking about those studies. And nowadays, I think while there's still a little bit of controversy out there about fish oils, I think most everybody believes that getting high quality omega-3s from good clean sources, including fish oil, is mostly beneficial or beneficial. What about fish oil for ADHD in particular?
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
And what threshold dosages are relevant here?
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
You probably need to get it in liquid form to make it so it wasn't so expensive. But I find this recency effect incredible, which you mentioned a few moments ago, that And I think this is helpful for people to hear. Certainly it is for me. We hear studies over the years have explored fish oil for cardiac benefits. And then more recently, as I understand, these have not been demonstrated.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
And there seems to be a focus on the recent studies as if the old ones don't exist. That's essentially what you described for both cardiac and ADHD. I think it's really important. We hear this with alcohol too. I've been involved in this debate. I don't care if people drink one way or the other, provided they take care of themselves and others. And if you're an alcoholic adult, don't drink.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
And if you're a kid, don't drink. But people want to drink a few drinks a week. I don't have a problem with it. But it's remarkable that every time a study comes out showing a mild benefit of moderate alcohol, use, that seems to be the highlight and then everything else is forgotten. And the inverse is also true.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
One would think that the meta-analysis would include all as many good studies as possible, but I think it's important to understand that people hear that that's not always the case. Just because there's a meta-analysis doesn't mean that it included all the relevant studies. So I'm just restating. Thank you. I make it a point to try and get one to two grams of EPA per day just as a general mood.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
You know, I'm not clinically depressed, but just to support my mood, to support focus, to support well-being, including cardiac function.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Metina. Metina makes loose leaf and ready to drink yerba mate. Now, I've often discussed yerba mate's benefits, such as regulating blood sugar, its high antioxidant content, the ways it can improve digestion, and its possible neuroprotective effects. It's for all those reasons that yerba mate is my preferred source of caffeine.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
I also drink yerba mate because I simply love the taste. And while there are a lot of different choices out there of yerba mate drinks, my personal favorite far and away is Matina. It's made of the highest quality ingredients, which gives it a really rich, but also a really clean taste. So none of that tannic aftertaste.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
In fact, given how absolutely amazing Matina tastes and their commitment to quality, I decided to become a part owner in the company last year. In particular, I love the taste of Matina's canned zero sugar cold brew yerba mate, which I personally helped develop. I drink at least three cans of those a day now. I also love their loose leaf matina, which I drink every morning from the gourd.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
So I add hot water and sip on that thing, and I'll have some cold brews throughout the morning and early afternoon. I find it gives me terrific energy all day long, and I'm able to fall asleep perfectly well at night, no problems. If you'd like to try Matina, you can go to drinkmatina.com slash Huberman.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Right now, Matina is offering a free one pound bag of loose leaf yerba mate tea and free shipping with the purchase of two cases of their cold brew yerba mate. Again, that's drinkmatina.com slash Huberman to get a free bag of yerba mate loose leaf tea and free shipping. You're one of the first people that I ever heard discuss the gut microbiome and ADHD.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
This is me giving you credit for being way ahead of your time. I don't know how you are receiving praise, especially on camera and with microphones. But I just want to say that it was over a decade ago that I heard from you about –
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
EPA and fish oil for depression and other things about circadian rhythms, an area that I'm familiar with, and just the critical importance of circadian health for everything that we're talking about today and more and on and on. And so, again, thank you for raising these points, even if they turn out to be minor effects. I think nowadays we hear about the gut microbiome
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
I may have actually heard the words gut microbiome first from you. Gosh, yeah, that would be well over, that would be almost 20 years ago. Remarkable. So gut microbiome, what do we know about the gut microbiome and supporting it in ADHD?
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Do you do anything to support your gut microbiome just with your knowledge of the relationship between gut and mental health? Does it impact your behavior at all in terms of choices?
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Great. If that's where we're at, that's where we're at. Before we go back to some drugs, I wanted to ask about behavioral tools for exercise. I've seen some of the literature claiming that certain video games might actually be useful for training focus. I've managed to find a few papers that talk about focus and meditation tasks that kids in particular, but adults may be able to get better at.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
And that, of course, is relevant not just to people struggling with attention and focus or who have ADHD, but to everybody. Dr. Cruz isn't just a psychiatrist. He also has a background in circadian biology research, and he offers the intriguing idea that ADHD and other deficits and focus may in many cases be the consequence of a misregulated circadian rhythm.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
I mean, are any of these brain training games to get people better at focusing? Are any of them known to be worthwhile according to like real data or clinical observation?
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Do you recall if the study of that device or the study of that video game has a conflict of interest? Was it run by the company?
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Yeah. I should just say that I've... followed his work for some years. He's a neuroscientist. I know people who have been in his lab. He's known for doing very, very high quality and stringent work.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
I've made it a point to put social media on a old phone. So those apps are only on that phone. I don't even know the number to that phone. If I need to post something, I airdrop it onto that phone. And this has helped tremendously in segregating that activity and limiting it.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
It also means that if people send me something which would otherwise direct me to social media, it's much more difficult for me to go look it up. It's helped tremendously. I just pass it on because it's one of the things that's really allowed me to restrict my social media time. And yet still be, you know, in keeping with the fact that I think social media has its uses. I post there, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
I do too. And I think it also helps, at least in my experience, to do things that are very different than social media as well but still consuming content. So I make it a point to read from an actual physical book. a bit each day or night. Also, because I was raised doing that and writing by hand, it's just sort of in keeping with the way that my brain was wired.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
So maybe that's more specific to me and my generation. But I find that when I'm doing those other activities, when I go onto social media, it feels more like a departure from the rest of life as opposed to the other way around. But in any event- I'd like to talk about some compounds that are not so typical, meaning some people may have heard of these, but most people probably haven't.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Eight Sleep makes it very easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to program the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
And they are somewhat novel to me. The first one is guanfacine. What is guanfacine and why is it sometimes used for ADHD?
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation of the Pod Cover called the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity. I find that very useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night. warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
No, that's an important point. I'll just quickly throw in, if I may, that the NMDA, the N-methyl-D-aspartate glutamate receptors are the ones that typically are associated with synaptic plasticity, although the AMPA receptors can do that too. But what Dr. Cruz is referring to is the fact that guanfacine indirectly modulates those pathways. So the longer duration to get the effect,
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
It sounds like could be at least partially explained by a real change in neural wiring, as opposed to with you use Cymbalta and Welbutrin as examples of fast changes in neurotransmitters and neuromodulators that led to this. very quick effect in this patient that left your office, got downtown, and was already experiencing effect.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Put differently, sounds like guanfacine and clonidine, not to be confused with clonopin. Clonidine could help ADHD, but might take longer for the effects to manifest than the other drugs that we typically hear about.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
It also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring. If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Let's talk about modafinil. and are modafinil by extension. We hear about modafinil a lot in communities like the tech community and communities where people are trying to quote unquote cognitively enhance. What is modafinil? What does it do? What doesn't it do? How might it be useful for ADHD?
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Today's episode is also brought to us by Juve. Juve makes medical grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast, it is the incredible impact that light can have on our biology.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Now, in addition to sunlight, red light and near infrared light sources have been shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health, including faster muscle recovery, improved skin health and wound healing, improvements in acne, reduced pain and inflammation, even mitochondrial function and improving vision itself.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Even though I've never tried modafinil provigil, that people that I know who have, and I know one who has for treatment of real narcolepsy, so he's narcoleptic, but others who take it for ADHD and for work focus and cognitive enhancement, People who take modafinil and are modafinil really like it.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
What sets Juve lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy device is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning specific wavelengths of red light and near infrared light in combination to trigger the optimal seller adaptations. Personally, I use the Juve whole body panel about three to four times a week. And I use the Juve handheld light both at home and when I travel.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
I don't know if it has any reinforcing property, but today is the first that I've heard that it has this dopaminergic aspect. But they seem to really like it and rely on it. Have you seen a kind of a dependence form?
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
What about within the category of Adderall, Vyvanse, and the stimulant type treatments for ADHD? I don't want to say what are your go-to favorites because that makes it sound very non-clinical. But You know, what are the general trends that you've observed and that others have observed clinically or in any studies about preference for long acting drugs versus shorter acting drugs?
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
And maybe this is also a good opportunity for you to be able to chime in about drug holidays, you know, taking weekends off or things of that sort.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
If you'd like to try Juve, you can go to Juve, spelled J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman. Juve is offering an exclusive discount to all Huberman Lab listeners with up to $400 off Juve products. Again, that's Juve, spelled J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman to get up to $400 off.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
I'm fascinated by this relationship between kind of optimal structure and difficulty or at least optimal structure versus having some margins for exploration at one's job. I realize it's very difficult to throw out kind of pan statements about what sorts of work and professions are going to be best for people with ADHD.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
He tells us how to test that idea and potentially how to fix it. By the end of today's episode, you'll understand what stimulants do, the possible origins of ADHD in both kids and adults, and both the behavioral and drug treatments and non-prescription approaches to overcoming brain fog and focus challenges.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
They're not feeling too jarred, too revved up. Yeah, we don't really have a language for these things, right? Hence the bad speed language before cracked out, bad speed, smooth. Yeah. Because what we're talking about here is the gestalt of the subjective experience of all these neural and chemical mechanisms. Very interesting. Thank you for sharing that.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
In your clinical observation, can you perhaps point us to kind of clusters of professions where people with ADHD tend to gravitate toward because they have sufficient or even hyper proficiency there? Like would we say like the creative arts where, you know, as long as they can get themselves to the theater, they tend to do well when
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
I know that there are a lot of listeners and viewers who have tried these things or are considering or at one point used them. And a lot has evolved in this realm of chemistry for ADHD. But that's very helpful. Yeah. Before we wrap up, I want to make sure that I ask you about something that's been on my mind a lot in general, but in particular as it relates to ADHD, which is time perception.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
And I'm basically obsessed with time perception. I've long been fascinated by the fact that we can find slice time. When our arousal is high, that's what presumably gives people the kind of slow motion effect in very stressful environments versus when we're relaxed, our frame rate on life goes down and it's all very dynamic. It's important our brains are able to do that.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
But someone recently told me the following. Her partner has ADHD and she said that the big rescue to their relationship came when they together read a book about ADHD and something in there read something like this, that people without ADHD keep track of time, whereas people with ADHD don't, but they do know the difference between now and not now, but they're not tracking time.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
They know that what they're doing in the moment is not what they're going to be doing later or what they did in the past, but they're not tracking time the same way. And I think this ties back to this interest-based attention system. What do we know about time perception in ADHD And by extension, do you think that these drugs are working in part to change time perception?
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Improv, I'm using extreme kind of almost silly examples, but those are professions indeed, versus a job where people have quote unquote banker's hours, where it's nine to five. I could see that being an advantage, also being very difficult. And of course, or accounting where literally decimal points matter and every, Every digit counts. So are there sort of clusters?
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Thank you for those reflections. Really, I want to say thank you on behalf of myself and everyone listening and watching for doing the work you do. You were invited here today because you have an absolutely encyclopedic understanding and knowledge of ADHD and the clinical treatments. And I've watched your YouTube channel and we'll provide links to all your various resources.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
I'm looking forward to your upcoming book, however long it takes. I'm sure it'll be spectacular. different angles, behavioral, supplement-based, nutrition, life and organizational, life organizational aspects. And of course the medication, the pharmacology, the neuroscience, and the ways that those different nodes interact with one another, because of course they do.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
So I just want to be absolutely clear how grateful we are for sharing all this knowledge. A lot of people struggle with attention issues, regardless of whether or not they have a full-blown ADHD or not. A lot of people have been treated for it. Some people are still wondering if they should be or not. And so today's discussion was nothing short of spectacular.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
So on behalf of everybody, I want to just thank you for doing what you do and for coming here to educate us. Thank you so much. Thanks. I'm gobsmacked. So Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. John Cruz. To learn more about his work, please see the links in the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel.
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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. In addition, please click follow for the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube.
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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
I do read all the comments. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body.
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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.
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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
So that's Instagram X, formerly known as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Threads. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as what we call protocols in the form of one to three page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure.
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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter, and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody.
Huberman Lab
Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse
Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. John Kruse. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Pavel Satsulin. Pavel Satsulin is considered one of the premier strength training and fitness coaches in the world.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
I'm a fan of dips. I like dips a lot. I heard you say that some years ago, you said that you were using dips for economy of time. And I started getting into dips. I Um, haven't quite figured out the best way to load dips once, because once you get past 15, 20 repetitions of the body weight dip, it gets, I don't know, it turns into something else. Sure.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Love it. There seems to be an over-reliance nowadays on pre-workout stimulants. I'm a big consumer of caffeine in the form of yerba mate and coffee. I'm old school that way. Not that I won't. Yeah. You still drink coffee every day?
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
These days there's a lot of emphasis on just trying to get as absolutely wired and geared up for training. And I think that in part contributes to why people feel this post-exercise fatigue. They hit the gym hard after a pre-workout and then they're doing their post-workout shake and a bunch of – carbohydrates to replenish their glycogen.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
And then of course, two hours later, you want to take a nap. I mean, it's amazing. Anyone could study or do anything at that point. I think that's very different than the kind of training you're describing. So I'd love your thoughts on stimulants generally and how they can support or hinder performance. And I'm also curious about
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Just what's lost in that model in terms of learning how to cycle one's energy up and down. You know, several times today you've mentioned this thing of the ability to relax the muscles and relax the nervous system in between sets, maybe even in between reps, who knows.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Yeah. So maybe we talk about stimulants. Before we started today, we were talking about when stimulants can actually hinder performance, when they can help. And then maybe we talk about the cycling of tension and relaxation. Because I look at training physically as a as a venue for exploring nervous system function and control over nervous system generally that one can apply elsewhere.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
So that's the kind of theme I'll just roll out onto the table.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Uh, it turns into aerobic exercise perhaps.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
I do think that pursuing strength as its own thing, independent of muscle growth, which we hear so much about these days, everyone wants hypertrophy, grow muscle, this and that. Pursuing strength as its own thing is a tremendously valuable endeavor. Today, you're going to learn how from the world's premier expert in this topic. You're in for a very special episode with Pavel Satsulin.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
I'm trying to stay in the lower rep range today. I'll talk about this with you more because I think a growing number of people, both men and women who are starting to do weight training or really incorporate strength training into their program are seeking a combination of strength and perhaps endurance as well without putting on too much size. Maybe size in some select body parts.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Would you mind before we go to the next question, if I just share with you a result that I just wanted to plant in your brain, because I've been excited to tell you about this, because it's new results from the field of neuroscience that I don't think anyone's discussed anywhere, but I think you might find interesting for your... sake of discussion here, but also- Thank you, Andrew.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Looking forward to it. I didn't do this study. I wish I had. The study, very briefly, is interested in the neural basis of choking, not choking someone out or not anything else related to choking, but when one feels that the stakes are really high and suddenly ability falls away. What is that?
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
So what they did is they developed this game where essentially the potential payoff in this game while recording from neurons in the brain is either low, medium, or very high, or the occasional jackpot. Like you could just win the whole thing. And the payoff is very, very considerable. Then they looked at the amount of upper motor neuron recruitment.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
So essentially the areas of the brain that drive coordinated muscular behavior or action. And what they found is that it basically scales with the level of reward. So you get more neuronal engagement as the reward scales up. However, every time the jackpot was offered, it over-engages too many motor neurons. And so this notion of like choking when the stakes are really, really high.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
It's like spillover of like it's like too much. We could call it too much excitement, but it's not adrenaline in this case, although that's probably associated with it. But you think, oh, great, you know, I'm going to get an award. I'm going to get a bigger award, even bigger award. Okay. Oh, my goodness. This could change everything. And all of a sudden, performance just tanks.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
And so it turns out it's a brain thing at the level of over-recruitment, which just speaks to this idea of being able to maintain arousal within a certain range. Yeah. is an essential skill to any performer. I just thought I'd share that because it's a fun set of results. And since I was a little kid, if I learned something, I have to share it with somebody who I think might care.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
So if ever people wonder about why people choke, it is hyperarousal at the level of the brain, apparently not so much the body.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
I love this concept of just learning to push on the accelerator, push on the brake, and to play with disinhibition as a First person to come on this podcast, even among the neuroscientists I've spoken with, to talk about disinhibition. Really? Thank you for bringing that up.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
That's a beautiful concept and an important one for how we function.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Do you recommend actually avoiding training to muscular failure?
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
The neurons are trained to complete the execution of the movement.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
The crossovers between physical training and mental pursuits are astonishing to me. As we're talking about this, avoiding going to failure, I'm in the process of writing my first book. I know you've written several books, and I'm finding it to be very different than anything else I've ever done. And the experienced writers tell me that you should end on a Thank you. Thank you very much.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
What about specialized training for grip strength? I believe that if somebody's large, if they can squat 500 pounds, if they can deadlift 600 pounds, I don't really care. The question is, can you open the pickle jar? Sure. This is a critical home test.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
I I
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Yeah, I completely agree. These are inspiring stories, truly inspiring. People of all ages should pay attention. It's not done in one leap. There's the progressive nature to it. And I think not training to failure is resurfacing in my mind now as we have this discussion. You know, the idea isn't to grind. It's to just grease the groove, get in there and do it as a practice.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Actually, I'm going to change my language around this. I realize that when I call it a practice as a noun... it's not as effective as practice as a verb. I'm going to practice. Okay. Not that just for me, this is just my own internal thing.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
You know, my neuroses insist that I share this, but I do think that semantics are important as you pointed out before, because it has a lot to do with how we feel about ourselves and what we think we're capable of. It starts with being inspired to try something, but also like I didn't grow up in a particularly athletic family. You know, not, none of us are,
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
unathletic, but I didn't think I could be, you know, reasonably strong, have decent endurance, and I wouldn't consider myself an athlete by any stretch. You're being too modest. But my consistency. I have confidence in. If I bite down into something, there's a good chance I'm going to do it for the next 30 years.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
So folks in your 20s and 30s get going on it now, and we'll have a podcast in a couple of decades to check back. Send us a note or put in the comments. I'd love to talk about body weight training. I love, love, love the book Naked Warrior. Thank you.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
I got that book initially because in the early days of starting my laboratory, I was traveling a ton, and I didn't always have access to gyms, and I wanted to try and grease the groove when I arrived in my room in the middle of the night in Germany or whatever. Um, I still have not succeeded in doing pistol squats on both legs. So one is I have some dominant and weakness, uh, as it were.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Um, but I, without any natural strength ability, uh, to speak of, uh, was able to learn one arm pushups, um, uh, one arm pull ups. I'm not there now. I have to return to that level of, of upper body strength. Um, but. It's remarkable what one can do with body weight training. And you describe some really beautiful progressions in the book. I highly recommend this book, folks.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
So maybe we could just take the push-up as an example and a handstand push-up as the extreme of that, right? What I love so much about that book is, for instance, you talk about doing a push-up against a wall is trivially easy for most people. Doing a handstand push-up freestanding, very difficult.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
But there's a series of progressions in between that maybe you could describe to us that once you realize that, oh, I can work through this over time. And if I'm not in a rush to get through it and I just do these a few times a week or more, or a few times a day, a few times a week or more, I could do a handstand push-up freestanding or a pistol squat or a one-arm push-up or a one-arm pull-up.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
It's not outside one's reach at all. Absolutely. Yeah. So could you fill in some of the gaps? So getting people to think about the kind of physics of this and the principles behind it. It's such a valuable system and one that is a lot of fun too.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
He is truly in a class all his own when it comes to fitness and strength training. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
I haven't explored kettlebell training so much. Whenever I've tried the standard kettlebell swing, just kind of if there is such a thing, but, you know, between the legs, two-handed kettlebell swing, I tended to get some right side lower back pain, medial glute thing. And I'm sure I'm not doing it correctly. And I...
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Interesting. I started incorporating farmer's carries thinking it was going to improve my grip.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
I'm going to have a few questions in the upcoming months about kettlebells. I'll try not to bother you too many times, but I'll, I'll be happy to answer them. Thank you. I'll use the course as a guide, but I'm determined to, to derive some of these benefits of kettlebells because kettlebells have been around me for, for over a decade now.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
And I, I just haven't quite taken to them, not through some aversion, but I'm going to approach it correctly. I love the body weight work. The body weight work. I don't know. Maybe it's, takes me back to PE class when I was in high school or something, when we do these fit tests.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
It's usually some pull-ups and push-ups, a reach and a run or something like that, like a straight-legged toe reach, who knows if it's a meaningful metric. But in any case, something so satisfying about going from struggling with push-ups to being able to do a one-arm push-up or something like that. And you describe it in how to make that progression in the book.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
It is awesome. And I love that strength training, resistance training is starting to really make a showing here in the U.S. and the general public. I think it's one of the best things to happen in the last few years. And this discussion, your knowledge is going to put even more momentum behind that.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Yeah. Amen to that. And I appreciate you highlighting the London cab drivers experiment. Your knowledge of neuroscience is truly impressive. You're way too generous. Thank you. No, it's true. No other guest on here has discussed long-term depression, which it's... My dad said, Andrew, you know something my dad taught me early on?
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Kids and young people training. I don't know what the going word is now as to whether or not there's a, you know, too young to what, to resistance train age. You know, some people say there isn't, um, When I was growing up, it was thought that if you squatted heavy or you deadlifted heavy before you reached your natural limits of your height, that it could, quote unquote, stunt your growth.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
I'd like your comments on that. But based on what we were just talking about, it seems that if a young person is interested in developing a super skill in one area, one sport, okay. But there's a real trade-off to that. And perhaps what we should do as kids is a little bit of soccer, a little bit of swimming. Sure. A little bit of gymnastics seems like a wonderful all-around sport.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Maybe a little archery. Try a bunch of things, some ballet.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Yeah. And psychologically sometimes too. We had a guest on here who's, uh, become a psychologist, but she was a concert level, uh, violin player then injured her finger. And it was like the most devastating thing. You know, when we put all of our sort of identity into one thing, um, sure you get your Michael Jordans and you get your, uh,
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
30%.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Yeah, previous guests, you may know him, Josh Waitzkin of, you know, chess prodigy fame, he's gone on to do several things at world class level by severing from the previous endeavor completely. He hasn't picked up a chess piece since he was 16, which is remarkable, pivoting to other things.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
But when one looks at the data on child prodigies, very few of them are like Josh, most of them don't actually succeed in doing anything else at a very high level, except
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
hopefully survive and thrive in their personal life, who knows, after being ultra successful as a young child, probably because their nervous system is so, you know, they grease the groove so heavily for one endeavor, it's very hard to cross over. Josh is exceptional in that regard. Well, exceptions prove the rule usually. Exactly.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Um, not to say too mechanical and specific, but I'd love to talk about abdominal or rather core work. Sure. Uh, another thing that I love in the naked warrior are the abdominal exercises. I must tell you, um, after years of doing some crunches here and there in different, you know, for whatever this class or that class are trying to,
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
I never really cared about having my abs defined for its own sake. One should probably be able to at least contract their abs, okay?
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Right, right, right, exactly. But there's some wonderful exercises in there about learning to brace the entire body and some- dare I say, some rather unorthodox ways of assessing stability at the level of the core. I'm thinking about the plank where somebody tries to either kick you over or push you over. This might sound violent. This is not where you start, folks.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
But I never thought I could do like hanging pikes, for instance. Now pikes are a standard part of my weekly routine. I love doing five sets of five of hanging pikes. Great, great. And And I will tell anyone that decides to go down this path that when I first tried to do a pike, I failed miserably.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
That's a heavy kettlebell. 30% of your body weight? Yeah, I mean, I'm 210 pounds.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
I tried an L-sit, failed miserably, tried to hang from the bar and just getting into a chair position and could just barely hold that. The progressions are what matter, right? Slow progression and patience. Now, five sets of five pikes, trivial for me. But I just want to emphasize that when I started... I was far, far away from that.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
And it's the progressions in the book that really helped me and I've maintained that pike ability. So thank you for that. And I say not to necessarily to highlight what I can do, but that to highlight what I do believe most anybody can do. If you put the work in.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Pavel Satsulin. Pavel Satsulin, welcome.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Thank you.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
pass you know switch hands off and then eventually build up to running and obviously build up gradually held like a suitcase yes only only like a suitcase okay yeah there's a podcast um led by a guy named cam haynes he's a bow hunter he's one of the people that really brought extreme fitness and ultras to the sport of bow hunting and is legendary there and for his podcast he has you carry the 72 pound rock up it's about a thousand feet of elevation in the oregon wilderness and
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Thank you.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
I've done it. It's hard because of the shape of the thing. And so you're moving it from shoulder to, you know, to football carry to, you know, infant carry. And you're not talking about that. You're talking about suitcase on the right.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Thank you. Thank you.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Are you trying to crush the grip while you're doing it?
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
And you're running at 10, 20 minutes, 30 minutes?
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Yep. Pavel, I must say, this has been a spectacular voyage through.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Thank you. And I'm going to just embarrass you a little bit further by telling you more positive things about you. Because I noticed it makes you uncomfortable. It's perhaps the only thing that makes you uncomfortable. But in all seriousness, I can't sense any discomfort. I want to just thank you for a number of things that are reflective, I'm sure, of what other people are thinking.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
First of all, the level of rigor that you've approached this whole thing of strength and fitness and flexibility and breathing and every one of these topics, too many to list off just now. It's remarkable. It's really fantastic.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
This comes through, and it's rare these days, but it's rare in any age to find people that are so dedicated to this level of rigor. in a given area. And it's so appreciated.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Yeah, we really, we need people like you. You're truly a scientist and a practitioner. You embody the principles that you discuss clearly, which is also important.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Russians don't blush? No. No, got it. A topic for another podcast. So the rigor and the quality of the information that you put forth in your books and on this podcast and elsewhere, your online course is just absolutely spectacular. And I hope people noticed. I couldn't help but notice as an academic.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Your attention to proper attribution for people that have done the work and accomplished the various feats from whom you've gleaned various aspects of this knowledge is not to be overlooked because that's something that's so lacking these days. It's remarkable and it's important to highlight.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Yeah, it should go without saying, but it doesn't. These days it's more about who can glean the most attention as opposed to shed light on others and their work. And in doing so, as we've observed, absolutely nothing is lost and so much is gained. It's for everybody. So thank you. That's a proper attribution is spectacular.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
And I really look forward to sharing the resources where people can learn more. But already today, you've just provided such a wealth of knowledge for us. It's a real honor to sit here with you and to learn from you. I plan to listen to this podcast several times over and take detailed notes. We timestamp it all. And I just hope that we'll have the opportunity at some point to sit down again.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
And as well, perhaps, to get the opportunity to train together. So I personally could learn from you. But in the meantime, on behalf of myself and everyone listening and watching. Thank you ever so much, Pavel.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Thank you. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Pavel Satsoulin. I hope you found it to be as interesting and as actionable as I did. To learn more about Pavel's work, including his books, his online courses, and other resources, please see the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
That's a terrific zero-cost way to support us. In addition, please click follow for the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
I do read all the comments. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
So that's Instagram X, formerly known as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Threads. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as what we call protocols in the form of one to three page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Pavel Satsulin. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Thank you. Likewise. Thank you. I will say that you and perhaps one other person have truly changed the way that I think about fitness, the way that I train, and I'm super excited to talk to you today. So I'm withholding excitement. There are a bunch of different ways to think about this thing that we call fitness, strength, endurance, hypertrophy, and there's so much information out there now.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
The motor neuron recruitment that you are describing is phenomenal. I have one reflection on this relationship between grip strength and longevity, just a little bit of neuroscience. You may be familiar with this, so forgive me if you are, but for the listeners as well. the motor neurons that control movement of the torso lie closer to the midline on both sides of the spinal cord.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
The motor neurons that are responsible for more distal muscles, that is further from the midline, sit outside of those. And so as you get out to the movement of the digits, you know, the fingers and toes, those are the most distal from the midline. The rate and pattern of degeneration of motor neurons as a function of aging
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
even if there's no ALS or Alzheimer's or Parkinson's or anything, is always outside in. We don't know why this is. It may relate to the presence of the enzyme SOD, superoxide dimutase. But it does seem that people that train their peripheral strength, they can offset some of that outside to in or distal to more close to the midline degeneration. So
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
I believe, and this is just a belief, that it's not just correlative, that when one trains their periphery, they actually can offset some of the degeneration. It's also the way it's mapped in the brain, which is kind of a discussion outside of here. We need to get some diagrams up for people to really conceptualize that.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
But it's also the case if you look at older people, 70, 80, 90, their calves are generally atrophied even if their torso is still very thick and muscular. if they did training. So I feel like obviously training the core and the torso is so key, but training the peripheral muscles, at least from the perspective of longevity, it makes sense why that would be important.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
I'm going to try this running with the kettlebell on one side. I'll go out for a mile with it on the right. Oh, no, no.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
I'd like to talk about concentric versus eccentric portions of a movement, concentric generally being the lifting phase and eccentric, of course, folks, the lowering phase. Is there a case for just doing concentric movements? Yes. Is there a case for emphasizing the eccentric portion? How does one balance those when thinking about soreness recovery and frequency of training?
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
How do you conceptualize fitness? Meaning, do you look at things through the lens of, are we focused on nervous system, bone, connective tissue, or muscle? Do you look at things through the lens of anterior chain, posterior chain, hypertrophy, strength? I would just like to get your sort of high-level conceptualization of this thing that we call fitness
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
with the idea in mind that most people would like to have some level of endurance, some level of strength, and feel healthy, and presumably look however they want to look. But let's set aesthetics aside for the moment. How do you think about this thing we call fitness?
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
He has pioneered the development of various programs to improve strength, which he calls the mother of all fitness. Indeed, today you will learn about strength as a practice, as a skill that can be applied to sports, that can be applied to general fitness, to getting leaner, to getting faster, and to improving your endurance.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Thank you.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
I suppose if someone has access to the appropriate equipment at home, you could incorporate grease the groove into your entire day.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
I've been eager to share with you some recent findings that are not my own, but that I think you might be curious about and that I think most people hopefully will be curious about as well.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
It's not greasing the groove specifically, but it provides a at least partial mechanistic understanding of how particular types of physical movement with this high motor neuron and attentional engagement can generate high levels of alertness that can be devoted to, as you say, writing the great American novel, perhaps.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
There's a guy at the University of Pittsburgh named Peter Strick, who for the first time started to map the connections between the adrenals and the brain. And he was able to do this using some really cool technology. The basic takeaway is the following, adrenaline released from the adrenals, as some of
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
the listeners may know, doesn't cross the blood brain barrier, but it turns out it binds to receptors on the vagus, which then stimulates noradrenaline in the brain and provides this increase in alertness. So then the question is, how do you get your adrenals engaged? You know, we can sit here and we can do a staring competition, which I'll lose for certain.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
But, you know, there are all sorts of psychological tools. We get, you know, caffeine, et cetera. There are all sorts of ways to get cold water. But it turns out what Peter found was that there are particular locations in the motor cortex that that send basically a two-synapse connection, dysynaptic connection directly to the adrenals.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
And the areas of motor cortex that engage the adrenals cause them to release adrenaline.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
But just by sheer movement of particular muscle groups, or the core, as you were talking about before, like bracing the core, causes the release of adrenaline, which then via the vagus causes the brainstem area to release more adrenaline, wake up the whole brain essentially, increase learning and performance in anything.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
As well, the stronger and stronger activation of the motor neurons, deliberate activation of the motor neurons, seems to engage adrenaline release. Now, to me, this was a wonderful way of trying to persuade people that they have internal control over this thing that we call motivation, that movement itself can increase adrenaline, which can increase the tendency to want to move.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
And I'd like to talk about that. But I think I and so many other people were kind of raised and conditioned, at least in this country, to think, oh, if I want to increase my level of motivation, I need to like, I don't know, watch an inspiring video. That could be great. Or I can drink caffeine or an energy drink. And certainly that will do it.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
But to me, the discovery that particular movements and particular muscles being engaged in activity itself changes the neurochemical milieu. I mean, of course it had to be, right? It's a big duh. But I think that, anyway, I was excited to share with you these data. I didn't discover them. That is news to me. So I read The Naked Warrior. I was closed when I read it.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
But it's a wonderful book because it talks about body weight only exercises. And this concept of, for instance, like trying to crush one's fist on, you know, making a really strong fist on the other side and how that will increase your – your gripping ability on the other side, this kind of thing.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Yeah, so when you talk about doing a set of three or four repetitions or two to three repetitions at about 85% or 80% of one rep max, waiting 10 minutes and in the intervening 10 minutes going and trying to learn something important or physical or cognitive. This makes perfect sense to me because of the relationship of adrenaline, but also the way that you're...
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
the entire nervous system has changed in the intervening period.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Yeah. The unconscious genius aspect of it is so cool. And of course, I don't want to be disparaging of common gym programs these days, but I do feel like the way that most people train... I'll do that for you. Yeah, you'll do that. Yeah.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
The way that most people train in terms of thinking, okay, I'm going to hit the gym three, four times a week, or I'm going to train chest one day and chest and biceps. While that has some value, I feel like for creating all around strength and hypertrophy, there's just such a...
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
incredible treasure trove of other things that you're sharing with us today that, that are just not discussed as much because people don't take the lens of the nervous system component. One, one thing that I'd love to ask about the nervous system in terms of training, adaptation and recovery is that I was weaned somewhat under the, uh, thought patterns of Mike Menser.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
This was in the Dorian Yates era. And I knew Mike a little bit. I paid for a consult with him over the phone. We So that had my mother asking, you know, why is this grown man calling our home? And why are you – in the old days, you had to wire somebody money. So I do. But it was so worthwhile because Mike taught me that the goal of training was to induce an adaptation.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Anything additional was not necessary. And in his case, he felt was counterproductive. Very infrequent training, et cetera. And it worked tremendously well to take me from like 150 pounds to 210 pounds, which I had no – need to do, but my body just reacted like crazy.
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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
But then again, I was 16, 17, and 18 years old in that time, probably could have done any number of different things and experienced similar results. Who knows? But the concept, of course, is that you train to induce an adaptation, then you rest, and then you allow the adaptation to serve the moving higher poundages in good form, this sort of thing.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
The problem, however, is that, and Menser highlighted this, is that training of any kind, running, lifting, etc., taxes both the nervous system as a whole and the muscles locally and the connective tissue. How should we think about training and recovery?
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
So when you describe grease the groove, I could imagine if I had a home set up or I'm going to the gym, I could maybe do four or five rounds of this training, but at some point it becomes counterproductive. Wow, a lot of great questions. I'm just trying to think about how to schedule this sort of thing, keeping in mind that the nervous system fatigues as a whole.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
And then there's also the issue of local muscle fatigue or even the propensity for injury if you just overdo it. Sure. Yeah. So if we could just riff on this.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
As Pavel Satsulin explains, by building one's strength through body weight exercises, free weight exercises, and occasionally machines, one can develop incredible levels of fitness at any age. We discussed some of the spectacular examples of people in their 70s and 80s performing strength feats like 100 pull-ups per week. And we emphasize that one does not have to be seeking hypertrophy.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
What movements do you believe, if they exist, all people should include in their weekly routine someplace when thinking about how to develop, perhaps maintain, but for most people it's going to be the goal of still achieving some strength. Okay. Strength increase, excuse me.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
So for every month, you're training two weeks hard. The other ones, you're cruising, you're... Not as hard.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Nobody takes two, three months off these days.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need, but nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, all in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish cognitive and physical performance. it's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are vital for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or your nerve cells.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Drinking element dissolved in water makes it extremely easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes. To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and therefore losing a lot of water and electrolytes. They have a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. They have watermelon, citrus, et cetera. Frankly, I love them all.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
And now that we're in the winter months in the Northern hemisphere, Element has their chocolate medley flavors back in stock. I really like the chocolate flavors, especially the chocolate mint when it's heated up, so you put it in hot water, and that's a great way to replenish electrolytes and hydrate, especially when it's cold and dry outside, when hydration is especially critical.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. Today's episode is also brought to us by Juve. Juve makes medical grade red light therapy devices.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Now, if there's one thing that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast, it is the incredible impact that light can have on our biology. Now, in addition to sunlight, red light and near infrared light sources
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
have been shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health, including faster muscle recovery, improved skin health and wound healing, improvements in acne, reduced pain and inflammation, even mitochondrial function and improving vision itself.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
What sets Juve Lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy device is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning specific wavelengths of red light and near infrared light in combination to trigger the optimal cellular adaptations. Personally, I use the Juve whole body panel about three to four times a week. And I use the Juve handheld light both at home and when I travel.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
If you'd like to try Juve, you can go to Juve spelled J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman. Juve is offering an exclusive discount to all Huberman Lab listeners with up to $400 off Juve products. Again, that's Juve spelled J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman to get up to $400 off.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
based on what you just told us about Franco's training and the rest, seems that shorter training cycles might be advantageous, even just conceptually and practically. Like I've tended to break up my year into 12 to 16 week training cycles, been doing that for a long time.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
And now that I'm 49, this is the year that I decided I was going to start modifying my training a bit because certain little things aren't working for me as well. You might laugh, I'm actually curious whether or not you'll laugh. I switched at some point to using the belt squat, these belt squat platforms. I just feel like that.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Yeah. The belt squat is essentially you stand on a platform. So you're on, unfortunately you're on display for everybody there, but that's not why I do it. You step up onto a platform. Sometimes it's called a pitch shark. Rogue makes a belt squat. There are other ones, of course, have no relation to any of those companies.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
And you wear a big, thick lifting belt, but it's kind of sagging in the front as if you were going to attach a weight to it. But you attach yourself to it. Usually it's a cable or a lever. between your legs sounds scary, but that lever or cable can drop below the level of the platform you're standing on. And you can load up quite a bit of weight on this.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
What I love about it is, um, you can get, uh, very vertical if you want, or just a little bit of forward tilt, cause you can place your fingers on the, on the handles. You can grip them if you like the point being, there's a lot of degrees of freedom in terms of stance and, um, I like that you're not loading the shoulders. I, you know, I don't want to sound like a wuss, but I'll do it.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
You know, I, I moved from standard squats, back squats to front squats, then to hack squats. And then now I've been playing around a lot with the belt squat and really enjoying it because you can go really deep, can blast out of the bottom position. You can load up lots of plates on there if you have the strength to do so without the,
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
feeling that you're just compressing your whole spine or worrying about dropping the weight. So I'm enjoying working with it. I love your thoughts on belt squats. True.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
But in general, I am hearing you and I'm thinking that moving away from this 12 to 16 week cycles is going to be advantageous because what I'm finding is that it's hard to account for life events in that way and plan training and travel and all this, but four weeks is kind of a manageable thing. This month, This is what I'm going to do. And of course, the months work together.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
The body doesn't know the difference between February and March, as it were.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
It does, right. Exactly. The seasonal cycles are real elsewhere. But I'm thinking shorter training cycles might be a strong conceptual and practical framework. And yeah, I'd love your thoughts on both of those. The belt squat or legwork that's non-spine compressing. Mm-hmm. and shorter training cycles as a general theme that people might think of incorporating into their training.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Oh, I love that you said that. I barely touched machines early on in my training, dare I say, call it a career. But I've been doing it for more than 30 years, so I'll call it a – It's a good run. Yeah, it's a decent run.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
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Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
And the bar, for those listening, not watching, is cradled in the crooks of the elbows in front of the body. Are the arms crossed?
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
One does not have to be seeking getting larger muscles in order to get exceptionally strong. I myself these days am focusing primarily on trying to get stronger and build endurance for sake of health and for general life reasons. And because getting really strong turns out to be very beneficial. in every aspect of life. Today, you're going to learn how to get extremely strong.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
I see. So sprint, perhaps, 100, 200, 300, 400 meters, and then jog back?
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Every set, between every set. The 11th rep, I joke. People checking their phones.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
And what sort of exercise? This is not sprints. This would be kettlebell swings, for instance.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Because this 30 seconds is hard. Yes. You're pushing.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Maui Nui Venison. Maui Nui Venison is the most nutrient dense and delicious red meat available. Now I've spoken before on this podcast with several expert guests on nutrition about the fact that most of us should be getting one gram of quality protein per pound of body weight every single day.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Now, not only does that protein provide critical building blocks for things like muscle repair and synthesis, but also for your overall metabolism and health. Eating enough quality protein each day is also a terrific way to stave off hunger and reduce sugar cravings. One of the key things, however, is to make sure that you get enough quality protein without ingesting too many calories.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Maui Nui venison has an extremely high quality protein per calorie ratio. so that getting one gram of protein per pound of body weight is both easy and doesn't cause you to ingest an excess of calories. Also, Maui Nui venison is extremely delicious. They have venison steaks, ground venison, and venison bone broth. They also have a terrific venison jerky that's super convenient.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
I probably eat a Maui Nui venison burger pretty much every day, and I'll swap that for a Maui Nui steak every once in a while, and I'll snack on the jerky whenever I need extra protein and I don't have time for a full meal. Right now, Maui Nui is offering Huberman podcast listeners a limited collection of my favorite cuts of venison and their products.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
It's perfect for anyone looking to improve their diet with delicious, high-quality protein. Supplies are limited, so make sure to go to mauinuivenison.com slash Huberman to get access to this high-quality venison today. Again, that's mauinuivenison.com slash Huberman. What should I do during my rest periods?
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Interesting. I used to think that I would have this recurring sort of lower back hip thing that I finally feel is under control. And I used to think that it correlated with travel and something about maybe not sleeping as well and traveling perhaps. But what I've noticed is even if I just sit too much after training my legs hard, I end up with this back issue.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
So just moving to a standing desk configuration after training legs, irrespective of travel, has really helped. And I think, I mean, nowadays there's all this excitement about walking. I don't know if you, you know, I don't know how much time you spend on social media, but like walking is the new thing for 2024. You know, people discovered walking to lower, you know, post-meal blood glucose.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
I mean, all stuff that was intuitive, great thing to do. We'll see what happens in 2025, what the new thing is, right? And I'm a fan of walking, but in no small part because it just feels like it loosens up everything after training. And I like to train early in the day if possible. And I notice a dramatic reduction in kind of aches and strains.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Anything into extension.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Wow.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
So yeah, that's... My Scandinavian relatives will chuckle at that. I feel like one of the... Again, I'm not trying to point out the ills of the fitness culture, but I feel like if I were to put up on a wall...
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
the two or three things that have caused the most confusion and, you know, reduction in people's potential results from fitness would be seeking the pump as its own thing and seeking soreness as its own thing. And then confusing panting hard and sweating a lot with intensity.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
You know, I feel like those three things, you know, people think I had a great workout or my new trainer is, you know, I finished just completely depleted, you know, this, and then these are the same people that are complaining about an injury or they quit or they don't have the motivation because
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
You know, they're not taking whatever pre-workout is required to generate that kind of quote unquote intensity. I'm not looking for agreement, but would you agree or disagree? I agree.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
And then maybe by comparison, we could sort of throw up on the wall the things that we should be seeking when we train, as opposed to these kind of... You know, before I answer this question, since we're talking about the peripheral adaptations, you made a great point about seeking pump.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
It seems like this is a repeating theme. And by the way, thank you for spelling that out. So for people that perhaps want to try something like this, and I intend to, four exercises. Three. Three exercises, excuse me, done each at roughly 70% of your one repetition maximum. So what you could do for about 12 repetitions, but you're only doing three repetitions. Rest a minute in between exercises.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
And so this could be a Zurcher squat, pull up, dip, deadlift or something like that.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Okay, and this is going to increase endurance, right? but is also going to increase strength somewhat.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Eight Sleep makes it very easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to program the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
You can add muscle if you want in parallel with that, or as Pavel Satsulin explains, you can pursue strength and flexibility for their own sake. And there's tremendous value for doing so. So today's discussion pertains to women, to men and frankly, to people of all ages.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation of the Pod Cover called the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity. I find that very useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night, and warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Thank you.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
It also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring. If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
whether or not one's talking about high volume or low volume or endurance or strength, quality, quality, quality.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Everything else is potentially detrimental and frankly has added a lot of confusion to the fitness literature where people, I think, they're doing five sets of five or do I do 10 sets of 10? And if I may, this isn't my field of expertise, but
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Today's episode is also brought to us by Levels. Levels is a program that lets you see how different foods affect your health by giving you real time feedback on your diet using a continuous glucose monitor. One of the most important factors in both your short and long term health is your body's ability to manage blood glucose or blood sugar to maintain energy and focus throughout the day.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
again, having been in and around it for a while, I feel like the message that keeps coming through that's going to deliver the results is every single repetition, high quality. The rest period, high quality. Whatever that may be, walking around, shaking it off. The structuring of the program, high quality.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
I think people are far too haphazard and seeking the pump and soreness and some sweat so that they can have their post-workout shake. Well, I'm not trying to be. And a selfie. And a selfie between every set. And just kind of check the box.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Even for people that aren't competitive athletes, I think there's just such an enormous range of things to be gleaned from taking one's fitness training seriously. Even the word fitness is kind of a strange word. Training seriously, right? I've never even called it a workout. I think I picked that up from Mensa. You train. Or you practice. Or you practice. I like that very much.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
I also like the distinction between students and clients. That's a very – these are not just labels. I think they really – No, they're really not. Change our cognitive frame.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Okay, so while one could use resistance training in order to generate strength and endurance, you explained how to do that, there are a good number of people out there, including myself, that sometimes like to get outside for a run or to hike, as you mentioned earlier about the rucksack.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
I'm not such a fan of the rucksack because of being pitched forward, but I like this idea of carrying the kettlebell and switching sides. Nowadays, they also have some weight vests that are a little bit more close to the body that distribute the weight better. What are your thoughts about going into the gym in order to do the strength training and then generating the endurance work elsewhere?
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
You want to keep your blood glucose steady without big spikes or crashes. I first started using levels about three years ago as a way to understand how different foods impacted my blood glucose levels.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
To be blunt, like how would one combine lifting and running in a way that allows one to get stronger and develop endurance, perhaps simultaneously?
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
And it's proven incredibly informative for determining my food choices when I eat specific foods and how I time eating relative to things like my workouts, both weight training and cardiovascular training, things like running and when to eat before I go to sleep to allow for the most stable blood sugar throughout the night. Indeed, using Levels has helped shape my entire schedule.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Yeah, I like the fill an hour. I don't think I've ever spent more than an hour of actual work in the gym, maybe 75 minutes or so. I notice if I train longer than that, I pay a serious price in terms of post-exercise fatigue later in the day. I'd actually like to talk about this concept. I looked it up before sitting down today.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
There's a little bit of literature starting to emerge, not as much as I would like, about post-exercise cholinergic depletion. You know, so much of our ability to hold our attention is dependent on epinephrine, norepinephrine, and acetylcholine release in the brain. And of course, muscular contractions, acetylcholine being the dominant transmitter from nerve to muscle communication.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
But this idea that if we exercise too intensely, or even if we just do cognitive work that's very intense for a period of time, that there's this post-exercise cholinergic depletion, and then we get this what people typically call brain fog, although that's not a real medical term.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
So if you're interested in learning more about Levels and trying a CGM yourself, you can go to levels.link slash Huberman. Levels has just launched a new CGM sensor that is smaller and has even better tracking than before. Right now, they're also offering an additional two free months of membership.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
So I think from the practical standpoint, a lot of people who would like to train more for strength, train more often for strength, do strength and endurance work, The challenge sometimes isn't just scheduling it. It's that we feel depleted and tired afterward. Have you observed this? And is there a way to use strength training or other forms of training to improve cognitive function?
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Because, you know, again, as you pointed out, only compromise is not solutions. But I do see a world in which one could use their physical training to give them a, for lack of a better word, a boost into the day. So you're getting stronger. You're developing your health. And you're also able to then lean into your day with more focus and intention. That would be the ultimate scenario.
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
Again, that's levels.link spelled L-I-N-K slash Huberman to try the new sensor and two free months of membership. would a combination across the week of some sort of squat, let's say the Zurcher squat, perhaps a kettlebell swing or something else for a posterior chain, pull up and dip be a fairly comprehensive program?
Huberman Lab
The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline
I think it's a terrific answer. I like to leave the gym with some gas in the tank because, well, I get paid to think and to speak, as it were, not to lift, but
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Mark Brackett. Dr. Mark Brackett is a professor of psychology at Yale University and the director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
And we talk about emotional intelligence, which it turns out can be increased at any stage of life. So by the end of today's discussion, you will be armed with a tremendous amount of new knowledge and many new tools, many new protocols that you can immediately apply in your life in order to improve your relationship to yourself and to others.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
So connecting the feeling and the reason for the feeling. Correct. As opposed to just labeling the field. Yeah, you need to know why. It's the why that you really have to deal with. How do you feel about emojis? From everything you're saying, they seem like more than benign to me. Yeah, same. I mean, I could imagine that the emojification of culture, as I refer to it.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
I don't think that's a real word. It's all right. It is now. Set up a Wikipedia page tomorrow. Emojification. is a serious problem because it's what we call in science too much lumping. In science we have lumpers and splitters, right? And both can have fabulous careers, but if you lump too much or split too much, you create more confusion and you often create problems.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
And I just see emojis as lumping this incredible set of different continuums within us that we call emotions into literally a small icon. And I can imagine this would lead to all sorts of problems, not just in communication, but in understanding our own emotions. Put differently, do you think that the use of emojis has degraded our level of emotional intelligence and processing?
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Yeah, I mean, right off the cuff, I'll just say, you know, I'm familiar with both of those feelings. I know they're different. I can sense their difference. I mean, but the disappointment piece... Yeah, it could be directed outward or inward. I'd have to work systematically through until I found a violation of one or the other.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is BetterHelp.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
So where an example applied to one and not the other, and it would take me a few minutes, longer than I want this audience to have to wait. There you go.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years. I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise. Now, there are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First of all,
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. AG1 is designed to cover all of your foundational nutritional needs, and it tastes great. Now, I've been drinking AG1 since 2012, and I started doing that at a time when my budget for supplements was really limited.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
In fact, I only had enough money back then to purchase one supplement, and I'm so glad that I made that supplement AG1. The reason for that is even though I strive to eat most of my foods from whole foods and minimally processed foods, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits, vegetables, vitamins, and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
And I need to do that in order to ensure that I have enough energy throughout the day, I sleep well at night, and keep my immune system strong. But when I take AG1 daily, I find that all aspects of my health, my physical health, my mental health, and my performance, both cognitive and physical, are better.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
I know that because I've had lapses when I didn't take AG1 and I certainly felt the difference. I also notice, and this makes perfect sense given the relationship between the gut microbiome and the brain, that when I regularly take AG1, which for me means a serving in the morning or mid-morning and again later in the afternoon or evening, that I have more mental clarity and more mental energy.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer. You said that disappointment is when one does everything essentially correctly, meaning gave the approval.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
It provides good rapport with somebody that you can trust and talk to about the issues that are most critical to you. Second of all, it can provide support in the form of emotional support or directed guidance.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
as much effort as they could, et cetera, and it didn't work out. Versus anger, which is perceived injustice. Would you say that your response to not getting your yellow belt then, because as a fifth degree black belt now, clearly you got that yellow belt eventually. I want to hear that part of the story too. That you were experiencing anger, in this case, could we even call it inappropriate anger?
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Simply inappropriate because what you experienced really needed to understand was this notion of disappointment, but no one had taught it to you.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
And third, expert therapy should provide insights, insights that are useful in allowing you not just to feel better in your emotional life, in your relationship life, but of course, to be better, to be better in terms of the relationship to yourself, your professional life, and to others, and of course, to things like your career goals.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Yeah, online emojis and, you know, downward facing thumbs versus upward facing thumbs and this kind of thing and, you know, vomit emojis and things like that. Mind blown. I'm starting to realize that these may be doing far more harm than we realize.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
I'm thinking of instances where people are just using these with the intention of expressing their – But that the people on the receiving end experience a lot of self-criticism as a consequence, mostly kids, but adults too. And I know some adults that really can't handle somebody commenting on their Instagram posts like, big L or something like that. It's devastating for people.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Or nope, or this kind of thing. It's also interesting because I see it even in the academic community, especially on Twitter, X, where I know that, sure, people reject each other's papers, critique each other's papers, but they do that with a degree of, um, intellectual nuance that, um, transmits a sense of care, right? If scientists really care, then they're going to do a careful review.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Um, as much as we would all love the, this is a perfect paper. That's it. Um, no critique. When somebody critiques something that we do with, um, with an attention to detail, provided it's fair, we, we feel cared for. Totally. They care for the work and we care for the work.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
And so there's a, there's a relationship there, even if it's an anonymous review, but I'm shocked to see how, um, scientific colleagues I've known for decades, um, really how they comport themselves online. Like they'll swear, they'll come out, you know, they won't bother to punctuate things. They'll just sort of behave in a very, what seems to be a very activated way.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Not all of them, of course, but it's been very interesting. The words that come to mind are, I feel like online, especially on social media, The kids are acting like adults and the adults are acting like children. And so there seems to be a kind of regression toward what I'm calling the emojification or the kind of high amplitude expression with blunt tools.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
With BetterHelp, they make it very easy for you to find an expert therapist with whom you have these critical components of therapy. Also, because BetterHelp allows for therapy to be done entirely online, it's very time efficient and easy to fit into your busy schedule with no commuting to a therapist's office or looking for parking or sitting in a waiting room.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
I don't know what that is because I know these people, the reason I'm using the academic community as an example, by the way, it's cost some of these people their jobs, chairs of departments, not at Stanford or Yale, fortunately. But it's kind of striking to me the way that when we remove the face-to-face connection, when people will behave that way. And I use the
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
a parallel example of anonymous review because there it's anonymous. So in theory, they could behave however they want, but there's an etiquette. So it seems like online etiquette is very deprived of many of the important features that you're starting to lay out for us here.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Politicians sort of open themselves up to it. Yeah, they do. Public-facing people in general, I've heard, open themselves up to it. But politicians in particular, I think we sort of give the general public a pass to say almost anything about them. But it's not pretty.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
If you'd like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating and sleep tracking capacity.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
I perceive it as evacutive. I look at that and I think, gosh, what they must feel inside to be able to say those things can't be good. But maybe it feels good to them. I don't know. I don't think I've ever made a negative comment. If I have, someone can call me out on it. Hopefully it was in sarcasm with a friend as the target and they were okay with it or happy with it.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
But I don't know what internal, emotional, or psychological state it would take to go say something cruel to somebody online.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Can we provide a counterexample? for the anger versus disappointment that's on the positive valence side. What's a positive set of feelings that people often conflate?
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
I'm getting Fs all around. Good thing I became a biologist. Ecstatic and elated.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
And so I'm good at this.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Now, I've spoken many times before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night. One of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to control the temperature of your sleeping environment. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Sorry to interrupt, but as soon as you describe contentment that way, and thank you for parsing those two, very useful to me. As soon as you describe contentment that way, I imagine, waking up and rather than thinking about what needs to be done and the things I want to achieve, which I want to achieve, they bring me joy. Throw in a third word there just to confuse myself.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
This notion of contentment, the way that you described, I could see might lead me to pay attention to how good it feels to have gotten some sleep. I sleep well most nights, but what a privilege that is. And to maybe feel the comfort of the comforter and the mattress for a moment before barging into the day. to chase happiness, as it were.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Because you somehow feel like you're not living up to some standard.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Here's where I get to appropriately make a joke about, because before we started, we were talking about East Coast schools versus West Coast schools. I was like, maybe you come West and that'll change, or maybe you're right where you belong there at the also phenomenal university that is Yale. But anyway, that's kind of inside ball stuff. East Coast University is amazing.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Midwest University is amazing. West Coast University is amazing. Different perceived temperaments, but for sure. And styles, just look at the walking speeds, for instance, not just the weather, but yeah, you raise a very important point. We have a member of our podcast team that is like always in a great mood. He's always in a great mood. And it is for me, a reminder to be in a better mood. I'm,
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Not somebody that I would say gets, I'm not moody. I don't change moods quickly, but I wouldn't say that my disposition is to be like Tigger-like and just happy all the time. But his energy around that doesn't drain me, but it makes me wish I was him.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees. Eight Sleep makes it incredibly easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to program the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
He is one of the world's foremost experts on emotions, meaning what emotions are and how they regulate our relationship to ourself and others. Today's discussion gets heavily into how we should think about our emotions and the emotional expressions of others and when and how we should regulate those emotions.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
those things are readily available within less than a mile of here. We can point you in the right direction. It sounds lovely. The introversion, extroversion bit is going to prick up people's ears. It certainly did mine. I like time alone. I also like time alone in the presence of many people. In fact, I get my best work done always either alone in nature,
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
or in Manhattan, where there are people around me, but I'm completely isolated. I love that too. So how should we think about introversion and extroversion? These things get thrown around so much in popular culture. Are there some solid scientific studies that support that introversion can best be defined as blank and extroversion as blank? And I'm guessing there's a range there.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for well over three years now, and it has completely transformed my sleep for the better. Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation pod cover, the Pod 4 Ultra.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
It's got to be on a continuum. It can't be two bins.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
You seem very outgoing.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity, higher fidelity sleep tracking technology, and it also has snoring detection that remarkably will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring. If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, you can go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
When you say you don't necessarily like people that much, I realize you're joking. And I was just going to make sure to ask because I can't presume. That doesn't mean that you dislike people. It's just that being in the presence of a lot of people doesn't draw you out to want to be closer to or get to know all these people simply because they're there.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Whereas an extrovert seems to really like forming and engaging in new relationships, old relationships, all relationships, relating.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Interesting. When I think of throwing a great party and I've thrown a few, what I like to think were great parties, it involves inviting a bunch of people over and then being able to stand back from a lot of it and not have to participate in all of it. I just like seeing friends that didn't know each other start to interact. That's cool. That's fun for me.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
And then if I have to communicate directly with too many people at the party, I would definitely feel drained. I'm known to retreat to a room and take a nap or disappear. Yeah, so maybe you are more introverted. Yeah, I think so. Rick Rubin, who's world-renowned for his creative insights and – creativity and for being Rick.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
I think once said on a podcast perhaps, or maybe he said this to me, that Tom Petty was the sort of person that basically didn't do anything besides write music and read books and interact with the small number of people in his inner circle. And the idea of leaving the house was just completely overwhelming to him.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Now, of course, people were always approaching him, but like really, really extreme introvert. Whereas Rick has described, and I won't name names here, um, other famous people, musicians and otherwise that. go out specifically to try and get the attention of fame. And if they don't, they feel absolutely isolated. Makes sense.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Even though they have people in their private life, it becomes a kind of extroversion requirement. I would imagine life is much harder for the extrovert in the long run because there's just so much need there.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Eight Sleep currently ships to the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman. I'm excited to share that I'll be speaking at a health summit called Eudaimonia, taking place in West Palm Beach, Florida, this November 1st, 2024, through the 3rd of November, 2024.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
In that case, do you cold call on people? Whenever I'm teaching, I'm somewhat reluctant to cold call on people because I recall it can be terrifying. when suddenly you're sitting there taking notes, trying to, you know, organize your thoughts around the material, and then suddenly, you know, the whole room's looking at you.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
And on the wrong side of the road.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Eudaimonia is an in-person event that offers science-backed tools, live fitness classes, and a range of treatments and protocols to optimize your physical and your mental health. I'll be giving a keynote talk with none other than Dr. Gabrielle Lyon on Saturday. As some of you may know, she's a former guest on the Huberman Lab podcast and has a terrific podcast of her own.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Super important. And by the way, my joke about driving on the wrong side of the road, I do realize that we drive on the wrong side of the road for Australians and those in the UK. So I'll do the touche for you. I'd like to take a brief break to thank one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Now I and others on the podcast have talked a lot about the critical importance of hydration for proper brain and bodily function. Research shows that even a slight degree of dehydration can really diminish cognitive and physical performance.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes in order for your body and brain to function at their best. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium are critical for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or nerve cells.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise I'm doing, especially on hot days if I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman, spelled drinkelement.com slash Huberman, to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Text messaging is an interesting example of communication that nowadays, depending on how many people have access to your phone number, can either feel like a wonderful source of filling the gaps on trains and while in transit and while walking to the car, perhaps, hopefully not while driving, although people seem to do that. And yet for the introvert, I can imagine that it might feel inundating.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
It might feel kind of overwhelming. How do you feel about text messages? Because it's just yet another form of communication. I asked this for a very particular reason. I could imagine that extroverts love to text message. They love to receive and send text messages, that they can't stand a moment of downtime before boarding a plane. They're
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
They're excited that there's yet another form of communication at all hours of the day and night, whereas introverts would be less excited to text message. I also asked this in part because I want to protect the variable latency to respond to text option that I've tried to exercise in my life. But that seems to, well, doesn't really seem to work.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
That's going to be on November 2nd, and we will discuss all things neuroscience and neuroplasticity. We'll talk about some of the benefits and protocols related to cognition and mood and much more.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
I think most people assume, you know, if I walk up to you and I say hello and you wait 10 minutes to say hello back, I'll first think you're a little bit rude and then think you're a little strange. Whereas if I text you hello and I don't hear back right away, I might think you're busy. There's some wiggle room for interpretation, but I think...
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
What I'm really getting at here is do we tend to project the same latency expectation on text that we ourselves embrace? This seems like an important source of potential miscommunication, misunderstanding, and maybe worse.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Yes, I'm happy to say it 100 times. No, because I mean, I feel this wash of like, relief and now I'm looking for the appropriate word because I'm talking to you. So I feel like I have to use the exact appropriate word. I feel, I feel emancipated because I also feel that as texting has become more routine and has crossed a number of different lines of formality and informality, right?
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Not just with family members, but with coworkers and people we do and don't know and just met and have known for ages and You know, the jargon that we use with one group is different than the jargon we use with another. But I feel that texting in general has really degraded our ability to communicate verbally and in writing elsewhere.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Also presenting at Eudaimonia are other excellent scientists and clinicians who've appeared on the Huberman Lab podcast, including Dr. Sarah Gottfried, Dr. Zachary Knight, and Dr. Robin Carthart-Harris, along with nearly 70 other experts. To see the full lineup of speakers and topics and to register, visit eudaimonia.net, spelled E-U-D-E-M-O-N-I-A dot net.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Forgive me. I'm going to interrupt you too. I have no idea what it's like to be a teenager in 2024. So I caught myself. I have no place saying weird because there were things that I was doing as a teenager that I'm sure adults were like, that's weird. So I take that back. But if you think about how...
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
That's an awesome friend.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Yeah, I think this is such an important topic. I think because texting is so common and has been used to, you know, communicate so many different forms of human emotion in this broad bin format, I mean, how much can you really put into a text? I have some... friends and coworkers. And you can voice text. Which is like, then it's like. Right. Right. It's long.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
And sometimes, well, there are issues with that too. I feel like it's enriched compared to texting, unless the text is carefully written out, punctuated. I mean, we can see the care that people put into certain texts or emails that they tip, and most people, including myself, don't, right? Texting is a short form of communication. Audio notes, voice memos seem like a step up.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
I think what this has probably done is that it's made the phone call or the goodness, the handwritten card or letter, it's kind of raised that to the The pinnacle of care of expression. Completely.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Yeah, I didn't outright set this rule in my relationships, but I would say with my coworkers, family members, and in other kinds of relationships, there's a rule, which is that we don't argue over text.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
It's sure to be a terrific gathering, and I hope to see you there. And now for my discussion with Dr. Mark Brackett. Dr. Mark Brackett, welcome. Thank you. Great to be here. I'm excited to talk to you today about many things related to emotions. We hear the word emotions and we have all sorts of ideas about what they are, what they aren't.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
But people do it a lot.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
You and I are both aware that there is neural real estate specifically dedicated to the processing of faces and specifically to the processing of human faces and specifically to the processing of the emotions. carried in human facial expressions. So, you know, this is a hardwired aspect to our species.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Wild. Can we talk about the energy pleasantness axes? Sure. And create a mental picture for people of what this is. I found this to be incredibly useful. If listeners or viewers have a pen or pencil and paper, you could map this out, but it's very easy to imagine in your mind. So maybe you could just tell us on the vertical axis.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Okay, so vertical axis is energy.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
We also hear about emotional intelligence quite a lot these days. And I have a feeling that the way it's discussed is often not the way it really is. So to just kick things off, Could you clarify for me, for everyone, what is emotional intelligence? What does it pertain to? And then maybe we can use that as a way to drill into the deeper question of what are emotions?
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Wow. Maybe the next generations coming up are far more emotionally intelligent than ours, if I may.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
I was going to ask, how do we resolve the contradiction between the message to feel our feelings versus to just recognize that the feelings are moving through us as this five-year-old gosh was and is able to do. Because I feel like it gets to the heart of a lot of what we hear in the psychological and wellness space, which is feelings are just feelings. They're transient.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
They represent all sorts of things. And we can get to the biological underpinnings or the childhood trauma root cause underpinnings, all sorts of things, genetics for that matter. Should we feel our feelings in order to best recognize them? I would imagine yes. Is there any value to suppressing our feelings or does that tend to just grow the feeling?
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
What is known about this from the research literature? Because you see a lot of different opinions about this, but I'd like to know, have there been any experiments where people are placed into a negative or positive situation? emotion or are experiencing a negative or positive emotion and then intentionally try to suppress it?
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Has there been any brain imaging and measurement of galvanic skin response? Like, does the emotion grow or does the emotion shrink?
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
This is a very important aspect of our life because, as we all know, emotions are present with us from the moment we are born until the moment we die. So much like having a body, we need to learn how to work with our emotions in order to have the best quality of life. We all know that we are supposed to pay attention to our emotions, but at the same time, we are often told that we shouldn't
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Um, I'm guessing empathically attuned.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Um, although that's a, for those that know empathy is a, is a, involves a bunch of subcategories. So I want to acknowledge that pathically attuned. Um, I'm guessing that they have themselves some high, high emotional intelligence. Um, and the third is, um, gosh, I, my hope is that there be a, a, uh, high situational awareness.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Right. Because your uncle needed to see something subtle in your facial expression, or maybe not so subtle, but everyone else was missing it. But yeah, But to be able to detect that there was something that really needed – it was like a silent cry for help.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
It's kind of going right by her.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
So if I were to take an emotional intelligence test, would it have me looking at pictures of facial expressions, Would it have me reading paragraphs about emotional exchanges and gauging who felt what and why and how, that sort of thing?
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
This is actually where my next question was going. So I'll just ask the question in the form of an answer. Is this like Jeopardy? I guess that's what you do. No, it's the other way around at Jeopardy. Sorry, you can see how many episodes of Jeopardy I've watched. That if people don't have adequate emotional boundaries and they are maybe even too empathically attuned
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
that someone they care about experiencing anger or sadness or frustration, maybe even with them, would shift their own emotions and not make them able to be available with the three qualities that you listed off before, in particular non-judgment, because now it's personal. And so it would undermine the process.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
It's actually the case that we don't have the time to be judgmental. It's far too energetically costly.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Those cappuccino machines can be scary.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to laugh. I laughed before you said it was a mess. I just, your impression of the question, it's a. Maybe it drew to mind some experiences of mine.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
In thinking about people that can really help us by asking us the right questions or in thinking about how we can ask people the right questions to really help them and us gain an understanding of what they're experiencing. I'm recalling numerous instances in my life where there seemed to be the requirement for an excuse, like an activity excuse.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
I currently have a very good relationship with my father, but I remember when there was a time where we had to talk about science or watches as an entry point to any conversation, let alone about emotions, right? And he's done a lot of work. I've done a lot of work. And I like to think we're much, we are much further down the road.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
We enjoy a very close relationship as a consequence of that work in part. But I think what you're describing really makes me realize that no matter who anybody is or what their age or what their background is, that as human beings, we don't just need permission, but we really should think about just having a conversation about how
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
others feel as opposed to making an activity a prerequisite for that conversation. And as I say this, I realize some people are probably thinking, oh boy, okay, so we're just going to sit around and talk about our feelings.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
But my short response to that is yes, because when you don't do that, then I can say from experience, then pretty soon you're not participating in those activities with that person and potentially with anybody. I mean, I'm not saying that people become so unpleasant to themselves and others that they don't have any friends. I mean, okay, that's an extreme case.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
But what I hear in the backdrop of everything you're saying is that it's not just about an education. It's really about a practice of giving ourselves and others permission to simply have a conversation about what one is feeling. as an exercise for both people to be able to explore that in the correct way. And there is a correct way. And you've described the ruler approach as one correct way.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
When I think about most uses of the words emotional intelligence, it seems to correlate, again, in a very non-scientific way, seems to correlate with one's ability to tolerate others' emotions and make sense of the emotions of others. For instance, I've heard it said before, not about me, that so-and-so has high emotional intelligence.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
I'm letting that really sink in because, you know, I think these days we hear a lot about therapy. Fortunately, in my opinion, I think and I'm going to get the numbers only crudely right, but they're certainly in the right direction and amplitude.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
There was a survey done, I believe, at Stanford asking students how willing they would be to seek therapy if they were dealing with an emotionally trying time. And this was in the, I think, early and mid-90s. And the numbers that came back were very low, somewhere in the teens or 20% of students polled. Whereas nowadays, it's in excess of 80% or 90%. Very high. Yeah.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
And I think that's representative of a lot of- Actually, can I give you another example of this?
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Is this a pre-med course?
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Okay. This is general undergrad. That was a joke against pre-meds. Love the pre-meds, but they are very grade conscious.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Of journaling about stress? Yeah.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Because in the presence of their child or someone else's kid reacting in a You're describing emotional intelligence as a self-perception as well. Yes.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Your joke about envy reduction is something I take very seriously. We did a four episode series with Dr. Paul Conti, who's a world expert in psychiatry. He's a psychiatrist and among the very, very best psychiatrists in the world by many accounts. And he discussed during that series, but also on other podcasts he's appeared in, such as my friend Lex Friedman's podcast that
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Envy is actually at the root of much of the evil in the world, small scale evil, large scale evil, and a lot of the despair that people feel. And I think it's a word that isn't discussed enough because like the sound of it is, it's kind of gross, right? Envious, envy, nobody wants to be associated with it. But fortunately,
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Dr. Conti described it as a natural human emotion in some cases, but I had no idea, and I don't know if he knows, but maybe he does through his clinical work, but I'll certainly pass along what you just said to him, that so much of the stress that I have to imagine good people, and these students are, after all, I imagine good people, they're not evil.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Not characterologically evil, let's hope, are experiencing envy. The wish to have more of what somebody else has, maybe something specific, which of course gets to these more common phrases of people feeling that they are not enough. Yeah. Which is going back to contentment. Right. Actually, oh, I didn't draw the arrow. Now I thought I drew the arrow. Between contentment and envy. Right.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
So if one wants to combat envy, you can imagine that a program to combat envy might be perceived, if one didn't understand it, as a calling for people to just be content with less, which is not what we want, right? I mean, we want ambitious people in the world. We want people aspiring. We want people to have growth mindset.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
And yet we don't want people to be stressed and have a pervasive feeling of envy inside either. So how would you make inroads into envy?
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
How does that differ? Sorry to turn your own work back on you from admiration or inspiration. Like, wow, they, you know, like the... Yeah, that's what I'm getting at.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
And so is our task, therefore, to do the equivalent of what, in my little anecdote, this other person was doing, to be able to parse one's own emotions in a fine enough way to understand the experience in kind of a third-person way that one can regulate their behavior, what they say, how they act?
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
That's all regulation. Conflict resolution is something that I think a lot about in any situation where emotions are discussed. And it brings me back to this earlier situation you were talking about where This woman said that she was going to find her child somebody to help him to intervene. And you were thinking, well, why not you?
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Right, exactly. And now there's a whole field of feelings mentors cropping up. That actually wouldn't be such a bad thing.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
That wouldn't be such a bad thing. Say it louder. I like that goal. Yeah. So when we were talking about that, one of the things that surfaced was this notion that some people have a natural empathic attunement or the emotion that the other person is feeling is a negative one and it's about us or about them.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
And as a consequence, you know, we're not able to really be present to help the person the way that you helped your dad. Like he was frustrated with his wife. Yes. Had he been frustrated with you, it might be a little bit – little bit more challenging to say, hey, well, dad, maybe what you're experiencing in terms of your frustration with me is actually blank.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Yeah, because you're now in a tether with them. So to what extent is empathic attunement a positive trait? Are there people who are better at turning it off or directing it in appropriate ways than others? In a previous podcast that I did recently, somebody sitting right there in that chair told me, and I believe them, that I am codependent. It's the first time anyone's ever called me that.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Codependent. She defined it, she spelled it out, and it, in a very parsimoniously Wei explained a huge array of challenges that I've experienced to the point where I've been learning more about codependency. All right. Okay. Not easy for me to say even now. We're all interdependent. Interdependent, yeah.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Certainly depending on others is important, but certain patterns fall well under the umbrella of codependency. So I was like, okay. And even now I'm uncomfortable talking about it, which is part of the reason I'm trying to desensitize myself to the word itself, let alone drill into the process of getting through it. So-
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
How much is recognition of others' emotions and understanding of those as opposed to what is recognition and understanding of their own emotions factoring into this thing that we call emotional intelligence?
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
The point being that if our emotions are so strongly tethered to others, we see that as empathy. We label that typically as positive, but it really diminishes our ability to be there for people if their emotions are negative and about us. I disagree. Okay, great.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Do we know where in the brain empathy resides? We hear so much about mirror neurons, but I think for those of us that have been in neuroscience and psychology long enough, we acknowledge, yes, there are appropriate conversations that include the words mirror neurons, but that they've been made out to be much more than perhaps they are in terms of empathy.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
And they've become sort of the default description for all forms of empathy and understanding. And it's not just that. So what do we know about the brain science of empathy? Yeah.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Yeah, I keep hearing that the way to do this properly is to ask questions. As opposed to telling people what they need to do. Your friend or this person who was an effective source of support in that moment said, you know, can you get in the hot air balloon and look down on your life? Yeah. get in the hot air balloon for a second and then do this.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
As a former partner of mine said, who I'm still on great terms with, no one likes to be shifted. Yeah, no one wants to be told what to do. Right, no one wants to be shifted. No one, no matter what state they're in, high or low, wants somebody to come along and try and shift them. Or just tell them like, you know, go for a walk. Okay, well, why am I, you know, like, to do what? Or meditate.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
That one's become equally grating when it's probably a great thing to do, but perhaps there's a different way posed in the form of a question that would be more effective. I think the hot air balloon example also brings to mind something. I'll try and keep this as succinct as possible for your sake and for the audience sake.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
take all of our emotions seriously, nor should we react to all of our emotions with behaviors. And indeed, that is true.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
But, you know, having studied stress a bit in my laboratory and experienced a lot of stress, as most people have in their lifetime, it's very clear that when we stress our mental aperture, our visual aperture, our auditory aperture, everything shrinks, right? It contracts. And we know that getting a different spatial perspective gives us a different temporal perspective.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
We can start thinking about our life binned in larger pieces and get that perspective of the things that in life or that are going well. There's a meditation that I guess it's a meditation, I don't know what to call it, that I started doing years ago when I was a junior professor because life was so stressful for tenure.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
And little did I know that it just continues to be stressful, but a pleasure to do the work. That involves basically doing a standard type meditation for a few breaths of closing my eyes and focusing on my body and what's going on internally, but then opening my eyes and focusing on something external like my hand or the room, and then going to the pale blue dot It's a very wide aperture.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
So effectively the hot air balloon looking down.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Distancing, right. And making this a practice, not in a moment of stress, but each morning as I start the day, as a kind of reminder that our brains, our cognition and our emotions go through tremendous state differentiation, like these complete, we're kind of different people under these different space-time references.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
And that when we're in stress, we tend to get locked into one space-time reference. And I'm not trying to be cosmic about this, but the nature of stress is to have us anchor to the stressor.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
And to put up mental walls to break out of that and physical walls. So it sounds like great supporters and we can help ourselves through the more unpleasant portions of the emotion scale if we want to by taking ourselves into this different perspective using spatial tools, hot air balloon, pale blue dot.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
While a lot of the stereotypes dating back to the, you know, let's just say in 1930s through to the end of the 1970s seemed to couch people as more stoic, less emotionally expressive, especially in public or with people that they weren't very close with. There was also a tendency, at least in movies about that time, for people who were passionate to be rewarded for expressions of their passion.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
So it's kind of two ends of the spectrum, right? We always think of the kind of the real stoic thing, both for male and female phenotypes, right? You look at movies from the 30s and 40s, you see that. But you also saw intense expression, passionate expression. And now I suppose we're in a bit of a new place where – I think there's an invitation.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
I like to think there's an invitation for a broader range of emotional expressions and phenotypes, let's call them. I'm a biologist after all. It's also a safe word to use still, I think. You can use the word phenotypes. Stereotypes is a bit loaded, a lot loaded. But emotionality and the notion of people being overly emotional has a unfortunately a bit of a negative tinge to it.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Whereas somebody being passionate, that sounds like a pretty good thing.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Maybe that's why my graduate advisor said, instead of telling you to be careful, I'll tell you to be mindful because the opposite of mindful is mindless, and then you'll remember.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
And yet we reward people still for being passionate, even if it's tinged with some anger. Like if somebody has a cause that they're really passionate about, we don't necessarily say they're being emotional. We say they're really passionate about this. There seems to be a subtle difference. There is.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
That maybe it's rooted in a kind of a trajectory of like trying to achieve a specific outcome, whereas just anger or sadness kind of just, you know, um, geysering out of us is it doesn't seem like it's directed towards an end point. Right.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
So given that we're both scientists interested in emotions, you're the expert. I'm also just the student today. I think it's worth pointing out to people that there isn't one location in the brain that governs this complex process that you just described. It's a network-wide phenomenon. But you did mention the body. You mentioned feeling. How is one feeling both in brain and body?
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
People gaslighting each other.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
What's been lacking, however, and what Dr. Mark Brackett finally delivers to us is a roadmap to think about our emotions in a very structured way and thereby to engage with our emotions, sometimes shift our emotions, and certainly to understand the emotional expressions of others in ways that best serve our quality of life.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
In your book, you include a number of really wonderful quotes, but one of them that I anchored to very quickly is the following. All learning has an emotional base. And it was none other than Plato that said that. What is the relationship between emotions and learning and decision-making?
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
To what extent does somebody who has high emotional intelligence – have more or less body awareness or somatic awareness as opposed to somebody who's quote unquote in their head. Put differently, can somebody who's very much in their head who has very poor body awareness have high emotional intelligence?
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Yeah, your examples bring me back to your earlier mention of this brilliant five-year-old kid who realized that his current emotional state was like the weather. It's going to change. In order to have that perspective, my guess is that he had to have already at some point moved from the blue quadrant.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
So low energy, low pleasantness to the green quadrant, high pleasantness, low energy to the yellow quadrant, perhaps not in this order. And yes, I'm using this to remind people about the quadrants, higher energy, higher pleasantness, and then red, high energy, low pleasantness. Yes.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
And you've developed an app that's freely available, um, that allows people to essentially, um, press the screen. Um, is that right? Yes. And to denote where they are on this, um, energy versus pleasantness, um, scale at numerous times throughout the day and night, if they choose, we'll provide a link to this app.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Yeah. I've used it before and a previous version. I need to update and get the new version. And I will, um, I found it to be immensely useful just to start thinking about emotions along this energy versus pleasantness axis.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
After one does this for a few days or weeks, maybe checking in and touching the app, I don't know, a couple of times a day, maybe again in the evening upon waking, what sort of data or information does one get back that can be informative toward Being a healthier, happier person, excuse me, a healthier person, more contented, more content.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Yeah. Amen to that. When I did an episode about gratitude, um, now some years ago, um, I was positively shocked to see the data that the data on gratitude practices are so striking in terms of whether or not one looks at neurotransmitter expression or, uh, whether one looks at, um, Happiness rating scales, as it were. Learning, ability to learn.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
So many things are improved by even short gratitude practices. And it was interesting for me to realize that not only do effective gratitude practices include thinking about what one has, but also in observing others expressing their own gratitude either towards us or towards others. So, you know, there's something about the human brain that really thrives on gratitude.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
And the other thing that I think is worth mentioning, you said these students could, through a gratitude practice, realize the opportunity that they have. I think a lot of people default to the assumption that a gratitude practice will make them complacent and stop seeking to reach their goals. But actually the opposite is true.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
There's a smaller research as far as I understand, maybe it's expanded in recent years, where if people do a regular gratitude practice, even five minutes a day, their achievement actually increases as well. So gratitude and complacency are not on, they're not in the same bin.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
So clearly you're on a mission and it's a wonderful, in fact, admirable one at that to bring more emotional awareness. Can we call it that? Emotional awareness to kids and to adults to better the world. I don't think I'm overreaching there. I think that's the goal. I'd like to get back to your origin story a bit. to understand a little bit more about the motivation behind the goal.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
You've written about in your book and you've spoken a little bit today about the fact that you were bullied pretty viciously. And also were the target of abuse. And when one thinks about bullying in particular, we, I think all hopefully naturally default to, okay, how can we stop bullies? But I'm guessing this is a two-sided issue. And I'm not trying to create empathy for bullies here.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
But I'm guessing that in order to really disintegrate the bullying problem down to zero, which would be the ultimate goal.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
That we need to get into the minds of both the bullied and the bullies. Correct. And as uncomfortable as that might be, maybe this is an opportunity to embrace some of the very practices that you've been talking about. So if you would, could you tell us a little bit about how, as a kid, how you perceived your bullies? I'm very curious about that.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
I can say I've never been bullied, but I've also not been a bully. I can easily say, I was thinking about this during our brief break there, I hate bullies. Like I like hate them. I'm like right there in the red, no pleasantness, like top, top corner there. Like it activates me physically. Like it makes me angry, makes me want to do something about it.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
But as somebody who was bullied, how did you perceive your bullies? Did you think they were like... correct or the authority? And how have you embraced whatever understanding that was and morphed it over time to be able to think about how to solve the bullying problem, both from the perspective of the bullied and the bully?
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Some years ago, I went to this course. It was, you know, broadly could be described as personal development. It was interesting. It was grounded in science and psychology. And each day would start with going around the circle as typically is done at these things. and you'd have to say how you feel, but you couldn't use a valuation. You couldn't say good or bad or so-so.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Yeah, that's part of the reason I asked the question. I mean, I was debating to myself whether or not I ask it in that way because I didn't want to come across as insensitive. No, I don't really care. Precisely because I have sat on neither side of the bullying equation that it's kind of a foreign thing to me. It also makes me realize, and especially now after what you just said,
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
And I found it very difficult. I found it difficult for a number of reasons. First of all, I don't think I was ever trained to use specific language for my feelings. In fact, I don't think I was ever trained to understand what feelings were. In fact, I don't neuroscientists and psychologists are still trying to figure out what feelings and emotions really are. So a couple of questions.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
that while I was in high school, I'm guessing there was a lot of bullying.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
You know, I had some friends that could definitely be classified as misfits. Yeah. And I, I think looking back, they hung out with my group of friends because we were definitely – we were into different things. We weren't – me, meaning my peers, grew up in the John Hughes film era where you had like the jocks versus the hippies versus the skateboarders versus the – The burnouts. Yeah, exactly.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
And I had my crowd and was friends with a number of people outside that crowd. But there were these kids that would hang around us that weren't into the same things that we were. And I am looking back and realizing now that they did it because they were definitely safe with us. And we could be a little scary if we wanted to be, but we weren't the type to go out and be scary.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
So I think they must have sent some safety with us. And I actually have very fond memories of those kids and know some of them still now. So yeah, I asked that way in part because I realized I missed a lot. Well, Lord knows I missed a lot of what was going on in high school for other reasons, but I just missed a lot of this. And I think even in academic culture as an adult,
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Not now, but I certainly witnessed bullying at meetings that was more demonstrative, where people would make fun of people in general in a way that I felt suppressed the likelihood that people would ask questions, which is a kind of different form of posturing and bullying, right? It makes students afraid to raise their hand and ask questions at meetings, for instance.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Even just working on humans is hard. For those of us that have worked on both animal models, which I no longer do, and humans, which I've done and do, working on humans is that much harder for all sorts of reasons. They're not on the same genetic background. You can't just put them in their cage, take them out, the same different like dark cycles. Some slept well, some didn't sleep well.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
I mean, there are issues with animal work as well. But yeah, just even embracing human work research at all is an immense challenge. So the idea that it would be viewed as soft is, I mean, that's just like laughable to me, but.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
When it comes to using language to describe our emotions, how important do you feel it is to have a broad buffet of options? A previous guest on this podcast, Lisa Feldman Barrett, and I talked about this a bit, and she mentioned that in some cultures, there's very specific language for specific emotions. In fact, there's even a word to describe the
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
feeling of sadness one has in a particular culture after getting a really bad haircut, which is incredible when one thinks about it. We all know what that feels like. Right. We know what it feels like. Right. But there isn't, to my knowledge- We don't have the word. A word for that in the English language.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
So today's discussion centers very heavily on scientific data that plays out in the real world that we can all use. We talk about conflict resolution. We talk about how to think about and work with emotions. We talk about bullying, both in children and in adults, how to deal with that sort of thing effectively.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
your description of confronting this bully. I don't even want to call them your colleague because there's nothing collegial. I agree.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
But more importantly, the fact that you were able to confront them is to me. And I think to anybody that hears that story, the definition of courage, you know, because it's in the moments where we feel like this big and we're collapsed on ourselves and we don't
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
know where the resources are and we don't have somebody sitting there like holding our shoulder saying, listen, I'm going to go talk to them or let's go talk to them that you, you, you did that for yourself. You, um, internalize the, um, the lessons you'd learned initially from your uncle.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Um, and brought that forward. And, um, I think anyone hearing that story, um, it's, it's obvious to them that, um, that is the, a great act of courage. And it's an inspirational one too.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
And a reminder that for people that are being bullied as adults as well, that it's important to calmly, but directly and firmly express, like you basically gave him a no, like a really strong, like, no, like you would to a puppy that was like putting itself in danger or something, except in this case, it's a human being who had agency. And so he needed a sharp, he needed to be punished slightly.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
I mean, I'm sure there's a curse word for it in the English language, but not necessarily for that specific feeling. Or unique to that specific feeling. So what is the relationship between language labels and emotion? And I ask that as a way to kind of wedge into the ruler approach, right?
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Well, certainly not rewarded. You're right. Punished isn't the right word. He certainly, whatever dopamine hit he got from that, that I think part of the intake was just needed that needed to be retracted. That needed to be taken away from him.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
And it occurred to me just now that you're effectively doing what your uncle did for you, but for millions and millions of people.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Because as you pointed out, one recognizes, understands labels, but the label is central, literally, to the ruler approach. It is. It is.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Well, it's absolutely clear to me that you're extremely passionate about this mission of teaching people what emotions are and how to work with them, giving them really clear systems to do that, tools that they can do that.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
I think it's fair to say that you answered your own question, in my opinion, if I may, that, you know, you through your Uncle Marvin to you and through the work that you do and through your public education effort, which includes your graciousness and coming here and sharing with us. what you know, um, what you believe people can benefit from.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
And I, it's absolutely clear to me that people can so benefit from these tools and what you put into your book, which does include some very personal things that, um, I must say are entirely couched toward the reader understanding and learning how they can make themselves and others and the world a better place. It's, um, it's really extraordinary.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
The, um, the rippling out effect, um, is not a sufficient way to describe it. It's really an enormous amplification of the hard work you've done. And I'm just really, really in awe of the fact that you've taken hard experiences and transmuted those into so much good. And so on behalf of myself and everyone listening and watching, I just want to extend an enormous debt of gratitude.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
This is truly important work. And I don't say that lightly. I really appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Mark Brackett. To learn more about his work and to find links to his book, Permission to Feel, which by the way I highly recommend, as well as other links to his laboratory and other resources, please see the links in the show note captions.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero-cost way to support us. Another terrific zero-cost way to support us is to follow the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or topics or guests you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
If you're not already following me on social media, I'm Huberman Lab on all social media channels. So that's Instagram X, formerly known as Twitter, Threads, Facebook and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content of the Huberman Lab podcast.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
Huberman Lab
How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as protocols in the form of brief one to three page PDFs, protocols that cover things like learning and neuroplasticity, how to optimize and regulate your dopamine, how to improve your sleep.
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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett
Again, all available, completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab, scroll down to newsletter and provide your email. And I should point out that we do not share your email with anybody thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion all about emotions with dr mark brackett and last but certainly not least thank you for your interest in science
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How to Improve Your Mobility, Posture & Flexibility | Dr. Kelly Starrett
Oh, my brother.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Matthew Hill. Dr. Matthew Hill is a professor of cell biology and anatomy at the University of Calgary.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
One, do you think that there are different subjective effects of different strains of cannabis that can be attributed to the different strains, right? Not just to individual differences in experience. And then the second is, do you think that...
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
there will ever be a time in which we can understand this plant, flower, right, to the extent that we can engineer it to provide specific subjective experiences, perhaps more positive than negative, et cetera. And then there's a third question, but I'll hold off.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Is it possible that there's a chemical profile that relates to the most common indicas or most common sativas?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Well, then that immediately to me negates the sort of premise of this paper that I was referring to that divides according to indica sativa. And yet the paper is also trying to distinguish among all the different types or products of cannabis. Meaning, is there some other feature of the cannabis plant that does relate to these different subjective effects? Because people do seem to
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
get different subjective effects from different products that relate in some way to things other than the concentration of THC.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
You mentioned effects of cannabis on appetite. And I know one of the medical uses of cannabis is in people that are undergoing treatment for cancer in order to stimulate appetite, because oftentimes they have
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
I mean- I see. So they purchase something that they think is going to make them calm and it makes them feel calm.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
It speaks to, you know, I did an episode on the placebo effect. And a lot of people hear placebo effect and they go, okay, well, then everything's a placebo. The placebo effect is amazing. There's dose response to the placebo effect of nicotine on cognition. Dose response.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
If you're told you got a high dose when you actually got a low dose, you will exhibit the high dose neurocognitive enhancement effect. And by brain imaging, it shows a high dose-like enhancement of the relevant brain areas. In other words, the expectancy drives changes in brain activity.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
very low or even no appetite due to the cancer treatment um is the mechanism by which cannabis can stimulate appetite known and if so um what is the general trend of effect makes people hungrier obviously but we hear again in um kind of uh recreational terms of people getting the munchies you know becoming exceedingly hungry is that related to some cannabis induced effect on say blood sugar like insulin or glucose regulation or is it happening at a different level
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Do you think this also explains the – lore or perhaps it's real that different alcohols produce different drunks. Um, you know, I mean, I've heard of, you know, I've, I've got friends who will swear that whiskey makes them feel aggressive and vodka, you know, is mellow and white tequilas feel different than, uh, than the other tequilas.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And, you know, for people listening to this, they go, okay, well, that's not science. I agree. That's not science. That's just anecdote. And yet, um, You know, the chemical composition of these different drinks is different, but ultimately we're talking about alcohol, right? Different sugar contents, you know, different hangover propensity.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
It's something for which we should all be very curious to try and understand what we know, what we don't know, and try and get to the real answers. So right off the bat on X, I invited Dr. Hill onto the podcast. and he accepted the invitation.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
So I think it's important that you explain that because I do think that, like— Well, that's what the data pointed to. But now what I'm realizing is that anytime we're talking about cannabis, because of the 70-plus cannabinoids present that could modify— or join, so work in parallel with the effects of THC, we're really talking about polypharmacology. It's not a pure substance.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
It's not like giving anandamide, or it's not like adjusting levels of endogenous anandamide. This raises, I think, an equally important issue for us to resolve, which is CBD, which we didn't talk about earlier. When Nolan Williams, who's a psychiatrist, He's one of these phenoms.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Triple board certified psychiatry, neurology, colleague of mine from Stanford School of Medicine, who mainly works in Ibogaine and transcranial magnetic stimulation. But we talked about cannabis a bit when he was on the podcast. And he mentioned a strain of cannabis that is available in Colorado, which is pure CBD. I think it's called Charlotte's Web. And the parents of children who have epilepsy-
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
will move there or go there just to get this strain because it seems to help their epileptic seizures.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Yeah. So the questions are, could you tell us a little bit about the biology of the CBD receptor, mainly as it relates to CB1 or not? Does it bind CB1 as well? If not, how is it working? And you mentioned that people will not report any subjective effect of taking a pure CBD compound, so lacking THC, but it sounds like it may have some usefulness for treatment of epilepsy.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And what are some other established, meaning clinical trials and or lab data, to support the use of CBD for any type of either psychiatric condition, pain, et cetera?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
You mean there's no CBD in there?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Oh, CBD. I mean, given the availability of CBD everywhere, in gummies and drinks, and I mean, you can get it in a... convenience store.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
I was under the impression that CBD also bound to the CB1 receptor. No, I mean, certainly not. Or that under some conditions, it can modulate the shape of the receptor to adjust THC binding. But now you're telling me that these two things rarely coexist together. So I guess the question- You can dose them.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
I thought the explanation for that was that CBD can modify the CB1 receptor in some way that makes THC less able to engage with the THC receptor.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
It doesn't sound like you're particularly convinced by that evidence. I'm looking at the look on your face for those listening. I'm looking at Matt, and I think he's being generous here. Let me ask it a little differently.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Does anyone know what CBD binds to?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
So that should make people feel more alert.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Caffeine. Of caffeine.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
The way you're describing this, it sounds like the anti-caffeine.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Given the effects on adenosine that you described before, that it's sort of what we're calling, just for sake of discussion, the anti-caffeine adenosine. how do we explain the preponderance of CBD added to energy drinks that also contain caffeine? There's like no logic there.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
There you go. Everything can't be expectancy bias. I have a feeling it's going to be interesting to see in the comment section on YouTube. I mean, presumably there's some regular pot smokers listening to this. And the expectancy bias is so strong, as I allude to in the placebo episode and we've been talking about here. And yet it's so strong that I think
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Although cannabis users everywhere use that argument.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
people will also be convinced that there are real differences between different strains because they've maybe done the, you know, non-formal blind, you know, someone gave them their weed and someone else, and then they got a completely different effect, right? They're not expecting something different necessarily in a particular direction, but they get a very different effect.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
But that to me just speaks to the idea that Again, cannabis sounds like polypharmacology, 70 different cannabinoids, THC being among the more powerful components. But it's yoked in the sense that, as you said, people self-regulate their intake, provided they're smoking, not ingesting it by edible. And so it's almost like THC is being held constant.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And then there's this constellation of other things around it that are modified. And people eventually veer towards what they like, what they can afford, what works with their lifestyle. And then they come up with a bunch of theories based on packaging, what they're told, but presumably also some real effects of these terpenes, the CBD component, et cetera. It can't all be just psychological.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
knew they got placebo. People who got the drug knew they got the drug. It's very hard. You could do a dose response, but it's very difficult.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
This is a similar phenomenon with GLP-1. I and other people have pointed to the fact that certain food products or certain drinks or certain activities can increase GLP-1, glucagon-like peptide, which is now becoming more commonplace knowledge because of ozempic, monjaro, et cetera, as very powerful weight loss tools, although there's questions about muscle loss, et cetera. And then we had
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Dr. Zachary Knight on who explained that even a fourfold increase in GLP-1 brought about through a prescription drug or ingestion of a particular food or drink does not lead to any appreciable weight loss. However, when one achieves a thousand fold increases in GLP-1 through the use of things like Ozempic Manjaro, you see profound weight loss, meaning that you need enormous effects
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
in order to see the clinically relevant changes in that case of weight loss. So it sounds like a similar thing with CBD. So if somebody takes a CBD gummy and they feel that they sleep better, you would argue that that's entirely expectation bias.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
I've never taken a CBD product. I know a few years ago they were all the rage. I just, I was never tempted to do it.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And I'm aware, and we'll talk about this a little bit more, that there is evidence, according to Matt Walker, who did a six episode series with us on sleep, that THC does help certain people fall asleep, but it can dramatically alter the architecture of sleep in ways that are probably not great.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
So if, for instance, you were to take a high dose of CBD and then maybe have a couple alcohol-containing drinks, that could be problematic, right? Because now you're talking about the two-hit model.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
This is more like... Separate enzyme pathway, but you're challenging the liver.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
It's the steak and CBD or the CBD with omelet protocol. I'm just kidding, folks. I'm not suggesting that protocol.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
So today's episode is really a unique one in that, first of all, we cover an enormous amount of biology and clinical data as it relates to cannabis, meaning today's discussion is not a debate. It is really an up-to-date discussion about how cannabis works. So we talk about THC versus CBD.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Yeah, I've never tried any of these CBD-containing products. I think a lot of what you're describing speaks to the fact that people are – eager for things that can help them adjust their anxiety and sleep better. You know, which is a large reason why a lot of this podcast is focused on respiration based tools and other base tools that can help people with anxiety.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
I think that many people suffer from just too much activation in their autonomic nervous system. And I would argue there are much better things that are not of a ingestible type, you know, things that one can do that are science supported, right? There are clinical studies.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
meditation, breathwork, not so much breathwork, I would argue, but certain patterns of breathing, meditation, cognitive behavioral therapy. There are a whole bunch of different things, as you know. So I don't know what explains the CBD craze, but you certainly have shed light on what is and mainly what is not known about CBD. And I think it's really important for people to hear.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Except supporting the placebo effect, perhaps.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
I want to make sure before we close that we touch on some of the potential harms or asserted harms of THC, because I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about this. We talked about psychosis and the lack of evidence for a direct causal effect. You give a beautiful description as to how we should think about all of that based on the current literature. But cannabis and driving...
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
is a potential hazard, right? And some people will laugh. They'll be like, oh, driving too slow as opposed to driving drunk or driving too fast. Okay, we can talk about that. We talked about the potential for addiction and the evidence potentially for and against that, right? There's also this, the big...
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
black or gray box of, you know, all the things we don't know about what regular cannabis use could do. And yet I know a lot of people who've used cannabis for years, mainly as a replacement for alcohol. At least that's how they describe it. Well, it's not as bad as alcohol that you hear that a lot. Okay.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
But what are some actual, if any, what are some actual harms of cannabis use that people need to take into account and just weigh against the fact that every compound, caffeine, even water can kill you if you drink too much of it. And then let's make sure that we touch on this issue of cannabis and driving or operating machinery.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
But I think the machine most people are thinking about these days is driving.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Because people are smoking less of it or there's just fewer carcinogens in there?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Can this potential, I want to highlight potential, relationship between cannabis use and cardiovascular issues be bypassed, no pun intended, by... using edibles, not inhalants, or is it related to THC itself?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And yeah, it took a while for the medical community to adopt the idea that cigarette smoking was bad.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Physicians would smoke in clinic. There are ashtrays in the doctor's office.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
I mean, there's also- I'm chuckling at the example because you are so very clearly rooted in science, but that just came out of nowhere. Like, okay, cool. A hot shower, deliberate heat exposure, folks. There it is.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
I have been trying to understand how this was- I'm not enjoying it because it's deliberate heat exposure, but it just speaks to the fact that we're talking about smoking being a regular part of the medical community's behaviors up until a few decades ago. And then a hot shower being the treatment for this chronic vomiting. And it speaks to the fact that with science and medicine, we do know a ton.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
It's amazing how much we've progressed this, especially in the last hundred years. last 25 years even. But it's also astounding how these seemingly surprising antidotes to uncomfortable conditions can hold up over time in the absence of any randomized controlled trials or mechanistic data.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Is there something about activation of the heat?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And yet we started off today's conversation with you explaining beautifully how activation of these CB1 receptors are homeostatic in some sense, the thermostat analogy. And, you know, maybe after... chronic use. The seesaw gets flipped to one side and gets stuck there.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. It's always nice to end on a positive side. And we don't want to demonize cannabis, nor do we want to glorify it. But the examples that I've heard of medical uses for cannabis include appetite stimulation. We talked about that. For glaucoma, lowering eye pressure and glaucoma that
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Age and age-related increase in eye pressure are two of the major risk factors for glaucoma, which is the most common blinding disease second to cataract. More than 70 million people suffer from it. Everybody, regardless of age, get your eye pressures checked. There are drops for this, but okay, cannabis can reduce eye pressure and glaucoma. Nausea, you mentioned. And then anxiety.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
It sounds like if people get the... the dose right and it's right for them, that in some cases it can help them with their anxiety. And the reason I raise that one is because it seems that most people who decide to use cannabis regularly are using it as perhaps for its euphoric effects, but as kind of a mild sedative, a way to relax in the same way that they would use a glass or two of wine.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
What are your thoughts on that? Because I think this is the most common use case.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And we know from the biopsychosocial model of pain that emotions and interpretation of the sensation of pain is a huge component of what people refer to as chronic and acute pain. Yeah.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
So sort of a homeostatic scale and trying to maintain a middle range.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And that's probably why the CB1 receptor is so widely distributed is that neurons can excite or inhibit each other. That is, raise or reduce the amount of electrical activity in the let's say, nearby neuron, because we're talking about retrograde signaling. But ultimately, you don't want runaway excitation, because that looks like epilepsy.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And I think this is- Presumably because it's reducing the amount of rapid eye movement sleep you're getting, which most people will probably hear and interpret as bad. But REM deprivation is actually one treatment for depression. So there are certain case conditions where dreaming and REM is not advantageous. And you're describing one.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And you don't want runaway inhibition, because that looks like suppression of ability to think, move, et cetera. Exactly.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
That's extremely interesting because it squares with my, again, non-laboratory observation that a lot of people use cannabis to deal with their anxiety.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Right. So what you're saying is that, you know, there's a range of kind of, let's just say, baseline circuit activation within the amygdala and related structures in mice and humans, presumably in other animals also.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
If people take a compound that adjusts the sort of homeostatic level of what's considered low, moderate, and high activation of those circuits that include the amygdala, then perhaps they're bringing their anxiety into range in a way that perhaps is different than with alcohol, which is more acute. People have a couple of drinks, they'll feel relaxed, but then...
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
There's this phenomenon of anxiety the next day, feeling a little anxious when they're not drinking. Whereas it's interesting that many people who use cannabis for this purpose are not using it all day long. They are perfectly able to wait until the nighttime or evening. And of course, people can wait for their happy hour for a drink as well.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
But it's far and away different than the way we envision something like alcohol use disorder, where somebody discovers that alcohol really helps with their anxiety, and then they're drinking you know, maybe one at lunch, maybe a couple at dinner, and then in the evening to fall asleep at night.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
I'm describing extremes here, but I find your hypothesis to square really well with the real world observations. And it's an interesting one.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
So perhaps genetic differences in sort of baseline levels of anxiety perhaps map to endogenous levels of anandamide and might predict propensity for THC use.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Fantastic. And I really appreciate that you're able to share some of what your laboratory is working directly on now and looking into the future. And I want to thank you for what has been an incredibly clear, precise, and in many cases actionable, whether or not it leads to a yes or a no. actionable information here because cannabis and CBD, as you pointed out, are kind of everywhere around us.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And people are making decisions about cannabis and CBD And I also want to thank you because what initially started off as a bit of a confrontation online, which I alluded to in the introduction that I gave, has now evolved into a collaboration that I'm certain based on the exquisitely clear and generous information that you've provided has led to success.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
better education, more clarity, and therefore better informed choices for all the people listening and watching. So I really, truly appreciate you coming out here, sitting down with me, discussing these issues, clarifying points that were unclear before, and also pointing to the fact that this is a complex system, a complex biology.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
You know, there are a lot of things about psychosis, about negative effects, about potential positive uses of cannabis that just are not yet clear. And thanks to excellent researchers like you are likely going to be clarified in the years to come. So thank you ever so much for your time, for your research, and for your attention to the public health education effort around cannabis.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
We address the question of whether or not indicas versus sativas have different biological and subjective effects or not. We of course talk about the potential correlation, maybe even causation, between cannabis use and psychosis. I think you'll find that discussion very interesting. And we talk about how cannabis relates to hunger, to memory, to anxiety, and to the treatment of anxiety.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Yeah, if somebody who is expert in a particular area takes issue with something specific and can substantiate it with something that can foster better understanding, without fail, I'll reach out to them. Now, how quickly we're able to get them here, et cetera, is always an issue. Sometimes we can put an addendum to a podcast. Nowadays, that's easier using –
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
what's called dynamic insertion, where we can go back and actually make a correction. But listen, the best situation is always when this podcast can mimic the real world of research science as you and I both know it to exist, where if we had been in a meeting and you presented data, I presented data and we disagreed,
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
what we would probably do would be to head, well, traditionally it would be to the bar, but we'd grab a cup of coffee or go for a walk and we would talk about it, hash it out, and then potentially bring it up again at the next meeting. So in some sense, what we've done here over the last month or so, and certainly during today's podcast is to do something to that effect. So-
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Yeah, likewise. And it's certainly within the spirit of the podcast. In no way, shape or form do I purport to get everything right and where I've made mistakes, I really strive to correct them. And listen, it's been a real honor and privilege to have you out here. Thanks for coming all the way from Canada.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And I do hope to have you back again as the research evolves and we can learn more about these topics and more. So thank you so much, Matt. Appreciate you. Great. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion about cannabis with Dr. Matthew Hill. I hope you found the discussion to be as informative as I did.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Please also subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. Please also check out the sponsors that I mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Our neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as protocols in the form of brief PDFs of one to three pages, where I spell out the specific do's and in some cases do nots, but mostly do's related to things like how to optimize your sleep, how to regulate your dopamine levels. There's a protocol for neuroplasticity and learning.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Matthew Hill. And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Interesting. If I may, earlier you mentioned one of the potential psychoactive effects of cannabis is euphoria. Does that mean that the euphoria associated with cannabis use is independent of dopamine and is more reliant on something like? perhaps the opioid receptor system or the serotonergic receptor system?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
I'm certain that given the widespread use of cannabis nowadays, that you'll find the discussion to be both an informative and potentially useful one that could help guide decisions as to whether or not you or others should or should not use or avoid cannabis, as well as one that can simply inform about this very interesting compound.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And so- He discovered anandamide and decided to call it bliss because he had familiarity with cannabis or because he took anandamide as a direct experience. No, no, I mean- Because it takes a lot for a scientist to discover a molecule, but then for a scientist to discover a molecule and then name it bliss for a particular reason, you have to-
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Speculate that they had some familiarity with the compound.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Well, now that potential myth is definitely going to propagate.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And of course, you'll learn a lot of neuroscience and biology along the way. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Your thermostat analogy is perfect here.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. I've spoken many times before on this podcast about the critical need to get sleep, both enough sleep and enough quality sleep.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Very interesting. A lot of kind of aficionado questions about the receptor biology. I'll just spare everyone the details by just highlighting something that you already said far more eloquently than I will, which is I think it is fascinating that this whole system has both a tonic, like a steady release capability, and a phasic, you know, so the ability to spike
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
forgive the pun, the neuroscientists will know what I'm talking about, to spike more activity of the system superimposed on that tonic activity, because this is something that you see in the dopamine system. This is something that you see in essentially every neuromodulator neurotransmitter system. But it seems that the endocannabinoid system has accomplished this quite a bit differently.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
So very interesting, unique system in a number of ways that raise a number of key questions.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And yeah, we just had an episode with Zach Knight from HHMI and UCSF. Uh, we talked about like the AGRP neurons and different neurons of the hypothalamus. We nowadays a rich understanding of the neurons that stimulate food-seeking, craving, and then eating.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Now, one of the key things to getting a great night's sleep is that your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees in order for you to fall and stay deeply asleep. And to wake up feeling refreshed, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
His laboratory studies cannabis and its effects on stress, its effects on feeding, and its effects on the behavioral impacts of cannabis exposure at different stages of development. The origin of today's podcast episode is a bit unique. So I'd like to share a little bit of that background with you.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
One of the best ways to ensure all of that happens is to control the temperature of your sleeping environment. And with eight sleep, it's very easy to do that. You program the temperature that you want at the beginning, middle and the end of the night. And that's the temperature that you're going to sleep at. And it will track your sleep.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Proof that even under the influence of cannabis, animals will work harder.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
It tells you how much slow wave sleep you're getting, how much rapid eye movement sleep you're getting, which is critical. And all of that also helps you dial in the exact parameters you need in order to get the best possible possible night's sleep for you. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for well over three years now, and it has completely transformed my sleep for the better.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
As many of you know, I've been taking AG1 for more than 10 years now, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring this podcast. To be clear, I don't take AG1 because they're a sponsor. Rather, they are a sponsor because I take AG1. In fact, I take AG1 once and often twice every single day, and I've done that since starting way back in 2012.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
There is so much conflicting information out there nowadays about what proper nutrition is, but here's what there seems to be a general consensus on.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Whether you're an omnivore, a carnivore, a vegetarian or a vegan, I think it's generally agreed that you should get most of your food from unprocessed or minimally processed sources, which allows you to eat enough but not overeat, get plenty of vitamins and minerals, probiotics and micronutrients that we all need for physical and mental health.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation pod cover, the Pod4 Ultra. The Pod4 Ultra cover has improved cooling and heating capacity, higher fidelity sleep tracking technology, and the Pod4 cover has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve airflow and stop your snoring.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Now, I personally am an omnivore and I strive to get most of my food from unprocessed or minimally processed sources. But the reason I still take AG1 once and often twice every day is that it ensures I get all of those vitamins, minerals, probiotics, etc. But it also has adaptogens to help me cope with stress.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
It's basically a nutritional insurance policy meant to augment, not replace quality food. So by drinking a serving of AG-1 in the morning and again in the afternoon or evening, I cover all of my foundational nutritional needs. And I, like so many other people that take AG-1, report feeling much better in a number of important ways, such as energy levels, digestion, sleep, and more.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
So while many supplements out there are really directed towards obtaining one specific outcome, AG-1 is foundational nutrition designed to support all aspects of wellbeing related to mental health and physical health. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
They'll give you five free travel packs with your order, plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman. You're talking about increasing endocannabinoid activity, and we've said all this in the context of cannabis. So maybe we could talk a little bit about how the components in cannabis, THC mainly, but also CBD, impact cannabis.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
these receptors, the CB1 and let's just leave CB2 out for the moment because it sounds like it's more of an immune system thing. But just to make it very clear, is there a way to increase the activity of endocannabinoids without ingesting THC?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
But you're talking about experimentally or recreationally adjusting their levels. But how does one do that without using THC?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
acting directly on the cannabinoid receptor, not... So it sort of mimics the anandamide and 2-AG.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
By the way, Matt's referring to the fact that I said that in a previous solo episode about this. And there I was nesting it in the concentrations of THC that can be found in high THC cannabis. Yeah. So essentially what I was saying is that at very high THC concentrations, the amount of
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
maybe not the binding affinity, but the amount of THC that is available to the CB1 receptors is going to exceed what's normally found in terms of the amount of anandamide that can bind to CB1 receptors, because what you're talking about is a super physiological condition.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, you can go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep currently ships to the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Element.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
So you said anandamide is high affinity, low efficacy.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
But it is high affinity.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Blocking the effects of 2-AG, but does it block the effects of anandamide?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
That's a very interesting point that we should highlight. So there are drugs that now exist that can block the breakdown of anandamide, make more available, presumably by disrupting some enzymatic breakdown, and therefore lead to more binding of anandamide. The now elevated levels of anandamide that are available to CB1 and you see no psychoactive effects.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
People are not aware that they... Yeah, you can do... No one can guess.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
What is it used for?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Elements is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Now, I and others on the podcast have talked a lot about the critical importance of hydration for proper brain and bodily function.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Seems like a lot of gymnastics to basically confirm what they already knew. Yeah. which is that even greatly elevating the anandamide by blocking this enzymatic breakdown of anandamide leads to, at least from what I'm understanding, vastly different subjective experience than ingesting or smoking THC, which brings us back to THC.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Research shows that even a slight degree of dehydration can really diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes in order for your body and brain to function at their best. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium are critical for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or nerve cells.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And cannabis. It seems that this thing that we call cannabis and THC are – overlapping with the endogenous effects of anandamide. But here you're not talking about endogenous normal levels. You're talking about pharmacologically greatly increasing anandamide, no psychoactive effect, no euphoria, no munchies, et cetera. Then people smoke or take an edible of THC or cannabis.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
and you get a vastly different set of effects. So maybe we could talk about THC and the CB1 receptor. And since we're here, we might as well talk about CBD and the, I think you're gonna tell us the lack of interaction with CB1 receptor, right? And what is cannabis doing at the level of these receptors?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Because it makes me wonder whether or not these receptors are the whole story or whether or not cannabis is, as you mentioned, 70 plus active molecules in there, terpenes and a bunch of other things that may modify their action. But this thing we call cannabis has many more actions than just mimicking the endogenous cannabinoid system.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
You're introducing the ligand, the thing that binds the receptor. This is far and away different than, say, like the actions of amphetamines, which are disrupting the normal biology in a way that's giving you an amplification of an endogenous mechanism.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
If that was all just nerd speak for those listening. It's one, in the context of amphetamines, what you're doing is you're taking an endogenous system, a naturally occurring system, and you're greatly amplifying the amount of dopamine, the amount of norepinephrine that's available. Yeah.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
With what we're discussing today, the endocannabinoid system seems to be producing a set of effects that might overlap with the THC effects. But THC is doing a bunch of other things. And that's because THC, and we'll talk about CBD, but at least THC is acting as the ligand. It's in some sense, we don't want to say replacing, but it's masking the effects of anandamide.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise I'm doing, especially on hot days if I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
That's very helpful. So the analogy that I was considering using coming in here, like the difference between endogenous testosterone or estrogen versus pharmacologic testosterone or estrogen given as a therapy is very different because that's a levels issue. This is a levels and an extent issue.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman, spelled drinkelement.com slash Huberman, to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Super interesting. Well, I have to imagine that there are many people who use cannabis not to stimulate appetite but for other reasons. They either like the euphoria or to adjust their anxiety. Yeah. what are some other known mechanisms by which cannabis can change people's psychology? Let me focus in on one particular aspect of subjective experience, which is focus.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Do you think that some people use cannabis because it allows them to focus better? And I raise this specifically because I think that in the past, cannabis has had a bit of a reputation for making people spacey. You use the word stoned, kind of out of it. And yet I've heard of some potential uses for enhancing focus.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
My understanding is that people who use cannabis have poorer certain forms of memory, but not necessarily poorer memory across the board. Is that correct?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. There are essentially three things that make up great therapy. First of all, great therapy consists of having good rapport with somebody that you can really trust and talk to about the issues that you're dealing with.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And so... I should just say this point has often been confused by undergraduates and others to assume that... Just because one can gain proficiency at a task while under the influence of a substance does not mean that you have higher proficiency at that particular task while under the influence. In fact, the way it was presented to me when I was an undergraduate was incorrect.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
I remember the lecturer said and later corrected himself. I won't call him out here because that's unfair. He's not here to defend himself, but it happens in lectures that – people who studied drunk would be better off coming to the exam drunk. That is not true from what I understand.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Second of all, that therapist should provide support in the form of emotional support or directed guidance.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Thanks for clarifying that. And also, thank you for clarifying the – discrepancy between endogenous cannabinoid binding and affinity for CB1 versus THC. I really appreciate that because that's something that you and I discussed in light of the solo episode I did about cannabis. And now you've made it clear that THC does not bind with much higher affinity. It's just, as I think your words were, it
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
assuming high THC levels in the cannabis carpet bombs all the networks as opposed to binding more with higher affinity at particular receptors.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And third, expert therapy should provide useful insights, insights that allow you to better understand not just your emotional life and your relationship life, but of course also your relationship to yourself and to career goals and school goals, meaning excellent therapy should also inspire positive action.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Previously, I did a solo episode of the Huberman Lab podcast about cannabis, the biology of cannabis, some of its medical applications and uses, as well as some of its potential harms. That episode came out several years ago now and remains a very popular episode. It's had millions of views and millions of listens.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Yeah, let's talk about this because I know that you and I arrived at different understanding of the fastest, typical, and slowest routes of entry for cannabis. THC into the system to arrive at the brain, right? The numbers that I gave in the previous discussion about this were related to how quickly inhaled smoke moves from the lungs to the bloodstream and crosses the blood-brain barrier.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Right, which is very fast.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Okay, so there may be... It may be that it is the same as nicotine. It may be that it's faster. But importantly, it can be fast. But typically, how fast is the onset of the subjective experience of, okay, somebody takes a hit off a joint or a bong hit, and they start to experience the subjective effects of euphoria, et cetera. How quickly after?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
I've seen some people not titrate it very well.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Yeah. I mean, that's not just a fair amount. I mean, if we were talking about alcohol concentration- It's beer to vodka.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And there are aquavit varieties, so to speak. By the way, I think when people hear me talk about any kind of drug that can be used recreationally or alcohol, I think some people assume that I'm ultra anti all these things. I'm actually not, right? I'm not an alcoholic, so I can- um, drink a little bit. And I have, I just don't tend to, and, um, we could discuss cannabis in a different venue.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Um, but the, uh, the point here is we're not trying to frame this as what people should or shouldn't do. We're just trying to inform people. I want to be very, very clear about that. So, um, but when I hear about, you know, um, 20 to 30% concentration, as opposed to 5% concentration, it's significant.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
BetterHelp makes it very easy for you to find an expert therapist with whom you really resonate with and that can provide the benefits that I just described. Also, because BetterHelp therapy is done entirely online, It's very time efficient and it's easy to fit into a busy schedule because it involves no commuting to a therapist's office, finding a parking spot, or sitting in a waiting room.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
If you'd like to try BetterHelp, you can go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman. And now for my discussion with Dr. Matthew Hill. Dr. Matt Hill, welcome.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
I love this. I mean, as somebody whose lab has done an in-laboratory VR-based experiment on human anxiety and fear and then compared that to a clinical study that we did Sort of en masse, where people were at home doing specific respiration practices. You have many more subjects, but of course, they're reporting back their effects.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
You can monitor them by device, look at HRV, look at heart rate, et cetera. I think having the ability to compare and contrast in laboratory and ex-laboratory data is extremely valuable.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Yeah, for people that have never been to a laboratory or tried to find a parking spot at a university, that's an anxiety-inducing experience in and of itself.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Delighted to have you here because you're an expert in the biology of cannabis, a topic that many, many people are curious about for a variety of reasons. So just to kick things off, maybe we can get people up to speed on what cannabis is. a little bit about how it works in the brain and body to produce the various effects that it produces and how some of that comes to be.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
So does that mean that cannabis use rarely leads to tolerance of cannabis use?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Yeah, it sounds like those are precarious. Yeah. That somebody who thinks they have a lot of experience or, God forbid, no experience takes a concentrate and is, what, no longer getting the euphoric experience that they anticipated but instead are getting, what, a paranoid anxiety attack?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
This is a very important point, and I'm going to highlight it because I think it's very... Very, very important, although you're making it very clearly already, which is these days we hear a lot about the quote-unquote problems with high THC-containing cannabis as relative to what was present in the 70s and 80s and presumably 90s as well.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
I was a teen in the 90s, so maybe I'm alluding to something there. But what you're saying is that unless one is talking about concentrates, that people and animals in the laboratory will self-regulate the amount of intake in a way that leads to approximately the same blood levels of THC.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
So it may not be as much of a concern, at least in light of the concerns about, oh, these levels are so high that people are overwhelming their system with THC. Basically, this could be stated in real world terms as people are taking fewer tokes. of the higher concentration stuff that allowed them to match blood levels that were present in the person taking many more tokes in the 70s.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And then we can dig into some of the nuance. I have a lot of questions about different types, if you will, of cannabis, the relationship to mental health, potentially to mental illness. We're going to drill into all of that. So just to kick things off, what is cannabis?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Usually it's the life destruction that thwarts their progressive increase. Yeah.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Another form of life deterioration.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Sorry, I have to interrupt pet positron emission tomography, not pets. Don't although people get their pets high and we don't know what those pets think about that.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
If also high, one can assume a lot of things about what your pet is thinking while also high. Sort of half joke there. But yes, positron emission tomography is one way to assess the binding of drugs within the brain as well as activity of endogenous neurotransmitters, neuromodulators, such as anandamide, dopamine, et cetera.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
It makes sense. Yeah, these concentrates sound like something to at least pay attention to as a potential problem. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, InsideTracker. InsideTracker is a personalized nutrition platform that analyzes data from your blood and DNA to help you better understand your body and help you reach your health goals.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Now, I've long been a believer in getting regular blood work done for the simple reason that many of the factors that impact your immediate and long-term health can only be analyzed from a quality blood test.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Now, a major problem with a lot of blood tests out there is that you get information back about metabolic factors and hormones and lipids and so forth, but you don't know what to do with that information.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
With InsideTracker, they make it very easy to know what to do with those numbers because they have a personalized platform that allows you to see the levels of those metabolic factors, lipids, hormones, et cetera.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And they give you specific directives that you can follow related to nutrition, behavioral modification, supplementation and more that can help you bring those numbers into the ranges that are optimal for you. If you'd like to try InsideTracker, you can go to InsideTracker.com slash Huberman to get 10% off their new membership program.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
InsideTracker membership offers significantly reduced prices on InsideTracker's comprehensive blood panels. Again, that's InsideTracker.com slash Huberman to get 10% off. Along the lines of use, tolerance, et cetera, Is cannabis addictive and or habit-forming? And I think it's probably important that we distinguish between the two.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
I may have made this joke in the previous episode I did on cannabis. I've known a lot of chronic cannabis users, and none of them – admit to being addicted. It's not my place to challenge them on that. But they do seem, in my experience, this is not an experiment, but in my experience, more irritable when they don't have access to what they call their quote unquote medicine.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
So that speaks to a dependence or something, but then we need to be careful because in the classic sense, addiction, I've defined and others in the field of addiction have defined it as a progressive narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure such that it causes disruption to other areas of life and your life becomes Yeah.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
But that's the nomenclature now that people are using, alcohol use disorder, cannabis use disorder. This is what you start to see now instead of saying being addicted to pot or being addicted to alcohol.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
So I just want to make sure I'm understanding clearly. For people that use cannabis weekly, the... propensity for developing cannabis use disorder is on the order of about 30%.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
That's interesting. I was under the impression this has really changed over the last, you know, five, 10 years. You know, growing up, it was, I mean, I think there are still people in jail now because of possession and sale of cannabis. And then, of course, there are stores not far from here where people are selling cannabis.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Is... The legalization of cannabis leading to more cannabis users or fewer and or incidents of people going into the emergency room suffering from cannabis-induced psychosis, something that I hope we can also talk about.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Does it split male-female?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Several months ago, we posted a clip of that episode to X, formerly known as Twitter. And Dr. Matthew Hill responded to that clip on X with criticism about the specific points made within that clip. Most notably, my discussion of the data that cannabis use can in some individuals cause psychosis.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
accidentally ate THC-containing gummies. Fortunately, the child was fine. But there are actually pretty serious ramifications for this. the parents actually are quite susceptible to legal action if this happens, right? So this is something to like really keep in mind.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
I mean, there are a million other health-related reasons why this is probably- Yeah, I don't know if that's true in Canada the same way, but in the States, yeah. Yeah, like if your kid gets into a stash of THC-containing gummies and ends up in the emergency room, there will also be, most likely, there'll be a police visit to that emergency room also, and it doesn't bode well for the parents.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
It's a very serious issue. And again, this was highlighted to me by someone that I know who didn't anticipate any of this, but kids are good at finding candy. And if that candy contains THC and they end up in the emergency room, serious issues. Nonetheless, if your kid is acting strange because you think they ingested THC containing anything, take them to the emergency room anyway.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
So as long as we're talking about edibles, Is there any fundamental difference between the dose regulation that you talked about earlier of inhalants versus, excuse me, versus edibles? Meaning earlier you said that even if it's high THC containing cannabis, people will self-regulate to achieve the same, approximately the same blood concentrations.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
But with edibles, I imagine you eat half a cookie, a quarter of a cookie, and you can end up in a vastly different place than you expected.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
I've heard of this happening.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Got it. As long as we're on the topic of time course, based on what I was able to find, I believed, and tell me if I was wrong, that cannabis can stay in one system for as long as 80 days. The reason I brought this up previously was there are a number of people who have used cannabis, are going to take a drug test, and want to know how fast it can clear from their system.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
But based on conversations we had offline, sounds like that 80 days might be a bit too long.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
So abstinence for 30 days.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
But you're talking about this metabolite that can come from the edibles that doesn't come from inhalants that can have a much more potent effect.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
So it's sort of a different situation altogether. Yeah.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Well, I guess it sounds like the drug tests either have to be revised or discarded. And it also sounds like if somebody is going to take a drug test for cannabis and they have used cannabis in any form in the previous 90 days, let's say, going for a run right before your test is going to liberate whatever THC resides in the fat stores.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
A lot of people are writing this down. Along the lines of what's known and not known, I'm curious what is known and not known about the effects of cannabis, THC, in particular on hormones. I've seen studies that cite increases in testosterone from cannabis use
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
I've seen studies that cite increases in estrogen from cannabis use, and they argue for increased aromatization of testosterone into estrogen as the mechanism. I've also seen studies that say the exact opposite. So is there any global takeaway message yet, or is it just highly variable or depends too much on dose and individual age, et cetera, that we just really can't say?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Right. Well, there's, and this is where I think it's important that people understand that, you know, on this podcast, we cover science and studies, but we also pull from common experience that people want explained if we can.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And one of the experiences that is talked about a lot in certain, let's just say online communities, is the experience of people who had no preexisting gynecomastia, male breast development.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
We'll smoke marijuana. Do we call it marijuana these days?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
I actually got a, I got someone, I got a lot of comments that said marijuana is an inappropriate term.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Smoke, we'll go back to that. That was new to me. I didn't know. So forgive me if I didn't know.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Okay, so we'll smoke cannabis and experience gynecomastia, or in females, so males and females both have breast tissue, but in males it's typically, it's not hypertrophied, but they'll smoke cannabis and get gynecomastia, growth of the male breast tissue.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
That's sometimes reversible, sometimes not, presumably through the aromatization of testosterone into estrogen, which then acts on the tissue, makes it grow, as well as reports of breast tissue tenderness after cannabis use in females. So that was sort of the origin of that discussion around does cannabis impact aromatization of testosterone into estrogen?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And you can find a little bit of evidence for that, but you can also find evidence to the contrary in the scientific literature. So I'm just curious your thoughts on this.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Interesting, because dopamine is one of the main ways that prolactin is suppressed. They're kind of in a seesaw. They work in somewhat seesaw fashion.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Now, whether that's a preexisting thing— Is there any reason to think that would be the case?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Yeah, it seems a bit, I mean, there are phytoestrogens in tons of different plants.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
The sort of attacks on soy and the attacks on – this I think grew out of the kind of the soy versus meat communities and plant-based versus carnivore. This podcast has always been agnostic with respect to nutrition and is really – if we encourage anything, it's that people consume – unprocessed and minimally processed foods as the bulk of their food intake.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
There seems to be enough data on that, but whether or not people choose to be vegan and eat a lot of plants or carnivore and eat just meat, we've essentially stepped out of that debate because let's just say it's as futile as about any other debate. It's completely circular. You end up right back in Twitter.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
So this seems to be something that purportedly occurs on a backdrop of elevated androgens, meaning in puberty, Or a backdrop of some other form of androgen increase.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Yeah, but that's not the community I'm referring to. It seems that because transient gynecomastia during puberty is actually fairly common because of there's just so much androgen being produced in puberty that some gets aromatized. And that the idea, I'm not stating this as fact, is that it may exacerbate that. In any case, it sounds like the takeaway from this is that there –
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
aren't a lot of conclusive studies about the effects of cannabis on testosterone or estrogen or aromatization in any direction.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Are those positive or negative changes? I'm assuming that the studies you're referring to saw disrupted what they call sperm quality, which has to do with motility, et cetera.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
So I have like- As we say this, I'm just chuckling to myself because anytime this conversation comes up about a substance and sperm quality or egg quality, I always get a barrage of comments of people telling me how many children they conceived while under the influence. No one is saying that you're going to be infertile.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
But if people are having challenges conceiving, it might be something to think about.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Along those lines, I saw kind of a jaw-dropping statistic, and I'm not sure I still believe it, but you tell me what you know about this, which is that up to 15% of pregnant women in the U.S. have used cannabis during pregnancy. That just seems, that number just seems too high and yet, you know, it exists out there.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Okay, two sounds like, okay, that I could imagine. but as high as 20. And do we know what the effects on the developing fetus are? There's a lot to unpack there.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Thalidomide effects are malformation of the limbs and other bodily structures in fetuses. It was an absolute tragedy of medicine that this occurred in even one birth. But Yeah, it's the reason why thalidomide is now, I believe, banned as a drug for use during pregnancy.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And this is... You're talking about the irresponsible that the dispensaries would say that?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Or irresponsible that the study was carried out that way? Because it's a little bit of... Entrapment?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Bartenders in the US put in the comments on YouTube, do you have to undergo training about alcohol to be a bartender?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
You're certainly doing your part to provide the public education about cannabis now. So we all appreciate that. you're highly informed and broad distribution of this information. Because this is also an issue with psychedelics, which currently don't have legal status in the US. This is an ongoing process of whether or not it will.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Right now, things are really on the teeter-totter with MDMA, where we await the decision from the FDA, but the early recommendation to the FDA was to not approve MDMA as a treatment for PTSD. So today, in mid to late June 2024, we'll see what happens.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
But this is also the case for ketamine, which has legal status, but many people are accessing ketamine not through a physician, but through online sources. So what you're speaking to here is a much larger issue. And I absolutely agree with you.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Fascinating plant. You mentioned the psychoactive effects. Some people listening to this and watching this presumably have experienced those psychoactive effects, others perhaps have not. How could we describe for both groups, what the quote unquote psychoactive effects are. You mentioned the higher the concentration of THC, the quote unquote higher someone will get, right?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
I mean, I think most people are probably not aware, except by experience, positive or negative in some cases, about the differences in blood concentration as it relates to number of tokes versus concentration versus edible. I mean, these are critical themes, especially for where we're going to go next, which is, you know, all the discussion about high THC and psychosis.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
It sounds like the take-home message is proceed with caution, you know, low and slow.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Like don't ingest too much too quickly. Like really, you know, if one is going to explore this legally, of course, you know, take a little bit, wait, take a little bit, wait, because otherwise you're going to get the, who was the reporter? Oh. I think it was Maureen Dowd, but I don't know.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Reporting from the floor in Colorado.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Can people self-regulate their THC concentration in the blood by vaping as well as they can by joint or bong or other form of smoking?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
The greater the intensity of the high. What is the high? And I know people are probably chuckling saying, you know, does Huberman not know because he's never done it? I mean, that's my own business. I just want people to understand what you mean by psychoactive effects.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
What? And if you go overseas, it's even more wild. I mean.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
He also took issue with some of the specific points I made in that clip related to potential differences in the biology of the effects of different strains of cannabis, most notably indica versus sativa strains, and a few other points as well.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
You know, we're going to be doing episodes on stem cells. And, you know, you've got people flying out of country to do stem cell injections. People are getting them down in Florida who went blind from the injections of stem cells into the eye in an attempt to save what little vision they already had. Probably don't want to get me started on that one. I'm in total agreement with you, by the way.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
I want to make sure that I ask about psychosis and paranoia. Yeah. I've previously said, and I was sort of, I wasn't joking, but I have observed in my history that when people started to experience some degree of anxiety or paranoia when smoking alcohol, cannabis, that sometimes the message they would receive back is to take more, to just adjust the subjective experience.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
I think that's a terrible idea. Terrible idea.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Well, usually the advice of people in terms of that was recreational drug taking is, um, is rarely excellent advice.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Yeah. Um, I also am aware that there are some very high profile papers that have been published in the last really five years or so pointing to potential increased risk for psychosis of lasting duration, even after the effects of cannabis have worn off in high THC cannabis users, in particular alcoholics.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
high THC cannabis users that initiate that cannabis use young, and this might be preferentially impacting males. I want to make clear that what I just said is not a statement of absolute fact. It's my understanding of the conclusions of these papers.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
There are other conclusions in these papers also, but that particular conclusion seems to be important enough that they place it in the abstract and it's reached major press headlines. So I guess the simple question, which probably doesn't have a simple answer, is does THC cause psychosis?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
What about anxiety attack?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Or does it carry the same set and setting considerations that, you know, psychedelics like psilocybin-
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Okay, so to just clarify for people, these are laboratory mice that are genetically modified so that they contain or lack specific receptors on particular neuron types so that researchers can parse the effects of THC on what we're referring to as inhibitory neurons, which quiet other neurons, versus excitatory neurons, which excite. other neurons and so forth.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And in doing so to understand some of the network biology, which is basically impossible to do in a typical mouse, what's called a wild type mouse or a human, because when one ingests the drug or when the mouse is given the drug, it affects any site in the brain, potentially any site in the brain where the CB1 receptor is expressed.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
You want to see that result.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Like- is in the scanner and then starts having a psychotic episode. But chances are they're going to try and get out. For those that don't know, I don't want to scare people out of doing MRI or fMRI, but you're typically... told to stay extremely still. There's sometimes even a bite bar.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
This is a very controlled environment, not an environment that you would want to be in during a psychotic episode.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And there's also the issue of polypharmacology, which is simply when people take one drug, then there's often the tendency to take another drug either because it's available in those or because their threshold to saying yes is a little bit lower. Do most people who take cannabis and achieve the high have a tendency to do other drugs?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Possibility everywhere.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
It doesn't seem like a drug that people combine with a lot of other drugs.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Is there a bias towards males developing psychosis? I know there may be a bias initially toward males in schizophrenia that could confound this, so we want to be careful.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
What about a first relative who has schizophrenia? Because there's a strong genetic component to schizophrenia.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Yeah, I was, um, looking toward, um, some of the recent studies and, uh, Lancet, JAMA Psychiatry, I believe we can provide links to these again. And now more recently, there's been a lot of, let's just call it mainstream media coverage of this potential, I think is the right way to refer to it, potential linkage between
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
adolescent, teen, and young adult use of high THC cannabis and lasting psychosis. But the more I hear you talk about this, the more I'm wondering if that idea is being amplified more than perhaps we ought to let it be amplified.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
As I recall, and I may have this incorrectly, but as I recall from my undergraduate years... What you just said is also true for military service, for people that have a predisposition to develop schizophrenia, that active military duty can exacerbate it as well.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Yeah, I hear your point loud and clear. I seem to recall that there is a higher incidence of schizophrenia independent of cannabis use closer to the poles and less so at the equator. I don't know if those statistics still hold up.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
It would be interesting for us to look into that because then it would argue that since we're comparing very northern locations to less northern locations that perhaps cannabis was You know, sort of exacerbating that.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
What is it about North Americans and cannabis use?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
I like The Grateful Dead. Rick Rubin convinced me to start listening to them again. And because my sister used to listen to them and there's some great songs and they're from Menlo Park, Palo Alto. So I've done my duty to listen. There's some great songs. So I'm not picking on them.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
That's interesting. Is that true even if they've never used cannabis before?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Now, as somebody who's been in the field of science for several decades now, I'm very familiar with the fact that every field, every single field within science has debates within it, controversies, and sometimes outright battles. And to me, that's part of what makes science interesting. It's an evolving process.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Do you see differences between United States and Canada with respect to either cannabis or opioid use?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And so I mean- It's a stressor argument.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And they pay you, so now pot smokers everywhere are running to look at stuff.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
I've spoken to many psychiatrists in an effort to find someone expert in ADHD. We've done two episodes on ADHD, focusing on everything from behavioral to nutritional, but also prescription drug treatments for ADHD. And what's interesting is that all of them have relayed the fact that many people, not just
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
young people, but adults with ADHD will often use, not necessarily abuse, but will use stimulants like coffee and other forms of stimulants to a high degree. And then of course you can say, well, perhaps the stimulants are causing ADHD, but they actually argue for the opposite, which is that people are attempting to self-medicate.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And then it's perhaps no surprise that most, not all, but most of the medications that are approved for the treatment of ADHD are variants of amphetamine or similar.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
So it's another case where, you know, depending on whether or not you look through the lens of the drug leading to the condition or the condition leading or through the lens of the condition leading to the use of the drug, you can end up in two very different places. But it looks exactly the same through each lens, so to speak.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
No, the way you're explaining it now makes perfect sense. I do want to make sure that we distinguish between schizophrenia, like psychosis, or schizophrenia itself induced by cannabis, and manic bipolar episodes. So people who have a predisposition or full-blown manic bipolar, sometimes called manic depression, but there's still a lot of nuance there. We did an episode about this that people can
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
also find linked in the show note captions but in any case is there any evidence for the fact that people who suffer from or have a predisposition to manic bipolar conditions like bipolar depression for instance should avoid high THC cannabis um so well first of all I mean
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
What about the effects of cannabis on time perception? There's this reputation that cannabis has for disrupting time perception that people will think a long period of time has passed when in fact very little time has passed. Maybe it's sometimes even the reverse. Is the mechanism by which cannabis can adjust time perception known?
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Or maybe they seek out lots of different forms of recreational drugs and cannabis just happens to be one that they land on, which raises the other question, which is, It's hard to imagine that these people who develop psychosis who happen to be using cannabis are only using cannabis.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Which is known to stimulate dopaminergic and other pathways.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
I think it enhances cognition in everybody. It just carries certain health concerns. And by the way, it doesn't enhance all forms of cognition, but there is a nice body of work to support the idea that nicotine
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
delivered in any number of different forms can improve cognitive function to some extent but i don't suggest people run out and do it and in fact it's um one of the more um quickly uh uh abused drugs nowadays because of the non-smoking delivery routes that are becoming really popular pouches and yeah and things in fact i was chewing a little bit of nicorette gum to kind of do an experiment i liked it a lot and then um i decided to stop completely recently because it just um
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
it wasn't having the same effect and I found myself reaching for more and that's the time when I usually back out.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
I think it's because of these very high profile papers and the way those were picked up by traditional media. And this seems to be something that every couple of years there's a resurgence of this idea. Clearly people are curious about it. And so I just want to say thank you for clarifying what is now to me obvious that It could be that there's a relationship there. It's clearly not the case yet.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And it may never be the case that there's a causal relationship there. And it could just as well be that people who have a predisposition to schizophrenia are seeking out cannabis use and engaging in cannabis use. And I think that's a very important principle for our listeners and viewers to just hear and understand anytime we're talking about a substance and a condition.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk about strains of cannabis. I've spoken before about the sativa versus the indica strains, and certainly there is a lot, a lot, a lot of – subjective anecdotal descriptions about differences in the quote unquote effects of those as reported by users.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
When I talked about this before in the cannabis episode, I leaned on a paper that took those subjective reports of arguably many, many people push those subjective reports through what was known about the strains they claim to have used. So this is, you know, people are reporting their use.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
We assume honestly, but you always have to assume that there, I guess people could be lying about which strains or misinformed, but, and then using machine learning to couple their, their, subjective experiences as they report them to indica versus sativa strains.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And then by looking at the chemical composition of those different products, because these were products that they had consumed, trying to tap chemical composition to strain, in this case, mainly the indica sativa discrepancy to subjective experience. And I know that you and presumably others in the field of cannabis research, take real issue to that sort of approach.
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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks
And perhaps I have the feeling this is what you're going to say, rest on the idea that we, at least at this point in time, really can't say anything about the different biological effects of sativas versus indicas. And yet at the beginning of the episode, you said that there are many, many different cannabinoid compounds in cannabis. So... Three questions, and I'll keep these very short.
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Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Craig Conover. Dr. Craig Conover is a medical doctor who did his training at Brown University and Thomas Jefferson University.
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Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Then we discussed the use of peptides specifically to increase growth hormone secretion during sleep as well as some peptides that can actually increase rapid eye movement sleep dramatically. Today, we also discuss testosterone therapies, not just for men, but for women. These are growing increasingly popular, as well as things like NAD, as well as specific supplements.
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Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Is that a direct effect of Ozempic on... the immune system and pathways related to inflammation, or is it indirect through the loss of adipose tissue, body fat, which then lowers inflammation?
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Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Very interesting. Well, I suppose moving from most widely known, peptides are still fairly unknown to most people, even the concept, but that's why you're here. You're changing that right now. But moving from things like GLP-1 to what I would probably call the second most popular peptide, the one that we're hearing more and more about all the time, and that's BPC-157, body protection compound 157.
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Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Yeah. which, to my understanding, there are a lot of animal data, very few, if any, clinical studies on humans. Agreed. But a lot of people now taking BPC in various forms. Yeah. What are some known uses for BPC? Let's just say within your clinic. Sure. And then we'll get around to the fact that BPC has, let's hope, temporarily been taken off market. Yep. And what some of the alternatives are.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
But... What is BPC? What instances or people have you found it useful for?
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Dr. Conover, as he will soon tell you, is not a huge proponent of supplements, but he does mention several that he feels are of particular use, including things like coenzyme Q10 and some of the methylated B vitamins, and he explains why he takes that stance. So today's discussion is really for anybody interested in mental health, physical health, and performance.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
That's interesting because my understanding is also that BPC, part of the specific and general adaptation of exercise is triggered by inflammation.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
This is why indeed it is true that doing ice bath or really cold water immersion, cold shower seems fine, but cold water immersion in the four to eight hours after resistance training can limit some of the hypertrophy and strength gains from resistance training because what you're inducing when you actually go into the gym that leads to the hypertrophy and strength training is an inflammation response that triggers the compensation.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
or the hypercompensation. So it's interesting, you're saying that BPC By the way, I must say this because then forgive the editorial, but that is not to say that cold plunges and cold immersion is bad. It's just in the hours following resistance training, specifically for hypertrophy and strength training. If those are your goals, probably best to do it outside of that window.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Other times it has some tremendous benefits. Be safe, but there. Okay, back to the topic, and forgive me, but this can set off a complicated... storm of sorts, if I'm not ultra clear about the details. BPC-157, strongly anti-inflammatory.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
My understanding is it also may upregulate growth hormone receptors.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Got it. Yeah. BPC-157 comes in many different forms, or it used to when it was FDA not disallowed. Sure. So I could imagine how the oral forms would allow for a... just general anti-inflammatory response. It's a gut peptide. So we don't have to worry about it being destroyed by the gut. Most peptides that go into the gut are broken down.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
And the reason I say that is that even if you aren't considering taking peptides or already taking peptides, peptides and some of these other compounds I've mentioned sit somewhere between doing nothing except diet and exercise which I sort of see as the next step up the ladder in terms of augmenting your health approaches.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
But this peptide, when it's naturally occurring, occurs in the gut. So it survives in the gut. So if somebody is taking BPC-157 orally through a capsule or tablet form, My guess is that has a general anti-inflammation response.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
How do you think that's working? And my understanding is BPC-157 can initiate fibroblast migration, some of the cells that make up the various connective tissues that when injured or sore, other things can make us injured or sore, of course, but when injured or sore, that those need repair.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
So it always was perplexing to me why one could put BPC-157 in such a small volume under the skin, just a few centimeters off the belly button, and it would somehow...
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
seek out the the injury site in an elbow or an achilles and there are all these wild anecdotal tales of you know lore of let's just say uh there was this olympic athlete not this last olympics but the previous summer olympics that had a torn achilles who came back a few weeks later and everyone was and meddled people were talking about you know took podium um
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
That is – and people were talking about BPC-157. There was kind of this – and who knows? That's just shatter and fog, as they say. But kind of wild, the idea that you could just inject something systemically, put it into the systemic circulation, into the bloodstream, and it would – ferret out the location in which the injury took place and initiate a recovery response.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
And then of course, there are a number of prescription drugs, including hormone therapies, such as growth hormone therapies, testosterone therapies, and a number of other things that yes, can modify those hormone pathways. They are in fact hormones, but they actually can shut down one's natural production of those hormone pathways.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
one has ever gone into the hospital for a surgery and got a cold saline infusion. You realize how quickly it hits your toes. You know, they're putting it in at your elbow. It's almost instantaneous. Yeah, within a few seconds. It also makes one appreciate how we're all generally a little bit dehydrated.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
When you start getting a real proper saline infusion, all of a sudden you feel yourself come to life in a way that, oh, this is what it feels like to have just the right amount of salt in my bloodstream. Exactly.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
BPC is definitely, shorthand for BPC-157 that is, is certainly in widespread use. I have been concerned, just personally, about gray market sources that contain contaminants and the fact that many people are obtaining BPC-157 not from a physician, not from a compounded pharmacy. but just kind of on, quote unquote, on the internet. Sure. You're a physician.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
I'm guessing that until the recent ban by the FDA, you were able to prescribe clean BPC as it were. Yeah. What's the story with BPC now? And maybe we could talk about gray market versus- I think it's a great question. Versus prescribed and made it a compounding pharmacy versus pharmaceutical company, pharmaceutical. And then of course there's black market, but let's just leave that out.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
There are people that are going to tell you, hey, this is BPC and sell it to you. That's obviously bad and dangerous.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Peptide therapy sits somewhere between doing nothing and supplementation and those more advanced hormone therapies. And that's why peptide therapies, I believe, are growing in popularity. They can augment specific hormone pathways. They can augment specific, in fact, multiple processes within the brain and body to augment health.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
So as long as we're here, my understanding is decadarabalin and testosterone cypionate can be prescribed, or testosterone enanthate, things like that, by physicians. That's because it's been FDA approved for the treatment of various things, hypokinatal syndromes, testosterone replacement therapy in both men and women, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
So those categories of testosterone-like compounds, cypionate, enanthate, et cetera, and Decadrobilin, which is basically like, is it similar to DHT? Is it?
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
No, it's interesting. And I think another sort of brief editorial from me, if I may, is, You mentioned this patient was in their 80s. I think nowadays, unfortunately, a lot of younger males in particular, guys in their, gosh, even teens, but 20s and 30s, even early 40s, think that they need to look to synthetic testosterone in order to look a certain way, perform a certain way.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
in the gym, libido, etc. And I'll go on record again, and again, and again, saying that it's absolutely not necessary for most people of those ages, provided that they are taking good care to sleep well, eat well, take care now, but I realized that there are a growing number of use cases where People, for whatever reason, aren't able to recover from exercise. They're struggling.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
This is a little bit like the Ozempic conversation, right, where there are things that can help move the needle in the right direction, pun intended. But here with testosterone, synthetic testosterone and DECA, there's a real concern about loss of fertility.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
but they don't tend to operate in that negative feedback cycle by shutting down one's own endogenous production. Now that doesn't mean that they aren't without some safety concerns.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
And today we of course discuss the potential side effects and safety concerns of peptides, as well as the critical issue of sourcing clean peptides and working with a board certified physician if one is going to pursue peptide use. So by the end of today's discussion, you will be right there on the cutting edge of what's happening and where things are going with peptides.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Right. Well, what brought us on to the conversation about testosterone was this black market issue. There's also what I would call this dark gray market issue, which is that there are a number of companies that will sell all sorts of things, but peptides in particular, and listed on their website, it'll say not for human or animal consumption, for research purposes only.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
And one of the major issues is that the potency and cleanliness, so to speak, of purity of those compounds is not established. Many of them have LPS, lipopolysaccharide in them, which is inflammatory.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Earlier, before we started recording, you mentioned that you have heard of or interacted with, not your patients, but people who have come to you saying that they had really serious life-threatening consequences for using these black market, certainly, but dark gray market peptides.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
And in keeping with that, you'll notice that during today's discussion, we talk a fair amount about what the FDA currently allows in terms of prescription peptides, what the FDA has recently removed from the market in terms of peptides. And as a very recent update, just prior to the release of this episode, I learned that three peptides, CJC1295,
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
So semirelin to stimulate growth hormone release, offset some of the muscle loss from terapazide.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. AG1 is designed to cover all of your foundational nutritional needs, and it tastes great. Now, I've been drinking AG1 since 2012, and I started doing that at a time when my budget for supplements was really limited.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
In fact, I only had enough money back then to purchase one supplement, and I'm so glad that I made that supplement AG1. The reason for that is even though I strive to eat most of my foods from whole foods and minimally processed foods, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits, vegetables, vitamins and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
And I need to do that in order to ensure that I have enough energy throughout the day, I sleep well at night, and keep my immune system strong. But when I take AG1 daily, I find that all aspects of my health, my physical health, my mental health, and my performance, both cognitive and physical, are better.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
I know that because I've had lapses when I didn't take AG1 and I certainly felt the difference. I also notice, and this makes perfect sense given the relationship between the gut microbiome and the brain, that when I regularly take AG1, which for me means a serving in the morning or mid-morning and again later in the afternoon or evening, that I have more mental clarity and more mental energy.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
So is it fair to say that if one is interested in exploring the use of peptides for what you refer to as performance medicine, mental, physical health, and performance falls underneath that? Yes. essentially only put peptides into their body, maybe even on their body surface that they're obtaining from a physician who's obtained the peptides from a compounding pharmacy.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
He is a world expert in what he refers to as performance medicine, which involves the use of peptides and other therapies for improving mental health, physical health, and performance. Now, many of you have perhaps heard of peptide therapies. Perhaps some of you have not. A peptide is simply a small protein. So insulin is a peptide.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Yeah, I agree. And it worries me very much that people are buying PPC from dark gray market or black market sources. I mean, anything that says on it, not for animal or human use, for research purposes only, you can pretty much... guarantee the endotoxin, the lipopolysaccharide, at least has not been removed.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
both of which are in the growth hormone secretagogue family, meaning they promote the release of growth hormone, as well as thymus and beta alpha, which is in the sort of anti-inflammatory and tissue repair pathway. Those three are now re-allowed for prescription in the United States. So at the time of recording this episode, we discussed some of those as being recently banned by the FDA.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
And that can be really problematic, especially since my understanding is that it can be cumulative over time. It's not that one injection causes somebody to go into anaphylactic shock. It's that some of this LPS can build up an inflammatory response over time. And then you don't know where the tipping point is. And then somebody can have a really terrible reaction.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
So given that BPC 157 has been effectively removed from the legitimate market, what are people's alternatives? Again, working with the caveat that People should work with a physician.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Where can physicians get something similar enough to BPC-157?
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
They are now approved again for use in humans by the FDA. So there's a brief and very recent update. So just to summarize this admittedly long introduction, today you're going to learn about this incredible area of science called peptide biology and how it can augment mental health, physical health, and performance. And you're going to do so from one of the world's leading clinical experts.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
I definitely want to circle back as to what the motivation was by the FDA for doing that at some point. I think in the meantime, however, I think there's a lot of interest in BPC-157, a lot of use of BPC-157. The sources of BPC-157 are now drying up. And That's why I'm personally concerned that people are going to start going to the dark gray market and black market.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
I'm excited about the pentadecarginate. Yes. So let's put that on people's ear map, brain map. Pentadecarginate may be a good physician-prescribed substitution for people that can benefit from BPC-157.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
And thus far, you haven't mentioned any side effects of BPC-157 or pentadecarginate. That's kind of remarkable. It's been tremendous.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
And even though earlier we were talking a little bit about some hormone replacement therapies, before that, off microphone, you mentioned that you prefer peptides to direct hormone manipulations in most cases. So I think while peptides can be hormones, there are things like – oxytocin is sometimes called a peptide hormone.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
In general, when people think about hormone therapies, they're thinking testosterone, estrogen, pregnenolone, thyroid, et cetera. It sounds to me like much of your practice is built up around the notion that there are things that one can use, peptides, to kind of push and pull on these various systems without getting into them directly.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
My understanding is the advantage of that is you don't get the negative feedback. You don't gain the shutting down of natural production.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Before you begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Juve.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
So I've long wondered whether or not the The tale I was told when I was growing up, which is that every hour before midnight is worth two hours of sleep post-midnight. That feels true to me. Then again, feels true is often misleading, but feels true to me. But it makes perfect sense if the largest pulse and growth hormone is occurring in that couple of hours before midnight.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Yeah, using side effects as an indicator of whether or not something's working just seems like a terrible idea. But it's very common.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
I tend to be very conservative about these things. And by the way, I've tried various peptides for short periods of time because I like to experiment very safely. And some things like sermorelin, and we'll talk about other growth hormones, secretagogues, for me, for whatever reason, gave me great sleep, but only in the first part of the night.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
It nuked my rapid eye movement sleep in the second half of the night. It spiked my prostate specific antigen. It was a very consistent effect. I came off it and it went back down. That went back on, it went back up. And so I just found I couldn't take it. And it didn't take me very long to figure that out.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
But I know that there are some people who love sermorelin and don't see any of the same issues. So it seems like it can be very individual.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Juve makes medical grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast, it is the incredible impact that light can have on our biology.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
I think for most of our audience, the interest in growth hormone secretagogues probably relates to the better sleep and the overall feelings of vitality. And probably most people are seeking to...
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
not spike their appetite or put on muscle really these days we're hearing more and more from people both men and women who want to be strong without being big yeah and they prefer to be lean as opposed to not lean which i think is a great goal frankly that's my goal at this stage of life i just turned 49 yesterday and i happy birthday oh thank you thank you yeah thanks for coming out to the the birthday oh yeah that was a lot of mini bash the other day it was a lot of fun um
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Now, in addition to sunlight, red light and near infrared light sources have been shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health, including faster muscle recovery, improved skin health and wound healing, improvements in acne, reduced pain and inflammation, even mitochondrial function and improving vision itself.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
You know, I want to be strong and capable. I also want to be able to run and have cardiovascular fitness, but I don't want to be large. I don't want to take up a lot of space. I'm not interested in taking up a lot of space. And I think most people fall into that category.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
So if GHRP-6 can spike appetite, which for a subset of people might be useful, but probably most people will want to avoid it. ipamorelin, I've always been calling it ipamorelin, but ipamorelin at 100 micrograms dosage or less per night sounds like it's an interesting tool. What are some of the other growth hormone secretagogues? And I should just brief, I'll take the liberty of defining it.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
These are peptides that stimulate the release of your own endogenous growth hormone. This is not taking growth hormone. Right.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
The growth hormone releasing hormone. Correct. Yeah. But we can almost set aside CJC now because CJC-1295.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
The FDA just came in and let's just say one acronym took out another. There you go. The FDA took out CJC.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
And BPC. And BPC. People are probably getting a little dizzy with these acronyms, but I think we're doing a good job of guiding people along. So Sermorelin and Tesamorelin are similar enough.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Or does it lead to this feeling of enhanced sleep as well?
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
What sets Juve lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy device is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning specific wavelengths of red light and near infrared light in combination to trigger the optimal cellar adaptations. Personally, I use the Juve whole body panel about three to four times a week, and I use the Juve handheld light both at home and when I travel.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
And this is taken before sleep, no food within 45 minutes of the injection.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Trevor Burrus, Jr. : Got it. And if one is combining tesamorelin or sermorelin, ipamorelin and well, not BPC anymore, but pentadeca arginate instead because you can't get BPC-157 compounded. Is that done every night, five days a week, three days a week? What's the rationale of this five days on, two days off?
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Function. I recently became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
While I've long been a fan of blood testing, I really wanted to find a more in-depth program for analyzing blood, urine, and saliva to get a full picture of my heart health, my hormone status, my immune system regulation, my metabolic function, my vitamin and mineral status, and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors on your results. For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had two high levels of mercury in my blood. This was totally surprising to me. I had no idea prior to taking the test.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Function not only helped me detect this, but offered medical doctor-informed insights on how to best reduce those mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, because I had been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification, and worked to reduce my mercury levels.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Comprehensive lab testing like this is so important for health, and while I've been doing it for years, I've always found it to be overly complicated and expensive.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
If you'd like to try Juve, you can go to Juve spelled J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman. Juve is offering an exclusive discount to all Huberman Lab listeners with up to $400 off Juve products. Again, that's Juve spelled J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman to get up to $400 off. Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
I've been so impressed by Function, both at the level of ease of use, that is getting the test done, as well as how comprehensive and how actionable the tests are, that I recently joined their advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman Lab listeners. Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Now, I've spoken many times before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night. That's truly the foundation of all mental health, physical health and performance. And one of the best ways to ensure that you get a great night's sleep is to control the temperature of your sleeping environment.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Eight Sleep makes it incredibly easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to control the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Eight Sleep has now launched their newest generation of the Pod Cover, the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity, higher fidelity sleep tracking technology, and even has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring. If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover,
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Go to 8sleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. 8sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU and Australia. Again, that's 8sleep.com slash Huberman. Before we started recording, you mentioned that you're actually not a...
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
I'm a huge fan of taking massive amounts of supplements that you are a big fan of taking CoQ10, coenzyme Q10, 200 milligrams per day in the morning. I also take CoQ10. I think I started taking it for quote unquote general mitochondrial health. I don't know that I thought very carefully about exactly what I was trying to accomplish with it.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. Therapy is an extremely important component to overall health. In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise, including cardiovascular exercise and resistance training exercise. Now, there are essentially three things that great therapy provides.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
So 200 milligrams a day of coenzyme Q10 can be... can facilitate some of that.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
You know, as people are hearing this, they're probably thinking, okay, well, these are just, you know, this is what I call anecdata or whatever. I, you know, I don't have to remind people that you're a board certified physician.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
I think that what was still ringing in the back of my mind this entire conversation, even though I'm paying very careful attention, is that most of the drugs that are prescribed in this country are off label. Yeah. I think that just like, I don't think I've ever heard that stated out loud. Yeah. Yeah. It's wild. Yeah, yeah.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
So the idea that people would take something that wasn't shown in a clinical trial to be effective for purpose A, that it gets approved for purpose A, but then can be prescribed by doctors for purpose B, C, D, or E. Right. I mean, you're not telling me this is commonplace. You're telling me this is the majority of prescription drugs.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
And does that ever cycle back to the clinical trials or no, this just becomes physician understanding and lore like, hey, yeah, you know, I've got patients that, you know, they get on azithromycin and their acne clears up. By the way, I'm not saying that folks, I'm not a physician, but But for instance.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
First, it provides a good rapport with somebody that you can really trust and talk to about any and all issues that concern you. Second of all, great therapy provides support in the form of emotional support, but also directed guidance, the do's and the not to do's. And third, expert therapy can help you arrive at useful insights that you would not have arrived at otherwise.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
So interesting. It is amazing. I think also I'm reminded that medicine, as beautiful a field as it is, I have tremendous respect for it, of course, is a field of fairly siloed training. And I love the idea that now, thanks to public education efforts like this one,
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
that you're providing us that physicians learn from each other in a much broader way and can potentially hear about what drugs can be useful for this or that. The other thing, and this is not editorial, this is a real observation. Pharmaceutical companies are very interested in the other uses of already approved drugs. Sure.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
The research and development process for a drug, the safety evaluation is incredibly expensive. So they want nothing more than to take a drug that's already been approved for one purpose and to take that already safety approved drug and find other uses. How are they not circling back to the off-label use and understanding of these compounds and
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
and then essentially marketing them for these other purposes. Or I guess with Ozempic, that's exactly what happened.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
We have many different thousands of peptides in our brain and body, and they perform a variety of different roles. Dr. Conover's expertise is in the use of exogenous, that is, peptides that one takes, exogenous peptides for activating multiple pathways in the brain and body to augment health.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Insights that allow you to do better, not just in your emotional life, in your relationship life, but also the relationship to yourself and your professional life and all sorts of career goals. With better help, they make it very easy to find an expert therapist with whom you can really resonate with and provide you with these three benefits that I described.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Also, because BetterHelp is carried out entirely online, it's very time efficient and easy to fit into a busy schedule with no commuting to a therapist's office or sitting in a waiting room or looking for a parking spot. So if you'd like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Well, thank you for the kind words. I mean, the birth of the podcast did take place during the pandemic and in large part because I saw, everybody getting very anxious, their circadian rhythms disrupted. And those were focuses of my laboratory.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
And frankly, when I was a postdoc and graduate student, but especially as I got a little older in my years, I couldn't believe that I was reading these papers about how important it morning sunlight is and all these things. But then my colleagues were all getting sick and dying around me or getting what we call the tenured look where they show up, you know, start their job.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
And five years later, they look like they've aged 25 years. And I realized that I wanted to avoid that. So I've always just enjoyed learning and sharing science and health tools. And so thank you for the kind words. I've, I've certainly, um,
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
been kind of both astonished and positively amazed in the ways that the pandemic and the post pandemic years, I like to think we're in the post pandemic years. I think we can safely say that now. how they've drawn people's attention to this idea that they need to take agency into their own healthcare. That no one, no pill, potion, injection, et cetera, can replace good behaviors.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Pills, potions, and injections can potentially augment those good behaviors and get people going down the right path, which is what we're talking about today. But that it's really a personal responsibility. I mean, no... No one can give us a calmer mind. No one can give us a healthier body. No one can do that, right?
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
It's interesting that some of the wealthiest people in the world, the new thing isn't for people to boast about their yachts or their properties. It's about... It's about their vitality, their longevity, because that's the thing that I suppose in some sense money can start to buy, but it doesn't require a ton of funds to take great care of one's body and mind.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
And now for my discussion with Dr. Craig Conover. Dr. Craig Conover. Welcome.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Yeah. Well, and I appreciate that you're bringing up this notion that, you know, just stacking more and more behaviors, like you got to crush a workout and do sauna. And that is not the message. You know, sometimes we get teased and there's some good comedy takes on me that make me chuckle now and again. Yeah. But that's not the approach. These are tools that people can... It's a buffet.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
And I think most everyone agrees that sleep is key. Most everyone agrees that exercise is key. Nutrition is key. Great social connection is key. When it comes to... because I want to make sure that we circle back to this. When it comes to the peptides, it seems that one of your approaches, if I may, is to kind of raise the tide so that the boat can get out to sea.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
I appreciate the invitation to be here. I'm thrilled that you're here. We are going to launch ourselves into the space that is called peptides.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
And we were talking about these growth hormone secretagogues. We covered... GH-RP6, which is the one that stimulates appetite, it's probably going to be a niche case condition that people would want to use that. Ipramirelin, tesamirelin, sermirelin. I get a lot of questions about, is it MK-677? Yeah. What in the world is MK-677? It sounds like a weapon.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
So it stimulates appetite. It does. It can stimulate cortisol prolactin. It sounds like a not good situation for most people.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
And it's an interesting space.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Because I think most people probably don't know what a peptide is. They should feel no guilt or shame about that. Right. I'm sure you'll tell us. But this area of medicine... that people broadly refer to as peptides is picking up a lot of momentum, even though it's been around for a long time.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Which are the growth hormone secretagogues that your more typical patients who don't want to stimulate appetite, both male and female patients prefer? What are you compounding for them?
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Does not spike appetite.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
So this is taken first thing in the morning. You get an additional growth hormone release. Yes, you do. Yeah, you do in the early mornings when you're waking up. And you used to compound it with CJC-1295 to get the other pathways involved that can help. But now CJC has been taken out by the FDA. Right. But hexarone still exists.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
We were talking about coenzyme Q10 and the Krebs cycle. And I forgot to close the hatch on supplements more broadly. Again, doesn't sound like you're a big fan of taking lots of pills and capsules. I think some people will take that as a relief. I think a lot of people get tired of... taking a lot of pills. Some people don't like to do that.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
What are some of the other things that you do take besides coenzyme Q10? Earlier, we were talking about methylated vitamins. Methylated B vitamins. Yeah. This is becoming increasingly popular. We're starting to hear more about methylation and methylated compounds. Could you educate us on methylated B vitamins?
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
And I find it particularly interesting because there are many people using peptides for very specific purposes, but Most people haven't really heard of the various peptides that are out there. And if anything, we can be sure that in the years to come, peptides are going to be increasingly popular. And there's, of course, the incredibly popular peptide of GLP-1 agonist. For sure. Taking over.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
And again, those methylated B vitamins are methylated B12.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
You're not supposed to drink caffeine too late in the day. Lately what I've – I don't know. This is wrong to bring up on this podcast, but I can't help myself – I love yerba mate in the morning and afternoon. Coffee in the morning now makes me feel nauseous. I don't know if I'm pregnant or something, but it makes me feel nauseous. But I love the taste of coffee in the afternoon.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
This is like a midlife thing. I don't know what it is. So now in the afternoon, like around 1 or 2 p.m., even just the smallest amount of coffee, it's like,
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
the most delicious thing i've ever tasted yeah i love coffee um it can mess with your sleep too late in the day but um that's a perfect segue to talk about sleep sure um because one thing that i know you've done a lot of work on and with are these peptides that can improve sleep not just by virtue of enhancing growth hormone release but um you know i'll just be very direct i um i
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
For the last, gosh, like four to six months, I've had the opportunity to try pinellin and injectable pinellin combined with glycine. Goodness gracious, in the positive sense of the goodness gracious, you're from the South, so I don't know where people have it.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Never before have I found something that can improve the amount of rapid eye movement sleep that I get besides rapid eye movement sleep deprivation. You know, sleep deprivation, the next night you'll get a compensatory effect. That's not the way to increase your REM sleep, folks. You know, there are a lot of things like high intensity exercise that improve my slow wave deep sleep.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Cold plunge early in the day improves slowly. Deep sleep. There have been a few other things. But with pineal, and by the way, I'm not doing this every night. I do this occasionally. I ran a little experiment and I track my sleep using the sleep tracker that's in eight sleep. And it's doubling the amount of rapid eye movement sleep that I'm getting. Yeah. Doubling. Yeah.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Which is, so like from an hour to two hours or from an hour and 30, it's like nearly three hours, you know? Even I posted a picture of a sleep score with some rapid eye movement sleep. It's not something I typically do. Yeah. But even the... the most competitive of biohackers, Brian Johnson, was like, oh, nice sleep score, you know?
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Now, he touts a sleep score that's perfect every night for, you know, for every night, but, and I'm kind of poking at Brian, because we like to poke back and forth. We're friendly with one another. So the point being that Pinelan is a remarkable, way to increase rapid eye movement sleep.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
I have very little knowledge about it, except that my understanding is that it might stimulate some regeneration or stimulation of the pineal sites of the pineal.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
I hope the FDA doesn't nuke it as a consequence of this conversation.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
And for my understanding, epitalin also is involved in DNA repair and has been explored in animal studies for... trying to offset vision loss and some retinal degenerative conditions.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
So to drop into this and make sure everyone's on the same page, what is a peptide?
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Oh, yeah. Yeah, it makes things other than melatonin. That's for sure.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
I think of... The millions of people that suffer from lack of rapid eye movement sleep, the lack of neuroplasticity that can be the consequence of that, the lack of healthy removal of emotional labels on previous day memories.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
that is the consequence of REM deprivation, the enormous impact on depression rates, the enormous impact on pretty much every mental health issue is made worse by, by lack of REM sleep. So I, I say, or I raised this conversation about pineal and with a little bit of trepidation, because I do worry that on the one hand, people will see it as a miracle drug. That's not what we're talking about.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
It has this effect, but at the same time, I, Okay, I'll just say that there's another drug that was released recently. This is an FDA-approved drug in the category of sleep drugs called the DORAS. So it works a little differently. It doesn't push on the sleepiness system, so to speak. It suppresses the wakefulness system. And the idea is that it's supposed to increase REM sleep.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
It was by name Quivivic and things like that. I tried it. It was a total disaster for me. I fell asleep, woke up three hours later, couldn't fall back asleep. I tried it. It was lower dosage. It's extremely expensive as well. So I'm going to piss off whoever makes Quivivic. I forget who makes it. It was a complete disaster for me. Pinelan has been incredible.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
And here's what's really interesting about it to me is that it seems to improve my sleep on the nights when I don't take it, which makes total sense if it indeed is providing some regeneration of the pineal sites that make melatonin and others.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
So here we're talking about something that one could potentially pulse with now and again and get improvement in sleep every night. Yes.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Interesting. We haven't done an episode of this podcast yet on heavy metals, but I'm very interested in this because many people write to me asking about metal toxicity and about mold toxicity.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
We say on the side of the road, you mean in the liver.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
You're not about screening it in the, you're talking about, building up of debris, cellular debris with it, or excuse me, metabolic debris within your body.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
So when people take a peptide that's injectable, pineal and glycine, the ganglycine, obviously, but for let's say somebody doesn't have access to you or to for whatever reason, there's a barrier. to getting a hold of those peptides. Can people take glycine orally?
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
I'm still a big fan of things like magnesium threonate, apigenin, which is a chamomile derivative. And I'll try glycine. I think a few years back I was using a little bit of glycine, but it was more like 1,000 milligrams. But now that it's in the injectable peptide, the pinelon, I don't take it. Is there an oral form of pinelon that works?
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Maybe just to orient ourselves, we should talk about GLP-1 first, not because it's necessarily the category of peptides that I think people would want to consider for themselves, but because most people have probably heard of semaglutide and Munjaro and things like that. Sure. So how long ago was it that humans started injecting GLP-1 agonists in order to lose weight?
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Yeah. And as we're talking about this, I'm realizing, unfortunately, just the way the internet works, that people are going to start selling likely as a consequence of this conversation, we'll start selling pineal. And, but you need to know that you're actually getting pineal. And I mean, it's very easy for somebody to just pop something up on Amazon and sell it.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
And maybe they just throw some melatonin in there and call it pineal. And like there, there's a lot of like BS stuff out there. So this is why the compounding pharmacy component and working with a physician.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Do you think the pharmaceutical companies are going to move into these other peptides? I mean, certainly ipamorelin for the reduction in visceral body fat, that's an FDA-approved drug. So is sermorelin an FDA-approved drug? Mm-hmm. The GLP-1 agonists, FDA-approved drugs. So the FDA is unlikely to pull those, but they're a blockbuster, especially GLP-1.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
I mean, they're making not even a small fortune but a large fortune.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
earlier you mentioned stem cell therapies. Those are not FDA approved in this country.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
and you give it back within four hours then that is allowed with under the fda guidelines interesting there was this clinic in um florida a few years ago was um touting stem cell therapies for macular degeneration injected some stem cells into these patients eyes and they went blind really quickly and they were not blind prior to the injections
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
That, to my understanding, caused a severe setback to the whole field. I'm old enough to remember when gene therapy was set back by about 10 years because a patient received gene therapy, which is now pretty common for certain diseases, and the patient died. It's unclear exactly why they died, but that delayed the field of gene therapy by at least a decade.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Now, of course, peptides such as insulin have been used for many years now to treat things like diabetes, but today we talk about novel peptides, including GLP-1, so these are glucagon-like peptide analogs, Things like Ozempic and Monjaro, which I realize are a bit controversial. However, today we talk about the micro dosing of those peptides.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
I mean, this country is very conservative when it comes to the approval of new therapeutics.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Yeah.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Mm-hmm.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Well, certainly you have the clinical data to back those statements. Thymusin alpha-1, what is this peptide? But maybe before we discuss it, did the FDA nuke thymusin alpha-1? They sure did. Whoa. Okay. They're coming through with a howitzer and taking out all these peptides. They are. Okay. Well, then let's keep this relatively brief. What was thymusin alpha-1 being used for previously? Okay.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
I hear a lot of complaints about brain fog with long COVID and brain fog generally. Cerebrolysin is a very interesting compound. Yeah. My understanding is that Cerebral Lysine is available in Europe more broadly than it is in the U.S. Is it still? It's available here. Did the FDA, is it taken out? No, it's still available. Okay, all right. Cerebral Lysine made the cut.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
We'll see what happens after this podcast.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
For that reason. My understanding is that cerebral lysin is a kind of a cocktail of brain-derived nootrophic factor, ciliary nootrophic factor, like some other things. It's not one thing.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
So as long as we're talking about maintaining or boosting cognitive function, here's one I've never tried, but you and I have talked a little bit about. And it's still seen as kind of renegade, but it's becoming more commonplace. And that's methylene blue. And I always make the joke that I used to use methylene blue to clean my fish tanks. Because I'm a big fish tank aficionado.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
At least I was when I was a kid. Right now, I don't have a tank, but it's empty. No pun intended. What is methylene blue and what are people using it for? And does it turn your tongue blue?
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Is it used as a performance-enhancing drug in endurance sports? Because this sounds like the kind of thing that cyclists would really want to use. For sure. Check with your local governing body. This is always a question I get. People are like, they hear something on the podcast and they go, can I take it or am I going to get disqualified?
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
And I always say, I have no idea if you'll get disqualified.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
There aren't circuits for being smart. There are circuits for task switching, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
So it's 10 milligrams of methylene blue combined, and you've got some other things in the cocktail version that you make. Take it in the morning on an empty stomach.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
So earlier you mentioned a patient, or maybe it was patients, plural, that experienced a more rapid transition out of a COVID infection or maybe more recovery from long COVID symptoms, et cetera. It reminded me of the second time. I got COVID, far less intense than the first time. But the second time I got COVID, I had an amazing experience where my COVID test was very strong band.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
It was very clear. Like I had COVID. There was no question about it. I didn't feel good. I was fatigued. wasn't super severe. I would put it kind of on a six out of 10 on the kind of malaise level. No fever. Okay. So I stayed in bed and stayed away from people, this sort of thing. But I did an NAD infusion. I of course told them I had COVID. They came over, they gave me an NAD infusion.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Correlation is not causation, but I think it was 750 milligram NAD infusion over the course of about 45 minutes. I had the usual feelings that one gets when you get an NAD infusion of you feel like an elephant is stepping on your legs. Your chest kind of cramps. And then when that stops, you feel much better than you go into the thing. The band was absent the next day. My symptoms were...
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
I went from, I don't want to say gone. I went from, you know, like a five, six out of 10, as I mentioned, to like a two out of 10. And within another 48 hours, I was good to go and better. Now this is correlation, not causation. I don't know what was going on. It could have been the saline bag, right? Could have been any number of things.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
But the shift from a dark band to no band was so dramatic that I took another test after the no band. And then, of course, the next day and the next day, this kind of thing. It's interesting. I don't know what it means. But one wonders whether or not it's just a – global way of combating inflammation.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Anytime I think about a systemic effect, and the reason I raise this is that I don't want to give the impression that I think that NAD is specifically in the pathway that was targeted, but that by Brain and body were inflamed. Clearly, I had an infection. You could have a flu. You could have a cold. You're inflamed. What are your thoughts on that anecdote?
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Again, it's just anecdote, but what are your clinical reflections?
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Amazing. Yeah. I take sublingual NMN each day. It makes my hair grow ridiculously fast. I've done the control experiments. I'm a scientist. I know how to do control experiments. It's still just N of one. It's just me. Makes my nails grow really fast. Makes my hair grow fast. That's the major consequence. By the way, I want to be clear.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
I don't have any stake in any company that sells NAD or NAD infusion. So I'm just reporting what I'm reporting. I think it's great. Somebody who's quite expert in the NAD Pathway, Charles Brenner, who I believe has a relationship to a company that makes NR supplements. I think that's correct. Encouraged me to try NR. I took these NR supplements.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
This is what, it's NAD minus a phosphate group is my understanding. And those I took orally. I couldn't tell if I got the same or different effect because I was taking them together. I didn't continue to take them because compared to NMN, it was very expensive.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
And I just stopped taking it. So that's why I use Sublingual NMN. But In brief discussions with Charles and forging online, it seems that there is some literature, human clinical literature, showing that NR can reduce inflammation. Is that right?
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Less data that NMN can reduce inflammation, at least lack of human studies. Okay. So we're still kind of in the, it's still murky, foggy territory with respect to the research and clinical- And the biochemistry. Yeah.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
So in the backdrop of our conversation today, there have been a number of themes. But one of the themes that seems to keep coming up is that there are a lot of things about medicine that we don't understand. Totally. And yet there are tools that seem to work for certain people extremely well. A few years ago, I went to a meeting. This is a foundation meeting, a foundation I was a part of.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
where you get to see talks from really the best of the best laboratories, and they only show unpublished data. And at the time – I don't know if this paper is published yet, but at the time they were showing that they took people that were diagnosed with – major depression. And they start doing a bunch of metabolomics on them. Now this sounds pretty standard for social media.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
It's actually pretty heretical. Not a lot of places have done this right. So a couple thousand patients blood draws, they're trying to figure out, they ask a simple question, are there any specific vitamin deficiencies that are associated with depression? And as I recall, they identified a few different types of vitamin deficiencies.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
So it's not like one vitamin, it's not always methylated B6 or something like that, or excuse me, it's not always B6 or B12. But they found these clusters of patients that had major depression that were deficient in a particular B vitamin, they supplemented back the B vitamin and lo and behold, those patients showed remission of their depression.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
So one could conveniently conclude, oh, well, all depression is a B vitamin deficiency, but of course that's not true, right? More likely depression like fever is just a raw description of symptoms. But what was so exciting about this talk, to me anyway, was that people were starting to look at nutritional deficiencies as a potential source of mental illness.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
which now has a bit more traction, but at the time was like, whoa, what are we really saying here? I thought all of depression was a serotonin deficiency, right? This kind of thing. So when you talk about NAD having these transformative effects and the fact that NAD can kind of raise the tide on a number of different biological processes, to me, it makes perfect sense.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
It might've kicked off some mitochondrial pathway or some cellular pathway that then fills in a blank that's desperately needed. Is that one way that we can conceptualize this? That makes total sense to me. Okay. I like how you've described it. So how often do you encourage your already healthy patients to do NAD infusions? What are the dosages?
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
I should mention the NAD infusions for most people are a little bit costly.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
They're like anywhere from... $500 to $1,000. Or more. Yeah, or more. If you're in Los Angeles.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Putting 500 milligrams in over the course of 45 minutes is going to be very uncomfortable. Many people take an anti-nausea med.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
What is your opinion? My understanding is that, well, there's sort of two camps on this, it seems. Yeah. At least two camps. One camp seems really bullish on this. They seem very excited about this drug. The other camp seems to point to the fact that one may be creating a drug dependency. Mm-hmm. That it's very expensive.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Of all the things we've discussed?
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
And they point to the also potency of lifestyle factors like exercise and caloric restriction, eating mostly non-processed foods, et cetera, as a quote-unquote better alternative. I'm not necessarily saying that. I think they both have their place. To me, it seems very contextual. But as a clinician, I'm curious what you think.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Well, that's a significant statement. So 100 milligrams injected subcutaneously, you get a little bit of stomach cramping.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
As compared to the 500 milligrams to 750 or 1,000 milligrams that one brings in IV. The fastest I've ever dripped it in was... I think like 40 minutes. I can tell you the record. What's the record? Three minutes and 26 seconds.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Yeah. I found that because you have to sit there for a while, you could think, okay, well, you organize the... the plumbing correctly that you could type or something, but you feel garbage enough during the infusion that you get irritable. It's actually a very interesting window into empathy for people who have pain.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
You know, when you're in this kind of whole body kind of systemic pain and discomfort and you're getting that saliva, I'm kind of sensing it now. I have a distinct memory of this. Kind of like for people that get seasick, you think about being on a boat and walking back and forth. Get a little nauseous. Someone would walk in the room and you're like, why are they walking like that? Right.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
You know, and it's your own, it's your sense of pain. I normally don't have that response to people. I'm not a moody person in general. But then, you know, when you remove the infusion, you feel great. And all of a sudden, people seem delightful. The irritating person. It's a very interesting experiment in social empathy.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Yeah. For people that can't afford the infusions, the injections would be the next best bet. If they can't afford those? Would it be the sublingual NMN or NR?
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Yeah. So going from most expensive to least expensive, most expensive would be IV, then it would be subcutaneous, then it would be NR, and then it would be a sublingual NMN.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
I get this itchy thing.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
And for those that are listening to this and They may recall I did an episode of this podcast with Dr. Peter Attia where we talked about NAD and NMN and NR. that was mainly focused on the research literature. You're not gonna find much. So what we're talking about here is clinical experience.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Speaking of clinicians and science and all of this, there are a couple other peptides that have received FDA approval that are commonly in use. Things like PT141, which is in this melanocyte hormone pathway that's used... One of its FDA-approved uses is, I think the brand name is Vileci, is for female hypo-libido. So it stimulates libido in women. It's also used to stimulate libido in men.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Is that right?
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
So it's not just related to blood flow?
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
It's not a very- It can look very unnatural.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Yeah. The medial pituitary, which at least my understanding is the origin of these peptides that we're talking about now is super interesting. And you mentioned the nausea. These peptides hit multiple pathways. When we had Dr. Zachary Knight from University of California, San Francisco, on to talk about GLP-1 in a lot of detail, he mentioned that
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
some of the nausea associated with Ozempic and Manjaro and things like that relates to the fact that there are receptors for these things, not just in one
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
hypothalamic structure, but also in like areopostrema and areas of the brain that are these quote unquote primitive areas that are associated with generating nausea when you need to rid yourself of a poison that nature conveniently engineered us with neurons that when they detect chemical changes in the blood make us vomit.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
So I have two more questions. The first one is a bit of a controversial one. Okay. Today, we've talked about a lot of peptides that you've observed incredible clinical utility for. We also talked about a lot of peptides that the FDA has banned, basically, to be blunt.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
We've also talked about peptides that at one point not too long ago were considered part of kind of niche culture, like fitness or bodybuilding culture that are now approaching what will probably be trillion dollar industries over the next 10 years. things like GLP-1 agonists. So any listener with their neurons firing, we'll put two and two together and say, okay, what's the deal?
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
We talk about those peptides combined with other peptides, as well as behavioral practices to offset the muscle loss associated with them. And then we dive into some lesser known peptides, but ones that are growing in use. For instance, BPC-157 or body protection compound 157, which is used to treat inflammation, to accelerate wound healing and a variety of other things.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Obviously the FDA, I like to believe, has a genuine interest in our safety. They don't want us taking things that are dangerous for us. At the same time, there seems to be a kind of clawing back of what's out there and then a handing off to pharmaceutical companies to put out compounds for which there are tremendous profit margins. I mean, the profit margins on these are insane.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
We can't comprehend it. You can't comprehend it. So, you know, MK-677, I crossed out, right? The FDA grabbed that one. Thymusin Alpha-1, crossed out. Okay, a bunch of other things that have been... BPC-157. clawed back. So how should we frame this in our mind?
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
In other words, do you think that the FDA is of genuine good intentions of trying to protect the general public and that's why they're doing this? Or is this a plan to kind of make that appear to be the case so that these can then be sold at a very, very high profit margin? And perhaps it could be both, right? It's not an either or. And I want to be very clear. Sure.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
I work at a major medical school, but I'll speak freely anyway, right? As would my colleagues. I like to think that these governing bodies have some people there at least with very good intentions. I don't think it's a bunch of bad people like writhing their hands together with getting kickbacks on pharma. I don't believe that. In fact, I know that not to be the case.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
But what's really going on here? Because this is kind of weird. There's this huge class of compounds we call peptides that clearly have immensely – Beneficial uses in the right dosage in the right hands with the right physicians. They're being clawed back Why it's confusing.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
That was done for melanocyte-simulating hormone pathways.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
I really appreciate your take. I too rely on prescription drugs now and again. I don't know, maybe I'll lose some following for saying this, but I've had some situations where it made sense to take an antibiotic after a surgery or something. I'm not like anti-antibiotics, right? I also don't eat them like M&Ms. I also... I believe that, well, everything you said, I generally agree with.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
I don't have the clinical expertise or the nuance to really understand these governing bodies. That's one of the reasons why I'm asking today and really appreciate you shedding light on this. I think you're clearly a truth teller. You're telling us your truth from the clinical perspective, but it's clear you also have a broad optics here. And we appreciate that. Sure.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
This podcast has always been about bringing in a diverse audience. outlooks on the same things. And it's been wonderful today to be able to explore peptides, NAD, and this issue of FDA approval and FDA removal, as the case may be. You said something earlier a couple of times that I'd like to finish up on. You talked about positive thoughts.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
You're a physician, not a psychologist, but you're a physician. and you're in the business of making people feel better. And it's clear to me that among your many talents, you have great powers of observation. So what is this thing about positive thoughts? I mean, there are a lot of neuro immunological data out there showing that, you know, stress makes us sick.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
If we stress too long for you repeatedly for too for too long, stress in the short period is actually good for us, right? There are some data showing that positive thoughts can enhance immune system function, et cetera. The data are pretty cool. Clinically, however, what's your observation about mindset and health?
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
beautifully said and so grateful to you for doing that within your clinical practice for making that decision a few years back to shift over to being you know aligned with your purpose and and the way that you've now expanded your practice to public education will provide links to your practice and to your public education efforts and for coming here to do this
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
significant public education effort about peptides and other compounds and regulatory bodies and also just the field of medicine. And also just, you know, I think so often we hear from scientists or from physicians and we forget the human component and what's what's so What's so beautiful about what you do and the way you do it is that your humanity really comes through.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
So it really does. I can tell you really care. And I know our listeners and viewers can tell as well. Thank you. As this field evolves and advances, please come back and talk to us again.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Meanwhile, again, we'll provide links so that people can find you and some of the resources that... back up what we've discussed today. And Craig, Dr. Conover, thank you ever so much.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Okay. Come back again. I appreciate it. I appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Craig Conover. To learn more about his work and his clinic, as well as to find links to some of the things discussed in today's episode, please see the show note captions.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
And if you'd like to learn more about peptides, including some of the ones that we discussed today, but also some additional ones, please see the link to the solo episode that I did about peptide therapies in the captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
In addition, please subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. Please check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
So that's Instagram, X, formerly known as Twitter, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media channels.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
If you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, our neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as protocols in the form of brief one to three page PDFs. Those protocol PDFs are on things like neuroplasticity and learning, optimizing dopamine, improving your sleep, Deliberate cold exposure, deliberate heat exposure.
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Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
We have a foundational fitness protocol that describes a template routine that includes cardiovascular training and resistance training with sets and reps, all backed by science. And all of which again is completely zero cost. To subscribe, simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab up in the upper right corner, scroll down a newsletter and provide your email.
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Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Craig Conover. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
Yeah, it sounds like from the story you just told us that it's not just about an aesthetic change that motivates people to lean into other aspects of their health and life when they lose some weight, that it's also just the sheer...
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
literal weight and also that adipose tissue, fat tissue, you know, produces a lot of hormones that we know impact the brain and brain function, which is not to say that there aren't people out there with a lot of adipose tissues who, aren't extremely bright and motivated, et cetera. But many people who are carrying excess body fat don't feel good. They report brain fog, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
And I think now, thanks to Chris Palmer and actually at Stanford, there's also a program in metabolic psychiatry. We're starting to see or understand and appreciate the link between adipose tissue and brain health or lack of brain health in most cases. So in the case of GLP-1, People have criticized it, saying that a fair percentage of the weight that's lost is lean body mass, muscle loss.
Huberman Lab
Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver
But it seems to me that can be remedied pretty easily if people just do some resistance training.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Lori Gottlieb. Lori Gottlieb is a psychotherapist and bestselling author and is considered one of the world's leading experts on relationships.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I rarely ask guests on this podcast to editorialize about other guests, but here it feels appropriate. Bill Eddy was on this podcast. He's a therapist and lawyer, and he wrote the book, I think it was like Five Types of People That Will Ruin Your Life.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And one of the cardinal features of a person that he claimed will ruin your life is somebody, one of the early warning signs, let's not say cardinal features, but is somebody who has a story about their past failures that's always about how they were wronged by somebody else.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Like the victim stance. Like there's no other word for it. People who are constantly talking about how they were a victim of somebody else.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I'm guessing you see this sometimes in therapy.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Yeah. We've been making a fair number of assumptions about relationship structure. There are so many different permutations these days that we don't have to explore them all. Do you think that some people are just not well suited for romantic relationships?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I've known a few people in my lifetime, a former advisor who he passed away, as I mentioned earlier, but who had tried romantic relationships and decided they weren't for him. Most everyone I know in my life is either partnered or yeah, pretty much. Thank goodness, happily so.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But are there people for whom like they just opt out of the game for reasons that are healthy as opposed to fear of rejection or otherwise?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Throughout today's conversation, I feel like what seems to be in contrast is our stories about ourselves and other people and life versus just really being present. This image of the Teflon pan is really – kind of looping in my head because this idea that, you know, positive thing happens, it slips right off. Negative thing sticks. What does that mean?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
To go a little bit further into this idea, which, by the way, I fully subscribe to based on your explanation of this and my belief that our unconscious mind is driving a lot of our choices, my understanding is that what you just described – doesn't adhere to mom, dad, male, female compartmentalization.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
It's like we create a story about the negative thing and that the story about the positive thing was a very brief story. It was like one of those three sentence poems or something and then it's gone. Versus presence, like the more presence we can bring to something, the more positive, meaningful experience we can extract from it. I really believe this.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I learned this in science actually, because I had an absolutely spectacular neuroanatomy professor when I was an undergraduate. And he said, when you look down the microscope, if you're looking for something, You'll find it, but you're going to miss all this context of like the inputs to that structure and you lose the pattern recognition that's going to serve you going forward.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So I learned I had this – I had so much time back then. I would just sit at night as a graduate student after I left my undergrad and went on to 11. I would just like stare at brain tissue and you learn that –
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
about it in conscious and unconscious ways and then later when you're doing an experiment you see things like oh you know there's a there's a deficit here there's a real effect here and and you and you learn that that through presence you um You're like experiencing things so much differently than if you go looking for something.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
In science, if you go looking for something, it's actually bad science.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And I've tried to transport that onto relationship in some ways, like in relation to things and people and dogs and all the things in life if you're really present. Like the story's writing itself, but you're not scripting it out. I don't think I have a language for this. Rick Rubin's talked a little bit about this in his book, The Creative Act.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Like we need to be on the front end of the vehicle, experiencing space and time as it's happening, as opposed to sitting next to it or in it and kind of creating a narrative about what's happening around us. Does that make sense?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And what I mean by that is that I think a lot of people will hear what you just said and assume, okay, if my dad hurt me in the following ways, then let's say it's a woman. And she said, you know, my dad hurt me in the following ways. Maybe he was a drinker, withdrawn, or he was violent or whatever. Then that woman will seek out men that mimic that. here I'm assuming heterosexual relationship.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Yeah, it seems that like one of the challenges of being human is unless somebody is a narcissist where they basically dismiss anything that doesn't make them feel good, in which case they miss out on so much of life and everyone can't stand them anyway.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
If you're a permeable person, like you're paying attention to what people say, you're trying to integrate that, you're trying to do better, be better. The hard part is being semi-permeable. You have to know what to let in, what to reject, what to accept, what to work on. I mean, it's a challenging thing, this process of being a person in relation to others, right?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Lori Gottlieb. Lori Gottlieb, welcome.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I feel like the whole landscape around relationships has changed so much in the last 20, 30 years. It seems like in some ways for the better, like there's a lot more discussion about the sorts of things that you're explaining and better understanding of self, how to show up better, better choice making and so on. I was thinking about the
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
At the same time, this example you mentioned before, like someone in their teens or 20s, a couple will break up, and then somebody's posting all these things about them.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
That kind of quote-unquote feedback, because it's not really feedback, it's more signaling and posturing about what they aren't as opposed to what the other person is, has got to create pretty detrimental stories in the person that it's about, right? Because they have the choice of either believing those things um, or disbelieving them.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But if her mother was the one that was the drinker, violent, and or withdrawn, and she's heterosexual, my understanding is based on the dynamics that you describe, if she will find those traits in a man, because she's heterosexual, she's seeking men for romantic partners. And I think that's very important. I think that sometimes we put the mom-dad relationship
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Um, but it's not really an opportunity for growth in the same way that sitting down with somebody and saying like, Hey, these were some things that you did well, and here are some things that didn't go well. Um, and I guess how much of the story for, um, for men and women, young men and women nowadays and older, do you think like, uh, is being, uh,
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
written through what we hear about the opposite sex, right? Like in the last, I would say 10, 15 years, there hasn't really been a moment of really trying to prop young boys up and men of it's like, like maleness is great. Like that's not something you hear very often. And I certainly understand why there was a need and an effort to balance opportunities, right?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But a lot of young guys grew up hearing that maleness, having a Y chromosome is a bad thing, that testosterone is bad or something like that. And I've been asked to comment on this more and more recently in the press, and I only know my experience and what I observe, but... I mean, you take any group and tell them that they're bad. That hasn't really worked out well for any group or for society.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
labels on top of the attraction to, again, staying in the heterosexual framework here, the opposite sex framework. And then people say, well, why is it that this woman always seeks out these, like what ended up being really terrible guys? Like she had such a great dad, but she had a dreadful mom.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Love it. I love this concept of make the choice that is going to bring the bigger life. Yeah. Because as you pointed out, it's so easy for people to stay stuck in what is unpleasant but hasn't killed them yet.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I love a vote in favor of people enjoying their life more and hopefully deriving more self-respect by doing it. This asceticism of we're going to deprive ourselves of things in order to respect ourselves, even though I value discipline and I think learning to enjoy life is also important.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So much here. Laurie, thank you so much for the work you do with your patients slash clients slash we don't have a better word for it. And also your willingness to get out and teach and literally every two weeks, you know, field questions from the general public. It's not easy to do, I imagine. Clearly, you're thinking about things past, present, and future. And people really need these tools.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And not everyone will make it into your office, unfortunately, and have the experience of working one-on-one with you. But I think that the workbook, I'm so glad that came up so that people have an opportunity to put these things into action and You've given us a ton to work with here. I listed out many things. I won't list them out here.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
We'll timestamp this episode in detail so people can go back and find them. Yeah, I've learned a ton. I'm going to put this to action and hopefully you'll come back again and talk with us about what's new because I know this is an evolving field and as the landscape of society changes, we're going to need new tools. But it sounds like the fundamentals are really in there.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
It involves self-reflection. I love this thing about a list of the things that make us difficult to be with as opposed to the list of the things we want in other people. And that Teflon pan is something I'm going to think about a lot.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Well, thank you. You've certainly enriched my thinking about it, and I'm sure everyone listening as well.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Lori Gottlieb. I hope you found it to be as interesting and as actionable as I did. To learn more about Lori Gottlieb's work and to find links to her excellent book and other resources, please see the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. In addition, please follow the podcast by clicking the follow button on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. And you can now leave us comments at both Spotify and Apple. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And if you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the information on the Huberman Lab podcast.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
You said that people will pick the person who's exactly wrong for them, who feels exactly right, at least at first. Right. that it has this kind of come here, this summoning aspect to it. Like we feel drawn to it. It feels drawn to us. I mean, that's how relationships start after all, one would hope. But in this case, you said that people –
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Again, it's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as what we call protocols in the form of one to three page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure,
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Lori Gottlieb. And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
come to find that that person is exact harbors some of the exact same traits i'm calling them that behaviors traits so you know whatever it is that hurt them in the context of their child parent relationship why do you think um initially it presents as the opposite
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
What's the first thing you ask a patient when you're meeting them for the first time?
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I think what you're describing is a pervasive feature of – being human, if I may, there's this kid, he's now a young adult, but I've watched grow up from a very young age who got into college. He was doing really well. Then he fell in love. He made the decision to leave school. The relationship ended and I was talking to him recently and he's kind of in this kind of dizzying spin of like,
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And are you listening both to the content of their words and their tone, their physicality?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
thinking about how great things were, how he blew it. And he's young. I'm like, listen, you're good. Like, he didn't drop out. He just withdrew. He can go back and, you know, he'll find another relationship. But, you know, and I empathize with him. But I passed something along to him that was actually discussed by a former guest on this podcast, Josh Waitzkin, who was a former child trust project.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
He's gone on to do a number of things. And he said exactly what you're saying, which is in a different context. He said, we... get so attached to our current identity and our past identity and trying to resolve those that we're more willing to stay in that state of discomfort than we are to
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
are are terrible to you but then you go out on dates with these like great guys and she's like yeah no chemistry no chemistry yeah let's talk about that what what what is the the flip side is the lack of of interest in somebody that doesn't um overtly or uh covertly harbor the the the painful thing that you're so used to
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
One of the things that I've noticed in my own life is that as I've gotten older, I'll be 50 later this year. Been looking forward to that. I feel great. But some of the things that I assumed for so many years, like slow is low. Like when things are really slow, like for many years, it felt kind of depressive. Now I love slow, mellow, like peace is the thing that I'm just I savor so much.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But for so many years, I think what you're describing, that sort of activation state of excitement, that was a pretty wild youth. And then, you know, I mean, I like adventure and I'd taken on at times dangerous adventures that I shouldn't have lived. told myself I wouldn't do them again, picked a different adventure.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But even in like my scientific career or podcasting, things that feel at times like a bit of a tightrope walk, just given the number of variables that I can't control just by virtue of what they are and the challenge of like long cycles of trying to publish. Like they're kind of scary at some level. It's your profession after all. But I did the same thing in a lot of my relationships.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Lovely people in some cases, some cases not, but in most cases, fortunately for me, lovely people. But there was this sense that like if something felt like a little bit of an upstate, kind of like a bit more of autonomic arousal or a lot more autonomic arousal, that it had this kind of magnetic quality to it. Whereas I think, and I'm not joking or lying here, I think owning a bulldog
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
taught me how to really savor relaxing i'm not saying this just to highlight costello again i mean i observed his relationship to the world and the bulldogs contract with its owner is is an amazing one that i think i learned a lot from the contract is i will die for you i will literally give up my life to protect you andrew but if that's not on the line i'm not gonna do anything
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
We're just going to sit here and enjoy the sunshine.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
We're just going to breathe and we're going to eat food.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Friends are coming over and I'll get excited. And, you know, and I'm not trying to make too much of this. I really noticed. I was like, wow, he needs so little to be blissful. And yet I know that if like push came to shove, like he's on my side, we've got each other's backs.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
As opposed to, let's talk about a more human contract of like this picture or story of a couple that they have about themselves. Ride or die is something people say a lot nowadays. It's a beautiful concept, right? Loyalty, like you're in it together no matter what. But there's a calm version of that, like ride or die. And then there's like ride or die, like we'll take on anything.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
We'll bring in chaos. We'll be the chaos. And we just don't quit.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Very different activation states. Oh, absolutely. And it took me 49 years to learn this. I see it in professional relationships, too. People want the exciting thing, the big build. And then they're like, it's the chaos of like, oh, this founder left and this person. It's like, well, of course, it started in drama. It's going to end in drama. Does this some of this resonate?
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Do you think, because I've heard, but I don't know if it's true, do you think that some people... tend to create a lot of internal and perhaps external narrative about what happened, who they are, how people are in the world, how they're not in the world. A lot of words to their experience, either spoken or internally versus people who maybe experienced life a little bit differently.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Yeah, one certainly wouldn't want to be bored in somebody else's presence, but calm seems like a good touch point to look for as opposed to this activation state.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
You know, maybe it's the neurobiologist in me, and I'm guilty of also working on this autonomic arousal thing for so many years, this seesaw in us of being like upstates that can either be stress or bliss and downstates, which can either be depression and fatigue or can just be like pleasant relaxation. Like the label becomes critical, right?
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Alert and stressed versus alert and elated is- Very different. Same level of alertness, two very different things. Same, you know, depressed versus peaceful. when relaxed, you know, and looking for or trying to figure out what sorts of interactions bring about that kind of even seesaw might be best, not one or the other, maybe erring even a little bit more towards peace.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I'll just say yes and yes to both those statements. I think peace is, it's not everything, but it's necessary but not sufficient, as we say. If I may, I'd like to get kind of a little deep and abstract along this dimension of
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
why people are so much more willing to stay in a state that doesn't feel good versus risk the unknown and the opportunity to win in relationship, in life, in career, et cetera. Because I do believe that. I happen to be reading, it's a hard book, a genuinely difficult book, but I'm really enjoying it. I'm reading Ernst Becker's, The Denial of Death. Highly recommend it to everyone.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Won a Pulitzer, after all. You don't need my endorsement. And, you know, I mean, the central thesis of the book, right, is that we're a weird species because we understand that we're going to die at some point. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Once somebody said in a comment on Instagram, and I still think about this, they said, I don't think in words, I think in feels. And my first reaction was like, yeah, I'm from Northern California and people talk that way sometimes. So I thought that's interesting. Maybe there are a lot of people who, for whom language isn't the primary mode of understanding what's going on around them.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
how to find relationships, how to be in relationships effectively, how to leave relationships if necessary, how to grieve them after they're gone, and how to renew them, all from the perspective of looking inward at ourselves and the stories about ourselves and others that we tell ourselves that can lead us to what we want and what's best for us or that lead us away from those things.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
My favorite bar is the chocolate chip cookie dough. But then again, I also like the new chocolate peanut butter flavor and the chocolate brownie flavored. Basically, I like all the flavors a lot. They're all incredibly delicious. In fact, the toughest challenge is knowing which ones to eat on which days and how many times per day. I limit myself to two per day, but I absolutely love them.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
With David, I'm able to get 28 grams of protein in the calories of a snack, which makes it easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight per day, and it allows me to do so without ingesting too many calories. I'll eat a David protein bar most afternoons as a snack, and I always keep one with me when I'm out of the house or traveling.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
They're incredibly delicious and given that they have 28 grams of protein, they're really satisfying for having just 150 calories. If you'd like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, that's davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Gosh, so much to go into here. This thing about vitality is so key. A friend recently said to me something.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I was talking about how, gosh, there's like these certain interactions in life that are like, I feel like they like pull me in and I don't like them. And then it just like really takes away from what I know I should be doing. And he said, you know, you have to do things right. that energize you? And immediately I thought, yes, and be very careful about the things that activate us.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Like there's this difference between activation and being activated versus being energized. I mean, it's a little bit semantic, right? But I feel like something that energizes me is like, I love cephalopods. I used to have cuttlefish in my lab. I love octopuses. And by the way, it's octopuses is the plural, folks, not octopi. We'd go into a whole thing here, but I won't.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And looking at one of those guys or gals solving a puzzle, that just energizes me in a way. I feel it in my body. It's energy that I can use for other things. It's like an inspiration for me. And there are many other things that do that. And then there are things that activate us, like where we – it's like a stress response. It's arousal, but it's negative valence. Right. It's draining.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
It's like pulling and it's taking from these things that energize us. And I feel like it's being able to notice those subtleties is hard in real time. But I feel like vitality is about the things that energize us.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Gosh, it's so important. I hope people will listen to that a hundred times because, you know, we've heard so much about dopamine hits that I think people have lost sight of the fact that when you're online and you're just awash in all this information and videos, you're you're not getting those hits. You're in the post-dopamine hit trough.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And we've been there for a long period of time unless we're judicious about our use of social media, an hour or three minutes or 15 minutes, whatever it is. But hours upon hours, there's no dopamine hit anymore. The peak is gone. You're in the trough. And that's why it feels kind of like, how did all that time go by? The importance of this really can't be overstated. I think that
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
We hear so much about fight or flight and the stress response that I think people forget that another component of the stress response, of drama, of being awash in all this information and movies and politics and violence and sex and all that stuff coming at us at once as we just scroll our thumbs is this thing of brachycardia.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
There's this phenomenon where when we're stressed, our heart rate actually slows down. And that's the kind of numbing and you're just kind of blanking out. And I think that's a lot of what people are starting to experience with a lot of high drama input.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Could you go into that a little bit further?
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
This idea that more words means more emotional, I don't buy it.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Well, now you have people concerned. So if a woman says to me, I didn't tell anyone. That means she only told four people.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
You said it, not me. But I'll wager a theory that I think that some people, when they feel something, the kind of relief that comes from evacuating that feeling or trying to evacuate it with words feels... reflexively better to them than sitting with it internally.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So I think people, when they feel an emotion, I think sometimes they feel like if they just talk about it or evacuate it, then it's like they get rid of it, but they forget that it has an impact.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I had a now ex-girlfriend who we're still on great terms who we had an agreement that that served us super well and that I try and apply going forward, which is nobody tries to shift anyone else. In my mind, I was the one that came up with that, but I think in reality, she was the one that came up with it. Because now I'm like, there's no way I would have come up with that.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I love that. I realized recently that thinking is something that we can practice. For all the tools and protocols that we talked about on this podcast and elsewhere, like physiological size and morning sunlight and working out and zone two cardio and cold and all the things I realized recently, like spending five minutes just thinking about something and really trying to work through it linearly.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
like a challenge, like a life challenge, is so valuable. And I didn't come up with this on my own. I now have a practice of, like, when something feels irritating or activating, I'll just, like, stop, put everything away, and I'll just sit and think, like, what's going on here? And inevitably there's some, like, some growth in understanding at the end of that.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But it's hard work to think like, what's going on here? Am I activated because it's true? Am I activated because it's false? Having to sort all that, you might think, well, who has the time for this? But actually, I would argue you don't have the time to not do it.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I totally agree. And yet life happens in real time. I mean, parents with kids, they got to pick them up and they're working and there's stuff coming through on the phone. My question is, do you think nowadays there's too much communication bombardment through text, social media, phone, and real life that we've eliminated all the space?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But I think it came about through a couple different interactions where I would get off work and sometimes like the initial 20 minutes of interacting was... much more difficult than it needed to be.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And then I remember we just came up with this plan where we just decided no one's going to shift the other person unless they're like, shift me please, you know, like help me relax or help me get excited about this, which we would never do, right? So like when, so a policy of not trying to shift anybody or somebody trying to shift our emotions, I think felt really liberating.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I refuse to argue over text. Yes. I just won't have an argument over text.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
When it comes to behavioral change, are you a fan of small one-degree turns? Or I'll propose an alternative, not as a counter, but just to explore next. But do you encourage your clients? Do you call them patients or clients, by the way?
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Okay. Thank you. I've always wondered about that. Do you recommend that your clients – make specific subtle changes, behavioral changes after they have an insight, or maybe even before they have an insight.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
During today's episode, we discuss how the feelings we experience when we're with certain people are the absolute best guide of how poorly or how well those people are suited for us as partners and the ways in which we miss key signals, both good and bad in relationships by not paying attention to how we feel.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need, but nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, all in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are vital for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or your nerve cells.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Drinking Element dissolved in water makes it extremely easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes. To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and therefore losing a lot of water and electrolytes. They have a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. They have watermelon, citrus, et cetera. Frankly, I love them all.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. Yeah, for so many years, the field of popular psychology was obsessed with how long does it take to make a change? It was like 28 days and it was like 90.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
As somebody who studies neuroplasticity, I can tell you that There's one trial learning, you'll never go back, and there's stuff that takes years. It just depends on the intensity and the consequences, right? And even with consequences, I mean, anyone that's seen somebody relapse from drugs so many times over, clearly they're working with more complicated dynamics there.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I think that this notion of reinforcing change is super key. I'm really glad you raised that. I want to ask, as a... I don't know how to phrase this, as a counterpoint or as an alternative. There we go. As an alternative to one-degree shifts. I'm somebody that always benefited from deadlines. I love deadlines. Like a deadline is how I get things done.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And I just – if there's a grant deadline, a paper deadline, deadlines work. And even if you don't meet them – Um, it's great to see how far off you were, you know, if you did your absolute best and how the mistakes you made to lead to the place where you didn't complete things in time. It's just, I love deadlines and I love rules.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And so, um, I've become a pretty strict rule enforcer for myself in my life. And I think one of the rules that's really helped me in recent times, uh, with vis-a-vis relationships has been, um, No drama, just none, like none. I don't tolerate any drama. But that's rigid, I realize, but it's helpful. I'm far happier than I've ever been, truly. in large part because of that, like no drama.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But the thing that I had to accept with a hard rule like that is that I'm going to lose people. So earlier you said that this patient client, maybe he doesn't have to put up, maybe there's somebody better for him. There's someone else out there that they don't have to deal with. I think that one of the things that I notice in my own past and
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
with others that I know struggling with a dynamic with people, typically it's romantic relationships, but it could be anything, is you have to be willing to let go. you can't like always resolve the conflict. And I find that a lot of people, maybe it's this childhood thing. They feel like they have to like remain on great terms or they have to stay friends or they have to put a bow on it.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And I so admire the people in life that are like, yeah, that didn't work, done. Because I look at the time wasted.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And I think that in our desire to make everything kind of okay in the end, we burn valuable life energy and incredibly valuable time. And so some people might hear like no drama and think, well, you're going to lose a bunch of people. And I will. I certainly will. Or they'll rise to the occasion or whatever you want to call it.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But I have a full life of many people with whom I have zero drama and wonderful relationships. So I'm full. My dance card's full. Right. But I'd rather... I feel so firm about this, given the peace that it's brought me, that I realized, yeah, I may never talk to that person again. I might, I might not. But at the first hint of drama, I'm done.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And I think it's because I forced so much suffering on myself for so long of trying to resolve these things that clearly wouldn't work. And I don't know, I feel immense freedom from it. But I think I hear this with other people like, oh, yeah, but, you know, they're going to change or, you know, he's going to stop drinking or not referring to me. I'm not a drinker, but there's a hard fact.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I quit drinking. Didn't have a problem with it. I just was like, I'm done with alcohol. Just like that relationship's over. And they just cling to this like thing that it's got like they just won't let go. Yeah. And I don't – what is that about? Why do we hold on to the thing that doesn't work even if we know we're not going to like stay with it?
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Idiot compassion. Idiot compassion. I love that phrase. I don't even know what it means and I love it already.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I agree, by the way. I think that my definition of drama is when challenging things are presented in a way that's not in effort to resolve.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Right. What I'm talking about is evacuative expression. Yeah. You know, I mean, and I'm sort of chuckling on the inside, too, about this thing about friends. I mean, I would say my group of friends is –
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
they're amazing i'm blessed with incredible friends and friendships i'm so blessed i only wish i had more time for all of them the um we're pretty hard on each other in terms of being very blunt very um like that was dumb is maybe maybe more male specific kind of language like that was dumb like why'd you do that it was super stupid or yeah don't be an idiot don't do it again or um
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
No, I totally disagree. That's a lot of the exchange in my friend group. I would say maybe it's just the culture I grew up in and academia, very little validation. Validation isn't a big part of it. But I am also surrounded by people that are very self-critical. So it's sort of inherent to the way they work.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
in their work, in their relationships, in their life, in their fitness, like pretty much everyone's pretty get after it.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
In which case is the best option to just pause it until somebody returns to adulthood?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Going back to this thing about texting, how many of the challenges that people present to you in your office these days incorporates or starts with, yeah, so I got this text versus, you know, somebody came to me or called me and we had a hard interaction or we had a conversation or something happened at work. I mean, how much of it is in the digital world nowadays?
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I agree. Yeah. At the same time, I feel like breakups are much harder than they used to be because you can block someone on social media, but then the block itself becomes this symbol. You can mute people. You can put your phone away, but unless you block their number, they can send you things. You can go back and read texts if you're an obsessive person.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are customized to your unique sleep needs. Now I've spoken many times before on this and other podcasts about the fact that getting a great night's sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
There's just so many venues, or avenues, excuse me, for people to access our psyche when we're trying to move on. In the old days, kids, you know, you had a phone with an answering machine, you broke up, it sucked, you looked at the photos, you put the photos in a box, or you burned them.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
and you put the box in a shelf, and then when you got into a new relationship, you either hid the box or you destroyed the box, and you moved on. And people's phone numbers changed, and it was so much easier. I noticed that one tended to just remember more good stuff because there wasn't other stuff coming in. The bad stuff tended to dissipate, or maybe it didn't. It was just so much easier.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Laurie explains how to better our communication skills, how to determine if somebody's critique of us is valid or not. That certainly is important for everybody and how texting and technology has changed relationships and how to navigate all of that by leaning into our own sense of agency, the things that we can control.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
infiltrated by the past and um you know because of the the nature of electronic stuff i just feel like it's like the past trying to like hold us back and and this is on both sides so you know it doesn't matter if the breakup was amicable then you long for the person now and again or the breakup was rough and then you like you relive element you know there's so many variants on this that um
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I don't know. It just feels like breaking up is already one of the hardest things. People, I think, don't acknowledge just how hard breakups are.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
You know, you know, sorry. I mean, that's just people say that kind of thing. No, no, no.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Now the mattress you sleep on makes a huge difference in the quality of sleep that you get each night. how soft it is or how firm it is, how breathable it is, all play into your comfort and need to be tailored to your unique sleep needs. If you go to the Helix website, you can take a brief two-minute quiz, which will ask you questions such as, do you sleep on your back, your side, or your stomach?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Do you tend to run hot or cold during the night? Things of that sort. Now, maybe you know the answers to those questions, maybe you don't. Either way, Helix will match you to the ideal mattress for you. For me, that turned out to be the Dusk mattress. I started sleeping on the dusk mattress about three and a half years ago, and it's been far and away the best sleep that I've ever had.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I definitely want to talk about grief. Before we do that, I'd like to kind of double click into this breakup thing. In my observation and experience, one of the hardest things about breakups is this idea that we want to somehow come to a
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
common narrative and there seems to be a lot of um desire to kind of understand where the other the other person's experience of of what happened um and a very i don't i don't think it's intentional but i think people can be somewhat um destructive in a breakup by um changing the whole this notion like the like it was all an illusion or something or you know where you know i mean i i guess i've had enough relationships and breakups to realize that
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
You know, there's love that continues. There's things that you thought were love that weren't. I mean, there's love that doesn't continue and there's all sorts of shapes and forms of this stuff, but that like good, well-meaning people that take divergent paths
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
i've learned it doesn't mean that um anything else sometimes it literally just means that right there isn't a need to rewrite the script like it wasn't what i thought it actually was what i thought and then it was something different or it just circumstances changed or things changed i'm not trying to make light of this i mean i i would argue i'm
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
probably one of the least skilled people at breakups, although I've gotten quote unquote better at it, it's always super painful. Like I've never had a breakup that didn't really hurt. It doesn't matter if I left or they left, that just didn't really hurt.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And I think it's this idea of like, and this is why I think it's an interesting, perhaps segue to grief is that it's almost like as something ends, we look back and we evaluate the story and try and figure out, was that real? Was it not real? How could that have been real? And then we're here, right? There was all this hope and expectation. Yeah, I think about this a lot.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So much so that when I travel and I'm not on my dusk mattress, I really miss it. And when I get home, I just find that I sleep so much better because of that mattress. If you'd like to try Helix, you can go to helixsleep.com slash Huberman. Take that two-minute sleep quiz, and Helix will match you to a mattress that's customized for you.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Right now, Helix is giving up to 20% off on all mattress orders. Again, that's helixsleep.com slash Huberman to get up to 20% off. Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. Now, I personally have been doing therapy weekly for well over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Or we were both great and it just didn't work out.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I always find I miss the person's smell.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I think that takes the longest.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I have a really good audio memory too. I can close my eyes. I've been able to do this since I was a kid and hear people's voices. But smells, I think we come to expect them. And then we don't notice they're there. And then the person's gone. And then we're like, it smells different here.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I'm always struck by how people talk about their partners when their partners aren't around.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
The other day, this kid came up to me in the gym, Kid. He was probably in his 30s, but there I go again. He was a podcast fan. We were just chatting. I like to ask people, like, what do you do? He's in tech, I think. I don't recall. And it's like, where are you from? And he's like, he's from Brazil. Cool. And then we were talking about something. He said, you know, my girlfriend.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And then we got into some discussion about travel in South America or something. And then at one point he said, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. She's like my flower. And the way he said it, I was like, wow, that's beautiful. Again, I'm half Latin. But I haven't heard that enough. And I was like, wow. And I said, that's amazing that you just referred to her as a flower.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
It was a condition of being allowed to stay in school. But pretty soon I realized that therapy is an extremely important component to one's overall health. There are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First of all, It provides a good rapport with somebody that you can trust and talk to about pretty much any issue with.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
He goes, yes, she's like the flower in my life. And I was like, wow. You don't hear that that often. I also don't get into conversations like this very often. But somehow he just shared that spontaneously. And she wasn't there to hear it. I can't remember the guy's name. Forgive me. Um, she'll never know that I, that he referred to her that way, but it was really beautiful.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And there are certain people, um, like I heard Rogan one day talking about his wife on a podcast. He was like, she's just so nice. Like he just, the appreciation he has for her in the, in the, in the small details of how he refers to her. Um, and those are just two examples. And then I could give a bunch of negative examples about people, uh,
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Gosh, I don't want to put it on one or the other side of the male-female dynamic. But when people say like, oh, yeah, like they're a pain in my ass or like referring to people as their old lady or their old man, like that's an interesting but kind of in my mind not the sweetest way. Maybe it could be. Maybe it depends on the tone.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Anyway, I'm casting a lot of shadows and light where perhaps I shouldn't. But that interaction was delightful. And I thought awesome for him and awesome for her.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Second of all, it can provide support in the form of emotional support and directed guidance. And third, expert therapy can provide useful insights, insights that allow you to better not just your emotional life and your relationship life, but of course, also the relationship to yourself and your professional life and to all sorts of goals.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
there's a saying from 12 step, which is identify, don't compare, which is like, cause you'll hear people outside of 12 step talking about, for instance, you know, like, you know, well, he's this, this and this and ambitious and this and that, but he's like kind of emotionally unavailable, but he's more available. And people will talk about male or female partners, right?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
or potential partners, or people that they're dating, as if you could kludge together the best of all people and get this perfect tapestry of the person that's got all the features you want. Because, yeah, some people are a little more easygoing, lighthearted, and sometimes, not always, less ambitious. Those things, in my experience, tend to correlate. Not always.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Some people are super hard-driving. They get it done. And they have the capacity to be immense providers, but they have less time and sometimes they're not as emotionally available. Again, stereotyping like crazy here.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But people get this idea that they're sort of like – through the comparison, they can arrive at the perfect person when, in fact, I think appreciation not being Teflon about the positive stuff comes from kind of shutting out the idea that there's an alternative. But, of course, you don't want to end up in a situation where the person is – you know, not truly not good for you, right? Well, right.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
That's not what I'm talking about. Right. And I don't think you are. But yeah, with that caveat, I think that accepting that people are complicated and there is no kludging together of people. At some point you make a choice.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Better help makes it very easy to find an expert therapist with whom you resonate with and that can provide you those three benefits that come from effective therapy. Also, because BetterHelp allows for therapy to be done entirely online, it's super time efficient and easy to fit into a busy schedule.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I feel like placing one's attention on the good things as much as possible and really letting those fill us up as much as possible is really key. I didn't say this, I borrowed this, but that two of the most dangerous words in the English language are if only. This idea like if only this, because for two reasons. One is it's very unlikely that if only comes true.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But the other one is it takes our attention away from seeing what's there.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
If you'd like to try BetterHelp, you can go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Yeah, I think this notion of attention and appreciation just seems so fundamental.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
What I love about what's coming through here is that you emphasize the role of these unconscious processes. We default to people that aren't healthy for us sometimes, not always. And yet you also emphasize that we have a lot of agency. These days, it seems like There's a default toward looking outward.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
One thing that I've observed, I don't have any formal data on this, is that some of the happiest couples I know are couples where I would refer to one person in the relationship as more emotive and expressive and the other person as a little bit on the spectrum. And my observation is that part of the reason those couples seem so harmonious is that the little things don't seem to bother the
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
For all that's been said about meditation and reflection and journaling on this podcast and others, we all know these tools are available. They basically just take time. I mean, with meditation, you don't even need a pen and paper. But we tend to look outward for answers. Do you ever give homework to your patients to just like think or journal or is there work tend to be more behavioral?
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Do you ever tell people whenever you think that, just do the opposite?
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
There's a great line in that movie, High Fidelity, based on the Nick Hornsby novel, which I also highly recommend, where he's like, you know, people tell me that We should listen to our gut. Well, after 30 years, I've come to the conclusion that my gut has shit for brains. That's right.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
You know, he's just realizing that his reflex on what to do with, you know, his relationship life is completely off. Some people will hear what we're talking about right now and will say, yeah, but I My gut also tells me when I'm in danger. We're obviously not talking about when you can sense danger.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
person on the spectrum because they don't register them they don't get entangled in the other person's um downs or or ups which i guess um could be problematic in theory but just seems like they get along really well because and i won't you know kind of stereotype the labels but these these couples that i know it does happen to be the male who is um
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And last but not least, Laurie explains how we can all access more vitality and enjoyment of life and how so many people don't allow themselves to do that because the familiarity of their present circumstances overrides their willingness to move forward.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I, um, completely agree. Uh, I also, in my life, I've had the experience of I've taken big risks with my career multiple times and it's always worked out. Thank goodness. A lot of my teen years and twenties and thirties were, were spent, um, learning to overcome the adrenaline response.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And I learned to take progressively more and more risk and ended up having an air failure, scuba diving, cage exit diving with great white sharks. I don't say this to sound tough. I say this because it's like, what was I thinking? I took it too far. So I think learning to overcome the adrenaline response. and be calm and adrenaline I think has its value.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I also took tremendous risk in my personal life getting involved with people I never should have gotten involved with. And I blame myself, I don't blame them, right? I mean, I was in choice. So I can imagine that some people are so averse to danger that they don't put themselves into circumstances in which they could really come to thrive.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And some people are just wired to go into the fire to the point where it's destructive, either with physical pursuits or in romantic relationships. You know, I'll take it outside my own story. I mean, I have a friend, a dear friend who, you know, was in like an incredibly physically abusive relationship, number 12.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And she eventually came to the conclusion that her threat sensing threshold was just way too high. Did some really good work to understand why that was and realized that her fear response didn't kick in until it was like a nine alarm fire.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And so, you know, she needed to listen to that, as you mentioned, that like super quiet whisper early on. because anyone else who didn't have her history, which is sadly a very, very challenging history in her family, would have immediately been like, yeah, I'm out. But she was like, this is normal.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
a little bit on the spectrum and the woman who's a little more emotive. And it just seems like there's so much harmony there. And when I talk to him, I'm generally closer to the man in the relationship, although not always. They say like, yeah, like, you know, it doesn't bother me. I just like will listen or if there's something to request, I'll respond to the request.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
There isn't this entanglement of she's upset, so I like have to respond or this is really painful to listen to. It's more of like a kind of matter of fact.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And I just think it's an interesting dynamic. It's obviously not one that people can pre-program themselves for. But I do think it's an interesting dynamic as opposed to what you're describing where emotions can kind of ratchet together like gears.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And that can be wonderful when people are in ecstatic states or happy or that there's like the banter of certain couples that seem pretty emotive is something I'm also familiar with observing. But Those couples also seem like more volatile, like when somebody is upset, the other person gets upset that they're – and it just starts to deteriorate pretty quickly.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
In your adult clients, how much of the struggle that you hear about in terms of romantic relationships relates to, again, online aspects like apps and things like that? Do you think they facilitated things or made them relationships more challenging?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
It's all opportunity cost for them.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Do you think that... after people make that list that they might take a look at that list and make some effort to reduce or eliminate some things from that list? Is that good self-work? Like if somebody is super rigid about punctuality, anyone that knows me clearly, that's not me. Like, I know some people that are so rigid about that.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
This was a really eye opening episode and one that I'm certain will help you better understand yourself and what your needs really are and how you can be happier in or out of a relationship. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Let's say someone identifies that as one of the things that can be really difficult. Like, they get really upset if somebody's five minutes late. I've interacted with these people. You're very difficult to be around. As an academic, everything starts 10 minutes late. We end late. That's how it works. should they try to resolve that or reduce that feature?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Or should they look at the list and say, you know what? Like, I'm not gonna change that. I mean, this thing, well, I should probably change that. What else can the list do for people?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
weaving this with what we were talking about earlier about gut sense and the validity or lack of validity of gut sense. I certainly have had the experience and I know many other people have that after a relationship ends or when it's ending, they think back and they go, you know, there was that thing at the beginning and I knew it then, but I pushed it aside.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Like, is that just a story we tell ourselves?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So I just want to make sure I understand. So we're talking about two different lists here. One is a list of features about the other person. This is what we hear as like the list. The number of times that friends are like, you have to make a list. I'll never get around to making a list.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But I like this other list that you described, which is all the things about ourselves that would make us difficult to be with. Which list or both do we need to have rigidity versus flexibility?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I love, love, love the criteria, for lack of a better word, of, you know, how do I feel when I'm around this person?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Peace being an anchor point or a place to look for.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
There's so much made of these love languages, like they're acts of service and I like, you know, gifts, you know, all that kind of stuff. You know, I've I've heard it said, you know, what's your love language? And someone, you know, all of them, you know, that person was me. All of them. Who doesn't like all of those, you know? You know, I like to think I offer them too, you know.
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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
You know, who doesn't like all of those things? But I realize that some people place more value on certain gestures and expressions. And I think that's all fine and good. What I love about what you're saying, however, is that It's more of like a, now we're sounding woo, but it's more of like an energetic match. This feeling of safety.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
You know, the word peace to me just holds so much value these days. I feel like the two things that I've come to really value more and more are peace and self-respect. Because it's hard to have peace without self-respect.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Certainly hard to have self-respect without peace. Now, sometimes lack of peace can be from external things, but then we have to ask ourselves, like, do we have any control over these external things? Yeah, I'm curious what your reflections are on like an energy match.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
However, the answer isn't entirely arousal, meaning not all of the positive effects of exercise on brain health, longevity, and performance can be explained by arousal. But when I step back from the literature, again, an enormous literature, tens of thousands of peer reviewed papers, many of which are done exceptionally well, by the way, as well as meta-analyses and reviews,
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
I think it's fair to say that probably 60 to 70% of the effects of exercise on brain health, performance, and longevity can be explained by the specific shifts in our physiology, both bodily physiology and directly within the brain's physiology during those bouts of exercise, which is this increase in so-called autonomic arousal, which occurs during the exercise, but also
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
extends into a window after the exercise is completed. So we have to talk about this relationship between exercise arousal and acute brain performance, meaning the improvements in brain performance that happen immediately after the exercise. And then we'll shift our focus to the effects of exercise that occur more chronically.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
So the goal of today's episode is to synthesize that vast amount of information into a logical framework that simplifies it and clarifies it and places it within the context of specific mechanisms, both neurobiological mechanisms and endocrine-based mechanisms that together
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
That is the effects of exercise on brain health and performance that occur in the hours, days, weeks, and years after we exercise, even if we are continuing to exercise every day or three times a week or whatever the frequency might be. But this issue of arousal is extremely important and I assure you it's not trivial.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
In fact, it will help you understand a number of things in the domains of deliberate cold exposure, stress, trauma, and most importantly for today's discussion, it will help you design an exercise program that's geared towards giving you the maximum bodily health effects and the maximum brain health effects.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Okay, in order to understand the relationship between exercise, arousal, and learning, we have to really clarify the relationship between arousal and learning. That's gonna set the stage for pretty much everything else we're gonna talk about for the next 10 minutes or so. And it's oh so cool.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
It also gives me the opportunity to review a paper that I've long loved, which comes from Larry Cahill's group down at UC Irvine entitled Enhanced Memory Consolidation with Post-Learning Stress, Interaction with the Degree of Arousal at Encoding. This is just one of several papers from the Cahill group, which essentially identified the following.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
There are a couple of different ways you can increase so-called autonomic arousal or levels of alertness.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Sometimes it's called stress, but autonomic arousal is simply an increase in the amount of activity in the so-called sympathetic arm or the autonomic nervous system, which is nerd speak for more alert, more aroused, wide-eyed, ready to move, higher heart rate, higher blood pressure, more alertness.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
This is a great state to be in for learning material, provided it's not too much alertness, too much arousal. Turns out this paper shows it's also a great state to be in after you've been exposed to material that you want to learn.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And it's also the case that in this paper and in many, many other papers from this and other laboratories, that you can increase levels of autonomic arousal by having people put their arm into ice water for one to three minutes, the so-called cold presser test. It's a very commonly used standard test.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
This paper and many other papers show that it leads to very rapid and significant increases in circulating levels of cortisol, which yes, sometimes is called a stress hormone, but it's really just a hormone involved in the stress response, but does a bunch of other things too. So they use that as a tool after people have been exposed to certain types of information to ask,
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Does elevation in cortisol, AKA autonomic arousal, improve one's ability to remember information? And the answer is yes. This study shows that. Several other studies from the Cahill and other laboratories show that. Sometimes those studies use people putting their arm into ice cold water.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
can very well explain the data on how exercise impacts brain health and longevity, such that by the end of today's episode, you'll have both some specific recommendations about how to use exercise for sake of brain health and performance that I believe will be new to most of you, as well as the ability to think about the mechanisms and the logical framework that wraps around this incredibly large literature on exercise and brain performance so that you can customize your exercise program on the basis of how much time you have available,
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Other times they'll inject them with a drug that increases adrenaline, also called epinephrine, sometimes also increases cortisol. The point being that elevations in autonomic arousal, after one is exposed to information, increases one's memory for that information and one's memory for the details of that information.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Now, in this particular study, they compared emotionally-laden versus non-emotionally-laden information and a bunch of other details, which are interesting if you choose to peruse this study. But I should mention that other studies from this and other laboratories have shown time and time again
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
increases in autonomic arousal measured by increases in cortisol or adrenaline, also called epinephrine, or norepinephrine, which is the sort of analog within the brain that consistently leads to better memory for information that one has been exposed to,
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
better memory for the details of that information, and oftentimes better ability to work with that information, to come up with new ideas with that information, or to think logically about that information in new ways. In other words, increasing autonomic arousal improves learning and memory.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Now, it's also very important to understand that that increase in autonomic arousal can improve learning and memory. If the autonomic arousal occurs after the exposure to the material, most people find that a bit surprising. I certainly did when I first read this paper. It makes sense if you start to think about the persistence of memories for things like traumas or bad events, right?
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Bad event happens and there's this big spike in cortisol and adrenaline, and those memories are hard to eradicate. They're certainly hard to remove the emotional content from. And if you think about it, In those instances, the event happens and then comes the big increase in cortisol and adrenaline. So that maps very well onto the study that I'm describing here.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
In addition, however, lots of studies have shown that increasing autonomic arousal as measured by increases in adrenaline or cortisol or both or any number of different measures of autonomic arousal that occurs during the exposure to the new material. Okay, so this isn't trauma.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
This is like new math material, new history material, new music material, new motor skill material that you're trying to learn. increases in autonomic arousal that occur as you're trying to so-called encode the information, you're being exposed to that new information, also significantly improve learning. And it's always through increases in arousal.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
In other words, whether or not you're measuring cortisol, adrenaline, heart rate, blood pressure, galvanic skin response, how wide someone's pupils are, or small someone's pupils are,
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
or any combination of those things or any other measures of autonomic arousal, the consistent takeaway is increases in arousal during or after, in particular after, trying to learn a certain material is going to improve significantly the amount of material that one learns, the details of that material, and the persistence of that learning over time.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. As somebody who's been involved in research science for almost three decades and in health and fitness for equally as long, I'm constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental health, physical health, and performance.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
I discovered AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast or even knew what a podcast was, and I've been taking it every day since. I find that AG1 greatly improves all aspects of my health. I simply feel much better when I take it. AG1 uses the highest quality ingredients in the right combinations, and they're constantly improving their formulas without increasing the cost.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
In fact, AG1 just launched their latest formula upgrade. This new formula is based on exciting new research on the effects of probiotics on the gut microbiome, and now includes several clinically studied probiotic strains shown to support both digestive health and immune system health, as well as to improve bowel regularity and to reduce bloating.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Whenever I'm asked if I could take just one supplement, what would that supplement be? I always say AG1. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. For this month only, January 2025, AG1 is giving away 10 free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3 K2.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim the 10 free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3 K2. Today's episode is also brought to us by David. David makes a protein bar unlike any other. It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories, and zero grams of sugar. That's right, 28 grams of protein, and 75% of its calories come from protein. These bars from David also taste amazing.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Today, we are discussing exercise and brain health, which includes brain longevity and brain performance, our ability to learn new information over long periods of time and indeed into old age. Today, we are going to discuss how different forms of exercise,
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
your specific age, your health status, and the specific types of brain changes that you might be seeking through the use of exercise.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
My favorite flavor is chocolate chip cookie dough, but then again, I also like the chocolate fudge flavored one, And I also like the cake flavored one. Basically, I like all the flavors. They're incredibly delicious. For me personally, I strive to eat mostly whole foods.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
However, when I'm in a rush or I'm away from home, or I'm just looking for a quick afternoon snack, I often find that I'm looking for a high quality protein source. With David, I'm able to get 28 grams of protein with the calories of a snack, which makes it very easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight each day.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And it allows me to do that without taking in excess calories. I typically eat a David Barr in the early afternoon or even mid-afternoon if I wanna bridge that gap between lunch and dinner. I like that it's a little bit sweet, so it tastes like a tasty snack, but it's also giving me that 28 grams of very high quality protein with just 150 calories.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
If you would like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, the link is davidprotein.com slash Huberman.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Okay, so now we've established that elevated levels of autonomic arousal, either during or after, and indeed also before a bout of learning, the so-called encoding phase of learning, when we're exposed to the new material that we want to learn and remember, are all beneficial. This is wonderful news.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
When we look out on the whole of the literature on the relationship between exercise and brain health and performance, we see studies that incorporate exercise either before or after a bout of learning.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And I should also say that by learning how exercise impacts brain performance and brain health, you're also going to learn some of the incredible ways that your body communicates with your brain and your brain communicates with your body, not just during exercise, but all of the time. So today you're going to learn a lot of practical tools, of course, about exercise, brain health, and longevity.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And we also find studies, believe it or not, that combine exercise with learning in real time, literally exposing people to new material that they're expected to learn or trying to learn while they're walking on a treadmill or running on a treadmill or cycling or rowing. Yes, those studies have also been done. Although for practical reasons, they're not as,
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Numerous as the study is exploring the relationship between exercise and learning where the exercise is done before or after the bout of learning. Okay, so what this means is wonderful. What this means is that if you want to use exercise, not just for enhancing your bodily health, but also for brain health and performance, you can do that exercise before, during, or after bouts of learning.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
That allows you to look at the constraints of your life. For instance, are you one of these people that can get up at five or six or 7 a.m. and exercise before everyone else gets up or before your workday starts or your school day starts, do a round of exercise and then get into your bouts of learning, whatever that material may be?
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Or are you somebody who has to dive into the workday, school day, family obligations, et cetera, in which case you might only be able to exercise later in the day, but you're probably still somebody who would like to enhance their brain health and performance.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
So in that case, you might organize the thing that you're trying to learn, the encoding or the exposure to the thing that you're trying to learn, either in written forms or you're reading or you're listening to it or you're attending a class or classes, and then exercising after you're exposed to that material in order to get that elevated levels of arousal, not unlike the arrangement of the studies that I was talking about earlier, which used the ice exposure,
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
in order to generate increases in arousal and thereby to improve learning and memory. So in the show note captions for this episode, we've batched a number of different references that have explored the relationship between exercise and cognitive performance.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And across those studies and the ones that are referenced therein, you'll find studies where the exercise bout was done before, where the exercise bout was done during, where the exercise bout was done after a round of learning or encoding of information. And I should mention that different studies focus on different cognitive tasks.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
So exercise and the arousal associated with exercise has been shown to acutely improve recall, so just raw recall of material, the details in material. It's been shown to improve cognitive flexibility through things like the Stroop task. And so in a very convenient way, exercise has been shown to acutely improve performance on all those sorts of brain and memory tasks, which is
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Greatly reassuring to all of us because what it means is that it probably doesn't matter so much when you do your exercise or what it is that you're trying to learn. It's going to be beneficial as long as the thing that you're trying to learn and the exercise are positioned fairly closely in time.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Now, the one caveat to that is that several studies have explored the relationship between short duration, high intensity interval training and cognitive performance. In particular, executive function, that cognitive prefrontal flexibility that we were talking about a few moments ago. And on the whole, all of those studies point to improvements in executive control and function.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
It's based on research that is incredibly interesting, in some cases surprising, and in almost all cases, actionable. As some of you may already know, I have a book coming out this year, 2025, entitled Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body. I'm super excited about the book.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
So that context dependent switching of knowledge and your ability to think about things in a very agile way, if you will. If people did a high intensity interval training session just before they do that bout of cognitive flexibility learning.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
However, several studies have also looked at the effect of repeated bouts of high-intensity interval training, and in some cases, looking at the mechanisms by which high-intensity interval training improve cognitive performance.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And the basic takeaway is the following, and again, I'll provide references to these in the show note captions, that high-intensity interval training done before, or believe it or not, even during cognitive flexibility tasks, a couple of studies have actually explored that, significantly improves performance on those tasks.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Again, we believe this is likely through enhanced levels of arousal, although some data also point to the fact that it's also likely through enhanced cerebral blood flow, simply more blood being delivered to the brain during, or in particular, after high intensity interval training.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
More blood, more fuel, and other molecules being delivered to the brain during a cognitive task or cognitive flexibility task makes sense why that would improve cognitive function. And yet when studies have explored the consequence of doing multiple high intensity interval training sessions. And when I say high intensity, I mean high intensity. These are studies where lactate is elevated.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
We'll talk more about lactate in a few minutes.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Where typically people's heart rate is either close to or at their maximum heart rate for some period of time, either 30 seconds, 60 seconds, two minutes, or in some cases, people are pushing really, really hard for four minutes, then resting for four minutes, then pushing really hard for four minutes, then resting for four minutes, four times over the so-called four by four program that I know a number of you have heard about.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
If you haven't, it's very intense. So you can imagine all out for four minutes, then rest, all out for four minutes, then rest. Doing that several times in a day, okay, so two bouts of four by four or two high intensity interval training sessions of any kind has been shown to diminish cognitive performance if the cognitive task comes after the second high intensity interval training session.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Now, for most of us, including me, that makes sense. You think, well, they're tired. People aren't able to focus as much because they're devoting all this energy to the exercise. And indeed, that's true, although the mechanism is interesting.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
The studies that have looked at this have actually found that cerebral blood flow during the two bouts of high-intensity interval training are more or less equal. So it's not that the first session necessarily precludes
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
high performance in the high intensity interval training session in the second session, but then when you go on to try and do a cognitive task that's demanding and also requires elevated levels of cerebral blood flow, you find that performance drops, and this is correlated with reductions in cerebral blood flow that come from doing too much high intensity interval training.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
It includes protocols, that is actionable steps that anyone can take to improve their sleep, motivation, creativity, gut microbiome, nutrition, exercise, stress modulation, and much more. Now, the book was originally scheduled to be released in April of 2025. However, to make sure that the book reflects the latest scientific research,
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Now, I have to acknowledge that most people aren't doing multiple high intensity interval training sessions per day, but this is a reminder, an important reminder, in fact,
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
that if you're using exercise to try and improve brain health and function, or even if you're just somebody who's exercising but is also expected to use their brain to learn things throughout the day, as most of us are, and to attend to things throughout the day, you need to be cautious about not overdoing the high intensity interval training sessions. This is also true for resistance training.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
You need to be aware that very high intensity exercise, yes, increases cerebral blood flow and the delivery of all these fuels and other compounds to your brain during the exercise, If you do that correctly and you don't overdo it, you can capture some of that wave of blood flow, fuel, et cetera, as you enter the learning session.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
But if you quote unquote overdo it, then you're going to arrive to that bout of learning with reduced cerebral blood flow. and you're going to be in a state that it's very difficult to focus and learn new information. So there is such a thing as too much arousal from exercise that leads to troughs in arousal that diminish cognitive performance and learning.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Now, all of this is focused, of course, on the relationship between exercise and brain function at the acute level, the immediate level. It's fair to say that all high intensity exercise and resistance training is going to support brain function in the chronic sense, in the long-term sense. In fact, the literature points to that.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And once again, I've batched the references for this episode so that they're grouped together according to the specific topics and timestamps.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And the two studies that I recommend you look at if you're interested in this relationship between high intensity training and cognitive function, in particular executive function, that cognitive flexibility I was talking about earlier, such as in the Stroop task, There's a wonderful article entitled Executive Function After Exhaustive Exercise. That's one to look at.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And the other one, which I think is really nice, and therefore I've placed there, really points to the way that a single bout of exercise can acutely improve brain function, in particular executive function. And the title of that paper, not surprisingly, is A Single Bout of Resistance Exercise Can Enhance Episodic Memory Performance. Here's a fun one.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
As I continue to hammer on this thesis that so many of the positive effects of exercise on brain health and performance, at least in the acute sense, immediately after the exercise, in some cases during the exercise, are due to arousal.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Well, then it should make sense why things like so-called exercise snacks, this idea that throughout the day, you suddenly do 25 quick jumping jacks, or you jump up and down five times, or you do 20 air squats. We've heard about exercise snacks in different contexts, such as adjusting blood glucose levels. You hear a lot about that. After meals, take a walk or
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
do some jumping jacks really quick, or do 20 air squats throughout the day. And people talk about the sort of outsized positive effects of those. Well, check this out. When it comes to high intensity interval training and positive effects on cognitive performance, there's a study entitled The Influence of Acute Sprint Interval Training on Cognitive Performance in Healthy Younger Adults.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
I've decided to expand on the yes, already finished version of the book to make sure that the protocols are as up-to-date as possible and reflect the most modern and best findings. So the new release date for protocols is going to be September of 2025. I do apologize for the delay in release, but I assure you that I will make it worth your wait.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And this study has people do six second all out efforts. You heard that right, six seconds. So six seconds, it always is tricky. They always use the same numbers, the four by four by four. Okay, six, yes, the number six, six second all out efforts, sprinting on basically a stationary bike, and then a period of rest of one minute between those six second
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
all out efforts and they see a significant improvement in cognitive performance. So yes, it's true that you can do very brief, very intense bouts of exercise. I mean, just think about six seconds of sprinting, one minute of just cruise or rest, six seconds, and then just repeat for six sprints total of six seconds each and experience an enhancement that is an acute
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
or immediate enhancement in cognitive function. And I can imagine no other mechanistic explanation for that aside from increased levels of autonomic arousal. Any other mechanism that you could envision, IGF-1, irisin, BDNF, things that we'll talk about in a few minutes,
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Yes, those might be deployed as well, but in terms of seeing something so brief, having such a fast action on cognitive performance, and given what you now know about the relationship between arousal focus and cognitive performance, I'd be willing to stake, let's say, six of my 10 fingers on the idea that it's all due to enhanced autonomic arousal.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Okay, let's talk for a few minutes about the mechanisms by which exercise improves brain health and performance. And I realize when I say mechanisms, some of you may say, okay, well, I just want to know what to do.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
I don't need to hear about the mechanisms, but in this case, understanding just a little bit about the pathways by which exercise impacts the brain can give you a ton of leverage in designing the best exercise schedule for your brain health and performance, and frankly, for your exercise schedule generally
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
to generate things like fat loss, improvements in strength, hypertrophy, endurance, and so on. In fact, let's do this mental experiment together. If we were to ask ourselves, how is it that exercise improves brain health and performance? Based on what you know now, you'd probably say, well, it increases arousal, the catecholamines, so dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
It probably increases heart rate, so more blood pumping to the brain, and so on and so forth. And you would be correct about all of that. But let's just think a little bit more deeply about how exercise actually impacts the brain in the short and long term and ask ourselves, what are the different physical pathways?
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
What are the different chemical pathways by which the movement of our body changes the way that our brain works in the short and long term? So if we were to draw a stick figure of a human and orient ourselves to the different locations or organs in the body that contain potential sources of information for the brain, One place that we could start would be, of course, the heart.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
When you do cardiovascular exercise of any kind, intense or not so intense, short or long, your heart rate increases, your blood pressure increases. Likewise, if you do resistance training, there will be heart rate increases. Those heart rate increases will come down between sets, but your heart rate tends to increase when you exercise. That's sort of a duh.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
To learn more about the book or to secure a copy by presale, go to protocolsbook.com. There you'll find all the information about the book, as well as the various languages that the book will be translated into. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Well, when your heart rate increases, there's actually both increased blood flow to the brain and the delivery of all the things that that blood carries, but there are also neural pathways that carry signals about that heart rate, about those blood pressure changes to the brain in order to increase our levels of alertness and focus that we can leverage toward learning.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
So the first location in the body that we know can communicate with the brain is the heart. When our heart beats faster, that's communicated to our autonomic nervous system, which resides in a number of different brain areas. In fact, it's a network of brain areas that act in concert to create what we call autonomic arousal.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
We also have another pathway that goes back from the brain to the heart and other organs that we call the vagus nerve, which is a two directional pathway, up from the body to the brain and from the brain back to the body. We're going to talk a lot about the vagus. In fact, let's talk about the vagus now.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
When we exercise, we release adrenaline, which is also called epinephrine, from our adrenal glands, which are small glands that reside atop both of our kidneys. That adrenaline or epinephrine, as it's also called, does many things in our body. It's responsible for increasing our heart rate further.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
It's responsible for a number of effects on the so-called endothelial cells that make up the vessels and capillaries. and it has impacts on the neurons in our body that create all sorts of changes in the way that blood flows, how fast it flows, and so on and so forth. Now, here's a key thing to understand. Adrenaline, epinephrine, does not cross the blood-brain barrier.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
So the adrenaline from our adrenals doesn't actually get into the brain to stimulate elevated levels of alertness. Rather, it acts on receptors on the vagus nerve. Again, the vagus nerve communicates with the brain, and also in the vagus nerve, certain brain areas communicate with the body.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
So adrenaline has a lot of effects within the body, but when it's released, it also acts on so-called adrenergic receptors on the vagus nerve. Then the vagus nerve is activated in a way that stimulates the activity of a brain area, because remember, the vagus goes from the body into the brain. stimulates the so-called NST.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And because neuroanatomists like to argue about naming, sometimes it'll also be called the NTS, the nucleus of the solitary tract or the nucleus tractus solitaris. Super annoying, I know. Forget the acronym unless you want to know that it's sometimes NST and sometimes it's NTS. Don't ask me why neuroanatomists do this.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
In any case, the NST can then communicate with a really important brain area whose name you should remember, which is the locus coeruleus. The locus coeruleus contains neurons that release, among other things, norepinephrine, which is similar in action to epinephrine, but different.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Neurons in the locus coeruleus send those little wires that we call axons into the brain in a very widespread manner. It's almost as if they're positioned to sprinkler the brain with a neurochemical and that neurochemical is norepinephrine. They also have the capacity to release other neurochemicals, but right now we're concentrating on norepinephrine.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
When norepinephrine is released from the locus coeruleus, it has this tendency to elevate the levels of activity in other brain areas through this sort of sprinkler-like mechanism. What that means is that other areas of the brain, such as your prefrontal cortex, such as your hippocampus,
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
such as different areas of the hypothalamus and indeed lots of brain circuits, all have a greater capacity to be engaged. This is what we're talking about when we talk about autonomic arousal. Release of adrenaline from the adrenals that has action within the body, elevated heart rate, blood pressure, et cetera,
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And then adrenaline also from the adrenals to the vagus, from the vagus to the NST, NST to locus coeruleus, and then locus coeruleus sprinklers the brain with this norepinephrine, raising the levels of baseline activity in all those brain areas and making them more likely to be engaged by things that we're trying to attend to, more likely to engage, say, the neurons of the prefrontal cortex that can learn context-dependent strategy switching, such as in a Stroop task.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
or when we're trying to attend to information and we go, okay, here's something important. I need to pay attention to this. We're able to do that because of that elevated level of norepinephrine. It facilitates, it's permissive for elevating our levels of attention and focus.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
It's also permissive for our hippocampus to encode new memories and for a bunch of other brain areas to do their thing, so to speak. So knowing these mechanisms is actually worthwhile. If you've ever heard that exercise can give you energy, this is the basis of that statement.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Many people, in fact, myself for many years thought, okay, I definitely have to sleep well in order to have energy and focus. That's absolutely true, still true, will always be true. I should maybe have some caffeine, be hydrated, well-nourished, all this stuff in order to have the energy to exercise. But it's also true that exercise gives us energy and this is how it gives us energy.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
When we move our body, the adrenals release adrenaline and the adrenaline acts through two different so-called parallel pathways. within the body, but again, it doesn't cross the blood brain barrier.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
So then there's a series of what we call signaling relays or circuit relays up to the locus coeruleus, and then a sort of analog, it's different, but an analog to epinephrine, norepinephrine is released within the brain. And lo and behold, we have elevated levels of both bodily energy and brain energy and focus that we can devote to that exercise, but also
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
to the learning that comes after that exercise, which explains pretty much everything that we've talked about up until now during the course of this podcast. So the next time you're feeling a little tired and you don't wanna work out, remember, exercise gives you energy through the pathways that I just described. Now, anytime I talk about the adrenals, people start talking about adrenal burnout.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
You burn out your adrenals. There are these crazy theories that you'll hear out there. Coffee burns out your adrenals. Not true. You'll hear that if you exercise too much, it might burn out your energy or your adrenals.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Look, you have enough capacity within your adrenals to survive relatively long famines, to survive long bouts of challenge, stress of many, many different kinds, short challenges, and so on. you're not going to burn out your adrenals. There is something called adrenal insufficiency syndrome, which is a real syndrome. There are diseases of the adrenals, but that's not what we're referring to here.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Now, I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years. Therapy is an extremely important component to overall health. In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise. Now, there are essentially three things that great therapy provides.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
You have plenty of adrenaline in your adrenals that you can deploy through movement, through exercise to get the elevation and arousal attention and so forth that we've been talking about.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
In fact, there's a set of biological pathways that were just recently discovered that will allow you to understand how to use movement in order to engage your adrenals so that then those adrenals can release adrenaline, impact your vagus, impact the organs of your body, the locus coeruleus, and elevate your levels of attention and focus.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And a lot of the core components of these pathways are highlighted in a paper that I absolutely love, another paper I absolutely love, This is from Peter Strick's laboratory at University of Pittsburgh, which is entitled, The Mind-Body Problem. Circuits that link the cerebral cortex to the adrenal medulla. The adrenal medulla are those adrenals that I've been referring to in the body.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And the question that Peter Strick and colleagues asked was how is it that movement actually gets the adrenals to release adrenaline? Like what's the signal? Does it come from the muscles? Does it come from the skeleton? It's perfectly reasonable to assume that there are signals that come from the muscles and from the skeleton that cause the adrenals to release adrenaline when we exercise.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
But what Strick and colleagues did was actually super clever. They took some new tools that had just become available. These are tools that allow the tracing of neural circuits from organs in the body all the way back up to the brain, or from one brain structure to another brain structure, and then to yet another brain structure.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
We don't have time to go into all the technical details, but this is a technique that perhaps I'll talk about on a future podcast. It's one that my laboratory used for a number of years to trace other neural pathways.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
What they discovered is that there are essentially three categories of brain areas, all of which communicate with the adrenals and can cause them to release adrenaline to create this elevation and arousal and attention.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Those three brain areas include areas of the brain that are involved in thinking, what we call cognition, areas of the brain that are related to what are called affective states, which is just kind of a more general category that includes emotions.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
First, it provides a good rapport with somebody that you can really trust and talk to about any and all issues that concern you. Second of all, great therapy provides support in the form of emotional support, but also directed guidance, the do's and the not to do's. And third, expert therapy can help you arrive at useful insights that you would not have arrived at otherwise.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Okay, if you saw the Huberman Lab podcast episode that I did with Lisa Feldman Barrett, she explains beautifully the distinction between affective states and emotions, but these are brain areas that basically relate to what we are feeling. or how we're perceiving our environment and how we're reacting to it, these sorts of things.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And then there's a third category of brain areas that most robustly communicates with the adrenals. And these are a collection of brain areas that are all involved with movement of particular areas of our body. These areas are broadly referred to as the motor network. So these are areas of the so-called cerebral cortex, which are on the outer portion of the brain.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And they send these wires down the spinal cord. There's a little relay in the spinal cord It's called the IML. If you're interested in the anatomical details, I'll put the link to this paper in the show note captions. In any case, these brain areas that are involved in motor movement send axons, those wires, down to the spinal cord.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Then from the spinal cord, they send a relay out via what's called the cholinergic preganglionic neurons. Basically what ends up happening is that acetylcholine, which is a neuromodulator, is released from these neurons that originate in the spinal cord. onto the adrenal medulla, and then the adrenal medulla, the so-called adrenals, same thing, adrenal medulla, adrenals, releases adrenaline.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
That creates these effects in the body on the heart, the muscles, and other tissues. And then as described before, that adrenaline also acts on the vagus, the vagus up to the NST, the locus coeruleus, and we have this elevation and alertness.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
So this paper and papers that came subsequent to it really explain how it is that the movement of our body, AKA exercise, allows us to have this elevation in arousal and alertness. It's a loop, okay? The adrenals release adrenaline. They do these things by these two parallel pathways I've been talking about.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
But your decision to engage these motor areas, to move particular areas of your body is what deploys that adrenaline. Now you might be thinking, well, duh, When I exercise, there's adrenaline release. In order to exercise, I need to move my body. And these brain areas control the movement of my body. But it's not a duh.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
It's actually very profound because it turns out that the specific brain areas that best activate the adrenals
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
are the brain areas that control the muscles closest to the midline, the core musculature, and the brain areas that are involved in generating the sorts of movements that we would call compound movements, at least in the context of resistance training, or that are responsible for moving multiple joints at the same time.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
So what this means in the practical sense is if you are feeling sluggish, you want energy, or you're simply exercising both for bodily effects and for brain effects, you need the deployment of adrenaline, of epinephrine. You need the deployment of norepinephrine in the brain.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And by the way, anytime you have a deployment of norepinephrine in the brain, almost always there's a coordinated action of release of dopamine, which most people have heard of by now. Dopamine is involved in motivation as well as movement, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
So the simple takeaway here is if you want to get the arousal that comes from exercise in order to use that arousal, to leverage it towards better cognition, brain health, et cetera, the key thing is to make sure that you're doing exercises that are compound exercises so that these would be the movements, you can look these up, just say compound exercises.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
resistance training, cardiovascular training of both long, medium and short duration can be used to improve the way that your brain functions acutely, meaning immediately in the minutes and hours and the day that you do that exercise, as well as in the long term, in the days, weeks and months after you perform that exercise. And of course,
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Insights that allow you to do better, not just in your emotional life, in your relationship life, but also the relationship to yourself and your professional life and all sorts of career goals. With better help, they make it very easy to find an expert therapist with whom you can really resonate with and provide you with these three benefits that I described.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
You can put that anywhere and you'll see that that includes things like squats, deadlifts, you know, bench presses, dips, pull-ups, rows. And yes, of course you want to train your whole body so that you have, you know, a symmetry of a function of strength and you want to offset any injuries and things of that sort or aesthetic reasons perhaps.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
But the idea here is if you want energy from exercise, you want focus, you need the deployment of the neurochemicals that we've been discussing, most notably epinephrine and norepinephrine.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And through the identification of this motor network, as well as the affective and cognitive networks that converge on this area of the spinal cord and then send communication to the adrenal medulla, you can essentially control the levels of arousal that your body and brain produces.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
So in describing this, my hope is that you'll no longer think about exercise as just elevating your heart rate, or you no longer think about exercise just as moving your body, but rather that the movement of your body is creating specific neurochemical outcomes, both in the body and the brain that create the arousal
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
that initiates the improvements in focus and attention that allow you to learn better and that contribute generally to brain health and longevity. And of course, you aficionados out there will remind me, I'm sure, but I'm going to beat you to the punch here.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Yes, your hypothalamus is also talking to your pituitary, which releases certain chemicals into your bloodstream, which also go to your adrenals. to cause your adrenals to deploy both adrenaline, epinephrine, as well as cortisol. That pathway is still intact, okay? But that's a slightly slower pathway.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Here I'm focusing on the neural pathways, some of which have only recently been discovered in the last five or 10 years, that work very, very fast to generate the sorts of arousal that are relevant to brain function and brain longevity. Nothing has changed in terms of the old story about how the brain impacts the adrenals, that's all still there, but here we're into the modern stuff.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And by the way, for those of you that are interested in things like psychosomatic disorders, trauma, and how trauma can quote unquote be stored in the body, not so much stored in the body, but how it can impact the body, and then how the body itself can impact the brain.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
This paper has also been used as support for the idea that indeed those effective areas, those emotional areas, those cognitive areas have a route by which they can communicate with the adrenal medulla to cause the release of adrenaline when we have specific thoughts. It was always known that if we have specific thoughts, it can quote unquote stress us out, our heart rate can go up, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
This paper also provides a reasonable anatomical substrate for that phenomenon. You know, I never want to make too much of any one single paper or finding, but I will say that after I read that paper from Strick and colleagues and through some of the subsequent discussions about that paper that I overheard at meetings and so forth, it really made me think differently about exercise.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Also, because BetterHelp is carried out entirely online, it's very time efficient and easy to fit into a busy schedule with no commuting to a therapist's office or sitting in a waiting room or looking for a parking spot. So if you'd like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And now anytime that I'm feeling tired, provided that I'm not chronically sleep deprived or something of that sort, I remind myself that if I start moving my body, in particular, if I engage core muscles, that was one of the key findings in that paper, that the areas of the brain that control the core muscles, as well as do compound movements, I move multiple joints.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
I start warming up in a way that includes some, maybe even just air squats or some running in place or jumping jacks, things of that sort. that the increase in energy that I'm perceiving is real. It's based on the same neurochemical outputs that would occur had I gone into the gym or to the run or whatever workout with tons of energy, it would just have increased the level of adrenaline further.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
So this idea that we can actually control our body with our mind And to some extent, our mind with our body, that's absolutely true. And this is one of the tools that I find particularly useful anytime I want to overcome that wall of kind of resistance to not doing the physical exercise that I know I and basically all of us should be doing.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Function. I recently became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
While I've long been a fan of blood testing, I really wanted to find a more in-depth program for analyzing blood, urine and saliva to get a full picture of my heart health, my hormone status, my immune system regulation, my metabolic function, my vitamin and mineral status and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors on your results. For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had two high levels of mercury in my blood. This was totally surprising to me. I had no idea prior to taking the test.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Function not only helped me detect this, but offered medical doctor-informed insights on how to best reduce those mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, because I had been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification, and worked to reduce my mercury levels.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Comprehensive lab testing like this is so important for health, and while I've been doing it for years, I've always found it to be overly complicated and expensive.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
I've been so impressed by Function, both at the level of ease of use, that is getting the test done, as well as how comprehensive and how actionable the tests are, that I recently joined their advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman Lab listeners. Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Okay, so let's think just a little bit more about how the body communicates with the brain during exercise, both in order to understand the mechanisms by which exercise improves brain health and function, but also ways that we can leverage that to improve brain health and function by using exercise.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Today's episode is also brought to us by Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are customized to your unique sleep needs. Now, I've spoken many times before on this and other podcasts about the fact that getting a great night's sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
One of the more interesting and powerful and indeed surprising ways that the body communicates with the brain during exercise to improve brain health and indeed our ability to remember things and to learn is the way that our bones, our skeleton, when they're under loads, okay, when they experience mechanical stress, not severe mechanical stress that would break them, but mechanical stress,
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
They release hormones, in particular, something called osteocalcin. Now, you might be thinking, wait, the bones release hormones? Yes, your bones release hormones, one of which is called osteocalcin. Osteocalcin is an incredible molecule.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Animal studies that were done mainly at Columbia School of Medicine, but later also at Columbia and elsewhere in humans have shown that osteocalcin is released from the bones during exercise, both in mice and in humans, travels to the brain so it can cross the blood-brain barrier,
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And there it can encourage the growth of neurons and their connections within the hippocampus, an area of the brain that's vitally important for the encoding of new memories. And there are some data, not a ton, but there's some data which suggests that perhaps, I want to highlight, underscore, and boldface perhaps,
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
can increase the number of neurons in the so-called dentate gyrus of the hippocampus to allow even better capacity for memory. Now, osteocalcin is therefore a really interesting molecule, right? Comes from bones, travels to the brain, improves functioning of the hippocampus, which is important for learning and memory. That's amazing.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And it does so in part through the actions of something that most of you perhaps have heard of, which is called BDNF or brain-derived nootrophic factor. Now, it's very important for us to understand that anytime we hear about exercise increases a growth factor. And by the way, exercise increases brain-derived neurotrophic factor.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
It increases growth factors that cause the growth of endothelial cells, so blood vessels. We'll talk more about that in a moment. And it increases nerve growth factor. It's not just BDNF. There are lots of different growth factors, a few of which, NGF and BDNF, act on neurons and other growth factors that act on endothelial cells, vasculature.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
It seems that a lot of the effects of BDNF on the brain that are caused by doing exercise and that benefit us in terms of short and long-term memory, our ability to encode new things and remember them for long periods of time, to resist age-related degeneration, because that's the case indeed, that our hippocampus decreases in volume over time as we age, just naturally, even in somebody that doesn't have Alzheimer's dementia, and exercise can adjust the slope of that decline
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
significantly provided there's enough exercise and the appropriate exercise. I don't think all, but many of the effects of BDNF appear to be mediated by osteocalcin.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
What this means is that any exercise program that's designed not just to benefit our body, but also our brain health and performance should do something to load the skeleton in some sort of impactful way that causes the release of osteocalcin. Now, unfortunately, there has not been a systematic exploration of the specific types of exercise that best cause the release of osteocalcin in humans.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Now, the mattress you sleep on makes a huge difference in the quality of sleep that you get each night. How soft that mattress is or how firm it is, how breathable it is, all play into your comfort and need to be tailored to your unique sleep needs.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
But based on what we understand about how osteocalcin is made and released, it seems reasonable to assume and reasonable to employ some exercise within your weekly exercise that involves jumping of some sort. In particular, jumping where you have to control the eccentric or landing portion of that jump. Now, I'm certainly not the first to talk about this.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
It's been discussed in a different context. That is jumping and landing has been discussed in a different context, namely by Peter Attia and others who have talked about the fact that as people age, one of the primary causes of mortality are the infections and the lack of mobility caused by falls. that people generally have when they're going downstairs or down things.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Stepping down is a common source of falls. Falls are a common source of breaking things. Breaking things is a common source of inactivity, and inactivity is a common source of infections and other things that lead to earlier mortality. What this means for all of us, young, middle-aged, and old, is that we should include some form of jumping in our weekly exercise.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Now, you could imagine doing that within your high-intensity interval training, provided you can do it safely and not get injured, but this is also a call for all of us to think about including, say, some jumping rope.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And if you're going to jump rope, maybe not just jumping, you know, a centimeter off the ground to be able to just consistently skip, skip, skip, skip along, but maybe doing some high knees, maybe doing some double unders, if you can do those, perhaps doing some box jumps.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
So jumping off boxes at different heights, again, what you can do safely without getting injured, no doubt is going to provide load to the skeleton. I guess, unless you're doing it underwater in outer space, it's hard to imagine how it wouldn't. And that seems to me like the most direct way to employ this osteocalcin pathway.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
So if you go to the Helix website, you can take a brief two-minute quiz that asks you questions such as, do you sleep on your back, your side, or your stomach? Do you tend to run hot or cold during the night? Things of that sort. Maybe you know the answers to those questions, maybe you don't. Either way, Helix will match you to the ideal mattress for you.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
This pathway from the bones to the brain and neurogenesis in the hippocampus, I do believe, is likely to underlie a lot of the enhancement of learning and memory that's seen in terms of the chronic effects of exercise on brain health and brain function over time. That is not just the things that exercise does via arousal in the minutes and hours after exercise, but
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
the way that exercise can improve literally the size and structure of one of the most critical structures in our brain that's responsible for learning and memory, the hippocampus. And of course, there are a lot of other ways that the body communicates with the brain.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
We definitely don't have time to go through all of them, but it's worth thinking about a few of them logically, just in terms of listing them off and thinking about how they might communicate with the brain to improve brain health and longevity. When you exercise, you utilize fuel differently, depending on whether or not you're relying on glycogen or fatty acids.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And of course, it's going to depend on how long you've been exercising and the type of exercise and what you're using for fuel, literally the foods you eat, et cetera. We don't have time to go into all of that, Get this, turns out that there are liver to brain neural pathways.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
So your liver can communicate with neurons and other cells in your brain, including the glial cells, the cells that are important for regulating energy metabolism and a bunch of other things too. Your liver can communicate to your brain, both through neural pathways and by releasing things into your bloodstream that then communicate to your brain, oh, the body is using a different source of fuel.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
It's been using different sources or combinations of fuels for the last 20 minutes. Maybe you should adjust your brain state in order to be able to cope with that or in response to that. And of course, there are other organs in the body that are communicating with the brain also.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Your diaphragm, for instance, is communicating with your brain through indirect pathways about how you're breathing during exercise. And of course, your brain is controlling your diaphragm too via a number of stations, including the pathway that includes the phrenic nerve. which controls the diaphragm.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
The point here is that once you start exercising, of course it has an impact on the organs in your body. They change the way that they're functioning, your heart, your liver, your adrenals, your skeleton, literally your bones, and of course your muscles. And they are releasing things that impact brain function either directly or indirectly.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Once you start thinking about exercise in that context, even if we don't parse each and every one of those pathways individually, you can start thinking about exercise as a multifactorial way of enhancing and changing brain activity so that it positions it to learn better in the subsequent hours and days, as well as modifying areas of the brain like the hippocampus by making certain brain areas literally bigger, more powerful,
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
For me, that turned out to be the Dusk mattress, D-U-S-K. I started sleeping on a Dusk mattress about three and a half years ago, and it's been far and away the best sleep that I've ever had, so much so that when I travel to hotels and Airbnbs, I find I don't sleep as well. I can't wait to get back to my dusk mattress. So if you'd like to try Helix, you can go to helixsleep.com slash Huberman.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
engaging the sorts of things that they do in the case of the hippocampus learning, in the case of the prefrontal cortex, context-dependent decision-making, updating strategies, these sorts of things.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And generally speaking, exercise causes the release of things like BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor, and nerve growth factor that enhance the health and stability of existing neuron connections. And something that is
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
very rarely, if ever discussed publicly, not because it's some sort of secret that people want to keep, but I just don't hear it discussed, is that BDNF is an activity dependent molecule. It's a molecule that can serve to stabilize and enhance the growth of neurons, keep their connections in place, grow new connections, and it does so when neurons are active.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
So the point is that BDNF has to be released in order for that to happen, but the release of BDNF itself is activity dependent, and it acts best on neurons that are already active. So if ever there was a mechanism that could explain why it is that people that exercise regularly seem to maintain healthier brains into later life, it's that one. It's that BDNF is activity dependent.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And when I say activity dependent, I mean the electrical activity of neurons is what causes the release of BDNF. And then once BDNF is released, it has the best opportunity to stabilize and enhance the growth of existing neurons if those other neurons are already active.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Now, if we were to list off all the different pathways and mechanisms by which exercise improves brain health and performance, it would be a list of probably, I don't know, somewhere between 40 and 100 different molecular pathways, and probably, I don't know, somewhere between 12 and 20 different anatomical pathways. And we certainly don't have time for all that.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
I don't think that's what you're interested in. I've tried to just highlight some of the key ones today. One additional one that I'd like to highlight is the lactate pathway or the impact of lactate when we exercise. This is getting discussed more and more these days on podcasts and elsewhere.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
One interesting finding, for instance, is that lactate is what's produced when we exercise intensely, our muscles produce lactate, and lactate is a very powerful appetite suppressant. Now, some of you may be saying, when I exercise hard, I get really, really hungry. Well, that may be true, but it's also true that if you exercise really, really hard,
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
and then you hydrate well and you wait a little while, oftentimes that hunger will subside. I'm not saying that you should starve yourself after exercise. Fuel as needed for you. If you're an intermittent faster, do that thing. If you like to eat right after you exercise, do that. Do what's best for you, but understand that lactate has powerful effects on our appetite because why?
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Because lactate has powerful effects, not just on our body, but on our brain. and it is able to impact the activity of neurons in our so-called hypothalamus, little marble-sized region above the roof of our mouth that contains some of the neurons that control our appetite. and our degree of satiety.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Take that two minute sleep quiz and Helix will match you to a mattress that's customized for your unique sleep needs. Right now, Helix is giving up to 25% off all mattress orders. Again, that's helixsleep.com slash Huberman to get up to 25% off. Okay, let's talk about the relationship between exercise, brain health and longevity and performance.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
So the point here is that lactate is a molecule produced in the body that can actually signal to the brain. Most of you perhaps have heard that lactate can be used as a fuel for neurons during exercise. Lactate is the preferred fuel for neurons under most circumstances, especially under circumstances of intense exercise that spares glucose for other things, including for cognitive work later on.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
This is perhaps one of the reasons why when People do intense exercise provided it's not too long and too intense, and then you go to learn something, you have enhanced focus.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
It's because of the arousal we've been talking about all along today, but it's also because we believe that there's glucose, there's fuel that's been spared that then can be used by the neurons because during the exercise, you weren't using quite as much glucose, you were using lactate. Now, lactate is also
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
a stimulus for something called the blood brain barrier, which is made up of endothelial cells, specialized endothelial cells that act as a barrier so that certain things, in particular large molecules, can't cross from the body into the brain. Lactate stimulates the release of something called VEGF, V-G-E-F, which is,
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
basically an endothelial growth factor that promotes the stability and growth of the blood brain barrier. This is very important in the context of brain health and longevity and longevity in particular, because one of the major features of age-related cognitive decline and one that's greatly exacerbated in Alzheimer's is a breakdown of the blood brain barrier.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
So the integrity, the structure and function of the blood brain barrier is something that's very important and related to brain health. An exercise that's intense enough to produce lactate causes the increase in VEGF that acts on and within the endothelial cells to improve the integrity of the blood brain barrier.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And because I mentioned the astrocytes earlier, and because I did my postdoc with somebody that was sort of famous for popularizing the study of astrocytes when no one else wanted to study the astrocytes, now everybody studies the astrocytes, but I have to mention something about astrocytes, which no, they're not just a support cell. Certain types of cells in the brain are called glia.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
The glia come in multiple forms, oligodendrocytes in the periphery, they're called Schwann cells, but then you also have astrocytes and astrocytes sit around the synapse, they ensheath synapses.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Remember synapses are the communication points between neurons and the astrocytes are beautifully positioned to read out the amount of activity that's occurring between neurons and produce fuel for those neurons. So the astrocytes mainly use glucose for fuel, but they can produce lactate. So again, we have this activity dependent phenomenon that is when certain neurons are very, very active,
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
The astrocytes are able to produce more lactate. The neurons can use lactate, spares glucose, and a bunch of great things happen. When I say great things happen, I mean in the context of the ways that exercise can improve brain function, because those elevated levels of lactate in turn also increase BDNF. We already talked about the blood brain barrier.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Basically the muscles producing lactate is terrific, but The astrocytes producing lactate for the neurons to feed on is also terrific because lactate can be used as a fuel and it triggers all these downstream or subsequent mechanisms, including BDNF.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
So basically what we're talking about is the lots and lots of ways that exercise improves brain health in the long-term, BDNF, brain plasticity, stability of synapses and so forth, maybe even new neurons, maybe. Not a lot of evidence for that in humans yet, frankly, but maybe.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And exercise can improve brain function in the short term through mechanisms of arousal, but also through alternate fuel usage, such as lactate from the body and from cells within the brain that we call the astrocytes, and the release of all sorts of other things, IGF-1 to promote more vasculature and on and on and on.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And let's just take a couple of minutes and really clearly define what we mean by exercise, because most of us have a concept of what exercise is, but for sake of understanding the relationship between exercise and brain performance, most of the peer reviewed studies focus on two general categories of exercise, either cardiovascular exercise or resistance training.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
It's really quite beautiful, the sort of wave front of molecules and neural pathways that's initiated when we exercise, provided we exercise intensely enough. So this is a double and triple call for including at least some high intensity interval training, VO2 max type training each week, as well as doing resistance training.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And of course the long duration cardiovascular training, the sort of, you know, 30 or 45 or 60 minute, or maybe even two hours zone two type stuff. You can look up zone two, but it's basically a level of cardiovascular training that still allows you to talk, but were you to go any more intensely, you wouldn't be able to complete sentences.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
That zone two training, of course, is going to be very powerful for the health and integrity of the cardiovascular system that's going to allow for the delivery of all these molecules. And of course the delivery of blood flow itself to the brain because cerebral blood flow is central to brain function.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Okay, so if you're right at the threshold of about to be overwhelmed by the number of different mechanisms by which exercise improves brain function and health, We're not going to add any more mechanisms. We are, however, going to talk about the practical steps that you can take to make sure that you're getting the most brain benefits from your exercise.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Based on what we've talked about so far, as well as a broad survey of the literature, and again, it is a big literature, here are the four things that I believe everyone should be doing every single week in terms of their exercise program. Now, we've talked a lot about exercise on this podcast before.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
I can summarize the very, very top contour of what my takeaway is from the literature and from discussions with experts such as Dr. Andy Galpin, and others, which is, I believe that everybody should include both resistance training, could be body weight, free weights, machines, some combination of those, as well as cardiovascular training each week.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And that the cardiovascular training should include both high intensity interval training, at least once per week, and some so-called long slow distance training or zone two type training each week. So presumably most of you are doing some form of that. So maybe you're doing more cardio than resistance training. Maybe you're doing more resistance training than cardio.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
If you're interested in a zero cost program where you can start to sculpt out a idealized program for you, but you want to start with a kind of general template, we have a newsletter that you can access at hubertmanlab.com. Zero cost. You don't even have to sign up to access it. Although if you want to sign up for the newsletter, that could be valuable to you too. Completely zero cost.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
You can go to hubermanlab.com, go to newsletter, scroll down to foundational fitness protocol. It describes the program that I've been following essentially for 30 plus years. And again, it's about three cardiovascular training sessions per week, three resistance training sessions per week. The cardiovascular training ranges in time from about 12 minutes and then a longer 60 minute session.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
The resistance training is generally 45 to 75 minutes. So on average, about an hour. And it might sound like a lot, but when you look at that foundational fitness protocol, what you realize is that some of the workouts are really, really short. Some of them are a little bit longer. None of them are longer than an hour. So it's pretty reasonable to do.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Now, of course, cardiovascular exercise can be a very short duration, high intensity. So getting heart rates up way, way, way up or longer duration, lower intensity. Now, typically the amount of time scales with that. So the shorter intensity stuff tends to be
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And I certainly did it while working, well, to be frank, extremely long hours for many, many years. So provided your sleep is intact and other areas of your life are or dialed in with stress, et cetera, should be doable for most everybody, but modify it according to what you need. Or if you're doing something completely different, more power to you.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
I just want you to know that's available as a zero cost resource if you want to check it out. With all of that said, whatever exercise you happen to be doing or you happen to be planning, I do believe it should include four things specifically to improve brain health and performance. Although these four things will also benefit you at the level of your bodily health, no doubt.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
The first thing is to include at least one workout per week that is of a long, slow distance nature. So zone two type cardio, maybe you get a little bit up into zone three, but basically jogging, swimming, rowing, Any activity that you can carry out consistently for 45 to 75 minutes without getting injured, right? People always say, well, do I have to run?
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
No, if you don't like running and running's too hard on your body or you'll get injured, then do something else. Maybe you do the rower, maybe you ride a stationary bike, maybe you ride a road bike. For me, it's jogging generally or hiking with a weight vest. Those are the things that I enjoy and that I can do without getting injured. But for other people, it's a different,
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
It's a different exercise. But at least one long, slow distance training session per week is going to be very beneficial for brain health because of the way that it impacts cerebral blood flow and to filial health, and basically the way that cardiovascular health improves brain function at the level of blood flow fuel delivery, et cetera.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
The second thing is to include at least one workout per week that's of the so-called high intensity interval training type. Now, there are a lot of different types of high intensity interval training out there. In fact, Dr. Andy Galpin says, you know, we'll hear about say like the four by four by four protocol, right? Four minutes of going as hard as you can for four minutes
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
basically where there's no variation in the intensity through that whole four minutes, you're going hard the whole four minutes, but only as hard as you can for the entire four minutes, then resting four minutes, and then repeating that four by four cycle four times. So that's one way to do it. But Dr. Andy Yalpin would be the first to tell you that
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
probably also get great results from a three by three by four type of workout or a six by six by six type of workout. Although for many people that's going to be too much and too intense.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
quick bouts of either 30 second, 60 seconds, sometimes two minute, or even four minute all out effort with some period of rest afterwards, or longer duration, 20, 30, 45, or even 60 minutes of cardiovascular training at a more steady state, lower intensity.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Or if you're me and you prefer a high intensity interval training session that is more like a two minutes on as hard as you can go for two minutes and then rest for say three to four minutes and then repeat maybe four times, maybe five times, well then do that. I have a high intensity interval training session that I do when I'm very limited on time, which involves getting on the Airdyne bike.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
They sometimes call it the assault bike. There's a lot of resistance, has that fan, which I always thought was to cool me off. But then, you know, once I actually got on one and started riding, I realized that that's to provide resistance. So, but basically if I'm limited on time, I'll hop on there, I'll pedal for about a minute or two, just kind of warm up.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And then I'll go all out for a minute, rest for 30 seconds, all out for a minute, rest for 30 seconds. The first three or four of those cycles, feeling pretty good. By the seventh and eighth one, I'm praying. And generally when one finishes that type of workout, your heart rate is very, very elevated.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Now, I don't tend to track my heart rate during exercise, perhaps I should, but I don't like to get too weighed down with technology when I exercise. I like to go more on feel, that's just me. I find that my heart rate is extremely high right as I get off that thing. But five minutes later, it's back to baseline.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And I certainly feel energized after doing that to go do some cognitive work, to shower up and to head to work, that sort of thing. So pick a high intensity interval training session that you can do at least once per week, and that works for you. And again, it's really important to pick a form of exercise for the high intensity interval training that you can do without getting injured.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
This is so important. You know, one way to really limit your brain health and bodily health is to get injured and to not be able to exercise. In a few minutes, I'll tell you about what happens when you don't exercise for a certain duration and how that negatively impacts your brain health. And it's not that long before that starts to happen. But in the meantime,
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
The first was long, slow distance or so-called zone two. So we could call that LSD, not the psychedelic, but long, slow distance exercise. Second was high intensity interval training or HIIT or HIIT. The third would be TUT, T-U-T, time under tension.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
If you're doing resistance training, and I do believe everybody should be doing resistance training, there are a near infinite number of different ways to do resistance training, as you well know. you can move the weight ballistically, you can control the eccentric, you can do any number of different things.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
But some proportion of the exercises that you do during your resistance training during the week should include time under tension training, where you're really emphasizing the contraction of the muscles, the slow lowering of the weight, as well as the lifting of the weight, contracting the muscles as hard as you can.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And I should mention that within the tens of thousands of studies that are out there exploring the relationship between exercise and brain health and longevity, you will mostly see studies focused on cardiovascular exercise. And most of those studies early on were focused on the longer duration, lower intensity stuff.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And this is really to emphasize the nerve to muscle pathways in the way that time under tension promotes the release of things from muscles
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
into the bloodstream that can positively impact the brain, as well as the way that focusing your brain on exercises such that you're isolating muscles, or even if you're not doing a so-called isolation exercise, maybe you're doing a compound exercise like a dip or a squat or a deadlift, but that really concentrating on the muscles that are supposed to be managing the work and not just moving the weight, but challenging the muscles.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
This is a very important thing, challenging the muscles, using the weight, not lifting weights or moving weights. By focusing on time under tension, you will of course get benefits as it relates to hypertrophy and strength increases, in particular hypertrophy. Doing time under tension requires you to engage the, what we call the upper motor neuron to lower motor neuron.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
You have motor neurons in your cortex. You also have motor neurons and your spinal cord, those pathways that then go out to the muscles and control the muscles in very deliberate ways.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And time under tension training is very beneficial for the deployment of the molecules that work both within the body, but also within the brain to support brain health and function, both in the short term and most particularly in the long term. I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Maui Nui Venison.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
In fact, I probably eat a Maui Nui venison burger pretty much every day, and occasionally I'll swap that for a Maui Nui steak. And if you're traveling a lot or you're simply on the go, they have Maui Nui venison sticks, which have 10 grams of protein per stick at just 55 calories. And they're extremely convenient. You can pretty much take them anywhere.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
So typically 30 to 60 minutes of lower intensity, yet still elevating the heart rate exercise. Nowadays, there's more of a focus on the high intensity interval training.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Again, that's mauinuivenison.com slash Huberman. Okay, so we have long, slow distance, high intensity interval training, and some degree of time under tension training with resistance training. you might be asking how many sets, what proportion? That depends on your goals, right?
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
If you're a power lifter and you're trying to lift bigger weights, or you simply want to get stronger, you're not going to devote a lot of your training to time under tension, most likely. You're going to be focusing mostly on the performance of those lifts to move more weight. But in my case, what I do, just for sake of example, again, this is just what I happen to do, is
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
I tend to make a full third of my resistance training just focused on time under tension. So if I do two exercises, typically the first exercise is a compound exercise. So if it's a shoulder press, for instance, I'll do a couple of warmup sets and then the work sets, I try and move the weight. And generally I tend to work pretty heavy for me in the four to eight repetition range.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
I'll try and move the weight as quickly as I can on the concentric phase, the lifting phase, and then at least twice as slow on the lowering phase. And then I pause while keeping the muscles under tension. I never really set the weight down at all during a set, if I'm doing my job, that is. And then the second exercise that I do, I really focus even more on time under tension.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
So whether or not it's a compound exercise or an isolation exercise, again, compound exercise, multiple joints moving, isolation exercise, single joints moving, I'll really concentrate on keeping the muscle under tension the entire time. In fact, I'll lift the weight off the stack if it's a machine, or if it's a free weight, just a little bit, engage the muscles that I'm trying to activate,
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
or train and then keep it under tension throughout the concentric, the contraction and the lowering of that weight and then never actually set it down until the end of the set, AKA increasing the time under tension. And then the fourth category of exercise that I believe everybody should include in their existing workouts or add if you're not currently working out is some sort of explosive jumping
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And today we're even going to hear about some studies that involve very, very short bursts, so-called sprints of activity, as short as six seconds long, followed by a period of rest, repeated for a number of times, and exploring what the effect of that sort of, I should say, very, very short intensity exercise is on immediate and long-term brain health and performance.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
and or eccentric landing. Now the explosive jumping with eccentric landing, you could do on a mat, right? Most people won't do it on concrete because they're worried about impact, that sort of thing. But let's say you have some mats or you're on a lawn or you're on dirt, or you're jumping up onto a box as high as you can and then jumping down and controlling the eccentric portion.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Again, pick something that you can do safely, progress slowly, right? If you're going to jump up and off boxes, you want to start with low boxes. I know that many of you can jump quite high and I'm not one of those people, but
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
if you can jump quite high and then you're going to jump off that box and you're going to do this as a new thing, you'll notice that anytime you add eccentric training to your workout regimen, it tends to increase soreness a lot. And often people get injured by including a new form of movement, in particular form of movement that you can fall and or
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
not just falling, but by including a lot of eccentric movements that they hadn't been doing previously.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Again, be really safe about this, but that loading of the skeleton through eccentric movement and controlling the descent, super important, not just for your body, not just to avoid falls, not just to improve coordination and a bunch of other great things, but also to get that release of osteocalcin, the improvements in BDNF, brain performance, brain health, and so on.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And I'm guessing that most of you can probably incorporate these four things, long, slow distance, high intensity interval training, some deliberate time under tension training during your resistance training, again, could be done with body weight, doesn't have to even be done with machines or free weights, as well as some explosive and eccentric control training without adding any time to your existing workout regimen, simply by incorporating it into whatever workouts you happen to already be doing.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
if you're exercising regularly, the effects of exercise on brain health and performance compound over time, making you better able to learn things, better able to retain information from the past, and indeed to expand your brain's capacity to learn new types of information in new ways.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And the explosive eccentric control training could be done frankly, at the end of a run. You could do it at the end of your zone two day. You could do it on the end of a hit day. Whenever you do it and however you do it, just try not to get injured. That's the most important thing. Why? Well, it turns out if you get injured, you can't exercise.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Sometimes you can, and it's good to continue exercising provided you're not aggravating that injury, but a lot of times you can't. And there are actually studies of how quickly your brain starts to suffer if you don't exercise. Now, most of these studies have been done on very experienced athletes. or people that are exercising a lot and then are forced to detrain or stop training completely.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And in some of these studies, they've done this independent of anything else. It's not like these people got sick from a cold or flu and then had to stop training. They'll just have them train a lot and then stop training and then start to look at some of the effects that occur within the brain.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And the major thing that I was able to extract from that literature is that after about 10 days of not doing any training, that is no cardiovascular training, no resistance training, you start to see significant decrements in brain oxygenation levels, as well as some other markers that are indicative of brain health or that would be indicative of brain health if they were to continue.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
So if you haven't been training at all for a long period of time, your brain is suffering. The good news is you can start benefiting your brain very quickly by exercising. Check out the foundational fitness protocol. It involves a ramp up or warming kind of phase because you don't want to jump into something whole hog if you haven't been doing it. if you haven't been exercising at all.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Forget what you did in high school. By the way, folks, anytime people tell you, back in the day, I was so fit, that's not the way to think about it. It's about today and what you're going to do today and forward, okay? The past is great. It tells you you're out of capacity, but you really just want to take where you are now and try and improve where you are now going forward, okay?
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Okay, so cardiovascular training of different durations and intensities. involving different durations of rest are one category that we're going to talk about today. The other category of exercise we're going to talk about today is resistance training.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
The past is the past. So how fit you were in high school or in junior high school, or when you were in the kindergarten class, you were the first one to make it around to get the blocks and the cookie in the milk first, like awesome. But if you're going to start up having not exercised in a long, long time, think about what you can do now so you don't get injured.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Because when you get injured, you can't exercise. And when you don't exercise for 10 days or more, that's when you start to see decrements in brain health. So if you're not exercising now, it's a great time to get to it. If you are exercising now and you have to take a week off because of some sort of illness or injury or family event or stress, look, don't obsess over that.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Don't miss out on some of the key things of life or make yourself sicker by exercising. Please, please, please don't come to the gym sick, okay? I did a whole episode on colds and flus and anytime people are coughing and sneezing and they tell you they're not contagious, that's completely unsubstantiated by the scientific data. Please don't come to the gym sick.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
So if you had to take a week off, you'll be fine. You'll be fine. You'll probably come back stronger in the end. Take a couple of days and ramp back up. But after about 10 days, your brain health starts to suffer. So that's an important number to keep in mind.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Okay, so multiple times throughout today's discussion, we've been talking about how exercise increases arousal, arousal improves brain function. That's true. You know what's also true? What's also true is that exercise improves brain health in the long term. Yes, through the deployment of things like BDNF. Yes, through the deployment of things like osteocalcin and on and on.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
but it also does so by improving your sleep. There are now many, many studies showing that sleep is the thing that mediates many, not all, but many of the positive effects of exercise on brain performance and long-term brain health. So what this means is that you have to make sure that you're getting adequate amounts of sleep. It's not sufficient just to exercise. You need to get proper sleep.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Now, most of the studies involving resistance training and their effects on the brain, both brain longevity and brain performance, focus on either compound, so multi-joint movements, so think squats, deadlifts, bench press, shoulder press, dips, et cetera,
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And I've done multiple episodes on how to optimize your sleep, how to improve your sleep, how to deal with insomnia, shift work, If you want to learn about any and all of that, either from podcasts or from our newsletter, go to hubermanlab.com, put sleep into the search function and it will take you to the episodes and the newsletters that discuss that.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
In addition, if you have a specific issue with sleep, like you're doing shift work or you're jet lagged or you are suffering from middle of the night waking or trouble shifting your schedule because you want to become an early riser, put those terms into the search function.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
It will take you to the specific timestamps in those episodes so that you don't have to listen to the entire episodes because I realize that some of them are quite long. And of course, there's the newsletter on sleep that lists off the various things that you should and can be doing to improve your sleep, no matter how well you happen to be sleeping now.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
but tons and tons of zero cost resources there in PDF form and podcast form and on and on. We also did this six episode series on sleep with Dr. Matthew Walker, one of the world's experts in sleep. So that's also there. So you can find all that there. One question I get a lot is let's say I don't sleep that well, should I exercise?
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Well, the short answer is yes, provided that it was just one night of poor sleep. In fact, there are studies showing that if you're slightly sleep deprived, meaning one night's poor sleep, so most people need somewhere between six and nine hours of sleep, varies by person, varies by age, varies by time of year and so on, all discussed in that series with Matt Walker.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Most people need six to nine hours, but let's say you normally get eight or you normally get seven, but you're down two hours on sleep for whatever reason. Should you exercise the next morning? The short answer is yes, provided it was just one night of poor sleep. It turns out that exercising after a poor night's sleep can help offset some of the negative effects of sleep deprivation on what?
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
on brain performance and health. Now, you don't want to get into a habit of this. You don't want to get into a habit of using exercise as a way to compensate for sleep loss. So if you don't sleep well for one night, exercise is a great way to offset that sleep loss effect on the brain or that would otherwise affect the brain. You can compensate for it by doing some exercise.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Keep in mind, you want to exercise in a way that's not too intense because you can drive your immune system down and be more vulnerable to infections. That's certainly the case after a poor night's sleep. You also want to be really careful with what you do for that exercise in terms of your coordinated movement. It's much easier to get injured when you're sleep deprived.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
But very often, and this is just a byproduct of how studies are done in the laboratory, very often the exploration of the relationship between resistance training and brain health and longevity are single joint isolation exercises, like a single leg, leg extension even. You might be thinking, wait, just one leg doing the leg extension? Yes. The reason for that
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
In fact, there's a really nice set of studies, Lane Norton's talked about this elsewhere, that the relationship between sleep, or I should say sleep deprivation and injury is a strong one. And the relationship between sleep loss and pain and failure to recover from injury is also a strong one. The direct point being, if you're slightly sleep deprived, sure, go ahead and exercise.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
That will actually help you offset some of the negative effects of that sleep deprivation, but you want to be careful how you exercise so you don't get sick and you don't get injured. So you can keep in mind that if you're having trouble sleeping, or even if you're a great sleeper already, getting exercise will further improve the architecture of your sleep.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
In fact, there's some evidence that doing high intensity interval training can improve the amount of deep slow wave sleep that you get. And there's some additional data showing that if you do high intensity training early in the day, and that's combined with a bunch of other things that stimulate autonomic arousal. So here we are again at autonomic arousal.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Things like caffeine, if that's in your program, you don't have to drink caffeine. Things like getting bright light in your eyes early in the day, definitely do that. Don't stare at the sun or any light so bright that it's dangerous or painful to look at, but certainly get bright light in your eyes.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
All those things that increase autonomic arousal early in the day can also help improve the amount and the quality of sleep that you get at night in particular, rapid eye movement sleep, which is so critical for learning and memory.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
In fact, there's something called the first night effect, which is the amount and quality of rapid eye movement sleep that you get on the first night after trying to learn something, powerfully dictates whether or not you actually learn and remember that thing. Because as you recall, Learning and memory neuroplasticity is a two-step process.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
You need to be focused and alert during the encoding phase, during the learning, but it's in states of deep rest, sleep in particular, but also non-sleep deep rest. But rapid eye movement sleep is the kind of king of reshaping your brain connections for the better, unloading the emotional load of experiences that were troubling. That happens during rapid eye movement sleep.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Just a little bit of REM deprivation, rapid eye movement sleep deprivation will make you more emotional, and will make the painful experiences of recent and distant past also more painful. Get more rapid eye movement sleep if you can. It also consolidates learning of things that you want to remember.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Again, exercise early in the day, in particular high intensity exercise, combined with some of the other things we just discussed, terrific way to improve the amount and quality of sleep that you get at night. And of course, all of that geysers up to what? Better brain health and performance in the short term and in the long term.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Okay, so I listed off the four types of training that you absolutely want to include in your exercise regimen if improving your brain health and performance is one of your goals. And obviously that should be one of your goals. Your brain is your central command center for your entire brain, but also your body. There's a fifth category of exercise,
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
that everyone should include if one's goal is to have a better and more resilient and indeed a better performing brain compared to your age match controls. And to be direct, that fifth category is the one that you absolutely don't want to do. What do I mean by that? Well, there's an absolutely beautiful literature about a brain area.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
I've talked a little bit about this before in our episode about tenacity and willpower. I've talked about it on a few other podcasts as well. It came up during the podcast episode that I did with the one and only David Goggins. And that brain area is the anterior mid cingulate cortex.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
The anterior mid cingulate cortex, very briefly, is a brain area that is powerfully engaged when we lean into challenges, including physical challenges, but also mental challenges, emotional challenges. And we get that, I'm going to push through tenacity and engaging our willpower. Now it's remarkable to think about this brain area.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
and I spoke to some of the scientists that do this sort of work, is that when they have subjects do a, say, seated single leg, leg extension as the form of resistance training, I know I and some of you are probably chuckling like, really? Of all the things you could select to see if it impacts brain health, you're going to have people kick up one knee? Yep, you do that. Why?
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
This is a brain area, mind you, that when my colleague at Stanford, Joe Parvizzi, putting a little electrode into, he was doing this for other reasons related to important neurosurgeries that patients needed and stimulated,
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
that particular brain area, anterior mid cingulate cortex, people reported immediately feeling as if there was some impending challenge, but that they were going to lean into that challenge. Remarkable. This brain area has intense connectivity with many, many other brain areas, the dopaminergic system, the so-called arousal system, so multiple brain areas involved in arousal.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
areas of the brain that are involved in learning, areas of the brain that are involved in stress, areas of the brain that are involved in lots and lots of different things. It's a major hub for inputs from other brain areas and outputs to other brain areas. But here's what's most remarkable about the anterior mid cingulate cortex. There's a category of humans referred to as super agers.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Super agers are people that defy the aging process, at least at the level of cognition. They maintain the volume of certain brain areas well into older age when their age match counterparts are losing the same brain areas, meaning people in their 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s have brain areas that are shrinking. Even in cases where people don't have Alzheimer's dementia, areas of the brain are shrinking.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Super-agers are people that maintain the healthy, full volume of these brain areas. And indeed, in some cases, the volume, the size of these brain areas continues to increase into their later years. One of the brain areas that maintains or increases volume in these super-agers is the anterior mid-singulate cortex. And there aren't many other brain areas that do that.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
The anterior mid-singulate cortex is the main site that can be tacked to this phenomenon of super-aging. Now, super-aging and super-agers is a bit of a misnomer because what's happening in these people is they're not just holding onto the volume of their anterior mid-singulate cortex, they're also maintaining healthy cognition,
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
which is flexible strategy, context-dependent learning, their memory, their working memory. They're doing phenomenally well, not just for their age, but even compared to some much younger people.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
So these super-agers are really interesting, both for sake of what they can do into their later years and because their anterior mid-singulate cortex is holding on to its size and in some cases increasing its size. What can allow you to activate and increase the size of your anterior mid cingulate cortex? Well, it's very simple, to do things that you don't want to do.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
I should be very clear, we're talking about things that can be done safely that aren't going to damage you physically or psychologically. but we are talking about exercise, or in some cases, cognitive exercise, but today we're talking about physical exercise that you would much rather not do. So if you're like me and you love resistance training, it can be hard, right?
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Some days I want to do it more than others, and sometimes the workouts are much harder than others, but I love it. But if I want to maintain and increase the size of my anterior mid cingulate cortex, I absolutely have to find some form of physical exercise that I would much rather not do. But as I mentioned before, that's also safe physically, and that's not going to damage me emotionally.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Well, most people can do that type of movement. It doesn't take any training. or it just takes a little bit of direction as to how to do it. So it can be done reasonably safely by many people, including people that are non-athletes, often older than 65 years old.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
I don't know what kind of physical exercise would damage me emotionally, but you get the point. This brain area has been explored in a number of different studies. So successful dieters increase the size of their anterior mid cingulate cortex. People that fail to reach a goal, a diet goal or other goal, experience a shrinking of their anterior mid cingulate cortex. There's also examples of
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
physical exercise, increasing anterior mid-singulate cortex, skill challenges, and on and on. The important point is that the anterior mid-singulate cortex is agnostic with respect to what you do, except that it has to be something that you don't want to do if you want to build and maintain its size.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And that building and maintaining of the anterior mid-singulate cortex size is strongly correlated. It's not necessarily causal, but it's strongly correlated with this super aging phenomenon. There's a wonderful review about the anterior mid-singulate cortex that was authored by none other than Lisa Feldman Barrett. She came up earlier in this episode.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
She's a world-class researcher on the topic of emotions and the basis of emotions, et cetera. The title of this paper is The Tenacious Brain, How the Anterior Mid-Singulate Cortex Contributes to Achieving Goals. And there's one figure in this paper, and I just want to summarize a couple of things from, because it's just, like a wow figure. There aren't many figures like this.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
I mean, this is a review article. So this figure includes panels pooling from a bunch of different studies, but I'm going to just highlight a few of these by paraphrasing what's in the figure legend. Okay. So bear with me here. I think you'll find this very interesting. Okay, so you can't see the pictures because many people are listening to this on audio, but you can certainly look up the paper.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
We provide a link to it in the show note captions, but these points are worth paying attention to. Spontaneous anterior mid cingulate cortex activity predicts grit, this psychological phenomenon that we refer to as grit. Now this is teased out in a study of grit. Grit is this ability to lean into challenge and the, Mere spontaneous activity, right? Not evoked activity.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
There's spontaneous activity, which is the activity that occurs sort of naturally as a consequence of engaging in a particular thought pattern or behavior. And then there's evoked activity when you stimulate a brain area. This is spontaneous activity. Spontaneous inter mid-singulate activity is associated with the psychological phenomenon the verb that we call grit.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Not that there aren't some very fit 65 year olds, but just people who are older than 65, but don't have a lot of athletic background can sit down in a chair, put the pin at the appropriate weight and move their knee or rather elevate their foot while seated in a chair, so-called single leg, leg extension.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And grit can be thought of as an adjective, right? Somebody who's really gritty, but it should best be thought of as a verb. It's the leaning into challenge. Greater anterior mid-singulate cortex activity is associated with higher levels of persistence. This again was teased out in a study of persistence. So these aren't just philosophical statements or theoretical statements.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
These are based on brain imaging studies where people are being challenged with a particular set of challenges while they're in a so-called FMRI, functional magnetic resonance imaging machine. Activation of the anterior mid-singulate cortex is associated with grit and with persistence. And anterior midsingulate signal is associated with willingness to exert more effort.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
If people have to exert more effort and they're willing to do that, boom, anterior midsingulate cortex activity goes up. Also, anterior mid-singulate activity increases, get this, during effort magnitude estimation. Even when people are just trying to gauge how much effort something's going to take, that starts to initiate activity of the anterior mid-singulate cortex.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
The, oh boy, this is going to be a big one. I got to do this. And I'll explain how I engage my anterior mid-singulate cortex. You'll have to decide if that's something that you hate enough so that you can use it too. Almost done here, folks. Anterior mid-singulate signal tracks the subjective value of effort exerted.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
As people start to track how much effort they're exerting, anterior mid-singulate cortex activity goes up. And last but not least, anterior mid-singulate cortex stimulation, so this is no longer spontaneous activity, but stimulation increases the will to persevere. Incredible, never before
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
meaning never before reading this article and learning about anterior mid-singulate cortex, which again is largely the consequence of work done somewhere between the years of 2010 and now, 2025, did we even understand what the anterior mid-singulate cortex is there for and is doing.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
It could do other things too, but this is an extraordinary set of findings and an extraordinary brain structure that everyone should know about. And that's why number five on that list, if you want to improve brain function and brain health over time,
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
is to do something you really don't want to do, something really challenging, both psychologically challenging and physically challenging at least once per week, make sure it's safe psychologically and physically, but do that thing. For me, I must confess it's deliberate cold exposure, but it's deliberate cold exposure under particular conditions. I'll be the first to say that I love
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
getting into the ice bath or the cold plunge or taking a cold shower after I've been in a hot sauna for 20 or 30 minutes or after a long run where I'm sweating and I want to cool off or on a hot summer day. But most of the time, that's not the case, meaning most of the time when I do deliberate cold exposure and sometimes I'll do it by cold shower, which, by the way, is zero cost.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And also it gives the benefit of the opposite leg within subject control for comparison in terms of strength increases. Okay, so set aside any kind of, you know, like eye rolls or chuckles that you might have about single leg, leg extensions as the total form of resistance training that's being explored because yes, those studies are still informative.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
It'll even save you on your heating bill. So you don't need to buy any equipment or you could do a cold plunge or an ice bath, but you don't need one. Most of the time, when I even think about getting into the cold plunge or taking a cold shower, that is very likely increasing my anterior mid cingulate cortex activity because I love, love, love the heat. I love sauna. I'm very heat adapted.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
I'm comfortable at very high temperatures in the sauna. I don't hate the cold, but I close to hate the cold. So for me, the first wall to get over, the first bit of resistance that's really hard for me to get over is to walk towards the cold plunge. Then it's to take the lid off. Then it's to look at the thing. Then it's to get in. But I force myself to do it. I make sure that I do it safely.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And I make sure that I do it for about one to three minutes, sometimes longer. But I do it because yes, deliberate cold exposure increases release of the so-called catecholamines, dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine. Also, yes, I know that those catecholamines are going to make me feel much better after I get out of the cold plunge for many, many hours. That's been established.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
But I also do deliberate cold exposure by cold shower or by cold immersion because I hate it. And because I know that by doing it, I'm going to be activating my will to persevere, my grit, my willpower. Now today's discussion is not about deliberate cold exposure, it's about exercise. So what I've started doing in recent months, and I'm certainly going to continue into 2025,
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
is to start adding some form of exercise that I absolutely don't want to do in order to activate my anterior mid cingulate cortex. Now for me, because my schedule is very full, I'm already doing six workouts per week. Again, some of them are shorter, some of them are longer. I don't have a lot of extra time to exercise.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
I don't have a lot of time to start rolling jujitsu for a couple hours a week, which I wouldn't loathe, but there's a big barrier for me to do that sort of thing. So maybe it's perfect for activating AMCC, anterior mid cingulate cortex. Rather, what I've decided to do
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
is to include the one thing that I've been putting off for years that frankly I may enjoy down the line, but that I don't enjoy currently. And that's to do some sort of really coordinated specific motor activity that has to be done precisely or very precisely before you can say that you've quote unquote done it right.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And for me, the thing that I'm selecting because I already like to jump rope and I can do a few different things with the jump rope. I'm not super skilled, but I can already jump rope is something that my friend Mark Bell exposed me to. which is this rope flow thing. Feel free to laugh if you want, but this stuff is hard and it's really, really cool.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
The rope flow involves just taking a rope, okay? There may be specific commercial brands of these, but I was told I can just use a kind of thick rope that you buy at the hardware store, like a dog leash type rope. And you can look this up online, we'll provide a link to it. There's a specific pattern of moving the rope where you're not actually jumping through it, so it's not jumping rope,
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
but you're actually moving it in front of and behind your body and from side to side and involves a lot of different shifting from one limb to the other in very deliberate ways.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And as I'm discussing this, I realized that I really don't want to do this, but I know it's going to be very useful for me, which is exactly why I'm going to use it in 2025 to enhance my anterior mid cingulate cortex activity. The only fear being that I'm going to start to like it and then I'll have to find something else to engage my anterior mid cingulate cortex.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
In fact, they perhaps even identified the lower threshold for the amount of resistance training and type of resistance training that could benefit the brain. But we also see studies that involve compound exercises. So having people do free weight squats or even weighted squats or deadlifts or bench press, dip, deadlift type combinations.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And perhaps at that point, I'll look to you guys in the comment sections to figure out what sorts of exercise I would hate the most in order to make sure that I'm getting my anterior mid cingulate cortex activation, because yes, increased coordination is great. Who wouldn't want that?
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
But mainly because I want to improve my brain performance and brain function, both in the short term and over time. So if you want, in the comment section on YouTube, because that's where I can see the comments best, or perhaps on Spotify as well, where they now have a comment section. I guess Apple has a comment section too.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
YouTube, Apple, or Spotify, put in the comment section the form of exercise that's both psychologically and physically safe for you to embrace, but that you would loathe to do and that you're going to perhaps, no, not perhaps, that you're going to commit to doing in 2025. And then we can compare and contrast and,
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
We can all see which ones we hate the most, and then we can exchange which exercises we hate the most, and everyone can laugh at us for doing these things that we hate, and yet we'll be the ones laughing because our anterior mid-singulate cortices will be nice and plump well into our old ages, and everybody else will be wondering where the comment section is.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Thank you everybody for joining me for today's discussion, all about how exercise can be leveraged to improve brain health and brain performance. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. Please also click follow for the podcast on both Spotify and Apple.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
So that's Instagram X, formerly known as Twitter, Facebook threads and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion, all about exercise, brain health, and performance. And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Again, when you look at the literature exploring exercise and brain health, You're looking at studies that in the best cases are very tightly controlled. That typically means having people do them in the laboratory in a very specific way, sometimes using untrained subjects, meaning when the subjects arrive at the study, they haven't done much exercise of that sort.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Sometimes it's involving trained subjects, both have their caveats, of course, but keep in mind that during today's discussion, I'm going to be pooling at many times across all these studies, exploring cardiovascular exercise of different duration and intensities, resistance training of different types, and sometimes different intensities as well, but where there is a specific piece of knowledge that can be gleaned from understanding the exact type of exercise that was done and a specific type of brain change,
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
In researching today's episode, I quickly came to realize that the number of studies that have explored the relationship between exercise, brain performance, and brain health as well as the range of different types of exercise that have been explored in that context is extremely vast.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
especially in cases where it's been shown to be especially beneficial, I will be sure to highlight that. So as we proceed in today's discussion, keep in mind, exercise is many things, two general categories. Most of the studies focus on high intensity or low intensity cardio. Most of the studies involve either
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
single joint isolation exercises, sometimes even single joint, single leg isolation exercises or compound exercises. And keep in mind that most of the studies exploring the relationship between exercise and brain health and performance are done to explore two types of changes, either what are called acute changes, meaning immediate changes.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
So they have people do the exercise and then they have them take a cognitive test or some other form of test that analyzes brain health and performance, or they look at chronic effects, which are what are the changes in brain performance and health over long periods of time, meaning having people do a particular type of exercise anywhere from two to four times per week,
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
although typically it's three times per week, and doing that for anywhere from four weeks to six months. Again, all of this relates to the practical aspects of running controlled studies in the laboratory.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
So if by now you're thinking this is really complicated, how is it that we're supposed to tease out the best things to do given this huge ball of barbed wire of different types of studies, variables, et cetera? Well, I assure you, we are going to make this very clear and very actionable.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
And the thing to keep in mind is that fortunately, most all of the studies, yes, most all of the studies that have explored the relationship between exercise, brain health and longevity and performance find positive effects. Now, for some of you who are skeptics, you might be thinking, well, great, so you can do any form of exercise? Well, in some sense, yes.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
I'll actually tell you this right off the bat. There are good data showing that if people do six second sprints, max all out sprints on a stationary bicycle, followed by one minute rest, and repeat that six times, you see significant acute effects on brain performance. So the brain performance could be a memory task. Sometimes it is a memory task.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
It could be what's called a Stroop task, which is a cognitive flexibility task where you have to distinguish between the colors that words are written in and the content of the words. Okay, so called Stroop task. I've talked about this on previous podcasts. I'll talk about it a little bit more later. Regardless of the cognitive test that's used, that very short duration, high intensity training
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
There are literally tens of thousands of studies on this topic, as well as meta analyses and reviews, all of which point to positive effects of doing exercise of various types on brain health and performance. Within those many, many studies, you'll find many, many different exercise protocols that lead to improvements in brain performance and longevity.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
increases performance significantly. As well, 20 or 30 minutes of so-called steady state cardio, figuring out how fast you can run or row or swim or stationary bike.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
for 20 to 30 minutes at a steady state, and then you analyze people's cognitive performance on a memory task, can be a working memory task, so remembering a short string of numbers, or it could be math problems, it could be the Stroop task, any number of different tasks reveal the same thing, which is that the longer duration, lower intensity cardio also significantly improves performance.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Now, does that mean that you can do six rounds of six seconds of sprinting with a minute in between or 20 minutes of cardiovascular exercise and get the same effect on brain performance?
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
Well, if you're just looking at overall improvements in performance, so for instance, the percentage of information that you learn, if you do or you don't do the exercise, or if you compare those two forms of exercise that I just mentioned, In that sense, yes, it really doesn't make a difference, which may have you scratching your head, but in a few moments, I'll explain why that is.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
On the other hand, different forms of exercise, of course, impact our bodily health differently. Higher intensity, shorter duration exercise, of course, impacts things like VO2 max and which circulating hormones and neuromodulators are going to be present very differently. than longer duration, lower intensity exercise.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
So too, if you have people do single joint isolation resistance training exercises, like a single leg leg extension or both legs leg extension versus 10 sets of 10 in a squat exercise, you're going to see very different specific adaptations at the physical level, at the bodily level. But in every case,
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
where you explore the acute, the immediate changes that occur in brain output and function, after people do that sort of exercise, you're going to see significant increases.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
When one does physical exercise, short duration, high intensity, cardio, or higher intensity resistance training, single joint training, compound training, single joint isolation exercises, compound exercises, one sees these increases in function. brain performance, at least acutely in the immediate stage after the training.
Huberman Lab
How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance
So we have to ask ourselves, why is it, how is it that all these different forms of exercise are positively impacting brain performance? And the answer is very simple and fortunately gives us tremendous leverage over our exercise and how to impact our brain health. And the answer is, arousal.
Huberman Lab
Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is James Sexton. James Sexton is a renowned attorney with over 25 years of experience in family law, specializing in prenuptial agreements and divorces.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
I'm not necessarily agreeing with you, but I can just hear the voices in people's heads about the, really, is that passive for men? It sounds almost like a passive response. Like, yeah, I guess there's really no other path here, right? I've had a lot. Let me tell you something.
Huberman Lab
Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Well, you're an equal opportunity assassin when it comes to these conversations. I mean, sure, what you just said kind of puts a target on men in the sense that it makes them sound like, well, they kind of went into it because there really wasn't another, like, Trail on the on the mountain. Sure. On the other hand, there's something kind of both romantic and and actually very honorable about.
Huberman Lab
Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Whether you're single, dating, engaged or married, understanding how the legal and emotional frameworks that support lasting relationships intersect can help you navigate one of life's most rewarding but challenging journeys with much greater awareness and intention and probability of success.
Huberman Lab
Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Yeah, look, there might be other options, but this is the one I like. And she really wanted this and I wanted her. And so that's the contract. I mean, there's there's something pretty nice to pass. Yeah.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Have you smelled one? I've never been to one, but I can imagine.
Huberman Lab
Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Like, that's beautiful. Yeah. I didn't want to imply it was passive. I want to be very clear. I think that some people might be surprised to learn that many men, because I agree with you, by the way. Yeah. will agree to do things not out of the sheer joy and delight of the thing, but the deeper delight of making the person that they care about happy.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Yeah, to me, it's celebration of life. Yeah. You know, it's very different than the birth of a child, but each one of those is a celebration of the life spirit.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
But get a prenup.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
There's other drivers on the road. You're damn right.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
I want to discuss relationships that start earlier in life versus later in life. Mm-hmm. When I was an undergraduate, I took a course, several courses actually, from a professor who was just phenomenal. Learned neuroanatomy from him, developmental neurobiology. Gave me the only B-plus after my freshman year.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
That's not to boast about my other grades, but that's the course that I learned the most from him. I still remember the questions I got wrong. I still remember him explaining exactly why I got it wrong. It was the best learning, right? Yeah, it was amazing. Years later, I went back to visit him just for social reasons. And he had kids now. He was married and he had a new baby.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
And he said to me something. I don't know why he felt compelled to tell me stuff about his personal life and give me advice, but he did because he was known for being a pretty rigid guy, very particular, which is part of what made him such an excellent neuroanatomist.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
And he said to me, you know, I don't know what your personal life is like, but you should get married as young as possible within reason. And I said, oh, yeah, why? And he said, because there's this thing that happens when you reach a certain age where that you need to have the toothpaste on the right-hand side of the sink.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
And when the toothpaste isn't on the right-hand side of the sink, then it irritates you. But if you get married and merge lives with somebody early, you develop a flexibility and you go through a lot of developmental milestones with them. And I found it both amusing and interesting that he would share that. I know examples of people who merged lives early and are still together.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
I know some that merged lives early and diverged later, got divorced. I know people that get married and have kids later in life. I'm almost 50 in September. So this question isn't about me, but certainly pertains to me in some sense.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
In your observation of successful versus unsuccessful marriages, is there a tendency for people who marry younger to, despite the fact that they quote-unquote might not know themselves as well, et cetera, for those marriages to be more successful because they go through a lot of these life milestones together, setting aside here whether the toothpaste is on the right-hand side or the left-hand side of the sink?
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
They're like relationship outlaws.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
It's real. Living in the delusion. Yeah. Living in the illusion should really be called living in the delusion. Delusion, yeah.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
I realize you've examined every permutation of the relationship structure and tried to correlate that with outcome, whether or not the relationship survives happily or not, divorce, et cetera, amicably or not. There is one question that I do think might fall into a distinct category. Sure. Which is the amount of time that people know one another before they decide to get engaged.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
We hear about – and it's been romanticized somewhat. People met on vacation. You still see this in traditional media. I don't look at traditional media too much anymore. But you'll see they met in Cabo for four days, went back, realized, and then there they are, married. Yeah. But – they might've been together 50 years, you know? Or, you know, people were together a very long time.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
I mean, to me, nothing's sadder. Here's the kind of like the Disney thing, right? When you hear about a couple like in their late 70s, having been married very long time, grandchildren, you know, they decide to get divorced. And we all just reflexively go, oh. And everyone romanticizes the couple sitting together is all over Instagram, right? The old couple, he still does this for her.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
She still adores him. He adores her. So amount of time that people have known one another prior to engagement, any correlation with outcome?
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
It's not a playbook.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Dogs, the diarrhea, they have this. They feel bad about it. Yeah. They feel bad because they're out of it.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Get it out. Man, I'd give my entire left hand to have like one more week. One more week. With diarrhea. Yeah. Except that would suck for him.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Last question. Oh, boy. Some people listening to this are in relationships. Some are married. Some are divorced. Some are not in relationships. Is there such a thing as a post-nup for the people who have already been married? And what are the pros and cons of opening up that conversation and the contract itself?
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
And for people who are still in the, you know, looking for partner, exploring a relationship or relationships, whatever their life structure happens to be, what do you think are
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
the questions that they might ask themselves and the other person that would give some insight into, um, into not necessarily like, should there be a prenup for the dating, um, period, but you know, a lot of the things you're talking about are, are in the circles of like close intimacy. Like what are your real flaws? What are you afraid of? What are you afraid I'm going to do?
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
That's not the kind of conversation maybe nowadays people do that, that typically people will have on their, you know, uh,
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
fifth date or sixth date but at some point it makes sense to have real conversation with somebody to try and make sense of whether or not you go forward so i just threw a lot at you yeah those are a couple of different questions a little bit of a scatter shot no but those are all really important questions but for the for the uh committed and non-committed folks out there yeah i mean i i'm paraphrasing jung when i say that the thing you seek most is in the place you least want to look
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with James Sexton. James Sexton, welcome.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Yeah, I don't either. The great Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize winning physicist of, surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman fame, said that understanding things at a reductionist level added to his a sense of beauty with the physical world. And I think it can. I mean, that's my sense of biology and physiology and what I know of psychology, understanding the deeper layers adds to my sense of wonder.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
But I acknowledge and agree with you completely that for most people, When we think about all those things around marriage, the engagement, the wedding, the party, they all imply a ton of trust. I believe in you. I have faith in you. I'm going to merge lives with you. The word contract implies somewhere in there a lack of trust.
Huberman Lab
Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
I gave this little anecdote about something very different than marriage, right? A business contract with my business partner where when they said, oh, you need to have a formal contract, there is something about that that implies that things could go wrong or that there will be unforeseen circumstances that our verbal contract can't anticipate and won't allow us to navigate as business partners.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Jim, what I love about you so much is that you're willing to, and maybe you just reflexively look at things through every possible lens. So if it's something dark, like divorce, you look at it through the lens of that, but also marriage. does it always have to be dark? You look at it through the lens of a lawyer's eyes.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Well, I think that's part of lawyering is you have to argue both sides of everything. But I would also say that, you know, if ever, you know, people had the stereotype in mind that all lawyers are heartless and cutthroat and it's all just about money. I mean, you clearly shatter that because, I mean, so much of what we talked about today wasn't about divorce. It was about contracts.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
It wasn't just about contracts. You know, really what I kept hearing over and over is that, By asking what at first are practical questions, you can really get to the emotional layers underneath those that really speak to what people need most in order to make things work, even if the relationship doesn't last forever.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
And I think that's such an important lens on, you know, the kind of overwhelming thing that we call relationships and marriage and prenups and divorces and everything. You know, I think it's enough to make anyone terrified. It's also enough, as you said, to make some people bitter. And I think we didn't talk about it too much because it's such a potent word. Didn't have to.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
But this notion of bitterness is really the thing to avoid most, right? Yeah. Because it contaminates the thing that you embody so much, which is you just have such a huge forward center of mass, full tilt. Yeah. Arms around all of it, love of life and people and dogs. Thanks, yeah. And it just comes through over and over in everything you do. Thanks, man. And in every way that you describe it.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
And there's, again, far and away different, arguably lesser example than a marriage contract, which is a much bigger life milestone.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
So I see you as, yes, a lawyer. Sure. Not just a divorce lawyer, but a lawyer. You're certainly a psychologist. You're definitely on the adventure of life. There's no question about that. For sure. You're an anthropologist, which reflects some of your prior training. Sure.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
And you're just a really amazing human being in the way that you're willing to just launch yourself into all of it and consider all of this. And like you said, you see some really unfortunate things, but it's clear that you also see a lot of really wonderful and beautiful things.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Well, I and everyone listening, uh, Really appreciate you taking the time to come here. Look, you make a living doing something else. You make a very, you know. I got a full-time day job. You don't need to do this. I love this, man. Traveling across country. Well, I so appreciate it.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
We've had some good conversations, and you've been a wonderful and trusted friend to me. Thanks, man. I also trust that if I'm going to make a dumb decision or if I've made a dumb decision that you'll let me know. I'm there, I promise. I have and I will in the future. Well, you have for me as well. I don't have your legal wisdom, but right back at you. Well, I haven't yet.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
You have plenty of wisdom. You're a trusted and amazing friend and you just have so much wisdom to share. You know, my dad has this saying that, you know, some people when they speak, they just might as well have exhaled. He's Argentine, he's a little cynical, but he also says, but some people when they speak, just wisdom falls out of them. And that's how I feel every time I'm in your presence.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Or I hear you on a podcast or even a short clip. I prepared a lot for today's episode by just watching as much content of yours as I could possibly consume. And I was like, wow, the density of value per unit time for your speech is unbelievably high.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Thank you. I'll take that in and right back at you. Thanks, man. And please come back again. Anytime. You have a very exciting project that we didn't get to today. So save that for a future episode. It's super cool. It's completely different than this. And like everything you touch, it turns to platinum. So thanks, brother. on both Spotify and Apple.
Huberman Lab
Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. And you can now leave us comments at both Spotify and Apple. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. And if you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the information on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, it's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as what we call protocols in the form of one to three page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter, and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody.
Huberman Lab
Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with James Sexton. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Thank you. It's good to be here. I've been wanting to do this for a while. I know. It's a long time in the making. Yeah.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
I think if two guys sit down, one of them a lawyer who's known as a divorce lawyer, and they're talking about divorce and love and money and contracts and the ending of things, I think there's a understandable default mindset where the female half of our audience are probably going to think, like, here are a couple guys talking about relationships and divorce through the lens of their Y chromosomes.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Yeah, the way you were framing the contract of marriage and prenups I love it because you're putting a positive emotional lens on it, right? Sure. Two people who love each other. Therefore, let's discuss the contract of love and marriage. Two people that are committed to creating perhaps children together and a whole life together, raiding together lineages.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Let's get a contract to really solidify this. What do we owe each other?
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
The way you're framing this, I think, is entirely different than how most people would envision a discussion about a prenup. I think that's true. Which I really appreciate. And I know the audience appreciates, too, because you're putting a different lens on things. I'm going to just put on my hat as a neuroscientist and biologist for a moment.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
I think there are certain words that people, for whatever reason—
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
consider kind of a buzzkill like we're talking about pheromones and love and children and romance and sex and vacations and honeymoons and parties and then someone says contract yeah and someone and somebody says um you know we finances which yeah you know maybe that turns certain people on i guess people in the finance world probably turns them on but do you get where i'm coming from I do, yeah.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
I have to assume it's a different brain circuit. I think it probably is. What you're doing is you're coming at this from a different perspective, which is part of the reason why you're here. You're saying this discussion around a prenup contract – can potentially shed more light into the nature of the bond and maybe even deepen the connection.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Is it one person or both?
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Which, of course, it's impossible to avoid completely because... I haven't done the karyotyping, but you have a Y chromosome and I do as well. I would like to know, in your experience working with male clients and female clients, is there something unique to the female experience of divorce or the female experience of realizing, wow, this contract that I thought was for life
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
And what if one person has substantially more income to hire a better lawyer, assuming that more money gets you a better lawyer, I have to assume on average it does, than the other?
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
When I was in college, nesting was when you got a tablecloth. Nice. Nice.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
may not, or is it not for life, that sort of drives a kind of female-specific set of psychological responses. Here, I'm basically asking for a generalization. And I want to be clear, I'm not asking this for politically correct reasons. I'm asking this because, like I said, two guys sitting down to talk about relationships, love, and divorce, it's kind of where the mind goes.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
It's fantastic. I love the way you lean into life in all its light and shadows and say, okay, let's accept all of that right off the bat. and figure out what's going to give this the highest probability of working. Well, it's reality. I've never thought about prenups as a way to bolster the probability of the marriage working.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
This is surprising to me. So people who prenup tend not to break up. Yes, that, Ron. Yes. Yes. I think many people will be very surprised to hear that.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Yeah. It's a mild form of paranoia, but it's a form of paranoia.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
What do you think? the psychological underpinnings of what you're describing are about? Is it some sort of internal validation of worth, external validation of worth? I mean, none of it computes for me when I look at, you know, like you said, let's say these are extreme examples, but C-suite female executive. Let's make her a founder also. These exist. I'm from the Bay Area.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
That's far more common than men taking their wife's last name. Oh, yeah. Actually, I can't even think of a single instance.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
It used to be that all the evolutionary biologists did that.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Another one is that in divorces, I've observed this. I don't have statistics on this, but. Women will keep their ex-husband's last name because what I was told is they want to have the same last name as their kids. That's pretty common. Which is understandable.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
But, of course, the kids could switch last names.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
That's the kind of funny thing.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
You'll get a lot more problems than it's worth. Be the lifeline. Be Mrs. Huberman. It's very fun. It's very fun. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. No, you'd be Andrew Huberman, and that comes with a certain number of live auditions as well. Yeah, that sounds exhausting. I don't think I can handle it.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
It's full-time fun. No, just kidding. In all seriousness... Wow. People have asked for their name back?
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
He is known as what many call the voice of reason between love and legal. Today, we discuss something that might seem counterintuitive, which is how the legal frameworks and contracts surrounding relationships, particularly prenuptial agreements, can actually deepen emotional connection and build trust between partners.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Is that true, excuse me, in Europe as well? And South America as well? And Australia as well?
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Definitely more.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
And then once you get past three, it's like you're, you know. All the divorced people in my family remarried and have been in those second marriages very long periods of time.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
And still together, very happy.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Yeah, and if there's kids, it brings them into the bottom line. It's a different kind of, yeah, an even higher level, yeah. Do you happen to know the numbers or the rough numbers on percentage of first marriages with kids that... Whether or not they're happy or not.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
So I'm honored to have them as a sponsor of this podcast. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, AG1 is giving away an AG1 welcome kit with five free travel packs and a free bottle of vitamin D3 K2.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim the special welcome kit with five free travel packs and a free bottle of vitamin D3 K2. Today's episode is also brought to us by Our Place. Our Place makes my favorite pots, pans, and other cookware.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Surprisingly, toxic compounds such as PFASs or forever chemicals are still found in 80 percent of nonstick pans, as well as utensils, appliances and countless other kitchen products.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
I'm beginning to adopt a mindset around contracts that they are a tool to embrace reality, both potential negatives but also to enrich the positives.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Tell me. So it's not just about the rule-outs. Like I think about, you know, certain guidelines. Like in the octagon, it's, you know, no groin shots, you know, no thumbing eyes. So there's all the... this is not going to happen type stuff. And there's reasons for each of those rules. No matter what, X, Y, and Z are off the table. Right. That makes people feel safe, right?
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Because you want to know that certain very dangerous things are off the table. Right, right. But what you're talking about are a number of opt-ins through contracts and prenups. Sure.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
That's an insane statement. So do prenups include discussions or agreements about sex, money?
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
I'd say the exact same things about you. There you go. Except you know a bunch of stuff I don't know in addition to that.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
You might have made that call. You've made that call to me a couple of times.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
I think it's because when people hear the word prenup, they're thinking endings. It's about the ending. It's the contract that is going to divide the resources so we don't have to give a certain amount to the lawyers. Everyone's going to feel safe. You don't have to worry that you're going to end up with whatever, less than or more than this amount.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Those are all valuable things. I could be wrong, but I don't think most people... associate the word prenup with anything about the success of the marriage, which is probably why so few people get them. Is there any idea roughly what percentage?
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
And is it as binding as anything else? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because we know nowadays things like NDAs are kind of fluid.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
I want to return to prenups and unfortunately to divorce, but I'd like to talk about love and the contracts, both emotional and practical around love a bit more. Sure. Do you think people are completely honest with themselves and with the other person when they decide to get married? or simply to become quote-unquote life partners or to just become partners.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
I mean, do you think that part of the allure of the dopamine, oxytocin, pheromone, social cloud, excuse me, and all that goes with it. I mean, what's more fun than leaving the bedroom with someone you're totally crazy about, showering up and heading out and going to see friends and you're happy, they're happy, and then going back home again. repeat.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Like there are very few things that are as from the other side of the fence to see a couple that's really happy and in love. And you don't need to know or care about what they do in private. You just, you can feel how much they adore one.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Yeah. I mean, I think there's a pheromone effect of that. I mean, there's really serious primate biology that supports all that, that we don't even have to discuss. We can just kind of like put that one on the shelf and everyone knows what we're talking about. But You know, underneath there is, like you said, our needs. Needs that in the future somebody might not feel are being met. Sure.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
And that sort of thing. It's hard to anticipate one's needs too, especially if it's a first relationship or third relationship. You know, you need some experience and sometimes, you know, you meet the right person at 18 and that's a beautiful thing. Oh, yeah. So to what extent do you think people understand how to understand their own needs and let alone express them?
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Well, in some religions, there's actually a word for the God-designated choice.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
The God-given choice, a singular person that is going to meet that need.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Esther Perel, when she was sitting in the same seat you're sitting in now, said that, 90% of affairs people describe as they had those affairs because they made them feel quote unquote alive. There was an aliveness that was in stark contrast to the deadness or lack of aliveness in the relationship. And it's not a justification.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
We were discussing the, you know, so what is the underlying thing that they're seeking? Is it sex? Is it adventure? And in some cases it's
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
I guess the question is, do you believe in the potential permanence of romance and love? Yes.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
As James points out, intimacy and trust are fundamentally about the ability to be your true self with your partner and then with you. It's about allowing ourselves to be vulnerable. It's also about having a same team spirit, of course, respect for one another and admiration for each other's unique qualities.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Well, the friendship piece is something that I've heard you talk about before. And, you know, with all the discussion that we're having here about, you know, pheromone clouds and dopamine and romance and sex, I think that
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
You know, I'll put in a strong vote for saying all that's wonderful, but the mellow times just hanging out on the couch are different, you know, starkly different, but are as bonding in many ways, especially on a backdrop of a world that especially now is you know, chaotic, uncertain, threatening to many people. Even if you're successful in the world, like the world's a lot.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
It's pretty overwhelming now. There's a lot coming at us all the time through devices and through things. You know, there's a lot of uncertainty about our whole species at some level. And criticism.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Men as children.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
We're not like I don't find that cute. I don't find it charming. That's sort of an American theme. You know, I've noticed like half my family is in South America, completely different picture. No one could argue their problems with the picture there. Yeah. And I'm sure they exist. But it's not the same, you know, men are children. Yeah. Women are cutthroat.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
I'm thinking about standards of expectation. Uh, and obviously social media plays an important role in that. Uh, you mentioned that people showing their best lives, best selves, best everything. I have a friend who, uh, is very high up in one of the social media platforms. It was, you know, let's just say in the original 10, um, who told me, um, social media is 99% about women and, um,
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
female biology and psychology communicating to one another and to men and getting men to communicate to the world things that support kind of an ideal. Some people are going to hear that and get upset. And then I'm going to tell you that the person that told me that is a woman, which kind of bends people's brains around it. Men will show their workouts. Men will compete with other men.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Men will, you know, just show their half-court shot prowess, et cetera. Is that for women? Maybe. Is it for men? More likely. In some cases, both. All of it. But the argument is that this idea of ideals being presented as something to keep striving toward is very much the modern version of the Disney movie. wedding at the end. Yeah. Right.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
The bride and groom and everything's perfect that it, that there's a subconscious text there we're all kind of aiming for and hoping for. And so we see the, the, the top veneer. I mean, let me put it this way. I don't think I've seen a movie or an Instagram account for that matter of a couple resolving a really hard challenge that wasn't like cancer or something like, like a psych, like a
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
a discussion, a hard discussion, a real one in real time. I've seen some staged ones that are just ridiculous where somebody listens. I hear you. I hear you. Okay. But that doesn't get to the underlying emotions at all. And so I think what's happening is people are getting more and more entranced by this ideal and losing track of what you just described, which may be the real ideal, which
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
This one from the show, Love on the Spectrum, right? That you're trying to find connection along the lines of simple, everyday things that you can bask in over and over without the fear of them disappearing. Because they're not that hard to attain and they're not dependent on some transient dopamine wave that you just can't get back.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
It's actually delicious.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
That's the subtext. You're not okay. And if you did X, Y, or Z or got X or Y. Then maybe you'll be better.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Like this dog's like, you know, it's just more and more appreciation.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
What you're describing is very alluring. And when you said, you know, two people together in the cocoon, maybe some dogs as well, if one were just to inject alcohol, a smartphone in there, completely different picture. Totally changes the ecosystem. And I'm not trying to be a buzzkill here, but what you describe is so beautiful.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
And if I look back on the best moments in romantic relationships that I've had, It was, well, in recent years, driving a segment of the California coast where there was no phone reception. Like the kind of peace that comes from that. You know, it's always moments of simplicity.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function. Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient levels, and much more. They've also recently added tests for toxins such as BPA exposure from harmful plastics and tests for PFAS or forever chemicals.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to your physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors who are expert in the relevant areas. For example, in one of my first tests with function, I learned that I had elevated levels of mercury in my blood.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Function not only helped me detect that, but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, I'd been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification. And I should say, by taking a second function test,
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
That approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by function simplicity and at the level of cost. It is very affordable.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. You've got my mind going to a number of pleasant memories and examples, but I love your pizza example. I'll just quickly give one. I I was in a long relationship with somebody. We're still on very good terms. And we still laugh and delight in this one moment.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
There's a diner here in Los Angeles that we had come to that it's closed now, but it's still there. Every time I drive past, I think about this. I think about this. And you think about her. I think about her. It was early days of dating. Yeah. I remember she asked for cream for her coffee and put like a little bit more cream than one would normally put in the coffee.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
And I was like, a little cream with your coffee? She's like, well, actually, I want to put the whole thing in here, but I'm trying to be polite. And I said, put the whole thing in. And without hesitating, she just went and put the entire beaker of cream in there. And we still laugh about that. And I remember that moment being so freeing.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
for me, because it was this moment where I knew she was relaxed enough to do it. It was hilarious for reasons that were only clear to us, and people are probably bewildered about why it would be so meaningful now. I don't think they will be. And to me, it was a moment where I was like, I... I don't want to reveal who this person is. People in my life will know.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
But she has such a lust for life, like full blast, all gas pedal on everything. And it was like, I love cream. I want the entire beaker of cream. And it was this permission that she gave herself. So I still delight in that. So these little things, right? And I think as you were describing the pizza example or my example, what's clear to me is that
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
The memory of, say, like the incredible early stage of a relationship or some big vacation or event, which is wonderful, that stuff can set a kind of yearning as much as an appreciation. Sure. or the pizza thing, you still have that. Like, it's not like you want it again. You've got that, it's yours, it's never going away.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
And I think there's something very deeply biological and psychological about those kinds of things, because I think they drive really deep pillars into our memory. It's like we still have them. I mean, look at the way you describe it or the way that I feel.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Today, we explore how prenuptial agreements, which most often are viewed as being unromantic or pessimistic, can actually serve as ways to establish a sense of safety for both people and prevent many common conflicts and misunderstandings. As James puts it, everyone has a prenup.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Can you give some examples of what a prenup kind of the scaffold of a prenup might look like, barring the extremes of like billionaires and, you know, and they have 19 chihuahuas or whatever it is. Good Lord, who has 19 chihuahuas?
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
I admire it tremendously. I think Steven Kotler, who... It's involved in a lot of the literature and popular writing around flow.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Has a lot of chihuahuas. And he told me that in some country other than the United States where they translate books, someone played a joke or something where on the title of the book it translates as Chihuahua Man. Love that. Or something like that.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
I like all dogs.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
I like all dogs. For the record, I'm not being politically correct. I'm partial to hounds, but I like all dogs. Well, you and I are friends for a reason. Some of the basic scaffold of a prenup. Because I can imagine that if we break up, you'll get X amount of blah, blah, blah. Yeah, it can be a lot of that. Yeah, maybe list off some core tenets. So to do that,
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
good reason for people to say they're getting married is hey we'll return to that one i want to make sure we flag that because things are changing but i i agree yes there's always the have they ever been married why aren't they married there's this we'll get back to that if you say this is my girlfriend that could mean a week we've been together a week or it could mean we've been together 10 years and we have kids together it implies my wife now
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
A family member told me that years ago, I won't tell you what the course of their relationship was, said the reason to get married is because it's an additional buffer against walking out when things get tough.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
It's very interesting. And there's a lot in there. I want to return to this sort of divergent response to men cheating versus women cheating a little bit later. Super interesting area for exploration.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
But there are a lot of rich, gorgeous matchups. Yeah, that's pretty common.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Is it always 50-50 of assets?
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Is that true?
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
So it's no-fault divorce. No-fault divorce is the law of the land. Assets are split according to the prenup or according to the laws of the state.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
You either have one that was created by the state legislature, or you can tailor one to you and your partner's unique needs. He also points out something that many people will find surprising, which is that the vast majority of people who do prenups stay married, and yet most people opt not to do them.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
I'm not trying to. I'm not trying to. I'm just kidding. She'll listen to this and she'll be like, wait a second. I'm kidding.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
So I'm the divorce lawyer. I'm just joking.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
There's nothing you can do to puncture that memory for me.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
I would like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Wealthfront. I've been using Wealthfront for my savings and for my investing for nearly a decade, and I absolutely love it. At the start of every year, I set new goals, and one of my goals for 2025 is to focus on saving money.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
What you're saying is really important. Forgive me for interrupting. But because I think that nowadays there's kind of a growing – I hear more often like, yeah, we were – these are colleagues of mine typically. Like, oh, yeah, you know, we were married. We got divorced. But, you know, we had 15 really great years. We raised our daughter. And they're still friends or at least friendly.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
And they look on those years or at least speak about them. I believe them with a ton of fondness. And without the major injury of what you're talking about, which is this rough litigation at the end. So that's another reason to have a prenup.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Since I have Wealthfront, I'll keep that savings in my Wealthfront cash account, where I'm able to earn 4% annual percentage yield on my deposits, and you can as well. With Wealthfront, you can earn four percent APY on your cash from partner banks until you're ready to either spend that money or invest it.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
We remember pain more than pleasure. Well, you know all this stuff about 28 days to form a habit or adult neuroplasticity. There's something called one trial learning and it comes fast and it sticks around forever unless you do something to reverse it. And that's the basis of trauma.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Bad, hard, painful stuff is etched into our nervous system in one trial. Yeah. Sadly, in some cases. And it shapes you. Yeah. And it changes your memory of everything that precedes it.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Not divorce lawyers. Yeah, your 56% statistic reminded me of like Marines. Sometimes you'll see them with the tattoo like killing is my business and on the other arm it's – and business is good. You're going to say divorce is at 56% and business is good.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
And it's the fight. Yeah, and they almost don't know what to do with themselves when it's over. And the impact on the kids and the pets.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Well, I think it's this business of egos, right? There's something in the quote-unquote traditional courtship dance that is about sort of before people are critiquing one another, before people are commenting on the things that aren't working, where – You know, it's a false reality, right, that you're only seeing the good, they're only seeing the good, and it feels good.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Yeah, the relationships are more like the deer hunter or something. It's really, they're long and they're complicated.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Yeah, hats off to anyone that got through the deer hunter. It's a great movie, but it's really long. But yeah, it takes some time to get through it. Let's talk about movies and as a serious thing. Sure. A couple years ago, I saw you on a podcast, and you were talking about the movie True Romance. Oh, sure. Sure. Love that movie.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Anyone that was a teen or in their 20s and the 90s will remember that movie. Everyone should see that movie who's old enough and mature enough to see it.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
It's just such an awesome movie, and the cast is amazing. Gary Oldman. Gary Oldman, greatest scene in history. Michael Rapaport's hilarious in that movie.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
He wrote it. He makes a cameo. Anyway, incredible movie. And Patricia Arquette, who's just awesome. And Christian Slater at his coolest. Yeah. Very, very cool movie. And you made the excellent point, which doesn't give away the plot. So no spoiler alert necessary, which is that, you know,
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
The essence of the movie is really about someone seeing something or a collection of things in somebody and just thinking that they're awesome. Yeah. I don't want to give away any more than that. Yeah. And just that kind of appreciation for quirkiness and uniqueness.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Yeah, their histories alone are a reason to walk away.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
I feel that in contrast to how you described, I think very aptly, social media as an advertisement of a life to aspire to, even if it's not possible to have, I felt for a long while that movies and television and books and music were –
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
For more information, see the episode description. Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years. There are essentially three things that great therapy provides.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
advertisements for exactly what you just described the uniqueness and the quirkiness of of relationships that are not typical um there's nothing generic about them even if the decision to um the the bond the legal bond but the marriage you know marriage is marriage is marriage is marriage i mean there's some subtleties depending on state and conditions but um But each one of those is unique.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
The right people found one another. So there's something really quite beautiful and special about that picture, right? True romance, right? As seeing the quirkiness, the everyday things, and as you said, a teammate perspective, right? One plus one equals three. There's tremendous value to that. Tremendous value. That's in very stark contrast to...
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
to what I think many people experience now, where they have their relationship, but then they also have visual and movie access to all these other relationships in the form of social media. They're always being presented with other options of at least how things exist for other people.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
And so I believe, again, the biologist in me, thinks this sets a kind of a yearning for something that one doesn't have. Because ultimately, all the good stuff we've talked about, whether or not it's dogs or a person or the pizza story, the creamer story, whatever, is about basking in the completeness of what one already has as opposed to needing more or wanting more.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
So would you say that social media – I mean, I teach on social media, you're on social media, but let's be honest, that it in some way may be poisonous to things like appreciation, fidelity, not just because you can meet people there, but because of the yearning that it creates.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
First of all, it provides good rapport with somebody that you can really trust and talk to about any issues you want. Second of all, it can provide support in the form of emotional support and directed guidance.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
And third, expert therapy provides useful insights, insights that allow you to better not just your emotional life and your relationships, but of course also the relationship to yourself and to your professional life and to all sorts of life and career goals.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
With BetterHelp, they make it extremely easy to find an expert therapist who you can really resonate with and that can help provide these benefits that come through effective therapy. And because BetterHelp allows for therapy to be done entirely online, It's very time efficient and easy to fit into a busy schedule.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
I think one of the reasons why, you know, I hear from so many young men about their challenges with pornography, which tells me that they've defaulted to pornography or that there are elements of it that have gotten them quote unquote addicted, or at least in a compulsive way with it.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Um, and I also frankly hear from a lot of women that are, um, frustrated with, uh, men dating apps and this kind of thing is that, uh,
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
people are very afraid i think in large part because of what you're describing with social media and uh and other forms of media but also just by virtue of the way that everything is um shared so much now that people are afraid to reveal any kind of flaws or authenticity in themselves unless it's the kind that they can leverage to make themselves seem more attractive or something
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Because, you know, if they go out on a date or let's say they share a first kiss or something, that if they're not a great kisser, that, you know, she's going to tell all her friends or worse, put it on an app or something that, you know, where his name is named. Or he's going to sleep with her and then might even share photos of it with people covertly. I mean, things that are illegal.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Just breaches of trust. The contract of trust that is...
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
purely i don't know for lack of a better word it's kind of a spiritual contract where you say hey listen like i don't know if this is gonna work you don't know if this is gonna work yeah i'm willing to wager in a healthy way some of my own safety by revealing some things that aren't aren't like super great about myself yeah and maybe you'll do the same or maybe you won't and i'll just feel okay just with the way it lands that seems more rare nowadays sure um because it's brave it's brave
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
There's no commuting to a therapist's office, finding parking, or sitting in a waiting room. If you'd like to try BetterHelp, you can go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman. We're talking about breaking one contract, the contract of marriage, and creating a new contract, the contract of divorce. I'm fascinated by contracts.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
We also discuss love itself and the key questions that we all need to ask to find the right partner. And if you have one, to build the strongest possible bonds with them. The information in today's episode is going to be extremely important for anyone looking for or currently in a relationship.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Yeah, good data there.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
In the world of business, my business partner and I that started this podcast, I insisted that we take an even split. That was important to me. It's absolutely critical because this podcast wouldn't be what it is without him and his incredible expertise. He is the genius behind it all. Our initial contract was on a piece of paper in a little coffee shop in Manhattan where I said, how about this?
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
I've said this before. It's still true. I check in with myself now and again. If you offered me a billion dollars to quit the podcast, no effing way. I just love it. I love my team. I love learning. I love teaching. End of story.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
How about this? And we discussed it.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Six months later... Uh, or so a lawyer told us we had to get a real contract and we did it. Um, and I have to say it was fine and I'm glad we have contracts, but to me, all contracts, whether or not it's a scribble on a piece of paper or it's a formal contract, uh, contracts make me feel safe. They made me feel good. I like rules and guidelines. I like knowing what's going to happen if.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
It never hurts and it often helps to be generous. I mean, sometimes generosity, people will look back on their generosity and actually, no. I can't think of a single instance where, you know, I was, Maybe even push myself to be a bit more generous than my impulse at the time would have had me be and didn't think like in retrospect that was the right thing to do.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
I mean I haven't dealt with circumstances of A, having that much money or B, doing a prenup. Well, if you have that much money, it doesn't really mean anything anymore.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
It starts to feel like a drop in the ocean.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Well, the joy in being generous is the opportunity.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
at least in this instance or something parallel to it is the opportunity to do something that for someone else would be quite meaningful yeah and for you just feels good to do yeah you know one would hope that he didn't say give her five because five didn't feel like anything i mean if he's got no i think he felt he felt that was not his reason this is not a man who did not take money seriously he made his bones in it but i i think what he was saying is
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Oh, man. I've done it a number of times. Sometimes it ends well. Sometimes it doesn't end well. But I'll tell you. And by the way, with enough time, both of those – There's something really like beautiful about them. I mean, look, I've been reflecting on this a lot lately and I don't want to pivot to my unique circumstances.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
But, you know, since I was probably since I was an embryo, but since I was old enough to remember, I'm. interested and on the adventure of life.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Put me back in.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Yeah, put me back in.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
That's an incredible statistic.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
For a scientist, this doesn't really exist. You like to think you can control outcomes, but you can't. And you acknowledge that and you go into the unknown. So contracts are very reassuring to me. I want to talk about the contract of marriage first. And what you think is going through people's mind when they decide to get married. There's the engagement process. There's a lot of love.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
You know my response? Yeah. I'd love you more. Yeah, yeah. And then they go, wait, what are you into? Yeah, yeah. You'd be like, well, we play hopscotch. I don't know. No, the idea is – I mean I think the question is such a beautiful one because it's a question of vulnerability, right? Yeah.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
It's saying if I were – because generally people aren't asking, hey, if I gained 50 pounds, would you still love me? Yeah. Yeah. A missing leg is more traumatic, but at the same time, it preserves certain things while it removes a certain thing. It's very well defined.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Because of what? A lack of political correctness by today's standards.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
None of my friends that were in special operations can watch a movie. Yeah, exactly. They just can't. It's too painful. It's physically painful to do it.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
Hopefully, there's a lot of love. Hopefully, there's a lot of dopamine. That's a wonderful thing. Presumably, there's a lot of pheromones. There's a lot of emotional and biological stuff happening. There's the recognition from others. There's the party. There's the bachelor party, the bachelorette party, the shower, the wedding. I mean, there's so many things reinforcing this bond.
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Contracts of Love & Money That Make or Break Relationships | James Sexton
I've heard it said that, um, Men marry women thinking that they're not going to change. Women marry men thinking they will change. And therein lies the challenge.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Martha Beck. Dr. Martha Beck did her undergraduate master's and PhD training at Harvard University.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
For me, that means being clear-eyed. People who listen to this podcast know that I came up through neuroscience studying a number of things, but the visual system. And these two little bits in the front of our skull are pieces of our brain. They're the only pieces of our brain outside of our skull. And yes, they may be the windows to the soul if people want to refer to them that way.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
But to me, just feeling like my eyes are clear. And there's a certain... tone or something that I'm like, okay, like, I'm all there.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Yeah, and I think it's the Buddhist that talked about, you know, it's someone who's at the level of their – their eyes are at the level of their skin. So like right there as opposed to sunken back into their eyes. Yes. You know, and then of course some people are like really forward leaning. That's so interesting.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And I also happen to work on the intersection between the visual system and the autonomic. You know, so, you know, stress or calm. And I think what that's referring to, and I'm speculating here, is where we are alert but calm. So we're present, alert, but calm.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And of course that controls pupil size and all of this stuff I do believe has been understood in other traditions and ancient traditions through a kind of unconscious genius where they're recognizing all the symbols integrated of clarity of the eyes and level of the skin. And of course we can measure the stuff in the lab, but that's just isolating variables.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice. It was a condition of being allowed to stay in high school, but pretty soon I realized that doing regular therapy is extremely important to our overall health.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
So for me, it's looking in the mirror and like, okay, my eyes are clear.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
It's like a retraction of our humanness. That's fascinating. I mean, I don't ever recall as a kid, you know, my dad or my mom or anyone telling me like where to place my vision.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And I'm probably guilty of being more expressive, emotional, effusive than certainly the – a traditional male stereotype. Like if I love something, people are gonna hear about it. And I'm not shy about the fact that thinking about Costello or my graduate advisor or people I love, like I'll well up and I'm okay with that.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I think – well, to flip that one around, do you think that that's a real thing that – I have no idea. Through cultural conditioning that men and women tend to kind of be either more – I don't know. There's no language for this.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
There are essentially three things that go into great therapy. First of all, you need to have great rapport with a therapist. So you need to be comfortable with that person. You need to be able to trust them and talk to them about all the issues that are relevant to you. Second, and this is what people normally think of when they think of a great therapist,
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Very tactical.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
It's like taking what's out there and holding it in. I actually can do it. I know how to do this.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Yeah. I probably just learned how to do it, right? Because I'm comfortable in a lot of different environments. There are certainly environments I don't want to find myself in again or in the future for the first time. But yeah, I'm very... very aware what that distinct change in internal state that accompanies that.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
But I have paper and pen here, and it's okay because the art of podcasting in my opinion, is that we can spin a couple different plates and return to them because it's like conversation. Otherwise we might as well be on a highly produced traditional media show and that's not what this is. So we're back. So I look in the mirror and I see, I'm like clear, like I'm clear and present.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And of course, for those listening, you should all be doing this exercise for you, right? Yes. Okay. Okay.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
It's just pretty funny because I definitely have my ideal wardrobe, which is very sparse. I've always owned 20 or so of these button-down black shirts for work purposes. I like T-shirts that are super soft. And because I have a short torso and long arms, they have to fit right. So I find the ones that fit right. It's a nightmare trying to get them. But once I get them, I adore them because –
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I always own two belts or so, one watch, black jeans. The shorts I like, I get teased for wearing mailman shorts, but they're actually the Costco purchased mail or like Kmart purchased like mail person shorts. They fit best for me. And I've always worn Adidas. So I'm happy there.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
that therapist needs to provide you support in the form of emotional support or directed guidance. And third, excellent therapy has to provide very useful insights, insights that you can apply to be better, not just in your emotional life, in your relationship life, but also your relationship to yourself.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Oh, yeah. I own a pair of proper leather shoes. I have a suit. I actually own a tuxedo. Oh, my. I own those things. And I like my closet. I've always liked it. It feels very safe in there. I like it. And then I've always kept a couple photographs of people that I love in my closet.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
It's my sister.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
It's my grandfather. And then I think that's it. Apologies to my parents. Apologies to my parents and anyone else. Just forgive me. Okay. Yeah.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Well, the work part of my life, quote unquote work, is like reading and teaching and talking about stuff on the internet, which is podcasting. Mm-hmm. But what I got a flash of is I'd want to work on my fish tanks with my kids.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
BetterHelp makes it extremely easy to find an excellent therapist for you, one with whom you resonate with, have excellent rapport with, and that can give you those three essential benefits of therapy. If you'd like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I do. Yeah, I've always wanted kids. I've been trying to time that correctly.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And with the right person. So, yeah, I like tending to my fish tanks. I have – kept fish tanks since I was a kid. I haven't had one for a few years now, but I like, I'm always setting them up for other people. It's kind of interesting. I always go play in real life. I go see people. I'm like, I'm going to put a fish tank there.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I'll show up and I'll be like, I got it. Will you let me? And then I'll set it up. And I love setting up fish tanks. It's like the, who knows?
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Realistically?
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Two. For some reason, I got obsessed with numbers for a while. But I was thinking like five or something. No, two.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Yeah, two feels good.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Fair enough. Two feels good. And... Yeah, there's so much life in a fish tank. There's the plants. There's the food. There's how the fish are interacting with one another, who's chasing who, who's nibbling, who's hiding, who's dominant, who's, like, being kind of unruly and, like, you know. I mean, I must have seen the Finding Nemo movie, especially the second one.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Like. Like 12 times. Fabulous. Like 12 times. It's crazy. As an adult.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
So good. Like I just love the personalities. I mean, any movie where Willem Dafoe is the voice of a fish, you're like, okay. I am in. All right. So we tend to the fish tanks, which is great pleasure. And then for me, it's we come here and sit down with you and – Hang out with these guys and my team and share what I know to be really cool, useful, like truly useful practices. Yeah.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Today's episode is also brought to us by Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are customized to your unique sleep needs. I've spoken many times before on this and other podcasts about the fact that getting a great night's sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
My dad's a theoretical physicist, but he will delight in that. As many of you know, I've been taking AG1 for more than 10 years now, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring this podcast. To be clear, I don't take AG1 because they're a sponsor. Rather, they are a sponsor because I take AG1.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
In fact, I take AG1 once and often twice every single day, and I've done that since starting way back in 2012. There is so much conflicting information out there nowadays about what proper nutrition is, but here's what there seems to be a general consensus on.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Whether you're an omnivore, a carnivore, a vegetarian or a vegan, I think it's generally agreed that you should get most of your food from unprocessed or minimally processed sources, which allows you to eat enough but not overeat, get plenty of vitamins and minerals, probiotics and micronutrients that we all need for physical and mental health.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Now, I personally am an omnivore and I strive to get most of my food from unprocessed or minimally processed sources. But the reason I still take AG1 once and often twice every day is that it ensures I get all of those vitamins, minerals, probiotics, etc. But it also has adaptogens to help me cope with stress.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
It's basically a nutritional insurance policy meant to augment, not replace quality food. So by drinking a serving of AG1 in the morning and again in the afternoon or evening, I cover all of my foundational nutritional needs. And I, like so many other people that take AG1, report feeling much better in a number of important ways, such as energy levels, digestion, sleep and more.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
So while many supplements out there are really directed towards obtaining one specific outcome, AG1 is foundational nutrition designed to support all aspects of well-being related to mental health and physical health. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
They'll give you five free travel packs with your order, plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman. There was something that popped to mind. I mean, there are all these little... things that also go into my perfect day that we don't have to go into every detail about like working out and the whole thing.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
But I just want to maybe mention a point of contrast that served as one of the reasons why I did this practice in the first place was that in real life, I was waking up and sometimes still do wake up with this like underlying like tension, like something's not right. I don't feel good. I wasn't anxious. I wasn't like, but like something's not right.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And I went through years of kind of like gnawing and scratching at different things that, you know, I quickly discovered, you know, like going out for a couple of drinks with people made me feel worse. I don't judge people who drink whatsoever, I'm like, I don't like this.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Now, the mattress we sleep on makes an enormous difference in terms of the quality of sleep that we get each night. We need a mattress that is matched to our unique sleep needs, one that is neither too soft nor too hard for you, one that breathes well and that won't be too warm or too cold for you.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Like it doesn't, like I was just, but this unease, it's like a restlessness that lived inside of me for so long and still can surface as a signal that like, this is not the right life. And at that point, I had a laboratory, grants, we're publishing papers, like all these things that I loved doing, And that I loved the trajectory that I took to arrive there and the people that were in my life.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
But like, I just knew I could just say like, something's not right. And I felt terribly guilty. The reason I'm telling this is I felt terribly guilty. Like I owned a home, right? I was in my mid thirties and it wasn't an expensive home, certainly not by today's standards, but I was able to buy a home on my own. I was... dog.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I had, you know, people in my life, but it was like this, it was almost like a gear that was grinding. And that was the stimulus for exploring this perfect day. My life looks completely different now. And it's far from quote unquote perfect, meaning there's still work to do in a lot of domains, a lot. But I feel like the trajectory is right.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
If you go to the Helix website, you can take a brief two-minute quiz, and it asks you questions such as, do you sleep on your back, your side, or your stomach? Do you tend to run hot or cold during the night? Things of that sort. Maybe you know the answers to those questions, maybe you don't. Either way, Helix will match you to the ideal mattress for you.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And he was – Probably true for a lot of higher education institutions. Yeah.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Adam, right?
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I only know his name through your books, of course, but I feel like I know him a little bit because I love the story about him peeing on the doctor.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I want to just... or lack of a better way to put it, double click on two things. First of all, I wonder if we're going to speculate, no need to, but if the perfect day exercise is really about accessing the subconscious.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
For me, that turned out to be the Dusk mattress, D-U-S-K. I've been sleeping on a Dusk mattress for, gosh, no, more than four years, and the sleep that I've been getting is absolutely phenomenal. If you'd like to try Helix, you can go to helixsleep.com slash Huberman, take that brief two-minute sleep quiz, and Helix will match you to a mattress that is customized to your unique sleep needs.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
She is also considered one of the foremost experts in the personal development field, having authored many bestselling books, including her upcoming book, Beyond Anxiety. curiosity, creativity and finding your life's purpose. I must say that today's discussion is a truly special one.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Right. In my case, again, I loved, and I still love doing science. I mean, my lab is certainly shrunk. I made sure people got placed in jobs and faculty positions, et cetera. I'm still involved in some clinical trials. But one thing that pained me about the work, I'll just come clean about this, this makes my throat lock up a bit is I've been an animal lover since I was a kid. I do eat meat.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I eat it from sustainable sources, but you know, not all, but a lot of the work that I did in my laboratory was on animals. And at some point it was approximately halfway through my first position. I realized I was like, I, I, I don't like this.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And we could talk all day about animal research, non-animal research. I decided to work on humans instead because they can consent and they house themselves. But, you know, so there were some pain points, but I think my unconscious was pulling at me. Yeah. Like, this isn't good. This isn't good. And for me. Yeah. And I do think that
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
the conscious mind and the logical mind, as you're referring to it, it's very tactical. And part of the problem is it works so well, works in quotes, to move us forward on metrics related to that. But I mean, there are very few people that I know who are truly aligned with their, I guess what you've called essential self.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
One who I'm fortunate to be good friends with, he just so happens to be famous for lack of a better word, who resonates with a lot of what we're discussing is the, great Rick Rubin, the music producer who's produced all these different types of music. And one thing that's really interesting about Rick, I've spent a lot of time with Rick and we communicate all the time.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And one thing that is very interesting about him is he has incredible powers of observation. He can really feel the energy of a musical artist or, and he's produced other things too. He does great documentary. He's got his own great podcast. But he doesn't get absorbed by it.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Right now, Helix is giving up to 25% off mattresses and two free pillows. Again, that's helixsleep.com slash Huberman to get 25% off and two free pillows. Today's episode is also brought to us by Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And I wanted to talk to you about this because I, you know, I think for people that are very feeling, very sentient or really in touch with that, the ability to like feel music, to feel other people's emotions, to really – that's a beautiful life, to taste food. But there's a – threshold beyond which we kind of lose ourselves in the experience of others and what's going on.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Rick can go right up to that line and really see it and enjoy it, but it doesn't absorb him in a way that he has a place that he returns to that's in him. And the reason I discovered this is I said, wait, you don't drink alcohol. He said, no. I said, no drugs. He said, no. Doesn't judge it, but he doesn't do it. I said, did you ever? He said, no.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And I said, who comes up through music and never takes a sip of alcohol?
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Goes to college and never took a sip of alcohol, tried any drug. And again, I don't judge. I've talked about psychedelics on this podcast. I've talked about my own relationship to those, what I think are very interesting clinical trials and things of that sort. I think there's tremendous potential there.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
But what is it to be able to experience life in the richest way, but make sure that we don't get lost in feeling or in thought. It's like this ability to move back and forth seems to be the most, the best definition of like a great life, in my opinion, because we need to do things each day.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
It's like the ultimate parent.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Have not, but I'm learning more about internal family systems models. I learned about this first in the context of visiting a trauma healing center. Yeah, that's great for trauma. And then people are now applying this to addiction as well.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I'll get his name from you later.
Huberman Lab
Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Now, proper hydration is critical for the optimal functioning of all the cells in your body. And that's especially true for the neurons, the nerve cells. In fact, we know that even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish both cognitive and physical performance.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
How do you go about doing that? And one of the reasons I'm asking this is because I think everyone, including myself, would do well to be able to access this compassionate witness self. But also because...
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
So many people are on social media nowadays where you can almost feel yourself getting pulled down these trajectories, like the gravitational pull of a battle or a video or even something that's delightful. But then you find like two hours went by and you were overconsumed and undercreated in some sense.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
It goes nowhere.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
You know, this sort of goes nowhere. So do you have a practice that you use to make sure that you're in that place?
Huberman Lab
Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
So to make sure that I'm getting proper hydration and electrolytes, I personally dissolve one packet of element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I first wake up in the morning and I drink that or sip that across the first half hour of the day or so.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
So the state is what's key.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And it is so – it has so much fun in this world. And so you can walk around in that state.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Sure. You can – so – To be sure I understand. So say I wake up in the morning and I'm just like not feeling right or something triggers me or, I don't know, just like I'm off center.
Huberman Lab
Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And then I also make it a point to drink another packet of element dissolved in an equal amount of water, so 16 to 32 ounces, at some other point during the day, and maybe even a third if I'm exercising and or sweating a lot. I should mention that Element tastes absolutely delicious. My favorite flavor is watermelon, although I also confess I like the raspberry flavor, the citrus flavor.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
You take that sensation of suffering. Yeah.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And you don't fear it. You don't amplify it. You just kind of pay attention to it.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
You. Okay.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Yeah, people in pain are usually agitated and grumpy. So it's the inverse of that.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Yeah, I love this. I mean, in some sense, the words like self-parenting keep coming up in my mind because a lot of this is about learning to parent ourselves from the inside. Yeah. And I do think that most... We hear about inner child stuff and I think inner child work is very interesting.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I also think that as a biologist who spent the early part of my career on developmental neurobiology, like the same neural stuff is repurposed in adulthood. Like that's something that it's kind of obvious, but we overlook.
Huberman Lab
Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Right, right, right. You know, but the notion that like our attachments when we're young, somehow that like those neural circuits are set aside. So then we can form more mature adult attachments. You know, it's like, no, it's crazy. We repurpose them. So we're working in an adult landscape with child-based algorithms.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And depending on how childhood went, you know, that either can be spectacular or so-so or a complete disaster. Usually it's a combination.
Huberman Lab
Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Basically, I like all the flavors. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. And now for my discussion with Dr. Martha Beck. Dr. Martha Beck, welcome.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Yeah, no, it's looking a little sketchy right now. I mean, things are tense. It sounds like it starts with... self-love, compassion, like only from that place of compassionate witness, self with a capital S, excuse me, can we be at our best for others?
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Let's, if you would, let's drill into this a little bit more because this is a high level, but at the same time, basic and yet abstract concept. And it's not often on this podcast that we talk about abstract concepts. We probably don't do it enough. We get like, I like to talk about protocols. You get your sunlight on clear days, you know, and I love that stuff too.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
But as probably people realize by now, I... I think a great life is bridging as many things, at least for me, as possible, and seeing the overlap in the Venn diagrams. It's the only part of us that's real, meaning the other parts are just conditioned.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I'm so excited. I mean, I don't know how to convey to the people listening and watching just how excited I am. I have very few heroes in life, but you are one of them. It's true. That does not compute. It's true. I won't name all of them, but you, the great Oliver Sacks, are among the people that have really influenced me so much in terms of the things I do.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Well, it's interesting because a few years ago, so many concepts that I was intrigued by, breath work, for instance, psychedelics, meditation. I mean, now people get federal grants to study this stuff.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And we do reductionist work to try and understand. In fact, I had to disguise breath work as respiration physiology, which we did. And we did a clinical trial. And, you know, lo and behold, certain patterns of breathing shift your internal state and your sleep and your anxiety. It's like a giant, but it was, it was scary territory for a while. And, um,
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And now, you know, psychedelics have kind of broken through as I mean, I mean, I just have to say this with like while touching my forehead and like that. They adjust neuromodulators just like, but differently than certain drugs that adjust neuromodulators and everyone accepted.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
So the idea of changing neuromodulators to change conscious experience and in that altered experience to be able to achieve neuroplasticity is like, it's also a big duh. Of course it works that way. But six years ago, you'd get fired from the university if you said, well, maybe psilocybin could be an interesting compound for... you know, depressed people.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And by the way, I'm not suggesting everyone run out and take a bunch of psilocybin, especially if you're depressed.
Huberman Lab
Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Right. And if you're, you know, more gun-shy on these things, contact a local university. They're likely doing a clinical trial on this. We can provide some links to clinical trials. I think the data are incredibly interesting. In any case,
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And I guess the point is that I feel like academia is kind of coming around, probably due to the suffering of people in it, where then they know somebody who achieved some relief through meditation or some benefits of meditation. So now everyone, I think, accepts like meditation can be very useful for lowering stress and altering conscious experience. This is not new stuff, as everyone knows.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
It's gone back thousands of years. So it sounds like Getting into the capital S self, the compassionate witness, is step number one. And so I just want to make sure that we make clear how one does that.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Okay.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
the ways I try and think, the ways I try to not think at times. And your life story is an amazing one. So we have a lot to cover today. So I'm not going to spend any more time talking about why I feel that way, because it's going to just become apparent in our discussion. But I do want to say that you have really been ahead of your time.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And every day.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Yeah, this is very relevant to me. I have always wondered about like, do you push back against the feeling? Do you live with the feeling? Do you let it amplify? There's so much contradiction inside of the typical discussion of these kinds of things. That's one of the reasons I love your work so much is that you don't tell people what to do, but you provide paths. I hope so. Absolutely, you do.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Absolutely. I'd like to talk about two things. You know, before I came in here, I did a little meditation. I do this before every episode, but today I just, it like took only like a minute because it came to me so fast, which is the two words that popped to mind were, you know, what's real, what is true.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I mean, I think so much of what we're talking about in so much of life is like, what's real, what's true. Certainly out in the world, but like in us.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
What I'm hearing is that at some level, we need to not trust our thinking. But of course, there are times when we need to trust our thinking. And then, of course, we're receiving messages about what's real, what's not real, what's true, what's not true, sometimes about us. I mean, there's all this childhood programming. How do we start to sort through this?
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I'm guessing that it has something to do with being in that compassionate witness place. But let's say what you've experienced in your life, I know because you've written and talked about this, and I certainly have now that by some interesting twist of fate. I'm a public facing person. People saying things about you or about me that are not true. Or that are judgments that don't feel good. Yeah.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And we are not alone in this. You don't have to be public facing in order to experience this. People all the time are being told they are stupid. Sometimes they're being told they are brilliant and they know they're not brilliant. This can go in every direction. How are we supposed to hold –
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
the narratives, the voices that we hear in our head and outside us in a way that really allows us to be our best essential selves.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I've long benefited from Martha's teachings, and I assure you that during today's episode, you will benefit from Martha's teachings. She describes and we explore practices in real time that will allow you to truly understand what is most important to you and what you ought to spend your time pursuing.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I mean, you're triple degreed from Harvard, you have these academic credentials, and yet you were one of the first people to be public facing about the mind-body connection in a way that is operationalized, what we sometimes call in and around this podcast protocols. And you've offered some practices that have absolutely transformed my life and other people's lives.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
It wasn't for you. No.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
All right, so it sounds like challenging or sitting with doctrine and labels and stories that we've heard and that maybe we've internalized. Oh, we've internalized them, yeah. Yeah, and systematically exploring how those make us feel in our body.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I'd like to take a brief break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Waking Up. Waking Up is a meditation app that offers hundreds of guided meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga nidra sessions, and more. I started practicing meditation when I was about 15 years old, and it made a profound impact on my life.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And by now there are thousands of quality peer-reviewed studies that emphasize how useful mindfulness meditation can be for improving our focus, managing stress and anxiety, improving our mood, and much more. In recent years, I started using the Waking Up app for my meditations because I find it to be a terrific resource for allowing me to really be consistent with my meditation practice.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And I gained them through reading your books and That's not a standard book advertisement, but all of your books have been transformative for me. One of the exercises that has had a profound effect on my life is the perfect day exercise.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Many people start a meditation practice and experience some benefits, but many people also have challenges keeping up with that practice. What I and so many other people love about the Waking Up app is that it has a lot of different meditations to choose from, and those meditations are of different durations.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
So it makes it very easy to keep up with your meditation practice, both from the perspective of novelty, You never get tired of those meditations. There's always something new to explore and to learn about yourself and about the effectiveness of meditation. And you can always fit meditation into your schedule, even if you only have two or three minutes per day in which to meditate.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I also really like doing yoga nidra or what is sometimes called non-sleep deep rest for about 10 or 20 minutes because it is a great way to restore mental and physical vigor without the tiredness that some people experience when they wake up from a conventional nap. If you'd like to try the Waking Up app, please go to wakingup.com slash Huberman, where you can access a free 30-day trial.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Again, that's wakingup.com slash Huberman to access a free 30-day trial. I recall the inverse of the perfect day exercise was another one that I did, which was like, just call it what it was. It was like the sucky day, like the shitty day, right? Or just where you'd imagine something really terrible. and then how it would cause the body to contract.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And to recognize, you know, the other side of the coin, right? And just learning that relationship between the body and thought.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I mean, I can say from my own experience that one of the biggest mistakes I ever made was teaching myself to be more resilient to certain forms of stress.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
One of the worst mistakes I ever made. Say more. I mean, I, and my lab studies stress and I talk about stress relief and physiological size are a great way to, you know, reduce real-time stress. And I stand by that. So I'm not talking about that. I stand by meditation and saunas and all the things that make us feel, vacation, the things that relax us.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
So I'm not saying the ability to modulate stress is bad. incredibly powerful and useful. I believe that for sure. But when I was a kid, I wasn't the kid that was going to hold the firecracker to the last second. I wasn't the kid that would do the really daring thing. I had friends like that. And I felt kind of sheepish about that.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
in the then very parentless community of skateboarders that a lot of us were really wild we were very free which I love the freedom part but there was a lot of mayhem and craziness especially back then yeah and it's a beautiful culture I'm still friends with a lot of those folks but
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Those cultures split off basically into thirds over time, about a third debtor in jail, about a third doing incredibly well personally and professionally, incredibly well, and then a third doing well, but they're not still as ambitious about that. They're more focused on their personal lives, and I hope that's what they want to be doing. Yeah. Um, that's kind of how it broke down.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And when I first read about it, I thought, what could this possibly be? And as I recall, it involved taking a little bit of time, maybe 10 minutes, maybe 30 minutes, and just sitting or lying down, closing one's eyes, and just imagining with no limitations one's perfect day.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
But I remember as a young kid and then in that culture, like learning to push myself past the feeling of like, this is dangerous to the point where as I got older and my body eventually got stronger because back then I was always getting hurt, which is why I left that sport. It wasn't very good. I, for the record, wasn't very good. Um, good enough, but not, not. not where I wanted to be.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
That over time, I remember when I started doing science, I realized this is crazy. Skateboarding, you fall, you hurt yourself so badly, you can't do it anymore. That doesn't happen with studying. So I'll just study until I collapse. I'll just work until I'm sick. I'll just, you know, like... That person down the hall puts in 80 hours.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Well, then I'll do 100, and I'm not a competitive person by nature. Or even worse, you know, in my mid-40s, getting into, like, stupid stuff, like cage egg sick great white shark diving to the point where I had an air failure.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And this is all – You know, this whole thing. And then coming back from that, I'm like, what am I doing? And what had happened is I learned to override the signals of the body.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And it was like, when is enough enough? It's like when the reaper comes, you know? And so I think that if we don't listen to the signals that our body sends and we learn to override them, repeatedly and systematically, we can place ourselves into real psychological, emotional, and physical danger. And I just like, I don't know why, I just felt like this was a need to do this in order to grow up.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And now I try and do the exact opposite. It's like, and then I feel bad. I feel kind of lazy. I'm like, I'm not like running at 5 a.m. I'm like sleeping at
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I'm doing yoga nidra. I'm doing yoga nidra at 7 a.m. because I didn't feel I slept enough. And then I have friends in the public facing health space that are like, they push so hard. I'm like, I'm lazy. And then, so it can go too far.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And what's so wild about this exercise is that several, not all, but several of the things that I imagined in that exercise have amazingly come to be reality.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
It was like the stupidest thing. I remember thinking like, what am I doing? And of course, we used it to get virtual reality for our lab. We did a bunch of things that I thought were useful that we transmuted into studies on stress. And so there was always a purpose and a story that could justify being there.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Yeah. And one that was really rooted in goodness and adventure. I love adventure and I'm super curious. Well,
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Enough.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Yeah. That's a perfect segue, but before I move on, I want to make sure that I linked back what you said because I think it's exceptionally valuable about what's real, what's true. To really evaluate what's true, you need to sit. Or maybe one can learn to do this while in motion and sense within one's body what feels liberating, opening versus what feels contracting. Is that right?
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Okay, well, I'm giving you a notification right now because at the end of that exercise, and I ended up doing it several times. I do too. I do it all the time. Okay, that's good to know. I want to know about the frequency there. Was, you know, I'd love to sit down and talk to Martha Beck, what I wouldn't do. So I'm in a pinch me moment right now.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Love it. I'm going to mention Rick Rubin again. A few years back, I called him up and I said, like, Rick, you're not going to believe this.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And I relayed to him a story about someone that I knew really well and this, like, very, like, just kind of wild set of discoveries that someone else had unearthed about their life being completely different than it had been presented and their business was a big fail. Like, the whole thing just collapsed. And And Rick just wrote back. He said, back to nature, the only truth.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Like that's very Rick. Like he's, you know, that's how he talks. Exactly. He said, he said, well, I actually, sorry. It was preceded by, he said, I said, did you read this? Do you see this? I can't believe this. And I'm like, you know, this person really well. And like, I can't like for a very long time. And he just said, it's all lies. Back to nature, the only truth.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And that just got tattooed in my brain because so much of what we see and the shock and I can't believe it. And I think he was referring to something similar. He also has said, and you're going to get a kick out of this, I think, so Rick loves professional wrestling. He watches 10 hours a week of professional wrestling. Why?
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Well, first of all, he believes that it's the only thing that humans have created that's real. Why? Because everyone agrees that it's not real.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
It's fake. And that he likes that no one gets hurt. I mean, people actually can get hurt, but that no one's trying to actually hurt the other person. They're collaborating in this. kind of Shakespearean dance that they do. And you have the different characters. And so I went to see professional wrestling with Rick thinking like, what am I doing here?
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Like it was like loud and the flames and all this is like not a scene I would normally take myself to on a Friday. And it was so much fun, mostly because of how delighted Rick was in seeing it and his son as well. So- We can distinguish or like really identify what's true through this practice.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
It's wild. It's like reality weaving back on itself.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
It'll protect you from cancer.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Well, it turns out that people that run kind of more towards autoimmune conditions, like people who have skin conditions that are autoimmune based, have fewer skin cancers. Yay! Because the immune system is combating all these invaders.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
So there's a, yeah, if there's an upside, and this is the basis of a lot of the logic related to immunotherapies for cancers is trying to have the immune system fight off these mutations that are always occurring in the background. So I'm not trying to take away from the suffering it's created, but that's an upside.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Thank you. I'm moved by that. Let's just talk about this exercise for a second. Clearly, we could come up with scientific explanations for why it would work. The brain is a predictive machine. Once it understands that something might be possible, maybe it looks for avenues for that unconsciously. We could come up with a whole narrative around that.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
No, not if you're talking about dogs and feeling.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
You might make me cry because I'm thinking about, no, because I think I can sense it. Yeah. I think I can sense it. And forgive me if I'm like, you know, like now sounding like totally crazy. If anyone's listening, like this, I will say, and I have a... I'm just going to be blunt. I got a lot of training in neuroscience. I got decades of training in it.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And I'll tell you, the notion of energy is not mysterious at all. I mean, neurons are electricity and chemical exchange. And that happens locally and it happens at a distance.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And the really forward-thinking neuroscientists are starting to put multiple people into scanners and putting people in scanners in different locations. And I know it sounds like people are going, oh, no, like, what are you talking about? This is like spoon-bending stuff. No.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
The idea that thought and emotion at one location can impact thought and location at another one is that magnetoreception has been published in the journal Science. Yeah. So we're not outside the bounds of reality. We are like actually finally as a field starting to acknowledge that this stuff exists and starting to poke and prod around in there. But people have known about this.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
So for you, the sensing of your dog passing or you can feel them present.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
But just for sake of those listening, what is this exercise? How would you suggest somebody try it?
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And the instruments we have to measure things are just not there yet. But the same was said about most everything that has been clearly discovered and is rock solid over the last 50 plus years, at least in neuroscience. I can't help it. just briefly share when I put Costello down. Cause I did that myself, which sucked.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
But I didn't want to, I didn't, I mean, so I, the vets, they came to the house, but it was at home and I was right there. I didn't do, I didn't do the injection. No, no, no. I originally, I, I thought I would because unfortunately, because of my previous job, I had to do that a number of times. Yeah.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
No, so, but what was interesting is, you know, like he let out a big like sigh right there at the end, but the wildest part of it was, and I swear it sounds like I'm making this up, but at the moment he went, I felt my heart heat up. I thought I was gonna be crushed like a broken heart. And I swear it felt as if he was giving me all this energy back.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And it's because I had been spending so much time. He was up in the middle of the night a lot. He must've had some dementia or that kind of thing. And I mean, I had that dog on everything. I was injecting him with testosterone for the last part. Made him a lot healthier, folks. Don't let your dog breed, you know, indiscriminately. But like, I've got my theories about, you know,
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
All the stuff that hormones and animals that a lot of the vets are aligned with me on this one. Um, talk to your vet, talk to a progressive vet. Um, you know, I had him on a bunch of different drugs. I had him, you know, he was, he was really unhappy. So letting it, it was the right thing to do. And, uh, I'll stop talking about it cause I'll get, I'll get too worked up. But, um, yeah. Forgive me.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
But that feeling, it was like, whoa. And I can still feel it. It's like he gave something back that now I think enough time has passed. I go get another dog. It was almost like, oh, here's all this resource and like gratitude. And so these things sound kind of woo, right? Could you do an experiment where you put me in the lab while I go through that? Sure. Would you see huge physiological changes?
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
You will hear a rich discussion about how to frame the thoughts and the emotions around any topic, including pain points in life, as well as your goals and the things that you are in pursuit of. You will also learn how to figure out exactly what is most essential to you and indeed how to explore what Dr. Martha Beck calls your essential self.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Sure. I don't see the point of that kind of experiment. Because I think enough people have experienced these kinds of things that it's not necessary. In any case, I want to talk about integrity and your book, Way of Integrity. You ran a very interesting experiment that, frankly, is going to sound a little scary to some people. They don't have to do it. And maybe reflexive to other people.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
which is, I think it was one year of no lying.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
But like no lying of any kind, not even to yourself. No, especially not to myself.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And previously on the podcast, we had my colleague, Dr. Anna Lemke, who runs our dual diagnosis addiction clinic. She's done a tremendous service to the world talking about all the various kinds of addiction, addiction as a disease, yes, but also something that people can overcome. And one of the things that I love so much about Ana's message, she wrote the book, Dopamine Nation. Oh, I love that.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Yeah, wonderful book. She talks about how recovered addicts are actually her heroes because they've learned to navigate this internal process that most people perhaps who aren't addicts or don't think they are, are constantly being yanked around by these dopamine systems, but they've learned to conquer their own dopamine systems So they represent the heroes of her world.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And I love that model because we tend to look at addicts and think about it as like, There's all this judgment on it.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Until it becomes the source of pain.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Yeah, I've spent a lot of my life there, I'll confess, and it's super unpleasant and it's always led to pain. like shitty things.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And we tell ourselves stories like, well, if we achieve certain things, then we'll be in a better position to do more for other people. Like there's the martyrdom version of it too.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
The reason I brought up Ana was she was the first to alert me to these studies that have been done about how myelination and growth of the prefrontal cortex is actually accelerated when people tell the truth, especially around truths that are somewhat uncomfortable. And it's a beautiful literature that's small but starting to really emerge. Yeah.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And a big part of the recovery from addiction is people first – like acknowledging the truth to themselves and then to other people. And, you know, again, it's all of that's kind of shrouded by how we think about addicts. Like, you know, sadly in any major city and even small towns now, you can see the bent over, you know, like fentanyl addicts.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And like, we judge, we're like, oh, you know, or we say it's so sad or, but that's just, you know, you know, an example of how far gone people can get in that particular addiction. Ana offers an interesting idea, which is that the more we tell these little micro truths, the more connected to reality we are. And in the way of integrity, you talk about this experiment that you did.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
My first integrity cleanse. So an integrity cleanse. So maybe you could explain what it is. And, um, It sounds incredibly scary. It's not just the telling the truth part. It's the realizing the truth part.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Of any kind, even a little micro. Like when are you going to be home and you know it's 12 minutes and you say 10?
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I would sort of try to soften the truth. Did it mean also telling every truth that was in your head? No. Or you would keep certain things to yourself?
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
For me, the first thing I hear is like, Just feeling how comfortable my body is on the bed. Something that I don't do enough.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
What Ana has said, and I think in the backdrop of what you're saying, is that everybody – does these little micro adjustments or, and you've said, constantly, and you've said that this is largely to smooth social interactions, that most of lying is to smooth social interactions.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
That came to you as a realization in that year.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Okay. It must have been in your unconscious someplace prior.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
There had never been a kind of like, knock, knock, hey.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I expected you to be like, it was horrible. You're like, no, better and better.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And the part that intrigues me is, the moment is like the losing of friends, like losing of people and the structures that we relied on also for safety. That's gotta be hard.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Yeah, someone next to me breathing and they're still asleep.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Well, if it was like my bulldog Costello that's snoring. I'm going to get another dog soon. So I would like a dog that breathes with less snoring than Costello. Although I must say I miss his – Bulldogs. His like incredibly deep snores. The early versions of this podcast, the early episodes, we kept him in the room snoring. And by the way, the watering up of my eyes, these are truly tears of joy.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Did you feel as if you had to accomplish certain things, degrees, et cetera, first in order to allow yourself this? Because I hear this a lot. And in the backdrop of this entire conversation, I have one little piece of neural real estate, which is devoted to the audience that is saying, okay, I can do these things once I have a job, once I have blank, once I have the resources.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
But at the same time, I do want to highlight for people that Everything that we've talked about in terms of practices and things to do, you just do them. There's no purchase. It's inside of us. There's no looking to something in a package or in even a program. It's all within us. So it can be done at really anywhere and with any amount of resources or lack thereof.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Okay, there's that. So you have the capacity for extreme resilience.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And it perhaps took you too far.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And inevitably, a much kinder, more generous version of ourselves emerges when we're living our truth. I mean, it's a foregone conclusion, but still worth stating. Yeah, I can personally say that most of my suffering has been the consequence of the fact that I love love. And I'm blessed with many great friends and things of that sort, business partners, etc.,
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
But I have a tendency to get into relationships quickly and ending them feels near impossible. And this has caused me and, you know, and also others too much suffering.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
You know, and so a lot of that is the reason I raised this is that it's about holding two truths at the same time, which feel incompatible. On the one hand, really loving and caring about someone.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And I said at the beginning of the podcast,
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And at the same time, knowing that the loving, caring thing to do is to go separate ways. And it's this relationship to loss that I sort of can't accept or haven't been able to. Like, I can accept that people die. All three of my academic advisors are wonderful people. Suicide, cancer, cancer. Like, so I had to come to the conclusion pretty early on in my academic career, like –
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
wow, like I'm the common denominator. I joke, you know, like, and it took me a long time to realize like, this might not be my fault. You know, I know it's crazy. Like how would that, you know, but I think that it also woke me up to the idea, you know, like life as we know it in this life ends. And so to try and make the most of it, but the idea that people would move apart.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
podcast I said listen I have a bulldog he's getting toward the end of his life so we're gonna keep him in the room and so when you hear that breathing in the background that snoring let's call it what it is he's in here like so sorry not sorry so anyway so yeah so there's some bulldog breathing you can have as many dogs in the room as you want just listen and maybe you hear birds outside maybe you hear the ocean maybe you hear wind maybe you hear people talking or the noise of traffic just just listen for a minute
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Even in circumstances where death doesn't separate them.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
To me, it's like, it's so painful.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And this has roots in all sorts of things in me, of course. But the reason I raise it is that I think that when we have two incompatible truths, that's when we feel stuck. Like we love people, we want to take care of them. Maybe we want them to remain in our lives, but we have to, like the letting go process sucks.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
100%.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
That's very useful. Thank you. And I know it will be very useful to many people. What is the suggestion for people that are trying to figure out what they want or need or both?
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Yeah, it's like this isn't safe.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Yeah, I like the sound of kids playing.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Yeah, it's caused me and I think others a lot of suffering because I think what ends up happening is that when we get separation from that person, then we do a little bit of self-recovery, but then it's like all fractured.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And repeat, right, exactly. What you just described is extremely helpful. I'm curious in your role as a coach to many people. Mm-hmm. how often are romantic relationships, partnership type things, whatever form that takes for people, how often is that like the bulk of what people struggle with, at least in terms of what they bring to the table?
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Or is it more often, I don't like my job, I'm in the wrong life? Professionally, you know, if you had to give us like the non-peer reviewed study, but like kind of crude breakdown,
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Like the whole thing. Oh, great.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
No. Well, it's interesting that you say that because I feel like professionally, it's like there's like a gravitational pull. Like I wanted to get into tropical fish when I was a kid. And I was like, tropical fish, I would spend all day at the tropical fish store. Then it was birds. Then it was skateboarding. Then it was, you know, I wanted to be a firefighter, like whatever.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Eventually it was neuroscience and it was podcasting. You know, it's just like, I can't miss anything. And when I say that, I mean, I can't keep myself from doing what I really want. I would say likewise with friendships, I'm fortunate to have a great relationship to my biological family. It was really rocky for a lot of years, but it's like the work has paid off and they've done a lot of work.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
You know, I'm a Californian at heart. I like it in the 70s and 80s. Perfect. Not too humid. Yeah. It's weird that a don't jumps in, but there's something about the sound of airplanes flying over.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
In romantic partnership, it's like a carve out. It's been much more challenging. I've had some amazing partners and partnerships, like amazing. I'm still on excellent terms with many of them. And then I've had some like really, really brutal, like barbed wire, just like, and you know, I've had to take a look at my role in that too, right? So in this case, for me, it's like a carve out.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I think of it as like this, like wedge shaped carve out. It just seems so much more challenging. But I think in talking with you today, it's clear that it's because of this thing of like, it's not, I'm not approaching it from the standpoint of like, I want to do this and it's good for me.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
to be frank. Whereas in the work domain, it's like what feels good ends up being really good for me.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Right. Well, and that's often the case, right? And I think so this notion of others getting hurt when we make the choice that's most in line with our own integrity, whether it's relationship or family or the decision to move or leave a job, how do you sit with that? I mean, how does one sit with that?
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I mean, I think I have clearly internalized some script that says if someone else is really upset, even, and obviously the right thing is often not the thing that makes people feel best, et cetera, et cetera, but how do you work with that?
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
It always depresses me. It must be some parrot association. Something like that. Sometime like, I don't like that.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Bird chirping. Who doesn't like birds chirping?
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Yes.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Yeah. The compassionate thing is to do the right thing.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Sorry, I didn't mean to laugh at that, but I did. I don't know. I find it hilarious. I mean, sorry. Not sorry. That was just nothing to do but laugh there. Goodness. Yeah, I think this notion of things ending because we realized that we were telling lies.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And gosh, it even hurts to say. Yeah. You know, it's like... Because we weren't trying to tell lies.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
We didn't know we were telling lies. Yeah.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
To me, that often grows from what I think of as empathy. Probably not, certainly not the best form of empathy.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
But I think that there's a human phenotype that I'm familiar with where we We feel other people's emotions, which I think is healthy.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Can be healthy.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And we love seeing people enjoy. Yeah. And we delight in it. So it feels good to us.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
To, you know, feed this addiction. Oh, I know the feeling. It's not like, it's like, oh, here I am, Marta. I'm like, I'm bleeding out, bleeding out, bleeding out. But it's not in line with this essential self.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And here, I guess the little vignette that's related to this is that I do think there's one very healthy form of this, which is I believe, at least for me, with a dog – I like other animals too, but with a dog, when we love them – we are seamlessly attached to their love of us. And so loving them and empathizing with them means like double the love.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Like we love them and we can feel their love and it's like a perfect, it just feels like a perfect circle. And with people, that can happen too, I imagine. I've felt that a few times. I certainly feel that in my friendships. I feel that with my sister. And I've felt it in a few of my romantic relationships. But The empathy for the other's pleasure can go too far.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Those deep rooted desires that are unique to you and your history and what will make your life most fulfilling. By the end of today's episode, you will be armed with new intellectual and practical knowledge, and you will be able to adopt the best possible stance for you as you navigate forward in your life.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And then when we, quote unquote, lose ourselves, I think it's because there's a component of ourselves that's like not attached to the part that still has our own needs.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Yeah, it's my partner next to me, my... Dog is, you know, I told myself I wasn't going to get another bulldog.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I love that.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
It's so interesting because I feel like in the domain of work and with my friends and largely with family, giving feels great and then people are sated and then they go on their way. But I noticed a contrast with romantic partnerships when, as I've said, I maintain good relationships with a couple of Girlfriends that I had, you know, in some cases, I'm good friends with their husbands.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Like they actually, one just came and visited with her sister and her kid recently. And like on just great platonic terms. But for years, I like...
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
worry about them but I felt like I could still feel the energetic pull even though they weren't asking for anything right and then when I attended their wedding this particular person's wedding I was like oh I was like my work is done yeah and I got to enjoy and still get to enjoy the friendship with the whole family yeah
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
But I think I'm going to get another bulldog. You are. They're the best.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
But it really showed me how much the whole – so much of the relationship had been about like trying to make sure the other person was okay.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
They're like the essence of efficiency of metabolism, meaning they do as little as possible and they experience as much joy as possible. Oh, that's perfect. They're hedonists when it really comes down to it.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
What a mature and generous thing for them to say. Yeah, they are. It sounds like it. This is your oldest. The contrast, and I think what drives a lot of what we're really talking about here is codependency.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Yeah. For those that don't know, we haven't caught on. Right, exactly. Is that sometimes when we... cut people off, or we just say, hey, I can give, but only to this point, or you can get this aspect of me, but not these other aspects, especially if they've been receiving them before. They get pissed.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I mean, and it's unclear, especially if the relationship had been different up until then, that, you know, like that's why it sometimes feels unfair to do. It's like, you know, it's one thing to invite someone over for a drink, then to discover that they're an alcoholic, continue to fill their glass. enjoy the exchange and then one day realize they're an alcoholic.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And I guess that term isn't used anymore. I've been told by many audience members, forgive me, it's alcohol use disorder.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
No, quite all right. I think that field of addiction medicine is nascent enough that we're still making the transition. And I don't say this, by the way, for political correctness. I'm not a politically correct person. It's just, I've had to learn to reframe these things for the specific purpose of trying to be more, to bring more people into the conversation.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And they are capable of protecting if they need to, but I honestly don't care about that. You know, all that stuff, like all that, like my bulldogs, I don't care about any of that.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Also, I like the sound of, I don't like the idea, but the words alcohol use disorder, the disorder piece is also controversial. But what I love is that as soon as we start to name things and rename things, we're all talking about those things and then there's no way out of the conversation. So that's my kind of jujitsu-ing out of that.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
So that means we have to talk about it, just like autism spectrum disorder or autism or neurotypical, atypical. Well, guess what, folks? Now we're all talking about it and it needs to be talked about. So in any case, at some point, there's the idea like I'm cutting you off. And the person says, but this is what we do. This is the kind of promise that you made.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And so then we find ourselves in like the other scripts of like, well, now I'm like, being bad. I'm doing the right thing, but I'm breaking a promise, which we're told from like the time we're little, like you don't do.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
In the notion of galaxies developing or something like that?
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Awesome, I am way off.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I'm like trying to be Elon Musk here and you're like, no, it's about pigeons, cool.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I love pigeons. I even have a pigeon tattoo. Yeah, I do.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Yeah, I'm good there.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
They perseverate.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting because with work, it's like I love learning, organizing information, having conversations like this and sharing them with the world. It feels kind of like the relationship to a dog. It's like this reciprocity. And if people don't like it, okay. And if you like it, great. And if you love it, even better. But I would be doing it anyway. I'd be doing it anyway.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Yeah. I'm a Wyeth fan.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Like there's no feeling of loss. There's no metabolizing of self, any of that.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And people pay me to do this. And I still can't believe it. I come in here and I talk to my producer, who's also my business partner and my closest friend, Rob. And I'm like, I can't believe they pay us to do this. I can't believe it.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And that's also how I felt about science the first time I looked down the microscope and saw a slice of a particular brain area called the dorsolateral geniculate nucleus. And we had labeled this. And I turned to Barbara Chapman, my graduate advisor there. And I was like, wow. This is amazing. And her response was so funny. She was also Harvard trained Radcliffe to be specific.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Well, recently I saw a caption. I don't know if this is true because it was an Instagram post that the woman in the field image. Oh, Christina's world.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And she said, yeah, brains are really cool. They're kind of like little walnuts. And I was like, so Barbara, the smartest people I ever met. She was just like, and I was like, and I thought, and then I looked around her lab. I was doing rotations where you get to sample different labs and you hope they'll take you. And she had green counters in her lab instead of black counters.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And she had pictures of mushrooms.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And she had this picture of a cat coming out of a farm silo. It's like its hat. And I thought, I really like this lady. Like, I want to work here. I'm going to do my PhD here. And I had already committed to another lab. And I started sneaking into her laboratory at night to do experiments.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
She got over it. So in the professional domain, I'm a completely different animal when it comes to these things. I walked into the other woman's lab. I mean, she's done tremendously well without me. So I just said, listen, I'm gonna join this other lab. But like I have no trouble doing that in the work domain, none.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
It's like, you know, when I started the podcast, sure there were these voices in my head, one of my colleagues gonna think this and that. And, you know, I was like, nah, I hope they're living their best life. I'm gonna live mine. Like, and I see them and some love it, some hate it.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And some, you know, like really I can tell, like I hear the judgments and I also hear the, like, I love it, you know, that kind of thing. It's a mix because public facing anything is gonna evoke different responses from people. And, but I'm sort of like, you do you, I'll do me and we'll both be good.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Yeah. I didn't know the name of it. Thank you. That this was a neighbor of theirs that had a degenerative neural condition. And rather than use a wheelchair of sorts, she insisted on crawling everywhere. And so that image is actually of her crawling out into the field happily to enjoy the field. Because my impression of the painting before was that
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
She's taking some work. She's taking some work.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
It's not going to – Unfortunately, it's a lot more complicated than that. But I am seeing a portal toward I guess what you're calling like true integrity where in the back of my mind, I have this like very – vestigial understanding of what all of that relationship stuff actually looks like when it and feels like when it's right for me.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I just, I think it's not going to look like the way I try to script it out.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
That's reassuring to me.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Your partner is awesome. Oh, I just met one of them.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Somehow because she's seated up there, it looks like in my mind I projected onto it that there's some like desperation there or something to get back to the house. But that's not it at all. It turns out this is a woman who preferred to move with her own agency, even if it meant crawling to enjoy nature.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And so that's how you- That was eight years ago.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
No, we have no master, no overlord. Are you kidding me? I mean, what we're talking about here is love, first of all. Like, I mean, let's just be, you know, of all the things to cut out of a podcast, we're not going to cut love out of a podcast. Oh, I love that about this podcast because a lot of people would. Yeah, well, not me.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And for people that, like, balk at that or it creates internal friction in them, then I just invite you to, I don't know, visit your compassionate witness self, see if it's still there. And if it's still there, then, you know, hey, I actually believe that humans, partially based on developmental wiring, like, experiences, but also just differences in wiring, like, just fundamentally –
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I believe in this. I mean, one of my closest friends, my third postdoc, my third advisor, who was my postdoc advisor at Stanford is the now, unfortunately he died of pancreatic cancer, is the late Ben Barris. He was born an identical twin girl. Wow. Okay. Then went up through medical school, living as a woman, graduate school as a woman, and then transitioned to Ben pretty late in life.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
So I only met Ben. Ben was a close friend and then unfortunately had probably because he had the BRCA2 mutation, died of multiple cancers, but that initiated by pancreatic cancer. First transgender member of the National Academy of Sciences. Wow. I wrote his obituary for the journal Nature.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
We were very, very close and just an amazing, very quirky dude, you know, and didn't have a romantic partner, at least not at the time when he passed or in the time that I knew him, to my knowledge. And, you know, Ben used to say, like, there are components of our wiring that are ubiquitous.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
The parts that control breathing, you know, the parts that control heart. And then there are parts of our— Wiring that are just different. And to me as a scientist, like it makes perfect sense. Like the notion that any of that would be controversial is like, what?
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Like it doesn't make any sense whatsoever that one would like not believe that people have differences in wiring because most people want to believe in differences in wiring when it's like convenient for themselves. So I really appreciate that you're sharing this because yeah, the every which version works.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And I also learned from my graduate advisor, Barbara Chapman, she used to say, tolerance has to go both ways. So I also love and applaud the whatever traditional nuclear family, is it still called that? Oh my gosh, yes.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
It's a magnificent painting.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Yes. Maybe not the original, although that would be awesome.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Maybe have the other person read it.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Totally. That would be – that I can do. As difficult as it is to have certain conversations, I could certainly write things down and just like slide an envelope.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I love it. And I really appreciate that you shared that. And I know people listening will as well.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Then I'm waking up in the Met.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Well, one of the reasons I oriented very young towards and still love punk rock music, like that genre, is because to me, I could be wrong, maybe classical music being an exception, but to me, it's the only genre of music where all the versions of self and emotions are welcome. There's angry music. There's like political music. There's sad music. There's...
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
you know, music about friendship and camaraderie about loss. And you look at the community, like I'm really into this stuff. So look at the community like that. My good friend, Tim Armstrong is created around certain bands. He's going to be on the Mount Rushmore punk rock or the great Joe Strummer from the clash political music.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
You know, or Laura Jane Grace, like one of the first transgender, like outwardly facing transgendered people in the punk rock community and does amazing music was against me. And then Laura Jane Grace, I'm like, she's a hero of mine. One of my short list of heroes. I love, love, love what she's done. at so many levels.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And it's like, there's like this tapestry of all the different humans and human experiences in a kind of single genre. And I don't know much about other genres of music, but I don't see that.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I don't see that, like maybe across the totality of rock and roll or whatever, but you know, and so like, if ever there was a sector of life that's like all inclusive, it's that, but not because it's loud, it's fast and it's anti, it's like so much of it is like pro-social. So I think there's a big misunderstanding around that. So that ethos is something that's always resonated.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And I feel the same way about like relationships or on social media. One of the reasons I can go on social media and not have it like spike my cortisol constantly Because I'm there and I'm like, okay, there's some like mentally healthy people here, some mentally unhealthy people here. People are here to fight. People are here to love. People are here to find partners. People are here to flirt.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And you know what? People are here to attack me like, cool, I'm glad I'm giving you a purpose for your morning. You know, that kind of thing. I try and just approach it all that way where you just made all of this very clear in a much more succinct way where you just said like, great, I like it.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
It's awesome. Yeah, yours with a real genuine sense of joy.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Like, no, like, well, I like it. There's no friction in that statement. It's just, I like it.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I love that you like it a lot and that you can say it that way.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
What was the quote from Jesus?
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Were you all, well, of course the answer is going to be yes. I was going to ask, were you always like this? Meaning that you could hold this position on the balance beam. And then I feel like you've taken this balance beam and like created this big mesa for others to stand on. So, so, cause it's a really stable place to be once you're there, but getting to this place of like
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
essential self and the path to integrity. I mean, can I just say it the way I feel it? Yeah. It's fucking difficult. Yeah.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I feel like it starts with the scope of self. Like we have to do this for ourselves before we can do this with and for other people.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And then at some point, the fantasy in my mind right, like it sounds like my mother, my mother from the youngest age I can remember in myself was talking about like trying to heal the world. And I've seen the toll it's taken on her. Like she'll call sometimes and I'll be like, how's it going? And like something will have happened in the news. Like I can just tell like it really wears on her.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And it's hard for me to hear and see, cause I've, you know, like I feel it too. It's like, goodness, like, do you feel, there's hope for our species. I mean, I'm trying to not throw the whole problems of the world at you, but- No, I've been thinking about it. I mean, like what? I'm almost 50. I feel like at this point I've seen enough to be like, there's so much goodness in people.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is BetterHelp.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I'm a mountains guy. As much as I love California, you know, I've realized that I just went out to Boulder, Colorado for the first time for a week just by myself. And I fell in love with it. Yeah. So I'm in the mountains. Colorado feels right to me. And there's water.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
But there's also like the capacity for so much like misunderstanding bad. You got the developmental wiring. You got the hurt people hurt people. We're all, everyone's doing the best they can. Everyone wants safety and acceptance and they're just trying to find it this way. And like, and then there are your truly bad actors because they're either miswired or whatever.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And they're like creating havoc. Like, is there... any real hope for like a different version of things that's persistent?
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
I have a feeling I am too. And I'm certain that... I'm in it thanks to you. Seriously, in large part. I've told the story earlier that the path I'm on and the fact that anyone's listening to this and watching it is the consequence of having read your books and done the exercises and will continue to do them. I must say there really aren't words
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
A river. They've got great rivers there. Yeah, they do. Or the little streams. I like the little streams that they have there because the rivers are so loud. That's true. The rivers are really loud when they get going. Yeah. And –
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
to express how much this means to me that you would come here, take the time to share with us your wisdom and to delve into some topics that are of particular interest to me, because I, like everyone else, I'm a work in progress who's curious about the best ways to to move forward. And yeah, every time you speak and just when you show up someplace, it's an incredible thing.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Everybody learns, everybody gets better, and everyone walks away with tools and empowerment. And I just want to say thank you so much. There's really not a whole lot else.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Thank you. That might be the only podcast to ever end in tears. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Martha Beck. I hope you found it to be as informative and as meaningful as I did. To learn more about her work and to find links to her many excellent books, please see the links in the show note captions.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. In addition, please be sure to follow the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
It's entitled Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, Twitter, now known as X, Threads, Facebook and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools, some of which overlap with the contents of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the contents of the Huberman Lab podcast.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. If you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, our neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes what we call protocols, which are brief one to three page PDFs that cover things such as neuroplasticity and learning dopamine optimization, how to get better sleep.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
things like deliberate cold exposure. We have a foundational fitness protocol. We have a protocol all about habit forming and much more. To sign up, again, at completely zero cost, you simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu function in the corner, scroll down to newsletter, and you provide your email. I should point out that we do not share your email with anybody.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Martha Beck. And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
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Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination | Dr. Martha Beck
Definitely small town. I can't be too isolated. If I'm going to be in a city, I'm going to be in Manhattan. It's like it's all or none. So if I'm going to be in nature, I want to be in nature. So a small town.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Richard Schwartz.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
It was just a feeling of both of us just being in this like high tension place, like, uh, and, um, uh, fortunately the conversation ended well with a path forward and that involved more contact, not less, that both of us feel really good about. But in that moment where I'm feeling overwhelmed and they're feeling overwhelmed, what's going on there? We're both adults.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Frustration. Like that previous conversations, I felt I hadn't – I was saying things, they were saying things, but I feel like there was so much underlying tension based on a history of poor communication. nested on top of the kind of an intensity of emotion that we both tend to carry. And somehow we just like couldn't parse things from that state.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
It's one that you can apply today during the episode and that you can return to in order to apply going forward in your life. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
And so I sat in my chair and I just told myself, okay, I'm gonna not say anything for five minutes because I know myself. It's not that I thought I would say something really barbed wire, but I just thought this is not gonna work. Like I'm slamming my head against a wall. They're not hearing me. I'm clearly not hearing them.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
And the thing that helped me through that was just, because it was what was taught to me, I just decided to surrender. And the word surrender used to mean to me letting go of truth. And it felt really scary because when you say surrender, it's almost like saying one context is surrender means you're right no matter, and you're right. I was just going to say that's right.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
But I've come to realize that surrender to me is just surrender in the moment. Yeah. so that I can get better optics, internal and external optics. So to me, the thing of embracing surrender in those types of moments, very uncomfortable, but I now have learned it's a great way to get perspective. But even as I describe it, the whole situation was so heavy.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
I came out of that call, even though it ended well, and was like, Ugh.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Like, ugh. That was like I'd never run a marathon, but I'd rather run a marathon than do two of those a week.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Between the middle of my midsection and like right behind my forehead, like there's pressure.
Huberman Lab
How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Richard Schwartz. Dr. Dick Schwartz, welcome.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
A little bit of relaxation in the head part of it. Yeah, it's funny how when you asked me to localize it, it's so clear. It's like this thing inside me. It's about the size of a teddy bear that's just like, oh, but it's not a good thing. It's like pushed up there.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
But then when you said to get curious about it, it feels like it kind of drops down a little bit and kind of moves in a little, maybe softens a little bit.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Well, since this is a podcast and none of this is comfortable anyway for me to do in public, if I'm quite honest. Yeah, just ask inside. Sure. No, I'll do it out loud. Okay. So what do you want me to know about you?
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Mm-hmm. Well, my answer is based on the feeling that occurred immediately after asking it, which was the answer was I can dissipate. And then I kind of felt it dissipate.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
So it feels like an energy that when condensed sucks.
Huberman Lab
How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
but when I look at it, softened a little bit, and then asked the question you asked, and then it feels like it just kind of went into the rest of my body, but not poisoning the rest of my body, just kind of mixing in with, you know, because we're speaking in mystical terms here, but...
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Yeah, I've heard so much about you and your work and internal family systems models. I've had the opportunity to do a little bit of that work. To be honest, I don't know whether or not the person I did that work with was formally trained in it. So I'd like to start off by just asking you what is internal family systems and what are the different components?
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
If it didn't try to take over?
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Yeah, that's a good question. Okay, so what would happen if you didn't take over my system that way, condense from my stomach up to my head when I'm feeling that way?
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
The answers are coming really quick. That I wouldn't be able to discern the truth.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Yeah. Yeah. Because it tends to surface when I'm hearing something that I believe to be fundamentally untrue, typically about my thoughts or feelings, right? I've come, maybe with age, I've come to the conclusion that two people can look at the same interaction or same thing. And have two very different versions of it. I'm okay with that.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
The part that I'm very, very sensitive to, people in my life know this, is when someone else tells me how I feel.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
What my motives are or how I feel. That to me is like, that's kind of a hard, fast way to engage this thing.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
what's it afraid would happen if it let that go yeah so what why are you afraid to why do you have to step in yeah when that happens my answer is not going to be very satisfying for the listeners but or for me um but it it's saying because if you can't hold on to your truth then nothing will make sense
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Yeah. I mean, I decided to become a biologist and to try and understand the meat inside our heads and body that is the nervous system because I felt, and I still feel that it can reveal some fundamental facts or truths. Understanding reality, as it were, is really important to me because I feel like humans, including myself, of course, are so prone to misinterpretation.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
So like the truth as a thing out there, I'm willing to let go of completely. Right. Like completely. Right. The truth as it exists for knowing for certain what my motivations were or what did or didn't happen. But typically it's about motivation. Right. What did or didn't happen, you usually can parse with somebody.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Yeah. That's something I feel I need to protect at all costs.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
That's an easy—that's a fast one. Not easy, but it's a fast one. Yeah, the part of me that feels injured by that is the fact that I believe that I, at least at— the beginning and throughout most of a relationship, and even if a relationship ends for whatever reason, that I know it's my nature to try and imagine as much goodness in the intent of the other person as possible.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
And as we do that, I'm sure people are going to be thinking about these various components for their own life and the people in their lives.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
So if I were to let go of this response, the keep going in my mind, I'm calling it like this, like, it's like a titanium teddy bear shaped thing, but it doesn't, it's not, I don't feel like it's like a titanium block there. Um, I would, um, potentially move into a mode of judgment, um,
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Um, of them, it's interesting because I, there are many people from my past and maybe even a few from my present that people close to me who are pretty well qualified, tell me like I should. dislike them or cut them out of my life. There are a few, maybe one or two instances of people I've cut out of my life, but it's my inclination always to just try and see what can exist.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
And that part feels important to me. I don't know why it's important now that I've come to think about it. Well, we can ask.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Yeah, I don't like feeling that. Yeah. It feels energetically wasteful. Yeah. And it feels, more than that, it feels incredibly sad. Yeah. It's sort of like, I think to accept that part of myself is to kind of give up on some fantasy, which is probably an unrealistic fantasy, which is why I'm calling it a fantasy, I realize. Yeah. Yeah.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Like this, because I look at, and I always have since I was a kid, I look at people as we are among the animals. We're the curators of the earth because we're good at technology development. But aside from that, and our, like, just like you wouldn't, I can't imagine that a raccoon, you know, looks at another raccoon and it's like, that's a bad raccoon. It's just a rabid raccoon, you know?
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
And they just- I sort of yearn for the same sensitivity to our own species.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Yeah. Like I don't hate anybody.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
I hate things that people have said or done. Certainly mostly to other people, not to me. But, yeah, being... Like, really being angry at someone in a pervasive way, not just in the moment, is something that's very difficult for me.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Yeah. I'm comfortable with the idea that you take the appropriate amount of distance could be zero or could be near infinite, but that I should take the appropriate amount of distance from things and people so that I can be in the most loving stance toward them or that.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Dr. Richard Schwartz is the founder of internal family systems therapy, which is a unique form of therapy that's less centered on your relationship to other people, but instead focuses mainly on identifying the parts of yourself and your personality that tend to emerge in different situations and that tend to create anxiety, resent or depression.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
I'm not trying to sound technical here with all the parallel constructions, but I've thought this through a lot. Like there's some people that I, um, There's no limit to the extent to which I want to interact with them. We have other things to do. We're not going to spend all our time together.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
And then there are other people that I love them, but I know that I have to keep a certain amount of distance in order to continue to love them. This is the same thing. So in that moment, it's almost like, but it's coming up without my conscious thing. It's not like saying, listen, that's the kind of person I can talk to like once a month or something.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
And I'll just add in professional settings, not now, but in the distant past, when I was in a very hierarchical structure of, I'm still in academia, I still teach, but not running research anymore formally. You know, like I had a couple senior colleagues that I really loved and respected, but that they would say or do things that I thought were frankly unethical to other people.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
And to me, I felt them as kind of abrasive. So I might, like the physical manifestation of this is, I would make it a point to, like walk past their office door quickly so that they didn't say, hey, because I don't want to interact. But I don't – I'm not familiar with cutting people out of my life.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
I'm just not familiar with doing that. I sort of don't believe in it as a value.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Yeah. The only thing is a family member. Okay. Yeah. Not that matters, but close family member.
Huberman Lab
How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
I know of Freudian psychoanalysis. you know, any number of different branches of psychology that have a clinical slant to them. There's cognitive behavioral therapy. What are the core components of internal family systems?
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Yeah, that's right. Because I'm describing a recent situation where the presence of this like titanium teddy bear, sorry, I don't know why that's amusing to me to say that. Um, The shape of a teddy bear. I'm not seeing a teddy bear in there, but roughly that size and shape. It creates a protection, but a pressure internally that's super uncomfortable.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
It's actually taken me a couple days to dissipate this. And I do think... somewhat counter to the way I'm describing it. It doesn't prevent me from saying something. It actually, if it's too much, it's almost like that's when words start coming out and they're not kind. So it's not a real protector in the sense like it's preventing me from a course of action I don't want to take.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
It's more, it feels like it's kind of extruding all this stuff. And obviously I'm responsible for my words and actions. I know that, but it does feel like it, it, It kind of takes over. It takes over. Yeah. That's the way to put it.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Yeah, it makes total sense. You know, what you said at the beginning, permission to go to the judgmental part, I was just, you know, my mind flits when I hear that flits to, you know, two possibilities. One's a novel possibility. One's a familiar possibility. The familiar possibility is if I were to really feel the disappointment that I'm feeling when this pattern in the
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
and the other person shows up again, because at least it seems to... I'm very familiar with the pattern. Right. Then it would fundamentally, like, change the way that I feel about them.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Like, I'm trying to hold on to the goodness in that. The relationship. That's right. But, of course, I want to be very clear, not just for anyone listening, but for myself, too, that clearly the protecting role of this titanium teddy bear
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
um it's created something where what the times when things have broken through from my side they're not kind right and or they're spoken in a way that just is not constructive right right um so yeah and then the second possibility is that I hadn't considered this possibility.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
But the second possibility is that were I to let myself feel that disappointment, that maybe the relationship could persist. Like I've been looking at those things as mutually exclusive. And as I say all this, I also realized that, well, honest disclaimer is like, I don't want to give the impression that I don't judge people. I'm human. And I certainly do.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
I'm just saying that when there's a relationship that I wish to maintain, I'll go to great lengths to push aside knowledge of my own experience and, or just judgment. I've made this, um, I've engaged in this pattern in ways that ended up being extremely destructive to me by completely like putting the blinders onto things that were right in front of me. And that's what I'm talking about.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Because I adored the person so much in other dimensions. Like that, you know, and... you know, it's not a, for lack of a better word, a holistic way to approach things. But I also will say that in contrast to those types of relationships, the, the relationships where this is, where the, the titanium tether is not required feel to me.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
So like by comparison, but also in the absolute scale feel to me, like the best possible relationships one could have. They're like pinch me type of relationships, like my friendship, some of my relationships to family, like my coworkers, and there are others too. I've certainly had romantic relationships like that.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Relationships, my relationship to my dog is trivial as people might think that seems that the contrast of that, like where there's no need for this protector part, it's like the best thing because it feels completely safe and uninhibited. I never have to worry that I'm going to be taken over from the inside, nor do I ever worry that I'm going to like really screw up.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
And I hope that if I do screw up, they'll tell me, but like it's the complete absence of fear.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
it's a lot in the sense that, um, I don't like feeling that titanium thing, teddy bear. Um, it's very, it's been very informative. So it's balanced by that. Um, and maybe that's why I went into a little riff about the pleasant relationships and how, um, how outsized positive they are for me. They're, they're like a,
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
They're like a salve and an elixir for me that maybe I gave myself a little like wash over with that because it's pretty uncomfortable. But it's been, it's really informative. And it also tells me that the internal family systems work that I did with someone else was an attempt at this, but so very different, which makes sense because this is your art and science. Yeah. So I'm grateful. Yeah.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
How would we go about doing that?
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Yeah. Not that I need clarity on this right now, but it's more that it protects the possibility of a relationship at all. Like I think the fear is like, if I were to look through my lens of truth, what's happened or is happening in the moment, if I were a quote unquote better boundaried person, it'd be done yesterday. But so it's sort of like a desire to live out a fantasy.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
And for the record, I never owned a teddy bear as a kid. I had a stuffed frog.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Well, I'm not embarrassed to say I had a stuffed frog that I loved, Freddie the Frog. So I don't know where the teddy bear thing came up, but the shape was so very clear.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is an all-in-one vitamin, mineral, probiotic drink with adaptogens. I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring this podcast. The reason I started taking AG1 and the reason I still take AG1 is because it is the highest quality and most complete foundational nutritional supplement.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
So at the time, were you already practicing as a clinical psychologist?
Huberman Lab
How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
I'm struck by a couple of things that I think people will be, if I may, wise to think about. One is in the classic psychodynamic or CBT model of therapy, it's clear that the client or patient, sometimes it's called, right? Patient-therapist relationship is one where it takes on certain components that exist in the outside world with other people.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
And it's always slightly bothered me slash concerned me that that's the structure. And as you said, in IFS, internal family systems, you become your own kind of therapist, if you will, for lack of a better way to put it. I like that because... there's so much discussion nowadays about, you know, parenting yourself and this kind of thing and learning to mother yourself and father yourself.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
And I actually think there's great value in that. I mean, I learned by living alone, you know, how to cook for myself and clean for myself. These are, I'm mapping to stereotypes here, but also to protect myself and to, you know, organize myself and be very, very disciplined. And actually running a laboratory was a great teaching there because you're basically a single academic parent
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
to all these people. So you quickly realize where you lack maternal instincts and where you may lack or overemphasize or have hypertrophied paternal instincts. So that was a good forum to see my weaknesses and hopefully some strengths too. So I like this idea that one can play those roles for oneself.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
how is IFS typically done if somebody doesn't have access to a therapist who's expert in it, or is that really the only proper gateway into it? No, so... Because I'm sitting here with the master, the founder, and I'm very grateful, by the way, for the work we just did. So thank you. It feels good. As a privilege. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, likewise.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
But most people won't have direct one-on-one access to you, so... It's very experiential. I imagine in books and courses, people can learn how to do this. And by the way, this was not preconceived as a pitch for books and courses, but I'm wondering, can somebody do this on their own the very first time? That's what I want to know.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
I do. I do. In fact, something pops to mind. Maybe I could just ask you about it. My mind's right on what you're saying, but something occurred to me as you said it. which is if I were to, for instance, really feel the feeling of like, hey, that's really screwed up or like actually feel the disappointment or judgment that this titanium teddy bear is trying to protect against.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
I realize it leads to a lot of role confusion and identity confusion. That's right. And I'll just be very blunt. It's probably not the best thing to do on a podcast, but I'm going to do it anyway, which is, you know, this is how I feel about modern politics. I see things on the left that make sense to me and things that are, to me, just absolutely ludicrous, inappropriate and offensive.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
and like just badly wrong. I see things on the right that make a ton of sense to me and also things that are inappropriate, offensive, and wrong. And as a consequence, I'm trying to see the best, the goodness in both sides and just kind of create this kind of Swiss cheese model of the world.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
I'm talking about politics because it's just simpler to do and people at least know what the groups we're talking about.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
But then it leaves me in a place of no affiliation, and I'm then between one of two stances, one of just kind of standing there being like, yeah, well, there's no real position in the middle that is an official position in the middle, but it also makes me just want to put up the middle finger to both and say I'm a double hater.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
But, of course, I'm an adult and a citizen who cares about people in the country, and so I feel like – to be an adult. I can't opt out, but there's like, I feel unaffiliated. I feel like there's no option for me. And this maps pretty well to, I think, the identity and role confusion that I feel when I place my, again, understanding the truth is a complicated thing, but my
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
judgment on things and people. It's like, well, then what is my role as a son? What is my role as a partner? What is my role if this thing is true? And so it's a way I'm realizing of protecting the simplicity of a role.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
And I did grow up in a home where like the roles were like, you know, your son, you do certain things like, you know, you do, you know, and so, but I also have a rebellious side to me. So the The role confusion is something that I imagine a lot of people are familiar with.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
And I also believe that when you just really say, well, they did something bad, therefore all bad, therefore I'm part of the opposite team. That to me is an unlived life. But I see a lot of people do it. And actually, sometimes I'm envious of people that have that ability because they seem so unconflicted. Right. So it's a tough thing to be a thinking, feeling person at the level of nuance. Yeah.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
It kind of sucks sometimes. Yeah. I'd rather do that than be a double hater or just cleanly opt in. Does that make sense? Totally makes sense. Okay.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Another key feature of internal family systems therapy is that it's not just focused on fixing challenges within us, it also teaches you how to grow your confidence, openness, and compassion. Now, today's episode is different than any other episode of the podcast that we've done before, and that's for two reasons.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Do you think that people who... have the reflex or the ability to kind of somaticize a bit. Like I obviously, I don't think of myself as somebody who's like psychosomatic. I don't have stomach aches and headaches and stuff unless I caught a virus, you know, but, but I can feel where certain things are in my body pretty quickly and always have. Do you think that
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
IFS lends itself better to people who, you know, feel things somatically versus people that are like really cognitive and in their head. Because I have that component too. I can actually feel the switch. Like I do it through, I'll go into like a narrative and then I start to see the structure like up here.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Tenure is nice, but one should tend to their emotional selves while they're pursuing it.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
So if we were to just step back for a moment and do sort of a top contour summary of the process, someone brings forward a memory, a recent or distant memory of something that made them feel not good. and you try and localize some sensation in the body, get a sense of its location. Let me pause there. I'll tell you why. Yeah.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Got it. And then one places some attention from the stance of curiosity. They were like, what's there? What's it trying to say? Exactly. And then you start to reveal the underlying layers of what's it protecting? What are those things that are protective trying to say?
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
I see. Oh, I love this because I'm a big believer in seeding the unconscious mind and then letting things surface either in sleep or in meditative states or – Has internal family systems been combined with some of the therapies that are now getting tested still in clinical trial stage around psychedelics?
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Are these different parts that exist within each and all of us, are they represented by a clear and distinct voice from the other? Or do people typically experience them as just the self, like my inner critic? You'll give us the other names and titles. Or is this happening typically below people's conscious awareness?
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Yeah, I've been open about the fact, and I always have to provide the disclaimer. I don't just say this to protect me. I say this to protect listeners that I do think...
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
young people should avoid psychedelics the brain is already in a psychedelic state uh it's it's the the amount of plasticity and this is is really tremendous and this is coming from somebody who regrets it but i did psychedelics recreationally as a kid um and i regret it i returned to them later in a clinical setting um and and derived a lot of benefit i think from them
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
namely high-dose psilocybin and MDMA, but both of those are still very much illegal. You can get into a lot of trouble for taking them and or certainly for selling them. So that's the cautionary note there. And the clinical trials are really impressive, in my opinion, spectacularly impressive, especially for MDMA and for the treatment of PTSD.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
But the FDA this last year did not approve MDMA as a treatment for PTSD. I think going forward in the new administration, it's likely that it will get approved, but who knows? Who knows? So anyway, that's a bunch of pseudo-legalese jargon, but it's sincere. If I were an 18- or 19-year-old person or 30-year-old person listening to a conversation about psychedelics and how they can be helpful—
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
I would want to also know that there are instances where people take them and they don't have the appropriate guidance in and through it and out of it, and it leads to serious problems. So this is a real, real thing that we're talking about.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Interesting. I've never tried ketamine. A few years ago, and I've talked about this publicly as well, I started developing a pretty deep relationship to spirituality and God, and mostly through the path of giving up control. I mean, there's just breaking news, folks. You can't control everything, you know? And you can control certain things, but most things, no.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
The way you describe ketamine is very interesting because as a dissociative anesthetic, it works in such a fundamentally different way than say MDMA, which is an empathogen which makes people feel so much more.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
I mean, I sort of half joke that the, aside from the safety legality stuff, the concern I have about MDMA is that if one is not in the eye mask, if you don't have somebody guiding you through it and taking some notes,
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
You know, if you listen to a piece of jazz or classical music or your favorite rock and roll album or you're there with your dog or cat or plants, I mean, you can spend the entire four hours bonding with the plant.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
You're not going to run off and get married to a plant. You're not going to try and fornicate with a plant. Right. One hopes. Right. It's a very precious but very labile situation. Totally agree. Because it's such a strong empathogen that whatever you direct your attention to, internal or external, is going to hypertrophy. So you just have to be really careful. Totally agree.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
And given that the neurotoxicity issues seem worked out and that if it's actually MDMA and isn't other things... By the way, the big study that showed neurotoxicity of MDMA in non-human primates, turned out they were injecting methamphetamine.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Yeah, that paper was retracted. It was published in Science. We'll provide a link to the paper and the retraction. The retraction was not as publicized. Wow. Methylene dioxide, methamphetamine, MDMA has not been shown to be neurotoxic, provided that's what people are taking. Wow. And not taking some combination of other things. Yeah, it's a real tragedy the way that...
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
retractions don't get nearly the kind of popular press coverage that initial studies do, regardless of whether or not the initial study was positive or negative. In any case, I do believe there are other routes to calming down the forebrain in the context of doing this kind of work that I'd just like your thoughts on. When I first wake up in the morning, I'm in kind of a liminal state, but
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
The thing that I don't want to think about comes to my brain. I can't avoid it. It's just like the protectors are not available. They're still asleep. So that seems valuable. I've tried recently to keep my eyes closed. Sometimes I'll get up and use the bathroom, but keep my eyes closed, stay in that still state. explore the contours of that thing.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Provided it's done safely and not anywhere near water. Cyclic hyperventilation breath work done for a few minutes or cycles, you know. we think can change the brain activity so the forebrain kind of comes off line a bit, so to speak. All these things just put managers to sleep. Put managers to sleep.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. Now, I personally have been doing therapy weekly for well over 30 years. In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise, which of course I also do every week.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function. Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient levels and much more. They've also recently added tests for toxins such as BPA exposure from harmful plastics and tests for PFAS or forever chemicals.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to your physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors who are expert in the relevant areas. For example, in one of my first tests with function, I learned that I had elevated levels of mercury in my blood.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Function not only helped me detect that, but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, I'd been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification. And I should say, by taking a second function test,
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
That approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by function simplicity and at the level of cost. It is very affordable.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. What is so striking to me is that And Martha taught me this practice of when we think about the things that create shame for ourselves, if we're able to go up and really look at those and own them not from the perspective of I'm proud of them, but own them as good.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
in us and not of us, you know, that it's incredibly freeing. And indeed it is so freeing, right? It's like the, if there were like a secret to life, like it would at least include that.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
There are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First of all, It provides a good rapport with somebody that you can trust and talk to about pretty much any issue with. Second of all, it can provide support in the form of emotional support and directed guidance. And third, expert therapy can provide useful insights.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Yeah, and I'd like to really go into this a bit because we hear all the time that when we're upset about something, it's something in ourselves that we're really upset about.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
So if I'm upset about the intolerance of good ideas from people in opposite groups of each other's good ideas, this logic would say that I'm really just disapproving of that aspect of myself that is like black and white judgmental.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Got me. Then again, you're the therapist. Right. So is this always true?
Huberman Lab
How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Insights that allow you to better not just your emotional life and your relationship life, but of course also the relationship to yourself and your professional life and to all sorts of goals. BetterHelp makes it very easy to find an expert therapist with whom you resonate with and that can provide you those three benefits that come from effective therapy.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
I think it's important that people hear that. namely that if we get in touch with these parts of ourselves that are protectors, that it makes us less vulnerable, not more vulnerable, both to quote unquote attack. But that also, I guess, put simply that in understanding of ourselves and compassion for ourselves, one develops understanding and compassion for others. But that doesn't mean
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
that you're opening yourself up for harm.
Huberman Lab
How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
And the opposite is actually true.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
This idea of, I'm definitely following that we will sometimes create in others what we fear because it allows us to engage in this unhealthy dynamic. It seems so counterintuitive, right? Maybe we take a kind of classic set of examples that I think are pretty common. A person who's codependent with somebody who's a substance abuse addict.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
or somebody who's very timid and always wants to pacify, and somebody who's very dominant. When I zoom out from the second case, it actually kind of makes me chuckle how crazy that is. Because if you think about it, a person who is very dominant doesn't need somebody very timid in order to feel dominant, right? They could probably...
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Also, because BetterHelp allows for therapy to be done entirely online, it's super time efficient and easy to fit into a busy schedule. If you'd like to try BetterHelp, you can go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by David. David makes a protein bar unlike any other.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
feel whatever power it is they need to feel with somebody who is less timid and maybe the relationship would be healthier. But that's not how people tend to other select. It's kind of interesting. So it raises perhaps a bigger question. Why do people select people that are fundamentally bad for them?
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Is this anything like the sort of repetition compulsion? Yeah, exactly. That we tend to repeat a pattern over and over again as an attempt to resolve, not just a manifestation of dysfunction.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's so interesting how romantic relationships are where these patterns get repeated. And at the same time, numerous examples in my life of healthy relationships. Is that usually the case because people have done the work before or because they had a minimum of trauma in their upbringing?
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
What percentage of kids, adults as well, do you think had a minimum of trauma are just because of the way they're wired and the way the stuff is organized within them that they naturally attach to a good partner and are pretty healthy? Is it like
Huberman Lab
How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. That's right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from protein. This is 50% higher than the next closest protein bar. David protein bars also taste amazing. Even the texture is amazing. My favorite bar is the chocolate chip cookie dough.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Half of marriages in this country and in divorce are... and presumably of the ones that don't, I'm guessing somewhere between a half and a quarter of those people are really unhappy. Sounds so pessimistic, but if you just look at the numbers, and I'm an optimist, I already acknowledge that I don't like to think about bad stuff. And I, you know, so...
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
First, Dr. Schwartz takes me through a brief session of IFS therapy so you can see exactly what it looks like in practice, and then he takes you, the listener, through it as well.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Yeah, I'm guessing that a lot of people repeat these patterns. But it seemed as if maybe 20, 30 years ago, because these ideas weren't discussed really, so many fewer people were in any kind of analysis or personal exploration work, that as a society, we defaulted to just sort of role execution. You're a father and a husband, so you do certain things, and you don't do certain things.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
You're a wife and a mother, so you do certain things, and you don't do certain, and so on. And I think nowadays there's a lot of discussion about, you know, is there a resurgence of organized religion because we've drifted so far from these kind of core structures? I mean, Love your thoughts on that.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
And also what you think doing this kind of internal work on oneself without requiring any input or participation from another, what the value of that is. It sounds like there's tremendous value to just doing this work for oneself, maybe with someone trained in IFS.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
But then again, I also like the new chocolate peanut butter flavor and the chocolate brownie flavored. Basically, I like all the flavors a lot. They're all incredibly delicious. In fact, the toughest challenge is knowing which ones to eat on which days and how many times per day. I limit myself to two per day, but I absolutely love them.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
I'm struck by how experiential it is as opposed to, um, just conceptual. I mean, obviously the concepts are important, but I think, uh, internal family systems was described for me previously, kind of mapped out for me on paper.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
I got a sense of it actually with some objects placed out and it was helpful, but I think just having done a little bit of it today, only by actually feeling the sensations in the body associated with it, does it actually really make sense to me. I mean, it made sense cognitively, but that's so very different
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Yeah. It's like me telling people, you know, get out and get sunlight in your eyes in the morning and set your circadian rhythm. Like you can know that you can know the underlying mechanisms, the neurons, the pathways, the hormones, et cetera.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
But at some level, until you experience what that's like for two or three days in a row, it's, you might as well be reading about, I don't know, titanium teddy bears, you know?
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
In order to be deliberately repetitive, I wonder if it would be useful to the listeners to, would it be possible to just pose the questions to them as an exercise that they could do in real time. Totally, yeah. Thank you so much. I think that would be tremendously valuable. So I'm going to have to erase myself here for once. I'm going to be quiet for a little while, folks.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
And you are the lucky patient that gets to talk to Dr. Schwartz here. And he's going to pose a series of questions. And we'll allow some moments of break or silence for you to be able to tap into the answers to these in real time. That way, you don't have to create a parallel construction of what we did earlier.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
With David, I'm able to get 28 grams of protein in the calories of a snack, which makes it easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight per day, and it allows me to do so without ingesting too many calories. I'll eat a David protein bar most afternoons as a snack, and I always keep one with me when I'm out of the house or traveling.
Huberman Lab
How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
They're incredibly delicious and given that they have 28 grams of protein, they're really satisfying for having just 150 calories. If you'd like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, that's davidprotein.com slash Huberman. I definitely want to go into what the various protector roles or titles are, labels, excuse me, and the exiles.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Before we do that, since you brought up the topic of trauma, this is a topic that I think many, many people are interested in. I'm just curious, how do you define a trauma? And why do you think it is that traumas tend to lock us into a state that was representative of an earlier time. Why is it that it's so linked to this thing of time perception?
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Thank you for that. That was awesome. I also was able to get some, I think, good work done in that. Is that true? Yeah, yeah. Totally different location, totally different set of dynamics. Even though what you just took us through is very experiential, what, if any, value do you think there is to writing down sort of key takeaways? A lot of value, yeah. Okay.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Well, you're very familiar with these parts. And to clarify for people, when Dr. Schwartz is saying parts, he's saying these personalities within us, not necessarily the body part where it manifests, but maybe that provides a physical anchor to look to.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
I hope I didn't reinforce the negative ones.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Thanks for sharing that. I didn't detect any anxiety whatsoever, neither pre-recording nor during this discussion. If you don't mind, could you describe or maybe even just list off some of the other labels of parts that people might encounter if they do this kind of work? So you describe them as protectors that manage and then the exiles, which are
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
The parts of us that the protectors and managers are protecting. Yeah. Correct? Okay. Those are two different things, right?
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
So as you'll soon observe and experience, internal family systems therapy allows you to work through challenging sticking points, basically the parts or feelings within you that you don't like to have, and then it shows you how to convert those feelings into more functional aspects of yourself.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
That it would just feel like too much to bear.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Like you just couldn't take it anymore.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Which, of course, is a crazy statement because it's not like my brain would explode.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Yeah. They're not grounded in logic.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Well, fortunately, I don't feel suicidal. But the answer would be yes.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
I mean, I have to imagine that if somebody, forgive me for going into my head about this, but if I have to imagine, it's just hard for me to imagine being suicidal.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Yeah. But I have to imagine that if somebody is feeling suicidal in order to protect themselves against the enormity of the feelings they would otherwise feel, and then they are offered the opportunity to be released from those feelings, I think the scary part would be like the first – it's like wading into really cold water.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
You know, I always feel that way about negative feelings. Once you get past your kind of waist or so, you get your shoulders under. That's a good analogy. It's a heck of a lot easier.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
something comes to mind for a number of years, not now, fortunately. I mean, I still work a lot, but I work like, you know, I don't want to, well, I'll share the numbers, but it's not a goal that no one should try and exceed this. I mean, there were times in graduate school where I, No joke, worked 80, 85 hours a week, slept under my desk. I lived in my office as a junior professor.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
My students can attest to that. I brushed my teeth. Not every night, but if I had deadlines, it was just all in with mind, body, heart, everything. It's not healthy. And at some point, I had to take a look at it because it's not conducive to a lot of things. It brings a lot. You can... Get a lot done. I won't lie. You can get a lot done. You can get a lot of degrees.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
You can get a lot of knowledge and you can accomplish a lot. But I decided to take a look at it. You know, like what would happen if I, I don't know, published five awesome papers in a year instead of 10 or something like crazy. You know, I just started looking at it and it just, it seems crazy now. But I remember the genuine fear of backing off. And I started to realize that
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
I loved what I did, but that some of the work came from a desire to compete out other feelings. It's a form of dissociation. And then what happened was I was able to adjust my hours, really pick the projects that...
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
held the most meaning for me and then really savor them and enjoy them and that's how i approached the podcast and other things i'm doing so it was a tremendously useful exploration but it was terrifying i didn't have to go to 12 step for work addiction or anything i mean it wasn't at that level but um but you're giving an example of exactly what we do we go to that workaholic park
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Yeah, so what I came to, it's interesting, was the – it was literally a fear of annihilation, of disappearing. And then I thought, well, then you parsed it a little bit further, disappearing to who? It's not like there was an absence of positive feedback. So it wasn't actually – to avoid disappearing from the outside world.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Because I'll tell you, when you're working 80, 85 hours a week, you're already gone. You just don't realize it. It was actually some way of avoiding this thing that I've now come to really love. I learned it from my bulldog. Um, I used to have this assumption that slow is low, like to slow down is depressive.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
I mean, now I love slowing down and I did learn that from my bulldog and a few people came into my life and their dogs as well. And I learned like, um, to really savor slow and not just so that I can bounce back into work, that too, admittedly, but also to just, and it came through, I just would like your thoughts on this.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
I realized right as I would go into or come out of a meditation or what I call non-sleep deep rest, this kind of yoga nidra like deep relaxation thing that listeners of this podcast will be familiar with hearing about, that there's this really terrifying moment
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
where I realized someday, assuming I'm awake when it happens, or it's not an accident, or I don't get involved in an accident, I'm gonna take my last breath. And it's absolutely terrifying, that concept. And I realized that the fear of disappearing is actually a fear of death. And what I was really afraid of was death. And I was using work.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
So it was a long way from like working 60 hours or 40 hours a week instead, or 30, whatever. People choose as opposed to 85, but what I realized that what I was running from was the fear of my own mortality. That's right. And I didn't have to use any substances to realize this. I just had to keep peeling back the layers of like, what are you really afraid of?
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
And now I've come to the conclusion that most addiction, having talked to a lot of addicts with process addictions and substance addictions, et cetera, that deep down everyone, addict or no, is terrified of death. It's just that some people are in touch with that terror and have worked through it.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Yeah, I think if I, for better or worse, if I see or experience something that scares me a lot, I have to. explore the contours of it. That's been a dangerous part of my life and it's been a helpful. Oh yeah. And it's been a helpful part of my life too. You know, the ability to suppress one's reflex to avoid fear is such a complicated thing because on the one hand it's necessary to navigate life.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
On the other hand, if people always say, is there, what would you tell your younger self if you could tell your younger self anything? And it would, I would have said, hey dude, listen, you know, if something makes you anxious, get out of there. Because my reflex has always been that if something gives me anxiety, like, okay, here's a test of myself. I need to overcome it.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
So in any case, some people are the opposite, you know? Yeah, I've tended to touch the hot stove three times when it should have been one trial learning, and it hurt the first time. But that's just me. I mean, everyone's got these things. But what I'm discovering, certainly through what you're telling us today, but also the exploration of these things is that
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
so much of life is structured especially nowadays with the phone love the phone love social media but um so much of life is structured to fill all the space between activities and i do want your thoughts on have like what you see in terms of um things that are active impediments to doing good work of the sorts of work that you're describing today, self-work.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
I would never ask, I guess, to be disparaging of the world just for its own sake, but I think people are now starting to develop an awareness of how certain technologies and lifestyle habits that are unique to the last five or 10 years are really exacerbating our problems as they relate to ourselves, not just interpersonal dynamics.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
You seem to be thinking about the big picture a lot, so I'm curious what your thoughts are.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
For developing internal family systems?
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
What is with the field of psychiatry?
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Right, the pain point can potentially become the source of tremendous growth and value to the world based on what you've developed. Keep in mind, I learned about your work, not just through Martha Beck, although Martha as well, but several incredibly talented psychologists, scholars in the field of research psychology, and actually a psychiatrist as well.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Maybe I'll just share the... So a psychiatrist that I think the world of said to me, I won't reveal who it is, but they said, do you know why there's so many lousy psychiatrists? This isn't a joke, actually, even though it sounds like a setup for a joke. I said, no, why? And they said, well, because if you're a cardiothoracic surgeon and like 30% of your patients die,
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
you're considered a pretty terrible cardiothoracic surgeon. If you're a psychiatrist, unless your patients kill themselves on a frequent basis, you can have a pretty quote-unquote successful career.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
And no one ever questions whether or not you're good at your job or not. Because the field, A, has a dearth of tools. B, the kind of assumption is that a lot of things don't get better and on and on. And they listed off all these reasons why the field of psychiatry is so replete with what they described as lousy psychiatrists.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
So I do believe there are some excellent psychiatrists out there, research and clinical and both. I don't know if that does anything. It sounds like you worked through your relationship to psychiatrists on your own. You don't need my statements.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
It's interesting how timing in a field is so important, and not just an academic field, but a clinical field, and the ethos. If anyone is interested in... Understanding where we are in the arc of medicine and culture, I highly recommend reading Oliver Sacks' book, On the Move. He's obviously a neurologist and writer, but he describes coming up through medicine and being in these various fields.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
He worked on headache for a while. It's pretty interesting. He wrote a book about migraine. He worked on with migraine. kids on the autism spectrum and a bunch of different fields. And in every single one of those fields was vehemently attacked by some individual for whatever reason, usually a superior, kicked out of universities, moved to another one. Now he did have his own issues.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
He was, you know, At the time, he was a methamphetamine addict and things like that. But he got over that and became the great Oliver Sacks that he was. But he describes these fields as having a culture at the time of really trying to suppress new ideas and holding people down.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
And then toward the end of his career, several of the universities that essentially had fired him earlier, hospitals and universities, were trying to recruit him back again. with multiple appointments because now he was this famous guy who had written the movie or worked on the movie awakenings and like, you know, and of course it revealed the hypocrisy of, of, uh, these big institutions.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
And so it made me chuckle and also realize that for those of us who are doing public health education at, at any level, and certainly on the, these more, um, non-traditional things, uh, approaches that, uh, the time is right for, for sharing them. And, um, And the good news is nobody lives forever. So, you know, the old guard dies or retires, you know.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
I won't ask which one it was. We can have an offline discussion about that. They just might. A couple of more questions. First of all, going back to this thing about the larger context of culture.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
I love the optimism that's threaded through your view that we could get God willing, Democrats and Republicans to come to some sort of common ground around the most important issues that we potentially could eradicate destructive racism, racism of all kinds. But given the way you described it, certainly it's implementation in the world is the first thing that needs to be dealt with, right?
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Certainly if people can see those parts of themselves, and work with them that we stand a chance to do that and given that trauma is near ubiquitous right um that people could start to address their own traumas so that they can induce fewer in other people i guess that's basically the the ultimate goal of humanity totally um and i
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
I, like so many people lately, not just, by the way, not just in the last year or so, but like for the last 10 years, have just been developing the sense like, goodness, like it just seems like the number of problems just seems to be expanding exponentially. How do we get our heads around this? And there's so much blame game going on of, well, it's because of this and it's because of that.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
And like, that's not a solution at all. So I love your sense of optimism that it's possible. And then my question is, How do we get that going, to be direct?
Huberman Lab
How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
You got people who were bulimic to essentially not be bulimic any longer.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Yeah, very common, right? Yeah. Before, when you talked about bulimia, bulimia is notoriously difficult to treat, let alone cure.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
moving from the one-on-one therapy model to a model where people can do this work on their own as well as in groups. But if I'm correct in thinking this, it seems like getting the work done with oneself is the first like real step.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
There's no replacement for that.
Huberman Lab
How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
So as you'll soon see, internal family systems therapy is both super interesting and it's an incredibly empowering practice. It's also a form of therapy that's now been studied and for which there's a lot of peer reviewed science to support its efficacy.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Fantastic. No, really fantastic. I don't think we've ever done a podcast like this where the audience had a chance to do self-work in real time.
Huberman Lab
How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Yeah, I don't know that I've ever heard a discussion like it, to be honest, which is just a testament to you and your bravery. It's very clear that Your decision not to go into endocrinology was one that we all are grateful for. It wasn't a decision. Well, my endocrinologist friends will have to just accept that, you know, we've got a lot of good endocrinologists.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
We needed you, Dr. Dick Schwartz, too. um to find yourself uh in this business of of um discovering and creating a truly novel approach to therapy and self-work that uh goes all the way up to the potential to change culture change the world so that's the goal yeah those those aren't just words that's uh those are um
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
real aspirational possible things that could be accomplished if people do this work. And in coming here today and sharing with us the structure of internal family systems and a demonstration of how it can work and offering people the opportunity to do it themselves in real time and giving us your perspective.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
about the things that are around it as well as in it with incredible clarity and just a real beautiful sense of care for people that comes through. But also I like the concreteness of it so very much.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
And I really appreciate that. And I'm certain that everyone else does as well. So I want to thank you for coming here today. for sharing this. We will provide links to places where people can learn more through books and courses and other resources that you've created. And also just for the work that you've done and for being you. It's been a real pleasure and I'm so very glad we did it.
Huberman Lab
How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Thank you. Well, this whole thing is a labor of love and a free fall through just curiosity.
Huberman Lab
How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Yeah. I hope to continue the conversation. Would love to. Wonderful. Thanks so much. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Richard Schwartz. To learn more about his work and to find links to his many excellent books, please see the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Huberman Lab
How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. In addition, please click follow for the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube.
Huberman Lab
How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
I do read all the comments. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body.
Huberman Lab
How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.
Huberman Lab
How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
Huberman Lab
How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
So that's Instagram X, formerly known as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Threads. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
Huberman Lab
How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as what we call protocols in the form of one to three page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure,
Huberman Lab
How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody.
Huberman Lab
How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Richard Schwartz. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
By the end of today's episode, Dr. Dick Schwartz will have shown you that a lot of the negative reactions that we tend to have with different people and things tend to originate from a few basic patterns that once we understand, we can really transmute into more positive responses. It's a really interesting practice.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
So the firefighter, the inner firefighter role is one of the exiles that surfaces under conditions of a lot of emotion. Maybe we could, this is a beautiful description, and I'm completely on board this idea that we have multiple aspects of self or selves inside. Jung said that too, I think, right?
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Yeah, and what I like about this protectors slash managers versus protectors again, not versus because they're combated, but as a distinct category, the exiles is, just feels very true to me. And I like the directness of the language. So maybe we could just like, create a mental grid for people.
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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Like if, let's say I came to you as a patient and I said, listen, I, you know, I'm, I'll just be direct. I'll be honest. Why not? Let's do it. Secretly. I brought you here to get therapy. No, no. Um, but okay. So I'm somebody who, uh, for a very long time has been able to organize his life. Um, I tend to have, um, smooth interactions with my coworkers, great friendships.
Huberman Lab
How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
I now have a very good relationship with my immediate family. Very good, in fact. I'm still working on a few things with a few people, but I'm living in a mode of great joy and appreciation these days.
Huberman Lab
How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
However, I'm, I'm not going to give the details of this for sake of privacy, but you know, the other day I was in a discussion with a family member and they had a grievance with me that I felt we had already addressed and it,
Huberman Lab
How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz
Um, and it became a very high friction conversation very quickly to the point where we tabled as an idea that maybe we just take some like serious space, like, um, which was not reflective of how deeply I love this person or they love me.
Huberman Lab
Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Ellen Langer. Dr. Ellen Langer is a professor of psychology at Harvard University and one of the world's leading pioneers in the mind-body connection.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
So that's the level three where you have so much, you hide it and – Well, this is interesting because when I was growing up, unless people had money to purchase things, they would drive older cars and things like that.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
um with credit that changed yeah um and i have friends who like to wear very very fancy watches i also have friends who um have far more money than them and uh choose to wear no watch so it's it's getting harder to discern um except at the extremes of course yeah it's getting harder to discern who has what and and maybe that's a good thing again again at the extremes it's obvious you know that i
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
The homeless issue in Los Angeles and everywhere in California is so troubling and so sad what's happening. Setting that aside, I think nowadays we have less information about people's values, even just by looking at them. When I was growing up, if somebody wore a particular T-shirt with a particular band, you kind of knew if you were part of the same group. All of that's gone now.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
It's all leveled.
Huberman Lab
Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
not a fan of particular activities as a way to increase longevity or particular activities as a way to increase mindfulness. But could we say that having somewhat of a mindset of playfulness with ideas and one's environment could potentiate longevity?
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Well, that's a great skill. Yeah, yeah. I was talking to my mom last night and she was saying, you know, not much is happening here. And I kept saying, no, like tell me, what are you guys up to? It had been a while. And she said, well, I don't have this like big exciting life, you know. And I said, what's going on? And she said, okay, well –
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
if you really want to know, there's this new plant weed that's growing in the garden. And she started explaining to me this really interesting weed that has these little yellow flowers. And my mom loves gardening. And so she delights in gardening and I was delighting in her delight.
Huberman Lab
Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
And when she was done, I said, that's actually the kind of thing I'd love to talk about, you know, and hear more about because I also know my own experience. So I didn't need to talk about like what's going on on the podcast or what's going on in my daily life or the
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
incredible breeds of dogs that I'm considering getting, maybe all of them, because I was interested in what was going on in her garden. And so what was trivial to her was actually interesting to me and it represented a really good bridge to a number of things. I have to say that we were talking earlier about how one frames past, present, and future.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I don't know if we were talking about it in that way, but in thinking about age, longevity, and what's possible, the word that came to mind that I'd like to just pressure test a little bit is nostalgia. And I have this feeling, and I hope I'm wrong because I've been wrong about most things today in a way that I'm learning from, that nostalgia can be
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
perhaps kind of a dangerous line of thinking, this idea that things used to be great, but now they're not.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
And I thought to myself, what a terrible sense or emotion. And it led me to some practical questions like, should we go to high school reunions? And I thought, well, no, if all we're going to do is embrace nostalgia. Yes, if it makes us feel like we're 19 again, this kind of thing. And here you can substitute reunions with, should I look at photo albums?
Huberman Lab
Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Like, I don't know how I feel about photos from the past. I used to collect them and cherish them. And now sometimes when I look at them, it just makes me long for something. And I'm trying, I think I need to learn how to pivot through that. So what are your thoughts on nostalgia and just notions of how we think about our past and
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Gamifying things is one of the great pleasures of parenting.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
You know, and earlier you were talking about what do your grandkids call you? Cosmic leader. Cosmic leader. But you can play these games with them, right? And then they reach their adolescent and teen years and then they claim they don't like those games.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
But as a former child and then teen, now I delight in some of the games that my parents played with me when I was little because it brings me back to the notions of imagination. Yeah.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
And for people that say, well, that's a luxury. I need to work in order to survive and feed my family, et cetera. How does one reconcile that?
Huberman Lab
Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
You've done some beautiful studies on healing and time perception. Could you just describe that experiment? Sure, sure. I love this paper.
Huberman Lab
Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
In fact, we also talk about how mindset can impact cancer outcomes or rather overcoming cancer. We discuss examples, mechanisms, and practical application of those mechanisms. By the end of today's episode, I assure you that Dr. Ellen Langer will change the way that you think about the mind-body connection, the way you think about your health,
Huberman Lab
Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I'll occasionally go into hook righty, but I'm a righty. My dad was naturally left-handed. They forced him to be right-handed.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Oh, this fits so beautifully. I don't want to spend too much time on this, and you're probably aware of these experiments, but just for sake of our listeners. You probably know that your colleagues at Harvard, David Huell and Torrance and Wiesel won the Nobel Prize for brain plasticity, critical periods of vision, et cetera.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
And they had this sort of doctrine that they stated in the 80s and it lasted until the gosh, until the early and mid 2000s, that there was no significant brain plasticity in adult humans, that it literally shut down.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Mike Merzenich and a guy named Greg Reconzone at UCSF did these beautiful studies, I'll try and describe this really quickly, where they would have their subjects pay attention to little bumps on a rotating drum, of different coarseness or fineness. And then there was a tone playing in the room.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
And if they were told to discriminate when the bumps were changed from coarse to just slightly less coarse or more coarse, the subject would signal, okay, that happened. And then over time, the area of the brain responsible for touch in adults expanded the map of that. So adult plasticity was very interesting, however, is if they did the exact same thing,
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
but they were told to attend to slight changes in the frequency of the tone. It didn't matter what they were doing with their fingers. The auditory cortex changed and the somatosensory, the touch map didn't. And so it's proof positive that it's not just a behavior in adulthood, but the combination of behavior and- An awareness of the shift in perception that drives adult plasticity.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
And I find those studies to be, well, first of all, they aren't discussed enough. That feature isn't discussed enough. And second of all, it basically says that awareness is the gate to brain change. Sure. And I think that fits perfectly with everything that you've been talking about.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
We have such a deficit model of life. And this also fits with the Kahneman stuff, right? That, you know, people work much harder to avoid a loss than they will for a gain. And it seems to be...
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
You've transcended the typical notion of loss.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Well, I'm not as evolved in that aspect, certainly others as well, as you are. But when I started my lab, I used to teach my students something, which was, okay, we're going to get a lot more rejections and have to do a lot more revisions than we are going to get acceptances on papers and grants.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
So the best thing that you can do, which is what I had to do for myself, one of the best things you might consider would have been a gentler way to say it, but I said one of the best things you can do, because that's the way I talk sometimes, is to... create a long arc of positive feedback loops when something good happens.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
But that when something negative happens, let yourself feel it acutely and then move on fast. And like, so if I were to plot this, it would basically be like an accepted paper will delight me and motivate me for many, many months, if not years, but a rejection or a tough revision where we're looking at another year or two of experiments, I'd allow myself maybe a day and a half
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
of just being, you know, utterly crushed and then right back to it.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Yeah. And reviews, I learned from my postdoc advisor, and I love this, is he used to say, reviews always make papers better. Even if you hate them, they always make papers better. They never make papers worse. Sometimes they make papers a little bit harder to track because like there's this weird figure put in just to satisfy a reviewer. Kind of like, what is this?
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
But everyone eventually realized what that figure is about anyway. And so I adopted the idea that reviews, red ink, critical feedback are just ways of getting better, which has also been essential in the podcasting sphere. Because if I've ever gotten anything wrong, believe me, I hear about it in the comments.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
And sometimes it can be embarrassing, but you just look at it as an opportunity to address your humanness and
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
move forward you know correct it and move forward but i think a lot of people try and maintain this air of perfection like there's some sort of fabergé egg that instead of living life like a work of art where it has dimples and cracks and acne and and all the rest and it's human i think a lot of people um want to present themselves to the world like a fabergé egg like that's just absolutely flawless but the problem with that is going out the next day
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
You mean in terms of a field and what's acceptable?
Huberman Lab
Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Yeah, things have certainly changed. And look, you've done a tremendous amount to pioneer that change. I mean, it's not one study or 10 study or 20 studies.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I mean, there's now a catalog of incredibly groundbreaking work that you've... I don't know if you used intentionally or you're just following your interests, but that have transformed the way that we think about the mind and its role in our physiology and so on. I was...
Huberman Lab
Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
hoping to get your reflections on something that I sometimes say that's probably wrong, but that is helpful to me because, and hopefully to other people too, because it, I think, captures some of the circuit dynamics related to reward and reinforcement, and it sometimes resurfaces on the internet.
Huberman Lab
Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
that addiction, among other things, is a progressive narrowing of the things that bring someone pleasure. And I used to attach to that statement, enlightenment, if there is such a thing, is a progressive broadening of the things that bring us pleasure. And one thing that struck me throughout today's conversation is that it seems like you're able to look at pretty much anything
Huberman Lab
Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
through a bunch of different facets, take on other points of view, so strong theory of mind, while holding on to your own perceptions, right? You're not drifting off from yourself. You're remaining, you know, of self, but taking on other perspectives.
Huberman Lab
Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
And that flexibility of thinking and that expansiveness, like looking at things as good, bad, maybe, I don't know, I don't know what's true or what could be true and really challenging preconceived notions. It seems very powerful. Do you believe in enlightenment? And was the description I just gave anything like the way you envisioned it?
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
It has indeed. And it's helped a tremendous number of people, both in the form of scientific findings, which are then shared with people through books and through podcasts. And I'm just so grateful that you came here today to share with us. This is really, as vast as it's been, you know, just a subset of the discoveries that you've made. So, you you know, a couple of things.
Huberman Lab
Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
First of all, thank you for coming here today.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I've thoroughly enjoyed this and I love, love, love your work and it's, caused me to think differently about things. And today's discussion is going to make me and I know so many other people think differently about everything. I mean, very, very few discussions that I'll hold will make me rethink my thinking about everything. This one certainly will.
Huberman Lab
Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
And also for continuing to do the work that you're doing. I mean, it's clear that you embody and live the discoveries that you make. And it's not just an academic pursuit that then allows you to and appropriately collect all the amazing awards. titles, but that it really serves and that you live it. So thank you for that as well. And then two more questions, very briefly.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
The floor is yours, but would you consider coming back again to share with us some additional findings is the second to last question. And then I'm just thinking that maybe the last question is a so that it sticks in people's minds, would you be willing to share the song?
Huberman Lab
Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I love the song and thanks for saying you'll come back again. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Ellen Langer. I hope you found it to be as fascinating as I did. To learn more about Dr. Langer's work, to find links to her books and workshops and other resources, please see the show note captions.
Huberman Lab
Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. In addition, please click follow for the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five star review.
Huberman Lab
Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.
Huberman Lab
Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep
Huberman Lab
Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body.
Huberman Lab
Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram X, formerly known as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Threads. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast.
Huberman Lab
Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
Huberman Lab
Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as what we call protocols in the form of one to three page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure.
Huberman Lab
Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody.
Huberman Lab
Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Ellen Langer. And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
And I assure you, it's not all just about positive thinking. In fact, Dr. Ellen Langer gets us to think differently about scientific questions, our health, and just about everything else in the world. You'll soon see she has a quite unique way of thinking, not just about science and health, but also about life in general and what makes for a truly good life.
Huberman Lab
Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Dr. Ellen Langer is a true luminary and pioneer in this area of mind-body health. And she's a fabulous teacher as well. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I want to talk about three themes that you raised. The first one is this mind-body notion. And now, even as I say it, mind-body, I feel like a hint of guilt because I completely agree that the division of mind and body is one of the greatest mistakes of thinking in psychology and Western medicine that ever existed.
Huberman Lab
Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
In fact, a lot of my, you know, secret mission in this podcast is to remind people every single episode, it seems that, you know, the brain and body are connected bidirectionally through the nervous system, but other systems too. Like there's no, there's no single system, hormone system, nervous system, immune system that doesn't, that doesn't
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
you know, cross the blood brain barrier and go back and forth.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I love it. I've spent a lot of time trying to learn the history of medicine and the merge of philosophy and medicine. There's a wonderful book that if
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
anyone is suffering from insomnia, they should check out because it's extremely detailed and difficult to listen to or read, but it's called The Prince of Medicine, which basically details all the reasons why we are so confused about how medicine is done and should be done. And it has to do with rules and restrictions and cultural conventions. And it's a whole barbed wire mess, basically.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
But it includes this mess that was created for us, which is this idea that somehow because The brain is perhaps the seat of our consciousness. To many people, they believe that. But certainly, you know, like if I were to lose a few fingers on my left hand,
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I'm not sure I would fundamentally be a different person, but if I lost a few millimeters or the equivalent amount of real estate in my brain, my personality could very well change, perhaps for the better, some would say. And I'm probably now hoping for that event. But all kidding aside, I think the mind-body distinction has really poisoned our thinking about what's possible. Yeah.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
And the other experiments that you described point to what's possible. And I want to talk about those. But maybe if we could just hover on this notion of mind and body as a single thing, that there's an us. I don't want to get too philosophical here, but that there's an us and our body carries us forward in motor behavior.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
But how should we conceptualize the self if we don't have a mind-body distinction?
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Ellen Langer. Dr. Ellen Langer, welcome. Thank you, Andrew. So great to have you here. There's so many topics that you've worked on and shed light on that impact our daily lives and our internal world and our external world and how they interact. I want to know your definition of mindfulness.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Yeah. Well, what I love is I'm going to first reflect. What I love is the flexibility of your thinking around these things. Again, it's like maybe exercise, the effects of exercise are epiphenomena. So in thinking about mind-body, I can't get my – no pun intended – my head around – This distinction that if I lose a certain piece of my body, I'm not fundamentally changed.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
But if I lose a piece of neural real estate, I'm fundamentally different. That's the only thing that anchors me to the idea that they're separate.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Yeah, I'll buy that explanation. Yeah. I mean, I'm just trying to probe this because I think nowadays people think, oh, you know, if I breathe in a certain way, I'll change my state of mind, which is true. If I think differently... get stressed or relaxed, I'll change the way that I breathe. I mean, I think that we're starting to understand the bidirectionality of these things.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Well, we're probing mind-body and their interconnectedness. And so this iridologist, I've never heard that term before, this iridologist, it could be, based on what we were discussing a few moments ago, it could be that the suggestion that there was a problem with your gallbladder led to a problem with your gallbladder? Or do you think that she had some or he had some diagnostic knowledge?
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Yeah. What are your thoughts on things like acupuncture? And when I think about acupuncture, I'm not just thinking about the needles. The few times I've been to an acupuncturist, the first thing they do is they ask you to stick out your tongue. They are able to diagnose tongue texture and color and
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
And it could take on practical forms, theoretical forms.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Might I ask what –
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
more specifically, how our thoughts impact our health. Dr. Ellen Langer was one of the first people to systematically explore the mind-body connection with scientific rigor. Her laboratory has made a large number of truly fascinating findings.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is an all-in-one vitamin, mineral, probiotic drink with adaptogens. I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring this podcast. The reason I started taking AG1 and the reason I still take AG1 is because it is the highest quality and most complete foundational nutritional supplement.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
What that means is that AG1 ensures that you're getting all the necessary vitamins, minerals, and other micronutrients to form a strong foundation for your daily health. AG1 also has probiotics and prebiotics that support a healthy gut microbiome.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Your gut microbiome consists of trillions of microorganisms that line your digestive tract and impact things such as your immune system status, your metabolic health, your hormone health, and much more. So I've consistently found that when I take AG1 daily, my digestion is improved, my immune system is more robust, and my mood and mental focus are at their best.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
In fact, if I could take just one supplement, that supplement would be AG1. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. They'll give you five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3K2 with your order of AG1. Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim this special offer. Today's episode is also brought to us by Juve.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Juve makes medical grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast, it is the incredible impact that light can have on our biology.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Now, in addition to sunlight, red light and near infrared light sources have been shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health, including faster muscle recovery, improved skin health and wound healing, improvements in acne, reduced pain and inflammation, even mitochondrial function and improving vision itself.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
What sets Juve lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy device is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning specific wavelengths of red light and near infrared light in combination to trigger the optimal seller adaptations. Personally, I use the Juve whole body panel about three to four times a week, and I use the Juve handheld light both at home and when I travel.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
If you'd like to try Juve, you can go to Juve, spelled J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman. Juve is offering an exclusive discount to all Huberman Lab listeners with up to $400 off Juve products. Again, that's Juve, spelled J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman to get up to $400 off. So much of our developmental wiring is based on learning how to predict what's going to happen next.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I mean, you think about object constancy that kids, you know, of a certain age, you put a ball behind your back, they think it disappeared. Eventually, they realize just because you moved your arm and the ball behind your back doesn't mean that the ball is gone. This kind of thing.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
True, right. There's always a portal to a different outcome. And I'm catching on to your mode of thinking here. This is actually what I'm trying to do because I think, you know, the brain is a prediction-making machine. In addition to doing other things, it regulates heartbeat, all the autonomic stuff, right, heartbeat, digestion, et cetera.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
It remembers things, and it's a prediction-making machine, at least those three things. I feel like the prediction-making aspect of our neural circuitry is what leads us to this notion of having control or wanting control. Because I think a lot of what's happening in our conversation in the backdrop of these experiments is to what extent do we have control over outcomes?
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I feel like close to the end of each year, which we just passed recently, these lists come out.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I woke up early this morning and my first thoughts of the day I like to think have some Importance for something, who knows? It's when my mind seems clearest for at least a nanosecond. And my first thought was that the pattern that I seem to be perpetually in is one of whatever I'm doing, unless I'm podcasting or reading a research paper,
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
that my mind is constantly flitting to the other things that I think I should be doing. And it's sad. And it's something I've been working on for a very long time. And I'm able to hold my, for lack of a better word, attention on things to accomplish tasks in my life and to be present with people as it were. But I thought-
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Right. It could be an asset. I think that for me what I realize is most of the shoulds are just total lies.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
And also they don't – they're just lies. They're not actually coming from – I'm not hearing other people's voices in my head. You should do this. It's not parental narrative or anything. It's just – it's just contamination of a, like of a useless type. It's not like listening to the radio. I used to listen to the radio while I'd like make dinner or something. And it was so pleasant, right?
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
You know, you hear an evening discussion about the news or talk show or whatever on the radio while cooking. And so that kind of, quote unquote, distraction felt really meaningful. I felt like when I lived alone that I had other people in the room with me. This is different.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
This is, it feels as if it detracts from some essence of the behavior that I'm in, even if the behavior is just getting out of bed in the morning.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
No, but they feel intrusive. They don't feel welcome. Like, because I know what I'm going to do each day. I have a policy for myself of doing one work thing each day, maybe in one or two blocks, and I try and really put everything I have into those. It's kind of a recent evolution of not trying to do three things in a day.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Maybe it's a function of getting older, but I get so much more satisfaction and get truly so much more done from just doing one thing in my work life each day.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Well, maybe I'm running the script backwards. Let me put it differently. The level of satisfaction that I feel from having, say, worked on a chapter of my book for a couple of hours or even 45 minutes or from going for a run without my phone and just enjoying the run, it still –
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
blows me away how much I enjoy things that would fall under the category of simple things or things that I experience in isolation as compared to how little I enjoy and sometimes reflect on how punishing quote-unquote multitasking is, like being in a text conversation while I'm walking on the beach.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Well, I love that notion. I mean, I will routinely – these articles just get served up to me in my Google feed or something. Like the five things that people regret most on their deathbed. I think these lists are terrible. I do too. I think they're terrible because – Without fail, the number one, two, or three is always, I wish I hadn't worked as much.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I've derived tremendous pleasure from my work. But also tremendous relationships. Sure. The tremendous, excuse me, levels of insight into what I think are insights anyway.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Exactly. I mean, I'm constantly in pinch me moments with the podcast. That was also true when I was running my lab and then I decided to transition more to this and other things. But I mean, this notion that one wishes they'd worked less, it's such a sad thing to even think about. But it also implies that
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
You know, somebody who enjoys their work doesn't enjoy their family or their relationships, and that certainly isn't true either. So there are all these assumptions that are written into these lists. I'm actually quite opposed to lists of that sort in a short media article form because I think, A, it – clearly doesn't change behavior. I mean, people have been talking about, you know, drink less.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Well, smoking was eradicated mostly from this country through different mechanisms. But, you know, sleep more, stress less. I mean, these lists come out, and they don't change behavior at all.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
If I relax in the two or three hours before going to sleep, Especially if I dim the lights, I actually require a full two to three hours less of sleep to wake up feeling refreshed. My criteria is what does it take to wake up feeling reasonably refreshed?
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Yeah, this is such an important study. I was going to bring it up later, but I'm so glad you brought it up now. These days, a tremendous number of people are tracking their sleep. I do it through my, you know, my sleep mattress cover. I love getting my sleep score. I like to see what I got.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
People do with the, with the Oura Ring or the Whoop Band or, you know, pick your favorite technology nowadays or Apple Watch, whatever. If I understand this study correctly, the perception of how much sleep people got based on their knowledge of a number, a score, et cetera, dictates their cognitive performance and their physical wellbeing.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I mean, this runs countercurrent to like everything in the wellness biohacking movement. It jibes, however, with the data that I'm aware of. I think it was a sleep lab at Stanford that, for instance, positive anticipation of next day events reduces your sleep need and improves the quality of your sleep. Just being excited for the next day can make it such that the five hours you got is sufficient.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Well, I do think that there was a I'll sleep when I'm dead mindset that was diminishing people's health for a while. I do think it's great that books like Matt Walker's, you know, Why We Sleep, et cetera, came out. Although that book focused more on the bad things that happen if you don't sleep enough.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
And I think Matt, who's done a series on here about sleep, would now say, you know, it's great that we're... now focused largely on the things that one can do to get agency over one's sleep. But I think that there's such a thing as creating a sleep need anxiety and then people can't sleep. We're not going to dissolve into a puddle of our own tears on one poor night's sleep.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Well, I always say if you're going to get less than your typical or required night's sleep, hopefully it's for good reasons. Hopefully you're having a good time. It's when you get the fire alarm in the middle of the night that it becomes, as you said, stressful. I'd like to just... Briefly go back to the counterclockwise study.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Could you describe a little bit more about the practical aspects of that study? So these were people who, let's say, were on average how old? Was it somewhere between like 30 and 50?
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
For instance, today you'll learn about a study that Dr. Langer did in which she brought quite old people into her laboratory, or rather she designed a laboratory such that people lived in this laboratory,
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I love this approach to science of seeing what may be. I have to say there's this little script running in the back of my mind, and now I'm not going to judge it. The sorts of experiments and the general line of inquiry that you've been involved in for some time now –
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
to me, runs countercurrent to my perception of, I'm just going to be honest because I'm a West Coast guy, the Harvard campus and the idea that science is done in a particular way. You know, a very brief anecdote, you know, the folks that founded at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur were at Stanford at one point.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
They weren't professors, but there's a story, and I believe the story that they had proposed at that time, a class on mindfulness and breathing. To bring Stan Graf through and some other people. And this was probably the late 70s, early 80s. And whatever the cultural norms were at Stanford at that time, they claimed they were basically run off campus, went and started Esalen.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I don't know if it's a true story, but I like the story anyway. Yeah. My lab at Stanford ran a study on particular patterns of breathing along with David Spiegel and how it can be used to self-adjust stress levels and reduce stress levels. And nowadays there's grants given for this kind of stuff and meditation. So there's been a huge shift in the academic cultural milieu.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
But given that you've been running these sorts of – seeing what may be types of studies for a number of years at a campus that I consider is more kind of like East Coast dyed-in-the-wool notions of how science is done. I want to know, A – How was it received early on? B, did you care? C, is it in your nature and has it always been in your nature to kind of test the elements?
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Because I sense, but I could be completely wrong because I'm not a psychologist, that you delight in kind of not poking the bear, but playing with ideas that are kind of heretical.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Great. Okay.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I love hearing that because it shatters my notions of kind of East Coast Ivy League academia.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Well, clearly it's worked out. And nowadays, you know, there are multiple labs at Harvard working on happiness, you know, working on mindfulness. And I mean, you've pioneered an entire field in a way. But I'm more interested in the way of thinking that was the eight-year-old Ellen Langer.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
How did you come to realize this thing that we call mindfulness? I mean, certainly in the last 20 years, the notion of meditation as a valuable practice has become pretty common. And prior to that, it was considered a little bit alternative, hippy-dippy.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I have to introduce you to my good friend. Rick Rubin, who's been on this podcast a few times because he he wrote the creative act. He's basically his life has been spent, you know, trying to pull out the best creative works from musicians. And he's been involved in other things, too. And he's just as a, you know, a kind of supernatural level of ability to do this.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
And he keeps coming back to this thing in our discussions, but also in his book and and elsewhere about how the the. The impediment, the greatest impediment to the creative process is to think about the publicity or cultural milieu that it's going to exist in. That he really believes that these things are offerings to God, to the universe, to whatever that come through us.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
And that the barrier is, it's almost like the self-awareness is the barrier.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function. Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient levels, and much more. They've also recently added tests for toxins such as BPA exposure from harmful plastics and tests for PFAS or forever chemicals.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Function not only provides testing of over a hundred biomarkers key to your physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors who are expert in the relevant areas. For example, in one of my first tests with function, I learned that I had elevated levels of mercury in my blood.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Function not only helped me detect that, but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, I'd been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification. And I should say, by taking a second function test,
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
that approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by function simplicity and at the level of cost, it is very affordable.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. I feel like one of the major detriments to living the way that you're describing, which by the way has tremendous gravitational pull in my mind, like it's such a better way to go through life, right? And I subscribe also to this notion that Pretty much everything was made up besides the laws of nature, right?
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I mean, to me, physics is real and chemistry is real. Biology is real.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Right. I mean, you know, seeing what may be, like, I mean, I could say, listen, because of the laws of gravity, objects fall down, not up. But of course, we could create exceptions to that. But that humans make up All sorts of rules. Culture dictates. Groupthink dictates.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
And it seems that one of the major detriments to living in this freer way, this more exploratory way that we're talking about today, is this whole thing of theory of mind.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
You know, that we are able, for better or worse, to get into the minds of others and, in some cases— create ideas, true or not, about how we will be judged if we do A, B, or C. And in doing so, we give up some real estate.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
It's interesting how now in Western society we embrace this idea of presence, but it gets merged with these kind of more rigid terms like focus and attention.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
but the laboratory itself was designed to resemble the environment, everything from the types of furniture, the types of dishes, the types of music, et cetera, that those people had lived in 20 years prior. When those subjects lived in that laboratory for less than one week, the change in the environment and their interaction with that environment led them to have far more mobility,
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Can I ask you to— No.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
We're here together. Could I ask you for any reflections that come up around this recent thought train I was on? I was laughing at the fact that our species... for whatever reason, seems to keep wanting to build technologies. And that much of our effort these days is focused on trying to undo some of the ills of the technologies that we've developed.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
So I use smartphones and I love them and I use social media and I think it's terrific for certain things. But of course, these things have issues just like the automobile created issues, the television created issues and on and on. Okay. fossil fuels and all of this. People will debate fossil fuels. But anyway, you get the point.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Every technology brings with it some convenience or some way that humans have been able to overcome nature in some way or work with nature, right? You know, we can't fly, so we build planes. Okay. And I just decided to look at this through a different lens. Like, this is amazing. We're sending rockets into space. We'll probably colonize Mars not too long from now if Elon figures it out.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
And I get the sense he probably will. We've got AI. Just this last week, there's this whole AI thing. And so then I started thinking, like, you know, at what point do we just kind of stop? And the answer is pretty clear. It's unlikely that humans are ever going to stop this kind of itch to develop technology. And... I thought, wow, you know, like we're the only species that does this.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Like, you know, if the raccoons get together and they think, okay, like let's figure out how to pick locks, like actually how to pick locks as opposed to just go in through crawl spaces. If they've been working on that, they're still failing miserably, right? As far as I know. So it's something so unique to our species among the old world primates to develop technologies. Other animals do it.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Crows do it. Other primates do it. But we special, I mean, we are, really the utmost example of this. And I just wondered, like, what do you think the human compulsion is to develop technologies?
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
What do you think that's about? I'm not asking us to go into evolutionary psychology, but what do you think it is that humans have this generative spirit in their... mind-body, same thing, to express and to create things that have some durability in time or that are just an expression of where we are. I mean, it's so unusual.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
You know, sandcastle no selfie. You're just doing it to do it. I actually do a lot of writing these days that like in my brain I've always called sandcastle, no selfie. Like it's getting washed away and then someone says, well, you could take a photo of it. It's like, no, actually, I just do it just to see. It's just a practice of getting out what I feel I need to get out.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
This is why at some point in my life, I'm going to tell my team six months and I'm done, and I'm gonna go do art. And I just don't wanna scare anybody. But I just, I love the idea of being able to switch venue and possibly to, even change identity, which is something I'd like to talk to you about.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
So mindfulness as a practice of exploration, presence and exploration is perhaps a slightly better perhaps way to think about it.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Turns out it's the best way to learn. I researched an episode of a solo episode of this podcast I did to figure out what are the best ways to study and learn. It was based on a course that I had guest lectured in at Stanford, it turns out. we have to be careful now. I have to be careful saying things like the best.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
One of the most effective ways to learn is to self-test for what one knows and doesn't know, but not for sake of evaluation, but for sake of enhancing recall and depth of consolidation.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
The danger of awards that carry titles like Genius or even Nobel. I'm not going to poke at my few friends that happen to have Nobels because they've done beautiful work, but it's rare that people who get Nobels do much after that. They become great sources of fundraising for universities, so you get leveraged for that.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
and I don't think anyone's going to shed a tear for a Nobel Prize winner here, but this brings me to this notion of labels, not just rankings and performance, but labels. Sure.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I have a friend who was in elite, elite special operations for a number of years. Very smart guy, very philosophical. And he once said to me, for reasons that I don't recall, he said, you know, the two most powerful but also dangerous words in the English language are I am.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Because anything that follows the words I am will completely constrain your notions of what's possible and what's not possible. Right. And I said, you know, why are you telling me this, right? Because I pointed out that he was from special operations.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
He said, you know, that he and his teammates had a mode of refreshing their mindset around particular operations that were, because of the division of the military he was in, et cetera, it was quite varied. It wasn't like they were just sort of doing one type of thing. They had to be very adaptive. And he said that they had to completely wipe away
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
this I am component of their vocabulary, except as it related to the word adaptive. It was like, I am adaptive. But there was never a title to who they were, what they were, once they entered the context of a planning execution of one of these operations. Very interesting way of thinking about identity, how it shapes mindset, how it constrains it and opens doors. And
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
converts things into, um, action and, uh, or, or failure to, to execute. Yeah. Yeah. I found it very intriguing that, you know, cause here's a guy that wouldn't normally think like, think of this stuff, but it turned out he said that was a very potent tool for them. Yeah.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I know what you don't do. You don't slam on the brakes. You slowly come off the gas. I've driven on the East Coast a little bit.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Our Place. Our Place makes my favorite pots, pans, and other cookware.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Now, I've discussed on this podcast before that the PFASs, or forever chemicals like Teflon, have been linked to major health issues such as endocrine disruption, that means hormone disruption, gut microbiome disruption, fertility issues, and many other health problems. So it's really important to avoid them.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
This is why I recently fell in love with Our Place products, especially one of their cooking pans, the Titanium Always Pan Pro. Our Place products are made with the highest quality materials and are all PFAS and toxin free. They're beautifully designed and function extremely well for all your cooking needs.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Most mornings I cook eggs in it, I cook ground beef in it, ground venison, and the Titanium Pan is also designed in a way that allows eggs and meat to cook perfectly without sticking to the pan. It's extremely easy to clean, and like all Our Place products, it's nice to look at when sitting on the counter or on the stove.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. Now, I personally have been doing therapy weekly for well over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
For a limited time, Our Place is offering an exclusive 20% discount on their innovative Titanium Always Pan Pro, designed to last a lifetime and completely toxin-free. Visit fromourplace.com slash Huberman and use the code SAVEHUBERMAN20 to claim the offer.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
So if one has parents, let's say, who are quote unquote slowing down a bit and they're talking a little bit about some aches and pains and there's a stairwell in the house, for instance, and they're starting to say things like, you know, at some point we're either going to have to move into a place that doesn't have a stairwell or put one of those chair lifts things or maybe just move into the downstairs.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Do you think that... In just thinking about that, they're going to accelerate the demise of their locomotor ability?
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
It was a condition of being allowed to stay in school, but pretty soon I realized that therapy is an extremely important component to one's overall health. In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise, which of course I also do every week. There are essentially three things that great therapy provides.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I've always had glasses for reading at night when my eyes would get fatigued or something. But recently, I... came to my awareness that my vision at a distance is very, very sharp. I'm like an eagle. I can, you know, read numbers, you know, very far away. But my vision up close has been diminishing. I find myself straining a bit more even in the distance.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
So I started wearing, you know, eyeglasses.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Or should I have the book further away? But, you know, I've just kind of defaulted to eyeglasses. But I realized that because I understand the neuroplasticity of the visual system that I'm certainly accelerating the demise of my near vision by wearing glasses. And so I'm trying to, you know, balance the two.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
The Snellen is the letters and numbers, yeah.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
First of all, it provides a good rapport with somebody that you can trust and talk to about pretty much any issue with. Second of all, it can provide support in the form of emotional support and directed guidance. And third, expert therapy can provide useful insights.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Insights that allow you to better not just your emotional life and your relationship life, but of course also the relationship to yourself and your professional life and to all sorts of goals. BetterHelp makes it very easy to find an expert therapist with whom you resonate with and that can provide you those three benefits that come from effective therapy.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
better cognitive function, and a large number of other markers of biological aging reversed, which is absolutely remarkable and speaks to the incredible power that the mind has over our biology. That's just one example of the sorts of experiments that Dr. Langer has done, again, with a tremendous amount of scientific rigor.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Also, because BetterHelp allows for therapy to be done entirely online, it's super time efficient and easy to fit into a busy schedule. If you'd like to try BetterHelp, you can go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Helix Sleep.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
been thinking about deadlines a lot lately. And we hear stories of, you know, people being told, I need this done in 15 days. And if people are forced to do it in 15 days, somehow they're able to get it done in 15 days. And certainly there are limits to this. If you told me I need to write a thousand pages in five minutes, I... There would be very little on each page.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
But staying within the bounds of reason of what we're talking about when we say there's a deadline in X number of days, why do you think it is that our perception of what's possible tends to scale with, A, what's been done before, so precedent or no precedent, the four-minute mile, for instance, until Bannister broke it. You know, no one else broke it. He broke it.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Lots of people have broken it since. Yeah. and did immediately afterwards. So what do you think about this notion of what's possible in terms of preordained human decision constraints? Like no one can break the four-minute mile. Someone breaks the four-minute mile, now we reset to a new reality in time and in sort of capability.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Because I feel like much of what we believe about ourselves is also constrained by our beliefs about the outside world. And as you pointed out earlier, all of that's just a human script that is the play we're all in. Yeah.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
It's a great answer. I'm trying to think about the use of the scientific method, which is what you use in your lab and in your research. And why it is that you haven't, it seems, challenged the scientific method itself, except at the level of like what hypothesis you're gonna test.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are customized to your unique sleep needs. Now I've spoken many times before on the Huberman Lab Podcast and elsewhere about the fact that getting a great night's sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance. Now the mattress you sleep on makes a huge difference in terms of the quality of sleep that you get each night.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I mean, in order to do great science, I mean, at some point you need statistics, you need sample size to be sufficient. You know, the rigor of your studies is as important as the originality of the questions you're asking. And so it seems that you've embraced the scientific method as at least useful.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Not long ago, we went through one of the biggest public health crises of at least my lifetime, and at least two major controversies arose. One was the extent to which masks should or shouldn't be worn and are useful or no. The other is about the so-called vaccines.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
how soft it is, how firm it is, how breathable it is, the temperature, all play into your comfort and needs to be tailored to your unique sleep needs. If you go to the Helix website, you'll take a brief two minute quiz and it will ask you questions such as, do you tend to sleep on your back, your side of your stomach?
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Dexedrine is basically speed.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
It will also ask you, do you tend to run hot or cold during the night or the early part of the night, et cetera, things of that sort. Maybe you know the answers to those questions, maybe you don't, but either way, Helix will match you to the ideal mattress for you. For me, that turned out to be the Dusk mattress, D-U-S-K.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Yeah, and experience matters, at least in my view, because – so, for instance, going back to vaccines, right? I'm not trying to create unnecessary controversy here, but it's – absolutely clear to me that there are people who believe that, for instance, the COVID vaccines were immensely valuable. On the whole, it saved lives, et cetera.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
And there are other people who are absolutely convinced that the vaccines caused injury, perhaps to them or to people that they know. And both sides as it were, seem to know a lot about their side. And so the discussions aren't really discussions because the people that felt that they had a vaccine injury know an immense amount about that injury, the context, and others who had it.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
the people who had a different experience of the vaccines or have a different stance of the COVID vaccine know a tremendous amount about the statistics and mass of what the general outcomes were as a consequence. Okay, so it's futile, right? Like it's not a meaningful discussion.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I started sleeping on the Dusk mattress about three and a half years ago, and it's been far and away the best sleep that I've ever had. It's absolutely clear to me that having a mattress that's right for you does improve one's sleep.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Well, then I'd like to challenge an idea since that seems to be a challenging assumption.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I'd like to challenge the assumption that as people get older, they become more set in their ways. Because Many times today I'm hearing that as one – and I'm getting older. I now can say I'm so happy I can say I'm almost 50. I actually love getting older.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I feel better now at almost 50 than I did in my 20s. Yeah. Psychologically and physically. Yeah. And I felt great then. Yeah. So I challenge the assumption that we get worse with age. Yeah, no, I'm with you and I'm much older than you are. So do we get set in our ways or maybe we're more flexible in our thinking?
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
If you'd like to try Helix, you can go to helixsleep.com slash Huberman, take that two-minute sleep quiz, and Helix will match you to a mattress that is customized for your unique sleep needs. Right now, Helix is giving up to 25% off all mattress orders. Again, that's helixsleep.com slash Huberman to get up to 25% off.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
God forbid you're human, you spilled a piece of food.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I think for a lot of people, a practice of meditation feels like the best or most obvious gateway into this thing that we're calling mindfulness.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
It's like our sense of justice kind of gets in the way sometimes. I mean, sense of justice can be very important in society, so don't get me wrong. But, for instance, recently I had the experience where a news story came out. It wasn't about me. And those are the only ones you read, right?
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
It came out and the headline was, I'm just going to say what it was, that so-and-so's home, this famous person's home, was destroyed in the L.A. fires. Had a description of what had happened. It had a photograph of the home before and after, the devastation. And I immediately got upset because that was not their home. That was my home.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Okay, now, I hadn't lived in that home in a while, so there was no reason for them to say that it was my home. I wasn't upset that they didn't say it was my home. But there was my... Toyota 4Runner parked in the driveway.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Like basically the whole thing was made up.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
And I actually know the reporter because they had tried to contact me once before. They had somehow got a hold of my phone number, which frustrates me in addition to that.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
And I realized they're just making up lies.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
They're not even attempting to fact check. Now this was a minor thing whose home it was perhaps, but they made a bunch of issues around this. And then another article came out about this person and another one. And I basically, I don't believe anything that I read, certainly from that particular venue.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
And then I started to realize that probably half or more of what we read in traditional popular press is just made up. And no one's fact-checking this stuff because how could they? Like, how could they know? And of course, I'm not going to pursue this in any kind of legal way. I don't really care. But my sense of justice is what frustrated me. And as soon as I went...
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Like this reporter, so desperate for a story and to capitalize on the horrible events, like felt that they needed to do – and I thought this is like ridiculous and our species is just so weird. This is what I always default to in the end, whether or not it's about technology, about something else. I mean real tragedies are real tragedies. And when those happen, as the fires were, it upsets me.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
But – So much of like what grabs our attention and the drama of things is just humans being ridiculous. Sometimes lying, sometimes in service to one thing or pretending it's in service to justice when in fact it's in service to themselves or a combination of things. And I think as I've hit this, like what I hope is a new vista in my life, I'm thinking to myself, like, wow, we're really...
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
obvious like we're so obviously silly like the game that i bring up rick rubin again he he has this saying that he repeats over and over to me he said like there are only two truths nature and professional wrestling he loves professional wrestling he watches hours and hours of professional wrestling and i said why do you do that isn't that um he said it's made up and everyone knows it's made up
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Which is why it actually is one of the few things that's real. Because we all know it's made up. So whether or not they become allies or they become enemies in a given match or whether or not somebody breaks the rules and the ref pretends they don't see, it's theater. And it's designed to show you the theater that is human nature. I never had any appreciation for professional wrestling.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
But he's right. And so once you start looking, it's all made up.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I realized I was the one being ridiculous. I'm upset because there's some injustice. Because what? Because I don't want my forerunner in a news article about someone else's home. Maybe that person had a home that looked very similar. But I guess it was the break with my assumption that... The traditional media tries to get things right. That they at least try.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
And in this case, the person clearly didn't even try. They had access to the real information.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
So maybe it's the time investment as opposed to something specific about the meditation practice. That's a heretical idea in the world of wellness.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
What do you think it is about hard events that are life-changing that anchor our mindfulness?
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
my postdoc advisor, well, all three of my advisors died, suicide, cancer, cancer. So the joke is you don't want me to work for you, but in all seriousness, and I was very, very close with the middle one, but the last one as well. And he died of pancreatic cancer, as it were. we did multiple fesh thrifts for him, celebrations of life, right?
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
You know, there's like in academia, they can't get enough fesh thrifts and this, you know, and I'll never forget Ben getting up his, the celebration of life in front of all the big ups at Stanford and all these people and editors flew in. I mean, they were like over 200 people there, president of Stanford was there. And he said, you know, if I had known that,
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I was going to be so celebrated and that people were going to be so kind to me, I would have, you know, died a lot earlier, you know. That was the first thing he said.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
And the second thing he said is, you know, if I could do it over again, you know, one of these if I could do it over again things, he said, I would have never agreed to review so many papers, review so many grants, and I would have eaten a lot more sushi and a lot more ice cream. And that was it. He had a good relationship with death. I interviewed him for hours even before I had a podcast.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I love the way that you look at things that we take for granted as operating one way through this different perspective. Our mutual friend, Allie Crum, told me the story that at one point she was in a conversation with you and you said, well, maybe exercise and all its effects on our health is just an epiphenomenon. Could you talk a little bit more about that?
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
So today, Dr. Langer and I talk about how the acquisition of knowledge, just simply learning about certain biological mechanisms, as well as your mindset about various aspects of your health and wellbeing, can powerfully dictate your health and wellbeing. We talk about longevity. We talk about exercise and weight loss. We talk about infectious disease.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
The will to live is a very interesting thing.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Well, I align with you on that stance. I mean I use the name only because they're sometimes referenced as such. But a focus of the podcast recently has been to emphasize that in that group and others – there's a brain area that's available to everybody because everybody has it, which is this anterior mid-cingulate cortex, which is activated when people embrace new forms of learning and challenges.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
And it does seem to correlate with maintaining cognitive function into later age. And it's roped into, excuse me, neurally it is roped into, it's linked up with the dopamine reward circuitry and other circuitries in a way that ties it somewhat to this notion of the will to live, being... related to the embracing new learnings or at least new challenges.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I think, first of all, I don't think most people are familiar with what epiphenomena are, but this idea of looking at things through a different portal seems so valuable, regardless of what the experimental outcome turned out to be. And perhaps we should touch on that experimental outcome about labor versus non-labor.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
This makes me wonder why we have names for hospitals like Hospital for Sick Children.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I've always been bothered by that title. Sorry for anyone that's been treated there and had a great experience because I imagine it's a great hospital.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
It keeps coming back to powers of observation, asking questions, depth as opposed to speed. Yeah. These seem to be the kind of basic contour.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Yeah, and masterfully, and masterfully, yeah, masterfully. And what I realize is that we're always to some extent in choice, as they say.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
And I think to some people that will feel freeing, like, you know, I'm always in choice. I can, my house burned down. Well, you know, who knows what newness that will bring, these kinds of things. But to some people-
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
I can certainly adopt that. I also can feel the parts of me that I assume are what other people experience as well, which is that when one has so many degrees of freedom over how to respond, that itself can feel a bit overwhelming.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
At one time, that was considered okay. Nowadays, there are a couple things that are more complicated, I would argue. One... Earlier, you mentioned coddling of people that are, you know, aged, elderly. I hate that word now that I'm 77. Well, you are. No one would guess that you're 77. And yeah, your vitality is undeniable.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
This notion of coddling, you know, Jonathan Haidt wrote The Coddling of the American Mind, Anxious Generation. I have to wonder what it's like for kids growing up nowadays and teenagers constantly being told about this disorder and that disorder.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
And the idea that if you meet five out of ten of the menu of criteria that you are – you might even be this thing. You are blank as opposed to just having blank or struggling with blank.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
And we certainly over-prescribe medication in this country, certainly compared to other countries. The vast amount of antidepressant and anti-anxiety medication is consumed in the United States. And certainly those medications can be valuable for people. I would argue, but they are over prescribed, I would also argue.
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
So my question is, if one grows up being told that they are fragile, that there's threat everywhere, or even that there's threat everywhere on social media, let's just like push into that, into that dent a little bit too, because that's Jonathan's idea. You know,
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Sitting here talking to you, that now has me thinking, well, maybe my 18-year-old niece is perfectly capable of navigating this online landscape, and it's just me who's not capable of it. And so I'm going to decide that she's struggling. But maybe kids aren't getting enough physical activity, one could argue, on the basis of data. But do you see where I'm going here?
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
When one can kind of pivot to different lenses to look at something through – It increases the number of options but then at some point we have to decide are we coddling our kids too much or are we not coddling them too much?
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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer
Yeah, certainly social media. gives it a literal score for followers and likes and things of that sort. So it's thumbs up, thumbs down. I mean, literally scoring performance in terms of what other people think. It's certainly training those circuits very robustly, whereas
Huberman Lab
How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Jamil Zaki. Dr. Jamil Zaki is a professor of psychology at Stanford University. He is also the director of the Social Neuroscience Laboratory at Stanford.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
This is very important because there's a lot of confusion about these words and what they mean. But I can assure you that by the end of today's discussion, you will have new frameworks and indeed new tools, protocols that you can use as strategies to better navigate situations and relationships of all kinds and indeed to learn better.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
How different is cynicism from skepticism? You know, I can think of some places where they might overlap, but cynicism seems to carry something of a lack of anticipation about any possibility of a positive future. Is that one way to think about it?
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
I'd also like to mention that Dr. Zaki has authored a terrific new book entitled Hope for Cynics, The Surprising Science of Human Goodness. And I've read this book and it is spectacular. There is a link to the book in the show note captions. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
When I think about scientists, one of the first things I think about is not just their willingness, but their excitement to embrace complexity. Like, okay, these two groups disagree or these two sets of data disagree. And it's the complexity of that interaction that excites them. Whereas when I think of cynics in the way that it's framed up in my mind, which is
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
I'm getting more educated now, but admittedly, my understanding of cynicism is still rather superficial. You'll change that in the course of our discussion. But that cynics are not embracing the complexity of cynicism. disagreement. They are moving away from certainly any notion of excitement by complexity. It seems like it's a heuristic. It's a way to simplify the world around you.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Maui Nui. Maui Nui venison is the most nutrient dense and delicious red meat available.
Huberman Lab
How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Wow, there's certainly a lot there that maps to many people's experience. So you pointed out that some degree of cynicism likely has roots in insecure attachment. That said, if one looks internationally... Do we find cultures where it's very hard to find cynics? And there could be any number of reasons for this.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Or perhaps even more interestingly, do we find cultures where there really isn't even a word for cynicism?
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
I've spoken before on this podcast about the fact that most of us should be seeking to get about one gram of quality protein per pound of body weight every day. That protein provides critical building blocks for things like muscle repair and synthesis, but also promotes overall health given the importance of muscle as an organ.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. By now, many of you have heard me say that if I could take just one supplement, that supplement would be AG1. The reason for that is AG1 is the highest quality and most complete of the foundational nutritional supplements available.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
What that means is that it contains not just vitamins and minerals, but also probiotics, prebiotics, and adaptogens to cover any gaps you may have in your diet and provide support for a demanding life.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
For me, even if I eat mostly whole foods and minimally processed foods, which I do for most of my food intake, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits and vegetables, vitamins and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone. For that reason, I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012, and often twice a day, once in the morning or mid-morning, and again in the afternoon or evening.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
When I do that, it clearly bolsters my energy, my immune system, and my gut microbiome. These are all critical to brain function, mood, physical performance, and much more. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim their special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer. What is the relationship, if any, between cynicism and happiness or lack of happiness? When I think of somebody who's really cynical, I think of an Oscar the Grouch or a curmudgeon-like character.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
And as I ask this question, I'm thinking specifically about what you said earlier about how cynicism prevents us from certain forms of learning that are important and very valuable to us. Here's the reason why. I'll give just a little bit of context. I remember when I was a kid, my dad who went to – classic boarding schools.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
He grew up in South America, but he went to these boarding schools that were very strict. And he was taught, he told me, that to be cheerful and happy, people would accuse you of being kind of dumb. Whereas if you were cynical and you acted a little bored with everything, people thought that you were more discerning.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
But that he felt it was a terrible model for going through life because it veered into cynicism. My dad happens to be a scientist. He's a... relatively happy person. Sorry, dad. A happy person. Seems happy, but meaning he's a person who has happiness and he has other emotions too.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Eating enough quality protein each day is also a terrific way to stave off hunger. One of the key things, however, is to make sure that you're getting enough quality protein without ingesting excess calories.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
I wouldn't say he's happy all the time, but he experiences joy and pleasure in daily activities, small things and big things in life. So clearly he rescued himself from the forces that were kind of pushing him down that path. But that's the anecdote. But I use that question more as a way to frame up the possible collaboration between cynicism and
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
and exuding boredom or a challenge in shifting somebody towards a happier affect. Because when I think about cynics, I think that they're like kind of unhappy people. And when I think about people who are not very cynical, I think of them as kind of cheerful and curious. And there's some ebullience there. They might not be Tigger-like in their affect, but they kind of veer that direction.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Maui Nui venison has an extremely high quality protein to calorie ratio, such that getting that one gram of protein per pound of body weight is both easy and doesn't cause you to ingest an excess amount of calories. Also, Maui Nui venison is absolutely delicious. They have venison steaks, ground venison, and venison bone broth. I personally like and eat all of those.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
In fact, I probably eat a Maui Nui venison burger pretty much every day, and occasionally I'll swap that for a Maui Nui steak. And if you're traveling a lot or simply on the go, they have a very convenient Maui Nui venison jerky, which has 10 grams of quality protein per stick at just 55 calories. While Maui Nui offers the highest quality meat available, their supplies are limited.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
In other words, cynics are not being scientific. Their hypothesis is cast, but they're not looking at the data equally. Right. And we should remind people that a hypothesis is not a question. Uh, every great experiment starts with a question and then you generate a hypothesis, which is a, uh, a theory or conclusion essentially, uh, made upfront.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
And then you go collect data and you see if you prove or disprove the hypothesis. Yeah. And you can never really prove a hypothesis. You can only, uh, support it or not support it with the data that you collect depending on the precision of your tools. But, um, That's very interesting because I would think that if we view cynics as smarter, which clearly they're not as a group, right?
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
You're saying cynics are not more intelligent, right? I believe that's covered in your book. And if one knows that, then why do we send cynics in kind of like razors to assess what the environment is like? Is that because... we'd rather have others deployed for us to kind of like weed people out? Is it that we're willing to accept some false negatives?
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Meaning for those, I guess we're using a little bit of a semi-technical language here, false negatives would be, you know, you're trying to assess a group of people that would be terrific employees. And you send in somebody to interview them that's very cynical. So Presumably in one's mind, that filter of cynicism is only going to allow in people that are really, really right for the job.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
And we're willing to accept that there are probably two or three candidates that would also be right for the job, but we're willing to let them go. Some false negatives. as opposed to having someone get through the filter who really can't do the job.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Like we're willing to let certain opportunities go by being cynical or by deploying a cynic as the, you know, I'm imagining the person with the clipboard, you know, very rigid. Like cynicism and rigidity seem to go together. So that's why I'm lumping these kind of psychological phenotypes.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Is cynicism domain specific? And there again, I'm using jargon, meaning... if somebody is cynical in one environment, like cynical about the markets, like, well, things are up now, but you know, have an election come, so things could go this way or that way, depending on, you know, do they tend to be cynical about other aspects of life, other domains?
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Again, that's mauinuivenison.com slash huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Juve. Juve makes medical grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing I've consistently emphasized on this podcast, it's the incredible impact that light can have on our biology.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Now, in addition to sunlight, red light and near infrared light have been shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellar and organ health. including faster muscle recovery, improved skin health and wound healing, even improvements in acne, reducing pain and inflammation, improving mitochondrial function, and even improving vision itself.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
His laboratory focuses on key aspects of the human experience, such as empathy and cynicism, which lie at the heart of our ability to learn and can be barriers to learning, such as the case with cynicism.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
So much of schooling in this country is based on at first cooperation, like we're all going to sit around and listen to a story and then we're going to work in small groups. But in my experience, over time, it evolves into more independent learning and competition learning. They post the distribution of scores. That's largely the distribution of individual scores.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
There are exceptions to this, of course. I've never been to business school, but I think they form small groups and work on projects. It's true in computer science at the undergraduate level and so on. But to what extent do you think having a mixture of cooperative learning
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
still competition perhaps between groups, as well as individual learning and competition can foster kind of an erosion of cynicism. Because it sounds like being cynical is, I don't want to be hard on the cynics here, but they're probably already hard on themselves and everybody else. We know they're hard on everybody else. But, oh, there was my presumption. Okay, I'm going to stay open-minded.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Maybe they're not. You'll tell me. That they are, on average, less intelligent is what I'm hearing. And that there's something really big to be gained from anybody who decides to embrace novel ideas. Even if... they decide to stick with their original decision about others or something.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Provided they explore the data in an open-minded way, even transiently, it sounds like there's an opportunity there. You gave a long-term example of these two phishing scenarios. So the neuroplasticity takes years, but we know neuroplasticity can be pretty quick.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
I would imagine if you expose a cynic to a counterexample to their belief that it's not going to erode all of their cynicism, but it might make a little dent in that scenario. neural circuit for cynicism.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
What sets Juve lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy devices is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning it uses specific wavelengths of red light and near infrared light in combination to trigger the optimal cellular adaptations. Personally, I use the Juve handheld light, both at home and when I travel.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
I'd like to take us back just briefly to these developmental stages. Maybe I'm bridging two things that don't belong together, but I'm thinking about the young brain, which of course is hyperplastic, and comparing that to the older brain. The young brain learns a number of things while it does a number of things. It handles heart rate, digestion, et cetera, unconsciously.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
It's only about the size of a sandwich, so it's super portable and convenient to use. I also have a Juve whole body panel, and I use that about three or four times per week. If you'd like to try Juve, you can go to juve, spelled J-O-O-V-V, .com slash Huberman. Juve is offering an exclusive discount to all Huberman Lab listeners with up to $400 off select Juve products.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
And then in many ways, the neuroplasticity that occurs early in life is to establish these maps of prediction. If things fall down, not up in general, things fall down, not up. and so on, so that mental real estate can be used for other things and learning new things. So I'm thinking about the sort of classic example of object permanence.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
You show a baby a block or a toy, and then you hide that toy, and they At a certain age, a very young age, will look as if it's gone. And then you bring it back, and then they're amazed. And then at some point along their developmental trajectory, they learn object permanence. They know that it's behind your back.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
And then we hear that characters like Santa Claus are real, and then eventually we learn that they're not, and so on and so on. In many ways, we go from being completely non-cynical about the physical world to being... One could sort of view it as cynical about the physical world, right? Like, I love to see magic. In fact, we had...
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
probably the world's best or among the very best magicians on this podcast, Ozzy Wind. He's a mentalist and magician. And to see him do magic, even as an adult who understands that the laws of physics apply, they seem to defy the laws of physics in real time. And it just blows your mind to the point where you're like, that can't be, but you sort of want it to be.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
And at some point you just go, you know what? It's what we call magic. So it seems to me that cynics apply almost physics-like rules to social interaction. Like that they talk in terms of like first principles of human interactions, right? They talk about this group always this and that group always that, right? These like strict categories.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
thick black lines between categories, as opposed to any kind of blending of understanding or blending of rules. And one can see how that would be a really useful heuristic, but as we're learning, it's not good in the sense that we don't want to judge, but it's not good if our goal is to learn more about the world or learn the most information about the world. Can we say that? Yes.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Again, that's Juve, J-O-O-V-V, .com slash Huberman to get $400 off select Juve products. Today's episode is also brought to us by Waking Up. Waking Up is a meditation app that offers hundreds of guided meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga nidra sessions, and more. I started practicing meditation when I was about 15 years old, and it made a profound impact on my life.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Function. I recently became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
While I've long been a fan of blood testing, I really wanted to find a more in-depth program for analyzing blood, urine and saliva to get a full picture of my heart health, my hormone status, my immune system regulation, my metabolic function, my vitamin and mineral status and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors on your results. For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had two high levels of mercury in my blood. This was totally surprising to me. I had no idea prior to taking the test.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Function not only helped me detect this, but offered medical doctor-informed insights on how to best reduce those mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, because I had been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification, and worked to reduce my mercury levels.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
And by now there are thousands of quality peer reviewed studies that emphasize how useful mindfulness meditation can be for improving our focus, managing stress and anxiety, improving our mood and much more. In recent years, I started using the Waking Up app for my meditations because I find it to be a terrific resource for allowing me to really be consistent with my meditation practice.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Comprehensive lab testing like this is so important for health, and while I've been doing it for years, I've always found it to be overly complicated and expensive.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
I've been so impressed by Function, both at the level of ease of use, that is getting the test done, as well as how comprehensive and how actionable the tests are, that I recently joined their advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman Lab listeners. Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
love that your examples of awe both pale blue dot and uh everyday compassion bridge the two uh what i think of as um time domains that the or i should say space time domains that the brain can encompass you know this has long fascinated me about the human brain and presumably other animals brains as well which is that you know we can sharpen our um aperture to
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
you know, something so, so small and pay attention to just like the immense beauty. And, you know, like I have a lot of ants in my yard right now. And lately I've been watching them interact because they were driving me crazy. They were just like, you know, they're like everywhere this summer and they're climbing on me. And I thought, I'm just gonna like watch what they do.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
And clearly there's a structure there. I know Deborah Gordon at Stanford has studied ant behavior and others. And it's like, there's a lot going on there. But then you look up from there, you're like, wow, there's a big yard. And then the sense of awe for me is that Interactions like that must be going on everywhere in this yard.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
And, you know, it frames up that the aperture of our cognition in space and in time, you know, covering small distances quickly or small distances slowly. And then we can zoom out literally and think about us on this planet. balls in space, right? And that ability, I think, is incredible. And that awe can be captured at these different extremes of space-time cognition. Amazing.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
It seems to me that what you're saying is that cynicism and awe are also at opposite ends of the continuum. And that's taking us in a direction slightly different than I was going to try and take us, but I love that we're talking about awe because to me, it feels like it's a more extreme example of delight.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
And I'd like you to perhaps, if there's any examples of research on this, touch on to what extent a sense of cynicism divorces us from delight and awe, or I guess their collaborator, which is creativity. To me, everything you're saying about cynicism makes it sound anti-creative because you're, by definition, you're eliminating possibility.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
And creativity, of course, is the unique original combination of existing things or the creation of new things altogether, creativity. So what, if anything, has been studied about the relationship between cynicism, I guess we call it open-mindedness, and creativity and or awe?
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Many people start a meditation practice and experience some benefits, but many people also have challenges keeping up with that practice. What I and so many other people love about the waking up app is that it has a lot of different meditations to choose from, and those meditations are of different durations.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
So it makes it very easy to keep up with your meditation practice, both from the perspective of novelty. You never get tired. tired of those meditations. There's always something new to explore and to learn about yourself and about the effectiveness of meditation. And you can always fit meditation into your schedule, even if you only have two or three minutes per day in which to meditate.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Today, you'll learn the optimal mindsets to adopt when trying to understand how to learn conflict resolution and how to navigate relationships of all kinds and in all contexts, including personal relationships and in the workplace.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
It's so interesting to think about all of this in the context of neuroplasticity. I feel like one of the holy grails of neuroscience is to finally understand, you know, what are the gates to neuroplasticity? We understand a lot about the cellular mechanisms. We know it's possible throughout the lifespan. We know that there's sure a and involvement of different neuromodulators and so on.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
But at the level of human behavior and emotional stance, not a technical term, but I'll use it, of say being curious. To me, curiosity is an interest in the outcome with no specific emotional attachment to the outcome. Yeah. But, of course, we could say you're curious with the hope of getting a certain result. So one could modify it.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
But there is something about that childlike mind, so-called beginner's mind, where you're open to different outcomes. And it seems like the examples that you're giving keep bringing me back to these developmental themes because – If it's true that cynics exclude a lot of data that could be useful to them, it seems that the opportunities for neuroplasticity are reduced for cynics.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
I also really like doing yoga nidra or what is sometimes called non-sleep deep rest for about 10 or 20 minutes because it is a great way to restore mental and physical vigor without the tiredness that some people experience when they wake up from a conventional nap. If you'd like to try the Waking Up app, please go to wakingup.com slash Huberman, where you can access a free 30-day trial.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
To flip it on its head, to what extent are we all a little bit cynical? And how would we explore that? Like if I were in your laboratory and you had 10 minutes with me, what questions would you ask me to determine how cynical I might be or how not cynical I might be?
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
So it loads the questions or it's open-ended where I would, would you say, what are people like? And then I would just kind of free associate about that.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Oh, I absolutely zip it over to them. Yeah. Yeah, I'm curious. Great. And I'm willing to lose the money. So I suppose that factors in as well.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Again, that's wakingup.com slash Huberman to access a free 30-day trial. And now for my discussion with Dr. Jamil Zaki. Dr. Jamil Zaki, welcome. Thanks so much for having me. Delighted to have you here. And to learn from you, you have decided to tackle an enormous number of very interesting and challenging topics.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
There does seem to be a salience about negative interactions or somebody stealing from us or doing something that we consider cruel to us or to others. nowadays with social media, we get a window into, gosh, probably billions of social interactions in the form of comments and clapbacks and retweets. And there certainly is benevolence on social media.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
But what if any data exists about how social media either feeds or impedes cynicism, or maybe it doesn't change it at all? And I should say that there's also the kind of, I have to be careful, I'm trying not to be cynical. I maintain the view that certain social media platforms encourage a bit more negativity than others. And certainly there are accounts.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
I'm trying to think of accounts like on Instagram, like Upworthy, which its whole basis is to promote positive stuff. I like that account very much. But certainly you can find the full array of emotions on social media. To what extent is just being on social media, regardless of platform, increasing or decreasing cynicism?
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Challenging because my read of it, not just your book, but of these fields in the science that you've done, is that people default to some complicated states and emotions sometimes that in some ways serve them well, in some ways serve them less well. So I'd like to talk about this at the level of the individual and interactions between pairs and larger groups and so on.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
But just to kick things off, what is cynicism? I have my own ideas, but what is cynicism? What does it serve in terms of its role in the human mind?
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
So much there. I have a I suppose, a mixed relationship to social media. I teach there and I learn there. And I also have to be very discerning in terms of how I interact with it. And you made this point that I've never heard anyone make before, which is that many people feel alone by virtue of the fact that they don't share in this warring nature that they see on social media.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
It's almost like sometimes I feel like I'm watching a combat sport that I don't feel quite cut out for. And then when I'm away from it, I feel better. But I like everybody else. Sometimes we'll get sucked into the highly salient nature of a combat between groups on social media. It can be very alluring in the worst ways. This mean world syndrome, what's the inverse of that?
Huberman Lab
How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
The kind world syndrome, I suppose. But attempts at creating those sorts of social media platforms have been made, things like Blue Sky, which has other aspects to it as well. And while it may be thriving, I don't know, I haven't checked, recently. It seems like people aren't really interested in being on there as much as they are these other platforms. Clearly the numbers play out that way.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Why do you think that is?
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Do you think it's possible to be adequately informed about threats to be able to live one's life in the most adaptive way while not being on social media? None of the social media platforms. can you have a great life that way, a safe life?
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
I'm not anti-social media, but I have to circle back on this yet again. A former guest on this podcast, one of our most popular episodes is with a former Navy SEAL, David Goggins, who's known for many things, but chief among them is striving and pushing oneself. And David has said many times that...
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Nowadays, it's easier than ever to be extraordinary because most people are basically spending time just consuming experiences on social media and doing a lot less.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
just literally doing a lot less not just exercising and running as he does although by the way he's in school to become a paramedic so he's essentially gone to medical school um and is always doing a bunch of other things as well so um he's also an intellectual learner um now i don't know if i agree with him completely but it's an interesting statement you know if social media is um
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
What sets Dr. Zaki's work apart from others is that he's able to take laboratory research and apply that to real world scenarios to direct optimal strategies for things like how to set personal boundaries, how to learn information in uncertain and sometimes even uncomfortable environments, and then how to bring that to bear in terms of your relationship to yourself, your relationship to others, and how to collaborate with others in more effective ways.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
bringing out our cynicism, polarizing us, and perhaps taking away, I would probably agree with David, at least to some extent, taking away our time where we could be generative, writing, thinking, socializing, building in other ways that one builds their life. Then I guess an important question is, do you think social media could be leveraged to decrease cynicism
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
or as you referred to it, to generate hopeful skepticism, like this notion of hopeful skepticism as a replacement for cynicism is something that is really intriguing. What would that look like? We were just gonna do the Gedanken experiment here. What would a feed on social media look like that fed hopeful skepticism as opposed to cynicism?
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
I believe in your book, you quote Kurt Vonnegut, who says, we are who we pretend to be, so we need to be careful who we pretend to be. What do you think that quote means? How do you interpret that quote?
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Do you think there's a version of AI that is... less cynical than people tend to be. The reason I ask this is I'm quite excited about and hopeful about AI. I'm not one of these, I don't know what you call them, but AI doomers. And it's here, it's happening. It's happening in the background now. And I've started using AI in a number of different realms of life and I find it to be incredible.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
It seems to me to combine neural networks and Google search with PubMed and it's fascinating. It's not perfect. It's far from perfect. But that's also part of its beauty is that it mimics a human lack of perfectness well enough that it feels something kind of like brain-like, personality-like.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
You could imagine that given the enormous amount of cynicism that's out there, that some of the large language models that make up AI would be somewhat cynical, would put filters that were overly stringent on certain topics. You also wouldn't want AI that was not stringent enough, right? Because we are already and soon to be using AI to bring us information extremely quickly.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
And the last thing we want are errors in that information. So if we were to take what we know from humans and the data that you've collected and others have collected about ways to shift ourselves from cynicism to hopeful skepticism, do you think that's something that could be laced into these large language models?
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
I'm not talking about at the technical level, that's certainly beyond my understanding, but could you build an AI version of yourself that could forage the internet for news and what's going on out there that is, you know, where you, it's, you know, tune down the cynicism a little bit since it's difficult to be less cynical.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
In other words, could it do a better job of being you than you and then therefore make you better?
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
I mean, that's what I want. I was thinking about my Instagram feed and cynicism versus hopeful skepticism versus, I guess, awe. And I'll use the following examples. I subscribe to an Instagram account that I like very much, which essentially just gives me images of beautiful animals in their – in their ultimate essence.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
It's an account by a guy named Joel Sartore, who works for National Geographic, and he's created what's called the photo arc. He's trying to get images of all the world's animals that really capture their essence, and many of them are endangered, and some very close to extinction. Others are more... you know, more prolific, uh, right now.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Nonetheless, I think of that account as all goodness, all benevolence. And then at the other extreme, I subscribe to an animal account called nature is metal. We've actually collaborated with nature is metal on a, on a great white shark grabbing a tuna, um, video that, uh, that I didn't take, but someone I was with took and we got their permission to post it.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
In any event, nature's metal is all about the harshness of nature. And then I think about like the planet earth series hosted by David Attenborough and so forth, which sort of has a mixture of, you know, beautiful ducklings, you know, and, but then also animals hunting each other and dying of old age or of starvation. And so the full array.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
So I think about that as an example of, you know, if you, if you look at nature's metal long enough, you, And it's a very cool account. I highly recommend people follow all three of these accounts. But if you look at it long enough, you get the impression like nature is hard. Life is hard out there. And it can be.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
You look at the Sartori account and you get the impression that, you know, animals are just beautiful. They're just being them, right? And he has such a, he has a gift for capturing the essence of insects, reptiles and mammals and everything in between.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
When I think about social media or I even just think about our outlook onto the landscape of real life, non-virtual life, I feel like the human brain potentially can like all these things. But what you're describing in cynicism is the people that – for whatever reason, they're skewed toward this view that like life is hard and therefore I need to protect myself and protect others at all times.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
In reality, how dynamic is cynicism? Earlier you described how it can be domain specific, but if somebody is pretty cynical, And they're older than 25. They're outside the sort of developmental plasticity range. What are the things that they can do on a daily basis to either tune down their cynicism or create room for this hopeful skepticism in a way that enriches them? Let's just start with them.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Because after all, they're cynics. We can't bait them with the good that they'll do for the world, but they'll do that too. What are some tools that we can all apply towards being less cynical?
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Are you adopting children? Yeah.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
I love those three, and I love the... distinguishing features of savoring versus gratitude because there's so much data to support gratitude practices. I don't think I've ever heard those two distinguished from one another, but clearly savoring things is equally powerful towards our neurochemistry and our well-being. I love that you include both sensory and interpersonal aspects to this.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
These are highly actionable and I'm sure people are as excited about them as I am because all this knowledge from the laboratory is indeed wonderful. But of course we always wanna know what can we do now that you've made such a strong case for tuning down our cynicism a little bit in order to make ourselves smarter, better,
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
happier and in touch with with with awe on a more regular basis uh would love to hear about some of the actions one can take as well yeah so
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
I love those practices. And thank you for reinforcing the process of reinforcing the experiences. Because many times I'll be listening to an audio book or I'll think of something when I'm running and I'll put it into my voice memos or notes in my phone and then I move them to this very notebook or another similar to it.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
And I'll go back and read it, but many things don't, don't get passed through the filters that, um, uh, I forget because I didn't do that. And we know this is one of the best ways to solidify information is to think about experiences and information after being exposed to it. This is true studying.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
This is true clearly for, uh, emotional learning and, and our own personal evolution, which brings me to, um, uh, Another example of somebody from the, I don't know what to call them. Is it sort of philosophy, wellness, self-help space? You mentioned Pema Chodron. Yeah. Wonderful writer.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
There's someone else more or less in that space, Byron Katie, who a lot of her work is about challenging beliefs by simply asking questions about our core beliefs. Mm-hmm. This is something that I've started to explore a bit. Like one could have the idea that, you know, good people always, you know, I don't know, show up on time. And wouldn't we all love to be punctual?
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
And as an academic, I confess, for me, everything starts 10 minutes after the hour. So we're consistently on time, but late, right? So the non-academics. My friends from the military have a saying, which is five minutes early is on time, on time is late. And if you're late, you better bring lunch. So that kind of thing. In any event, the practice that she promotes in essence is,
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
to take a core belief and then just start challenging it from a number of different directions. Is that always true? You know, are there cases where that's not true? What would that look like? Et cetera, as a way to really deconstruct one's own core beliefs, which is, I think a bit of what you're talking about. And I feel like this could go in, um, at least two directions.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
You can have a core belief that leads in the direction of cynicism that you can deconstruct by just simply asking questions. Is that always true? Are there ever instances where that's not true? And what would it mean if that weren't true in a given instance, this sort of thing.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
And then on the other side, where we tend to err toward hopeful skepticism as opposed to cynicism, there too, I could imagine it would be useful to explore hopeful skepticism also as a scientist, right? Are there cases where hopeful skepticism, here I'm gonna be cynical, can really get us into trouble? For instance.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Anyway, obviously I haven't run a study on this just because I came up with this example on the fly, but does what I just described fit more or less into the framework that you're describing?
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
I love that. And one of the things that we've done on this podcast is to always invite comments and questions, critique and so forth in the comment section on YouTube. And I always say, and I do read all the comments and sometimes it takes me a while and I'm still sifting through them.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
But I think comment sections can be, yes, they can be toxic in certain environments, in certain contexts, but they can also be tremendously enriching not just for the reader, but for the commenter and to see what people's core beliefs are really about. Now, oftentimes comments are of a different form and that's okay, that's all right.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
But I think that because of the anonymity involved, I think I can see that now through the lens of what you're saying as a license for people to really share their core beliefs about something as something that can be really informative and really enriching.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Although I much prefer, I confess, the model that you're presenting where people are doing this in real time face-to-face as opposed to just online. As long as we're talking about polarization and the wish for less polarization. What are the data saying about the current state of affairs?
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
We're recording this about what, three months or so out from an election or 90 some days or so from an election, presidential election. So without getting into discussions about political camps per se, what do your data and understanding about cynicism and hopeful skepticism tell us about that whole process and how the two camps are presenting themselves.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Wow. I say that for several reasons. First of all, I've never heard the landscape described that way. And I confess I didn't know that the landscape was as toward the center as it turns out it is. I have also many theories about how media and social media and podcasts, for that matter, might be contributing to this perceived polarization as opposed to the reality.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
And there's certainly a lot to explore in terms of what we can each and all do to remedy this. our understanding of what's going on out there.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
As a consequence, I'll ask, can some of the same tools that you described to better interact with one's own children, with one's own self, with other individuals and in small groups be used to sort of defragment some of the cynicism circuitry that exists in us around this polarized, excuse me, perceived highly polarized political landscape?
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
How early in life does cynicism show up? I'm thinking about Sesame Street characters, which to me embody different neural circuits. You know, you've got Cookie Monster, some strong dopaminergic drive there. Knows what he wants, knows what he likes, and he's going to get it.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
I want to be very clear that today's discussion, while focused on cynicism, trust and empathy, is anything but squishy. In fact, it focuses on experimental data derived from real world contexts. So it is both grounded in solid research and it is very practical, such that by the end of today's episode, you'll be armed with new knowledge about what cynicism is and is not what empathy is and is not.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Even if he has to eat the box in order to get to the cookie quicker. You have Elmo, who's all loving. And you have Oscar the Grouch. Somewhat cynical, but certainly grouchy. And then in, you know, essentially every fairy tale, or every Christmas story or, you know, there seems to be sort of a skeptic or somebody that can't be brought on board the celebration one would otherwise have.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Jamil, Dr. Zaki, thank you so much for sharing your incredible, what can only be described as wisdom into this area of humanity, right? I mean, to be a cynic is one potential aspect of being human, but you've made very clear that we have control. There is plasticity over this aspect of ourselves if we adopt the right mindsets. apply the right practices.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
And it's so clear based on everything you've shared today that humans are operating rationally and yet irrationally at the same time. I'm certainly not the first to say that. But in the context of cynicism and in the context of being happier individuals and families and couples and groups, to really take a hard look at how cynical we are and to
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
start to make even minor inroads into that through belief testing you know i i wrote down as we were talking that uh what i really feel you're encouraging us to do correct me if i'm wrong is to do both internal and external reality testing in an effort to move us away toward internal and external polarization and you know i can't think of any higher calling than that and your
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
giving us the tools and those tools are supported by data. These aren't just ideas. They are data supported ideas. And I just want to thank you for your incredible generosity and coming here today to talk about those ideas. Your book is phenomenal. I already learned so much from it and I highly encourage people to read it. And what you've shared with us today is phenomenal. And
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
I do hope to have you back again to talk about another topic that you are expert in, which is empathy, but we'll have to all wait with bated breath for that, myself included. So once again, I just want to thank you for your time, the incredible work that you're doing, and the evolution that you're taking us on. So on behalf of myself and everyone listening and watching, thank you ever so much.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Well, thank you. I'll take that in. And it's a labor of love and an honor and a privilege to sit here today with you. So thank you ever so much. And please do come back again. I would love that. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Jamil Zaki. To learn more about his work and to find a link to his new book, Hope for Cynics, please see the links in the show note captions.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. Another terrific zero cost way to support us is to follow the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five star review.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
But even though kids are learning about cynicism and grouchiness and curmudgeons, I often think about those phenotypes in older folks, because that's how they've been written into most of those stories. I guess Oscar the Grouch is, we don't know how old Oscar is. If one observes children, how early can you observe classically defined cynicism?
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
If you're not already following me on social media, I'm Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, formerly known as Twitter, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I cover science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media channels. If you haven't already subscribed to our Neural Network newsletter, our Neural Network newsletter is a zero-cost monthly newsletter. that has protocols, which are one to three page PDFs that describe things like optimizing your sleep, how to optimize your dopamine, deliberate cold exposure.
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
We have a foundational fitness protocol that describes resistance training, sets and reps, and all of that, as well as cardiovascular training that's supported by the scientific research. And we have protocols related to neuroplasticity and learning. Again, you can find all that at completely zero cost by going to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the right corner, scroll down to newsletter,
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How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset | Dr. Jamil Zaki
you put in your email and we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Jamil Zaki. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Morgan Housel. Morgan Housel is a partner at the Collaborative Fund and an expert in private wealth generation and management.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
And I can think of few topics as important as today's topic. I read Morgan's book, The Psychology of Money, and I loved it. I also loved today's discussion because I'm certain that after it's done, you will realize that you've probably been thinking about wealth and money incorrectly in a number of ways, and you've probably been pursuing it incorrectly in a number of ways.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
But in thinking about the people I know across various wealth scales and different ages, it seems that some people are just more motivated to try new things because they like doing new things. They like the sense of reward that can come from doing those things. And so it really is painful for them to stay in the same place financially or otherwise. Other people, they like the sure thing.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
They like reliability. And you can see this in a lot of domains of their life. I mean, I don't want to extrapolate this to all aspects of their life. dogs that, you know, the entire breed would, you know, is known for rarely ever having bitten somebody. Other people like to raise cane corzos.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
And while I'm sure there's some really nice, loving cane corzos out there, they occasionally bite it when they bite it serious. So, you know, are we really talking about a propensity for risk versus safety? And do you think that people fall into more or less two camps on that?
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
When I was growing up, you would see a mixture of newer cars, including some very nice cars, as well as a lot of older kind of beaten up cars driving around. Nowadays, of course, this varies by area. It's actually rare to see really old beat up cars. You see some really nice old cars that have been restored, but that's a different thing altogether. And I assume this is because of credit.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
But by asking yourself certain probe questions that Morgan raises today and answering those questions, you can arrive in a place where your relationship to money and your pursuit of it really clearly matches your particular goals. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
that people can now buy things on credit. How has the ability to purchase things on credit changed the way that we think about money generally? I know people who have tremendous credit card debt and I think are now at the point where they figure that they're never going to pay it off. They're just going to probably not live long enough to pay it off.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
And they're sort of comfortable with that, which is kind of scary to see. And some of them aren't even particularly big spenders. They just accrued this debt early enough and they can't seem to get out from the trap of that. I know other people who, you know, like myself, pay off my credit card bill every month. I'm like, you know, I hate the whatever it is, 18 plus percent interest.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Even if I'm one day late, I'm like, you know, and and at the same time, I'm not somebody who likes to purchase many things. I'm not a things guy. I, you know, I own, you know,
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
one or two watches one truck like i'm just not a things guy but i certainly have my own psychological relationship with money that after talking to you today i'm sure i'm going to realize is not optimized either right so it's easy to point fingers at people in these different groups but going back to this issue of credit how has the ability to own and use things that we don't really truly own
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
basically to exceed our income level in terms of the number and type of luxuries that we can enjoy, change the way that people think about money and use money. Because today's discussion in your book, we're talking about money as if it's something that we have, but credit basically is living outside your means. By definition. Yeah.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Wealthfront. I've been using Wealthfront for nearly a decade as my high yield cash account and I absolutely love it.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
So interesting. I sometimes think about the phrase, money can't buy happiness. And my immediate impulse is to respond with, well, somebody with a lot of money probably said that. Not because I think money can buy happiness, but Money can buffer stress. I have friends who've had children recently who have night nurses. They're looking a lot
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
more rested than the ones that don't because they can't afford them. And on and on. If you have a medical issue, right? I mean, there's this whole world within hospitals that we won't talk about in this episode, but there's this whole world about wealth and how one is actually even treated as a person in a hospital.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
There's a lot of knowledge behind the scenes about people's income level when they come into a hospital. People are going to go wide-eyed when they hear this. They'll get shuttled to different rooms, different conditions that allow them to sleep better, recover better. Health outcomes depend on this. I mean, and on and on.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
So money can't buy happiness, but it certainly can buffer stress and it can drive outcomes. So how should we frame that, especially if we are on the – or in the pursuit of acquiring more money, more wealth? Because a lot of people are.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Personally, I'm sometimes hesitant to invest money given the risks involved. So I often prefer to keep it in my Wealthfront cash account where I'm able to earn 4.25% annual percentage yield on my deposits and you can as well. With Wealthfront, you can earn 4.25% APY on your cash through partner banks until you're ready to either spend that money or invest it.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. By now, many of you have heard me say that if I could take just one supplement, that supplement would be AG1. The reason for that is AG1 is the highest quality and most complete of the foundational nutritional supplements available.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
What that means is that it contains not just vitamins and minerals, but also probiotics, prebiotics, and adaptogens to cover any gaps you may have in your diet and provide support for a demanding life.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
For me, even if I eat mostly whole foods and minimally processed foods, which I do for most of my food intake, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits and vegetables, vitamins and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone. For that reason, I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012. When I do that, it clearly bolsters my energy, my immune system, and my gut microbiome.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
These are all critical to brain function, mood, physical performance, and much more. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim their special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer. Today's episode is also brought to us by Roka.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Roka makes eyeglasses and sunglasses that are of the absolute highest quality. I'm excited to share that Roka and I have teamed up to create a new style of red lens glasses. These red lens glasses are meant to be worn in the evening after the sun goes down.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
They filter out short wavelength light that comes from screens and from LED lights, the sorts of LED lights that are most commonly used as overhead and frankly, lamp lighting nowadays. And I want to emphasize, Roka Red Lens glasses are not traditional blue blockers. They're not designed to be worn during the day and to filter out blue light from screen light.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
They're designed to prevent the full range of wavelengths that suppress melatonin secretion at night and that can alter your sleep. So by wearing Roka Red Lens glasses, they help you calm down and they improve your transition to sleep. Most nights I stay up until about 10 p.m. or even midnight and I wake up between five and 7 a.m. depending on when I went to sleep.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
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Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Now I put my Roka Red Lens glasses on as soon as it gets dark outside, and I've noticed a much easier transition to sleep, which makes sense based on everything we know about how filtering out shortwave lengths of light can allow your brain to function correctly. Roka Red Lens glasses also look cool, frankly. You can wear them out to dinner or to concerts or out with friends.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
So it turns out it is indeed possible to support your biology, to be scientific about it, and to remain social after all. If you'd like to try ROKA, go to roka.com. That's R-O-K-A.com and enter the code Huberman to save 20% off your first order. Again, that's R-O-K-A.com and enter the code Huberman at checkout.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I love the story about spending time with your kids on vacation as unstructured time, as well as spending unstructured time with them playing Legos at home. My graduate advisor sadly passed away very young of cancer. She was 50 and I knew her kids really when they were in the womb, because she was pregnant with the first one. And I attended the memorial service there.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
And it was an incredible thing because people gave their speeches and her kids got up. And by then they were, I think, about eight and 11 or so. And I'm sure they had a great many thoughts and feelings that they didn't share. But the one thing that really stood out is they appreciated how much unstructured time their mom had spent with them. It wasn't this like big event or something.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
It was all the unstructured time that she had spent with them. And that was very inherent to the kind of person she was. And so that really stuck with me. And God willing, you live a very long time.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
But I think for anyone listening to this and because of the statement that Kahneman made where that we are not well calibrated to sense a future regret, you know, that unstructured time is perhaps one of the most valuable things that we can give our relationships, both the people we engage in them with and ourselves. And I don't think it's discussed enough.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
And as you point out, however... earning money allows for the opportunity to spend time with kids and loved ones of all kinds.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
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Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
So then in an ideal world, which of course doesn't exist – One would find a vocation or a pursuit that they found really meaningful, would work really, really hard. would make enough money to then, I guess, retire and spend unstructured time with the people you love and then simply stop working in this model that clearly is an artificial model that I'm creating here.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Because it seems like after a certain point, provided you earned that money through an effort that you felt was meaningful, presumably with people you enjoy, or even if it wasn't, you found it meaningful, you make that money, then it seems that it's all about human interactions at that point.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
What did he do? He kept working.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Even though he didn't need more money. Absolutely. This is interesting because people who do achieve a high degree of wealth at a young age seem to keep going. And we could make all sorts of assumptions about why it is that they do that, expectations from others that their ego –
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Literally their sense of self in some way or perhaps entirely is tied to the sense that they're still in pursuit, that it's somehow a failure to opt out at that point. I mean we can speculate all day, but what this guy Felix said really rings true. It seems like once people reach a number – and for everyone it's going to be different. It's not going to be a billion dollars for everybody.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
There are already over a million people using Wealthfront to save more, earn more, and build long-term wealth. earn 4.25% APY on your cash today. If you'd like to try Wealthfront, go to wealthfront.com slash Huberman to receive a free $50 bonus with a $500 deposit into your first cash account. That's wealthfront.com slash Huberman to get started now.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Once they have enough resources for themselves and the people they need to take care of, maybe a bit more as a buffer – It makes no sense to continue on that path.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Yeah, absolutely. I love learning.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
In the backdrop of everything we've talked about thus far is the biology of dopamine reward. Dopamine, of course, being a molecule that people associate with reward, but it's really about the pursuit of reward. It's about more. And it's no coincidence that dopamine is involved in generating movement in the body.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
This is why people with Parkinson's who are depleted in dopamine can't generate movement. And it's also involved in generating cognitive movement and pursuit, paying attention to things.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
There is this idea that I've been pushing for a few years now that kind of throws its arms around a big literature on dopamine that says that addiction is a progressive narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure. But your definition is actually much better, I realize. Addiction is a progressive narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure and or safety or a sense of safety, right?
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Because here we're not talking about making more money to enjoy things more. We're talking about making more money to avoid the sense that pain is coming or that we are vulnerable.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
He is also the author of the spectacularly bestselling book, The Psychology of Money. And today we talk about the psychology of money. We talk about how money can change your psychology. We talk about how most people tend to lie at the extremes of either saving too much money or spending too much money.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
This has been a paid testimonial of Wealthfront. Wealthfront brokerage isn't a bank. The APY is subject to change. For more information, see the episode description. Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. Now, I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I fundamentally believe that all forms of addiction, all forms of addiction, are fundamentally a fear of death, their way of shrinking our aperture on time perception so that we're in pursuit of something. And for people that can place their addiction within work, it has this feedback of being functional as opposed to dysfunctional.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
This is also true for people that are continually seeking awards within their profession. I mean, there are these professions, academia included, but other professions where people are constantly pinning awards on one another. And it gives this illusion of progress when in fact, there's a whole world of things happening.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Now, these people often have quite healthy families and relationships, so they're not mutually exclusive. But Yeah, I think I know a few billionaires, not not many, but I know some that are very happy. They tend to be the people that are still working and in pursuit of new things, avid learners. But perhaps by virtue of the work that I do, which is focused on science, but also health,
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
You know, the modern billionaires that I'm aware of seem to be very focused on not just making money, but also trying to secure their place on the planet for a very long time. Not through legacy, although I think many of them like to provide for the next generations and their family, surely. Not so much by putting their names on the sides of buildings anymore. This used to be the way it was done.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
But rather trying to secure their health status. Because the one thing that money can buy sort of is better health care. But money can't buy you more years of your life except by virtue of the things that you are willing to not do and do behaviorally. Yeah, you still have to exercise, still have to get your sleep. You have to avoid certain things. And so the modern billionaires
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
often are talking about what they're doing for their health as opposed to their yacht their car etc this has now become the kind of metric for comparison blood profiles become a sort of point of bragging for people it's pretty interesting uh especially given that you just look back about 50 or even 100 years and and further back and the more wealthy people were the less physical labor they were doing now they're doing more physical labor to try and live longer so what are your thoughts on the on the relationship between physical health
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
and money. I mean, obviously there's a sweet spot there, but there's no pill that people can purchase to live longer.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Initially, I didn't have a choice. It was a condition of being allowed to stay in school. But pretty soon I realized that therapy is an extremely important component to overall health. Now, there are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First of all, it provides good rapport with somebody that you can trust and talk to about any and all issues you want to.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Yeah, there's a lot of excitement right now about stem cells and treatments that currently are not available in the United States that are available out of country. And I get asked about these a lot. Most of them don't have FDA approval yet. Some of them probably never will have FDA approval. We'll probably talk about stem cells another time.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Oh, absolutely. I mean, I'll just point out, I don't have anything against stem cell therapies. I think they hold great potential. But there is a true story about a stem cell clinic down in Florida prior to the FDA bringing the gavel down on them of injecting stem cells into the eyes of wealthy people who could afford the treatment.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Second of all, it can provide support in the form of emotional support or directed guidance. And third, expert therapy can provide useful insights. With BetterHelp, they make it very easy for you to find an expert therapist who you resonate with and can provide you those benefits that come through expert therapy.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
These people had certain markers for macular degeneration and other things that can cause blindness. And guess what happened to these people? They all went blind. So that brought the gavel down on stem cell therapy generally in this country. A lot of people are getting infusions of stem cells and related things out of country. They're coming back and they're walking and talking.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
And they're calling me and they're asking what my thoughts are. And I have a lot of thoughts. I mean, I think that the basics of longevity are clear, right? I mean, you want to avoid head trauma and environmental toxins. Those things are real. And if you have certain mutations like BRCA mutations, you know, you need to be more careful about cancer and avoid smoking, all this stuff, right?
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Alcohol turns out to be pro-cancerous and things of that sort. But then it's, you know, it's physical activity, it's nutrition, it's social connection, it's sleep, it's sunlight, you know, it's all the things that I've talked about on this podcast and that other people talk about as well. But yes, very wealthy people are looking for that edge. to live longer.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
And it is true that when you start to layer in all the basics of do's and don'ts, all the behaviors, and then you start to augment that with a few extra things, you get the sense of more vigor that sort of suggests they may live longer, but we still don't know. We still don't know.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
With the exception of exercise that we absolutely know can enrich mitochondrial density, give people more energy and vigor, et cetera, most of this is still a big question mark.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Oh, every excellent doctor.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I totally agree. And I think what we're talking about here is, you said it Fairly quickly, but I think I want to highlight it because I think it's really important that even people who have billions of dollars still have a sense of yearning for something that's missing or that they don't have. And in some cases, that's the sustaining factor to their well-being.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
You say it's also good to be in pursuit.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Also, because BetterHelp allows for therapy to be done entirely online, it's very time efficient. It's very easy to fit into a busy schedule with no commuting to your therapist's office or sitting in a waiting room or looking for parking, none of that. It's all done online. If you'd like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
As long as you think that there's a possibility you could get it. The dopamine circuit loves, you want what you feel is just out of your reach, but might be possible to achieve. I mean, this is why people throw so much money away gambling.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
and real examples of people who went from nothing to immensely popular or wealthy, etc. I mean, gosh, I would say about Once a month, somebody walks right up to me and says, just watch, someday I'm going to have the top podcast in the world on blank.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
And they're trying to seed this thing that they've seen on social media, which are examples of people, you know, kind of, it used to be called rags to riches, but you know, the parallels in different universes. But there's a famous musician, I think his name is Ed Sheeran, who there's still a video of him early on saying like he knew he was going to make it.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
If you watch the Conor McGregor documentary, it's amazing. I think it's called Notorious on Netflix, even if people aren't into it. to MMA, they should at least watch the first part. He was videotaping himself very early on. And he made this prediction that he was going to be a world champion. And then he ends up being a world champion, right?
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Yeah, and I don't know if this anecdote is true, but there's the anecdote that I heard that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck practicing their Academy Awards acceptance speech in the school yard when they were kids. And then they gave their speech and they were laughing about that. I grew up skateboarding.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
So when I first got into it, the Tony Hawks and the Mike McGills and Steve Caballeros, these were the names at the time, were like these luminaries, right? The gap between us and them was so huge. By the time I was a junior in high school, my best friend at the time, Paul Zuonich, sent in a videotape of himself to a company called Planet Earth. He got sponsored.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Next thing you know, we're in the shop watching him skateboard. And within a year or two, he had his own pro model.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
So I think social media gives us not just the sense of what's out there, but it gives us very salient examples of people that went from completely unknown to extremely known. Just this last year, there's the, you know, the so-called Hawk to a girl, you know, it's interviewed outside a bar. So she now has a very popular podcast. She has sponsors. She's known.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Literally became one of the most famous people in the country. Right. And has a financial stream now of income through her podcast.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
And so this raises the sort of idea in people's minds or the possibility, however remote, that if somebody puts a camera in front of you, by virtue of one thing that you say, you could suddenly be an internationally known person and potentially go from quote unquote rags to riches. Right.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman. And now for my discussion with Morgan Housel. Morgan Housel, welcome. Thanks so much for having me. Happy to be here. I'm excited that you have a new book coming out next year about the art of spending money. Is that right? That's right. You got it. Today, I want to talk about how to think about money What is it?
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Well, I'll tell everyone out there that if you think that fame is what you want, fame restricts your freedom. It does not increase your freedom.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I mean, so much of social media is just by definition in terms of the number of followers being displayed, et cetera, number of likes and comments being displayed is designed to set up these metrics of comparison.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Function. I recently became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
While I've long been a fan of blood testing, I really wanted to find a more in-depth program for analyzing blood, urine, and saliva to get a full picture of my heart health, my hormone status, my immune system regulation, my metabolic function, my vitamin and mineral status, and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors on your results. For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had two high levels of mercury in my blood. This was totally surprising to me. I had no idea prior to taking the test.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Function not only helped me detect this, but offered medical doctor-informed insights on how to best reduce those mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, because I had been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification, and worked to reduce my mercury levels.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
How do we frame it within our historical context, meaning our personal historical context? Because I think we all and each think about money a little bit differently and then talk about what is the best use or in some cases not use of money. This is a topic that could go in any number of different directions, but my goal here is that people will get a better understanding of
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Comprehensive lab testing like this is so important for health, and while I've been doing it for years, I've always found it to be overly complicated and expensive.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I've been so impressed by Function, both at the level of ease of use, that is getting the test done, as well as how comprehensive and how actionable the tests are, that I recently joined their advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman Lab listeners. Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. One thing that I wish somebody would do, maybe it's been done, is you mentioned earlier this not typical, but
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I guess, semi-common thing of an article will come out and say, you know, the five things that people say on their deathbed or that they, and they look back and they mentioned that they wish they'd spent less time at work. They wish they had spent more time with their kids or more time in nature, perhaps.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Has anyone ever just asked people directly what were the things that they are most proud of or the things that they really feel brought them tremendous meaning then and now? as they're passing away, because it's related, but it's kind of the inverse of the same question.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Why is it, do you think, that even though we've perhaps all heard by now that, you know, compounding interest is great, right?
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
You put in, let's say, a small or a moderate amount of money into even just a savings account that's accruing a couple percent, you know, varies year by year and with the economy, of course, or into the markets that over time, if you quote unquote set it and forget it, just kind of like put it there and walk away, that you're likely to make X percent over time, and you can look at the plot.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
You can look at that line upward and to the right. It almost always is jagged line drifting upward to the right, and even just scroll over and see, okay, at age whatever, I'm going to have X number of dollars. And that value is often very high relative to where one's current wealth is, even if they're a student or they have very little put away. We all hear this. We can see it.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
You can run the models. It's almost trivial. And yet people don't do that even if they have the income to save. Is it that hard for us to project our emotional state and the sorts of things that we integrate in terms of life meaning and value into the future that most people just don't do that? And why do you think that is? I mean, I'm not asking you to play neurobiologist here.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I mean, I think we both agree that time perception is a complicated thing. But You would think that people would just sort of get it, but we're not rational. Most people aren't rational in that way. They don't save, they don't invest, and they don't compound interest. And so they end up with a lot less money than they could have and a lot more regret.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
what money is, why they work for it, and really how to make it a true asset to their lives, as opposed to something that is forever out of reach in terms of amount or what they expected to bring them. Great, looking forward to it. Great. So your book starts off with this notion that people are not crazy. It's in fact the title of the chapter. Does that mean that people are rational about money?
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Do you know how they got people to stop smoking, in particular young people? It wasn't by scaring them about their health. Turns out the most effective campaign to get especially young people to stop smoking was to hijack the inherent rebellion of youth and to display ads of wealthy older people in rooms full of smoke. So it became us as the youth rebelling against them.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
The older generation that are trying to take our money had nothing to do with health.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
And it absolutely worked.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
And I have friends that work on this sort of thing in the context of public health as it relates to all sorts of public health initiatives and the effective way to change human behavior as it relates to health.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
is to incentivize aesthetics to incentivize fear uh or to hijack fear of dying but even fear of dying is not sufficient uh as compared to um hijacking these uh cross-generational uh let's just call them frictions um that exist so i found that to be interesting you used a math example of eight plus eight plus eight plus eight versus eight times eight times eight times eight and you said that the
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
human brain is not capable of exponential thinking, or most people's brains are not capable of exponential thinking. I think you either intentionally or inadvertently hit on something really important. I don't know that the dopamine reward system, which is the fundamental currency of pursuit and reward across all timescales, it's kind of wild, right?
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
One neuromodulator, and there are other things involved that modulate that modulator, but one neuromodulator is involved in reward pursuit across all time scales, whether or not we're playing. Let's say we're both competitive enough to play a game of chess or checkers. Dopamine is motivating
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
the pursuit for the win, or a four-year degree, or an eight-year degree, or why you would want maybe your kids to win a soccer game. Now you're like a third person in dopamine, right? It's across all time scales, all scenarios. It's incredible, and across many species. So it makes me wonder, and I'll have to ask some of my colleagues that work on these dopamine reward schedules for a living.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
whether or not the dopamine reward system actually can do exponential math. It might not be able to do exponential math. It might be that the pursuit of water, the pursuit of mates, the pursuit of food, the pursuit of shelter, which is what these dopamine circuits evolved under the constraints of, whether or not they are even capable of doing exponential thinking.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
And there are those people. So let's parse the marshmallow test. the marshmallow test I think initially done at Stanford. I think it was a Bing nursery school or something like that, or maybe somewhere at Stanford. If I'm wrong, someone will correct me in the comments.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
And we talk about how most people get it completely wrong when it comes to framing in our minds what money is, what its real value is, and its ability to generate happiness within us. And no, I am not going to tell you, and Morgan is not going to tell you, that beyond a certain dollar amount, you don't increase your happiness.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Of course, for those that don't know, they brought these really cute kids into rooms and they put the marshmallow in front of them and they told them they could eat it now or they could wait and they could get two marshmallows later.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
And then they videotaped them and the videos are absolutely delightful of the kids, you know, like distracting themselves or having the marshmallows talk or taking a little piece of the marshmallows. I mean, it reveals as much variation on human self-constraint behavior as you could possibly imagine. And they're really interesting, as you know. I would like to know whether...
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
the children that were able to wait and therefore get two marshmallows were trying to resist the temptation or whether or not they were being pulled forward by the anticipation of two marshmallows.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
But they weren't thinking into the future about how great it would be to have two marshmallows. I don't think so.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
My way of dealing with social media, I would say compulsion, not addiction, is I now, one could take an old phone. I actually got a phone specifically for social media. So I have Instagram and X on that phone. I don't even recall the number of that phone. I airdrop things onto it if I want to post, and I do what Rogan calls post and ghost. So you post, and then it goes into a box.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Because otherwise, I'm just absolutely blown away by how much time can be sucked away. All of it. You tell yourself, I'm going to just look at social media for a moment, and then you're pulled down some rabbit hole. It's just incredible the way they've designed these algorithms to get you. And of course, I like social media. I teach on social media.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
This conversation will probably be, you know, fragments of it will be on social media. um i think that people don't realize how compulsion inducing the dopamine circuitry is and once you start getting pulled down it you're you're a different organism altogether and uh you know it's not a coincidence that the people who have the largest social media accounts spend very little time on social media
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Because if you spend too much, it just gets overwhelming. Well, you're spending time doing things like commenting and liking and there's a liability to some of that, but there's a reward to it too, an immediate reward. What you're not doing is going and doing the thing that you bring to social media that brings you more followers and views. Yeah.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
so i always think of social media as the last point in a funnel where i go do things in real life like research papers talk to people um learn and then organize that learning into a format that i think people can benefit from and then put it on social media but that's the the end point yeah and so if i stay too long there um then i'm not getting more material.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
It's almost like if I were a farmer, you know, this is like, you know, once the crops ship, you know, I'm not going to stand there just like looking at the road as the truck goes by. Yeah, you got to get back and plant more seeds and plow the field. I mean, so I like to think about these things in these very basic terms, because I feel that the dopamine circuitry has, it hasn't evolved, right?
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
But we have new technologies that have hijacked it to some extent.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Well, this raises a really key point for people, including myself, which is in an ideal world, one can make a living that is sufficient for their needs, doing something that you truly enjoy doing. Or I would say, to be realistic, where 75% of the activities are pleasurable, maybe a
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
15 are kind of neutral and then the remainder there's some punishing features there are punishing features in every profession yes jeff bezos said if you can enjoy half that's pretty good okay all right so i'm a little more um stringent with my with my yeah more of an optimist than bezos hey i don't but then again he's bezos um yeah where i mean you want to be able to enjoy your work not all aspects of it are going to be pleasurable but
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Ideally, that's the case because what we're talking about here is effort that precedes dopamine. And I'm a big believer that dopamine that is not preceded by effort is very dangerous. It's not just things that are addictive, but by way of example, methamphetamine, cocaine, dramatically – and quickly spike dopamine levels. With no effort put in. With no effort put in.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
And then, of course, we know from the beautiful work of my colleague Anna Lemke and others that then the dopamine profile is that then the higher the peak and the faster the rise to peak, then the more drop below baseline and the more time it takes to return to baseline.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
And typically what people do is when they're below baseline in terms of their dopamine, that's when they really start hitting the hammer with whatever behavior or substance. And all it does is drive that baseline further and further and further down.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
There's no effort put into to like base it against. Compare it against what you were talking about before, which is time that's unstructured with your kids playing Legos. It's almost... It sounds effortless. It's not like you're like, oh, I got to go play with my boy's Legos. I'm sure that you're like, yes, like this is fun. This is the good stuff, as they say.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
And so there are forms of reward, it seems, that are not preceded by effort, although you had to raise those kids and your wife had to give birth to those kids and it's work. But in terms of what's happening in that limited time frame, it's just so seamless, right? It's just sheer pleasure. And yet that kind of pleasure is enriching. This has me very perplexed.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
As a biologist, I still don't know the underlying mechanisms, but clearly we have multiple paths to pleasure, but I think we have only one path for motivation and that's dopamine. But I think there are multiple forms of pleasure and I'm certain that Dopamine that is high levels of dopamine that are not preceded by effort are not just bad. They are downright dangerous.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I just want to hover on that for a second, because I can think of numerous examples in my life where the best parts of a relationship were like a drive home with someone where like, you know, I'm asleep for part of the time, they're asleep for part of the time. And you get back and like, you really, you feel like you really did something. There's something bonding about traveling with people.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
it's even in the absence of external input. Like you're just, what is that? It must be something fundamental, some fundamental circuit about journeying with other members of our species.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
And what's that movie with Emile Hirsch where he... It's a true story about the guy that goes out into the Alaskan wilderness and lives on that bus. And sadly, he passes away there. I just spoiled it for you. But he has... I think it's called Into the Wild. Into the Wild, where he's obsessed with this notion of bonding with nature.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
But then in his journal, a real journal of a guy that really died out there, he... gets to the realization that the fundamental pursuit in life is to experience things with other people.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Brutal. Brutal. On the other end of the spectrum, there's freedom. So let's talk about freedom.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
It means different things to different people, but certainly one does not want to be enslaved by anything, including... own pursuit of work. So there are, I think, at least two forms of anti-freedom. One would be the type that exists within our head.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
We have to continue on this track because I'm afraid of failure or I'm in pursuit of something and we are actually enslaved in a way that we create for ourselves in the act of pursuit. The other is the job where it's providing resources, but we really don't need to be there. And yet people don't hop off the train.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
You know, they could, they could escape the dreaded boss or the dreaded circumstance. You know, I remember a time when all I wanted was a window at work that opened for fresh air. That's all I wanted. I had like all these other things. I just, I just wanted a window that opened.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I even tried to find one of these like little saws to saw, but then the maintenance people or the, the, whatever the facilities people told me I'd get in trouble. Um, We yearn for freedom, we hate enslavement for all the obvious reasons. In your observation, what is the best way to frame this need for freedom? And I have to imagine that people listening are at various points along their careers.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
What have you observed here in yourself and with other people you talk to, wealthy, not wealthy? What is freedom? How do we get real freedom?
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Wow. I think this is a super important concept. How should the person who is, well, let's just say early mid-career who likes what they're doing, but thinks that this is probably not the thing for them. I hear about this all the time. Like, it's this like, yeah, like it's good, but it's a ton of work. It's unclear how it's going to turn out, but they feel like they're already on the conveyor belt.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
There's always this question of, do you stay in investment banking another year to make a bunch of money, and then you get out so that you then have the freedom to pursue something where you have more freedom? People are always playing this kind of mental math, and I don't think there's a clear answer, unless, of course, you're lucky enough that you fall in love with science.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I mean, I did not become a neuroscientist to make money, and Lord knows I didn't. I mean, I made some. I made a living. people heard what I was making as a tenured 45-year-old professor at one of the premier universities in the world, where the salaries are relatively high, they would be shocked. Just shocked that post-tax income is quite low by Bay Area standards.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Absolutely. Oh, and I loved it. And I still teach there. And
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
it's one of these things where i wouldn't trade it for anything also in terms of intellectual stimulation um in terms of being able to look to my left or look to my right and and realize that most of the people at stanford students included are just phenomenal like their level of intellect their drive their excitement for what they're doing i mean no one ends up there by accident right so that was and remains extremely exciting um but i think a lot of people unless they they find a profession that they really love
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
or there's some feature of that profession that keeps them, you know, looped in in a way that feels satisfying the people, et cetera. Most people are kind of thinking like, all right, how do I work to make a living? And then, you know, like what's the exit ramp?
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
People think a lot about exit ramps and sometimes it's a dollar amount, but also it's the idea that maybe, you know, go work on their real love, which might be like gardening. They want to, you hear about these sort of hobby interests, right? I'll go, I'll write poetry or I'll, you know, go, you know, ceramics or something like that. The things that they truly enjoy doing.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
How should people optimize along those musts versus want tos versus sort of aspirational goals?
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I once heard Ray Dalio say something along the lines of, you know, the first third of your life is spent trying to learn how to function in the world. Then there's a kind of middle third where you are acquiring resources to be able to take care of yourself and people close to you. And then in the final third of your life, you want to
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Take your knowledge, take what you've gleaned in terms of financial and other types of wealth, because of course there are other types of wealth, and put back for subsequent generations. It's a beautiful model if you think about it.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Nowadays, we have both the benefit and the problem of people living longer and maintaining vigor longer and therefore working longer. This is certainly true in academia. People don't like to retire. They really do not like to retire. And I don't think it's just so they can make more money. I think it's so they can stay – intellectually active.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
People get into science typically because they like learning or academics generally. They have a campus office where they go to and it makes them feel socially connected. So you can understand all the reasons why these people in their late 60s 70s and even 80s, sometimes even 90s, continue to go to work.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
It's rare for these older generations of people that stay in various professions to continue to glean resources, but it happens. I mean, how old is Buffett? 93, maybe. He's still investing? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Full time. Okay. And presumably he's going to use that money for what, either philanthropy or generational wealth within his family. Is that the plan?
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Oh yeah. The children of the ultra rich that inherit all their wealth, I don't know what the numbers are there. I know a great number of them squander it. But I also know a few examples of some that really made good on those incredible assets that they inherited and are very thoughtful, hardworking people. It does happen.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Super important concept. Again, incredibly important, I think, because people often will think that they because they were born into families that didn't have a lot of money, that somehow they were given the short end of the stick. And in some sense, they were right. I mean, it's one thing to grow up in a in a world with assets and another world where you don't have assets.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
For most people, including myself, the whole notion of money and safety are very closely linked, you know. Do we have enough resources to take care of ourselves? Plus a bit extra, one hopes. I guess I would include in taking care of oneself, buffering one's anxiety about not having enough money. That's part of the psychological care.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
But we don't often hear about the downside. Yeah.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Right. Well, the show Succession, right, you know, is all about the horrible interpersonal dynamics of people that have a lot of wealth because it's never enough and they self-destruct essentially.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I wonder if it's the excesses of wealth that destroy people or if it's the fact that the excesses take them away from the pursuit of what delivered the wealth in the first place.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I love such a good guy.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
And also taking care of others that we might be responsible for or simply want to take care of. That's very closely linked to notions of how much and what type of education to get. I mean, I think everyone presumably at some point goes through the mental gymnastics of is it worth it to get an advanced degree? What major should I focus on? Are there any jobs there?
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I think people like Elon Musk, people like Mark Zuckerberg, they represent these you know, incredibly extreme examples that obviously most people can't even, including me, can't fathom what a day in their life must be like. You know, I met Zuck, he was on this podcast and it seems that he really enjoys doing what he's doing.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Um, but I think for me and for most people, it's just like so far out of the stratosphere of, of, of understanding is similar to the, the amount of wealth that they've acquired. It just sort of like, what do you even do with all of that? Right. And people go, well, I'd figure it out. Yeah, I'm sure you would. But you know, it's, it's just, it's so astronomically outside the scale of one's normal,
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
kind of dopamine reward schedules that it's hard to imagine. And what are you going to do, buy a plane as big as a state? But there's a place in between struggling to quote unquote make it and being at that extreme. where people hit that sweet spot.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
And I think a lot of your work is really aimed at at least shining light on the possibility of a sweet spot where you're doing something that you find meaningful, making sufficient income, that your anxiety is buffered. You have meaningful relationships in and out of work. And you've essentially built a quote-unquote good life, right?
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I mean, I think I heard Naval say something recently where he said, you know, you want resources along the dimensions I just mentioned, a healthy, fit body. a calm mind, and a home full of love. I think it's a pretty awesome list right there. And it's a lot of work though, right? Just to check off even one of those four boxes is a lot of work.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Because as we all know, money cannot buy happiness, but it can buffer stress. We acknowledge that from the outset. And then Morgan goes on to explain that really what we're seeking when we talk about seeking wealth or money, is freedom. Freedom is really about independence. And that if we are constantly in pursuit of wealth, well, then we are not truly free or independent.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Do you have a dog? I do, golden retriever. I was going to say, you want them to love you 10% more, get them a puppy. But it sounds like you already did that. I'm just, I'm only half kidding. I would say that, you know, dogs are not only unconditional love, but they have the ability to give on a, on a daily basis, multiple times per day in a way.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I mean, they give love as readily as they receive love. It's just like this perfect reciprocal loop.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I love that. What's your dog's name, if I may? Lucy. Golden Retrievers are an amazing breed because they also are universally loving. They love the person that you know, their owner the most, but they also love people that stop and meet them on the street. Not all dogs are like that.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
When I went to school to be a neuroscientist, a cardiologist, a friend of our family said, why would you go into neuroscience? There are no jobs in that. And there are plenty of jobs in neuroscience and still are. I wouldn't say that most of them are high paying jobs. So, you know, we know that higher education doesn't always scale with higher income as we grow up and move into the world.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I love it. Let's talk about this social comparison thing. I'm trying to make this practical for people that are both partnered and not partnered. Seems to me that a lot of
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
what I've observed in terms of people who are on the conveyor belt, work, work, work, work, work, have a picture in their mind of kind of where that's all going, when enough is enough, and when they plan to hop off or stay on or how late to stay, in large part based on, yeah, their upbringing, yeah, kind of who they are, but also the messages that they're getting from typically
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
The one other person that has the greatest degree of input, right? Like you could create a picture where the spouse in either direction is saying, like, we need more, right? That changes the picture completely. Where the spouse just says, like, I would just like to see you more. I don't need any more stuff. I just want to see you more. We want to see you more.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
These are the sorts of at-home dynamics that I think drive a lot of decisions about career, not just what careers to pursue, but how long to stay in, whether or not you try and make partner in a firm, whether or not your social media account needs X number more followers or not. I think to me, this is as important as the social comparison of your peers at work or online.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
The messages that we receive by the people closest to us about what to be afraid of, what the needs are. And I don't know that people have really parsed how to how to resolve all that. But I'm guessing you probably have some thoughts about this.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
We're thinking about how to integrate all these different things, what we want to do because it's interesting versus what will make us money. In your experience and observation and in writing your book, is there some sort of mental path to cut through these different considerations? I mean, when we talk about money and wealth, What should we really take into consideration?
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
And with social media, we now have access to... millions, if not billions of comparison points. Whereas just 30 years ago, even 20 years ago, we only had access to local comparison points. Like the people in your neighborhood drove certain types of cars.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Now online, you can see people that you went to high school with that have certain lives and their vacations that are spectacular relative to the ones that one typically has. I'd like to talk about this notion of social comparison as a function of place. We can touch on some major cities. We were doing this before we started recording. It's kind of fun to do.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
In the Bay Area and Silicon Valley area where I grew up, it seems like there's a high value placed on the people who manage to do things that wick out to the entire world, the building of companies or technologies that go everywhere. It's not just because of Facebook and Instagram. It's Also because of biotech, it's because of all sorts of things. Apple, right?
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I mean, there's a whole history of that. What would you say for like New York City? What is the dominant message that's being pumped into the psyche of New Yorkers? And by the way, I love New York City, but it'd be fun to play this game a little bit as an example, and then we'll then wick it out to people regardless of where they live in the world.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Is there some sort of checklist? I mean, it becomes a pretty vast space. I believe that you get the best work out of yourself in terms of going after things that you're really interested in. But there may not be money in things that are highly interesting to somebody.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
You grew up in Tahoe? Yeah. I love Lake Tahoe. But can I ask you, did you grow up being competitive or thinking about how well people skied or snowboarded?
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Tell me what you think of this mental exercise. As you're describing this to me, I'm thinking about how at different stages of my career, first academic science, and I still teach, but I'm shut down my animal lab, still involved in some human research, but mainly focused on the podcast these days. I can look to different things around me that were the forces pulling on me.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I like to think in terms of carrot and stick. For those that don't know what that is, because we have a lot of listeners from outside the US, carrot is the thing you're working towards, the enticing thing, the reward. Stick is the punishment, carrot and stick. Because frankly, that's how the brain works, carrot and stick, right?
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
And a lot of what we're talking about today is carrot and sticks of different sizes, different types, et cetera. For every stage of my career, graduate student, postdoc, Professor before tenure, professor after getting tenure. It's kind of interesting concept. People think of it as job for life, but it's really academic freedom. And you're still on the fundraising treadmill or even as a podcaster.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
You know, like what the force was inside me and not trying to make this about me. I just kind of, I know that there are different people that I'm trying to satisfy individually. And of course, satisfy my own curiosity and intellect. But there are forces. There's the, I'm part of a group. I'm part of a team here. I can't let them down. So it doesn't matter how well I slept last night.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I happened to sleep pretty well last night, but it doesn't matter. I got to show up. I got to suit up and show up, as they say. Do you think it's worthwhile for people to stop wherever they are in their life arc and just think about like where are these forces pulling us, the carrots and the sticks? Because I think therein lies a lot of information. Are you working for –
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
an expectation that you need to fulfill because you did it before. I sometimes think about professional athletes. They sometimes have a shorter professional life than in other careers because just physical capabilities give way. But you know, like what drives them? I often want to know, like, what pulls them? Like, where do they feel obligated?
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
You know, not just, you know, what the drive is, but where do they feel obligated? Where do they feel like kind of pulled? Is it to the general public? Is it their parents? Is it their bank account? Is it the fear that they're going to have to retire at some point? Do you ever think about this kind of stuff?
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Yeah, that's like that cartoon of the person standing with a little cage in front of their face. Like they're giving out freedom by virtue of some mental construct.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I wonder if perhaps even... better than Paul's idea of shrinking one's identity to make it operational and make it verb-based. Because it's one thing to say, I'm going to not use my professional title of podcaster, professor, author, doctor, but if one gets to the verb function that drove the pursuit of things in the first place- I enjoy doing this. I'm a curious person.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I seem to mention them all the time and I'm just going to do it because it's my podcast. Yeah. Rick Rubin's a close friend and I feel so lucky for that friendship. Of course, I love the music he's produced, but that's not why I love the friendship.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I happen to just really think Rick's a great guy, but because he's so verb and action-based, it's about almost everything Rick talks about in terms of creativity and productivity is about discarding with titles and concepts of who you were before and just being in the verb state of wherever you happen to be at that point in your life and creating offerings.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
And he actually likes to remove the concept of an audience
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
actually talks about this is your offering to god and the audience may or may not like it but that in his words are the way it is the way to frame it because otherwise you end up trying to satisfy people and then you're no longer in the process of of exploring your curiosity or creativity so yeah i've decided at this moment and i'll make it uh i'll put it on record that i'm not going to think of myself as a podcaster i mean i did a lot of things i did you know
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Pursued skateboarding, pursued tropical fish tanks, pursued science and research science, teaching, and then this, public education and podcasting. I fully expect that in five to 10 years, I'll be doing something completely different. But it'll still be attached to the verb state that drove every single one of those professions. Yeah. Or every single one of those pursuits.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Because as Rick's taught me, it's the energy that you need to continue to tap into that is self-rewarding. The feelings of delight, of friction, and then release when you solve a problem. It's not really about the profession or the title or even the resources that come from that.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
But that in fact, the greatest resources, in particular financial resources, coming from identifying the verb state of being in pursuit of something that's truly unique to you. And that changes over time. I'm always amazed at these examples like the Warren Buffetts and these people that have been investing their whole life.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
You pointed this out in your book that one of the fundamental things about Buffett being so successful is that he's had a lot of time investing. He's been doing it since he was 11 and he's 93. Right. It doesn't seem like he needs another venue. It seems like he's got it dialed. That's his venue. If he were a golfer, he'd be golfing at 93. Yeah.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I guess the phrase, you know, be a lifer. I used to think that meant if you were a musician, stay a musician. If you're in finance, stay in finance. But I think now I'm going to revise that to one wants to be a lifer. at tapping into the energy of pursuing things that are really meaningful to them in that moment, in that phase of life. Because it's so different.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I mean, when I was a kid, I was obsessed with fish tanks and tropical birds and skateboarding, punk rock music, and it changed. I mean, the venue changed. But we don't really change in terms of identity very much, right? These professions and these bank accounts, and we don't actually... We're not fundamentally changed by them. It's really a bunch of verb states that drive all this.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I think about Michael Jordan playing baseball, which he did for a little while. He wanted to play professional baseball. So he gave himself the shot. I think it's awesome, even though it didn't turn out as well as basketball turned out for him. Because it just reflected his inherently competitive – you know, high performance nature. I had to keep doing something or Bezos.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
You're working on a new book and I eagerly anticipate the release of that new book. When's it coming out? September, 2025. Okay. So we got a little while to wait. Yeah. Are you willing to share a few things that you're thinking about or that we might expect to see in that book?
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
In a lot of ways, what sounds like you're describing is kind of identifying the sources of self-seduction where we – by virtue of social media or just by virtue of being human, we compare what we have to see if it really is what it is. You would think that – We would be pretty good as a species at just experiencing things, kind of like the dog sitting next to the lake.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Given that we can understand that we have this propensity to compare and to regret things of past but not be able to anticipate future regret, you'd think we would be better at that. But clearly we're not.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Make more of yourself and take care of the young and then you're dispensable. Keep going.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Do you think birth rates are going down because people feel that they have to use more of what they earn for themselves or that it's harder to establish a relationship to money and resources that makes them feel capable of taking care of others?
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
What are you teaching your kids about money? And at what age should we start to do that? And for those listening who don't have kids, I suppose it's never too late to learn.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I like this saying, none of us know what it's like to be 13 years old in 2024. We think we do because we were 13 years old at one point. Your earlier descriptions of depriving kids of the first class ticket, putting them in coach and the parents flying in first class, it makes me realize that we like to think that those sorts of things will drive integration of the lesson.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
each one of your examples pointed to the fact that kids are integrating based on the emotion they experience at the time. They're not thinking about the larger lesson.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
They're thinking, I'm hiking up this hill and this sucks. And they're not piecing together things over time. Like, okay, I'm doing this and he's trying to teach me a lesson. They're very attached to their immediate feelings. Right.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
When I was a kid, my dad used to walk me to this point along our street where then he would split off to go to work. He was a scientist. He would go to his laboratory and I'd go off to kindergarten and first grade. And I remember one day asking him what he did for a living. And he's a physicist. And he said, well, I'm a physicist. And I said, what's that?
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
And he explained a little bit about what it was. And I'll never forget, we still talk about this, he and I, I'll never forget. I said, do you like it? And he said, well, you know that feeling the night before your birthday? I said, yeah. And he said, I feel like that every day. And then I think he also said, and I'm still a little bit murky on this one.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
And sometimes this sense of what one is likely to regret If we have access to it at all, because it sounds like we're not very good at anticipating this, as Kahneman pointed out, most people lack a well-calibrated sense of future regret. That's going to change over time. So it's dynamic. And here we're talking about investing in two-year or four-year degrees.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I need to touch base with him about this sometime again soon. But he said, you don't always get presence. It doesn't always work out. But the feeling that you might or that you're likely going to or there's a possibility, that just feels so good. And I think I must have internalized that lesson because what I like is work.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I don't think I'm addicted to work, although some in my life have accused me of that. And I'm willing to be open to that possibility. But it wasn't even really about discovery. It was about the possibility of discovery. And so I think in terms of teaching to kids and teaching to peers and teaching among humans –
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Getting people to think about the verb states that really motivate them from the best place seems to be the kind of general theme throughout today's discussion and in your book somewhat. I'm not trying to summarize to too fine a point here. But if I may, it seems like – and what Rick Rubin has said about – he has this like just supernatural track record at bringing out the best creative –
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
elements in people from different genres of music. It seems to be about tapping into these verb states of like, what is the thing that brings out your best as opposed to thinking about the rewards that come from that. But it's hard, right? We see those numbers. We see those, the followers, the dollars, et cetera. We see the metrics of comparison. It's tough.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
There's a work to this that is not obvious.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
So today's discussion is as much about being happy, being free, feeling independent, feeling free of stress as it is about this thing that we call money. So in other words, Morgan explains not just how to generate and manage monetary wealth. He explains that, but he also explains how to organize your life in and around this thing that we call career, the pursuit of wealth and happiness.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
What a wild concept, but it seems just spot on. So we need to think about money a little differently or a lot differently if we are to get the most satisfaction from our work and from resources.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
We're talking about investing in one's time, that is, in a particular profession. And I think we come up with all these ideas. explanations post hoc about, well, you know, I went to that company, I went into that line of work, I spent 10 years there or the startup failed, but I learned a valuable lesson that then, you know, really supported me in a future endeavor.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I love it. Well, Morgan, thank you so much for doing the work that you do. It's an incredibly unique perspective on this thing that we all have to deal with, grapple with, and hopefully can develop a symbiotic relationship with money. And it's clear from talking to you today and also from reading your book that there's a strong central cord of benevolence in all of this.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I don't know if that was your intent. It seems to just come through in who you are. Um, but when I read your book and as we talked today, it's just so clear, like that you want the best for people.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Uh, so I think that's, uh, an important thing to highlight because there are a lot of people out there telling people how to make money, uh, what to do or not to do with their money, but you're telling us how to live more meaningful lives, which is, uh, something just an order of magnitude more important. So.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
For that and the work that you've done and that you're doing, I'm eagerly anticipating your book next September. And for coming here today to educate us, thank you ever so much. This has been so much fun. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Morgan Housel.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
To learn more about Morgan's work and to find links to his two superb books, The Psychology of Money and Same as Ever, please see the links in the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. In addition, please follow the podcast on both Spotify and Apple.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. Please check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, formerly known as Twitter, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
If you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, our neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries as well as protocols in the form of brief one to three page PDFs. Those one to three page PDFs cover things like deliberate heat exposure, deliberate cold exposure. We have a foundational fitness protocol.
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Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
We also have protocols for optimizing your sleep, dopamine and much more. Again, all available, completely zero cost. Simply go to Huberman lab dot com, go to the menu tab, scroll down to newsletter and provide your email. We do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Morgan Housel.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
And so we rationalize our poor choices from the past in ways that allow us to, you know, connect the dots to sort of steal from the famous Steve Jobs speech. And yet All of this really says that we are very poor at placing our current experience and our past experience into any kind of future projection of ourselves.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
You talk a little bit about this in your book, and this really sunk in for me in a major way, that we don't really know or anticipate how we are likely to change as we get older.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
In order to... as I described it before, carve a path through this for people. I'm wondering if people generally fall into either one or the other category of, as you described with Bezos, not wanting to regret not having done something. Okay, so I think of that in sort of pseudo neurobiological terms as being drawn toward the possible dopaminergic or other rewards of having succeeded.
Huberman Lab
Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness | Morgan Housel
Really, that's what he's envisioning, presumably, is the pain of having not had given himself the opportunity to succeed. Okay, that's one way to put it. And then the other path would be just avoiding the pain of loss. And there are a lot of studies, I think Kahneman did some of them, in fact, that people work a lot harder to avoid the pain of loss than to gain something.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, we are discussing skin health.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Whereas short wavelength light, which only hits that epidermal layer on the outside of the skin, may be bad for our skin. And I say maybe because it's really a function genetic background, okay? If all this is seeming rather complicated, I'm going to make it very simple. And before I do that, I do want you to ask yourself a question.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
I want you to ask yourself where you reside on the continuum of beliefs about sunscreen, UV light, and skin cancers. So here it goes. My read of the landscape out there is that there are some people, it's a small minority, but there are some people who feel that sunscreen in any form is bad for them.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
These are other proteins within skin that give skin its youthful, or in some cases where it's degenerative, non-youthful appearance, things like wrinkles and sagging skin. So we'll talk about all of that. We'll also talk about the various products that have been developed in order to treat wrinkles, treat sagging skin, reverse acne, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
They think, okay, sun is great for them and sunscreens of any kind, chemical or physical barrier is bad for them, okay? Some people believe this. I'm not saying I believe this. In fact, I don't believe that. I'm a big believer in sunlight and the power of sunlight for health, but I am not what is called a sunscreen truther, okay? I'm not somebody who thinks that sunscreen has no value.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
In fact, quite the opposite under certain conditions and certain sunscreens. I want to say that for the record. Other people out there believe that certain sunscreens can be valuable, but only the sunscreens that lack certain chemicals because they are concerned about chemicals in certain sunscreens being so-called endocrine disruptors, or maybe even causing cancer on their own, okay?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Other people are so afraid of sunlight and believe that it causes so many issues as it relates to skin cancer that they basically create beekeeper uniforms for themselves so that anytime they're out in sunlight, they want to have sunglasses on, they want to have a hat, they want to cover their neck, every part of their body.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
They sit at the opposite extreme of the people who don't believe in using any sun protection whatsoever. And now of course, there's the backdrop of how much natural melanin production we each make. That is how dark our skin happens to be according to our genetics.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And of course, there's the issue of where we live on the planet and how much sun we have available to us in order to potentially expose ourselves to. And perhaps also ask yourself if you are in what I believe is the largest category of people out there, which is the category of people who probably don't wear sunscreen every day.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Maybe they put it on occasionally, but only if it's very bright out, very hot out, because they don't want to get a so-called sunburn. And I believe most people fit into that general category of A, not wanting to be burned, B, not wanting to age any faster than they would were they to not wear sunscreen? At least that's their belief.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And C, they've just been told that sunscreen is good for them and they'll reach for whatever sunscreen is on the shelf or that was recommended to them either by their dermatologist or that they happen to find in the pharmacy or when they're out skiing and they, You know, they notice it's a bright day and so they buy some sunscreen and slather it on.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
So before I go any further, just ask yourself those questions. You know, where do you reside? Are you afraid of sunscreen? Do you love sunscreen? Are you in the beekeeper category? Like you think all sun is bad, it's going to give you skin cancer, it's going to age you faster.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
We'll get to the aging component in a few minutes, but just ask yourself that question as we wade into the material I'm about to cover. So what's the story with sun exposure, sunburn, sunscreen, skin cancer, and aging? I spoke to several different dermatologists about this, including one expert in skin cancers specifically. And what I was told is the following.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
First of all, sun exposure will disrupt the collagen and elastin, but mostly the collagen composition of your skin in a way that makes it appear as if you're aging faster. Okay, so sun exposure, yes, ages the skin. Now that does not mean, however, that you want to avoid all sun exposure because the same dermatologist said that some sun exposure is healthy for us. Why?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
We'll talk about which ones are safe, which ones are not safe, and which ones for which there still is no clear answer. I want to make very clear here at the outset that while I'll discuss various skin products during today's episode, I nor the podcast has any financial relationship to those products. I will provide examples of certain products and provide a few links in the show note captions.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Because our skin is also an endocrine organ. It's involved in making various hormones. It's part of the vitamin D production pathway. Although a little bit later, we'll talk about the fact that most people get their vitamin D from their diet and in some cases also from supplementation.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
but it is a good idea to get some sunlight for sake of vitamin D production, but also the production of other hormones like testosterone and estrogen, okay? So every single dermatologist that I spoke to said that some sun exposure is good for us, but that too much sun exposure will accelerate the appearance of aging in our skin. So let's pin that up on the wall as fact, okay?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
This again is not saying you should avoid sun completely. It's also not saying you should get excessive sunlight exposure. It's saying, by virtue of the UV wavelengths ability to cause mutations in the epidermal layers of the skin and to impact the collagen composition of the dermal layers below it, as well as some of the other proteins present in the keratinocytes, okay?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
One of the major skin cell types. and other cell types of the skin does lead to the appearance of aged skin, which is one rationale for wearing sunscreen.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Now, when I say sunscreen, everyone, including myself, thinks about lotions or in some cases sprays, but let's pay attention to the one fact that I do think everybody, regardless of what category they are in the general population or what background training a dermatologist has,
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
believes, which is a physical barrier, a shirt, a hat, a jacket, a physical barrier can provide in some cases, very good protection from the sun. And I don't think there's any controversy whatsoever as to whether or not the composition of the physical barrier is having negative effects on the skin, okay?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
You will find those niche communities out there that are saying, okay, certain chemicals present in certain
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
materials that clothing are made with can be problems for the endocrine system but we're not talking about that here okay what i'm saying is that all dermatologists i spoke to and i think most every rational human being on earth would say that a physical barrier can help to a great degree in order to protect our skin from the sun as it relates to sunburn but also acceleration of the appearance of aging in our skin okay so i don't think there's any dispute about physical barriers for protecting the skin
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
How much you want to protect your skin from the sun, well, that will depend on what category you decided you were in from the earlier discussion. We'll get back to that. What else did all the dermatologists and skincare experts that I spoke to also agree upon? Well, they all said that indeed excessive sun exposure can increase the propensity for certain skin cancers.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
I want to go on record by saying, I believe that. Why? Well, because of this ability of UV light and some other wavelengths of light potentially to cause mutations in skin cells that can lead to certain skin cancers. I don't think that's a debated topic out there.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
There might be a few people out there who are going to hang their hat on a study that I'll go into a little bit later, which is that the relationship between sun exposure and all-cause mortality is a tricky one. It's one that we'll parse. Meaning, I'll just give it a little hint into what I'm saying. People who avoid the sun entirely
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
don't tend to live as long as people that get some sun exposure, but there are a bunch of confounding variables that have to be understood in order to really interpret that statement and the study that we'll parse a little bit later.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
For now, let's just accept the reality that the vast, vast majority of dermatologists out there and skincare experts really understand that sun exposure can accelerate aging of the skin, but most will also tell you that some sun exposure is good for you, not just for skin health, but for overall brain and body health.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
But I want to point out that those serve merely as examples that I found during researching this episode, which, by the way, included speaking to several board-certified dermatologists, including a dermatologist expert in oncology, cancers of the skin.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Now, as it relates to skin cancer, the dermatologist oncologist that I spoke to, all right, who did his training at Stanford, and I'll provide a link in the show note captions to his clinic, and you can learn more about some of his work. He's published some really nice papers, said the following, and this was surprising to me.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
He said, it turns out that the skin cancers that sun exposure causes, while they can be serious and should be taken seriously, they should be treated Those generally are not the most deadly of the skin cancers. Now, why would he say something like that? Okay, he said it because it turns out that there are lots of different kinds of skin cancer.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Some of them arise or can arise through sun exposure, others, and indeed some of the most deadly of skin cancers, are independent of sun exposure. And this is where things can get a little bit tricky. You'll hear out there, oh, you know, sun can cause skin cancer, but not the skin cancers that kill you. I don't think that's really a fair statement.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
You'll also hear, however, that all the skin cancers that are out there are the consequence of sun exposure, and that also is not true.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And if anything, this provides motivation, not just on the part of the dermatologist, but it should be motivation from within all of us to make sure that we understand our background genetics, not just how much pigmentation we carry in our skin by virtue of our genetics, but we should know by asking, if you're not going to get genetically sequenced, which you can do nowadays, of course, but you should know whether or not your family, your genetics,
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
tends to carry certain mutations that make you more prone to skin cancers in general, not just the type that can be exacerbated by sun exposure. What I'm basically saying is that if you have particular genetics in your family, even if you avoid all sun exposure, nobody should do that, of course, you need some sunlight.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Like all other or most all other creatures on earth, sunlight is important for us. It's important for setting our circadian rhythms. That's why I'm always telling people to get sunlight in their eyes early in the day, which by the way, when the sun is low in the sky, low solar angle sunlight, the UV index tends to be very low.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
So by the end of today's episode, you will have a much clearer understanding about skin and what it is at the level of biology and function, its relationship to other systems in the body, including the immune system and gut microbiome, and you will be armed with the knowledge to make the best possible decisions for you in terms of skin health and skin care, depending on your age, your goals, and any current conditions you may have.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
So you are at the lowest possible risk of getting burned, of getting any kind of mutations to your skin. That doesn't mean you should overdo it. It doesn't mean you should stare at the sun and damage your eyes. I've talked about this a lot on other podcasts, how to get morning sunlight exposure properly. But when the sun is low in the sky, that's generally a safe time to get sun exposure.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
It's that midday sun typically between the hours of 11 a.m. or even 10 a.m., depending on time of year and where you're at, and 2 or 3 or 4 p.m. that the sun is overhead and at its greatest intensity and where the UV index can be very high. It's very easy to look up the UV index. And when the UV index is very high, right?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
I was down in Australia earlier this year and the UV index down there is so high, you can almost feel it. You actually can feel it. You step outside and you immediately feel like, wow, my skin is really being bombarded with the sunlight. And I'm somebody who tolerates sunlight pretty well because my dad's fairly... and dark pigmentation just naturally by virtue of being South American.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Normally I can tolerate the skin pretty well, but you should not rely on just that subjective feel. You should look up the UV index and we'll provide a few links of good UV index sites that you can look up the UV index and where you might want to be extra cautious about providing a physical barrier or a chemical barrier to protect your skin.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Now, a lot of people out there also believe that if you avoid sunburn, you're avoiding skin cancer. Perhaps you're very pale or it's the early phase of the summer season, or you have a susceptibility to sunlight such that You step outside and you get too much sunlight on a given day and you get a sunburn.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
That reflects an immune reaction, an inflammatory reaction within the dermal layers of the skin. So that means the vasculature, right? Those vessels and capillaries, they're going to dilate. You oftentimes will get infiltration of things like cytokines, which are of the immune system. You get an inflammatory response. That's why it's red. That's why it's tender to the touch.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
The nerve endings there can be overly activated. So the reason why your skin actually feels warm, right? When you touch your sunburn is because in fact, You have an activation of some of the nerve endings at that site, as well as the activation of the local immune system properties that give rise to, again, vessel and capillary dilation. It's a wound of sorts induced by excessive sun exposure.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Our skin is an incredibly important organ, not just for our appearance or because it serves as a barrier to the other organ systems of the body, but because it actually reflects the health status of all the other organs and systems in our body, including our brain. As well, you'll learn today about the direct and reciprocal relationship between the immune system and our skin.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Now, does sunburn cause skin cancer? There's no direct relationship between sunburn and skin cancer, except the fact that sunburn reflects excessive sunlight exposure. And yes, as I mentioned before, It's conclusive that excessive UV sun exposure to the skin can cause certain mutations in skin cells that give rise to certain skin cancers. Why are we parsing things at this level of detail, right?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Is this all just semantics? No, it's not just semantics. Many people believe that if they didn't get a sunburn, they are not... at additional risk for inducing skin cancer or other issues with skin, right? We're not just talking about skin cancer, we're talking about accelerated aging of the skin according to sun exposure. So let's make this very simple.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
You don't need a sunburn for the sun to accelerate the aging appearance of your skin. you don't need a sunburn to induce the kind of mutation that may, again, I want to highlight, may give rise to a skin cancer. It's also not the case that if you've got a sunburn or even multiple sunburns that you'll necessarily develop skin cancer.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Although by virtue of the fact that sunburn reflects UV exposure, multiple sunburns would reflect increased UV exposure and therefore increased risk for certain skin cancers. So all of this to say, avoid sunburn however you can. And if you're somebody who just loathes sunscreen, that doesn't want to even hear the discussion we're about to have next about which sunscreens are safe and which ones
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
appear to be less safe. If you're just one of these people that does not want to put sunscreen on because you're very concerned about whatever chemical might be in sunscreen, well then consider that the physical barrier of an article of clothing or a hat or a bandana of sorts can indeed shield you from the sun to some degree, often to a great degree.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Juve.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And again, I don't think there's any controversy as to whether or not those are safe. As many of you know, I've been taking AG1 for more than 10 years now, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring this podcast. To be clear, I don't take AG1 because they're a sponsor. Rather, they are a sponsor because I take AG1.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
In fact, I take AG1 once and often twice every single day, and I've done that since starting way back in 2012. There is so much conflicting information out there nowadays about what proper nutrition is, but here's what there seems to be a general consensus on.
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Whether you're an omnivore, a carnivore, a vegetarian or a vegan, I think it's generally agreed that you should get most of your food from unprocessed or minimally processed sources, which allows you to eat enough but not overeat, get plenty of vitamins and minerals, probiotics and micronutrients that we all need for physical and mental health.
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Now, I personally am an omnivore and I strive to get most of my food from unprocessed or minimally processed sources. But the reason I still take AG1 once and often twice every day is that it ensures I get all of those vitamins, minerals, probiotics, etc. But it also has adaptogens to help me cope with stress.
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It's basically a nutritional insurance policy meant to augment, not replace quality food. So by drinking a serving of AG-1 in the morning and again in the afternoon or evening, I cover all of my foundational nutritional needs. And I, like so many other people that take AG-1, report feeling much better in a number of important ways, such as energy levels, digestion, sleep, and more.
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So while many supplements out there are really directed towards obtaining one specific outcome, AG-1 is foundational nutrition designed to support all aspects of wellbeing related to mental health and physical health. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer.
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They'll give you five free travel packs with your order, plus a year supply of vitamin D3 K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman. Okay, so before we dive into our discussion about sunscreens and the chemicals in sunscreens, Let's just take a moment and talk about vitamin D. Vitamin D is important for a great number of bodily and brain functions.
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As I mentioned earlier, most people get their vitamin D from the foods they eat. If you eat dairy, in most countries, the dairy is fortified with vitamin D. Many people nowadays supplement with vitamin D, anywhere from 1,000 IUs to 5,000 IUs. There are folks out there
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who perhaps even take 10,000 IUs, seems a bit high for most people, but it's going to depend on how much sun exposure you get, the pigmentation of your skin.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
But there are a number of people, especially in countries where they don't get a lot of sun exposure in particular times of year, and maybe they're not eating enough dairy fortified with vitamin D, who would benefit from vitamin D supplementation. And many people find they feel better
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when they supplement with vitamin D, but I encourage you that if you're going to supplement with vitamin D to probably start at the lower end of supplementation, like 1,000 to 3,000 IU, maybe 5,000 IU. Best would be to measure your vitamin D levels.
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Juve makes medical grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing I've consistently emphasized on this podcast, it's the incredible impact that light can have on our biology.
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Many people are surprised to find that even if they live in a part of the world where they get a fair amount of sun exposure and they eat some dairy that's fortified with vitamin D, that for whatever reason, their vitamin D levels are still too low and benefit from supplementation with vitamin D.
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The dermatologist that I spoke to told me that yes, even if you wear sunscreen or a physical barrier, okay, this is interesting. Even if you wear sunscreen or a physical barrier, when you get outside into the sun, it can still have a positive effect on your vitamin D levels. This was surprising to me, but then of course it makes sense. Sunlight is full spectrum light.
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It's not just UV and short wavelength light. The ability for longer wavelength light to penetrate the skin is clear and those longer wavelengths can also impart a positive influence on the vitamin D pathway, okay? So if you're concerned about wearing sunscreen because you're worried that it's going to impair your vitamin D synthesis or metabolism in any way, probably no reason to be concerned.
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Now, if you're somebody who is in the beekeeper category, who's completely avoiding sun exposure for whatever reason, well, then you probably want to get your vitamin D levels checked and you may want to rely on supplementation or something of that sort.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
At the same time, because of variation in genetic background, there will even be some of you out there who are super anti-sunscreen, who are peeling your shirts off all the time, who are getting lots of sun exposure, who may, surprisingly, have vitamin D levels that are still low. That's rare, okay, for all the obvious reasons, but it could still be the case.
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And indeed, some of the dermatologists that I spoke to said they occasionally have a patient like that. Vitamin D, as you may recall, is involved in a bunch of different things. It acts as a hormone. It's involved in calcium absorption. It's involved in some of the other hormone pathways.
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Now, in addition to sunlight, red light and near infrared light have been shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health, including faster muscle recovery, improved skin health and wound healing, even improvements in acne, reducing pain and inflammation, improving mitochondrial function, and even improving vision itself.
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And I should mention that there's a study, I'll link to this in the show note captions, that shows that some amount of sunlight exposure to the skin, this is an Israeli study where they had people get several tens of minutes of sunlight exposure in the afternoon during particular times of year. They didn't have them going naked outside, okay?
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This was sort of like context and culturally appropriate. Skin exposure to the upper body and to the legs could induce increases in hormones such as testosterone and estrogen, which were correlated with, it wasn't causal, but it was correlated with improvements in mood, wellbeing, libido, et cetera. Well, some of that probably relates to testosterone and estrogen
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synthesis directly again the skin as an endocrine organ okay there are certain elements within the keratinocytes skin cells that can literally communicate with some of the organs of the body that produce testosterone and estrogen even some of the glands pituitary etc this is through a number of different stations it's not necessarily direct but also through the sun's ability to impact the vitamin d pathway that then impinges on those testosterone estrogen and
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things like luteinizing hormone pathways. We don't have time to go into all this now. I covered this in an episode about testosterone and estrogen. You have hormones such as luteinizing hormone, which then stimulate the gonads, the testes of the ovaries, to make testosterone and or estrogen.
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The skin is a not so obvious player in this whole thing, whereby external environmental stimuli, such as the availability of sunlight, which in most places in the world varies across the year, can stimulate more or less vitamin D production, luteinizing hormone production that can impinge on testosterone and estrogen production.
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These pathways are one of the reasons why when we get the right amount of sunlight, not too little, not too much, we feel better. We feel better because certain hormones are being produced at certain levels when we're getting that sun exposure. And when we don't get that sun exposure, we have lower levels of those hormones.
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This is well-established, and the study that I linked to in the show note captions, which I've covered in previous episodes, is but one example of that phenomenon. Okay, let's talk about sunscreens. Now, the reason I changed my tone of voice with this is that if you look on the internet, you will see claims that I don't use or believe in sunscreen. That is just false.
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worn sunscreen my entire life. I don't necessarily wear it every day. I don't tend to burn easily. I have some natural level of pigmentation in my skin based on my genetics, as I mentioned earlier. But as we talked about earlier, just avoiding sunburn is not going to protect me or anyone else against certain sun-induced mutations in skin cells and the aging effects that sun can have.
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So I do believe in certain sunscreens, meaning I will put sunscreen on on certain days, on certain parts of my body. However, I do believe, now having spoken to multiple dermatologists and looked into the literature very deeply, that there are certain chemicals in certain sunscreens that are of concern.
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What sets Juve lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy devices is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning it uses specific wavelengths of red light and near infrared light in combination to trigger the optimal cellular adaptations. Personally, I use the Juve handheld light both at home and when I travel.
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I don't mean that if you put these on once or even twice that you are going to suffer negative consequences. I mean, they are of concern, meaning we should pay attention to them. And when given the option, we should opt for the healthier choices. And in fact, there are known healthier choices.
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To make all of this very clear, I'm going to tell you what is very clear to the dermatology community at this point in time, okay? In June of 2024, here's what we know. There are two major types of sunscreens out there. Well, really three. We talked about physical barrier before. No one argues about a physical barrier. No one's worried about the chemical composition of physical barriers, okay?
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When we talk about sunscreen, so lotions, creams, sprays, et cetera, there are two major types. The first are organic types, which is essentially chemical sunscreens, okay? So when you hear organic sunscreens, that means chemical type sunscreens. And then there are inorganic types, which are sometimes referred to as mineral-based sunscreens.
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Here's what most everybody seems to accept, that mineral-based sunscreens, meaning sunscreens that tend to include either zinc oxide or titanium dioxide, or both in some cases, are generally thought to be safe up to concentrations of 25%. 25% is a pretty high concentration. You can find sunscreens out there that have 25% zinc oxide or 25% titanium dioxide. They're rare to find, however.
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More often you'll find sunscreens that have 15%, 10%, 18% zinc oxide, sometimes alone, or in combination with titanium dioxide. You'll find some pure titanium dioxide sunscreens out there, while those are a bit more rare, right? A little bit harder to find. Here's the story.
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Zinc oxide and titanium dioxide reflect back UV light, the short wavelengths of light that would otherwise potentially cause mutations in your skin cells at the level of the epidermis, okay, in the outermost layers of skin. Remember, short wavelength light doesn't pass very deeply into the skin.
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Sunscreens containing zinc oxide and or titanium dioxide were engineered for that specific purpose, to reflect back UV light. This is very different than organic or chemical sunscreens, which contain certain compounds. These go by different names, oxybenzone, avobenzone. There are a bunch of these different chemicals that are contained in so-called organic or chemical sunscreens.
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Those chemicals in general don't serve to reflect back UV light, but rather absorb UV light. Okay, so when they're applied to the skin, they're designed to absorb the UV light so that the UV light can't negatively impact the skin.
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It's only about the size of a sandwich, so it's super portable and convenient to use. I also have a Juve whole body panel and I use that about three or four times per week. If you'd like to try Juve, you can go to juve, spelled J-O-O-V-V, .com slash Huberman. Juve is offering an exclusive discount to all Huberman Lab listeners with up to $400 off select Juve products.
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Those chemical, again, chemical, AKA organic components within organic sunscreens, again, sometimes called chemical sunscreens, are designed to absorb UV light, mineral-based sunscreens, so-called inorganic sunscreens containing things like zinc oxide or titanium dioxide, are designed to reflect back UV light. Why am I telling you this?
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Well, I'm telling you this because it's generally believed that the zinc oxide and titanium dioxide containing sunscreens are safe up to concentrations of 25%, whereas there is some, again, some concern about the chemicals within chemical aka organic sunscreens as potential endocrine disruptors. So disrupting things like testosterone synthesis, estrogen synthesis and other hormones.
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It's not all just about testosterone and estrogen folks, other hormone pathways that many people, including some governing bodies and Agencies that assess the safety of different cosmetic and sunscreen products are concerned about. Now, how concerned they are depends on where you are in the world, okay?
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So in Europe, they have different stringencies for what is considered safe versus unsafe or just of concern as opposed to in the US. Here's what every dermatologist in the US, because those are the ones I spoke to, told me, which is that it is advised that on children younger than six months of age, you do not use chemical-based sunscreens. Why?
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Well, young skin, even the skin on the external part of the body, in children six months or younger acts more like mucosal skin in that it can very easily absorb things transdermally through the skin. However, even as we age, so into puberty, our young adult years, and even into our elderly years, there is still a capacity for things to pass transdermally through the skin.
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Although, because of some of the additional barriers formed within the dermal and epidermal layers of the skin, things like extracellular matrix, the changes in collagen, et cetera, there is less tendency for compounds to pass transdermally through the skin. Now,
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That just simply highlights the fact that if you are a very young person, or if you're applying sunscreen to a very young person, maybe six months or younger, but also perhaps older, depending on how careful you want to be, to avoid these chemical-based sunscreens.
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There is very little, if any, evidence that the mineral-based sunscreens are of concern for transdermal passage into the skin at concentrations of 25% or less. Meaning, Sunscreens containing zinc oxide and titanium dioxide are probably safe, or at least have been deemed safe enough that they are freely available on the market. And we are told that they are safe for people of all ages.
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So if you are somebody who is concerned about the chemicals in sunscreen, most every dermatologist or chemist who works on sunscreens will tell you, well, mineral-based inorganic sunscreens are going to be your safer option if you're concerned.
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But get this, the chemical-based sunscreens, while some of the chemicals in them indeed can be quite scary when you read the literature, you look at some of these things like oxybenzone, avobenzone, and some similar substances Even at low concentrations have been shown to be endocrine disruptors. People talk about how the fact when they apply these sunscreens, they can taste them in their mouth.
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There's a lot of fear around these. And some of that fear is substantiated. When one goes and looks at the studies that have been done on these chemical-based sunscreens, you may find it interesting to note that the way these studies were done often involves having people apply a ton
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Again, that's juve, J-O-O-V-V, .com slash Huberman to get $400 off select Juve products. Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. I've been doing weekly therapy for over three decades. Initially, I didn't have a choice.
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of these chemical-based sunscreens, like two full bottles of these sunscreens over the course of a very short period of time, and then have their blood drawn, and then it's revealed that some of these chemical components are within the blood.
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So a big issue that's not often discussed because it's very difficult to control for in a natural setting, but is straightforward to control for in a laboratory setting, is how much sunscreen one is applying and how often. and across how many years of time.
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So there's no real prescriptive that can tell you, hey, if you put chemical sunscreens on once, that's problematic, although certainly pay attention to that six months and younger, what is essentially a rule that I mentioned earlier, and do not put chemical-based sunscreens on really young kids. You might want to avoid them entirely, depending on how stringent you are about this stuff.
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But when it comes to chemical-based sunscreens, personally, I avoid them, but then it becomes a question of if you could only use a chemical-based sunscreen, you simply look at the label. Some of these have, by the way, zinc oxide, titanium oxide, and chemical-based components, okay? Keep that in mind. Some are purely mineral-based, some are purely chemical-based.
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But if you look at a sunscreen label, you know, okay, well, this is the only thing available on this very hot day with a very high UV index, and otherwise I'm going to get a burn. Well, if you're really concerned, then I would resort to a physical barrier.
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If you are less concerned, then you could perhaps tell yourself, okay, you get to put it on that day, but you might not want to use it every day. And you might want to use a small volume of it, right? Or maybe just on parts of your face or your ears or your neck that are particularly sensitive to sun. Okay, these are the things that need to be taken into consideration.
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But when we step back from all of this, all of the literature, including, by the way, some of the literature that assessed, and I'll put a link to this review, a review on the potential neurotoxicity of titanium dioxide nanoparticles. I'll get into this in a moment. It has been explored whether or not titanium dioxide is more risky than zinc oxide. Talk about that in a moment.
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But when you step back from all of this, Here's what you get. Physical barrier, no one argues about that. No one believes that clothing is dangerous per se when it comes to avoiding excessive sun exposure. Again, excessive relates to your skin tone, your background genetics, your activities, and where you are in the world and what time of year, okay? Very specific to your needs.
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Very few folks are concerned about mineral-based inorganic sunscreen. So if you want to use sunscreen, as many people do, and you want to make sure that it's not an endocrine disruptor and it's not a neurotoxin or something else that's been raised for some of these chemical-based sunscreens, well then find a sunscreen that has 25% less zinc oxide and or titanium dioxide.
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If you were a bit more concerned about say titanium dioxide and some of the suggestive evidence, only suggestive evidence that maybe titanium dioxide is more risky than
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zinc oxide, especially when it's in its nano form, the very small form that may indeed allow it for more easy passage through the layers of the skin, that transdermal passage, well then find a sunscreen that is purely zinc oxide sunscreen. And again, they always have other things in them, but what I mean is the only active ingredient in a zinc oxide only containing sunscreen is zinc oxide.
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And then there are a bunch of other things that allow it to be a lotion, for instance, again, up to 25% concentration. Why would somebody not want to use zinc oxide containing sunscreen up to 25% and opt for anything else, you might ask, right? If that's considered safe. The reason is the consistency of the zinc oxide is it's pretty sticky and thick and it's kind of pasty, right?
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It was a condition of being allowed to stay in school, but pretty soon I realized that therapy is critical to overall health. In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular physical exercise, which of course I also do every week.
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Back in the 80s and 90s, some of you may recall that zinc oxide Sunscreens that would actually, you know, color the nose white. So you could really see it was really prominent on the face. They tried to turn that into a fashion statement. Didn't go over so well over time.
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But in any case, the addition of titanium dioxide to those zinc oxide containing sunscreens allow it to be a bit silkier so that it would spread on more evenly. And then you may say, well, why even put chemicals in sunscreen at all if there's risk?
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The reason why chemical-based organic sunscreens even exist is that they can come up with compositions of those sunscreens that are very silky and that could spread on clear over makeup and things of that sort. but there are these concerns about some of those chemical components as endocrine disruptors and potentially as mutagens that could cause other issues or any number of different things.
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You can find all sorts of concerns out there on the internet. Most of those concerns are not substantiated, but these chemicals can be problematic at high concentrations. And that takes us back to the point made earlier, which is that in the studies of those chemicals and the reasons in some cases being banned in certain countries and other countries carrying
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warning recommendations, the amount of those chemical-based sunscreens that were applied was exceedingly high. So if you're wearing sunscreen very often, you're wearing a lot of it, probably best of year towards a mineral-based sunscreen. If you are concerned at all about the chemicals in chemical-based sunscreen, wear a mineral-based sunscreen and or use physical barrier.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And if you're somebody who just doesn't believe that sunscreens are safe whatsoever, well, You know, as far as I know, it's a free world. You don't have to wear sunscreen, but then I would say you need to be very aware of the fact that sun can induce the appearance of accelerated aging in the skin, right? That's an actual process that takes place. There's really no debating that, frankly.
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And sun exposure can potentially accelerate or even give rise to certain skin cancers, and nobody wants that. Okay, before we move on to a discussion about what can be done to increase the youthfulness of our skin or the appearance of youthfulness in our skin, we need to have a bit more discussion about skin cancers.
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research tells us that excellent therapy includes three critical ingredients the first ingredient is a strong rapport between you and the therapist somebody that you can really trust and talk to about the issues that are concerning you second great therapy should provide support in the form of emotional support or directed guidance towards the issues you're facing and third excellent therapy should provide insights either directly from the therapist or that you arrive at that you would have
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Notice I said skin cancers, plural, because there are many different forms of skin cancer. Some of them relate to sun exposure, as we discussed earlier, others do not. And in fact, some of the more deadly skin cancers are independent of sun exposure. They can relate to genetics and to other factors. So the most straightforward story about all of this
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is that approximately 80 to 90% of melanomas, which are skin cancers and they are very serious skin cancers that can indeed be very deadly, arise in what's called de novo skin. De novo skin is non-mole skin. Now, does that mean that you should not pay attention to the shape and any changes in your moles? No, you absolutely should.
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But for people who have naturally darker pigmentation everywhere or who have very few moles, then you aren't going to be able to use the monitoring of your moles as the only readout of potential development of skin cancer. And frankly, everybody should be thinking about these more serious skin cancers independent of moles or changes in moles.
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Here are a couple of things that everyone should pay attention to. If you have a pimple-like condition,
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or you have any kind of spot on your skin that seems like it's an acne that's lasted more than a month, or you have an area that's seeping something that might look like plasma or pus or blood, and it persists over a long period of time, like a month or more, absolutely get that checked out by a dermatologist, okay? Don't wait any longer than a month, get it checked out.
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In addition, it's highly recommended that you go in and you get your moles checked by a dermatologist. And frankly, that you get all of your skin checked by a dermatologist at least once per year. This is going to really protect you against both the sun induced skin cancers and other forms of skin cancer. The most common form of sun exposure induced cancers are basal cell carcinomas.
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And indeed those are less deadly than many of the melanomas, but they still can be exceedingly problematic and they can be deadly. So it's very important to get these checked out. Now there are websites and I'll provide a link to one of them in the show note captions for which you can look at a bunch of different examples of different moles and how they change over time.
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And if you happen to have a mole that resembles the appearance of any of the moles in that image gallery, then you would be wise to go to a dermatologist right away because it could be, again, could be, cancer of some sort. You do not want to let these things linger for too long.
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At the same time, many people get concerned about one mole that didn't have an irregular border and then suddenly has an irregular border. There are a lot of different features that you'll learn from the website or if you talk to your dermatologist that relate to whether or not something is predicting skin cancer or has become skin cancer. It's not just irregular border, it's changes in size.
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Certainly changes in pigmentation, vascularization, bleeding, any kind of seeping. There are a lot of different things there. So don't be alarmed at first appearance of one of these things, but do take it seriously. And keep in mind that there are things that your dermatologist can do to help prevent certain skin cancers.
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So for instance, there's a growing trend now among dermatologists to suggest laser resurfacing of skin. That is a laser used to essentially disrupt that epidermal outermost layer, turn it over so that it regenerates because it can indeed regenerate to create new cells there. Keep in mind that UV light and other factors in the environment can cause mutations within that skin layer.
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Sometimes they're caused by genetic factors, but often environmental factors like sun and chemicals and other things. And by encouraging turnover of that skin layer through laser resurfacing, which, by the way, may also increase the sort of youthfulness appearance of your skin.
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So many people are motivated to do it for that reason, can dramatically reduce the incidence of certain kinds of skin cancer. In fact, The dermatologist that I spoke to who's an expert in derm oncology, okay, cancers of the skin, said that laser resurfacing can cause a 30% reduction in skin cancers because of this ability to rejuvenate that epidermal layer.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And that's especially true for areas of the body like the face, ears, neck, tops of the hands, et cetera, for which the sun often induces the most damage because those are the most exposed parts of the body on a regular basis. And by the way, this whole thing about skin cancer is not a trivially small number. It's a big number.
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otherwise not been able to arrive at had you not had that emotional support and strong rapport. With BetterHelp, they make it easy for you to find an expert therapist with whom you can have those three critical components. And because BetterHelp is carried out entirely online, it can mesh well with your schedule. You don't have to commute anywhere. You don't have to find parking.
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In the US alone, there are up to 4 million cases per year of what's called squamous cell carcinoma, one of these forms of skin cancer. So getting checked out by a highly qualified dermatologist on a yearly basis, maybe even more if you're really concerned about this, because you have a lot of familial, genetically inherited skin cancers, things of that sort is really highly advised.
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I'd like to take a brief break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct amounts and ratios and nothing you don't, which means no sugar.
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Now, I and others on this podcast have talked about the critical importance of hydration for proper brain and body functioning. even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes.
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The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are critical for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons, your nerve cells. Drinking Element dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes.
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To make sure I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I'll also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot, losing water and electrolytes.
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They have a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. My favorite is the watermelon, although I confess I also like the raspberry and the citrus. Basically, I like all the flavors. And Element has also just released a new line of canned sparkling Element. So these aren't the packets you dissolve in water.
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These are cans of Element that you crack open like any other canned drink, like a soda, but you're getting your hydration and your electrolytes with no sugar. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement spelled L-M-N-T.com slash Huberman to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix.
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Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. Now with respect to everything we've talked about about sun exposure, sunscreen, and skin cancer, I'd be remiss if I didn't discuss a study that's often used kind of as a wedge or a weapon in the online debates about sun exposure, skin cancer and mortality.
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And the title of this study is, quote, avoidance of sun exposure as a risk factor. That's right. Sun exposure as a risk factor for major causes of death, a competing risk analysis of the melanoma in southern Sweden cohort.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
So the basic design of this study was to evaluate people's self-reported amount of sun exposure across many years, and then to correlate that with all-cause mortality, and then to relate it to different causes of disease, in particular cardiovascular death, compare this to smokers. Keep in mind that some of the people who were reporting their sun exposure were smokers, some weren't.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And the conclusion of this study that drew a lot of attention and continues to draw a lot of attention is the following. quote, and here I quote from the abstract, non-smokers who avoided sun exposure had a life expectancy similar to smokers in the highest sun exposure group. Okay, I'm going to repeat that.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
You can fit it into essentially any schedule. If you'd like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Roka. Roka makes eyeglasses and sunglasses that are the absolute highest quality.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Non-smokers who avoided sun exposure had a life expectancy similar to smokers in the highest sun exposure group. So what many people take this to conclude is that avoiding sun exposure is as dangerous as smoking, okay?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
That's not the conclusion that I'd like you to take away because what this study basically shows is, and here I continue, quote, compared to the highest sun exposure group, life expectancy of avoiders of sun exposure was reduced by 0.6 to 2.1 years.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
So you go, wait a second, can this really be true that people that are avoiding sun exposure have a lower life expectancy than people who get sun exposure? And indeed in this particular study, that does seem to be the case, but the interpretation of this is not completely straightforward. Here's what we know. Getting some degree of sun exposure appears to be good for life expectancy.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
That is true. But is it directly related to sun exposure? That's a critical question. And is the increased sun exposure that one gets, if you do get sun exposure, linked to other issues, in particular, the development of melanoma? As you recall, melanoma was even in the title of the study. So here's how I think we should think about this study.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
It does appear that getting sun exposure is correlated with longer life expectancy, but there could be any number of different reasons for that. For instance, people that are getting regular sun exposure presumably are also enhancing activation of the vitamin D pathways, which is related to any number of different things. They no doubt are experiencing increased feelings of wellbeing.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
I talked about papers that have substantiated that earlier, and frankly, We didn't even need a scientific study to substantiate that, although it's always great to have it. We know that being out in sunshine for some period of time each day, as long as we don't get burned in the sun, feels good. Why does it feel good?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
It leads to the production of testosterone, estrogen, some of the endorphins that generally make us feel good. It is directly related to the pathways associated with dopamine release. There's a whole story there about seasonality, both in humans and other animals about dopamine synthesis.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
When we get sunlight, there's elevated dopamine and serotonin and testosterone and estrogen and feelings of wellbeing and libido. This is all well substantiated in animal models and humans. So getting sun exposure makes people feel good. When people feel good, they tend to be lower stress.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
When people are feeling good and they have energy, because there indeed is a direct relationship between sun exposure, especially to the eyes early in the day and our feelings of elevated mood and alertness, and energy, they tend to exercise more, walk more. And of course, if you're outside exercising more, walking more, cycling, swimming, you're also going to get more sun exposure.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And we know that exercise is strongly related to improved or extended life expectancy, okay? So the study basically says getting sunlight as opposed to very little sunlight is good for life expectancy, but it doesn't say get too much sunlight, right? Because, and this is interesting,
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
I've spent a lifetime working on the biology of the visual system, and I can tell you that your visual system has to contend with an enormous number of different challenges in order for you to be able to see clearly from moment to moment. Roka understands all of that and has designed all of their eyeglasses and sunglasses with the biology of the visual system in mind.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
It is very clear that the people who lived longer because they were getting more sunlight also tended to have more cancers, including melanoma. But this is a very important point. It's also the case that the longer one lives, the more likely you are to develop a cancer.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Okay, so as you can see, these studies that many people just draw one straightforward conclusion from, such as people who get less sun exposure don't live as long as people to get more sun exposure. Well, that's true, but when you get more sun exposure, very likely you're doing other things like exercise and feeling better that relate to living longer.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
So it's very difficult, if not impossible to isolate one single variable, in this case, sun exposure as the key variable. However,
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
I'm happy to go on record saying that we know from so many studies of animal models and humans that sun exposure, especially early day sun exposure, when the sun is low in the sky to set your circadian rhythm and late day sun exposure, okay, I'm not talking about middle of the day getting baked in the sun and sunburned or things of that sort, but around the time of sunset, especially sun exposure to the eyes is powerfully modulating your circadian rhythm to elevate daytime mood focus and alertness and improve sleep.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
both of which are strongly correlated with improvements in mental health, immune system function, feelings of wellbeing, enhanced cognition. I mean, there's this whole story about people with Alzheimer's and disruptions in circadian rhythms and sleep. So sun exposure to the eyes in terms of setting circadian rhythm, powerful, powerful improvement of life expectancy and immediate health.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Sun exposure to the skin, no doubt, very powerful, positive modulators of certain hormone and neuromodulator pathways such as dopamine, testosterone, estrogen, and so forth that make people feel good and do things generally that are good for them. Okay, generally, not all the things people do with elevated dopamine, testosterone, and estrogen are good for them. We know that for sure. But
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Getting some sunlight, that is some appropriate dosage of sunlight, especially to the eyes early in the day, don't stare at the sun, don't damage your eyes, but getting some of that sun exposure to your eyes early in the day and some to the skin, especially in the early and later part of the day, clearly is positively correlated with various health metrics in terms of mental health and physical health, and not surprisingly with lifespan.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
So I mentioned the study because I do think it's very interesting, right? I think it's really interesting that people who completely avoid sunlight
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
are not living as long as people who get some sun exposure and some of this actually is on par with what's experienced with cigarette smoking i think something that everyone agrees is negative in terms of life expectancy and certainly is not good for a great a number of different systems within the brain and body.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Roka eyeglasses and sunglasses were first designed for use in sport, in particular for things like running and cycling. And as a consequence, Roka frames are extremely lightweight, so much so that most of the time you don't even remember that you're wearing them. And they're also designed so that they don't slip off, even if you get sweaty.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
But I think the study sometimes is used to highlight the wrong conclusion, which is that sunlight itself is extending lifespan. I think that that very simple conclusion can be taken too far.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
and can start to negate some of the equally important messages about excessive sunlight exposure causing certain problems as it relates to skin cancers, which we talked about earlier, as it relates to things that you can do in order to offset some of that risk with if I were to suggest, a physical barrier if you need it, a chemical-based sunscreen if you choose to use sunscreen.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And of course, that's an independent choice that each of us have to make for ourselves. Okay, let's talk about youthfulness of skin or the appearance of youthfulness in skin. Before I did this episode, I put the call out on social media for questions about skin and skin health. And I must say that the vast majority of questions related to this topic.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And if you think about it, you've seen this relationship in action before. When any of us is feeling fatigued or sick, the color, the tone of our skin tends to be a bit quote unquote off, at least for us, relative to what it normally is. Conversely, when we are feeling particularly well rested and vibrant and healthy, our skin reflects that. So today we will discuss the skin as an organ.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And it's a very interesting one because it relates to a lot of decisions that people are making about what to do, what to buy or not buy as the case may be.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And it is an enormous, probably hundreds of billions of dollars industry, if not trillion dollar industry over time, this business of devices, products, and procedures to try and reverse aging or the appearance of aging in skin, or even create de novo new synthesis of collagen in skin and other things to make skin look more youthful.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Okay, so if we step back from this whole area, we have to ask ourselves, what do we know for sure about what makes skin look youthful and what can be done to make skin look more youthful? And to understand the answers to those questions, we simply have to go back to the beginning of today's discussion for just a moment.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Remember that we have the epidermal layer of skin, we have the dermal layer of skin, we have the vasculature, the blood vessels and capillaries, you have the nerve inputs there. You have a bunch of different cell types in there, the keratinocytes. You have different proteins within those cells.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
like collagen, elastin, that over time can, yes, be mutated by things like UV rays from the sun, but that over time tend to lose their elasticity, which leads to wrinkles and sagging skin. You also have this issue of hydration of the skin, right? Skin has a lot of watery components within it, actual water within it.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And those watery components are what give it its kind of plump, moist look, smooth look, as opposed to desiccated, sagging, wrinkled look. to speak in extremes. And there are hundreds, if not thousands of different chemicals out there that dermatologists, as well as cosmetic surgeons, as well as just frankly manufacturers of products assert are going to be good for skin.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Now, even though Roka eyeglasses and sunglasses were initially designed for sport, they now have many different frames and styles, all of which can be used not just for sport, but also for wearing out to dinner, to work, essentially anytime in any setting.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
So let's talk about where there is a lot of evidence for certain things that you can do if your goal is to increase the youthfulness or the appearance of youthfulness in your skin. And one of the main ones is collagen itself. And now I have to admit, I was very surprised when I looked at this literature, but I was positively surprised. Here's why.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
As you know, there are various macronutrients present in foods. You can have proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. When we ingest proteins such as beef, chicken, fish, eggs, as well as some vegan sources of proteins like beans or lentils or tofu, things of that sort,
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
They contain different amounts of different essential amino acids, and those essential amino acids and other amino acids are used as the building blocks for proteins in our muscles, in our tendons, in essentially all the organ systems of our body. The lipids are also used for cell membranes, et cetera, okay?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
This has been discussed various times on this podcast before, people like Dr. Lane Norton, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, and others. It's well established that when these proteins are broken down in the gut, some of those amino acids go and serve for the purpose of tissue repair. Others are for the purpose of other things.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
What most people in the field of nutrition agree upon and what certainly I believe is that if you were to say, eat a little bit of liver, right? You might have a little bit of cooked liver or a little bit of skeletal muscle in the form of like a steak, that there's no selective trafficking of the amino acids that are broken down from the liver that you eat to your liver, right?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
So when you hear that eating liver supports your liver, it may do that by the broad process of certain amino acids and vitamins and lipids, et cetera, serving your liver and other organ and tissue systems of the body, but not selectively your liver. However, when we talk about collagen, this protein that forms one of the most essential aspects of what makes our skin what it is, which is elastic
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
I wear Roka readers at night or Roka eyeglasses if I'm driving at night, and I wear Roka sunglasses in the middle of the day anytime it's too bright for me to see clearly. My eyes are somewhat sensitive, so I need that.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
and to have some tensile strength where you can push on it, it returns to its original position, especially if it's well hydrated and makes our skin very youthful in appearance when we're young. And then as it degrades, when we get old, it makes it look less youthful, wrinkles and sagging and so forth.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Well, then why would eating collagen protein, which can come from any number of different sources, it can come from fish sources, it can come from, believe it or not, animal hoof sources, can come from any number of different sources, tendon, et cetera. Why would ingesting collagen be selectively trafficked to the collagen in our skin, right? That doesn't square with everything we know.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And yet, when you look at studies, including meta-analyses of studies where people supplement with collagen powders, and these powders typically come from fish or tendon, any number of different sources,
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
When people do this and then measures are taken as to skin appearance, skin elasticity, there are a bunch of measures that can be done in humans in the laboratory to do this, you often will find studies that show statistically significant improvements in collagen composition and skin appearance, and even the appearance of reduction in wrinkles and so forth.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
So this is an interesting exception where the ingestion of a particular protein that naturally exists in abundance in certain tissues, such as skin, but also other tissues like tendon, ligaments, et cetera,
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
seems to be assisting in either the repair and rejuvenation of collagen, or perhaps some other aspect of collagen synthesis that leads to improvements in collagen composition and the appearance of skin in humans. That's very interesting. And the study that I find particularly interesting is one that I'll link to in the show note captions.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
I do not wear sunglasses in the morning when I'm getting my morning sunlight viewing for sake of setting my circadian rhythm, but I do wear Roka sunglasses often at other times throughout the day when it's very bright out. I particularly like the Hunter 2.0 frames, which I have as eyeglasses and now as sunglasses too.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
It's entitled, quote, Exploring the Impact of Hydrolyzed Collagen Oral Supplementation on Skin Rejuvenation, a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. And the basic takeaway of this and other meta-analyses and the studies within this meta-analysis is that when people supplement with anywhere from five to 15 grams, okay, grams of hydrolyzed collagen per day,
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
in particular in combination with vitamin C, it doesn't have to be a lot of vitamin C, that one can observe, okay, not always, but can observe some visible improvements in skin composition, meaning less wrinkles, even some reversal of wrinkles, less skin sagging, more youthful appearance, more kind of, let's just call it rebound elasticity of the skin.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
I realize that's not the appropriate technical term, but the ability of a skin to bounce back from an indentation when you push down on it, as opposed to sitting down or sagging. So some pretty impressive results when one considers that what people are basically doing here is just mixing up some hydrolyzed collagen protein and then drinking that down once per day or so.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Now that is not to say that you have to supplement with hydrolyzed collagen. Why? Well, collagen is also present in various foods. So for instance, drinking bone broth, beef bone broth, chicken bone broth is a rich source of collagen. You can go online and simply look up just by web search.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
You can just say, you know, what foods contain high levels of collagen, and you'll get a list of things back there. Hopefully a few of those are not just palatable to you, but you actually like, and you can start to include those in your daily diet, or you could supplement with hydrolyzed collagen protein. There are any number of different sources for these.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
It's interesting that while indeed I don't believe, and there is frankly zero evidence for selective trafficking of amino acids arising from a particular organ source to that particular organ when you ingest it, it is interesting that consuming hydrolyzed collagen in the form of a supplement or deriving it from foods like bone broth
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
et cetera, does seem to be able to improve collagen synthesis or the appearance of skin, making it more youthful. For those of you that are interested in ingesting collagen peptides as a way to improve the youthfulness of your skin, should mention that the dosage is there, come in a range depending on the studies that you've looked at.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And the dermatologist that I spoke to said, if one decides to go down this route of supplementing or getting collagen from food sources, you want to aim for anywhere from 15 grams to 30 grams of collagen peptides per day. Okay, that's a bit higher than what was used in a number of studies, but you'll find studies that use 30 grams and that that whole process can be augmented, can be improved.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
through ingestion of 500 to 1,000 milligrams of vitamin C as well.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
If you'd like to try Roka, you can go to roka.com slash Huberman to get 20% off your purchase. Again, that's roka.com slash Huberman to get 20% off. Okay, so let's talk about skin health, and by extension, skin care. What should we all be doing to take care of this organ that we call our skin?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
But check the label on those collagen peptides that you might be supplementing with, because oftentimes they already include that 500 to 1,000 milligrams of vitamin C. I should also mention that the dermatologist I spoke to said that they like collagen protein supplementation, not just for the reasons discussed up until now, but that they liked them for a number of other reasons, such as the potential anti-inflammatory effects of collagen proteins.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
To be honest, I don't know what the exact mechanism of that is. Maybe if you get a certain protein threshold, inflammation is down. But anyway, that's still cryptic to me. But in any case, they did describe some of the potential mechanisms by which collagen ingestion can do its thing in terms of improving youthfulness.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
It's broken down in the blood into dipeptides and tripeptides, which then are used within the collagen itself of the skin. This is the hypothesis. And that it can increase the chemotaxis, the mobility of fibroblasts, which make up some of the skin tissue. and give rise to the appearance of more youthful skin.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
There's also evidence that ingestion of hydrolyzed collagen peptides can improve the elasticity of the skin barrier on the outside, make it look nice and taut. If I guess we say nice, we're sort of passing subjective readout on this, make it appear taut through the increase of certain proteins unrelated to collagen, such as filigrees, elastins, et cetera. What about other peptides?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Okay, so this is a big topic nowadays, especially in the online communities. I did an entire episode of this podcast about peptides. Keep in mind that insulin is a peptide, Ozempic, what is essentially an agonist for glucagon-like peptide one. This is a very popular prescription drug now for the treatment of obesity and for the treatment of diabetes.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
There are lots of things that qualify as peptides. A peptide is simply a small chain of amino acids. A polypeptide is a bit, longer chain of amino acids, and then proteins are made up of amino acids, okay? So when we say peptides, that means many, many things.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
But these days, when you hear about quote unquote peptides, especially in online communities, generally people are referring to exogenously given, okay? So pills, or more typically injections of peptides that are designed to achieve some specific biological or physiological outcome.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And one of the more common of these peptides being used nowadays is one that I've talked about before called BPC-157, body protection compound 157, which is essentially a synthetic version of something found in gastric juice in all of us. It's known that certain peptides within the gut
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
that BPC-157 is known to mimic, or it actually is a synthetic version of that exact sequence or a portion of that sequence, can assist in tissue and wound repair of different kinds, tendon, anything involving fibroblasts. All of that has been well-demonstrated in vitro in a dish, So not in vivo, as well as in vivo in certain cases, but only in animal models.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Now, our skin is a very interesting organ, as I mentioned earlier, not just because it protects all the other organs of our body, and I should mention it protects them not just by a physical barrier, but there's also chemical things, a chemical composition, a skin microbiome to the skin that also provides additional layers of support, such as neutralizing different bacteria that land on your skin.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
To my knowledge, there's only one study. And frankly, it's not a very good study at all on BPC-157 in humans. And yet a lot of people are taking BPC-157 either orally in the form of a capsule or pill, or more typically injecting it. What does it do or what does it likely do in humans? We know from animal models that BPC-157 increases angiogenesis, the growth of capillaries in blood vessels.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
We know this. It can accelerate wound healing by virtue of increasing fibroblast motility. For this reason, it's used post-injury in sports, It's used by people who want to build more muscle. It's used by endurance athletes. It's used for cosmetic purposes.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Anytime people are using BPC-157 for any of those purposes, it's likely that they're using it in part to increase the blood flow that's available to a given tissue and the repair of that tissue. Now, again, I do want to caution people that there is very little, basically no evidence in humans besides the anecdotal that people say they healed faster.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
What I do know is that anytime you get vascularization of tissue, you're going to get improved blood flow. So it all makes sense mechanistically. I also know that vascularization due to BPC-157, even if it's injected locally, into a given tissue is likely to occur globally throughout the body.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
This is why some people taking oral BPC-157 or injecting it, you know, just subcutaneously at the level of, you know, their stomach a little bit, you know, under the skin at the level of their stomach report faster wound healing, even in a distal limb or like a hand or a nerve injury in their foot or something like that.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
That also tells us that there's going to be increased vascularization of other tissues, such as skin, such as tumors, if tumors exist. So you need to be very careful.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
I need to say that upfront as a cautionary note, because it is very clear that many people are starting to either inject BPC-157 or apply it in the form of a topical cream in effort to get more vascularization of skin in order to make that skin appear more youthful. And more and more products are out there that contain BPC-157. I can't in good conscious recommend those products.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
I can only offer to you the likely mechanism by which they work, if they work, and also offer you the caveat that it is unclear that BPC-157 can go transdermally if it's applied topically. So if you put it on a, say, wrinkly portion of your face, like I've got crow's feet, crow's feet come from either aging, smiling, or both.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
You know, the crow's feet are the kind of wrinkles that extend out the corners of your eyes when you smile, or for me, because I'm, you know, 48, you know, and probably... I do that even when I don't smile.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
The logic would be that if you take a cream containing BPC-157 and you put it on there, that you'll get increased vascularization of that area, delivery of more growth factors and nutrients, and those wrinkles will either be halted in their aging progression or that they will reverse. That's the logic.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
To my knowledge, there are no clinical studies, and I'd love to know from you if you've tried these products. please put your experience of those in the comments on YouTube so we can get a sense of whether or not people are having good results with this. That, of course, is not a controlled study, but I'm very curious as to know.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Many of the products that contain BPC-157, by the way, also contain copper. Copper is a trace mineral. It's found in your diet. There is some evidence that copper is important for some of the collagen and other elements of skin synthesis pathways. And so the mechanistic logic and the biochemical logic is there on paper.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
There's a lot more to skin than you might realize. But to start off, let's just talk about what skin is at the level of its structure, some of the cell types, because in understanding that you'll be best equipped to understand some of the recommendations for skin health and skin care. The skin, like many other organs in the body, is a layered structure.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
However, it's also clear that ingesting too much copper can induce an inflammatory response and would lead to the exact opposite desired effect that people who are using copper and usually copper BPC containing products are taking them for, which is to halt or reverse the appearance of aging in their skin. Why am I going through this whole gymnastics of, you know, BPC-157 and copper?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Well, because nowadays many, many products are starting to include quote unquote peptides for skin rejuvenation. And most often those peptides are of the copper variety, of the BPC-157 variety, and oftentimes also with things related to collagen synthesis, sometimes collagen directly.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
So you'll find oral products that one takes by pill form that are BPC-157, copper, and collagen or things that promote synthesis of collagen. You'll find ointments that are pure BPC-157, still unclear if those go transdermal. Okay, so this is still a very, very young science. And most of this is not being explored in randomized control trials.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
However, I know some of you out there are pretty experimental. You like experimenting with this kind of stuff. You like hearing what's working for other people. Here's what I suggest. If a sunscreen or a lotion or a pill or an injection is asserted to contain peptides to help with skin rejuvenation. Make sure you look and see which specific peptides are included.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Know the risks associated with BPC-157. It's uncertain risk about acceleration of tumor growth, but the mechanistic logic is just as strong for that with BPC-157 as it is for BPC-157 encouraging vascularization of any other tissue, muscle, tendon, ligament, or skin for that matter. So I'm not telling you what to do, just know what you're doing and understand the likely mechanisms behind it.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
in the absence of any of these randomized controlled trials. I will say in service to making sure that your diet and or supplementation includes enough trace mineral copper, copper has been shown to play a key role in DNA repair, which is a critical component of the turnover of collagen and other proteins in skin.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
It has been shown to reduce so-called reactive oxygen species, so it serves as a so-called antioxidant. And this relates to what I just said, reduced inflammation, but too much copper is a problem. So I wouldn't run out and start supplementing with excessive amounts of copper. Please don't do that. But you want to make sure that you're getting sufficient amounts of copper from your diet.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And you can simply look up online what sufficient amounts of
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
copper are given it's a trace mineral and it's very likely that if you ingest any kind of supplement that is a multi-vitamin mineral supplement or a foundational nutrition supplement that includes at least some copper so it's likely that you're sort of quote unquote topped off in terms of the amount of copper that you need but very unlikely to be excessive amounts of copper but if you start supplementing with copper beyond that again you can induce an inflammatory response so
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
It's a dosage kind of middle ground issue there. You don't want your copper too low. You don't want your copper too high. You want it right there in the middle. Okay, as I mentioned before, we will talk about other components of food that are great for skin health. And we will also talk about components of certain foods like advanced glycation end products.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
So the very outermost layer is called the epidermis. The epidermis has cells in it. Below that, there are other cells that comprise what's called the dermis, or sometimes referred to as the dermal layer. And then beneath that, you have subcutaneous fat.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
I don't know if you've heard of those before, but very interesting, not good stuff that you want to avoid if you can, especially if you're concerned as youthful looking skin and healthy skin and frankly health overall.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
But before we do that, I think it's worth paying attention to a few things that you can potentially take that can really improve the youthfulness of your skin for which there is excellent science to support it.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Okay, so when I spoke to board certified dermatologists who trained at excellent institutions, what people can do to improve the youthfulness or the appearance of youthfulness in their skin and that There specifically be peer reviewed studies to support their statements. They mentioned hydrolyzed collagen protein in combination with vitamin C. We talked about that earlier.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
They mentioned a bunch of do's and don'ts as it relates to sun exposure and nutrition, et cetera, some of which we've covered, some of which we are yet to cover, but will soon. And they mentioned supplementing with niacinamide. Niacinamide is a form of vitamin B3. It is also sometimes referred to as nicotinamide.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And I was told that when taken at twice per day at a dosage of 500 milligrams per dose for a total of one gram or 1000 milligrams per day, that niacinamide supplementation can increase the production of ceramides, which relate to the lipids in skin that improve the moisture in skin. And by the way, moisture in skin is a key component of the youthfulness or plump appearance of that skin.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And when I say plump, I don't necessarily mean outwardly rounded plump. I mean, the fact that the skin looks like the outermost layer of the skin, which you now know as the epidermis, is kind of taut and the skin looks hydrated and smooth at the level of its outer appearance, all of that.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
is improved by niacinamide supplementation, but that the supplementation has to be carried out for three to six months or more before that effect is noticed. Now, the origin of the niacinamide effect on the youthfulness of skin could also be related to the fact that there's evidence that niacinamide supplementation can reduce inflammation of skin overall.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
We haven't talked so much about the immune skin relationship, although as I alluded to at the beginning of the episode, this is a key relationship. But for those of you suffering from rosacea, from acne, So rosacea being a reddening of the skin. We're going to talk more about it later and specific things that can be done for it.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Acne almost always involves some reddening, often painful reddening of specific pox on the skin. Sometimes even the appearance of, you know, pus-filled bumps, this sort of thing. That niacinamide supplementation may also assist there because of the reduction in inflammation. And we'll talk all about the relationship between inflammation and acne.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Now, of course, in different areas of the body, the skin, and as a consequence, these different layers of the epidermis and dermis and the fat layer below it, are of different composition and different thicknesses. Think for instance, about the thickness of the skin on your forearm versus the thickness of the skin on your belly versus the thickness of your skin on your eyelid, okay?
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Regardless of whether or not you suffer from rosacea or acne or not at all, that niacinamide supplementation may benefit you. Also because niacinamide supplementation appears to balance the level of oil production in the skin. You need oil in the skin. You need oil down in those pores, but not too much. And that it can definitely help reduce the appearance of clogged pores.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And if you're concerned about pores that appear too large, this typically happens in the face, around the nose, on the upper cheeks, although other regions of the body as well, niacinamide supplementation may assist with that as well. There's also a number of people out there that are concerned with specific spots that they see as hyperpigmented spots.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
So regardless of whether or not overall your skin is very light or very heavily pigmented, Supplementation with niacinamide can reduce the appearance of accumulation and maybe even the actual accumulation of melanin at particular spots, so-called dark pigmented spots that some people decide that they don't want for whatever reason, usually just cosmetic reasons.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Although there may be reasons why hyperpigmentation in a given area could relate to skin cancers. We talked about that earlier. Another reason to go get not just your moles, but all of your skin checked at least once per year. Now, if you decide to supplement with niacinamide, you have the option of either taking that 1,000 milligrams and two 500 milligram dosages per day.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
You also have the option of using any number of different topical niacinamide ointments or serums that exist out there. Keep in mind that many skincare products already contain niacinamide, so check the label. And there, the dermatologists tell me that to be effective, the niacinamide needs to be present at at least a two and as high as 10% concentration within those ointments or serums.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Keep in mind that many serums and ointments also contain what's called hyaluronic acid. Hyaluronic acid is a natural component of the skin that provides a physical substrate for holding in water, so moisture within the skin. It does a bunch of other important things too within the extracellular matrix and elsewhere, the regions between the cells, that is.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And supplementation with hyaluronic acid or ointments or serums that contain hyaluronic acid and niacinamide are pretty common out there. because of the already stated effects of niacinamide and the fact that hyaluronic acid can serve as what's called a humectant, something that serves to sort of barrier in moisture at the level of the skin.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Okay, so it gives that kind of plumping, moist look of skin that's characteristic of youthful skin as opposed to aged skin. The dermatologists and the cosmetic surgeons that work on faces,
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
that I spoke to, I told you I consulted with a fairly large and diversified group of folks in preparation for this episode, all agreed that supplementation with collagen, vitamin C, niacinamide and hyaluronic acid was something that they suggest to their patients.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
The other supplement, well, actually it's a prescription treatment most often that dermatologists recommend if the goal is youthful appearing skin. are things within the so-called retinoid pathway, such as retinol. Okay, many of you have perhaps heard of this. And it's a whole story related to the relationship between vitamin A and skin.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Okay, so tretinoin is the common name for it, although some of you may know it as Retin-A, and prescription drugs that are similar to that are basically derivatives of vitamin A. Why? Why are these used for skincare? Why are they used to increase the youthfulness of skin?
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Well, vitamin A gets into skin cells and is converted into something called retinaldehyde, then into something called retinoic acid. Very important to know that retinoic acid is involved in a lot of different cellular processes, especially during neural development.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And as soon as you think about your eyelid, you realize, okay, this thing that we call skin varies tremendously in thickness, depending on whether or not we're at the scalp, the eyelid, the face, the chin, even neck versus chin, body, et cetera.
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This is why, and please pay careful attention to this, this is why women who are pregnant or breastfeeding should avoid taking these products because it can seriously disrupt the development of the fetus. And keep in mind that many times people don't realize they're pregnant for some period of time. So this is of paramount concern.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
We could have a whole discussion as to the role of retinoic acid in fetal development, but you don't want to tamper with that pathway. Very serious consequences can occur. So when retinoic acid gets into cells, it can activate what's called transcription factors.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Transcription factors bind to DNA, your genetic code, and can induce the transcription and translation of DNA into RNA and RNA into proteins of particular types. So think of transcription factors as sort of setting a menu of different proteins that ultimately will be formed.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
okay, by binding to DNA, and then you get DNA to RNA, RNA to protein, and you're getting a set of proteins related to a particular process. That's generally how transcription factors work.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And Retin-A, tretinoin, and things similar to that are going to induce the formation of collagen protein within skin, as well as other proteins that relate to the formation of de novo skin, new skin, and can replace old degenerated skin.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
So the dermatologists that I spoke to were really bullish about the fact that, believe it or not, they felt that people starting in their 20s could very well, as long as they're not pregnant or lactating or planning to get pregnant, could take Retin-A or things similar to it in order to stimulate the production of more skin and look more youthful.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Now, for people already in their 20s, by my rate, they're already youthful, but that they could initiate the use of these compounds at least in one's 20s and continuing on really as long as they wanted through life. And they told me about, quote, remarkable results. So I said, well, why isn't everyone aware of this? Why isn't everyone taking them?
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Well, it turns out that these different compounds can also increase sensitivity to light, make you more prone to sunburn, to some of the other effects of light on skin, even from screens or from artificial light. So one has to be careful about inducing too much skin sensitivity to light of all kinds, not just sunlight. that they can also induce some redness or dryness.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
So what we think of as skin, while it may have a designated set of layers that have particular names, can vary tremendously in terms of its overall thickness, and therefore its vulnerability to things like sunlight, which indeed can mutate the cells within the skin, cause them to have dysregulation of the expression of DNA and the production of other cells. We'll get into that.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
So one has to get the dosage right, the frequency of use right. And they can be a little bit tricky to work with, but that if one can home in on the right dosages, the right frequency, et cetera, the dermatologist felt like this was one of the best things that one could do to improve the youthfulness or the appearance of youthfulness in one's skin.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Now, I find this interesting for a number of reasons. First of all, I've heard of Retin-A, right? I've heard of these compounds before, but I hadn't heard about all these, you know, reportedly spectacular things like improved angiogenesis, vascularization of the skin. This is why people are taking the rather experimental, untested BPC-157 that I talked about before.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
The improved elasticity of skin, which somehow seems related to the ability of these compounds to remove degenerated elastin within the skin, to clear that out, as well as to induce de novo synthesis and even the number of different fibroblasts that are present in skin. So more new skin, clearing away of old skin, improved vascularization.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And while all of this sounds a little bit too good to be true, the mechanisms by which it's asserted to work all hold up. So that's always reassuring, right? Mechanism isn't everything, but it's really nice to see there. For instance, these compounds are known to get into the nucleus of cells, right? To impact gene expression. We talked about that before.
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You have receptors on the surface of cells. Okay, so cell surface receptors. You also have nuclear receptors and the ability of certain things, we call them ligands, but these are chemicals, right? In this case, you know, in the vitamin A pathway to get into the nucleus of cells and impact gene expression.
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This is actually how hormones like testosterone and estrogen change the way that people look so dramatically during puberty. They actually... They operate by binding to cell surface receptors. They also get into the nuclear compartment of the cell.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
They bind to nuclear receptors and they turn on entire genetic programs that cause, for instance, deepening of the voice or the growth of hair or breast tissue, et cetera. So these are powerful compounds. Now, I talked to a cosmetic surgeon, expert in face specifically,
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Remember cosmetic surgery is done for a number of different areas of the body, but for face specifically, who also specializes in these sorts of treatments for skin. And they've started using and are frankly quite confident in the use of retinoid esters that, can be applied to the surface of the skin. These things are available not by prescription.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
There's far less research on these sorts of compounds, but these compounds get enough positive support from the people that have tried them, reporting improved youthfulness of skin, et cetera, that some of them are becoming quite sought after and people, let's just say, are very enthusiastic about them.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And I will say that in discussing the various mechanisms of this with these cosmetic surgeons and some dermatologists, the logic holds up. So you're starting to see more and more of these. Now, as I mentioned at the beginning of today's episode, there is zero business relationship between me, the podcast, or any of these people that
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have marketed serums or creams or prescription drugs for that matter, related to skin health and skincare. However, I have provided a couple of links in the show note captions of some of the different sources of these.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Obviously, if you need a prescription for something like tretinoin or something similar, because you're interested in this whole retinol, retin-A, vitamin A pathway story, you need to talk to a board certified dermatologist who could potentially prescribe that for you if they decide it's right for you.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
In terms of these topical ointments and serums and creams and things like that, I do provide a link to at least one source of those that uses the retinoid ester. Just keep in mind that these various ointments and serums do not yet have the randomized control trials to support them that some of the other compounds that we were discussing do have.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Now I'd like to talk about things that one can do to improve the health and appearance of one's skin that don't involve taking anything or putting on any kind of ointment or serum or anything like that. And what I'm referring to is phototherapy.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
So I just want you to think about skin as having these critical components of layers, epidermis and dermis below it. And by the way, within the dermis, is where you're going to find the blood supply, the vessels and capillaries that innervate the skin. Innervate simply means that supply or go to the skin. You of course have hair follicles and hair growing out of those follicles in many cases.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Now at the earlier part of the episode, I talked about how different wavelengths of light like UV light and long wavelength light can penetrate skin to different depths and some of the negative, but also positive things that that can do. So for instance, we talked about UV light mutating DNA in cells and potentially causing cancers, accelerating the aging process and so forth.
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But as you also recall, long wavelength light, so-called red light, and near infrared light, which is even longer wavelengths of light, can penetrate deep into the skin tissue, so past that outer epidermal layer into the dermal layers of the skin, and can access the vasculature,
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the neurons, some of the glands located deeper in the skin, and of course, the cells there, like cells in the epidermis, I should point out, contain things like mitochondria for which red light has been shown to be beneficial. Why? Red light and near-infrared light phototherapy has been shown to reduce reactive oxygen species and thereby to improve mitochondrial function in cells.
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And that in turn has been shown to be beneficial for all the different processes within cells that involve mitochondria, which of course include energy production, but a bunch of other things too. So when I say that phototherapy has been shown to be beneficial for cells of the body, it's not just cells of the skin. In fact, a Nobel Prize was granted in the early 1900s
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for the use of phototherapy for the treatment of lupus. So this is not a new technology. At the same time, While there are many studies exploring the use of phototherapy for improvement of skin health and appearance, most of those studies have fairly low sample sizes, but there are a lot of those studies.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And fortunately by now, there are a few meta-analyses and reviews that take into account lots of different studies using slightly different wavelengths of light applied to different portions of the face for different purposes, treatment of acne, maybe even putting red light near infrared light on one half of the face to have a so-called within-person control
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the changes in skin or lack of changes in skin as the case may be between one side of the face and the other. I'll put links to some of these studies and some of the meta-analyses and reviews of these studies. One that I like in particular was published in 2018 entitled Light Emitting Diodes in Dermatology, A Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Of course, randomized controlled trials being one very powerful way to analyze the utility of a practice or a compound. It's not the only way to assess the utility of something. I know some people argue that they are very useful, but keep in mind in the field of medicine, we often have entire fields or even entire chapters of medical books that are based on case studies.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
For instance, we implicate the so-called hippocampus of the brain for its function in human memory, which it absolutely has. And that fact largely grew from one major case study that then exploded into a number of different animal model and then human studies later on.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
So we all love randomized control trials, reviews of randomized control trials and the uses of their phototherapy for treatment of skin conditions and improving the quality of skin are wonderful and point to the fact that
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Phototherapy can indeed improve the appearance of skin in conditions like acne, can accelerate wound healing, can improve the youthfulness appearance of skin, but these effects tend to be somewhat mild to moderate when they occur. And certainly there are many studies that show no significant effect, no statistically significant effect.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
That said, I'm of the belief based on my read of the literature, and this is a literature I've spent a lot of time with, frankly, because I did an episode all about light and health, I've also been very interested in the use of phototherapy for the treatment of eye diseases and offsetting age-related decline in visual function. There's some interesting evidence there.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And then of course you have skin that does not have hair, the so-called glabrous skin, like on the palms of your hands, the bottoms of your feet, et cetera. So I don't want to give the impression that skin is the same everywhere. It varies in thickness. It varies in terms of the presence of hair. hair or lack of hair.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Again, mild to moderate effects, but that can be meaningful in the real world. And when I step back from all of the literature, here's what I see, and this is what I ran by a dermatologist to make sure that They thought that this protocol would be useful or not useful, right? I asked them, I didn't tell them, do you think this will be useful? Tell me yes, I asked them.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And what we basically converged on was that if somebody decides to do phototherapy, the use of phototherapy that involves long wavelengths of light, so red light plus near infrared light typically,
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
at a distance of about a foot to two feet from the light source, depending on the intensity of the light source, although that doesn't seem to be so critical, but one can't be across the room from the red light source, nor should one get right up next to the red light source so that there's a lot of heat generated from the red light source that one can feel.
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But at a distance of about a foot to two feet away at fairly high intensities, done for anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes, five to seven days per week on a consistent basis does seem on average to lead to improvements in the youthfulness appearance of skin.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Why this would be the case isn't exactly clear, but there are a number of different logical interpretations, such as reduced inflammation, improved mitochondrial function, all downstream of reduced reactive oxygen species, improved blood flow to that particular area because of the effect that long wavelength light can have on vasodilation,
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sort of expansion as opposed to contraction of blood vessels and capillaries. All of this makes mechanistic logical sense. And the effects that one sees in these various peer reviewed papers, randomized control trials seem pretty good, meaning they are mild to moderate.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
None of them are sort of jaw dropping, like, wow, complete reversal of severe acting or, you know, massively accelerated wound healing. And we also, of course, have to take into account that many people who are doing phototherapy often are combining it with other things, sometimes, in today's era, like injections of BPC-157 or the use of hyaluronic acid or niacinamide, et cetera.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
So these things aren't always being examined in isolation, but when we look at this literature, I think it's fair to say that there is now substantial evidence for the use of phototherapy for improving the quality of skin, and in some cases for
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reducing the symptoms of acne, reducing the symptoms of psoriasis, basically any condition where improved blood flow, lowered inflammation, fewer or reduced oxygen species, improved mitochondrial function, delivery of nutrients, anytime some or all of those things are going to be involved, phototherapy makes logical sense. And so it's no surprise that we're seeing increased evidence
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
It varies according to a lot of different parameters, including how much oil is produced in one region or another. But if you just know that the skin has an epidermis, an outermost layer, a dermis, or sometimes referred to as the dermal layer, which is below it, and then it has fat below that, and that the vasculature, right, the vessels and capillaries are at the level of the dermis.
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for phototherapy in these conditions. Now I've provided a link to the review of the randomized control trials that I mentioned a bit ago. I also provided a few links to some specific studies that show pictures of before and after, in some cases on two sides of the very same face. I did an entire episode about light and health. I'll also provide a link to that episode.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
We'll talk a little bit about the biology of skin so that everybody's on board the nomenclature of the different cell types in the skin and how they're affected by various things. And then we will discuss those things such as sunlight and sun exposure as it relates to We'll talk about sunscreens, of course, something that I know garners a lot of interest these days, and even some controversy.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And if you don't want to listen to or watch that entire episode, you can go to specific timestamps in that episode to learn about the uses of phototherapy for the treatment of skin, eye, and other conditions related to mental health and physical health. Now, keep in mind that when people hear phototherapy, they almost immediately think about a device. And that makes sense, right?
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Red light and your infrared light. However, if you recall, There's this thing called the sun that emits a full spectrum light, which of course includes red light and longer wavelengths of light, okay? So just because you can't see those longer wavelengths of light, that doesn't mean they're not there, just like UV light. You can't sense UV light with your eyes.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
By the way, ground squirrels and some other animals can. It's thought to be the case that they have photoreceptors to detect UV because they actually, this is sort of strange, but interesting, you'll never forget this, that they'll take their urine and they'll spread it on their stomach with their little paws and they'll stand up and they'll like signal flash one another from across the,
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prairie or whatever it is across the lawn to signal to one another so they're sending uvp signals across the lawn i'm not making this up i actually studied a little bit of this when i was an undergraduate but not at the level of the urine and the signaling at the level of the retina Any discussion about skin has to include a discussion about nutrition. Why?
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Well, remember the fact that I mentioned at the beginning of today's episode that your skin and your immune system have a very intimate relationship. It's bi-directional. Your skin reflects the status of your immune system in many ways. And this is why many people with autoimmune conditions, things like lichen planus, you can look it up or if you, you know, mind,
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particularly striking photographs, please don't look it up, but people that have autoimmune conditions that often manifest in skin conditions. We'll talk more about this in the context of psoriasis in a little bit, but anytime we're talking about the immune system or skin, we need to take into account the gut microbiome and nutrition.
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So many people asked, what are the things that they should eat to have healthy appearing youthful skin? They also asked, what are the things that one eats that could exacerbate things like acne and what can one eat in order to reduce their acne? So let's just start off with the basics.
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And here I'm going to be fairly brief because I think we all know the big take-home message about nutrition nowadays.
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we hear over and over again, and we should pay attention to the fact that the vast majority of our food, well, I should say, if one desires to be healthy, mentally healthy, physically healthy, and a high-performing individual in any number of different things, cognitive, physical, or otherwise, we want to consume the vast majority of our foods from non-processed or minimally processed sources, so-called whole foods, so fruits, vegetables, if that's within your diet.
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Some people include grains, some people don't. I'm not here to discuss that. meat, eggs, fish, chicken, and so forth, if that's within your diet plan or your nutrition, or if you're a vegetarian or vegan, you make the associated adjustments so that you can make sure you're getting enough protein and amino acids, but it's in keeping with your ethical and maybe your health goals.
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Okay, so we're not here to discuss vegan, vegetarian, omnivore, of which I am, or carnivore, okay, that's not the discussion. I think all of those groups agree that getting the majority of your nutrition from non-processed or minimally processed foods is going to be best.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
They come up through the subcutaneous fat and into that dermal layer, but they don't reach into the epidermal layer, that outermost layer. And if you understand also that nerve endings, okay, the little terminals, as we call them, of neurons, nerve cells, also go up into that dermal layer, You've got temperature sensors in the skin.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And that of course, if you're human, sometimes you'll ingest processed foods, but really trying to avoid highly processed foods is critical. Now, with respect to the specific foods that can improve skin appearance and skin health, It's very clear that diets that are of the so-called low inflammatory type that don't spark inflammation.
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So these would be things that sometimes are referred to as the Mediterranean diet or a paleo like diet. You hear these terms, but what are we really talking about? Mostly whole foods, minimally processed foods. Okay. And then there's variation depending on whether or not you emphasize or deemphasize meat and fish or emphasize or deemphasize vegetables, this kind of thing. Again, I'm an omnivore.
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I love fruit. I love vegetables. I do like rice, oatmeal, and some pastas. I like a great sourdough bread. I like butter. I like olive oil. I like meat. I like fish. I think I am representative of most people out there because I eat most all those things, but I also eat the occasional croissant. I also eat the occasional slice of pizza. I don't eat a lot of that stuff, but I eat it now and again.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And then of course you have people that are super strict. What do we know about the relationship between specific foods and skin health and skin appearance? Well, anti-inflammatory diet. We've more or less spelled out what that represents without getting into too many specifics. And then there are the specific components within food.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
So vitamins, minerals and micronutrients, as well as things like collagen present in bone broth that can be really useful to include. So one of the, I think, best accounts on dermatologic health and skin health and appearance on the internet is Dr. Andrea Suarez.
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She's a medical doctor, board-certified dermatologist, and she has a wonderful video that describes the various foods that one can eat to promote skin health and skin appearance.
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And rather than repeat that entire video, because A, that wouldn't be right, and B, it already exists out there in excellent form, I'll just give a brief synopsis of some of the things that she suggests, because I entirely agree. And again, there's no need to be repetitive. and she does an excellent job. So she certainly mentions collagen and bone broth.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
She also mentions various sources of omega fatty acids that are often lacking in people's diets that they should pay extra careful attention to get. So things like walnuts, flax, fatty fish. I personally am a big believer in supplementing with liquid form fish oil. That's what I do. Why am I a big believer in that? Well, I don't tend to cook much fatty fish.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
I love the taste of it if it's prepared right, but I don't tend to do that very often. So I use a liquid form fish oil or capsules, but the liquid form is generally more affordable. This was discussed in an episode that I did with Dr. Rhonda Patrick. So we can put a link to that particular segment in the show note captions.
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It's also suggested that we eat a lot of leafy greens, so dark leafy greens. You're probably noticing a lot of these recommendations are kind of typical for what people describe. Anytime they're talking about nutrition for health, she highly recommends people get enough folic acid for the role that folic acid plays in
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All of this becomes very important for our discussions of skin conditions, things like rosacea, things like acne, which sometimes can be painful or can be exacerbated by things like heat. They can be suppressed in some cases or even activated by things like cold.
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DNA synthesis and repair of skin cells, among other cells, and cell proliferation. And of course, we should get our colored fruits and veggies. So our oranges, our strawberries, the reds and oranges are critical out there. And she also highlights something very important that I want to reiterate, which is that we have a critical need for vitamin A for our skin health.
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And this was covered, albeit through the lens of exploring the pharmacology of tretinoin and those retin-A compounds. But Vitamin A is crucial for a number of different processes within the cell types that make up skin.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
She appropriately cautions against supplementing with vitamin A because as a fat soluble vitamin, it's very easy to overdose vitamin A. If one is supplementing with too much of it, she recommends rather getting enough vitamin A from things like oranges, carrots, sweet potatoes. She recommends as much berry intake as is appropriate for someone and one can afford.
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The berries are so delicious, but they tend to be expensive depending on time of year, ingesting things like garlic because garlic has sulfur, which is key for collagen synthesis and repair. And she talks about the critical role of taurine. Anyway, she does such a terrific job of describing the nutrition for skin health and skin appearance. Those are just a few of the highlights.
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So I do encourage you to check out that video and her other content is spectacular as well. Again, she has an Instagram account, YouTube channel that are really wonderful.
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So again, without doing a deep dive into nutrition, decide whether or not you're going to be vegan, vegetarian, omnivore, or carnivore, and then make sure that you're getting enough of the vitamins and minerals and micronutrients from your foods or supplement if necessary. But note that caution about vitamin A supplementation in excess.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And also make sure you're avoiding excessive amounts of highly processed foods. You know, I mentioned earlier these advanced glycation end products. These are things that are present in a lot of processed foods like crackers and chips and things like that. that make those foods inflammatory. So you're getting the theme now.
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Inflammation is bad, not just for the skin, but for all organ systems of the body. It's not just about the high density of calories and the high density of taste present in highly processed foods. Those are problematic, but a lot of the issue with these highly processed foods is the high heat conditions used to make those foods stable on shelves or stable in packaging over time.
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So there's a whole discussion to be had here that frankly, I don't think Amy had enough, but that is outside the scope of today's episode. The point is that when these highly processed foods are basically made, right, they're constructed, they involve the interactions between sugars and proteins and fats at high heat that make them stable on the shelf or in packaging.
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Okay, so if you just understand that there are three layers, epidermis on the outside, dermis below it, subcutaneous fat, and that skin varies in thickness and that nerves, that is nerve endings and blood vessels and capillaries are within the dermal layers of the skin, well, you're going to be very well equipped for the rest of today's discussion.
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And those can be very inflammatory. And that can show up in the form of reactive skin. It can make your psoriasis worse. Yes, it can make your acne worse. It can make your skin more tender and painful. It can make your skin basically more reactive to some of the underlying predispositions you might have, either because of genetics or other things you're doing or not doing.
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Maybe you're going through a particularly stressful time. Maybe you're getting a little bit of extra sun and you're eating more highly processed foods and those things are combining and making your skin break out or flush more than it would ordinarily. Again, there's so many reasons to eat most of your foods from non-processed or minimally processed sources.
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And of course, and now I sound like a broken record because you can hear this all over the internet, ingesting foods that are excessively high in sugar, excessively high in sugars combined with fats, just not good to do. Pro-inflammatory, it's going to cause all sorts of issues.
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And we're going to get into this more as it relates to acne in particular, because as you probably know, when you ingest foods that are high in sugars or even just carbohydrates generally that also contain a lot of fats, and in particular when those foods are highly processed, well, then you initiate an inflammatory response and you often can initiate additional things happening in the pores of cells that can start to really aggravate acne and cause more acne.
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This has to do with the whole insulin pathway. So when we talk about acne, I'll talk about diets that create a high glycemic load. We're not necessarily talking about the glycemic index of food. You may know that when people measure the glycemic index of food, they're looking at the blood sugar response after eating that food typically in isolation and not in combination with other foods.
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What I'm talking about, is eating combinations of foods that induce high levels of insulin, high levels of blood glucose, that then lead to all sorts of things in the hormone pathways and cell growth pathways that exacerbate acne. So we'll get there in a moment, but I think the take home message around nutrition is pretty clear. So much so that I don't want to spend any more time on it.
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We all know what the best nutrition really is for us, regardless of whether or not you're vegan, vegetarian, omnivore or carnivore, it's nutrition. non-processed or minimally processed foods representing probably anywhere from let's say 75 to 100% of your food intake, depending on how strict you want to be.
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And then sure, make some room if you want for some processed foods, but just know that those advanced glycation end products and
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the high glycemic load that comes from those processed foods can really exacerbate inflammatory responses in skin and set forward a whole domino set of issues related to hormone pathways and cell growth pathways that make everything, acne, psoriasis, and overall appearance Yes, your skin will appear to age faster.
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And on the positive side, most of the foods that we think of as healthy and anti-inflammatory are actually quite delicious. So enjoy. Ah, and I forgot to say what's absolutely clear. You know that myth that they told us when we were teenagers, that eating a lot of fried food would make you break out, would make your skin worse? Guess what? It's true.
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I'll throw in some additional information about oil production within the hair follicle and a few other things like extracellular matrix, which as the name suggests is extracellular, it's outside where the cells reside, but gives it its composition as either plump and moist appearing on the outside, or it can be kind of sagging and wrinkled and dry appearing.
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That high heat preparation required for creating things as delicious as the donut or French fries, right? There's a reason people love these foods. They're so delicious. They do cause problems. They're pro-inflammatory. Does that mean you can never have a French fry? No. You decide what's best for you, but know what you're doing.
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As a segue to talking about acne, we need to talk about the gut microbiome. And this is a direct outgrowth of our discussion about nutrition. Here's the simple takeaway that I believe everyone should follow, not just for sake of healthy appearing skin, but also for sake of
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every organ and tissue system in your body, which is, the data clearly show that ingestion of sufficient amounts of fiber, so prebiotic and probiotic fiber, so fruits, vegetables, sometimes this can also come from grains. Some people will supplement with additional fiber if they feel they need it. as well as ingestion of low sugar fermented foods. I've talked about this before.
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So regular listeners of this podcast may have heard this. Things like kimchi, sauerkraut, the sort of sauerkraut that has to stay in the fridge. So not the stuff that's stable on the shelf at room temperature. Anything containing a brine, that salty brine. So pickles, but not the pickles that are stable at room temperature, the ones that have to be
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kept in the refrigerated section of the grocery store. These low sugar fermented foods are powerful enhancers of the gut microbiome. And when the gut microbiome is healthy, you have reduced overall inflammation in the body. This is often reflected at the level of the skin and basically skin health and the youthfulness appearance of skin is enhanced, okay?
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
This can also help with conditions like acne or psoriasis, especially in conditions where there's a direct immune system skin relationship that we'll talk about more in a little bit. Okay, so I highly recommend people have anywhere from one to four servings of low sugar fermented foods per day, or try and enhance the health of their gut microbiome generally.
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Maybe you take a pill probiotic, although those can be very expensive. There's a little bit of data suggesting that if you chronically take pill probiotics that yield very high levels of bacteria, well then maybe there's some associated
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brain fog, that's a little unclear, pun intended, but they are very expensive, they have to be kept refrigerated, and let's face it, low sugar fermented foods, if you find the ones that you like, are really great to ingest because they're tasty and they're good for you. Now, why am I talking about this? In part because we keep coming back to inflammation as a general issue for skin health.
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And that points us also towards some specific do's and don'ts as it relates to lifestyle. Let's face it, pun intended, if you sleep well, so maybe you need six hours, maybe you need seven, maybe you need eight, maybe you need nine, but if you sleep well on a consistent basis, your skin is going to look so much better, so much healthier, more vibrant than if you are not getting enough sleep.
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If you drink alcohol and you wake up the next morning, you know your skin's going to look puffy. It's not going to look good, but Many of you can ingest alcohol without issues. I've done an entire episode about alcohol. Yes, it's a poison. Up to two drinks per week for adults who are non-alcoholics is probably safe.
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Zero is better than any, but let's face it, alcohol is going to exacerbate most skin issues. This is just clear from the literature.
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All of that relates to the different components of proteins and other things within those skin layers. But if you understand what I just told you, even at a crude level, if you can just imagine it just a little bit, those three layers, you're going to be very well equipped for the rest of today's discussion. I should also mention that there are glands within the skin.
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Doesn't mean you never have a glass of wine, doesn't mean you never have a beer or a cocktail, if that's your thing, but alcohol consumed in excess, and it doesn't take much to get there, is going to cause sleep issues, microbiome issues, so indirectly and negatively impact the skin appearance and health, and indirectly and negatively impact the health of other tissues in your body.
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But it's clear some of that is reduced to increase inflammation, some is related to decreased sleep quality or duration. So get great sleep, avoid alcohol in excess, maybe avoid it altogether. Drink plenty of water. This sounds like such basic advice, but proper hydration is key. Get enough water and electrolytes. It absolutely will impact your inflammation levels by reducing them.
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It absolutely will impact your skin health and appearance in a positive way. So these are just basic things that I'd be remiss if I didn't mention. The other one is smoking and nicotine from non-smoked sources. So it's very clear that smoking, vaping, dipping, or snuffing is bad for skin appearance and health. Bad, bad, bad. Every dermatologist said this. Why?
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Well, with smoking, you can imagine why, okay? A lot of carcinogens and toxic end products generated from smoking, even from vaping. Yes, even from vaping, it will make your skin age faster. That's clear. But it's also the substance itself. Why all of those things, in addition to increasing inflammation, nicotine itself is a vasoconstrictor.
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So you're doing the exact opposite of what you want when it comes to skin health and appearance. And that's why people take things like BPC-157. That's why people take nicotinamide. That's why people are trying to improve the hydration status of their skin.
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So if you're somebody that's vaping nicotine or even taking nicotine in some other form, pouch or smoking nicotine, and you're interested in having youthful appearing skin, you are really shooting yourself in the face. And as we all know, our emotions impact the appearance of our skin and yes, it can exacerbate so-called breakouts. And we'll get to that in a moment as to what the exact pathway is.
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But I've done entire episodes about controlling your stress. We have a master stress episode that talks about real-time tools that you can use, like the physiological sigh, provide a link to a clip about the physiological sigh. It's the fastest way that I'm aware of to reduce one's levels of stress. This is something my laboratory has studied in detail at Stanford.
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There are also things you can do, and we're all aware of what they are, proper sleep, meditation, non-sleep deep rest. We'll provide a link for that. All things that we can do that are zero cost, very minimal time investment. Physiological side takes about 10 to 15 seconds. Non-sleep deep breast, AKA yoga nidra, sometimes called, takes anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes per day.
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And that reduced stress can dramatically improve not just the health, but the appearance of your skin. And it makes perfect sense as to why that is.
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The stress hormones such as cortisol, but other hormones too, such as adrenaline, when they are chronically elevated because of the fact that adrenaline impacts vasoconstriction in the skin, it's going to reduce blood flow to the periphery, to the skin. It can cause all sorts of issues at the level of nerve endings that can lead to, believe it or not, enhanced flushing when we're under stress.
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This won't be surprising to most of you. Those glands will produce oil, either more or less, depending on certain conditions. And there are things that live on the skin, on that epidermal layer and within it that we call microbiota. You've no doubt heard of the gut microbiome, right?
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This is why we measure the galvanic skin response. So not just sweating, but also blood flow and other things to the skin when we are studying stress. Okay, so direct relationship between stress and skin appearance. Learn to control your stress.
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Stress is part of life, but learn to control your stress in real time and through tools like non-sleep deep rest that are zero cost that can help you reduce your overall levels of stress, get great sleep, Don't use nicotine. If you do use nicotine, know what you're doing. Maybe use it sparingly and please don't smoke or vape it, dip it or snuff it.
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There are other forms and I don't recommend those forms because they're very addictive. And keep in mind that things that improve blood flow, reduce inflammation, give you lower stress, better sleep, all of that is going to make you look more youthful. It's not an imagined effect, it is real. Let's talk about acne. Acne is very common.
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It impacts anywhere from 80 to 90% of young people at some point. Some people get very bad cystic acne, you know, deep acne in the cheeks, on the back of the neck, the back. It can be very uncomfortable, very painful. Some people only get the occasional pimple, but they get them very deeply. They're very painful. And look, nobody likes acne. likes the appearance of acne on themselves.
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It can be very distressing for people. It can cause additional stress that then feeds back in terms of inflammation. And I guess my first request, I suppose, I can't tell people what to do and never do, but for people that have acne, be compassionate, okay? Young people, be compassionate. I remember when I was younger, some of the kids with bad acne got teased and it really upset me.
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That's really frustrating, especially when going through puberty, because there's this hormonal component to acne. Now, fortunately, there are things that we can do for acne. I'll provide a link to one of the major sources I used for researching this episode.
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I also, of course, spoke to dermatologists, one of whom really knows an exceptional amount about acne and its relationship to the immune system. The paper that I'm referring to now is a systematic review and network meta-analysis of topical, pharmacological, oral pharmacological, physical, and combined treatments for acne vulgaris, which is the technical name for acne.
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There are a lot of things that impact acne. Let's just briefly talk about what acne is. Anytime you talk about acne, you're usually thinking about pus or oil. That's called sebum. The sebum accumulates in essentially the follicle around the hair. This also occurs on non-hairy skin or where they're just tiny little hairs
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The existence of trillions of little micro bacteria that live within your gut that provided they are varied in their composition and of the right sort. really support your immune system and other aspects of health, including brain function and health?
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That's why it's very unusual to get acne on say the glabrous skin of the palms. I suppose it could happen, but it's very rare. At any given moment, 10% of people worldwide will have acne. As I mentioned, up to 90% of young people have acne. So very common, very distressing. The accumulation of that sebum in the follicle can be due to a number of different things.
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Some of it can be related to androgens, things like testosterone, increasing the amount of sebum that's produced. This is why you often see acne during puberty. In addition, the anabolic, the pro-growth effects of androgens such as testosterone, and by the way, these occur in both males and females because both males and females have testosterone and estrogen.
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The androgenic effects of testosterone can also cause hypertrophy growth of the hair follicle, right? So an increase in the number of keratinocytes, the cells in and around the follicle, which can compress that and hold some of that additional sebum beneath the surface. And that's why you're getting a swelling of what looks like a pimple or a cyst.
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So there's the potential for a hormonal influence on increasing acne. Now, if someone's going through puberty, you just have to deal with that increase. Now, if there's a sudden increase in acne when one is post-puberty, you may want to look at levels of androgens that are being produced.
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And nowadays with increasing numbers apparently of things like polycystic ovarian syndrome, which in part relates to increases in androgens, this is becoming an additional concern. So getting a quality blood test, looking at androgen levels over time can be very beneficial for both males and females. Now, in addition, insulin, that is related to our diet.
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So insulin and glucose generally go up together or down together, depending on whether or not we're ingesting foods or amounts of foods that greatly increase our insulin and blood glucose. So insulin is part of an anabolic pathway as well, a cell growth pathway, pro-growth pathway, we should call it, that involves mTOR, mammalian target of rapamycin, that is a general growth signal for cells.
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So this occurs in the eye, this occurs in the liver, mTOR is involved in growth of cells of all kinds, including cells within the skin. When our diet, increases the amount of insulin and glucose to a degree that is in excess of some threshold that's going to be different for everybody, depending on your activity levels, your metabolism, the way you manage insulin.
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Well, you also have a skin microbiome, that is the existence of microbiota on the outside of your skin that serve as a barrier to infections, but that also provide things that are nourishing to the skin and give it that vibrant look that most people want. And by cleansing your skin in particular ways,
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When that happens, you get increases in mTOR that then can feed back on those androgen receptors, increase the levels of things like testosterone further, that then feed back on the production of increased sebum, okay, that oily stuff, increased keratinocyte proliferation, and you get more acne.
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In other words, having a diet that has a high glycemic load or evokes a large insulin response can be problematic. So what to do? Well, we talked about it before. You want to eat mostly non-processed, minimally processed foods. You definitely want to exert portion control, right? You don't want to eat much sugar or sugar in excess. You don't want big spikes in insulin and blood glucose.
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You want to avoid an inflammatory diet. So again, fewer, if any, highly processed foods because of those glycation end products that we talked about before. And on the positive side, if one exercises something like say intermittent fasting, and here I don't necessarily think young people, especially people going through puberty should do this because they're growing, they need nutrients.
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So you have to strike that balance between getting enough nutrients and not overloading the system with insulin, glucose, and calories. But things like intermittent fasting could be useful or making sure that if you ingest complex carbohydrates, as I mentioned, I do, okay? I'm an omnivore. that you don't do it in excess to the point where you're getting big spikes in insulin and blood glucose.
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All of this, the dermatologists tell me, can help serve to reduce acne. And while it might seem indirect, this relationship between testosterone and sebum accumulation, the relationship between insulin and mTOR and increased testosterone and sebum accumulation and growth of the keratinocytes, these are real pathways that have been established.
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And some of those are discussed in detail in the review. So much so that there has been the exploration of specific foods, in particular dairy and whey. You know, we hear a lot about ingestion of whey protein.
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It's a very high quality protein, high bioavailability, high in the amino acid leucine, which for those of you that are interested in muscle building and repair, there's a lot of discussion about leucine being a critical component there. You want leucine. But it does appear that people that overconsume whey, people that overconsume dairy can run into issues.
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Now, does that mean you shouldn't consume whey protein? No, I take whey protein. Do I suffer from acne? No. If I did, would I reduce my whey protein intake? Well, I might decide to run a bit of an experiment where I reduce the amount of whey protein that I eat for a little bit and see how that goes. Should I reduce the amount of dairy I ingest? Ah, well, here's where things get interesting.
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that is washing it with certain substances and avoiding other substances, you can support as opposed to diminish that skin microbiome. Okay, so to start today's discussion, I want to jump right into the deep end, meaning into one of the more controversial issues related to skin health and skincare out there right now, which is sun exposure and sunscreen.
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So in discussing this with a dermatologist who also happens to know a lot about nutrition, they told me something very interesting. A lot of people think that high fat dairy will exacerbate their acne, but here's the situation. Nonfat and low fat dairy has emulsifiers is actually based on work. I believe some of which was done at Stanford that can spike insulin more than full fat dairy.
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So some people in an attempt to reduce the amount of acne they're getting will move from high fat dairy or full fat, I should say, to nonfat milk or nonfat dairy or low fat dairy, and their acne will actually get worse. And that could be because of the insulin spike associated with some of the emulsifiers in that nonfat and low fat dairy.
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So what this means is that you don't have to avoid dairy altogether, but you might be better off ingesting full fat dairy. You might be best off not ingesting any dairy at all. Maybe you want to run that experiment on yourself and just see what works and what doesn't work or if there's no change at all.
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In addition, if you're consuming a lot of fried foods, so those French fries, you're ingesting cheeseburgers and things of that sort, it may not be so much the fat content of those meals, but rather the big insulin response that occurs when we ingest high fat meals in combination with things like sugary milkshakes or fried foods.
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like French fries and things of that sort that's leading to the acne by way of increased inflammation. So there are a lot of different pathways, inflammation, androgens like testosterone, insulin leading to increases in testosterone and inflammation. A lot of pathways converge. to exacerbate acne.
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And oftentimes it's just the removal or even just the reduction of some of this food intake or types of food intake that can really lead to big improvements in one's acne. So all of these things combined to support lower inflammation, appropriate amounts of sebum production, because you do need sebum production.
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You do need keratinocytes in and around the hair follicle, but you don't want too many of them. and so on. But what can be done to directly address acne? Well, there are a number of different prescription treatments that your dermatologist can suggest. But one thing that all the dermatologists agree upon is first of all, getting adequate sleep, reducing stress,
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taking care of your gut microbiome, the nutrition recommendations that we've been talking about up until now. But also, get this, this is interesting, not over-cleansing. A lot of people with acne will start to wash their face constantly and will often use harsh cleansers that can exacerbate that acne, either by virtue of removing some important skin microbiome components
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that then lead to even other infections like fungal infections or additional inflammation, because you're removing that microbiome barrier. But they all recommend regular cleansing of the skin, usually two or three times per day, but not in excess of that, using a gentle, unscented, unfragranced, cleanser. Okay. So there are a number of different types of these.
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I personally, my, basically my entire life that I, at least as far as I can remember, I've always used unscented, unfragranced Dove soap. Okay. I have no relationship to Dove soap. I'm sure people out there are going to say, oh my goodness, you know, it contains a bunch of things that are bad for you, but that's what's worked for me. and not the liquid form, just bar soap.
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And there are things like Cetaphil. These are some brand names. And there are a bunch of other more sophisticated, gentle cleansers that one could use. There are also a lot of products out there that contain what's called salicylic acid. Okay, this is often as a clear fluid that you put onto a cotton ball or a tissue, and then you spread on the face.
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Now, it makes sense why this would be such a heated issue, no pun intended, because most everyone is exposed to the sun or has the opportunity to be exposed to the sun to some degree or another every single day, even on cloudy overcast days.
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It's very important, very, very important that if you're going to use these products, that you do it on clean skin. That is skin that's been cleaned with a... combination of mild zero-fragrance soap and lukewarm water, okay? Because of the relationship between inflammation and acne, that's what gives it its red appearance.
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You don't want to use extreme temperatures of especially hot water when washing your skin. So lukewarm water, mild soap, And then, and only if it's been recommended by your dermatologist, the salicylic acid. Salicylic acid comes from the same class of drugs as aspirin. So it tends to reduce keratinocyte stickiness, right? The extent to which those cells stick together. Why do I mention aspirin?
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You may have heard that some people will take aspirin to reduce the stickiness between their platelets in an attempt to improve heart health. We'll cover that on another episode at some point. But salicylic acid reduces the stickiness of the keratinocytes so it can lead to less clogging of the pores by accumulation of keratinocytes, or I should say by less accumulation of the keratinocytes.
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and it can reduce swelling in and around the area related to the acne. Sometimes if people get an acne pimple, especially if they have an event or they don't want to be seen with that pimple, the use of a little bit of corticosterone cream put on there can reduce the redness or swelling. The dermatologists tell me you should absolutely not pop your pimples.
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Part of the problem when you pop a pimple, I know there are entire videos about this online. I know, please don't go look at them. The whole community is around this, it's super gross. But I know people find it very satisfying in some cases to pop these pimples, get the infection out.
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While there are certain use cases for that, where someone has an infection, it just absolutely needs to get out, then be cleaned, then covered. with a bandage and maybe some topical antibiotic that would be a use case for that. The dermatologist practically begged me to tell you, don't pop your pimples because A, they will go away in not too much time if you leave them alone.
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It's also the case that we've learned a lot in the last 10 years or so about how different sunscreens and their components may be good for us, may be less good for us. And today we're going to talk about what is known and what is still unknown. But before we do that, we need to take a step back and look at the context in which all this controversy is happening.
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And B, you can always put a little bit of corticosterone cream on top of them to reduce the redness or swelling. But most importantly, they tell me that when you pop those pimples, what ends up happening is you get a
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a physical disruption of that area, which to you might just seem like, okay, whatever, it turns a little bit red and that's transient, but you get the influx of what are called matrix metalloproteases.
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These are enzymes, and remember, anytime you hear an ACE, it's usually an enzyme, matrix metalloproteases that then and go eat at the extracellular matrix, and then you can get an indentation scar that is permanent. So if you're concerned about the appearance of your skin, avoid popping those pimples. I know it can be hard to do, but really try and avoid popping
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It can lead to scarring because of the matrix metalloproteases and the eating away of the extracellular matrix. Keep the area clean, cover it up if you need to, get some corticosteroid cream on there if you want to reduce the redness.
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If it's really bad and you have some big important event, like you're getting married tomorrow and it's right on the tip of your nose or something like that, then you can potentially go to the dermatologist and get it injected with a corticosteroid to reduce the redness in a more potent way. But they did ask that I ask you to please not pop your pimples.
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And if you're somebody that suffers from acne, I'd like you to know, I provide a link to a paper in the show note captions entitled acne and diet, a review of pathogenic mechanisms.
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And I also provide a link to the review I mentioned before that covers all of the other aspects of treating acne, topical, pharmacological, oral, pharmacological, physical, and combined treatments for acne vulgaris, because again, I do sympathize with the fact that acne can be very distressing, very painful.
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Fortunately, there are a number of different avenues that you, without a dermatologist, but ideally you and a dermatologist can use to attack acne at the level of inflammation through diet, through lifestyle, if needed, prescription medications, and again, gentle cleansing and thinking about the various things that indirectly will impact that acne. So much so that a few of the derms told me
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
that they have patients young and old who will be suffering from really bad acne that will sometimes just make a few adjustments to their diet, the exclusion of certain things, mainly highly processed foods, maybe reducing dairy a little bit or weigh a little bit or completely, and increasing the amount of things that reduce inflammation, so more fruits and vegetables and meat, fish, eggs from healthy sources, and seeing dramatic improvements in acne.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
So that's always reassuring to hear. It doesn't always require prescription medication, but if you need it, You should take it. Okay, let's talk about rosacea. Rosacea is reddening of the skin. And some people suffer from this pretty severely, other people mildly, some people transiently, but it tends to be kind of distressing for people.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And the reason it's distressing is that it can look like blushing or flushing of the face when in fact one isn't emotionally embarrassed. However, being embarrassed or having any flushing of the skin can exacerbate existing rosacea. So it's thought to be caused by a combination of genetics.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
There can perhaps be some, again, over inflammation of the skin, which probably reflects inflammation more globally at the level of the gut and body, et cetera. We've been talking a lot about that today. And there are things that can exacerbate rosacea such as alcohol intake or anything that acts as a vasodilator that dilates the vasculature, innervating the skin.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
My read of the online community as a whole, as it relates to sunscreen and sun exposure in particular, is the following. I think most everybody, I didn't say everybody, but most everybody out there seems to accept the idea that excessive sun exposure can cause certain cancers of the skin. That's the general belief out there.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
So the approach to treating rosacea is pretty much similar to the other things that we've talked about, consuming a low inflammation, low glycemic, low diet, trying to get enough sleep, keeping alcohol intake in particular to a minimum or cutting out alcohol completely. The reason I say in particular is that a lot of people that suffer from rosacea who cut out alcohol completely
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
essentially eliminate the rosacea or dramatically reduce it. So oftentimes it's alcohol that's the culprit, either directly or indirectly, we don't know. Again, alcohol is a poison, but it could be the indirect manner in which alcohol impacts sleep and the gut microbiome negatively that's causing the rosacea. Without knowing the direct or indirect mechanism,
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
We will talk about common conditions of skin that concern people such as acne, rosacea, psoriasis, eczema. And of course we will talk about so-called anti-aging treatments for skin. That is the things that can be done to help reduce the degradation of the protein components in skin, things like collagen, things that you can do to improve collagen turnover, as well as elastin.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
reduce or even eliminate your alcohol for a bit and see if your rosacea improves. That will give you a strong indication of what might be going on and even better, it could give you a potential solution to the problem. Now, for those that don't experience a reduction or elimination of rosacea,
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
If you eliminate alcohol, get your sleep right, get your diet right, there are some additional things you can do. First of all, you want to follow the same recommendation we talked about for acne, which is also the general recommendation for skincare. Use lukewarm water, not excessively hot or cold water, a gentle, unfragrance cleanser. You want to use sunscreen regularly.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Remember, sun damage to the skin is also inflammation. So that's going to exacerbate rosacea. And of course, sunlight, because of the release of nitric oxide is also going to act as a vasodilator. Does that mean you have to go full beekeeper mode? No, it doesn't. You can if you want to, I suppose, but use a quality mineral-based sunscreen, which we talked about earlier in the episode.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And you should use some sort of moisturizer to help lock in the moisture within your skin. You could use things like hyaluronic acid or use any kind of gentle moisturizing cream that's not going to cause inflammation or kind of irritate the skin in any way and can keep the moisture within the skin. And there are a lot of different versions of these available out there.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And frankly, a lot of them are not terribly expensive. You can find super expensive varieties of any and all these things, but many of the things that meet the criteria of gentle unfragrance cleanser SPF 30 mineral only sunscreen as well as a quality moisturizer are not necessarily the most expensive available.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And what justifies the higher expense in some cases could be, I don't know, the silkiness or the packaging. It could be any number of different things. I'm not going to say that
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
The cheapest varieties are necessarily as good as the most expensive varieties, but I do think, and the dermatologist that I spoke to definitely confirmed that there's a lot of price inflation out there related to kind of the overall milieu of packaging and purported exclusivity of certain skincare products. Look for the things that meet the criteria you are trying to establish for your skincare.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Just like with acne, just like with general skincare, if you have rosacea, you want to think about mild treatments for the skin at the level of cleaning, at the level of sun protection, at the level of locking in moisture. And then there's some additional things that if you can spare the expense, could also be beneficial, like nicotinamide, niacinamide, as it's also called.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Or there's also been some evidence that things like licorice root can be a benefit, okay? These things are typically found as a topical ointment or in a topical ointment. But in the case of niacinamide, nicotinamide, we talked about how this can be available in an ointment form, a topical form, or it can be taken as two 500 milligram dosages per day.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And there is good reason for that belief because indeed the sun as full spectrum light includes long wavelengths. It's probably easier to think about those long wavelengths as the reds and oranges and yellows and so forth that are present. And well, they're always present from sunlight, but they're most obvious to us when the sun is low in the sky, so-called low solar angle sunlight,
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Gave you the long list of the various mechanisms by which it can improve skin health, reduced inflammation, production of collagen, et cetera. All of that still holds for the potential treatment of rosacea. Be sure to avoid any kind of things that are acting as strong astringents or that increase heat. So people who have rosacea will often try to avoid hot peppers. So spicy foods of any kind.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
I know that's tough. I'm somebody who really enjoys spicy foods. So if you have to avoid spicy foods, I sympathize with you, that's rough. Anything that acts as an astringent or can really irritate the skin from the inside or from the outside. So think not excessively hot foods as it relates to spicy or temperature, things of that sort. Now I should point out there are different types of rosacea.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
The dermatologist I spoke to who is expert in rosacea told me there are four major types of rosacea. Many of them respond to the sorts of guidelines that we've been talking about up until now. Some of them that also include acne need some additional treatment. We talked about acne treatments that can be easily folded into the treatment for rosacea.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
There are people who have very stubborn rosaceas. This may be due to excessive use of cleansers. And again, we're talking about how over-cleansing can really be a problem. So we're not saying don't wash your face. We're not saying don't take a shower, please do.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
In fact, and I should have said this earlier, by the way, for a lot of reasons related to your comfort and appearance and other people's comfort,
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
After you work out at a gym, regardless of whether or not you're rolling around on the floor with a foam roller or you're rolling jujitsu or you're lifting weights, you're doing cardio, it is a good idea to take a shower and cleanse with a gentle cleanser as soon as possible.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
I know this sounds like just basic advice, but a lot of people just throw on a clean shirt or they don't rinse off or they don't wash their face and they're wondering, why they're getting all sorts of skin issues. Well, there's a lot of bacteria in gyms, a lot of sweating people. There are a lot of bacteria on you, a lot of bacteria on the equipment.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And yeah, you can spray down the equipment and do these various things, but it's a good idea to shower as soon as possible or to bathe rather as soon as possible, wash your face. after going to a gym for your sake and for the sake of others.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Now, some rosacea is very stubborn, meaning it does not go away even if somebody makes all the appropriate lifestyle adjustments, tries any number of different medical treatments. And by the way, rosacea is a medical condition. And in some cases, people will get angiomas, the accumulation of blood vessels near the surface of the skin that can be, for them, something they don't want.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
So we could say unsightly, but they just don't want it. Or in some cases they'll treat their rosacea and then they'll get an accumulation of broken vessels near the surface of the skin. This is pretty common for people that experience rosacea and treat rosacea. For these people, there is a treatment.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
It has to be done in a dermatologist's office called pulse dye laser, where they use a laser of a particular wavelength that can penetrate, excuse me, the superficial layers of the skin.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And now you know how different wavelengths of light can penetrate to different depths within skin and destroy the blood vessels or the broken blood vessels that then call in immune system cells to clear out the destroyed endothelial cells and other stuff around it and take it away, get rid of those blood vessels that sit beneath the surface. Let's talk about psoriasis.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
at sunsets and also at sunrise. But of course, as full spectrum light, sunlight also includes UV, ultraviolet light of different types. We'll talk about those types today, as well as blue light and green light. And in midday sun, when the sun is overhead, we just see the sun as white light, right? Because it's containing all those different wavelengths.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
So when I was researching this episode, I asked the dermatologist, is psoriasis related to yeast or overproduction of skin cells? And what they told me was really interesting. They said for more than 80 years within the dermatologic community, it was thought that psoriasis was just an overproduction of skin cells. but it wasn't really known what the source was.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And it turns out that now almost all the derms, at least the ones I spoke to, said that it has something to do either directly or at least powerfully and indirectly with the immune system. So what can be done to treat psoriasis? you'll probably guess, things that reduce the overall level of activation in the immune system.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Not so much that you become susceptible to infections, because that's not good, but you treat this like any other autoimmune condition. There are now drugs, these are prescription drugs, that directly target the interleukins, the components of the immune system that are directly involved in
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
psoriasis such as interleukin 17 and interleukin 23 and i'm told that these drugs are very effective in the treatment of psoriasis so that's very reassuring you know i know um especially in communities online that are focused more on behavioral tools and nutrition-based tools or supplementation-based tools of which i am right we focus on those but as you probably noticed in this and other episodes of the human lab podcast we also talk about prescription drugs that have proven to be very effective in certain conditions
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
So it's very reassuring to hear that there are excellent prescription drugs that can target the specific interleukins that are over-activated in psoriasis because psoriasis is now known as an over-activation of the immune system and a kind of turning of the body on itself, if you will, to create this itchy, scaly, uncomfortable, and in some cases, unsightly overproduction of skin cells at the scalp and elsewhere.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Okay, so we've covered a lot of topics thus far. We've talked about skin biology. We talked about various skin conditions that are very common, such as acne, psoriasis. and so forth. We talked about ways to increase the youthfulness or the appearance of youthfulness in skin that are based on data, some that are a bit more experimental.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And we talked about even some laser procedures and phototherapy, things of that sort. And at the same time, I acknowledge that there are many topics and conditions related to skin health and skincare that we did not talk about. We didn't talk about eczema. We didn't talk about Botox. We didn't talk about an enormous number of topics that I know are of interest and relevant to many of you.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
So as a consequence, the plan is to host various expert guests, both dermatologists, expert in particular areas, as well as yes, a cosmetic surgeon who, believe it or not, does not like to cut, but rather likes to use fairly non-invasive procedures that touch on some of these very same mechanisms.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Yes, injections of certain things, things that operate at the surface level of the skin and sometimes surgical procedures, that I know when people hear cosmetic surgery, they think, oh, people just trying to improve the youthfulness of their look or something of that sort, but that also relate to certain serious skin conditions for which surgery and non-surgical approaches can assist in.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
So while this is not a discussion about wavelengths and optics, for sake of today's discussion, just understand that long wavelength light tends to be more of the red, orange, yellow variety, okay, loosely speaking. And down at the other end of the spectrum, the short wavelength light is more of the blue and green and so-called ultraviolet light.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
So the point is that any discussion about skin health and skincare is going to be an ongoing discussion, one that I do plan to continue on this podcast in the form of expert guest episodes, maybe even another solo episode.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
We've occasionally done so-called toolkit episodes where we summarize some of the main points of previous solo episodes and that arrive with guest episodes and that reflect the latest knowledge that gets published in between episodes. I do plan to cover this topic in more detail going forward.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Meanwhile, I like to think that what I've covered today provides at least an introduction to the biology of skin and an understanding about the various things that we all can and should do for our skin health and appearance, as well as ways to attack certain pain points
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
related to certain skin conditions that come from expert sources, from excellent literature that has been established over many, many decades. And I personally find this organ that we call skin to be infinitely fascinating, not just by virtue of what it does, but by virtue of all the different organ and tissue systems that it interacts with in our body.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
and by virtue of the fact that our skin is this incredible living organ on the outside of our body that tells us oh so very much about how we and others are doing in terms of our immediate and potentially our long-term health. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Please also subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and Apple.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or topics or guests you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep, to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body. If you're not already following me on social media, I am hubermanlab on all social media platforms.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
So that means Instagram X, formerly known as Twitter, Threads, Facebook and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I cover science and science related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content I cover on the Huberman Lab podcast. So, again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.
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How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
If you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, our neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes summaries of podcast episodes as well as protocols in the form of brief one to three page PDFs that explain protocols for things like deliberate heat or deliberate cold exposure.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
So it's well accepted light of different wavelengths, such as UV, blue light, green light, all the way out to red light, even near infrared light can penetrate into cells. It can actually pass through surfaces. It turns out that long wavelength light can actually go deeper into the surface of our skin, right? It literally can penetrate just by shining a red light on your skin.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
for optimizing dopamine, for improving your sleep, for neuroplasticity and learning. Again, all zero cost in the format of one to three page PDFs. To access it, you simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab, scroll down to newsletter and enter your email. And we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion all about skin health and skincare.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
It can actually penetrate the skin to a deeper layer than can short wavelength light like UV light. And it's well accepted that UV light when it penetrates mostly that epidermal layer of the skin, that outermost layer, it can cause changes in the way that DNA functions.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
It can cause mutations such that DNA, which as many of you probably remember from high school biology, DNA is transcribed into RNA and RNA is translated into proteins. The proteins are the things that the cells produce. They're actually made up of proteins. Well, UV light can disrupt which DNA are expressed and how they are expressed
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
in some cases leading to overproduction of too many cells or disruptions in the functions of cells. And that's why people link UV light to skin cancer. That's the whole idea there. And that's the whole notion behind using sunscreens. And notice I'm saying sunscreen, so ways to screen out UV light or maybe all sunlight in some cases in order to prevent
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
that penetration of the UV light into cells, which can cause mutations, which in some cases can lead to skin cancer. Now, I realize as I'm saying this, there's probably a group of you out there saying, what's the evidence that sunlight can actually cause skin cancer? Well, there is clear evidence that sunlight can cause skin cancers.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
Which skin cancers and how deadly those skin cancers are, we'll get to in a few moments. That turns out to be a very interesting twist in the whole story. But I want to highlight the fact that there's very little controversy as to whether or not UV light can cause mutations in cells, right?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance
But what you should be asking yourself is, well, why would long wavelength light, like red light, perhaps be good for skin? We'll talk about that later. There are therapies, phototherapies that use, that exploit red light, which can penetrate deep into skin that actually can enhance the health of skin if done correctly.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. I'm also wearing my Roka red lens glasses, which block both blue light and green light, both of which are so-called short wave length light.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
to try something, see if we like it, see if we don't, ask ourselves why, right? If you get stomach discomfort from a given brand of whey protein, please don't take that one again, right? You have to find what works for you and then pay attention to whether or not, for instance, if you're a woman and you're seeing
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
The research that we fund is largely applied research. We do fund some basic research, but it's largely applied research, meaning it's research that's geared toward developing novel therapeutics for mental health, physical health, and performance in humans as soon as possible.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
some increase in acne or other skin symptoms by taking whey protein at a particular phase of your cycle. Maybe you stop taking it during that phase and take it only in other phases, or if you have no issues, go ahead and take it. For men whose hormones obviously don't cycle as much throughout the month, if at all,
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
they're going to cycle depending on sleep, et cetera, stress, et cetera, but you get the idea. If you are experiencing troubling levels of acne, take whey protein out altogether, maybe replace it with a casein protein or other high quality protein and see how you react. Again, become a scientist of yourself, You'll be glad you did.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
Thank you for joining me for the beginning of this Ask Me Anything episode. To hear the full episode and to hear future AMAs, go to hubermanlab.com slash premium to become a premium member.
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AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
Other membership benefits include access to transcripts of Huberman Lab episodes, early access to Huberman Lab events, and a discount on all items in the Huberman Lab store, along with special gifts from our sponsors. To learn more, go to hubermanlab.com slash premium. And as always, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
We've already done several rounds of research funding, and I'm excited to tell you about the results of those studies as they become available. I'm also pleased to inform you that for every dollar that the Huberman Lab Premium Channel generates for research studies, there are now three matching donors that match that amount.
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AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
The Tiny Foundation, along with two other generous anonymous donors, have agreed to do a dollar for dollar match. So technically, given the number of dollar for dollar matches, it's now a dollar for dollar for dollar for dollar match. That is, for every dollar provided by the Premium Channel for research, we have three dollars provided to the Premium Channel's research fund.
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AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
And then we distribute that to various investigators, as I mentioned, at Stanford and other universities throughout the United States. This is a 4X amplification of the total amount of funding given to studies of mental health, physical health, and performance.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
And of course, as those studies are completed and published, we will be sure to share the data and the actionable tools that emerge from those data with you. So for those of you that are already Premium Channel members, thank you. And for those of you that are considering becoming a Premium Channel subscriber, please keep in mind that $3 to $1 match that greatly amplifies your contribution.
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AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
To subscribe to the Huberman Lab Premium Channel, please go to hubermanlab.com slash premium. It costs $10 a month to subscribe, or you can pay $100 for an entire year's membership. We also have a lifetime membership that again is a one-time payment. You can find out more about that lifetime membership at hubermanlab.com slash premium.
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AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
For those of you that are already premium channel members, please go to hubermanlab.com slash premium to download the premium member feed in order to access the entire episode today. And for those of you who are not premium members, you can still hear the first 20 minutes of today's episode and determine whether or not becoming a premium member is right for you.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
And now without further ado, I will answer your questions. The first question for today's AMA is, quote, is there a distinct health advantage to using bone broth or collagen protein versus whey protein? I get this question pretty often. And I touched on this in the episode that I did with Dr. Lane Norton.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
That's because we are recording this AMA at night and the lights in here are very bright and bright lights at night will quash your melatonin, which is the hormone of sleepiness. Bright lights at night also increase cortisol levels. And by blocking those short wavelengths of light, you offset the reductions in melatonin and the increases in cortisol that would otherwise occur.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
But I think the key thing to remember here is that while protein is one of the three macronutrients, proteins, carbohydrates, and fats, not all proteins are created equal. Now, what differentiates different protein sources has a lot to do with how easily those proteins are assimilated into our body and their amino acid content.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
Now in general, how bioavailable a protein is, as well as its quality or protein score, relates to a number of things, not the least of which is the amount of leucine, which is a particular essential amino acid that we need to get from food. So why is leucine important? Well, leucine is an essential amino acid.
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AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
You need to get it from food and some protein sources, such as whey protein, for instance, but also beef, chicken, eggs, et cetera, have high levels of leucine as compared to other types of protein. for instance, collagen protein, and some not all bone broths. And I'll explain what I mean by that in a moment.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
So if we just step back from this question and ask it in two parts, remember the question was, is there a distinct health advantage to using bone broth or collagen protein versus whey protein?
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
One can be very confident in the answer to that, which is whey protein contains relatively high amounts of the amino acid leucine, and therefore is going to be the superior form of protein if your goal is to grow muscle and or get stronger, to repair muscle, either muscle damage caused by exercise, or simply to engage protein synthesis.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
Remember, even if you haven't been exercising intensely or doing any resistance training, and by the way, you should be doing resistance training and cardiovascular training,
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AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
But independent of exercise, dietary protein, in particular dietary proteins that contain high amounts of leucine, or I should say relatively high amounts of leucine, like whey protein, will help induce so-called muscle protein synthesis, which is generally good for us, again, and it's occurring even if we're not exercising.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
If we are exercising, especially if we're exercising very hard, and in particular, if we're doing a lot of resistance training, or frankly, any amount of resistance training that's taken or to failure, right?
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
So it doesn't even have to be heavyweight, but if you're stressing the muscles hard, then having a quality protein source that's bioavailable, that is you can assimilate it, and that has relatively high leucine content is going to be advantageous.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
So through that lens, I can confidently answer the question by saying that a quality whey protein would be a better choice for a protein as compared to bone broth or a collagen protein, which have relatively low amounts of leucine. And if you look at their essential amino acid profile, just sort of across the board, not just focusing on leucine and compare that to whey protein,
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
we would easily say that whey protein is the superior form of protein, again, both based on its bioavailability and its amino acid composition. Now, does that mean that bone broth and collagen protein are not valuable at all? No, I didn't say that, okay? So when are bone broth and collagen proteins valuable?
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
So this has also come up in several Huberman Lab podcast episodes, namely the episode that I did with Dr. Lane Norton, also the episode that I did about skin health. Because there are some data, not a ton, but there are some data showing that people who regularly ingest collagen protein can observe some improvements in skin elasticity and appearance. Now, are these dramatic effects?
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
And I always make the general recommendation that whether or not you decide to wear blue-green blockers or blue blockers or simply no blockers, that you dim your lights at night. It will greatly facilitate your transition to sleep and the quality of your sleep. So this AMA is part of our premium subscriber channel.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
Not so much, but are these significant effects? That is, are they statistically significant as compared to a control condition of either no collagen protein or a different protein source? And there one can find manuscripts that show, yes, indeed, ingesting collagen protein. And by the way, bone broth has high amounts of collagen.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
So we're treating bone broth and collagen protein sort of in combination here, or we are considering them in combination. And one would say that the amino acids that are contained in bone broth and collagen protein actually have been shown to support skin elasticity and appearance when ingested at levels of 15 grams per day over a period of about two weeks or more.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
Okay, so through the lens of which protein source might be best for improving skin health and appearance, the answer in this case would be that the bone broth and collagen protein is going to be superior to whey protein. However, Keep in mind that bone broth and collagen protein contain calories, right? They contain protein and calories.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
Sometimes they contain calories also from fat, rarely from carbohydrate, but you need to check the packaging and see what else is in there. So that raises the question, should you be taking bone broth slash collagen protein? I would say either or, maybe both, but either or and whey protein, or rather, let's ask the question more scientifically, will taking whey protein
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
support skin health and appearance in a way that either mimics or can replace the positive effects that one gets from bone broth and collagen protein? And the answer there would be no, at least not in any direct way. There's no evidence, or at least there are no studies that I'm aware of, of people taking whey protein as a way to improve skin health and appearance.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
Now that said, recovering from exercise, inducing muscle protein synthesis, these are things that are generally good for your body. So they are going to support overall health, immune health, your general sense of vigor. There's all sorts of downstream things that happen when you stress your muscles and then recover them, or even if you just, eat a protein like whey protein.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
And keep in mind, there are other proteins that have high leucine content that lend themselves as whey protein does to muscle protein synthesis. So that's going to create an overall milieu, an environment of health.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
It certainly isn't the only path to health, but it's going to create a general milieu of health in the right context, provided you're ingesting it at the right amounts and in the right times. When I say that, I know people are thinking, well, how much is the right amount?
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
I am of the belief that most people who are seeking muscle protein synthesis, recovery from exercise and general health would do well to ingest approximately, I'm not super neurotic about these things, approximately one gram of quality protein per pound of lean body weight or desired body weight.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
Our premium subscriber channel was started in order to provide support for the standard Huberman Lab podcast, which of course comes out every Monday. Those are our full length episodes. We also now have Huberman Lab essentials episodes, which are 30 minute essentials only episodes. So just the actionable protocols and the key mechanisms behind those protocols, those come out every Thursday.
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AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
Or if you want to be a little looser about it, some people will just say one gram of quality protein per pound of body weight each day. So that's going to vary from person to person. So how much whey protein? Well, depends on how much other protein you're ingesting. So let's simplify things here. If in trying to get that one gram of protein per pound of body weight or so,
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
you have a limited budget as most people do. I would personally suggest that you get a significant portion of whatever that protein requirement is. Maybe it's 150 grams, maybe it's 200 grams, maybe it's 100 grams, depending on your size. I would suggest getting 60 to 70% of that from whole food sources. So it could be quality lean meats, chicken, eggs, fish.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
If you're a vegetarian, yes, there are combinations of things like beans and rice. that will allow you to achieve the proper combinations of essential amino acids. There are some sources of non-animal proteins that will meet all those amino acid needs. You can look these up. They're easy to find online now. There's also casein protein, you know, milk protein.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
I would suggest getting most of your protein for muscle protein synthesis and for from exercise from whole food sources. And then the remaining 30% or so, and I suppose this could be as high as 50% if you're having trouble eating enough during the day, could come from a protein powder, so to speak, or a protein bar. And whey protein is an excellent source of protein in that instance.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
And those whey proteins are available out there with minimal amounts or zero amounts of carbohydrate in them. Some of them have sweeteners like Stevia, some don't. They vary in cost a bit. They vary in flavor a bit, in mixability a bit. So you have to find what works for you. These are now pretty easy to find out there. You just have to pick the one that's right for you and for your budget.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
That's to meet your one gram of protein per pound of body weight sort of threshold. And again, you don't have to be super neurotic about reaching that threshold every single day. I'm about 100 kilograms or about 220 pounds. I'm probably a little bit lighter now, maybe 210 pounds. I probably get anywhere from 175 to 210 grams of protein per day.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
I know that from having tracked it recently, but I'm not neurotic about making sure that every day I get 210 grams or 200 grams. I'll let it vary a little bit. And sometimes it gets a bit lower and sometimes it gets a little bit higher. And at least that works for me. I'm also not in a mode of life where I'm trying to put on a lot of muscle or something like that.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
So if you are, maybe you need to pay a bit more attention to the details, but so that's to get your protein ration per day. And of course you also need to make sure you're getting sufficient. I believe you should get sufficient vegetables, fruits, and if it's in your nutrition plan, starches, you know, things like rice and oatmeal and things like that.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
If that's what you do, I realize today people are doing a variety of different things. Now, the bone broth and collagen protein, yes, will factor into your total protein count, that protein ration of one gram per pound of body weight per day.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
But keep in mind that if you evaluate bone broth or especially powdered collagen proteins through the lens of what is high quality, bioavailable, high leucine content protein, collagen protein, or rather powdered collagen protein doesn't scale up that well.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
Both the full length episodes and essentials episodes are available at zero cost to everybody on all standard platforms. So YouTube, Apple, Spotify, we now have the full length episodes on X as well. We started the premium channel as a way to generate support for exciting research being done at Stanford School of Medicine, on the main campus at Stanford and elsewhere.
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AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
And so I would say, if you are interested in improving your skin health and appearance, sure, go ahead and add 15 grams of collagen protein in powdered form per day, or have some bone broth. I happen to really like bone broth. It also has a fair amount of protein.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
And I believe, I need to double check this, but I believe that some of them actually have fair amounts of leucine, just not as high as whey protein. Okay, so I want to be clear about that because the question was about a comparison between bone broth, collagen protein, and whey protein. One last thing about skin health as it relates to whey protein.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
On the episode I did about skin health, I read a number of papers, and then we addressed these papers again when I had Dr. Teo Seloumani on the podcast. He's actually a derm-onc, or a dermatologist oncologist, specializes in skin cancers, but also the cosmetic aspects of skincare. You know, what makes skin have nice levels of elasticity, reducing things like rosacea, psoriasis, and acne.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
And in that discussion, and in the papers that I covered in the solo episode, It was clear that one of the things that has been shown to contribute to acne in some people, okay, not all, but in some people, is having a high leucine content in the diet. Okay, so this runs counter-current to everything I've said before, but I would be remiss if I didn't say this.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
Whey protein has been evaluated for its tendency to increase acne in some people. And it seems to be related to leucine, which again is quite present in whey protein and leucine's ability to increase certain components of the cell growth pathway involving mTOR, mammalian target of rapamycin. There's a whole discussion to have about mTOR. that we don't have time to get into right now.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
I don't think you should be afraid of whey protein because you think it will induce acne. What seems to be the case here is that the high leucine content and probably other things in whey protein that are effective in increasing insulin lead to increases in mTOR. which in turn lead to changes in the skin that sometimes show up as increased acne.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
Again, I'm not saying that taking whey protein will increase your acne. What I am saying is if you have issues with acne, you might try taking out whey protein for a couple of days or weeks. And by doing so, see whether or not whey protein is causing or exacerbating those acne symptoms. I personally have never noticed that issue with whey protein.
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
but others might, and indeed there are some peer reviewed manuscripts that point to that. And as a final point, one thing that became clear in offline discussions with Dr. Teo Soleimani about this whey protein, leucine, acne thing is that for women in particular whose hormone cycle across the month
Huberman Lab
AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More
They may find that whey protein and other high leucine protein sources will exacerbate or create acne at particular phases of their cycle because of the interaction between that mTOR pathway and some of the hormones that fluctuate during different phases of the menstrual cycle. So we all have to learn to be scientists of ourselves. That is,
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. Hi, everyone. I'm delighted to kick off this premium subscriber AMA. And today I have some great announcements to make, including the fact that we have now expanded our SciComm, that is the parent company of the Huberman Lab Podcast.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
This is my opinion. I like to do deliberate cold exposure in the following way. I don't even do it for time. I do it for... what I call walls. So if you're having a hard time even persuading yourself to get in the thing, well then that's one wall you need to get over.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
So we essentially have a 4X what we would otherwise give in terms of supporting exciting new research on humans in various laboratories at Stanford and elsewhere. I'll just touch on a few areas that we are supporting going forward. This is not an exhaustive list, but for instance, we are supporting some exciting work using deliberate heat exposure.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
And then if you get over that wall, which hopefully you do, you get in and you start to breathe very quickly, just know that if it's very cold, you'll breathe quickly. And after about 20 seconds, your ability to think clearly will come back online. Okay, that's right about the time that most people say that their hands or feet hurt.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
Okay, I do recommend putting your hands under, it's not necessary, but hands and feet under. If you're in the shower, getting your body as small as possible. Sometimes people will huddle. In the shower, if you really want to make it uncomfortable, you can raise your arms and get in your armpits, which is especially cold. But in any case, it should be uncomfortable.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
And then you should stay in until you adapt to that. I'm like, okay, so maybe that's 30 seconds, maybe it's 10 seconds, maybe it's a minute. And then I suggest getting out at that point. So I would say anywhere from one to three minutes for most people, maybe 30 seconds,
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
if you're really experiencing a lot of mental barriers to getting in there, and it should be just cold enough that you don't want to be in there that you want to get out, but that you can stay in for that one to three minutes safely. Why do I say this? Well, if you get into very, very cold water, like 30 degree Fahrenheit water, and you're...
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
and really hyperventilating, you do run the risk of hypothermia, you run the risk of putting your cardiovascular system into shock. I mean, there is a real danger to these things. And by the way, you should never, ever, ever do any kind of breath work prior to getting into deliberate cold, prior to getting into very cold water.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
Because if you're doing a lot of exhaling, you're blowing off a lot of carbon dioxide, that will limit your gas reflex. And there have been people who have done cyclic hyperventilation, deep breathing, then gone into water. and they didn't realize that they needed to breathe. They didn't get that gasp reflex early enough, and unfortunately they blacked out and died. So that's very serious.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
So what do I recommend in terms of cold water? Great to have somebody there. Ideally, you have somebody there with you who's not in the water with you, who can monitor you. If you're talking about cold shower or cold plunge, and you're talking about, okay, should I do it at 40 degrees or 45 degrees Fahrenheit or 50 degrees?
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
Well, put your hand in and then ask yourself on a scale of one to 10, how eager am I to get in? If it's 10, well then it's probably a little too warm, or maybe you're just highly motivated. If it's a five or a six and you're kind of feeling some resistance, great, provided it's not so cold that it's dangerous.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
So for me, the typical temperature, if you just want me to throw one out there is somewhere between 45 and 50 degrees. And a few of my friends who really like it extra cold or like an ice bath, will say, oh, that's weak. Well, that's what works for me. I never like the cold. I love getting out of it. Sometimes I like being in there after a little while, but I never like getting into it.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
I much prefer heat and the sauna. And while we're here, I'll just mention how hot for the sauna. Again, same thing, hot enough that you feel a little uncomfortable, but not so hot that you put yourself in danger. And here we really have to emphasize danger because It doesn't take much of a temperature increase to overheat the brain. So for me, I'm pretty heat tolerant.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
So I'll put the traditional sauna, not infrared sauna, but traditional sauna to about 210 and I'll last about 10 to 20 minutes in there maximum. And then I'll go into the cold plunge and back and forth. Okay. So if you're going to do the cold plunge for the first time, maybe start it, 55, 60 degrees and stay in a little longer.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
If you're going to be more experienced with this and you're more cold tolerant, try 45, 50. And then if you're really aggressive and you want to try getting down into the low 40s or so, high 30s, well then make sure you have somebody there and make sure that you Don't force yourself to do something that's going to cause tissue damage or cardiovascular damage.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
to treat symptoms of depression, a really interesting and forward-looking approach to treating depression for which there's already some really exciting preliminary results. We are going to be supporting work on goal setting at New York University. This is really exciting work.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
Cold is a very potent stimulus and you should go with the minimum effective dose, but you don't have to obsess over the difference between 58 degrees and 56 degrees or 46 and 48. I think subjective feel is going to help. Just make sure that you build in some safeties so that you can adjust quickly, stay out of danger. No deep breathing. prior to getting in there.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
Now, some of you might be asking, well, what about deep breathing while I'm in there? That's how I calm myself down. That's fine, but no emphasizing the exhales to blow off carbon dioxide, certainly no submerging yourself intentionally, okay? So be safe, have fun with it.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
Deliberate cold exposure I think is a wonderful tool for increasing alertness, not just while you're in there, but when you get out. In fact, that's the best part, if you ask me, is getting out. All right, next question is from Katie. It's about self-motivation. Do you have any suggestions or steps to self-motivate to start a new routine? I do, I do, I do, I do.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
First of all, be very careful who you announce and what you announce to people in terms of starting a new routine, unless they are going to really be on you about accountability. In general, talking to people about our goals, less effective, in my opinion, and there's some research to support this, than just simply making the decision, writing it down, simple, you know,
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
Old school, like me, eight and a half by 11 paper. Write down what the goal is. Give yourself a check for each day that you do it or the times of day that you do it. Sometimes signing your signature as if you have a contract with yourself can help. These are all different tricks. Some people will say, should you reward yourself for completing something? Sure.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
Should you scare yourself into doing something? Sure. There's data to support that also. I covered this in the episode. with Emily Balchettis and about goal seeking and habits that I did as solo episodes. We have a newsletter on this. Here's the deal. There are going to be multiple barriers to starting a new routine. I do believe in incremental approaches to these things.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
Right now I'm working on some bonus chapters of my book. And while I'm pretty motivated person, I'm excited to share that information with the world. I must say that Setting aside time to do these bonus chapters has been challenging because I've got a lot else going on.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
So rather than tell people that I'm doing that, I actually have a contract with myself that I sign each time I complete anywhere from a 10 to 60 minute writing block. So a contract with yourself can really help. I think it's far more valuable than stating to the world what you're going to do.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
I don't know why that tends to work, but we know why stating to the world what you're going to do often wears off because typically and this reflects both good and bad things about human behavior and psychology.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
Many, many people struggle with goal setting and habit formation that can serve them in their career and in their personal life and fitness goals, health goals. This work directly relates to that. In other words, you're supporting that work. We are also supporting work on immune system, nervous system interactions.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
Typically, people will support you by saying, great, you're going to do great, the book's going to be great, or your new exercise program is going to be great, you're going to do, and they're just supporting you, supporting you, supporting you. And that support turns out to be sufficient to create this mindset that you could do it at any point, or you've got the support you need.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
Sometimes a little bit of additional friction, what Tim Ferriss would call fear setting, is a good idea. You think about worst outcomes if you don't do the thing. But let's face it, You can't lie to yourself and believe it. So if you know that not doing the thing isn't going to markedly change your life for the worse, well, in that case, you need some additional support.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
You need some additional motivation. So you could use all sorts of tools and protocols like a cold shower to increase epinephrine, adrenaline, and dopamine, and get more motivated and then do something. You could, and I think this is probably the best tool anyone could apply, which would be to put away your phone, turn it off, put it in the other room.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
I now have a box for my phone that I've dedicated to keeping my phone in when I'm busy doing other types of work for which the presence of the phone would be an intrusion. It would limit my work output. I do think that the contract with self is going to be the best way. You say, I am going to do 30 minutes of whatever resistance training three times a week.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
And then you're going to sign off by the end of the week. And when you complete each one, that's your reward to yourself that you were accountable. There's no external reward. Why do I say this? The work itself should become the reward. We know, This from all the work on growth mindset that we've talked about, Carol Dweck's wonderful work and David Yeager's wonderful work.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
He was a guest on the podcast. I've done solo episodes about their work, about growth mindset, that ultimately the work becoming the reward is how you're going to sustain motivation over time. So when you sign off that you did the work and that's the reward,
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
Well, then there's this kind of cyclical relationship between what you've promised yourself you would do, what you did and rewarding yourself for the work, no additional external reward, the work becomes a reward. So I like the idea of being a bit of a, what we would call closed loop system on motivation, rather than going out and seeking excessive support from others.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
And I say this not to isolate, I encourage healthy relationships, et cetera, but, If we start seeking external validation or pressure in order to do what we know we want to do or would love to be able to do without external support, we limit ourselves. And when that support isn't there, we tend to be far less productive and move toward our goals far less well.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
So it's an internal process of reshaping your psychology. There's also some deeper psychology around this stuff of agency and what you feel you deserve. You deserve, I'll tell you this, because I believe everyone deserves to be able to better themselves through these kinds of self-directed actions.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
And I also like the idea of a closed loop because you can be really honest with yourself at the end of a week. Did you do your three sessions? Did you sign off three times? Keeping some of that reward system and validation internal, really helps you become stronger also to be able to support other people if they need your support.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
This is an area of science that's now really progressing quickly that explores how, especially in babies and kids and young adults, but also in more mature adults, interactions between the brain and nervous system and the immune system can cause all sorts of interesting susceptibilities, but also patterns of resilience in people that do specific things as it relates to supporting their immune system.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
Whereas if you have a committee of people that you rely on, that you need to hear from, you need their support in order to be motivated, while that can be great, coaches can be great and support systems are wonderful, I don't think it's nearly as effective as being your own committee, your own chair and secretary in this case, and member of your own committee.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
And then of course, seek social support and reinforcement for other areas of your life that you need and be a source of social support, but also encourage people to be in this kind of cyclical loop of motivation and to really impart the principles of growth mindset, which is really what we're talking about. Make the effort the reward. Okay. I'm going to take a sip of tea here.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
Lou asks, what can you do if you're not getting enough rapid eye movement sleep? What are the consequences? Okay, so to remind everybody, rapid eye movement sleep is more enriched towards the end of the night. It differs from slow wave sleep or deep sleep. tends to be dream rich sleep. The dreams tend to be more elaborate.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
You also dream during deep sleep, during slow wave sleep, but your dreams are far more emotionally laden during rapid eye movement sleep, more vivid, et cetera. And rapid eye movement sleep is associated with learning. So getting enough rapid eye movement sleep, especially on the first night after trying to learn something,
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
Rapid eye movement sleep is also important for removing the emotional load of previous day and previous day's experiences. So it's its own form of trauma therapy. During rapid eye movement sleep, your body is essentially incapable of releasing adrenaline. So you can have these very intense emotional experiences in your mind.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
Without adrenaline in your body, you're actually paralyzed during rapid eye movement sleep. It's a healthy paralysis, sleep atonia it's called. How do you get more REM sleep? Well, one of the best ways to get more REM sleep is to simply add anywhere from 10 minutes to 30 minutes to your sleep schedule, adding that 10 to 30 minutes in the morning. Most people can't do that, however.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
Another way to increase the amount of rapid eye movement sleep that you get is to get a bigger surge of epinephrine of adrenaline in the early day prior to that sleep. So this is a great reason to do deliberate cold exposure in your shower in the morning. You could also get it through exercise.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
So exercising early in the morning, and then we're talking about the rapid eye movement sleep that occurs the very next, that same night, okay? So we're talking about a Monday morning where you exercise and get deliberate cold exposure.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
By the way, it is true that if you do deliberate cold exposure after resistance training, you can limit some of the strength and hypertrophy increases or adaptations, but at other times it seems to be fine. And there is zero evidence that taking a cold shower after resistance training is going to limit strength or hypertrophy So you don't have to be too paranoid about deliberate cold exposure.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
In fact, I think the best recommendation I can make about deliberate cold exposure is neither be too paranoid nor too obsessive about it. So spiking your adrenaline a bit in the early part of the day with exercise and or deliberate cold exposure can help get more rapid eye movement sleep later that night, sleeping in a bit, even 10 minutes more going back to sleep.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
This is a case for hitting the snooze. You go back to sleep maybe even two or three times. of course better to just sleep the whole way through until a maximum long night is achieved, long night of sleep that is.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
So thanks to you and these dollar for dollar matching donors, we are able together but mainly thanks to you to support these exciting areas of human research. And as the data come in, we are going to relay what the new findings are, and of course, translate those where appropriate to protocols for improving mental health, physical health, and performance.
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If you wake up and you're not rested enough, or if you're looking at your sleep score and you don't see enough rapid eye movement sleep, the other thing you can do is a non-sleep deep rest protocol, which by the way, Matt Walker's laboratory and I are gearing up to do some studies on non-sleep deep rest and how it impacts the brain specifically as opposed, and this has been done in other studies, but not with modern methods in a while.
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So we're excited about that. So do a 10 to 30 minute or 10 or 20 minute non-sleep deep rest protocol. Those are easy to find. I have zero cost ones that are on YouTube. You simply put NSDR Huberman. There's a 10 minute one, a 20 minute one. We have them in Spotify format. There's actually a link on the hubermanlab.com webpage
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
that links out to audio format so that you don't have to go onto YouTube. If you don't want to do that, you can download that script from Spotify and that way you have it in your phone. You don't need to even have internet access. So if you're camping or you're out of internet access, you can still do that non-sleep deep rest.
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And then if you prefer a female voice, Kelly Boyes, B-O-Y-S, has some wonderful NSDR and yoga nidra scripts on YouTube and has her own. She also is on the Waking Up app doing NSDR and yoga nidra. So I would do that first thing in the morning to get a bit more REM-like rest is what we'll call it until the data are in.
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REM-like rest puts the brain into this very interesting state with body completely still, right? Similar to sleep atonia that you observe in REM sleep. and mind active, very similar to REM sleep. This is actually our hypothesis, which is that non-sleep deep rest mimics rapid eye movement sleep, but that hypothesis still needs to be tested formally. And Dr. Walker and I are going to do that.
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So that's another way to get more REM sleep. The other way, and this is kind of a tongue in cheek answer is if you don't get enough REM sleep on one night, you can be sure that if you allow yourself sufficient sleep the next night, you'll get more REM sleep than you normally would anyway, had you slept well the previous night. What does all that mean?
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It means that there's something called the REM sleep rebound. If you don't sleep enough or you don't get enough REM sleep on say Monday night, Tuesday night when you go to sleep, provided you didn't blitz your system with caffeine, you're not ingesting anything that would disrupt your REM sleep such as caffeine late in the day, well,
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or alcohol, which will disrupt REM sleep dramatically, well, then you will get more REM sleep on Tuesday night. There's a REM compensation. Anyone that's tracked their sleep has observed this. So that's another way. Right now, there's no clear pharmacology to induce more REM sleep, unfortunately. There are some tools to increase slow-wave sleep, deep sleep, pharmacologically.
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Some of the growth hormone secretagogues that are in common peptides will do that. But right now there doesn't seem to be any pharmacology directed specifically at increasing REM sleep. There are a few, these go by brand names like Quivivic and things like that, that are thought to do this, but it's still somewhat debated as to whether or not they specifically increase REM sleep, okay?
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Danielle says the top three most impactful things schools could do to raise student capacity for learning. What a great question. Well, I'll add a fourth because I don't want to, I don't want to try and wriggle out of the question by just saying sleep again, but I think trying to get kids to sleep enough is going to be key. So that means off phones and iPads in the middle of the night.
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That means starting school a little bit later. I don't know if that's ever going to work, but that would be a marvelous thing for learning because as you know, or we all should know or remember, neuroplasticity and learning is triggered by focused attention, which is supported by having slept well the night before, but the actual rewiring of neural connections occurs when? It occurs during sleep.
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So I want to extend a deep, deep, deep message of gratitude to you for supporting science, for supporting new research, and for supporting the evolution of new data to serve humanity. Thank you ever so much. Okay, so without further ado, let's get to answering your questions about mental health, physical health, and performance.
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It occurs during deep sleep and rapid eye movement sleep. That's when the reorganization of neural connections occurs, the strengthening of particular synapses, the weakening of other synapses. And there's a small, small, small, perhaps infinitesimally small percentage of neuroplasticity that is the consequence of the addition of new neurons.
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So most neuroplasticity is not that, most neuroplasticity is the reorganization of existing neural connections, but nonetheless, that happens during sleep. So getting kids to sleep enough, nap enough, sleep late if they need to is actually a great thing, but who knows if schools will change their protocols. What else can we do? What can schools do?
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I'm a big fan, as you know, of non-sleep deep rest. Wouldn't it be wonderful if in every school that started the day with a five minute meditation or non-sleep deep rest, where kids would do some quiet, focused breathing, bringing their attention back to their breathing, bringing their attention back to the spot just behind their forehead, just before beginning a learning session. Why? Why?
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Is it about mysticism? No. Is it about trying to understand consciousness? No. It's about a study done by Wendy Suzuki's laboratory at, She's their current Dean of Letters and Science, as far as I know. She is a neuroscientist. She has a spectacular record in the field of neuroscience and psychology.
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And her laboratory showed that even a very brief meditation session, in that particular study, it was about 13 minutes per day, can significantly improve working memory, which is the ability to keep information online in one's mind active. It can increase Other forms of memory, it can increase focus, it can decrease stress, and it is a zero cost tool.
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So I think, unfortunately, we think of meditation as a mystical tool to explore consciousness, and it can be, but if you think about it, exercise can also be an ultra marathon to run 242 miles or something to win a trophy. or it can be something to improve cardiovascular health. So similarly, meditation is just a perceptual exercise.
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I think that if kids learn that they can bring their perception internally to what we call interoception, as opposed to looking at things externally, exteroception, understand that they have some control, some regulation over their focus and attention, bringing their attention back
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to interoception whenever it drifts, well, then they get better at focus over time and it improves learning in the long-term, but also in the bout of learning that they go into immediately after. So, you know, if I had a magic wand, every classroom would begin a session of learning with five minutes or maybe even three minutes of what is typically known as third eye or focused meditation.
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with no interest in mysticism, pure interest in improving the ballot of learning. I think another thing that a school should include to increase capacity for learning is they should include micro gaps. So we know that if you take gaps in information delivery, so for instance, if I were to just pause now and then continue to, it seems like kind of an odd interruption.
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The first question comes from Robert, and the question is, is there any way to repair thinning skin as we age? I'm 77 years old, and in the last few years, the skin on my arms has gotten noticeably thinner. Thank you. Well, thank you for this question. It's a very timely question given that we just had a solo episode. I did a solo episode about skin health and appearance on the podcast.
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And then every once in a while at random introduce a short 10 second pause or so. What do we know happens? We know based on now a number of different really high quality papers that have looked at musical learning, mathematical learning, concept learning, physical skill learning, that those little micro gaps allow for very rapid replay of the information that's relevant.
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for whatever reason in reverse in the brain very quickly within the hippocampus and the neocortex areas of the brain critical for encoding and storage of memories. And these little micro gaps and the rapid replay of the information one is trying to learn at 20 to 30 times the normal rate increases the number of repetitions. You're basically getting 30 repetitions for doing nothing.
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This is exactly what happens in what? In rapid eye movement sleep. When you learn something, like maybe you learn something today in our discussion thus far, and you go to sleep at night, there's a very strong chance that if we were to record from your brain, we would see that the same areas of your brain that were active during specific portions of this discussion
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which arguably is more of a lecture than a discussion. But those brain areas would repeat at 20 to 30 times speed within a very compressed time. And then you'd go back to a different pattern of brain activity. What is going on? Well, in rapid eye movement sleep, the brain is rehearsing, it's generating repetitions of certain forms of behavior and certain forms of
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learning of cognitive information at high speed, you're generating more repetitions. And this is critical for the learning process. We know this from animal studies. We now know this from human studies as well. So if in the classroom teachers would just say, okay, we just finished discussing, I don't know, the cell cycle or the Krebs cycle. Now let's take a moment
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and students are not checking their phone at that time or reviewing the material at that time. They just got 20 to 30 repetitions of, and by the way, at a subconscious level, they're not aware of it, of the material they had just been exposed to. And so you introduce these, excuse me, at random. You could do anywhere from one to five of these per hour. You could do as many as 10 per hour.
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You're just introducing these brief micro rest intervals. There's a beautiful literature to support this.
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And the third thing that's very important is I think it's very, very clear that physical activity, in particular cardiovascular training, any kind of physical activity, running, jogging, swimming, et cetera, is going to facilitate learning, especially if the learning is done immediately after that activity.
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That's right, if the learning is done immediately after the activity, and that's probably related to the increase in the various catecholamines, dopamine, epinephrine, and norepinephrine associated with physical activity, then making coding of new memories and coding of new information more readily accessible.
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So this is a call for including PE class or even just some basic movement, even walks or things of that sort. We can look at this through the other lens and say, what are the worst things for learning? Terrible sleep. being delivered information like through a fire hose with no pauses and forgive me if from time to time, I tend to do that.
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As some of you know, we've expanded our SciComm Huberman Lab Podcast philanthropy to support great, exciting science that is going to directly relate to mental health, physical health and performance tools in the very near future.
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Maybe I should start introducing microgaps into the podcast, but you can always just pause it, go back to it. I feel like real life provides that. There is the strong, strong incentive for including some physical movement each day. And then I suppose if we were going to include another one, we'd say that Kids and teachers should have a discussion about optimal learning protocols.
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They should understand where their thresholds are after which their attention falls off. There's really no point in trying to learn information if you're not focused on what you're trying to learn. And then there's a whole discussion to be had about caffeine. There's a whole discussion to be had about nutrition as it relates to maintaining alertness throughout the day.
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I should mention that that episode was reviewed by a derm oncologist. I consulted with different dermatologists prior to that episode. And my general sense is that it's been received very well. There are a few areas within the skin health and appearance field that are of controversy, mainly around sunscreens. I'll just go on record saying that it's very clear that excessive sun exposure
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Anyone that's ever gone into a lecture on a college campus or a high school elementary school, even after lunch, you'll see that people's brains are just kind of idling there in the background. It's the rare student that's wrapped with attention, even after a big lunch, even after running around outside. So structuring of the day properly is essential. And of course, get that sleep at night.
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okay um alec could you share your thoughts on how shilajit might influence cognitive function and physical health specifically its impacts to boost testosterone i get a lot of questions about shilajit shilajit is a mineral pitch from the himalayas there are a lot of fake versions out there but the authentic versions are basically this is stuff that um basically they take soil and and grasses and a bunch of things and they mash it down and they take the extract and they
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and create this stuff called Shilajit, which sometimes is sold as a thick paste, kind of a tar-like paste. Sometimes it's in capsules. What do we know about Shilajit? Shilajit contains minerals that are thought to augment some hormone pathways. And that's why people have argued and it's marketed that Shilajit increases vitality.
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It's been argued that Shilajit can increase testosterone, maybe estrogen as well. There are actually a few studies on this that are covered at examine.com. I'm going to bring up one just now. so we can induce a little gap effect here if there's a pause.
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There is some data, not a ton, but there's some data that support the use of Shilajit for testosterone increase, but I would place it on the low end of the effectiveness scale in terms of things to increase testosterone. And then of course the real question is, are you getting enough authentic Shilajit to really have an effect? The dosaging on this is very mysterious.
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In other words, I personally wouldn't play Shilajit high on any list of ways to, to generate hormone support. There are far better ways. I mean, the best ways, of course, are to make sure that your body fat percentage is neither too high nor too low, okay? People who are overweight, who are obese, who lose body fat will improve their hormone profiles dramatically.
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However, people who are already very lean, who get excessively lean, you can disrupt testosterone levels dramatically. And by the way, anytime there's a discussion about testosterone, I want to remind that both men and women have testosterone. It's important in both men and women.
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Yes, it's related to libido, but having sufficiently high levels of estrogen in both men and women is also critical for libido. People that take drugs like an Astrozole to disrupt the aromatase conversion of testosterone into estrogen can sometimes find themselves with reduced libido. And that's because estrogen is critical for libido in men and women, as is testosterone.
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So it's all about the ratios. Going back to Shilajit, Let's look at the human effect matrix on Shilajit. There is one study here with 60 participants that cites a small increase, small but statistically significant increase in follicle stimulating hormone, FSH, which in females is critical, in males is critical, and The extent of the increase is just very small.
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So it's not clear that it would be worth taking Shilajit given the risks and the cost. It depends on how aggressive you are in trying to increase testosterone. Certainly there are other ways. Sperm quality, one study showing a small improvement in sperm quality. One study of 60 participants showing a small increase in testosterone.
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will age skin more rapidly, okay? That's just categorically true, okay? So if anyone's debating that, you know, there's an issue there, right? There shouldn't be any debate about that. It's absolutely true that sunscreen can help, and there are sort of three major forms of sunscreen. This relates to how to protect skin from thinning. One is a physical barrier.
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And then of course, there's a bunch of other things that have been looked at. the perhaps most impressive effect is a reduction in some LDLs. But again, even though I say the most impressive, it's still a small effect. So I wouldn't place Shilajit high on the list of supplements to consider. Always, always, always, before talking about supplements, you want to get your nutrition right.
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I've talked about how to do this. You want to be exercising, but not overtraining. You want to do both resistance training and cardiovascular training, maybe on the same day or different days, whatever your schedule allows. You want to make sure you get enough sleep at night. If you want to increase your testosterone significantly, get an extra 30 to 60 minutes of sleep each night.
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Even a 20 minute increase in rapid eye movement sleep is going to serve your testosterone far better than taking Shilajit. Will taking Shilajit increase your vitality? It'll probably increase your energy a bit. You might increase libido a bit. You have to ask yourself, is it transient? Is that effect transient? Is it directly related to testosterone increases? Probably not.
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It's probably directly related to follicle stimulating hormone increases. And for women who have a menstrual cycle that is obviously going to lead to different constellations of hormones, markedly different constellations of hormones, such as,
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follicle stimulating hormone, estrogen, progestins, et cetera, different times throughout the cycle, taking something like Shilajit because it can stimulate FSH release can potentially disrupt that. If you're a male who's doing everything else, like you're exercising, you're sleeping well, your nutrition is locked in, you are,
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you're taking creatine and fish oil, you're taking care of your gut microbiome, and you want to experiment with Shilajit, well, by all means, find a reliable source of Shilajit. They are out there. Just look for one that has some testing for authenticity.
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And then you're likely to be able to see within about a week or so if it leads to a significant increase in vitality, libido, whatever it is that you're seeking. But I wouldn't place Shilajit high on the list. of things to pursue. And I will also say having tried Shilajit, it's pretty messy. It's hard to get the dosaging right in the tar form. The capsules make it a little bit easier.
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If you wanted to explore other ways to augment testosterone that have a bit more data to support them, I would say things like Tonga Ali, which may have its effects on increasing libido in both men and women by virtue of increasing testosterone or maybe free testosterone, more likely it's an increase in luteinizing hormone in that case, which is upstream of testosterone.
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So this can all get into some pretty extended discussions about biochemical pathways and hormone pathways. this on the episode about optimizing testosterone and estrogen as a solo episode that I also covered with Dr. Kyle Gillette and with Dr. Peter Attia.
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By the way, if you go to hubermanlab.com and you put in any combination of search items, if you put, for instance, Sheila G testosterone, it will take you to the timestamp that covers that. If you put Tonga Ali testosterone or libido, Tonga Ali will take you to the timestamps across different episodes.
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directly to those timestamps so that you don't have to listen to entire episodes or go searching for this information. It's all there. We also have an AI engine at hubermanlab.com that allows you to do searches on this sort of thing. But of course, I'm happy to talk to you about it as well. I'm delighted to.
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So again, if you have the budget and you're somebody who likes to experiment, maybe Shilajit is the right thing for you. Find a good brand. It shouldn't be hard to distinguish the real brands. They always have a label of authentication on there. And if you're going to,
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Pretty much nobody disputes a physical barrier, a hat, a long sleeve shirt, long pants, et cetera. However, those don't always cover all the areas of the body that need sun protection, such as the ears, the back of the neck, portions of the face and so forth.
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already be doing everything else right behaviorally, and you want to explore supplementation for improving testosterone, vitality, et cetera, then I would say don't start with Shilajit. You'd probably be best off starting with something like Tonga Ali, maybe Fidojia. I've talked about these things previously. Okay. Let's see. Two questions popped up in front of me.
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So I'll just take the first one. Alexander, Alexander, I like the way you spell your name, Alexander. It's unusual. I dig it. What has your process been for the writing of your book? Slow. I have a saying that I say in my lab or that I have said for many years in doing science when I was a graduate student, a postdoc, and then in my lab,
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And by the way, because sometimes people ask about this, I still have research funds for human studies. I closed my animal lab, focusing mainly on teaching, which I'll be doing again this year, teaching in the spring, maybe in the winter as well to undergraduates. I may get re-involved in some human clinical studies on vision, an area that I've loved for many years.
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But in any case, there's a saying that I always would reiterate to my students in post-docs, which is I go as fast as I carefully can, okay? So I believe in a sense of urgency. I like to sit down to write and think, okay, I'm going to go as fast as I carefully can. It's that right balance between urgency and precision, okay? Going fast is rarely good in its own right.
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Going too slow isn't good either. So there's that place where I feel like I'm just pushing myself a little bit, but then you have to be careful, right? So as fast as you carefully can. So the process has been slow, but I've been going as fast as I carefully can. Any recommendations on overcoming obstacles and how did you deal with them? Yes, put that phone away, put it in the other room.
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If you have to generate accountability measures, do it. When I used to write grants in my laboratory in San Diego, you can ask my lab. I used to walk in and say, okay, I'm giving my phone to somebody. And if I ask for it back before 5 p.m. today, you each get $1,000. And I did not have $1,000 to give everyone in my lab. I had a pretty big lab and I didn't have the money.
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So you may have to create some barriers and gosh, about an hour and a half in, I'd think, okay, gosh, I was supposed to respond to this person today. They're going to think that I've dropped off the map. Oh my goodness. And then I'd remember, oh, I have an office phone. If someone really needed to get ahold of me, if it was an emergency, they'd let me know.
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When it comes to sunscreen, sometimes called sunblocks, I think there's general agreement that the sunscreens, and I'll use sunscreen and sunblock interchangeably, that are mineral-based, that is inorganic, meaning that the active ingredients are either zinc oxide or titanium dioxide or some combination of those up to a concentration of 25% are generally deemed safe by most all dermatologists.
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And if I couldn't be reached that way, someone would find me. I realized for people with kids, et cetera, this might not be feasible, but if you have to do that, you do that. Set stakes, okay? Give someone a check for an exorbitant amount of money that you can't afford to give away, but that you do have in your bank account. Give them that check and say, you know, if I don't,
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stop writing for the next hour, then you can tear up the check. Otherwise you can go cash it. So you can put some fear in there, but again, as I mentioned earlier, better to generate these kind of incentives with yourself. So I like to put my phone away. I like to take about 10 minutes to transition into the writing. And then I actually set rules for myself.
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I don't allow myself to get out of the seat, even to use the bathroom. It's true. I've never gone to the bathroom in my seat, but I resist the temptation to get up until the timer goes off. That's how I did it as an undergraduate. That's how I did it writing grants. That's how I've done it writing fellowships as a graduate student. And that's how I write the book now.
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And I find that after about 20, 30 minutes, I don't want to stand up. I'm super happy. And then if an interruption comes, then I get frustrated because I want to keep writing. So give it a try, set some high stakes incentives for yourself. I mean, don't, don't make them too high, but set some high stakes incentive. Thank you for saying, looking forward to the book. I appreciate it.
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If you want to buy a pre pre-order copy, it's a protocols book.com. It's there in multiple languages. Now I'd, you know, Be grateful if you did. On the other hand, if you don't want to buy it or you just want to wait until it comes out, that's fine too. And I'm just grateful that I have the opportunity to put this information into one place that people can access if they like.
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Mike Torres, and I think this is the last question, right? Are we down to about the last question? Two more? One more? All right, here we go. I'm asking my producer here. Mike, where can I find information from Huberman Lab regarding addictions and recovery? Great question. I get this a lot. A lot of people struggle with addiction.
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Addiction is a progressive narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure in ways that can be very disruptive for your life. These can be process addictions, meaning behavioral addictions. These can be substance abuse issues. First of all, I just want to say, while I have no formal relationship to them, there are wonderful zero-cost resources in every city around the world, 12-step communities.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
Go online, look for that. The meetings and programs that they provide are very useful. have proven very useful. Actually, this was explored in a study from Stanford Psychiatry a few years ago, because there hadn't been a lot of science on those sorts of programs. And the conclusion was they can be very, very useful. In terms of Huberman Lab resources, if you go to hubermanlab.com, put addiction,
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
into the search function.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
It will take you to specific timestamps, mainly of an episode that I did with Dr. Anna Lemke, who is our director of the Dual Diagnosis Addiction Clinic at Stanford, the author of Dopamine Nation, an absolute virtuoso in terms of the description of the underlying biological mechanisms, mostly surrounding dopamine, but also the approach to treating and getting over addictions. You can get
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
over addictions. People get sober from their addictions. It takes time, it takes energy, it takes effort. And in every case, it's an incredibly rewarding thing that just makes your life and other people's lives better. So I highly encourage anyone that's struggling with process addictions or substance abuse addictions or alcohol use disorder or things of that sort,
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
to pursue those resources, both on our website and of course the other resources that I mentioned a few minutes ago. Also Ana's book, Dopamine Nation is a wonderful one. It will allow you to see and understand that these are brain mechanisms that are at play. These are not, It's not a lack of willpower. It's a disruption in neurochemical circuit regulation.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
And that should give you some grace and some feelings of ease because what that means is that while it is not quote unquote your fault, it is your responsibility to deal with it. And you can, and there are great zero cost resources to do that. So please access those. And then just popped up on my screen. It says, happy birthday, Karen. I hope I pronounced that correctly.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
Now, there are some people who will point out that there's some controversy around certain forms of titanium dioxide. The evidence for that, however, is not conclusive. I would say that if you're really, really concerned about any of that, then just stick with a pure zinc oxide formula up to 25%. Why would people not use zinc oxide formulas?
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
Happy birthday, Karen, and happy birthday to anyone else whose birthday happens to be today or in the vicinity of today. I guess this is going to be recorded and put out eventually, and then it'll be somebody's birthday on every day at some point. But happy birthday, Karen. Thank you for being a premium subscriber. Thank you all for tuning in.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
Thank you to those of you that listened to this at a later time recorded. I really appreciate your questions. I really appreciate your support of Huberman Lab. As I've said many times before, it's a labor of love. It continues to be a labor of love. I spend my life, basically all of my waking life, minus some self-care, and some care of others and hopefully a bulldog soon, another bulldog soon.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
I can't wait, I've been looking for bulldogs and there will be another one soon. I don't know his or her name will be, but in the absence of tending to those things, I'm focusing 98% of my waking life to trying to suss out the best health and science information for you all and get it out to you in formats that are convenient for you, that are useful for you and that you can apply.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
Also discussions with expert guests, So there are the guest episodes, the solo episodes, there's hubermanlab.com has a lot of resources like the AI engine. Please give that a try if you like, it's basically an AI version of me, which is kind of weird to me, but it does a pretty good job. I would say it does a very good job of encapsulating a lot of themes.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
It's a great way to generate your own brief protocols. If you want to do that, you can ask it to generate a, you know, exercise plan based on Huberman lab protocols or what have you. And then the newsletters, I'm assuming most of you already subscribed to, but
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
If you would be so kind as to make sure that you follow the podcast by clicking subscribe on YouTube, following the podcast on Apple and Spotify, just click. If you already follow, by the way, make sure you don't accidentally unfollow. But if you go click that follow tab, that really helps us. It's zero cost.
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AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
Give us a five-star review if you think we deserve it or different review if you think we deserve that. I love your comments on YouTube. I do read them all. I really do read them all. I even go and find the hidden comments that get filtered and I read those too. So please, if you feel inclined, you can support us in that way.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
And most importantly, take the protocols and the information that you think works for you, apply it, Discard the protocols and the information that you don't feel is for you, discard it, that's great. And of course, I don't deserve credit for any of these protocols per se, right?
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
These are the product of so much great science and health studies out there, clinical studies, and I'm just a funnel in a filter, but it is a true pleasure to be able to be that funnel and filter. So thank you for letting me funnel and filter today's knowledge for you. And as always, thank you for your interest in science.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
Well, they tend to be kind of pasty and they don't spread on very easily compared to some other sunscreen formulas. Sunscreens that are quote unquote chemical based. Okay, everyone will say, well, everything's a chemical. Yes, but they're chemical based. They use a different approach to blocking or reflecting or absorbing UV rays. Those do indeed have some controversy around them.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
There are a few studies in which very large amounts of those chemical containing sunscreens, these are chemicals like oxybenzene, et cetera, are applied to the skin and they do make it into general circulation. They do blood draws.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
that some of these chemicals can be endocrine disruptors, leading some people to believe that chemical-based or sunscreens that contain some of these chemicals are to be avoided. Now, I want to be very clear on my stance, which is if you need sun protection and the choice is either to use those types of sunscreens occasionally versus no sun protection, I would say probably better to just use them.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
And we've been able to do that thanks to all of you, because we use a significant portion of the funds from the premium channel subscribers to support exciting work on humans. So these are laboratories working on questions such as improving mental health, physical health and performance from a variety of approaches at all major universities.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
but if you are picking a sunscreen, AKA sunblock, where you are going to be using it all summer or very frequently, well, in that case, probably best to go with a mineral-based sunscreen because you'll be doing more frequent exposure application, okay? And then of course, There are people that will argue that the chemical based sunscreens are in fact fine.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
And if that's your threshold, meaning that there isn't enough conclusive evidence that they're problematic, then that's fine. So those are the three general categories. But yes, sun will damage the skin. That doesn't mean you shouldn't get any sun exposure to your skin. Turns out that generating vitamin D, of course,
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
getting your circadian rhythms right, hormone production, et cetera, actually requires some exposure to sunlight. You just don't want to do it during the highest UV index portions of the day, like the middle of the day. You don't want to burn. However, and please note this, you do not have to burn in order to put yourself at a greater risk for skin cancer.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
So, you know, avoid burns, but avoid excessive sun exposure for you as well. Now back to Robert's question, the skin is thinning. Why is it thinning? Well, as we get older, composition of the proteins in skin, and there are many different proteins, but in particular, the collagen and elastins start to either mutate or weaken. There can be less production of these.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
The skin sometimes loses moisture as well. And the basic solution to this is the following. We know that sun protection will help.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
We also know, and I covered this in the episode, that there's some evidence, okay, I would say it's moderate evidence, it's not extremely strong, it's not weak, that ingestion of collagen proteins, believe it or not, can improve skin elasticity and the appearance of smoothness and plumpness, as it's subjectively rated in these studies. You might ask yourself, well, how is that?
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
Is it that you ingest collagen? And by the way, people typically do this at dosages of anywhere from, you'll see as low as five grams per day, but as high as 30 grams per day of collagen protein. Typically there's some vitamin C in there as well, which seems to help its absorption or utilization. And they will observe,
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
in these studies over time, some improved elasticity, appearance of smoothness and plumpness of the skin. So should you ingest collagen protein? Well, the results are again, statistically significant, but they're not overwhelming in the sense that you're not going to reverse all the thinning and kind of the, what appears to be a little kind of local sagging of the skin completely.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
by ingesting collagen, but it can help. Collagen can be ingested through things like bone broth. By the way, collagen is a composition of not just skin, but of tendon and ligaments and things of that sort. Typically people will get their collagen in powdered form. It's relatively inexpensive. There are a lot of different forms of this from fish, from animal sources.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
There are some plant-based sources. It's a little unclear whether or not those are as good. But in any event, five to 30 grams, typically 15 to 30 grams in most of the studies does seem to be moderately effective in improving skin elasticity, plumpness, and appearance of smoothness. Okay, so that's one area. The other area where there's some interesting research is red light exposure.
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AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
And we've supported work at Stanford, Columbia University, University of Oregon coming up. We're actually supporting some programs related to student training and teaching. in the realm of neuroscience and happiness. So some really exciting groundbreaking areas all made possible thanks to you and the fact that we now have three dollar for dollar matches from exceptional donors.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
So red light exposure is an interesting one because of course in sunlight, we have full spectrum light, right? If you ever put a prism and you get a light beam through it, you need to get the rainbow, right? It includes red. There are long wavelengths, AKA red wavelengths of light. I pause as I say red wavelengths, because they're actually long wavelengths of light that appear red.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
And it has been shown that light panels that are emitting red light or near infrared light, or typically both, can also improve skin appearance if done for about 10 to 15 minutes per day maybe five days per week minimum over the course of a few months. Again, the results in those studies are statistically significant in many of those studies.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
And I would place them in kind of the moderate result, meaning it's not a striking result, but you could imagine combining red light with the collagen. So you start to get perhaps a synergistic effect, but those studies combining them have not been done. It does seem that one of the best, that is dermatologists supported ways to improve skin appearance is to ingest a retinoid.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
Now, these are prescription drugs. The retinoids do require that you work with a qualified dermatologist. They require that you stay out of the sun for some period of time because they can increase sensitivity to the sun, but they will improve collagen composition, and that's from the inside out.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
So, and by the way, there are also some different supplements that one can take that can protect your skin so that you don't have to put sunscreen on. It's actually the extract of a vine. I did not cover that on the skin health and appearance episode, but we very soon have a guest, Dr. Teo Silomani, who is an expert dermatologist oncologist trained at Stanford and Harvard and UCLA.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
who was going to talk about the use of essentially sun guarding by the ingestion of certain compounds that change the chemical composition of the skin from the inside. So that's very interesting. He also added another tool for improving skin appearance, and this is true for the face and for the arms, et cetera, is the use of laser resurfacing. Now this is not,
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
a cosmetic procedure as much as it is a procedure to remove the very top epidermal layer, the very, very superficial layer of dead keratinocytes and other cells of the skin, excuse me, as a means to reduce cancer risk, okay? So he's a derm oncologist. It does have the consequence of making skin look quite a bit younger, so it does work.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
And like anything in the realm of kind of laser resurfacing and things of that sort, it does require a period of peeling, of staying out of sunlight, and being really strict about that because the skin is more sensitive in the immediate days and even week after. the laser resurfacing.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
It was kind of remarkable for me to learn that this laser resurfacing and the retinoids are very well supported by dermatologists as a preventative measure for certain forms, not all forms, but certain forms of skin cancers, and that they can dramatically improve the appearance of skin that is to make it look more youthful. So certainly that would work on the arms as well.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
So we've got, we're talking about collagen, red light, retinoids. by a qualified dermatologist or derm oncologist ideally. And the reason I emphasize the derm part is there are a lot of people who do kind of plastic and cosmetic work on skin who are probably very qualified.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
And then there's probably some who are not as qualified and there can be some real issues raised by using excessive laser power and things of that sort. This is something I also touched on in the episode. So those are the four major ones. And then of course, eating a diet that's low inflammatory.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
When we started this premium subscription model to support science, we had one still have this one absolutely spectacular dollar for dollar donor match from the tiny foundation and now two others have joined in. So for every dollar that is used from the premium channel to support, these exciting areas of research. We now have $3 being donated to match that dollar.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
So limiting fried and highly processed foods, of course, making sure that you're getting enough essential fatty acids in the form of either supplementing or ingesting fatty fish oils, all of these sorts of things, fruits and vegetables, fiber, all the sorts of things that support healthy skin internally, some directly, some indirectly by virtue of the gut microbiome.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
So I think that's probably a sufficient answer. I will add one last thing for your question, Robert. It's very clear that the appearance of skin is also very supported by hydration and moisture. So applying a regular moisturizer, a high quality moisturizer regularly, pick a non-fragranced moisturizer regularly to the arms, that will help as well. And then there's some,
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
more aggressive approaches that I'll talk about with Dr. Soleimani, things like hyaluronic acid and things of that sort that can help with the kind of plumpness or moisture of the skin, but we'll hold off for that episode, which comes out in a few weeks. So thanks again for your question. I like to think that those are some actionable tools and then depending on people's disposable income time
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
and energy they wanted to devote to this. You could go with the zero cost one, the moderate cost one, or on the combination of all of them if you're able to. Okay, the next question comes from Jen Shaw. How cold does the water need to be for cold therapy to be effective?
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
This is a great question, especially since at least in the Northern hemisphere, it's summer and people are doing cold plunges more, cold showers. Such an effective tool for shifting the state of your mind. Any debate about deliberate cold exposure to me that centers around metabolism or how long the dopamine increase lasts is kind of a trivial one in my mind.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
in my estimation, because what do we know for sure? We know that deliberate cold exposure is very, very low cost or even cost saving if you use a cold shower, because you're saving on the heating bill. We know that if you can afford a cold plunge or access a safe river or stream or cold plunge, Great, what do we know it does? It changes your state, it shifts your state.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
It makes you more alert, not just while you're in there, but in the minutes and certainly up to an hour or more afterwards. And let's face it, rarely does it feel good getting in. Sometimes it feels good being in it because you're very, very warm before you get in it. Maybe you came from a run or from the sauna,
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
but it always feels great getting out and you always feel much better afterwards, provided you get the right stimulus, which is really what this question's about. So what is the right stimulus? How cold? Cold enough that you feel a bit uncomfortable and you want to get out, but you can safely stay in and you stay in for a little bit longer.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
Now, I know that sounds vague, but there has never been a systematic study of exactly how long to stay in at a given temperature at a given time of day. Why do I say at a given time of day? Well, try doing a cold shower first thing in the morning. It can be pretty rough, pretty jarring.
Huberman Lab
AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More
Try doing it at night when you're tired, far bigger barrier to getting in that cold shower or cold plunge, unless you are particularly warm because you exited the sauna. or exceptionally motivated. So the point is to make the water just cold enough that you would kind of retract from it, that you don't want to be in it, but not so that it's like an icy burn, so cold that it burns.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Bob Dylan didn't show up to pick up his Nobel Peace Prize. That's punk. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He probably grew in notoriety for that. Maybe he just doesn't like going to Sweden, but it seemed like it would be a fun trip. I think they do it in a nice time of year. But hey, that's his right. He earned that right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
You got to verb it through, download your inner thing. I don't think we've talked about this, that this obsession that I have about how Rick has this way of being very, very still in his body, but keeping his mind very active as a practice. Went and spent some time with him in Italy last June.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And we would tread water in his pool in the morning and listen to a history of rock and roll and a hundred songs. Amazing podcast, by the way. It is. Yeah. And then he would spend a fair amount of time during the day in this kind of meditative state where his mind is very active, body very still.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And then Karl Deisteroth, when he came on my podcast, talked about how he forces himself to sit still and think in complete sentences late at night after his kids go to sleep.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
You know, there's a state of mind, rapid eye movement sleep, where your body is completely paralyzed and the mind is extremely active, and people credit rapid eye movement sleep with some of the more elaborate emotion-filled dreams and the source of many ideas. And there are other examples, Einstein,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
People described him as taking walks around the Princeton campus, then pausing, and would ask him what was going on, and the idea that his mind was continuing to churn forward at a high rate.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
So this is far from controlled studies, but we're talking about some incredible minds and creatives who have a practice of stilling the body while keeping the mind deliberately very active, very similar to rapid eye movement sleep. And then there are a lot of people who also report great ideas coming to them in the shower or while running.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
So it can be the opposite as well, where the body is very active and the mind is perhaps more on kind of like a default mode network, not really focusing on any one specific thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Right, and we know, we just did this six-episode special series on sleep with Matt Walker. We know that... When you deprive yourself of sleep and then you get sleep, you get a rebound in rapid eye movement sleep. You get a higher percentage of rapid eye movement sleep. And Matt talks about this in the podcast. And he did an episode on sleep and creativity, sleep and memory.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And rapid eye movement sleep comes up multiple times in that series. There's also some very interesting stuff about cannabis withdrawal and rapid eye movement sleep. People are coming off cannabis often will suffer from insomnia, but when they finally do start sleeping, they dream like crazy. Cannabis is a very controversial topic right now.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Yeah, we did an episode about cannabis, talked about the health benefits and the potential risks, right? It's neither here nor there. Depends on the person, depends on the age, depends on genetic background, a number of other things. We published that episode well over a year ago and it had no issues online, so to speak.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And then a clip of it was put to X where, you know, the real action occurs, as you know, your favorite spot. Um, yeah, the, the, the four ounce gloves, as opposed to the 16 ounce gloves, um, that is X versus Instagram or YouTube. There was, um, kind of an immediate dog pile from a few people in the cannabis research field. The PhDs and MDs, yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
There were people on our side, there were people not on our side. The statement that got things riled up the most was this notion that for certain individuals, there's a high potential for inducing psychosis with high THC-containing cannabis. For certain individuals, not all. That sparked some issues. There was really a split. You see this in different fields.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
There was one person in particular who came out swinging with language that, in my opinion, is not of the sort that you would use at a university venue, especially among colleagues. But that's fine. We're all grownups.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Yeah, it's tough because most academics don't understand that people outside the university system are, they don't, they're not familiar with
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
like the inner workings of science and um and the culture and so you have to be very careful how you present when you're a university professor um and when yeah so you know he came out swinging at some you know a four-letter word type language and he was obviously upset about so i simply said what i would say anywhere which was hey look you come on the podcast let's chat and um why don't you give your tell me where i'm wrong and let's discuss and and fortunately he agreed
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
and initially he said well no how can i be sure you're not going to misrepresent me and so i said we got on a dm then an email then eventually phone call and just said hey listen like you're welcome to record the whole conversation we've never done a gotcha on my podcast and let's just get to the heart of the matter i think this this little controversy is perfect um kindling for for a really great discussion and um
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And he had some other conditions that we worked out. And I felt like, cool, like he's really interested. You get a very different person on the phone than you do on Twitter. I will say he's been very collegial. And that conversation is on the schedule. I said, we'll fly you out. We'll put you up. He said, no, he wants to fly himself.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
He really wants to make sure that there's like kind of a space between. I think some of the perception of science and health podcasts in the academic community is that it's all designed to sell something. No, we run ads so it can be free to everyone else.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
But I think, look, in the end, he agreed and I'm excited for the conversation. It was interesting because in the wake of that little exchange, There's been a bunch of press from traditional press about cannabis has now surpassed alcohol in many cultures as within the United States, as when I say cultures, I mean demographics, the United States as the drug of choice.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
There have been people highlighting the issues of potential psychosis in high THC containing cannabis. And so it's kind of interesting to see how traditional media is sort of on board certain elements that I put forward. And I think there's some controversy as to whether or not the different strains, the indicas and sativas, are biologically different, et cetera.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
So we'll get down into the weeds, pun intended, during that one. And I'm excited. It's the first time that we've responded to to a direct criticism online about scientific content in a way that really promoted like, oh, here, the idea of inviting a particular guest. And so it's great, let's get a guest who is expert in cannabis.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
I believe, I could be wrong about this, that he's a behavioral neuroscientist, it's slightly different training, but look, he seems highly credentialed, it'll be fun. And we welcome that kind of exchange. I deeply- And I'm not being diplomatic. I'm just saying like, it's cool. Like he's coming on, you know, and he was friendly on the phone, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Like he literally came out online and was like, basically like, kind of like F you. Like F this and F you. But you get someone on the phone and it's like, hey, how's it going? And they're like, oh yeah, well, you know, there was an immediate apology of like, hey, listen, I came out- Normally I'm like, not like that, but online. You know, you get a different.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
So it's a little bit like, it's a little bit like jujitsu, right? People say all sorts of things, I guess. But if they, if you're like, all right, well, let's go. Then it's probably a different story.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
They regress. And they also are protected. You know, when you remove the... I mean, no scientific argument should ever come to physical blows, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
But when you remove the real world thing of being right in front of somebody, people will throw all sorts of stones at a distance and over a wall, and they've got their wife or their husband or their boyfriend or their dog or their cat to go cuddle with them afterwards. But you get in a room and it's like, confrontational people,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
in real life are pretty rare, but hopefully if they do it, they're like willing to back it up with knowledge in this case, right? We're not talking about physical altercation. Yeah, he kept coming and he kept putting on conditions. How do I know you want this? And I was like, well, you can record the conversation. How do I know you want that? Listen, we'll pay for you to come out. How do you know?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And eventually he just kind of relented and to his credit, you know, he's agreed to come on. I mean, he still has to show up, but once he does, you know, we'll treat him right like we would any other guest. Yeah, you treat people really well, and I just hope that people are a little bit nicer on the internet.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Yeah, well, you know, X is an interesting one because it thickens your skin, you know, just to go on there. I mean, you have to be ready to deal with.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Years ago, I was a student in TA, then instructor, and then directed a Cold Spring Harbor course on visual neuroscience. These are summer courses that explore different topics. And at night, we would host what we hoped were battles in front of the students.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
where you'd get two people on a, you know, would it be neural prosthetics or molecular tools that would first, you know, restore vision to the blind kind of arguments. And you kind of like, it's kind of a silly argument because it's gonna be a combination of both, right? But you'd get these great arguments. But the arguments were always couched in data.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And occasionally you'd get somebody would go like, or would curse or something. But it was the rare, very well-placed insult. It wasn't coming out swinging. I think ultimately, Twitter's a record of people's behavior. The internet is a record of people's behavior. And here I'm not talking about news reports about people's behavior. I'm talking about how people show up online is really important.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
You've always carried yourself with a ton of composure and respect, and you would hope that people would grow from that example. Well, I'll tell you that the podcasters that I'm scouting, it's their energy, but it's also how they treat other people, how they respond to comments,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
You know, we're blessed to have pretty significant reach when we put out a podcast like someone else's podcast, it goes far and wide. So like a skateboard team, like a laboratory where you're selecting people to be in your lab, you want to pick people that you would enjoy working with and that are collegial. Etiquette is lacking nowadays, but you're in the suit and tie, you're bringing it back.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
James Hollis is a 84-year-old union psychoanalyst who's written 17 books, including Under Saturn's Shadow, which is on the healing and trauma of men, the Eden Project, excuse me, which is about relationships and creating a life. I discovered James Hollis in an online lecture that was recorded, I think, in San Diego. It's on YouTube. The audio is terrible, called Creating a Life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And this was somewhere in the 2011 to 2015 span. I can't remember. And I was on my way to Europe and I called my girlfriend at the time. I was like, I just found the most incredible lecture I've ever heard. And he talks about the shadow. He talks about your developmental upbringing and how you either align with or go 180 degrees off your parents' tendencies and values in certain areas.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
He talked about the specific questions to ask of oneself at different stages of life to live a full life. So it's always been a dream of mine to meet him and to record a podcast. And he wasn't able to travel, so our team went out to D.C. and sat down with him. We rarely do that nowadays. People come to our studio.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And he came in, he had some surgeries recently, and he kind of came in with some assistance from a cane and then sat down and just... just blew my mind. From start to finish, he didn't miss a syllable. And every sentence that he spoke was like a quotable sentence with real potency and actionable items.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
I think one of the things that was most striking to me was how he said, when we take ourselves out of stimulus and response,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
and we just force ourselves to spend some time in the quiet of our thoughts while walking or while seated or while lying down, doesn't have to be meditation, but it could be, that we access our unconscious mind in ways that reveals to us who we really are and what we really want. And that if we do that practice repeatedly, 10 minutes a day here, 15 minutes a day there,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
that we start to really touch into our unique gifts and the things that make us each us and the directions we need to take. But that so often we just stay in stimulus response. We just do, do, do, do, do, which is great. We have to be productive. But we miss those important messages. And interestingly, he also... put forward this idea of, what is it? It's like, get up, shut up, suit up.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Yeah, something like that. Like, get out of bed, suit up, and shut up, and get to work. He also has that in him, kind of a Goggins-type mindset. So be able to turn off all this self-reflection and self-analysis and just get shit done. Get shit done, but then also take dedicated time and stop and just let stuff geyser to the surface from the unconscious mind.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And he quotes Shakespeare, and he quotes Jung, and he quotes
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
everybody through history with with incredible accuracy and um and in exactly the way uh needed to drive home a point but that conversation to me was one that i really felt like okay you know if i don't wake up tomorrow for whatever reason that one's in the can and i feel really great about it it's it to me it's the most important um guest recording we've ever done um
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
in particular because he has wisdom. And while I hope he lives to be 204, chances are he's got another, what, 20, 30 years with us, hopefully more. But I really, really wanted to capture that information and get it out there. So I'm very, very proud of that one. And he's the kind of guy that anyone listens to him, young, old, male, female, whatever, and you're going to get something of value.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Jung said it, we have all things inside of us, and we do, and some people are more in touch with those than others, and some people it's repressed. I mean, does that mean that we could all be, you know, horrible people or marvelous people, benevolent people? Perhaps, I think that... thankfully more often than not people lean away from the like violent and harmful parts of their, their shadow.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
But I think spending time thinking about, you know, one's,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
shadow shadows is super important how how else are we going to grow otherwise you know we have these unconscious blind spots of denial or um repression or whatever you know the psychiatrists tell us but it clearly exists within all of us i mean we have neural circuits for rage we all do we have neural circuits for altruism um and no one's born without these things and some people they're atrophied and some people that are hypertrophied but
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Looking inward and recognizing what's there is key.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
I have a lot of new practices around this. I mean, I'm always exploring for protocols. I have to. It's like in my nature. When I went and spent time with Rick, I tried to adopt his practice of staying very still and just letting stuff come to the surface or the Dicerathian way of formulating complete sentences while being still in the body. What I...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
FM works better is what my good friend Tim Armstrong does to write music. He writes music every day. He's a music producer, he's obviously a singer, guitar player for Rancid, and he's helped dozens and dozens and dozens of female pop artists and punk rock artists write great songs. Many of the famous songs that you've heard from other artists, Tim helped them write.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Tim wakes up sometimes in the middle of the night and what he does is he'll start drawing or painting. So what he's done, and Joni Mitchell talks about this too, you find some creative outlet that's like 15 degrees off center from your main creative outlet. And you do that thing. So for me, that's drawing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
I like doing anatomical drawings, neuroscience-based drawing, drawing neurons, that kind of thing. And if I do that for a little while, my mind starts churning on the nervous system and biology. And then I come up with... areas I'd like to explore for the podcast, ways I'd like to address certain topics. Right now, I'm very interested in autonomic control.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
A beautiful paper came out that shows that anyone can learn to control their pupil sizes without changing luminance through a biofeedback mechanism. And that gives them control over their so-called automatic autonomic nervous system. And I've been looking at what the circuitry is, and it's beautiful. So I'll draw the circuitry that we know underlies autonomic function.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And as I'm doing that, I'm thinking, oh, like, what about autonomic control and those people that supposedly can control their pupil size? Then you go in and there's a paper published in Nature Press, one of the nature journals, and there's a recent paper on this. Like, oh, cool. And then we talk about this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And then how could this be put into a kind of a post or how could this, you know, so doing things that are about 15 degrees off center from your main thing is a great way to access, I believe, the circuits for, in Tim's case, painting goes to songwriting. I think for Joni Mitchell, that was also the case, right? I think it was drawing and painting to singing and songwriting.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
For Rick, I don't know what it is. Maybe it's listening to podcasts. I don't know. That's his business. Do you have anything that you like to focus on that allows you then an easier transition into your main creative work?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Any cognitive enhancers? I've got quite the gallery in front of me. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Should we walk through this?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
This is not a sales thing. It's just I tend to do this bounce back and forth. Your refrigerator just happened to have a lot of different choices.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
This is all my refrigerator. I know, right? There's no food in there. There's water. There's element, which they now have canned. Yeah. And yes, they're a podcast sponsor for both of us, but that's not why I cracked one of these open. I like them provided they're cold.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
There's an orange one. I pushed the sled this morning and pulled the sled from my workout at the gym, and it was hot today here in Austin. So some salt is good. And then matina yerba mate, zero sugar. Full confession, I helped develop this. I'm a partial owner, but I love yerba mate. Half Argentine, been drinking it. mate since I was a little kid.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
There's actually a photo somewhere on the internet when I'm like three sitting on my grandfather's lap, sipping mate out the gourd. And then this, my fun, interesting, this is just a little bit of coffee. with a scoop of Brian Johnson gave me cocoa, just like pure unsweetened cocoa. So I put that in chocolate and I like it. Just for the taste. Well, it actually nukes my appetite.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And since we're not going out to dinner tonight until later, I figure that's good. Yeah, Brian's an interesting one, right? He's really pushing this thing. The optimization of everything. Yeah. Although he just hurt his ankle. He posted a photo that he hurt his ankle. So now he's injecting BPC, body protection compound 157, which many, many people are taking, by the way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
I did an episode on peptides. I should just say, you know, BPC-157, one of the known effects in animal models is angiogenesis, like development of new vasculature, which can be great in some context, but also if you have a tumor, you don't really want to vascularize that tumor anymore. So I worry about people taking BPC-157 continually, but, and there's very little human data.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
I think there's like one study and it's a lousy one. So a lot of animal data. Some of the peptides, are interesting. However, there's one that I've experimented with a little bit called pinellin, which I find, even if I've just taken it twice a week before sleep, then it seems to do something to the
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
circadian timekeeping mechanism, because then on other days when I don't take it, I get unbelievably tired at that time that normally I would do the injection. These are things that I'll experiment with for a couple of weeks and then typically stop, maybe try something else. But I stay out of things that really stimulate any of the major hormone pathways. When it comes to peptides,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Well, I'm very sensitive to these things, and I have been doing a lot of things for a long time, so if I add something in, it's always one thing at a time, and I notice right away if it does not make me feel good. Like there's a lot of excitement about some of the so-called growth hormone secretagogues, hypermorelin, testamorelin, sermorelin.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
I've experimented a little bit with those in the past, and they've nuked my rapid eye movement sleep, but given me a lot of deep sleep, which doesn't feel good to me, but other people like them. I also just generally try and avoid taking peptides that tap into these hormone pathways because you can run into all sorts of issues. But some people take them safely.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
But usually after about four or five days, I know if I like something or I don't, and then I move on. But I am not super adventurous with these things. I know people that will take cocktails of peptides with multiple things. They'll try anything. That's not me. And I do blood work.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Um, but also I'm, you know, I'm mainly reading papers and podcasting and, um, I'm teaching a course next spring, Stanford, I'm going to do a big undergraduate course. Um, so I'm trying to develop that course and things like that. So, um, I don't need to lift more weight or run further than I already do, which is not that much weight or, or far as it is.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
No, and I'm not trying to get down below whatever, you know, 7% body fat or something. I don't have those kinds of goals. So hydration, electrolytes, caffeine in the form of mate, and then this coffee thing. And then here's one that I think I brought out for discussion. This is a piece of Nicorette. They're not a sponsor. Nicotine is an interesting compound. It will raise blood pressure, and it...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
It's probably not safe for everybody, but nicotine is gaining in popularity like crazy, mainly these pouches that people put in the lip. We're not talking about smoking, vaping, dipping, or snuffing. My interest in nicotine started, this was in 2010. I was visiting Columbia Medical School, and I was in the office of the great neurobiologist Richard Axel, won the Nobel Prize.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
co-recipient with Linda Buck for the discovery of the molecular basis of olfaction. Brilliant guy. He's probably in his late 70s now. Probably, yeah. And he kept popping Nicorette in his mouth. And I was like, what's this about? And he said, oh, well, this was just anecdote, right? But he said this. He said, oh, well, you know, it protects against Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. I said, it does?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And he goes, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if he was kidding or not. He's known for making jokes. And then he said that when he used to smoke... It really helped his focus and creativity, but then he quit smoking because he didn't want lung cancer, and he found that he couldn't focus as well, so he would choose Nicorette.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
So occasionally, like right now, I do a half a piece, but I'm not Russian, so I'm a little, you know. Did you just pop the whole thing in your mouth? So I'll do a couple milligrams every now and again. And it definitely sharpens the mind on an empty stomach in particular, but you fast all day. You're still doing one meal a day?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Yeah. Yeah, I did a nicotine pouch with Rogan at dinner and I got high. Yeah, that's a lot. That's like usually six or eight milligrams. I know people that get a canister of Zin, take one a day, pretty soon they're taking a canister a day. So you have to be very careful. I will only allow myself... two pieces of Nicorette total per week.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And you will notice that, you know, in the day after you use it, you know, sometimes your throat will feel a little bit like, like a little spasmy, like you might want to cough once or twice. And so, you know, if you're a singer or you're a podcaster or something, you have to do long podcasts. You want to just be mindful of it. But yeah, you're supposed to kind of like keep it in your cheek and
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Here we go. But it did make me intensely focused. In a way, that was a little bit scary. The nucleus basalis is in the basal forebrain. Nucleus has cholinergic neurons that radiate out axons, little wires that release acetylcholine into the neocortex and elsewhere.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And when you focus on one particular topic matter or one particular area of your visual field or listening to something and focusing visually, we know that there's an elaboration of the amount of acetylcholine released there and it binds to nicotinic acetylcholine receptor sites there. So it's a kind of an attentional modulation by acetylcholine. So you're getting with nicotine, you're getting a
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
or artificial heightening of that circuitry.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
He literally said it makes his dick very hard. He said that publicly also. Okay, well, as little as I want to think about Tucker Carlson's sex life, no disrespect. The... Major effect of nicotine on the vasculature, my understanding is that it causes vasoconstriction, not vasodilation. Drugs like Cialis, Tadalafil, Viagra, et cetera, are vasodilators. They allow more blood flow.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Nicotine does the opposite, less blood flow to the periphery, but provided dosages are kept low. And I don't recommend people use it frequently or at all. And I don't recommend young people use it, you know, you know, 25 and younger. Brain's very plastic at that time. And certainly smoking, dipping, vaping, and snuffing aren't good because you're going to run into trouble for other reasons.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
But in any case, even there, vaping is a controversial topic. Probably safer than smoking, but has its own issues. And I said something like that, and boy, did I catch a lot of heat for that. You can't say anything as a health science educator and not piss somebody off. Just depends on where the center of mass is and how far outside that you are.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
If they experience a crash in the afternoon, this is one of the misconceptions I regret maybe even discussing it. For people that crash in the afternoon, Oftentimes, if they delay their caffeine by 60 to 90 minutes in the morning, they will offset some of that. But if you eat a lunch that's too big or you didn't sleep well the night before, you're not going to avoid that afternoon crash.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
But I'll wake up sometimes and go straight to hydration and caffeine, especially if I'm going to work out. Here's a weird one. If I exercise before... 8.30 a.m., especially if I start exercising when I'm a little bit tired, I get energy that lasts all day. If I wait until my peak of energy, which is mid-morning, 10 a.m., 11 a.m., and I start exercising then, I'm basically exhausted all afternoon.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And I don't understand why. I mean, it depends on the intensity of the workout. So I like to be done, showered, and heading into work by 9 a.m., but I don't always meet that mark. So you're saying it doesn't affect your energy if you start out with exercising? I think you can get energy and wake yourself up with exercise if you start early, and then that fuels you all day long.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
I think that if you wait until you're feeling at your best to train, Sometimes that's detrimental because then in the afternoon when you're doing the work we get paid for, like research, podcasting, et cetera, then oftentimes your brain isn't firing as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
I haven't really rigorously tried that wake up and just start running or listening. This is the Jocko thing. And then there's this phenomenon called entrainment, where if you force yourself to exercise or eat or socialize or view bright light at a certain time of day for three to seven days in a row, pretty soon there's an anticipatory circuit that gets generated. This is why
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Anyone, in theory, can become a morning person to some degree or another. And this is also a beautiful example of why you wake up before your alarm clock goes off. You know, people wake up and all of a sudden it goes off. It wasn't because it clicked. It was because you have this incredible timekeeping mechanism that exists in sleep.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And there's some papers that have been published in the last couple of years, Nature Neuroscience and elsewhere, showing that people can answer math problems in their sleep. Simple math problems, but math problems nonetheless. This does not mean that if you ask your partner a question in sleep that they're gonna answer accurately.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
What happened? What happened? Here's the deal. A few years back, I did a four and a half hour, after editing, four and a half hour episode on male and female fertility. The entire recording took 11 hours. And at one point during the... And by the way, I'm very proud of that episode. Many couples have written to me and said they now have children as a consequence of that episode.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And my first question is, what were you doing during the episode? But in all seriousness... We should say that it's four and a half hours.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
It talks about sperm health, spermatogenesis. It talks about the ovulatory cycle. It talks about things people can do that are considered absolutely supported by science. It talks about some of the things kind of out on the edge a little bit that are a little bit more experimental. It talks about IVF. It talks about ICSI. It talks about all of that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
It talks about frequency of pregnancy as a function of age. et cetera. But there's this one portion there in the podcast where I'm talking about the probability of a successful pregnancy as a function of age. And so... There was a clip that was cut in which I was describing cumulative probability.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And by the way, we've published cumulative probability histograms in many of my laboratory's papers, including one that was a Nature article in 2018, so we run these all the time. And yes, I know the difference between independent and cumulative probability. I do. The way the clip was cut
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And what I stated, unfortunately, combined to like a pretty great gaffe, where I say, you're just adding, I said, you're just adding percentages, 20 to 120 to 120%. And then I made a kind of, unfortunately, my humor isn't always so good. And I made a joke. I said, 120%, but that's a different thing altogether. What I should have said was,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
that's impossible, you know, and here's how it actually works. But then it continues where I then describe the cumulative probability histogram for successful pregnancy. But somewhere in the early portion, I misstated something, right? I made a math error. which implied I didn't understand the difference between independent and cumulative probability, which I do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And it got picked up and run and people had a really good laugh with that one at my expense. And so what I did in response to it was rather than just say everything I just said now, I said, I just came out online and said, hey, folks, in an episode dated this on fertility, I made a math error. Here is the formula for cumulative probability, successful pregnancy at that age.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Here's the graph, here's the, you know, and I offered it as a teaching moment in two ways. One, for people to understand cumulative probability. It was sort of interesting, too, a number of people that had come out critiquing the GAF. Also, like Bology and folks came out pointing out that they didn't understand cumulative probability. So there was a lot of posturing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
You know, the dog pile, oftentimes people are quick to dog pile. They didn't understand, but a lot of people did understand. Some smart people out there, obviously. I called my dad and he was just laughing. He goes, oh, this is good. This is like the old school way of hammering academics. But the point being, it was a teaching moment. Gave me an opportunity to say, hey, I made a mistake.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
I also made a mistake in another podcast where I did a micron to millimeter conversion or centimeter conversion. And we always correct these in the show note captions. We correct them in the audio now. Unfortunately, on YouTube, it's harder to correct. You can't go and edit in segments. We put in the captions. But that was the one teaching moment.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
If you make a mistake, it's substantive and relate to data. You apologize and correct the mistake. Use the teaching moment. The other one was to say, hey, you know, in all the thousands of hours of content we've put out, I'm sure I've made some small errors. I think I once said serotonin when I mentioned.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
dopamine and you know you're you're going you're you're riffing and it's a reminder to be careful um to edit double check but the internet usually edits for us and then we go make corrections but it didn't feel good at first but ultimately you know i can laugh at myself about it um
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Long ago at Berkeley, when I was TAing my first class, it was a biopsychology class, it must be 1998 or 1999, I was drawing the pituitary gland, which has an anterior and a posterior lobe, actually there's a medial lobe too.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
I had five, 600 students in that lecture hall, and I drew, it was chalkboard, and I drew the two lobes of the pituitary, and I said, my back was to the audience, I said, you know, and so they just sort of hang there. Mm-hmm. And everyone just erupted in laughter because it looked like a scrotum with two testicles. And I remember thinking like, oh, my God, I don't think I can turn around.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
I can face this, you know. And I'm like, oh, I got to turn around sooner or later. So I turned around and we just all had a big laugh together. It was embarrassing. I'll tell you one thing, though. They never forgot about the two lobes of the pituitary. Yeah, and you haven't forgotten about that either. Right, there's a high salience for these kinds of things. And it also was kind of fun to see
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
how excited people get to see people trip. It's like an elite sprinter trips and does something stupid, like, you know, runs the opposite direction out of the blocks or something like that. Or, you know, I recall at one World Cup match years ago, a guy scored against his own team. I think they killed the guy. Do you remember that? Some South American or Central American team.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And they killed the guy. But yeah, let's look it up. I just said World Cup. Yeah, he was gunned down.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
I think it would protect you. Listen, you know, so... There are some gaffes that get people killed, right? So, you know, how forgiving are we for online mistakes? You know, it's the nature of the mistakes. People were quite gracious about the gaffe and some weren't. And, you know, it's interesting that, um,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
We, as public health science educators, we'll do long podcasts sometimes and you need to be really careful. What's great is AI. allows you to check these things now more readily. So that's cool. And there are ways that it's now gonna be more self-correcting. I mean, you know, I think there's a lot of errors out there on the internet and people are finding them and it's cool.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Like things are getting cleaned up. Yeah, but mistakes nevertheless will happen. Do you feel the pressure of not making mistakes? Sure. I mean, you know, I try and get things right to the best, you know, to the best of my ability. I check with experts. It's kind of interesting when people really don't like something that was said in a podcast.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
A lot of times I chuckle because I'm, you know, at Stanford, we have some amazing scientists, but I talk to them else people elsewhere. And it's always interesting to me. How. you know, I'll get divergent information and then I'll find the overlap in the Venn diagram. And I have this like question, do I just stay with the overlap in the Venn diagram? Like I did an episode on oral health.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
I didn't know this until I researched that episode, but oral health is critically related to heart health and brain health. There's a bacteria that causes cavities, streptococcus, you know? that can make its way into other parts of the body through the mouth that can cause serious issues. There's the idea that some forms of dementia, some forms of heart disease start in the mouth basically.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
I talked to no fewer than four dentists, dental experts, and there was a lot of convergence. I also learned that Teeth can demineralize, that's the formation of cavities. They can also remineralize. As long as the cavity isn't too deep, it can actually fill itself back in, especially if you provide the right substrates for it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
That saliva is this incredible fluid that has all this capacity to remineralize teeth, provided the milieu is right. things like alcohol-based mouthwashes, killing off some of the critical things you need. It was fascinating. And I put out that episode thinking, oh, I'm not a dentist. I'm not an oral health episode, but I talked to a pediatric dentist.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
There's a terrific one, Dr. Downscore Stacy, S-T-A-C-I, on Instagram, does great content. Talked to some others. And then I just waited for the attack. I was like, here we go. And it didn't come. and dentists were thanking me. I was like, whoa, you know? That's a rare thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
More often than not, if I do an episode about, say, psilocybin or MDMA, you get some people liking it, or ADHD and the drugs for ADHD. We did a whole episode on the Ritalin, Vyvanse, Adderall stuff. You get people saying, thank you, you know, I prescribed this to my kid and it really helps. But they're private about the fact that they do it because they get so much attack from other people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
So I like to find the center of mass, report that, try and make it as clear as possible. And then I know that there's some stuff where I'm going to catch shit. What's frustrating for me is when like I see claims that I'm like against fluoridization of water, which I'm not, right? Like we talked about the benefits of fluoride. It builds hyper strong bonds within the teeth.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
I went and looked at some of the, literally the crystal structure, excuse me, not the crystal structure, but essentially the like micron and submicron structure of teeth is incredible and where fluoride can get in there and form these super strong bonds. And you can also form them with things like hydroxyapatite. And why is there fluoride in water? Well, it's the best.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Okay, you say some things that are interesting, but then somehow it gets turned into like you're against fluoridization, which I'm not. Or I've been accused of being against sunscreen. I wear mineral-based sunscreen on my face. I don't want to get skin cancer, or I use a physical barrier. There is a cohort of people out there that think that all sunscreens are bad. I'm not one of them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
I'm not what's called a sunscreen truther. But then you get attacked for like, so we're talking about there are certain sunscreens that are problematic. So what, and Rhonda Patrick's now starting to get vocal about this. And so there are certain topics it's interesting for which
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
you have to listen carefully to what somebody is saying, but there's a lumper or lumping as opposed to splitting of what health educators say. And so it just seems like, like with politics, there's this like urgency to just put people into a camp of expert versus like renegade or something. And it's not like that. It's just not like that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
So the short answer is I really strive, really strive to get things right. But I know that I'm going to piss certain people off. And you've taught me And Joe's taught me and other podcasters have taught me that if you worry too much about it, then you aren't gonna get the newest information out there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Like peptides, there's very little human data, unless you're talking about Vilisi or the stuff in the alpha-melanocyte-stimulating hormone stuff, which are prescribed for female libido, to enhance female libido, or sermorelin, which is for certain growth hormone deficiencies. With rare exception, there's very little human data.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
but people are still super interested and a lot of people are taking and doing these things. So you want to get the information out.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Yes. So like, for instance, there's a community of people online that believe that like, if you consume seed oils or something that like you're setting up your skin for sunburn. And if you don't, you know, like there's all these like theories, but I liked it. So I like to know what the theories are.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
I like to know what the extremes are, but I also like to know what the standard conversation is, but there's generally more agreement than disagreement. I think where, um, you know, I've been kind of bullish actually as, you know, or like supplements, like people go, oh, supplements. Well, there's food supplements, like a protein powder, which is different than a vitamin.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And then they are compounds. There are compounds that have real benefit, but people get very nervous about the fact that they're not regulated, but some of them are vetted for potency and for safety with more rigor than others, you know? And it's interesting to see how people who take care of themselves and put a lot of work into that are often attacked. That's been interesting.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Also, one of the most controversial topics nowadays is Ozempic, Monjaro. I'm very middle of the road on this. I don't understand why the... quote unquote, health wellness community is so against these things. I also don't understand why they have to be looked at as the only route. For some people, they've really helped them lose weight.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And yes, there can be some muscle loss and other lean body loss, but that can be offset with resistance training. They've helped a lot of people. And other people are like, no, this stuff is terrible. I think the most interesting thing about Ozempic Monjaro is that they are GLP-1, they're in the GLP-1 pathway, glucagon-like peptide one, and it was discovered in Gila monsters.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
which is a lizard, basically. Now the entomologist will dive on me. It's a big lizard-looking thing that doesn't eat very often, and they figured out that there's this peptide that allows it to curb its own appetite. at the level of the brain and the gut, and it has a lot of homology to, sequence homology to what we now call GLP-1.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
So I love anytime there's animal biology links to cool human biology links to a drug that's powerful that can help people with obesity and type two diabetes, and there's evidence that can even curb some addictions. Those are newer data. But I don't see it as either or.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
In fact, I've been a little bit disappointed at the way that the, whatever you want to call it, health wellness, biohacking community has like slammed on Ozempic Monjaro. It's like, they're like, just get out and run. Listen, there are people who are carrying substantial amounts of weight that running could injure them. They get on these drugs and they can improve.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And then hopefully they're also doing resistance training and eating better. And then, you know, you're bringing all the elements together.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
think if it's a pharmaceutical, it's bad. And then, or if it's a supplement, it's bad depending on which camp they're in. And wouldn't it be wonderful to kind of like fill in the gap between this divide? You know, what I would like to see in politics and in health is neither right nor left, but what we can just call a league of reasonable people that looks at things on an issue by issue basis
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And fills in the center, because I think most people are in are I don't want to say center in a political way, but I think most people are reasonable. They want to be reasonable, but that's not what sells clicks. That's not what that's not what drives interest. But I'm a very like like I look at issue by issue, person by person. I don't like in-group, out-group stuff. I never have.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
I've got friends from all walks of life. I said this on another podcast, and it always sounds like a political statement, but the push towards polarization, it's so frustrating. If there's one thing that's discouraging to me as I get older each year, I'm like, wow, are we ever going to get out of this polarization? Speaking of which, how are you going to vote for the presidential election?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
I'm still trying to figure out how to interview the people involved and do it well. What do you think the role of podcasts is going to be in this year's election?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
i don't think people really appreciate how skilled he is at what he does and the number i mean the three or four podcasts per week press plus the ufc announcing plus comedy tours and stadiums plus um you know doing comedy shows in the middle of the week plus you know, a husband and a father and a friend in jujitsu. The guy's got like superhuman levels of output.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
I agree that long form conversation is a whole other business. And I think that people want and deserve to know the people that are running for office in a different way. and to really get to know them. Well, listen, you know, I guess you, I mean, is it clear that he's going to do jail time or maybe he gets away with a fine?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Because I was going to say, I mean, does that mean you're going to be podcasting from jail?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
That just doesn't feel an authentic way to get the interview, but yeah, I understand. Yeah. You wouldn't be able to wear that suit. You'd be wearing a different suit. That's true. Yeah. It's going to be interesting. And you do, I'm not just saying this because you're my friend, but you would do a marvelous job.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
I think you should sit down with all of them separately to keep it civil and see what happens. Here's one thing that I found really interesting in this whole political landscape. When I'm in Los Angeles, I often get invited to these like
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
They're not dinners, but gatherings where a local bunch of podcasters will come together, but a lot of people from the entertainment industry, big agencies, big tech, like big, big tech. Many of the people have been on this podcast. And they'll host a discussion or a debate. And what you find if you look around the room and you talk to people is that about half the people in the room
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
are very left-leaning and very outspoken about that. And they'll tell you exactly who they want to see win the presidential race. And the other half will tell you that they're for the other side. A lot of people that... people assume are on one side of the aisle or the other are in the exact opposite side.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Now, some people are very open about who, who they're for, but it's been very interesting to see how, um, when you get people one-on-one, they're like telling you they want X candidate to win or Y candidate to win. And sometimes I'm like, really? I can't believe it. Like you like, yep. And so it's what people think about, um, people's political leanings is often exactly wrong.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And that's been eye-opening for me. And I've seen that in university campuses too. And so it's gonna be really, really interesting to see what happens in November.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Yeah, I mean, here's, to me, the most interesting question. Who is gonna be the next... big candidate in years to come. Who's that going to be? Right now, I don't see or know of that person.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Well, that's the issue, right? Who wants to live in this 12-hour news cycle where you're just trying to dunk on the other team so that nobody notices the shit that you fucked up? That's not only not fun or interesting, it also is just like, it's gotta be psychosis inducing at some point. And I think that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
you know, God willing, we're going to, you know, some young guy or woman is like on this and refuses to back down and was just like determined to be president and we'll make it happen. But like, I don't even know who the viable candidates are. Maybe you, Lex, you know. We should ask Sagar. Sagar would know.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Yeah. Maybe Sagar himself. Sagar's show is awesome. Yeah, it is. He and Crystal do a great thing. He's incredible. Especially since they have somewhat divergent opinions on things. That's what makes it so cool. He's great. He looks great in a suit. Looks real sexy. He's taking real good care of himself. I think he's getting married soon. Congratulations, Sagar.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Forgive me for not remembering your future wife's name.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
That just shows the fundamental difference between the two. With a poem inscribed in it. Which was pretty damn good. I realize everything we bring up on the screen is like really... Depressing, like the soccer player getting killed. Can we bring up something happy? Sure, let's go to Nature's Metal Instagram. Those are pretty intense. We actually did a collaborative post on a shark thing. Really?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Yeah. What kind of shark thing? So to generate the fear VR stimulus for my lab in 2020, Was it, yeah, 2016, we went down to Guadalupe Island off the coast of Mexico. Me and a guy named Michael Muller, who's a very famous portrait photographer, but also takes photos of sharks. And we used 360 video to build VR of great white sharks. Brought it back to the lab.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
We published that study in Current Biology. in 2017, went back down there. And that was the year that I exited the cage. You lower the cage with a crane. And that year I exited the cage. I had a whole mess with a air failure the day before. I was breathing from a hookah line while in the cage. I had no scuba on. Divers were out.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
The thing got boa constricted up and I had an air failure and I had to actually share air. And it was a whole mess. Story for another time. But the next day, because I didn't want to get PTSD and it was pretty scary, the next day I cage exited. with some other divers. And it turns out with these great white sharks in Guadalupe, the water's very clear and you can swim toward them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And then they'll veer off you if you swim toward them. Otherwise they see you as prey. Well, in the evening, you've brought all the cages up and you're hopefully all alive. and we were hanging out fishing for tuna. One of the crew on board had a line in the water and was fishing for tuna for dinner, and a shark took the tuna off the line. And it's a very dramatic take.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And you can see the just absolute size of these great white sharks. The waters there are filled with them. That's the one. So this video, just the Neuralink link, was shot by Matt McDougall, who is the head neurosurgeon at Neuralink. There it is. Now, believe it or not, it looks like it missed, like it didn't get the fish. It actually just cut that thing like a bandsaw.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
So I'm up on the deck with Matt. Yeah. And so when you look at it from the side, you really get a sense of the girth of this freaking thing. So as it comes up, if you look at the size of that thing. And they move through the water with such speed. Just a couple. So when you're in the cage and the cage is lowered down below the surface. They're going around.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
You're not allowed to chum the water there. Some people do it. But, and then when you KJAG sit, they're like, well, what are you doing out here? And then, you know, you swim toward them, they veer off.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
But what's interesting is that if you look at how they move through the water, all it takes for one of these great white sharks, when it sees a tuna or something it wants to eat, is like two flicks of the tail and becomes like a missile. It's just unbelievable economy of effort.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And Ocean Ramsey, who is, in my opinion, the greatest of all KJX at shark divers, this woman who dove with enormous great white sharks, she really understands their behavior when they're aggressive, when they're not going to be aggressive. She and her husband, Juan, I believe his name is, they understand how the tiger sharks differ from the great white sharks.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
We were down there basically not understanding any of this. We never should have been there. And actually, the air failure the day before, plus KJXing the next day, I told myself after coming up from the cage exit, that's it. I'm no longer taking risks with my life. I want to live. Got back across the border a couple days later. I was like, that's it. I don't take risks with my life any longer.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
But yeah, McDougal, Matt McDougal shot that video. And then it went, quote unquote, viral through Nature's Metal. We passed them that video.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Right towards them and they'll bank off. Now, if you don't see them, they're ambush predators. You're swimming in the surface.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Some people will actually roll them, but if they're coming in full speed, you're not going to roll the shark. But here we are back to dark stuff again. I like the shark attack map and the shark attack map shows that, you know, Northern California, there were a couple, actually a guy's head got taken off. He was swimming north of San Francisco. There's been a couple in Northern California.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
That was really tragic. But most of them are in Florida and Australia. Florida. The Surfrider Foundation Shark Attack map. There it is. They have a great map. There you go. That's what they look like. They have all these scars on them. So if you zoom in on... I mean, look at this. If you go to North America- Look at skulls. Yeah, where there are deadly attacks.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
But in Northern California, sadly, this is really tragic. If you zoom in on this one, I read about this. This guy, if you can click the link, 52-year-old male, he was in chest high water. This is just tragic. I feel so sad for him and his family. He's just- Three members of the party chose to go in.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
He was nigh, was in his chest high water, 25 to 50 yards from shore, breached the water, seized his head, and that was it. So it does happen, it's very infrequent. If you don't go in the ocean, there's a very, very, very low probability.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Who do you think wins, a saltwater crocodile or a shark? Okay, I do not like saltwater crocodiles. They scare me to no end. Muller, Michael Muller, who dove all over the world, he sent me a picture of him diving with...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
saltwater crocs in cuba it was a smaller one but goodness christ have you seen the size of some of those saltwater crocs yeah um i'm thinking i'm thinking the the sharks are so agile they're amazing they've head cammed one or body cammed one um moving through the kelp bed um and you look and it's just they're so agile moving through the water and and it's looking up at the surface like the camera's looking at the surface and you just realize if you're out there um you're not
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
and you're swimming and you get hit by a shark.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Yeah, and turning one of those big salties is probably not that, you know, turning around, it's like a battleship. I mean, those sharks are unbelievable. They can hit from all sorts. Oh, and they... They do this thing, we saw this, you're out of the cage or in the cage, and you'll look at one and you'll see its eye kind of like looking at you. They can't really foveate, but they'll look at you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And you're tracking it, and then you'll look down and you'll realize that one's coming at you. They're ambush predators, they're working together. It's fascinating.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Very primitive, eyes on the side of the head. Their vision is decent enough. They're mostly, obviously, sensing things with their electro-sensing in the water, but also... Oh, faction. Yeah, I spend far too much time thinking about and learning about the visual systems of different animals. If you get me going on this, we'll be here all night.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Because this is from a shark. Goodness. Yeah, I can't say I ever saw one with teeth this big, but it's beautiful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
It's beautiful. Yeah, it's probably... probably your blood pressure just goes and you don't feel a thing. Before we went down for the cage exit, a guy in our crew, Pat Dawson, who's a very experienced diver, asked one of the South African divers, so what's the contingency plan if somebody catches a bite? And they were like, he was like every man for himself.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And they're like, basically saying, if somebody catches a bite, that's it. Anyway, I thought we were going to bring up something happy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
well that is happy well nature is beautiful yeah nature is beautiful uh we lived um but you know that there are there are happy things you brought up nature as metal this see this is the difference between russian yeah americans and americans it's like maybe this is actually a good time to bring up um your ayahuasca journey i've never done ayahuasca But I'm curious about it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
I'm also curious about Ibogaine, Iboga. But you told me that you did ayahuasca and that for you it wasn't the dark, scary ride that it is for everybody else. Yeah, it was an incredible experience for me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
I've done high-dose psilocybin. It's terrifying, but I've always gotten something very useful out of it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
That's the fundamental biological timer. You know, every mammalian species has a short wavelength. So you think like blue UV type, but like absorbing cone and a longer wavelength absorbing cone. And it does this interesting subtraction to designate when it's morning and evening, because when the sun is low in the sky, you've got short wavelength and long wavelength light.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Like when you look at a sunrise, it's got blues and yellows, orange and yellows. You look in the evening, reds, orange, and blues. And in the middle of the day, it's like full spectrum light. Now, it's always full spectrum light, but because of some atmospheric conditions,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
elements and because of the low solar angle, like that difference between the different wavelengths of light is the fundamental signal that the neurons in your eye pay attention to and signal to your circadian timekeeping mechanism. Like we are at the core of our brain and the suprachiasmatic nucleus, we are, we are like, wired to be entrained to the rising and setting of the sun.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Like, that's the biological timer, which makes perfect sense because, you know, obviously, as the planets spin and revolve.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
So maybe that affects... Well, their social rhythms, their feeding rhythms, sometimes in terms of some species will signal the timing of activity of other species. But yeah, getting out from the canopy is critical. Of course, even under the canopy during the daytime, there's far more photons than...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
at night you know this is always when i'm telling people to get sunlight in their eyes in the morning and in the evening people say there's no light no sunlight this time here like it go outside on a really overcast day it's far brighter than it is at night right so um there's still lots of sunlight even if you can't see the sun as an object but i i love um time perception shifts.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And you mentioned that in the jungle, it's linked to the rising and setting of the sun. You also mentioned that on ayahuasca, you zoomed out from the earth. These are like, to me, the most interesting aspects of having a human brain as opposed to another brain, of course, if only you ever had a human brain, but which is that you can, consciously set your time domain window.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Like we can be focused here, we can be focused on all of Austin, or we can be focused on the entire planet. You can make those choices consciously, but in the time domain, it's hard. Like different activities bring us into fine slicing or more broad bending of time, depending on what we're doing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
programming or exercising or researching or podcasting, but just how unbelievably fluid the human brain is in terms of the aperture of the time-space window of our cognition and of our experience. And I feel like this is perhaps one of the more valuable tools that we have access to that we don't really leverage as much as we should, which is when things are really hard, you
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
need to zoom out and see it as one element within your whole lifespan and that there's more to come um you know i mean people commit suicide because they can't see beyond the time domain they're in or they think it's going to go on forever um when we're happy we rarely think this is going to last forever but uh which is interesting contrast in its own right but i think that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
psychedelics, while I have very little experience with them, I have some, and it sounds like they're just a very interesting window into the different apertures.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Do you have any interest in iboga? I'm very interested in Ibogaine Iboga. There's a colleague of mine and researcher at Stanford, Nolan Williams, who's been doing some transcranial magnetic stimulation and brain imaging on people who have Take in Ibogaine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Ibogaine, as I understand it, gives a 22-hour psychedelic journey where no hallucinations with eyes open, but you close your eyes and you get a very high-resolution image of actual events that happened in your life, but then you have agency within those movies. I think you have to be of healthy heart to be able to do it. I think you have to be on a heart rate monitor. It's not trivial.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
It's not like these other psychedelics. But there's a wonderful group called Veterans Solutions that has used Iboga combined with some other psychedelics. in the veterans community to great success for things like PTSD. And it's a group I've really tried to support in any way that I can, mainly by being vocal about the great work they're doing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
But you hear incredible stories of people who are just like, like near cratered in their life or zombied by PTSD and other things post-war, um, get back a lightness or achieve a lightness and a clarity, um, that they didn't feel they had. So I'm very curious about these compounds.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Um, the state of Kentucky, we should check this, but, um, I believe it's taken money from the, uh, opioid crisis settlement for Ibogaine research. I mean, so this is like no longer, yes. If you look here, let's see, uh, did they do it? Oh no.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
They were going to use the money to treat opioid. Now officials are backing off 50 billion. What is on its way over the coming years? $50 billion.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Kentucky has some of the highest number of deaths from the opioid. So they were going to do psychedelic research with Ibogaine, supporting research on illegal folks, psychedelic drug called Ibogaine. Well, I guess they backed away from it. Well- Sooner or later we'll get some happy news up on the internet during this episode. I don't know what you're talking about.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Yeah, yeah, that's true. That's true. And you survived the jungle. Well, that's the thing. I was writing to you on WhatsApp multiple times because I was going to put it on the internet. Are you okay? And if you're like alive, and then I was going to just like put it to Twitter, just like he's alive. But then of course you're far too classy for that. So you just came back alive.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
I was going to ask you, it's kind of a silly question, but like give me a small fraction of things on your bucket list. Bucket list.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Yeah. What's the status of that? I don't know, I'm being patient about the whole thing. Red Planet ran that cartoon of you guys going to Mars. That one was pretty funny. That's true. That was pretty funny. The one where Goggins is already up there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
What about seeing different animal species? I'm a huge fan of this guy, Joel Sartori, where he has this photo arc project where he takes portraits of all these different animals. If people aren't already following him on Instagram, he's doing some really important work. This guy's Instagram is... Amazing. Like portraits of animals. Well, look at these portraits.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
The amount of, I don't want to say personality, because we don't want to project anything onto them, but the, like the eyes, and he'll occasionally put them, moving like that, there's a little owl. I delight in things like this. I've got some content coming on animals and animal neuroscience and eyes. Dogs or all kinds? All animals. And I'm very interested in
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
kids content that, that incorporates animals. So we have some things brewing there. Like I could look at this kind of stuff all day long. Look at that bat. Like bats, people think about bats as kind of like little flickering, a little annoying disease carrying things. But look how beautiful that little sucker is.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Oh yeah. We've been in discussions with Cookie. The, um, I can't say too much about that, but Cookie Monster embodies dopamine, right? Cookie Monster wants cookie, right? Wants cookie right now. It was that one tweet, Cookie Monster, I bounce because cookies come from all directions. It's just embodying the desire for something, which is an incredible aspect of ourselves.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
The other one is, do you remember a little while ago, Elmo put out a tweet, hey, how's everyone doing out there? And it went viral. And the Surgeon General of the United States had been talking about the loneliness crisis. He came on the podcast. And a lot of people have been talking about problems with loneliness, mental health issues with loneliness.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Elmo puts out a tweet, hey, how's everyone doing out there? Everyone gravitates toward it. So the different Sesame Street characters really embody the different kind of aspects of self through very narrow neural circuit perspective. Snuffleupagus is shy and Oscar the Grouch is grouchy, right? And the Count, one, two. The archetypes of, yeah, this is very Jungian once again.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Yeah, and I think that the creators of Sesame Street clearly either understand that or it's an unconscious genius to that. So yeah, there are some things brewing on conversations with Sesame Street characters. I know you'd like to talk to Vladimir Putin. I'd like to talk to Cookie Monster. It illustrates the differences in our sophistication. or something. It illustrates a lot.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
But yeah, I also, I love animation. So I'm not anime. That's not my thing, but animation. So I'm very interested in the use of animation to get science content across. So there are a bunch of things brewing. But anyway, I delight in Sartori's work and there's a conservation aspect to it as well. But I think that...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Mostly want to thank you for finally putting up something that like where something is not being killed or like let some sad, sad outcome. These are all really positive.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
They're really cool. And every once in a while, look at, look at that mountain lion. But I also like to look at these and, and some of them remind me of certain people. Right? So let's just scroll through. Like for instance, I think when we don't try and process it too much. So like, okay, look at this cat, this civic cat, amazing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Like, I feel like that's somebody, I feel like this is like someone I met once as a young kid. Curiosity and a playfulness. Carnivore. Carnivore, frontalized eyes. Found and forced to the areas. Right. So then you go down, you know, it's like, this beautiful fish. Neon pink. Right. It reminds you of some of the influencers you see on Instagram, right? Except this one's natural. Just kidding.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Let's see. No filter. No filter. Yeah. Let's see. I feel like... Bears. I'm a big fan of bears. Yeah, bears are beautiful. This one kind of reminds me of you a little bit. There's like a stoic nature to it, a curiosity. So you can kind of feel like the essence of animals. You don't even have to do psychedelics to get there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Right. I mean, one of the reasons I love New York City so much despite its problems at times, is that everywhere you look, there's life. It's like a tropical reef. If you've ever done scuba diving or snorkeling, you look on a tropical reef and it's like, there's some little crab working on something. And like everywhere you look, there's life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
You know, in the Bay Area, if you go scuba diving or snorkeling, it's like a kelp bed. You know, the Bay Area is like a kelp bed. Every once in a while, some big fish goes by. It's like a big IPO. Yeah. But like most of the time, not a whole lot happens. Actually, the Bay Area, it's interesting as I've been going back there more and more recently.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
There are really cool little subcultures starting to pop up again. There's incredible skateboarding. The GX1000 guys are these guys that bomb down hills. They're nuts. Like they're just going like crazy. So it's just speed, not tricks. You got to see GX1000. These guys going down hills in San Francisco. They are wild. And occasionally, unfortunately, occasionally someone will get hit by a car.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
But GX1000, look, into intersections. They have spotters. You can see someone there. Oh, I see. There's somebody looking out. Yeah, into traffic. In San Francisco. Yeah, this is crazy. Like, this is unbelievable. And they're just wild cars. But in any case.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Well, I'm working on a book. So I'm actually going to head to a cabin for a couple of weeks and write, which I've never done. People talk about doing this, but I'm going to do that. I'm excited for that. Just the mental space of really dropping into writing. Like Jack Nicholson in The Shining cabin? Let's hope not. Okay. Let's hope not. You know, before...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
I mean, I only started doing public-facing anything, posting on Instagram in 2019, but I used to head up to Wallala on the northern coast of California, sometimes by myself, to a little cabin there and spend a weekend by myself and just... read and write papers and things like that. I used to do that all the time. I miss that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
So some of that, I'm trying to spend a bit more time with my relatives in Argentina, relatives on the East Coast. I see my parents more. They're in good health, thankfully. I want to get married and have a family. That's an important priority. I'm putting a lot of work in there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Yeah, putting a lot of work into the runway on that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And then I'll listen to it someday and see if I hit the marks. Yeah. Well, obviously pick the right partner, but also like do the work on yourself. Know yourself, the Oracle, know thyself. And I think, listen, I have a friend, he's a new friend, but he's a friend who I met for a meal. He's a very, very well-known actor overseas and his stuff has made it over here.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And we become friends and we went to lunch and we were talking about work and being public facing and all this kind of thing. And then I said, you have kids, right? And he says, he has four kids. I was like, oh yeah, you know, I see your posts with the kids. You seem really happy. And he said, he just looked at me, leaned in and he said, it's the best gift you'll ever give yourself.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And he also said, and pick your partner, the mother of your kids very carefully. So, you know, that's good advice coming from excellent advice coming from somebody who's, you know, very successful in work and family. So that's the only thing I can pass along. We hear this from friends of ours as well, but Kids are amazing and family's amazing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
All these people who want to be immortal and live to be 200 or something, there's also the old-fashioned way of having children that live on and evolve a new legacy, but they have half your DNA. So that's exciting.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Let's go. Right, well, the chaos of kids is kind of the... It can either bury you or it can give you energy. But I grew up in a big pack of boys always doing like wild and crazy things. And so that kind of energy is great. And if it's not a big pack of wild boys, it's, you know, you have daughters and they can be, you know, different form of chaos, sometimes same form of chaos.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
How many kids do you think you want? You know, it's either two or five. Very different dynamics. You're one of two, right? You have a brother. I mean, I'm very close with my sister. I couldn't imagine having another sibling because there's so much richness there. We talk almost every day. Three, four times a week. Sometimes just briefly, but we're tight. We really look out for one another.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
She's an amazing person. Truly an amazing person. And has raised her daughter in an amazing way. She's like... My niece is gonna head to college in a year or two, and my sister's done an amazing job. And her dad's done a great job, too. They both really put a lot into the family aspect.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
I just had Jonathan Haidt on the podcast, the guy who's talking about the anxious generation causing the American mind. He's great. But he was saying that, you know, in order to keep kids healthy, they need to not be on social media or have smartphones until they're 16. I've actually been thinking a lot about getting a bunch of friends onto neighboring properties.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
You know, everyone talks about this. Not creating a commune or anything like that, but I think Jonathan's right. We were more or less, our brain wiring does best when we are raised in small village type environments where kids can forage, the whole free range kids idea. I mean, I grew up skateboarding and building forts and dirt clod wars and all that stuff.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
It would be so strange to have a childhood without that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
I mean, it's cool to see, for instance, kids in New York City just kind of moving around the city with so much sense of agency. It's really, really cool. The suburbs, like where I grew up,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
like as soon as we could get out take the 7f bus up to san francisco and hang out with you know wild ones like you know while there were dangers i mean we couldn't wait to get out of the suburbs the moment that you know forts and dirt clod wars and stuff didn't didn't cut it we just like wanted into the city so i um bucket list i will probably move to a major city not los angeles or san francisco um
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
in the next few years, New York City, potentially. Those are all such different flavors of experiences. Yeah. So I'd love to live in New York City for a while. I've always wanted to do that, and I will do that. I've always wanted to also have a place in a very rural area. So Colorado and Montana are high on my list right now. And to be able to...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
pivot back and forth between the two would be great, just for different experiences. And also, I like a very physical life, so the idea of getting up with the sun in a Montana or Colorado-type environment. And I've been putting some effort towards finding a spot for that. And New York City, to me, I know it's got its issues, and people say, it wasn't what it was.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Okay, I get it, but listen, I've never lived there, so for me, it would be entirely new. And... you know, Schulz seems full of life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Yeah, you walk down the street, there's like a person with like a cat on their head and no one gives a shit. Yeah, that's great. San Francisco used to be like that. The joke was like, You have to be naked and on fire in San Francisco before someone takes it. But now it's changed. But again, recently I've noticed that San Francisco, it's not just about the skateboarders.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Definitely. I mean, I came up within and then on the periphery of skateboard culture. And for the record, I was not a great skateboarder. I always have to say that, because skateboarders are relentless if you call something you didn't do or whatever. I mean, I could do a few things, and I loved the community, and I still have a lot of friends in that community.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
There's some community houses of people in tech that are super interesting. There's some community housing of people not in tech that I've learned about and known people have lived there. And it's cool. There's stuff happening there. in these cities that's new and different. I mean, that's what youth is for. They're supposed to evolve things out.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Do you do like daily habits? Yeah, I do. My... I wake up, if I don't feel I slept enough, I do this non-sleep-depressed yoga nidra thing that I've talked about a bunch. We actually released a few of those tracks as audio tracks on Spotify. 10 minute, 20 minute ones puts me back into a state that feels like sleep and I feel very rested. Actually, Matt Walker and I are gonna run a study.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
He's just submitted the IRB to run a study on NSDR and what it's actually doing to the brain. There's some evidence of increases in dopamine, et cetera, but those are older studies, still cool studies. So I'll do that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
get up, hydrate, and if I've got my act together, I punch some caffeine down, like some matina, some coffee, maybe another matina, and resistance train three days a week, run three days a week, and then take one day off. And like to be done by 8.39, and then I want to get into some real work.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
I actually have a sticky note on my computer, just like reminding me how good it feels to accomplish some real work. And then I go into it right now, it's the book writing, researching a podcast and just fight tooth and nail to stay off. social media, text message, WhatsApp, YouTube, all that. Get something done. How long can you go? Can you go like three hours, just deep focus?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
If I hit a groove, yeah, 90 minutes to three hours if I'm really in a groove.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Oh, yeah. The agitation. But I've sat across the table from you a couple years ago when I was out here in Austin doing some work, and I was working on stuff. And I noticed you would just stare at your notebook sometimes, just like...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
pen at the same position and then you'll get back into it like they're those building that hydraulic pressure and then go yeah i try and get something done of value then it the communications start and talking to my podcast producer my team is everything i mean like the the magic potion in the podcast is rob moore right um who's in the has been in the room with me every single solo
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Jim Fibo at Deluxe, you can look him up. He's kind of the man behind the whole scene. I know Tony Hawk, Danny Way, all these guys. I got to see them come up and get big and stay big in many cases, start huge companies like Danny and call him a case, or DC. Some people have a long life in something, some don't.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Costello used to be in there with us because that's it people have asked journalists have asked can they sit in friends have asked nope just Rob and uh for guest interviews he's there as well and I talk to Rob all the time all the time we talk multiple times per day and um
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
You know, in life, I've made some errors in certain relationship domains in my life in terms of partner choice and things like that. And I certainly don't blame all of it on them, but, you know, I've played my role. But in terms of picking business partners and friends, like, you know, to work with, I mean, Rob's just, it's been bullseyes. And it's just Rob has been amazing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Mike Blayback, our photographer, and the guys I mentioned earlier, like...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
we just communicate as much as we need to and we pour over every decision like near neuroticism before we make we put anything out there and so including like even creative decisions of like topics to cover all that yeah like a photo for the book jacket the other day mike shoots photos then and then we look at them we pour over them together um logo for the perform podcast with andy gallop and then we're launching like is that the right contour mike's the real he's got the aesthetic
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
because he was at DC so long as a portrait photographer. And he's cute, was close friends with Ken Block, did Jim Khanna, like all the car jumping in the city stuff. Like, I mean, Mike is a master. He's a true master of that stuff. And we just pour over every little decision. But even with sponsors, you know, there are dozens of ads now.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
By the way, that whole Jawserciser thing of me saying, oh, a guy went from a two to a seven. I never said that, that's AI. Like I would never call a number off somebody, a two to a seven. Are you kidding me? It's crazy. So is AI. If you bought the thing, I'm sorry. But like our sponsors, we list the sponsors that we have and why on our website.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And like the decision, do we work with this person or not? Do we still like the product? I mean, we've got ways with sponsors because of like changes in the product or change, you know. Most of the time it's amicable, all good. But you know, like just every detail and that just takes a ton of time and energy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
But I try and work mostly on content and my team's constantly trying to keep me out of the other discussions. But I, cause I obsess, but yeah, you have to, you have to have a team of some sort, someone that you can run things by. For sure.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
But one thing I observed and learned a lot from in skateboarding at the level of observing the skateboarders and then the ones that started companies. And then what I also observed in science and still observe is you do it for a while, you do it at the highest possible level for you. And then at some point you pivot and you start supporting the young talent coming in.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
I used to spend a lot more time alone. That's on my bucket list, spend a bit more time dropped into work alone. I think social media, like, causes our brain to go the other direction. I try and answer some comments and then get back to work.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
So after that morning block, I'll eat some lunch and I'll usually do something while I'm doing lunch or something and then a bit more work and that real work, deep work. And then around 2.30, I do a non-sleep deep rest, take a short nap, wake up, boom, maybe a little more caffeine. And then... lean into it again.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And then I find if you really put in the deep work, two or three bouts per day by about 5 or 6 p.m., it's over. I was down at Jocko's place not that long ago and in the evening did a sauna session with him and some family members of his and some of their friends. And it's really cool. They all work all day and train all day and then in the evening they get together and they sauna and cold plunge.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
I'm really into this whole thing of gathering with other people at a specific time of day. I have a gym at my house and Tim will come over and train. We've slowed that down in recent months. But I think gathering in groups once a day, being alone for part of the day. It's very fundamental stuff.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
We're not saying anything that hasn't been said millions of times before, but how often do people actually do that? And call the party, you know, like be the person to like bring people together if it's not happening. That's something I've really had to learn, even though I'm an introvert. Like, hey, I'm like, gather people together.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
You came through town the other day and a lot of people at the house. It was rad. Actually, I was playing because I was getting a massage when you walked in. I don't sit around getting massages very often, but I was getting one that day. And then everyone came in and the dog came in and like everyone was piled in. It was very sweet.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And, you know, we're fortunate to have a lot of them. It'll also show you who really has put in the time to try and understand you and understand people, like people are complicated. I love that, so can you read the quote once more?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Definitely.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
It definitely makes you stronger. Let's go get some food. Yeah. You're one meal a day guy. Yeah. I actually ate something earlier, but it was like a protein shake and a couple pieces of biltong. I hope we're eating a steak. I hope so too. I'm full of nicotine and caffeine. Yeah. What do you think? How do you feel? I feel good. Yeah. I was thinking you'd probably like, I only did a half a piece.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And I won't have more for a little while, but a little too good. Yeah. Thank you for talking once again, brother. Yeah. Thanks so much, Lex. It's been a great ride, this podcast thing. And you're the reason I started the podcast. You inspired me to do it. You told me to do it, did it. And you've also been an amazing friend.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
You showed up in some, some very challenging times and you've shown up for me publicly. You've shown up for me in my home and my life and, you know, it's an honor to have you as a friend.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
In fact, the greatest scientists, people like Richard Axel, Catherine Duloc, there are many other labs in neuroscience, Karl Deisseroth. They're not just known for doing great science, they're known for mentoring some of the best scientists that then go on to start their own labs.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And I think in podcasting, I am very fortunate I got in in a fairly early wave, not the earliest wave, but thanks to your suggestion of doing a podcast, fairly early wave. And I'll continue to go as long as it feels right. And I feel like I'm doing good in the world and providing good, but I'm already starting to scout talent.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
My company that I started with Rob Moore, Sycom Media, there's a couple other guys in there too, Mike Blayback, our photographer, Ian Mackey, Chris Ray, Martin Phobes. We are a company that produces podcasts. Right now that's Huberman Lab Podcast, but we're launching a new podcast, Perform, with Dr. Andy Galpin.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And we want to do more of that kind of thing, finding a really great talent, highly qualified people, credentialed people. And I've got a new kind of obsession with scouring the internet, looking for the young talent in science, in health, and related fields. And so will there be a final episode of the HLP? Yeah. I mean, bullet buster cancer aside, you know, someday they'll be the very last.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And thank you for your interest in science. And I'll clip out.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Or at least we don't know. Yeah. Right, you don't know. I don't know if he knows. Bears everywhere are worried. Yeah, I think it's always a call. The last... A few years have been tremendous growth. We launched in January 2021, and even this last year, 2024, has been huge growth in all sorts of ways. It's been wild. And we have some short-form content planned,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
30-minute shorter episodes that really distill down the critical elements. We're also thinking about moving to other venues besides podcasting. So there's always the thought and the discussion. But when it comes to when to hang up your cleats, there just comes a natural time where you can do more to mentor the next generation coming in. than focusing on self.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
And so there will come a time for that. And I think it's critical. I mean, again, I saw this in skateboarding, like Danny and Colin and Danny's brother, Damon, started DC with Ken Block, the driver who unfortunately passed away a little while ago, rally car driver. And they eventually sold it, I think, to Quicksilver or something like that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
But they're all phenomenal talents in their respective areas, but they brought in the next on the next line of amazing writers, the Plan B thing, you know, Paul Rodriguez. For skateboarders, they know who this is. Now, in science, there are scientists like Feynman, for instance. I don't know if anyone can name one of his mentor offspring. So there are scientists who are phenomenal
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
like beyond world class, right? Multi-generational world class who don't make good mentors. I'm not saying he wasn't a good mentor, but that's not what he's known for. And then there are scientists who are known for being excellent scientists and great mentors. And I think there's no higher celebration to be had at the end of one's career.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
If you can look back and be like, hey, I put some really important knowledge into the world. People made use of that knowledge. And guess what? You spawned all these other people scientific offspring or sport offspring or podcast offspring. I mean, in some ways, we look to Rogan and to some of the other earlier podcasts. It's like they paved the way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships
Rhonda Patrick, first science podcast out there. So, you know, eventually, the baton passes. But fortunately, right now, everybody's active and it feels really good.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. 2024 is nearly over. So I decided to put together a compilation of some of my favorite moments from the show over the last year. It was going to be a top 10, but I couldn't choose. So it's 11, 11 favorite moments.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Yeah, that's awesome. I was thinking a lot about the lonely chapter that we talked about the last time. That was the best, most powerful idea I think that we came up with. And If you see there basically being no shortcuts toward getting the thing that you want, there are ways to be more and less efficient.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
And there are ways to do things with more and less of a positive disposition, which can actually make the journey feel an awful lot easier. But ultimately, if you assume that largely everyone needs to go through the same challenges that you're going through. every single difficult thing that you do is kind of like a massive wall that you need to get over.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
And you go, wow, fuck, I'm so glad that I've got over that wall. And think about how many people are going to be selected out. It's like the Hunger Games, you know, think about how many other people are going to fall that wall there.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
the energy it requires to start doing something is way more than the energy required to continue doing the thing. And that the beginning of doing anything results in the lowest amount of reward, both internal and external, than when you've been doing it for ages.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
So I think about this a lot with the show that there was this stat that Spotify told us, 85% of the listeners of this show found this in 2023. And I thought at the end of 2022, remembering at that point, I'd been on Rogan. We were at like 650K. We've got, you know, we've been doing 550, 600 episodes deep. Like I've got it. I've done the thing.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Like this is me doing, if this isn't fucking doing the thing, I've moved to Austin, Texas. I've got an O1 visa. I've got like all the rest of this stuff. Jordan Peterson's been on twice. You've been on.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
and yet the what everything up until that point is two months of growth yeah i mean we made we made more money for just from a revenue perspective we made more money and more subs in one month december of last year than we did in the entire first three and a half years of the show So it's this odd paradox.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
And one of the things that you need to ensure, I've had this idea about protect your passion at all costs, because if you begin to hate the thing that you do, you negatively change your trajectory.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
And that means that at the time when you can benefit the most by every single unit of work, which is the later that you go, presuming that you continue to hit that upward trajectory, if you've completely killed any passion or desire to do the work in the early stages, because you've
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
you've not protected it appropriately that can be by focusing on the wrong things by not rewarding yourself by not building it with people that care about you by you know just not not celebrating when you hit milestones all of the things that actually help to keep you going being a character
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
By the time you get to the stage where each unit of effort allows you to gain a thousand or a million of each of the things that it would have done at the very beginning, you've inverted the passion equation. It takes way more energy to start a thing than to continue doing a thing. And yet, in the beginning, the rewards are way lower than they are at the end.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
But if you don't protect your passion, your motivation is at its lowest when you are at your highest amount of efficiency in terms of returning your time put in.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Expect to learn Andrew Huberman's best advice on how to become a morning person, why Oliver Berkman thinks you should stop trying to control your life, the reason Eric Weinstein believes more young men are becoming right wing, Dr. Mike Israel's most important advice for choosing muscle building exercises, Alex Hormozy's advice on why everything worth doing is hard, and much more.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
I've always loved earning my stripes with the things that I've done, whether it was with nightlife or running the podcast or doing whatever. And I think... There's like a degree of nobility to it, but functionally that's kind of, that's just like, it's a nothing. Like what is the nobility?
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
But I think the reason that you can feel noble about it and the reason that it gives you a positive reward is you know that you understand every single inch of the things. And that if you want to hold a conversation, we went out for dinner with our new CFO and accounts people on Saturday. And they said, you ask a lot of questions.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
most people don't ask very many questions and i also don't care at all about accounts really like i'm not doing this for money but they said you ask a lot of questions is that well i don't ever really want to walk into a room and not be able to hold my own at least just competently if it's to do with something that I care about. And the same thing goes for this.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Like I started to learn about focal lengths and frame rates and negative fill, reverse contrast lighting. And then sure enough, two years after we started doing it, a bunch of different, I sent you the Instagram thing. Like this really awesome film Instagram that I've been following for ages, picked us up for what we were doing and gave us,
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
props independent of the talky thing which is fundamentally what we're here for and we created this entire new industry of like cinematic podcasting which was recognized by as far as i'm aware like the best cinematic it's called film lights at film lights people can go and see it on instagram like the best decoder and analyzer of cinematography and
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
And two years ago when we started, I remember thinking, fuck, I love the way that they've broken down what happens in Ad Astra. Oh my God, the whole thing was shot on 35mm. Each different scene's got two pairings of colors and stuff like that. But the reason that we were able to get there, at least in some part, is I can have a conversation with people.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
So each of the things that you do when you not only win in the weeds, but live in the weeds, then allows you downstream from that to see the things that other people aren't seeing.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Have you heard Rogan talk about the, be the hero of your own story thing? Oh dude, it's as old now. I think this is maybe, maybe even 10 years old, maybe 10 years old. Um, and he's in one of his old, he's in the LA podcast studio and he says, imagine that you're in a movie and imagine the movie begins now and you're the hero of the movie.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
What would that guy do? Yeah. What would that guy do right now? Yeah. Because you are.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
One of the first places that people are going to go to, and I'm going to guess one of the most common questions that you get asked, what exercises do I need to be doing?
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Whereas if you're doing this on the handrail.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
We're here in a spooky field with a car on fire and a full moon and a weird house over the far side. Yeah. Have you got any stories that fit this environment?
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
And it's I don't have those VW Beetle. There's something in the VW Beetle.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
How can people become a morning person or learn to get up early more easily and more regularly?
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Yeah. Three days of pain, the rest is easy. So it takes about three days to shift the biological mechanisms to make you a morning person. Now, if you are a very strongly genetically determined night owl.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
That's a thing. So there are genetic mutations. They call them polymorphisms. that makes some people night owls. They feel best psychologically and physically going to sleep at about 1, 2 or 3 a.m. and waking up somewhere around 10, 11 a.m. or noon. That exists, not just during development or teen years, but that exists, not just for social reasons. Other people are true morning people.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
They feel absolutely best going to sleep around 8 p.m. or 9 p.m., 10 p.m. will be late for them, and they feel great waking up at 4, 5, or 6 a.m., okay? Most people feel best going to sleep somewhere between 10 and midnight and waking up somewhere between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. or so, maybe 5.30 to 8 a.m., okay?
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
So those are three bins of the night owl, the morning person, and then the more typical schedule, but it's heavily weighted toward that typical schedule if you look at the general population.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
So if somebody wants to get up earlier, you need to stack the four primary, what are called Zeitgebers or timekeepers, so named because some of the early chronobiologists that discovered this stuff and the underlying mechanisms were German. as it were.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
So the number one zeitgeber, the number one way to shift your circadian clock, which is this cluster of neurons that sits a few centimeters above the roof of your mouth, is to view bright light at a time when you want to be awake, AKA the morning, okay?
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
So that's why I say, get outside, look at the sun, toward the sun, don't force yourself to stare at it, don't damage your eyes, blink as needed, no sunglasses. glasses, corrective lenses, and contacts are absolutely fine, even if they have UV protection. Okay. However, if you combine that with another zeitgeber, the second most powerful zeitgeber is exercise or movement.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
So if you do some jumping jacks, you skip some rope, or you even just take a walk while facing the sun, now you're starting to stack different zeitgebers. And I'll explain the mechanisms in a moment.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
If you then also add caffeine, now this spits in the face a little bit of what I said a few minutes ago, but if you were to add caffeine, you can entrain as it's called the circadian clock to be alert at that time a bit more. And I'll be honest, if I'm going to exercise first thing in the morning, I need caffeine. I can't wait that 60 to 90 minutes.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
If I need to jump right into exercise, I find it's easiest for me to do 30 minutes after waking, three hours after waking or 11 hours after waking. And a lot of people find that the same, but of course exercise when you can, because it's that important.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
But if you want to quote unquote optimize your energy levels for exercise, typically people will notice that has to do with your temperature rhythm. Okay, so we've got sunlight, we've got exercise or movement of any kind. It could be jumping jacks, could be walking. You don't have to do a full workout. And then caffeine and in some cases, food. I'm not big on eating first thing in the morning.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
I don't like to eat until 11 a.m. or noon. That's when my first meal arrives. For me, just naturally, that's when I get hungry. It's all caffeine and hydration prior to that. But if you were to eat something first thing in the morning, that's part of the way you entrain your circadian clock to wake up to essentially wake you up earlier. And then the fourth one is a social rhythm.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
If you're interacting with other people, you are going to entrain your clock to that as well. No way. Yes, so there's a social component to circadian entrainment. Now, the pathways for these are from the eye, in the case of viewing light, to the circadian clock, the suprachiasmatic nucleus. In the case of caffeine, it's more general.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
In the case of exercise, there's literally a brainstem to circadian clock connection. a big superhighway of neuronal connections that then so-called entrains your circadian clock.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Remember, your circadian clock generates an intrinsic 24-hour rhythm such that if we put you into constant dark or constant light, you would still sleep for a given bout and then be alert for a given bout with a little bit of a nap. It just is what we call free run. It would drift a little later each day. This is what happens when you go to Vegas.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
This is what happens when you're in an environment without a lot of cues about the day, the sunlight, rising and setting cycle. Sunlight, exercise, caffeine and eating, and social interactions bring your circadian clock into alignment with all of those zeitgebers.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
So when I said it takes three days, if tomorrow you want to start beginning the process of becoming an early riser, you'd set your alarm for 5 a.m. No matter what time you went to sleep the night before, you're going to get up and you're going to do the four things that I described. Maybe leave out food if you don't want to eat. Maybe leave out caffeine if you want to delay by 90 minutes.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
It's going to hurt. And then by the early afternoon, you'll be dragging a bit. And you just have to be careful to not overindulge in caffeine, which will then cause you to fall asleep later. Then you want to go to sleep at your now naturally slightly earlier sleep time. The next day, you'll notice it'll be a little bit easier to do the morning routine I just described.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
And by the third day, you ought to be waking up with or before the alarm by a few minutes or moments. Because your circadian clock has phase shifted, okay? It's phase advanced, as we say. Your circadian clock intrinsic to you generates a 24.2 or a 24.3 hour rhythm. It's not perfectly 24 hours. And that we believe, we don't know, but the just so story is that it's such...
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
that you're able to then shift that clock in one or the other direction. You can phase advance, so you wake up earlier and go to sleep earlier. You can phase delay. How do you phase delay? Well, you're probably doing this already.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Everyone nowadays pretty much qualifies as a shift worker by the strict and not so strict criteria of shift work, which is, are you doing any kind of cognitive activity after 9 p.m.? Are you viewing any kind of bright lights after 9.30 p.m.? Most people would say yes.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
So the diabolical thing about the circadian timing system is that it requires a lot of bright light, ideally from sunlight, but a lot of bright light early in the day to make you a morning and daytime person. But it requires just a little bit of bright light, even from an artificial source, after the hours of about 9.30 p.m. till 4 a.m.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
to quash your melatonin and make it difficult to sleep, or if you sleep, to make that sleep not as effective. There's a simple remedy, however, which is, and this is a beautiful study published in Science Reports in 2022. If you view sunlight in the afternoon
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
even for five minutes or so, could be late afternoon, could be sunset, take off your sunglasses, look in the direction of the sun, so now looking west, you adjust the sensitivity of your retina, the neurons in the back of your eye, such that bright light later at night doesn't have quite as much effect to suppress melatonin.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
It reduces the melatonin suppressive effects by about 50% or offsets those. So I think of this afternoon viewing as, well, first of all, it's nice to look at a sunset. If you're indoors in an environment like this, even if there are bright lights on, Get outside for a few minutes before the sun sets. This is especially important in winter.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Even if you can't see the sun as an object, get some sunlight in your eyes, and that will at least partially offset the effects of bright light in your eyes at night, partially. And I refer to this more or less as your Netflix inoculation. So that that night you can be on your phone or watch Netflix and it's not going to disrupt your sleep as much, but it will still disrupt your sleep somewhat.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
But let's, you know, unless like Rick Rubin's very diligent about wearing the red lens glasses. I've started doing that as well. But if you don't do that, you could, I'm guessing he also sees the sunset in the evening. He's very attached for good scientific reasons to the sunlight thing. But these are little things that take just moments, right?
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
They're essentially zero cost that can really improve your sleep. But that's how you become a morning person. If you want to become a night person, you do the opposite. You view bright light. between the hours of 4 p.m. and 10 p.m., and then you will phase delay or phase shift in a delayed way your circadian clock, making you want to wake up later the next morning.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
I wonder if dogs count as social interaction. Absolutely.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
And they have all of the same mechanisms we just described.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
So I just think, how can we stack that everything first thing in the morning, morning walk, if you're in a place that's not Iceland or somewhere that's super high north, dog, social interaction, moving around, and then caffeine if you do or if you don't want it. Yeah.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
If you have a dog that likes to run, you're even better off because it'll force you to run. You're going to have to chase after it. If you have an English bulldog like I did, you'd be lucky if you get out of there by 10. A little bit. Yeah, you're in game one. Their eyes are droopy and they don't like to move. But it is the case that dogs will naturally orient toward the sun.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
And people always ask, do dogs have the same mechanisms? Absolutely. Intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells, the one that project to the clock and carry all of this thing about circadian entrainment to sunlight. are present as far as we know in every extant mammalian species, every mammalian species that's alive today.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
And this is a system that evolved from bacteria that's very similar to the opsins, the light absorbing molecules that are in the insect eye. It's a very primordial system. It's organized very differently anatomically in the retina. And to me, it's actually one of the more beautiful systems in all of us. In fact, the one thing that no one can seem to defeat
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
you're never going to biohack away is circadian biology. This 24-hour fluctuation in energy and focus. Some people require less sleep, but we're all more or less a slave to these mechanisms. And it's a good thing that we are because it forces us to rest. Neuroplasticity occurs during sleep. They push down adenosine. It takes us through these natural ebbs and cycles of cognition.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
I'm obsessed by the idea that in sleep, The conscious mind obviously is not in control. The unconscious mind can geyser up thoughts. The brain is organizing things more in terms of symbols. Time and space are organized very differently in dreams. And there's a lot of information to be gleaned from dreams.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
It's just that we don't yet understand what the symbols mean, the kind of classic Freudian Jungian interpretations are certainly not going to be complete, but I'm so grateful that we get this thing called sleep. And I think thanks to the great Matt Walker, we now understand that the whole thing about sleep when I'm dead is a really dumb mindset.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
And my team at the Huberman Lab Podcast, we sometimes joke that we win by sleeping. When we're in the peak of things, we all encourage each other to get rest, get rest. We really prioritize sleep. It's so essential.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
How have you learned to have a better relationship with yourself, the voice inside of your head to be kinder if things go badly?
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
I had J. Michael Bailey on the show who his paper on ROGD, rapid onset gender dysphoria, was pulled. Very, very rare that this happens. And I learned during my research for that about the left-handedness argument for both gay and transsexual people.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
And how many people can say that? How many people say, I like me, they would give more grace, more care, more attention, more love to somebody else than themselves. There's a statistic around, I think on average, the likelihood that you are going to complete a course of antibiotics yourself is about 50%. The likelihood of your dog completing it is 95%.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
So we're literally capable of caring for a pet nearly double as well as we can for ourselves. Remembering that if you die, no one can look after the pet. So in an odd roundabout way, serving yourself and serving others from a cup which overflows around your own or the saucer that sits around your cup is important.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
And again, this sort of tension between being self-serving, being narcissistic, being egotistical, being self-centered, but not meaning that. It's this delicate balance. And this is what comes with growing up. And I think this is why one size fits all flaming sword advice seems to die away as people get a little older. Yeah.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
You listen to a Joe Rogan and a lot of what he's saying is hedged in some regard. It's caveated. You know, it's, it's, this is what worked for me. Right. Not, this is how everybody should do it. Right. And, uh, yeah, there's a humility that comes with age.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
I appreciate all of you. This year has been insane and tough and beautiful and all of the things. And if you haven't done your end of year review yet, you can go to chriswillx.com slash review. It's a free annual review template that helps you to reflect on lessons from last year and plan what you want to get done next year. It's the exact template that I use and I updated it.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Okay. The person that you have to spend the most time talking to in your life is yourself. Try not to lose that respect. Right. Right. And I think... This was a lesson that I realized toward the end of my 20s where I'd accumulated a lot of success and status in maybe the way that modern society tells a young man that he should with freedom and notoriety and women and stuff like that.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
So in the Middle Ages, it was seen as being a mark of witchcraft or being touched by the devil that you were left-handed, which meant that people who were hid their left-handedness. I think about 12%, maybe if the population is left-handed, something like that. But during the Middle Ages, it was significantly less.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
And that was cool to look back on fun. But it was beginning to get to the stage where I didn't like me all that much. I hadn't done anything bad, but I just felt like I was built for more. I was built for different, built for something else. And I realized that I wasn't keeping promises to myself. That if I said I was going to wake up at a certain time, the snooze button would be hit three times.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
If I said that I was going to stick to my diet or go to the gym or do this thing, Maybe it would happen, but it wouldn't happen quite the way that I'd meant it to. And there would be some negotiating and some cajoling and some falling short. So imagine that you had a friend and every time that you invited this friend out for lunch, they showed up an hour late or they didn't show up at all.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
after a while you'd stop trusting them and stop inviting them out at all. Right. You are that friend to yourself. Yeah. You know, how can you have faith that you're going to go and do all of the things that you want in life when you can't not hit the snooze button? Right. Or you can't not cheat on your diet.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
You can't not do, you know, you are constructed by the tiny decisions that you make every single day. And even if you think that nobody else is watching, and even if no one is, There's this little ticker in the back of your mind when you go to bed. You were gentle with yourself when you got agitated. Right. Good. Yeah. You were kind with the lady that looked like she was tired at Walmart.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
You said something peaceful and encouraging to her. Good. Yeah. Yeah. But you did these things. You did something that makes you feel not so proud about yourself. And in some ways, it's a great correcting mechanism because there is no hiding from it. And people turn to alcohol and distraction and aggression and depersonalization in order to deal with the fact that they don't like themselves.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
But ultimately, you need to live with the decisions that you make. You need to live with you. Right. There is this set of scales inside of your mind that's just balancing things all the time.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
The ceiling gets released and people are free to be their true left-handed selves and more people become left-handed. I can now fully manifest that forward. And that is an argument that gets put forward a lot. Well, now that we have released the lid on the pressure cooker that was tamping down people's natural trans or gay proclivities or whatever, they're now free to be themselves.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Lots of benefits of improving VO2 max. Take us through the Norwegian 4x4 again, and then what else is in there? If there was a protocol or a number of protocols you were going to design, here's a program that you can take away today into your gym and do that will help to improve your VO2 max. What would you tell people?
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Just dig into that. What do you mean as hard as you can go and maintain it? What does that mean?
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
But that doesn't explain why gender dysphoria appears to occur in clumps. It's not evenly distributed across all schools.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
So, but it is- I imagine it's a motivation thing, which is probably one of the biggest hurdles to get over that just, if you've got any program in front of you that isn't the Norwegian four by four for the day, you go, maybe it's back and biceps. Maybe I'll just go for a little jog. It's like manana, manana, manana.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Is there any benefit to going twice per week?
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
It would have been so much better if you'd said, oh, no, no.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
If Norwegian 4x4 is gold standard at the moment for improving VO2 max, what would be some examples of other vigorous exercise workouts? What else is in that bucket?
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
So what we're aiming for here is 75% to 80% max heart rate for around about 20-minute exposure?
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Yeah, you were telling me about the need for people to break up their sedentary time, that there's some very specific risks that people can encounter if they're too sedentary for too long, too frequently. What's happening there?
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Trying to do burpees post food might be difficult.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
So one of the things that Dr. Stu McGill, number one back pain specialist on the planet, taught me about forever ago, and then Mark Bell also popularized this 10-minute walk, 15-minute walk post eating because insulin sensitivity, because of helping to...
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
readjust glucose levels within the blood also the muscles of the hips and the arms cross across the stomach so actually helps with digestion of food a little bit as well like if you've had a really big meal and all you want to do is lie down actually probably one of the best things that you can do to make yourself feel better is maybe go for a walk what would you say here we've got the the
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Post-meal walking crowd and the post-meal burpees crowd. Like, is there something that you're missing from one of those or are you happy with either?
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
I don't disagree, but I think the left-handedness argument makes sense when it comes to homosexuality, but not when it comes to the trans issue.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
All right. What about becoming muscled for longevity?
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
You say the world opens up when you realize you're never going to sort your life out. What do you mean?
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
That's got me thinking about sort of two types of people. There's many types of people, but here's two, a little taxonomy. One being the people who have not an external locus of control, but the restrictions on why they can't do things are because of something that's happening out there.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
How can I sort myself while the climate is still such a mess or while there's these global conflicts going on or while we've got this person in power I don't like or this person trying to get in power that I don't like? And then there's another version of a person who does the exact same thing, but all of their restrictions are inside of themselves.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
How can I start doing my life while my to-do list is still all over the place? How can I begin to do that when I'm still at 17, 18% body fat and I don't know what diet I'm going to follow? How can I do this before I... You know, it's the same psychology that many people that listen to this show and are fans of your work probably chastise others for, the externalized locus of control.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
And it's like you haven't... internalised, externalised locus of control.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
There's a Sartre quote where he says, I have led a toothless life, a toothless life. I have never bitten into anything. I was waiting. I was reserving myself for later on and I have just noticed that my teeth have gone. Amazing.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Uh, yeah. Gwendo Bogle has a similar idea about deferred happiness syndrome that you sort of this sense. And it's so, it's so common. I remember I used to, I used to think this when I spent the summers, uh, in between school. So I played cricket, uh, growing up like a good British boy and, um, uh,
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
the season obviously really ramps up as soon as you get into summertime, especially as a youth cricket player. And I always remember that I would think, well, summer hasn't really started yet. And it would be half a week in. And then it would be a week and a half in. I think, well, summer really hasn't It still kind of hasn't started yet.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
And then before I knew it, I was getting ready to go back to school and I was thinking, but summer hadn't really started yet. And I think that that is a, it's a microcosm for kind of how we see our life. It's this sort of common feeling that your life hasn't yet begun and that the reality you're in at the moment is some sort of prelude to an idyllic future.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
I'm in mid-August. I can't say that summer's not started yet. Right, right. One of the other things, for better or worse, that we're both familiar with is low mood. What are the things that you do to pull yourself out of a funk? Or how would you advise people to better deal with depression and anxiety or low mood?
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
I updated it from last year to this year. So there's tons in there. It's so cool getting to revisit these old episodes. A lot of stuff that aren't just the biggest moments from the biggest episodes, but underground clips and sections, 10, 15 minutes that maybe you missed. And perhaps there is something that you forgot that you wish that you hadn't. And anyway, I'll stop talking.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Well, that was a lexical game that was played in the 1950s. That was played to try and bifurcate the term.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
That's in big part the podcast. I think for me, I think we're both kind of the same with this, that the external accountability of someone being there, there is a time on the calendar. Someone is expecting you to be there. They are a guest. You probably respect them. You probably care about what they think about you.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
You probably want to perform well for them and also put them in a great light and be a springboard for them and their message because you're interested in what they've got to do. All of those things. It's like you're not not showing up. I've never once I've canceled in my previous life as a club promoter. I would not show up for events. I would not show up for bits and pieces.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
I could always sort of work somebody else to go and do a thing if it was just me that had to do it. But as soon as even one other person was involved or 2000 appearing at a nightclub, I'd be there and I would be there because there was accountability and there was this expectation.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
I have never once canceled a podcast in 750 episodes, six and a half years due to low mood, no matter how low the mood is, because there's, I, I, it, it gets taken out. It gets eroded away by my excitement to go and do the thing. And the same thing is true with a holiday. And the same thing is true with a dinner with a friend at the same thing.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Like it's the same reason why a training partner just makes so much sense when you can like every Saturday, for instance, in Austin, I do the same session with progressive overload, the same exercises with the same guy. We've done this for two years. It's one of my favorite days of the week. Saturday morning, I'm full of caffeine. It's shoulders, biceps, and triceps starting with calves.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Best day of the week. And I love it. And every single Saturday, no matter how shit the week's gone, no matter how bad I'm feeling, if we're available and we're both in the city, we both go and do it.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Okay, so what do you mean when you talk about it?
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Yeah. Yeah, you're hedging, you're hedging your identity, you're hedging your sort of existential investment.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Do you have a like break glass in case of impending low mood protocol? Something you just start to see the early warning signs. Is there a, okay, I need to pull the pin with these things?
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
For all of me saying that people struggle to connect with their emotions, a lot of people listening to this show will be familiar with the cerebral horsepower praying at the sort of altar of cognition thing. But there's also still a bunch of emotions that are just kind of less exciting and more dour that everybody is familiar with.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Anxiety, you know, this sort of ambient sense of a little bit of fear that's going on. It's not full fear, it's not gripping you, but it's, you know, anxiety, worry, concern, insufficiency, shame. So we're connecting with
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
It sounds great. Again, people can use their intellect and rationality, as I am right now, to go, sounds fantastic. Feel feelings. Yep, understood. Go back and hear the thing. But what does it look like? What does integrating emotions, embracing them, feeling feelings, what does the process of going from
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Where can people go if they want to pick up this course?
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Just talk to me. I think that's a really lovely cue that people can probably quite quickly pick up on. Just take me through that step-by-step that someone has just like the echo of a sensation that continues to come up when they see a person or whatever situation that they're in.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
You're female on the inside. Does that person produce both sperm and eggs? No. Right.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
When you talk about expressing, what do you mean?
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
But truly, that's the definition. That is the line in the ground. Around male and female. Large gametes.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
But this is expressing it. It doesn't necessarily need to be to a person. If you're angry, does it need to be to the person that you're angry at?
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
How do you think about this sort of relationship between brain and emotions and body and sort of moving out of and between those? Is there a hierarchy? Is there an interplay?
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
People playing to their strengths almost. Typically.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Yeah. The closest thing is luxury beliefs. Ooh, do tell. So a friend, Rob Henderson, has repopularized this. It's not his original invention, but he says luxury beliefs are beliefs... held by the upper classes that bestow status on them, but incur costs on people of the lower class. Oh, that's good. Yeah. So Defund the Police is a perfect example of this.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Another one that's kind of obvious is two-parent households have no advantage, or getting married has no advantage for raising a child. So you look at the number of college graduates and people in the upper echelons of society, almost all of them are married in monogamous relationships with a classic nuclear family set-up.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
And the lower classes that may believe this particular narrative that's pushed by them are the ones that suffer in the same way as you behind your gated community tweeting, yeah, we really need to, you know, these police are racist and they shouldn't be there and all the rest of it. It's like, yeah, but you're not a... black guy from inner city Chicago.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
There's a huge problem in Illinois at the moment in the schooling system. Some huge percentage of kids can't read at grade level. And then they finish high school and they get out and it's just, there's nothing there. They finish like K through 12. Maths ability is way behind where they should be. Reading comprehension is way behind where they should be. You think, what are you learning?
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
That's wild. I've got a friend, Carol Hoeven, who wrote a book about testosterone. And when she did Rogan's show, she cried profusely. I think four times. Whoa. When she did my show, she cried at least three times. We went for breakfast in Austin. I think she cried twice at breakfast. What? She's just a very emotional lady. You don't say. It's in like joy and sadness and stuff too.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
She'll start talking about her son and immediately start welling up. She just loves her son. Anyway, she talks about Biological differences between men and women. Spicy. She was at Harvard. She had, I think it was one of the most popular courses of undergraduates in psychology. I think it was like some insane number. It might have been 500 people that attended this particular course that she did.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Really interesting course. And... After she did the Rogan thing, and then the book came out, and then she maybe posted a couple of things as well, none of her teaching assistants were prepared to work with her. So these are post-grads usually doing a PhD or something, and they'll be part of some lab. But you need your TAs. You need the teaching assistants. Tits and ass. Sorry, sorry. TAs.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
It depends on how we're going to define sex, because if it comes down to gamete size, that is binary.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
I'm listening. You need that to help you because it's a huge class and marking work and they kind of assist during the lecturing. I've got a few friends in Austin here that work as TAs for their professors, the head of their labs and shit. And that's like soft cancel. She was being pushed out. Yeah. How can you do your course if no one will work with you? Of course.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
And then there wasn't backup from the dean and there wasn't the rest of it. And she's out now.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
She's being pushed out. I'm pretty sure she had tenure. Yeah. which is supposed to be the protection that you need. And then she was part of this Bill Ackman thing, you know, where he called out Claudine Gay and all this stuff a couple of months ago. But the weird thing there, and I spoke to her about this, she was basically used as a very fortunate political football to be kicked around.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
See how perfect this is, shows that the woke mob are trying to push people out that say things that aren't egregious and no one, this is something I haven't really thought of before. No one considered what she wanted as a part of this. So she's already lost her job. Good point. But just because she's a very, same with Shane, like Shane strikes me as a large, ruddy, robust guy. Yeah.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
And you using him as an example of somebody who went through difficulty with SNL to then sort of come out the other side of it.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
i don't i don't feel that he's taking that as oh you you know you've re-triggered my ptsd from this awful incident that occurred to me five years ago he doesn't strike me but the woman that cried five times on a podcast maybe does yeah right this is you know again do we care about people's feelings or not yes it just comes back to trying to give people a bit more grace
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Women are loving men who embrace baby girl vibe and ditch toxic masculinity. Delving into the new trend of baby girl, following Jacob Elordi, Timothee Chalamet, Pedro Pascal, and more. This includes men carrying purses, wearing shorts and sequins, an embracingly traditionally feminine aspect.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
A man who is a baby girl comes across as sweet, charming, a bit bashful, and seemingly in touch with the feminine side, ready to talk about their feelings or carry a purse to brunch at any point. Heterosexual women, especially Gen Zers, are rusting, which means romanticizing and lusting. I thought rusting might mean something else, after men that they consider to be baby girl.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
This trend signals a sharp departure from the uber-masculine sex symbols of previous generations, a lady explained to the Post, and men outside the limelight are taking note, think the definition of what is masculine is changing. The director of Talkify matchmaking service told The Post, some traditional masculine norms are shifting.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Masculinity today is not about being a tough guy, but about being honest, respectful, protective, and emotionally expressive. About 31% of American men have actively changed their behavior to become more vulnerable and open with people they are dating, according to Bumble's 2024 Dating Trans Report.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Hey, that's a better way to, concise way to say it. I've been, me and my housemate have been thinking a lot about things that are bitch that you don't realize are bitch. So trying to pick up a moving ping pong ball.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
This could be like a TikTok running series. Wearing as a man, wearing a towel wrapped around your upper chest rather than wrapped around your waist.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
The interlace of the finger from behind. Yeah. That's pretty bitch. Um, turning, he has, Zach has one, which is turning around ever. So if you walk past the entrance to somewhere, you're going around the block and coming back in. Cause if you go and then turn around, that's pretty bitch. That's good.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
He had one at dinner the other evening, which we were sat outside and the receipt blew off the front of the table. And we've been talking about things that a bitch that you don't realize a bitch for forever. Six months now. This is gold. We've accumulated this huge, big, long list. Love it. I could go for the rest of the podcast.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
And I was watching it and we hadn't come up with chasing a receipt blown in the wind. And I was watching it happen. And sure enough, the wind picked up and you bend over and you... That, and then it goes away again. And he came back over and he went, this is being added to the list, isn't it? That's a great one. It's getting added to the list.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Sleeping in a blanket with your arms all the way under as opposed to having your arms out. Oh, interesting. I think that's pretty bitch. Holding a coffee mug with both hands. Yes, that's a great one. Massively bitch.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Which is interesting because Crocs are obviously the most sexually arousing type of footwear that are available.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
You're going to play football? There is a Croc marathon thing. Come on. Record. Really? Yep. There's a croc mile and there's a croc marathon record. People can go and look this up online. I will. Yeah. I'm sure it's elite athletes.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
We can get into it. Happy New Year. Have you seen the data showing the movement of teenage boys politically to the right? Have you been looking at this? Where else are they going to go?
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
If it's hard, good. It means no one else will do it. More for you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Sie werden sagen, nein, okay, hör mal, ich habe das mit genug Leuten durch mein Labor gemacht, als wir das mit Menschen gemacht haben, mit Brian McKenzie und anderen. Und wenn du besser bei Lungenkapazität willst, dann bekommst du längere und längere Seiten dieser Box auf Box-Breathing für fünf Minuten am Tag. Und dann testet ihr euch auf dem Kohlenstofftoleranz-Test.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und ihr werdet bemerken, dass ihr von einem 30-Send-Kohlenstofftoleranz-Rate zu einem 90-Send-Diskard-Rate gehen könnt. Wenn man sich die Freedivers anschaut, gibt es eine ganze Art dazu. Und ich sage immer, es ist wahrscheinlich der gefährlichste Sport da draußen, weil es alles gut ist, bis es auslöst und dann stirbt man. Also empfehle ich es nicht.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber was sie herausgefunden haben, ist, langsam zu atmen, damit sie den Gasp-Reflex nicht triggeren. Leute denken, sie packen ihre Lungen mit Wasser. Das funktioniert nicht wirklich so. Wenn du viel ausatmest, das ist das, was ich gerade gesagt habe, es ist sehr gefährlich, Hyperventilation zu machen und dann ins Wasser zu gehen. Warum?
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Weil du viel CO2 ausbläst und dann kannst du deine Atmung länger halten, aber schau dir das an, dein Gehirn spürt CO2-Leveln, um den Gas-Reflex zu triggeren, der dich auf die Oberfläche bringt, um eine Atmung zu bekommen. Wenn dein CO2-Reflex niedrig ist, kriegst du keinen Gas-Reflex und schau dir das an, du schläfst einfach aus und stirbst.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
So this is why there's been a lot of controversy suggesting that people should not do Wim Hof-type or Tummo-type breathing or sick, what we call in the lab cyclic hyperventilation. Any heavy exhales followed by a breath hold near water is potentially lethally dangerous. But you asked how can you get your breath, Deine Lungkapazität besser. Mach das Cardio-Werk, das ich erwähnt habe.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Besonders das Max-Hart-Rate-Werk. Aber dann mach fünf Minuten pro Woche. Es ist nur fünf Minuten pro Woche Box-Breathing. Und entscheide, wie lange du die Seiten des Boxes machen musst, indem du einen Carbon-Dioxid-Toleranz-Test erst machst. Und dann testest du jedes paar Wochen wieder. Sehr bald wirst du zehn Minuten die Seiten des Boxes machen. wenn du nicht schon bist.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und ich habe gesehen und ich habe einige Freedivers getroffen, die 20 Sekunden Inhalte, 20 Sekunden Halt machen können. 20 Sekunden Ausatmen, 20 Sekunden Halt. Es klingt einfach, aber es ist nicht trivial. Und das ist, weil sie wirklich gelernt haben, wie sie ihre Diaphragmen in einem gewissen Weg kontrollieren. Ich sage es so. Dein Gehirn hat zwei Zentren für das Kontrollieren des Atmens.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber die Atmungszentren sind großartig. Sie befinden sich direkt an der Brücke zwischen dem Bewusstsein und dem Unbewusstsein. Du atmest immer, ohne diese zu kontrollieren. Aber an jedem Moment kannst du die Kontrolle
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
neural control of breathing which is unlike any other autonomic function like digestion or pupil size you can't just decide to digest faster decide to increase your heart rate these breathing is the bridge into controlling your your inner state and so that's why things like yoga meditation there's nothing really mysterious about it it's using breath to control your level of Auslösung.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und dann, kurz nach dem Zeitpunkt, als die Puberty umgegangen ist, also ich war ungefähr 13 oder 14, meine Eltern haben durch einen sehr hohen Konflikt durchgeworfen. Damals war Divorz viel rarer. Ich glaube, ich war einer von nur ein paar Kindern in meiner Hochschule, deren Eltern verabredet waren. Ich wusste nicht, wie viele Kinder mit verabredeten Eltern waren.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ausatmen, die Herzfrequenz niedrigen. Respiratorische Sinusarrhythmie. Inhalte, erhöhe die Herzfrequenz. Auch Respiratorische Sinusarrhythmie, für diejenigen, die es nachschauen wollen. Also, beim Box-Breathen in einer sehr kontrollierten Weise, balanciert man diese Herzfrequenz. Man bleibt schön und fest. Man lässt nicht, dass die Herzfrequenz hoch wird, nicht, dass sie niedrig wird.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und man benutzt das Atmen als Weg, das zu machen. Und das Diaphragm funktioniert so, dass es sollte, wenn man inhaltet, das Bein rausgeht. Und wenn man ausatmet, Es gibt nichts Mystisches daran. Es ist eigentlich alles sehr mechanisch. Es ist alles ein Gas-Ausgleich.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Während des Testes mit dem Deoxydiscard. Okay. Ja, du läufst so langsam wie möglich, bis deine Lungen leer sind, und dann stoppst du den Stopwatch. Okay. Du kannst also nicht verletzen? Du kannst nicht verletzen. Und das ist interessant. Tiere wie Lizarden haben aktive Exhalationen und passive Inhalationen. Sie exhalieren aktiv und inhalieren passiv. Menschen sind das Gegenteil.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wir atmen aktiv mit den Muskeln zwischen den Rippen, den Intracostalen und dem Diaphragm, aber dann atmen wir passiv. Wir lassen es einfach ausfallen. Wenn du es zu einem Punkt machst, um aktiv zu atmen, dann verlängerst du die Herzfrequenz. Du engagierst einen Neuralzirkus durch die Sino- und dann die Sinoatrial-Node und dann verlängerst du die Herzfrequenz.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es ist ein wirklich wunderschönes Mechanismus. Und ich denke, nicht genug ist gesagt worden über die Beziehung zwischen Atem- und Gehirnstatus. Ich meine, es ist eine unglaubliche Sache, dass du dein Atem mit deinem Gehirn kontrollieren kannst und du dein Gehirnstatus mit deinem Atem kontrollieren kannst. Du siehst aus wie ein sehr ruhiger Typ. Die meisten Operatoren sind sehr ruhig.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Sie sind nur trainiert, Energie nicht zu verbrauchen. Du sitzt also am meisten in einem sehr evenen Flugzeug, und du weißt, wie es ist, wenn du super in der Zone bist. Die meisten Leute wissen nicht, wie man das macht. Sie leben also ihre Leben enttäuscht von Kaffee und Alkohol und Stress und Social Media. Ich würde sagen, für die meisten Leute Man muss ein wenig darauf achten, wie man atmet, z.B.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
beim Nasal-Breathen, solange man nicht üben, essen oder sprechen muss. Das ist auch gut für die Zähne. Und auch für die Facialstruktur. Ich weiß nicht, ob ihr die Bilder von diesen Kindern in diesem Buch von meinen Kollegen von Stanford, Paul Ehrlich und Sandra Kahn, gesehen habt. Sie sind Twins. Einer ist ein Mund-Breather, der andere ist ein Nose-Breather.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und der Mund-Breather-Kind hat eine wirklich seltsame Facialstruktur gegenüber dem Nose-Breather-Kind. Und das ist ein bisschen extrem, aber es ist ein bisschen schwierig, deine Zunge auf den Ruf deines Mundes zu befestigen, mit deinen Zähnen geschlossen. Ich kann das nicht tun, weil ich eigentlich Orthodontie hatte, also ist meine Palate ein bisschen zu verbreitet.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und nur die Möglichkeit, durch deinen Nuss zu atmen, während du joggst oder einfach weitergehst, das ist der richtige Weg, um zu atmen, um den richtigen Luftfluss zu haben. Und während des Schlafens, Schlafapnoe, Blockierung des richtigen Luftflusses während des Schlafens, Atmen durch den Mund während des Schlafens. Das sind hohe, hohe Risiken für kardiovaskuläre
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Schmerzen oder Schmerzen wegen Herzinfarkt. Ich meine, von Oxygene ausgedrückt zu sein, von Oxygene ausgedrückt zu sein, für lange Zeit, während des Schlafens oder des Wachstums, ist einfach nicht gut. Ich habe einige Geschichten von den Teams gehört. Ich weiß nicht, ob das wahr ist. Ich weiß nicht, ob wir das öffnen wollen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber das, was ich vorhin gesagt habe, über das Nicht-Hyperventilieren und das Halten eines Atems, ist so ernst, dass es tatsächlich, ich glaube, ich weiß nicht, ob das wahr ist, dass sie aktiv sagen, dass die Leute, die ihre Dive-Arbeit machen, wir gehen in die Bälle, wie in der Tower, dass sie vorher keine Hyperventilation machen können. Weil man kann einfach schnell schmerzen und sterben.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Damals nannten sie uns Latchkey-Kinder, erinnerst du dich daran? Du hast dich am Ende des Tages nach der Schule eingelassen. Das bedeutet, du warst ein Latchkey-Kind. Damals, wenn deine Eltern verabredet waren, nannten sie das eine gebrochene Heimat. Das wird für die meisten jetzt ein offenes Konzept sein. Ich habe gesehen, dass viele Menschen verheiratet werden und es einfach gut machen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es ist also nicht etwas, mit dem man verletzt wird. Aber wenn du auf dem Boden bist und du nicht Fahrzeug fährst, Du gehst einfach für einen Moment raus. Ich meine, ich bin nicht dazu eingegangen. Aber ich glaube, dass man richtig atmen lernen muss.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Das coole Ding ist, dass das Box-Atmen, die Seite des Boxes länger zu machen hat, einen wirklich guten Cross-Over-Effekt hat, mit kardiovaskularem Training, wo du zurückgehst und diese Hits-Workouts machst. Und du fühlst dich, als hättest du eine Superkraft. Schön. Ich werde das definitiv machen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Was it scary going through it? Sorry to interrupt. I'm just so curious. No.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich hatte einen Freund, der auf der Mannschaft war. Ich lache nicht, weil ich es noch nie gemacht habe, obwohl ich es vielleicht irgendwann machen werde. Er war ein ehemaliger Mann auf der Mannschaft, der mir sagte, dass es so war, als ob er seine Wörter an einem Atombomben-Schockwave festgelegt hätte. Und ich dachte, das ist ein großes Statement.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Okay.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wir haben Familienmitglieder, die verheiratet sind, und sie haben das wirklich gut gemacht. Meine Eltern, leider, trotz ihrer guten Bedeutung, haben es wirklich beschädigt. Es gibt ein Regelbuch, wenn Eltern verheiratet werden. Man spricht nicht schlecht mit dem anderen Vater. Du lässt die Kinder nicht Angst vor der Zukunft haben. Du behältst die Aufmerksamkeit.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich bin super gespannt, dass wir darüber sprechen, weil es eine wirklich wichtige Zeit ist, um all das zu tun. Es gibt mehrere Aspekte. Ich sage ein Stück zuerst, und das klingt immer wie eine Erklärung, aber ich sage es nicht, um mich zu schützen, ich sage es, um jemanden zu schützen, der das hört. Ich denke nicht, dass junge Kinder oder Teenager Psychedelik machen sollten.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und ich habe sie als Teenager gemacht. Also, ich bin da, ich empfehle es nicht. Ich denke, es gibt ein therapeutisches Potenzial, sicher. Für Psilocybin, MDMA, Ibogain. Ich weiß nicht viel über 5-MeO, aber sie scheinen es mit Man kann sich fragen, warum ich LSD nicht in diese Kategorie stelle. Weißt du, warum es nicht so viele LSD-Studien gibt?
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Selbst wenn LSD eine sehr serotonergische, dopaminergische Effekte hat, die ähnlich wie Psilocybin sind, aber auch ein bisschen anders. Weißt du, warum sie LSD nicht studieren? Ich wusste das nicht. Weißt du, warum sie LSD nicht studieren?
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Weißt du, warum sie LSD nicht studieren? Ich wusste das nicht. Weißt du, warum sie LSD nicht studieren? Ich wusste das nicht. Weißt du, warum sie LSD nicht studieren? Ich wusste das nicht. Weißt du, warum sie LSD nicht studieren? Ich wusste das nicht. Wie lange sind die? Sie sind etwa 11 oder 12 Stunden oder mehr. Wow. Ich zeige das, weil das auch so funktioniert.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und es illustriert einen sehr wichtigen Punkt. Und als tangenzieller, aber verbundener Punkt, das sogenannte Acht-Stunden-Feeding-Window für Intermittente Fasten. Weißt du, warum die meisten Studien acht Stunden sind?
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Weil der Typ, mein Freund Sachin Panda, der diese Studien initiierte, am Salk-Institut in San Diego, hatte einen Graduatstudenten, dessen Freundin, die diese Studien rannte, sagte, ich brauche dich ab einem bestimmten Zeitpunkt nach Hause. So he could be in the laboratory for 10 hours a day, but not longer. So they made the feeding window that they studied eight hours.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
So almost all the data on intermittent fasting, at least the bulk of it, is about eight-hour feeding windows because of this graduate student's girlfriend. Wow. So just giving you a sense of kind of how science is done, not haphazardly, but it exists in these practical constraints. Okay, psychedelics, in my opinion, should not be done in the developing brain.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Psychedeliken wie Psilocybin und LSD und zum einen Ibogain, der den Serotonin-System beeinflusst, den größten physiologischen Effekt, und mein Kollege Nolan Williams von Stanford ist derjenige, der diese Studien auf Ibogain pioneert,
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es erhöht Serotonin und es scheint Serotonin zu verwandeln und durch spezifische Serotonin-Rezepte zu reagieren und eine erhöhte Kommunikation zwischen bestimmten Gehirnbereichen, sowohl während der psychischen Reise als auch später, zu erhöhen. Wir müssen uns zwischen diesen Bereichen distinguieren, denn gerade gibt es eine wichtige Frage in diesem Bereich, die ist,
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Does the psychedelic journey matter? Or is the psychedelic journey just a kind of epiphenomenon, where people think they learned something there, but actually there's a bunch of brain rewiring that happens simply because of the chemical of the drug. Drug companies are very interested in taking psychedelics, I'll tell you,
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Leider sind diese Dinge nicht geschehen. Ich war ein 13-, 14-jähriger Kind. Ich bin immer ein, ich würde nicht sagen, ein emotional sensibel Kind. Aber ich habe mich in die Welt eingelassen. Dinge sind für mich intensiv. Wenn ich etwas mag, liebe ich es wirklich. Als ich ein Kind war, liebte ich Fischtanker. Ich habe Fischtanker gegründet. Ich habe all meine Zeit in Aquariums gespart.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
und die psychedelische Erfahrung von ihnen entfernen und nur die körperliche Plastizität herausfinden, die ihnen die Depressionen helfen, etc. Aber für die Zeit dahin scheint es zu sein, dass diese Psychedeliken mindestens zwei Dinge tun. Aus einem subjektiven Standpunkt sind sie die Wasserlinie zwischen der wissenschaftlichen und der unbewussten Meinung. Du kannst deine unbewusste Meinung sehen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich habe High-Dose Psilocybin gemacht. High-Dose würde zwischen vier und fünf Gramm sein. Ich habe das vier verschiedene Male gemacht. Und jedes Mal, das kann ich bestätigen, beginnst du, die Struktur deines Denkens zu sehen. Aber das passiert mit echten Emotionen und in der realen Zeit. Und du bekommst viele Raps. Also, anstelle von etwas zu denken, erlebst du etwas.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und du bekommst die Struktur zu sehen, wie du mit dieser schwierigen Sache oder dieser tollen Sache umgehst. Du kannst über die Familie denken und all die Dinge über deine Familie fühlen. Max emotional state, maybe ramped up to level 11 out of 10. And it's on repeat over and over and over.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
My understanding of Ibogaine, and I haven't done Ibogaine, is that people get basically a very clear picture of previous life events They talk about it kind of rolodexing through and that the person on Ibogaine seems to feel a certain sense of agency and they can kind of modify either the understanding of or the actions that occurred within that picture. Was that accurate?
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ja, realistische Erinnerungen, die geschehen sind. Das ist ungewöhnlich bei Psychedelikern. Normalerweise sind es nicht realistische Erinnerungen, die Menschen erleben. Bei Ibogaine sind es realistische Erinnerungen. In Gesprächen mit Nolan Williams, den ich vorhin gesehen habe, ist er Professor, er ist ein triple Board Certified Neurologist Psychiatrist.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Er ist wie einer dieser Phenoms, den ich meinen Kollegen bei Stanford genannt habe. Er ist derjenige, der das Gehirnbild und die transkraniale magnetische Stimulation von Menschen macht. die Ibogaine und DMT nehmen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Sie haben vorhin dieses Jahr ein wunderschönes Buch veröffentlicht, das zeigt, dass es nach dem Post-Ibogaine-Treatment eine ziemlich enorme Verbesserung in den Symptomen von PTSD gibt und in der Verschmutzung von Verletzungen unterschiedlicher Art gibt. Das ist wild. Nicht nur Alkohol, sondern auch andere Formen von Verletzungen, beheblich und chemisch.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und es scheint, dass sich eine erhöhte Gehirnkommunikation zwischen Bereichen wie der Insula, welches ein Gehirnbereich ist, das eine Art internes Körpergefühl repräsentiert, aber auch die Zirkel zwischen der Insula und anderen Gehirnbereichen, die in der Erinnerung involviert sind. Jetzt denkt man also daran, wie sich Erinnerungen fühlen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
wie auch Bereiche des Gehirns, die in kontextabhängigem Entscheidungsvermögen involviert sind. Man kann also vielleicht bessere Entscheidungen über Alkohol machen oder bessere Entscheidungen über, wie man sich über bestimmte Dinge fühlt und sogar anders über bestimmte Dinge, die passiert sind, während man trotzdem versteht, dass sie geschehen sind und sie in diesem richtigen Weg geschehen sind.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Man erzielt also keine Erinnerungen, man modifiziert die emotionale Erfahrung und die Antwort auf diese. Das ist unglaublich. Das mit den Daten auf Depressionen, der sogenannten Major Depression, die Psilocybin-Studien. Und obwohl nicht alle Studien die gleiche Anzahl der Effekte zeigen, kann man sehen, dass die Menschen in Rettung von majoren Depressionen gehen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Severe Depressionen, die zu majorer Erlösung von vielen depressiven Symptomen gebracht werden, wie gemessen von verbessertem Schlaf, verbessertem Ausblick auf das Leben usw. Es ist sehr beeindruckend, besonders wenn man sich mit den traditionellen SSRI-Typen vergleicht. die ihren Platz haben können, besonders bei Dingen wie OCD, aber wir wissen, dass sie auch ihre Probleme hatten.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wenn wir über Psychedelika sprechen, ist es sehr wichtig, zu verstehen, dass wir über Gehirnplastik sprechen. Die Leute werden ein bisschen überrascht und denken, okay, das ist wie ein Drogen, das dich wirklich verrückt macht. Nein, das sind Drogen, die Menschen helfen, durch vorherige Probleme zu arbeiten oder die Art und Weise, wie sie Probleme durchführen. Und sie erhöhen die Plastik.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Dann kamen die tropischen Böden. Dann kam Puberty. Und dann waren es Skateboarderinnen und Mädchen. Was auch immer ich drauf bin, bin ich wirklich drauf. So kurz nach dem Zeitpunkt, als ich Puberty hatte, spielten mich meine Eltern zusammen. Sie kämpften viel. Ich habe mir viele Ideen entwickelt, welche Eltern falsch waren, und das ganze Ding.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Sie ermöglichen eine Modifikation des Gehirns. Das ist es, was sie tun. Und die SSRIs sind interessant, weil es nicht gedacht wurde, dass Depressionen das Verlangen von Serotonin sind. Niemand hat das in der psychischen Gemeinschaft wirklich gedacht. Es wurde gedacht, dass die SSRIs in die Gehirnplastik tappen können. Die Therapie sollte in die Gehirnplastik tappen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber jetzt sagt jeder Psychiater, den ich gesprochen habe, dass sie ziemlich gespannt sind auf das Potenzial für Psilocybin, Potentially Ibogaine as well, but Psilocybin for the treatment of major depression. Now, this is not some self-appointed shaman doing this. These are clinical studies. The Ibogaine is particularly interesting because of the addiction relief that people experience.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
The challenge is, you have to be heart rate monitored, Das ist nicht für alle. Und ich habe gefragt, ob es schrecklich ist, dass manche Leute denken, dass es eine gewisse Anzahl von Ehrgeiz benötigt, um in das zu lehnen. Das ist sicherlich ein 5-MeO. Wo sind wir bei diesem Thema? Okay, in Bezug auf die Aufmerksamkeit von der FDA ist es noch nicht passiert.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
In order to understand where things are at right now, we need to understand, you've got groups like Veteran Solutions that are doing amazing work trying to get FDA approval. This stuff is happening out of the US and then people are being scanned in the US, like in Nolan's lab, Robin Carter Harris' lab and other labs. The FDA approval has hinged largely on this thing with MDMA.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
MDMA, so-called ecstasy, is methylene-dioxymethamphetamine. Methylenedioxymethamphetamin. Es ist Methamphetamin, aber es wird von Methamphetamin modifiziert. Und der nette Effekt ist, dass Serotonin und Dopamin dramatisch erhöht werden. Methamphetamin, Street-Methamphetamin, ist meistens Dopamin und Noradrenalin oder Adrenalin. Was haben wir hier?
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wir haben ein Drogen, MDMA, das, assuming it's pure and assuming it's applied in a clinical study, has been shown multiple times now to lead to not just improvement, but remission of posttraumatic stress disorder. Remission. Es ist ein Empathogen, nicht ein Halluzinogen oder ein Halluzinogen-Psychedelik. Es ist nicht ein traditioneller. Es ist also ein Empathogen, eine sogenannte Herzmedizin.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es erlaubt Menschen, ihre Gefühle zu fühlen, ihre Gefühle zu fühlen, selbst wenn es um sehr traurige Events geht. Und mit einem Therapeuten zu arbeiten, um das mit ihnen durchzuarbeiten. Wir sprechen also nicht von Rauchen oder so etwas. Das ist nicht so. Es sind Menschen in der Augenmaske oder wenn man mit einem Therapeuten spricht. Okay, this all sounds great, right? So, where is the block?
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Why did the FDA not approve MDMA this last year? Okay, this gets into some kind of darker territory, but I'm just going to tell you what I am aware of, and where I'm wrong, I'm sure I'll be corrected. The MAPS group Es wurde von Rick Doblin geführt. Er ist ein guter Mensch und hat eine enorme Anzahl an Arbeit gemacht, um MDMA zum FDA-Approval zu bringen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Sie haben Forschungsstudien gemacht und sie werden weiter machen. Sie haben diese tollen Ergebnisse erhalten. Diese Erhöhungsrate ist wirklich hoch. Es gibt Risiken mit MDMA, weil es ein Amphetamin enthält. Es erhöht die Herzrate, sodass Menschen mit Herzproblemen es nicht nehmen können. Es ist dopaminergisch, es bringt die Menschen ziemlich ab, etc.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und im Grunde habe ich die Aufmerksamkeit an die Schule ausgelassen. Ich war traurig. Ich denke, ich war traurig, furchtbar und traurig. Und mein Leben zuhause war sehr kompliziert. Meine Mutter hatte einen sehr schwierigen Zeitraum, um sich mit dieser Verbrechung umzusetzen. Sie war sehr familienorientiert. Und es war nur ich und sie zuhause.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
I could have predicted that the FDA wasn't going to approve it this round. Why? I don't think there are enough studies yet. That's number one. Two, they had this issue with the control group, which was that people knew if they got the drug or they didn't, because if you didn't get it, not much is happening. And if you did get it, you're... Du fühlst dich wie eine Nudel.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich habe in einem dieser Experimente teilgenommen. Ich habe pure MDMA als Teil einer klinischen Erfahrung genommen. Und du machst nichts anderes am nächsten Tag oder am nächsten Tag. Ich sage dir das. Es ist also nicht so, dass man es einfach zu Hause macht oder mit einem Therapeuten und zurückkommt und die Kinder in der Schule holt. Das wird nicht so funktionieren. Du brauchst Tage ab.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wie das Ibogain-Treatment. Es gab auch, leider, während dieser Trial, weil sie mit Therapisten in einer bestimmten Gemeinschaft gearbeitet haben, ein paar Berichte von sexuellen Unwahrheiten während der Sessionen mit Patienten. Das ist eine... clear, clear barrier for the FDA to just run along and say, okay, right? The FDA, and I understand this because I used to review grants for the NIH.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
I've not worked at the FDA, but I have friends that have, right? A family friend growing up was Don Kennedy, who, if my memory serves me correct, former president of Stanford, but also worked for the FDA for a long time. If I'm not mistaken, he directed the FDA, but if I'm mistaken, I apologize, but he was at the FDA. Die FDA ist eine sehr konservative Organisation.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Jetzt könnt ihr vielleicht sagen, warte, warte, sie werden unsere Nr. 5 in unser Essen geben, und wir können über Nr. 5 sprechen, sie werden das nicht in Europa oder Kanada tun, aber sie werden die FDA nicht anbieten. Ja, es gibt eine höhere Bar für Drogen. zu FDA-Perscription-approveten Drogen in diesem Land, als es für Dinge ist, die in den Nahrungsverbrauch kommen. Das ist die Realität.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Nun, sie werden nicht in den Nahrungsverbrauch verletzt, was dich an diesem Tag töten wird, aber die Dinge machen es durch. Ich möchte nur erwähnen, dass Yellow No. 5 in einer recenten Studie gezeigt wurde. Das wurde von Science Magazine besprochen, einer der Premier-Magazinen, die wirkliche Forschungswissenschaften besprechen. Yellow No.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
5, ich vergesse den technischen Namen, wurde, wenn es auf den Beinen dieser Mäuse verbreitet wurde, transparent to light. You can literally see their organs. People can look this up. This is in mainstream media India. It's wild. What is that in? If I call out a brand, I'll get in trouble. Cheese puff, anything bright orange or yellow. Candy, snack foods, chips. So it's a dye. It's a dye.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und es macht die Haut transparent zum Sonnenlicht. Was ist der nette Effekt davon? Wir wissen es nicht. Die Toxizität ist offensichtlich niedrig genug, dass es nicht die Menschen tötet. Aber früher sprachen wir über Wasser. Und dann gab es diese Sache, die sich in die Internet-Lore gesetzt hat, wie Atrazine in den Pferden, in ihren reproduktiven Organen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Das ist das Werk von Tyrone Hayes bei UC Berkeley. Ja, es ist wahr, dass bestimmte Dinge in Wasser sind. wie Atrazine, die die Entzündung von Endokrin-Zerstörung in Vogeln verursachten. Die Entwicklung der reproduktiven Organe wurde zerstört, und ihr sexuelles Verhalten wurde verändert. Ja, das ist wahr. Es gibt nichts Besonderes darüber. Ich habe von Tyrone auf Berkley gearbeitet.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und wir haben zusammengekommen, aber es war... Ich erinnere mich einfach nur an eine wirklich dunkle Zeit. Ich erinnere mich darauf, dass ich sehr furchtbar war, sehr wütend vor meinem Vater war. Ich war einfach so leidenschaftlich vor ihm.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Er macht großartige Arbeit. Niemand kann das testen. Aber in jedem Fall, Dinge wie Atrazine in der trinkenden Wasser oder in Delta-Wasser, bestimmte Deltas in Kalifornien hatten sie, glaube ich. Ich glaube, das war in der Zentralvallee. Pestizide sind eine große Ursache für Endokrindendisrupte.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Also Menschen in rüren Gemeinschaften sind viel prüfer an kanzerlosen und endokrindend disruptiven Pestiziden. Das ist ein ernsthaftes, ernsthaftes Problem, das auch mit einem bestimmten sozioökonomischen Status korreliert. Und so wird es ziemlich schmutzig. Aber wenn es um Psychedelik geht,
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Einer der wesentlichen Gründe, warum die FDA nicht MDMA für die Behandlung von PTSD ermöglicht hat, trotz dieser wirklich beeindruckenden Daten, ist meiner Meinung nach, weil sie sagten, okay, nicht genug Studien. nicht eine große Kontrollgruppe, und es gab diese beruflichen sexuellen Unwahrheiten. Ich weiß nicht, ich habe diese Fälle noch nicht gelesen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Was also passieren muss, sind mehr Studien, und man kann natürlich keine solchen Situationen haben, aber es hat etwas aufmerksam gemacht, und das ist, dass Menschen sehr vulnerable sind, wenn sie unter der Einfluss dieser Dinge sind. Sie haben keine Aufmerksamkeit, um die besten Entscheidungen zu machen. Es muss also etwas vorhanden sein, z.B. mehrere Therapeuten, Rechnungen und Bindungen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es muss etwas vorhanden sein, um sicherzustellen, dass niemand sich selbst oder andere beschädigt. Und leider wurden einige Dinge nicht richtig behandelt oder wurden nicht richtig behandelt. nicht richtig gemacht haben, während des Ramp-Ups zu dieser potenziellen Anerkennung.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich denke also, Ibogaine wird es in den nächsten paar Jahren durchführen, in Teilen, weil es so eng mit der Veteranengemeinschaft verbunden ist, und weil, ich sage es einfach, dank der wirklich unglaublichen Anerkennung von Veteranen-Solutions und dem ehemaligen Gouverneur Rick Perry,
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es ist wirklich interessant, ich will nicht in Partisan-Politik hineingehen, aber er ist einer der größten Vorschläge für psychologische Medizin. Und er hat das across-the-aisle erreicht. Ich war an einem Event der Veteranen-Solutions, einem Fundraiser, wo ich gesprochen habe. Und Rick Perry und ein Demokrat sind zusammen da.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
um Geld zu erheben, um Psychedelik für die Behandlung von PTSD und Veteranen zu erheben. Das ist für mich, zumindest als ich erwachsen bin, so, wie dieses Land arbeiten sollte. Ich weiß nicht, ob diese Leute einander lieben oder hassen. Es ist egal. Sie sahen einen Ort, wo es wirklich einen Vorteil geben könnte. Die Verteidigungsgemeinschaft steuert diese ganze Sache.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Sie versucht, diese Tätigkeiten anzunehmen, die andere noch nicht versucht haben. Ich denke, die ganze Menge der Daten zeigt, dass es enorm nützlich ist. Ich kenne eine Person, die zurückkam von der Abigail-DMT-Sache, die nachher nicht gut ging. War sie dadurch verursacht? Unklar. Wir wissen es nicht. Sie sind jetzt glücklicherweise in Ordnung.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Sie konnten es nicht spezifisch zu dieser Erfahrung beobachten, aber das ist immer eine Möglichkeit bei jeder Behandlung. Aber die große Mehrheit der Leute, die zurückkommen, ich habe so viele Operatoren gesprochen, die zurückkommen. Ich denke, es wird bald ein Dokumentar über all das kommen, was Amber und Markus zusammengebracht haben. Es sagt einfach so.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und mehr wichtig für meinen Job als Wissenschaftler, sagt mein Kollege Nolan Williams, dass es einfach unglaublich ist, die Gehirnplastik zu sehen, die Veränderung des Verhältnisses zu sehen, die psychologische Veränderung zu sehen. Und das ist ein eins, manchmal auch zwei, aber das ist wirklich ein Ein-Treatment-Eindeut.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich glaube, wir sind jetzt an dem Punkt, wo es so ist, okay, es gibt genug Daten, dass sogar die größten Skeptiker, es ist wichtig, skeptisch zu sein, sogar die größten Skeptiker über Psychedelik steigen zurück und sagen, okay, auch Leute, die auf Addiktion arbeiten, sagen, guck, ich glaube, hier ist wahrscheinlich etwas.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es ist fast wie ein logischer Zirkus, der sich wiederentwickelt. Ich habe es in meinem Podcast noch nicht genug darüber gesprochen, aber eine Bedrohung ist diese unglaubliche Sache, in der eine Person komplett sauer und rational sein kann in jeder anderen Art und Weise, aber in einer Art 2 plus 2 ist 5 für sie. Und dann kommt etwas wie das, was du beschrieben hast, und es verstärkt die Mathematik.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und es verstärkt es in den Kontexten, die zählen, was nicht, wenn man im Retreat oder im Rückkehrzentrum ist, das ist auch wichtig, aber auch, wenn man nach Hause kommt. wenn Dinge stressvoll sind, wenn Dinge gut sind. Ich meine, ich habe Freunde, die verlapsen, wenn Dinge großartig waren. Ich habe einen Freund, es ist wert zu sagen,
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich habe einen Freund, der so stark an Drogen und Alkohol verletzt war, dass seine Frau ihm ein Ultimatum gegeben hat. Er hat den Motorrad am 7. morgens um die Fahrt geworfen, er hat das gemacht, er hat die Pille ausgelassen und die Kinder wurden gefährdet. Er hat alles getan und er hat so hart versucht. Ich meine, er war ziemlich bereit, sich sowohl sauber zu machen als auch sich selbst zu töten.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
oder einfach aufhören. Und der Weg, wie er leidenschaftlich wurde und er ist immer noch leidenschaftlich, ich sage es einfach, ich meine, das ist eine der ersten Dinge, die zweite sind die Eddie-Penny-Konversationen, die mich wirklich in die höhere Macht-Beziehung eingeladen haben. Er ging zu diesem Ort in L.A.,
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Als er mir gesagt hat, dass er dort gehen soll, nachdem er mehrere Rehabs gemacht hatte, sagte er, dass er dort gehen soll und dass er sauber werden soll. Ich sagte, okay, egal, wir haben das schon gehört. Er ging dort, kam raus, hat es voll aufgenommen. Und ich dachte damals, oh Gott, weißt du. Ich meine, er hat es voll aufgenommen. Er ist seitdem sauber geworden. Mann, das ist großartig.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und er ist der glücklichste, der es je gewesen ist. Und die Kinder wachsen. Seine Beziehung wächst. Und sein Arbeit, sein professionelles Leben, sein Demeanor, alles wächst. Und als er da war, dachte ich mir, oh Gott, er hat mehrere Rehabs gemacht. Nichts hat geklappt. Und diese Beziehung hat geklappt. Wow. Und es wird weiter funktionieren. Ich habe von ihm heute Morgen gehört. Das ist unglaublich.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
So, I don't think this, who, you know, have similar stories in the sense that, you know, Eddie had his issues he talked about on this podcast. And, you know... die Beziehung zu Gott. Und Jesus hat es für ihn geschlossen. Oder er hat es für ihn geschlossen durch das. Und ich bin ein Wissenschaftler, also kenne ich die Erklärung nicht.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Was ich weiß, ist, dass das zwei unglaubliche Datenpunkte sind, die ich beobachtet habe. Denn das sind zwei Leute, die waren, ich wusste Eddie nicht, als er darin war, aber sie kämpften. Der andere Mann sah definitiv, dass er kämpft und einfach
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und dann kam es zu einem naheliefen Fehler, nach einem naheliefen Fehler, nach einem naheliefen Fehler, nach einem naheliefen Fehler, nach einem naheliefen Fehler, nach einem naheliefen Fehler, nach einem naheliefen Fehler Ich habe es mit Ibogaine gesehen und auch mit den beiden, wie du siehst. Ich weiß nicht, ob es nur eine Lösung gibt.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich muss sagen, die Pandemie war eine sehr schwierige Zeit für viele Arztinnen und Arzt, die auf 12-Stunden-Meetings abhängig waren, um auf Drogen und Alkohol zu bleiben. Eine wirklich schwierige Zeit. Und es gab Menschen, die in der Kommunikation bleiben und sich um einander kümmern. Man, ich habe das noch nie gedacht. Die Auswirkungen der Lockdowns
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich meine, es gibt Dinge, die leichter sind, wie schlechte Entscheidungen darüber, mit wem zu verabschieden, schlechte Entscheidungen darüber, mit wem zu verabschieden. Du hast das auch gesehen. Die Herausforderungen bei der Sozialisierung, die Kinder hatten.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber dann die Erhöhungsrate von Drogen und Alkohol oder die Menschen, die unter diesen Bedingungen entdeckt wurden, das ist einfach erstaunlich. Und ich denke, wir bezahlen den Preis dafür. Und ich muss meinen Hat an die Veteranen-Gemeinschaft und Veteranen-Solutions schicken.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und ich bin nicht Partizan, aber diese Politiker oder ehemalige Politiker, würde ich sagen, riskieren ihre Reputation, um sicherzustellen, dass diese Lösungen, wie Abogain und Sulsivan und MDMA, sicher gemacht werden, im richtigen klinischen Kontext, dass diese es schlussendlich an die FDA-Approbation bringen. Es ist so wichtig. Ich muss eine Frage stellen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Auf der einen Seite ist die FDA in diesem Land einer der stärksten Regulierungsböden der Welt. Wenn ein Drogen auf den Markt gebracht wird, Es muss eine sehr stringente Toxikologie durchgeführt werden, so wie sie die LD50-Studie umfasst, auf welcher Dose die 50% der Bevölkerung sterben, etc. von laboratorischen Tieren.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich meine, eine Menge Arbeit wird gemacht, um das Modell zu verhindern, dass man an jeder Pharmazie etwas bekommt. Das ist gut. Stemmzellen zum Beispiel. Ich denke, Stemmzellen sind eine potenzielle Therapie.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich weiß auch, dass es eine Stemmzellenklinik in Florida gibt, die Stemmzellen in die Augen von Patienten mit makulärer Degeneration injiziert hat, ein Feld, von dem ich von meiner Ophthalmologie-Rolle etwas weiß. Diese Leute sind blind geworden.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Die FDA hat also sichergestellt, dass Stemmcelltherapien nicht nur auf den Markt gehen dürfen, weil manche Stemmcelltherapien vielleicht in die Knie oder in die Schulter bringen könnten. In diesem Fall sind Stemmcell-Injectionen in die Augen, die Menschen blind machen. Hätten sie nicht reingegangen und das Gehäuse runtergelassen, hätte man viele Probleme.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Menschen mit Glaucoma könnten sich mit Tätigkeiten befinden, die sie schneller blind machen könnten. Also müssen wir die wichtigen Arbeiten anerkennen, die sie machen. Ich habe eine Freundin, eine Neuroscientistin in Kanada, die vor kurzem über die Fruchtlupe gesprochen hat. Wie kommt es, dass die Fruchtlupe in den USA so viele Sachen wie Yellow No.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
5, vielleicht gibt es das, vielleicht nicht, aber all diese Futterstifte, die niemand sagen kann. Und in Kanada benutzen sie Karotte-Juice oder so etwas. Und sie hat gesagt, ich werde schauen, ob das wirklich so ist. Sie geht in einen kanadischen Supermarkt, sie lebt in Kanada, es ist Montreal, glaube ich. Es nimmt die Frühtlupen-Maschine aus dem Schlauch.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und klar genug, es fehlt an all diesen Chemikalien, die hier wahrscheinlich erlaubt werden. Also denke ich, dass dieses Land eine Asymmetrie von Stringenz hat. Das klingt wie technische Sprache, wo es bestimmte Dinge sehr stringent ist, um auf den Markt zu kommen, andere Dinge viel zu wenig. Ist es jetzt die große Ernährungslobby? Ich weiß es nicht.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Was wir wissen, ist, dass die Nutzung von Nutzung von Nutzung von Nutzung von Nutzung von Nutzung von Nutzung von Nutzung von Nutzung von Nutzung von Nutzung von als Vermögen, weil es die Verlustfähigkeit oder die Laufzeit dieser Lebensmittel verändert.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Also in diesem Land haben wir viele Lebensmittel, wir haben viele Preservativen und solche Dinge ermöglicht, zu essen, die die Lebensmittel weniger gesund machen, aber gut für die Ernährungsindustrie sind. So that's true. Then people will say, well, that brings food costs down and, you know, food is cheap in this country compared to other countries. Calories are cheap in this country.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Not healthy calories, but food is cheap. And then people say, well, that's the obesity problem. Not to weave too many themes here, but if Ozempic taught us anything, it's that people in this country are obese because they eat too many calories. Ich erinnere mich an die Leute, die darüber diskutieren, ob es Seed-Öle ist oder nicht. Ich mag nicht Seed-Öle, denn sie riechen schrecklich.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich mag also Olivenöl und Butter und solche Sachen. Aber ich glaube nicht, dass Seed-Öle das macht, was Menschen fett macht. es ist wahrscheinlich, dass sie zu viele Kalorien essen und viele Kalorien in Erdöl. Wir lieben die Idee, dass es nur eine Sache ist, aber es ist nur ein Verhalten. Zu viele Kalorien im Vergleich zu zu wenig Aktivität. Die Leute verbrauchen nicht so viel Energie wie früher.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Die Leute verbrauchen ungefähr 3.500 Kalorien pro Tag und das sind viele Kalorien für Menschen, die nicht aktiv sind. Osempic hat uns das beigebracht. Denke ich, Osempic ist die Behandlung von Obesität? Nein, ich denke, dass Muskelverlust ein Problem ist. Die Leute brauchen immer noch zu exercitieren und zu trainieren. Denke ich, dass einige Menschen davon profitieren können? Ja. Wahrscheinlich.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ist es zu teuer für die meisten Leute? Ja. Wird das für die Drogenfirmen gut funktionieren? Absolut. Können Menschen diese Zempik mikrodosen? Die Leute machen das jetzt und bekommen den größten Effekt. Sagt jemand nicht, dass ich das sage? Es scheint, dass die Leute das jetzt tun. Ich bin sowieso nicht hier oder da mit dem Thema.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Was ich als Wissenschaftler, der öffentliche Bildung tut, gerne tun würde, ist zu sagen, die FDA geht nicht irgendwo hin. Für mich ist die FDA-Erlaubnis wichtig, weil, wenn Ärzte Dinge wie MDMA für PTSD preskriben wollen, brauchen sie die FDA-Erlaubnis, sonst machen sie das mit dem Potenzial, sich mit einem Verletzungsrecht zu beurteilen oder ihre Lizenz zu verlieren.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich will nicht zu lange auf das rufen, aber zu sagen, ob ich die FDA liebe? Ich habe keine Emotionen vor ihnen. Ich würde sie gerne tun, was sie immer noch tun, nämlich zu schauen, was in den Körpern eingepackt wird. Ich wünschte, dass sie die gleiche Art von Stringenz zu den Arten von Füßen, die in die Erwachsenen hineingehen, wie sie es für Kinder haben. Keine Plastik-Sippe-Köpfe?
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Okay, aber was ist mit Adoleszenten, die durch die Pubertät gehen? Warum machen wir das nur für Kinder von drei Jahren? Und ich denke, in diesem Land haben wir die folgende Reaktion. Wenn etwas neu ist, wie die Gene-Therapie neu war, ein Kind stirbt in einer Gene-Therapie-Triale, die zehn Jahre gedauert hat. Stemmzellen, die sind neu.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es gab dieses Problem, dass Stemmzellen in die Augen der Menschen gehen und sie blind werden. Es hat die Stemmzellen-Therapie vermutlich mindestens fünf Jahre gedauert. Hoffentlich wird das kommen. Und sie werden bald sicher sein. Also auf der einen Seite haben wir diese sehr, wie du siehst, dritte Räder-Response zu Dingen, die neu sind, wenn etwas wirklich schlecht passiert.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Auf der anderen Seite sind wir in meiner Meinung weit zu nackt darüber, Nicht zu ermutigen oder sogar gesundheitliche Verhältnisse in unseren Jugendlichen und Jugendlichen zu benötigen. Sonnenlicht, Schlaf, Übungen, das sind die gewählten Wege, länger zu leben und gesund zu werden.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und wir sind auf dem Regierungs- und öffentlichen Niveau viel zu nützlich, wenn es darum geht, die Dinge zu ermöglichen, die dich nicht sofort töten, aber die dich langsam verletzen können, über Zeit. wie z.B. Dienste im Essen, vielleicht auch Dinge wie Fluorid, obwohl du gehört hast, dass meine Vorstellung vorhin etwas daran verbunden ist.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es gibt also diese Hyperstringenzierung, eine dritte Reihenfolge an Dinge, die wirklich schlechte Effekte haben. Okay, wir gehen nicht so nahe, aber wir sind okay mit vielen Dingen, die für eine sehr lange Zeit vorhanden sind. Und ich werde nur auf dem Rekord sagen, dass ich einige Kollegen bei Stanford und anderswo habe, die unglaublich gesund und robust sind.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich kenne auch Ärzte und Wissenschaftler aus den USA, die ich kenne, die nicht gesund sind. Sie haben schlechte Verhaltensbedingungen, Verletzungsprobleme, psychologische Probleme. Seine Kinder kämpfen, weil sie nicht gesund sind, auf allen Ebenen. Ein Wissenschaftler oder Physiker gibt dir keine Gesundheit. Es gibt dir das Recht, über die Gesundheit in einem bestimmten Bereich zu sprechen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich bekomme Anrufe von Kardiologen, die sagen, was sie an der ketogenischen Diät für Alzheimer denken. Sie fragen mich. Ich bin kein Experte in dem, aber Type 3 Diabetes wird manchmal genannt. Für bestimmte Formen von Dementia kann es helfen. Es ist eine Gehirnmetabolismus. Kann es Alzheimer beheben? Wahrscheinlich nicht.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Also, wenn Ärzte mir diese Fragen über Dinge außerhalb ihres Feldes fragen, dann sagt es mir sofort, dieser Mann oder Frau kann mir über das Herz und nichts anderes erzählen. Und nur weil jemand einen M.D. hat, bedeutet das nicht, dass er weiß, worüber er spricht, über die meisten Dinge. Und dann wiederum, in Wahrheit, nur weil jemand einen Ph.D.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
hat, bedeutet das nicht, dass er weiß, worüber er spricht, über die meisten Dinge. Eines der Gründe, warum ich den Podcast liebe, ist, dass ich das, was ich glaube, die besten Experten der Welt sind, durch mein Studio filtert, und ich kann sie direkt fragen. Ja, ja. Also, es tut mir leid, so eine aufregende Antwort zu geben.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich denke, es gibt immer die Temptation auf der Seite der Audienzen, zu sagen, magst du die FDA oder liebst du die FDA? Die FDA ist hier, um zu bleiben. Und wir sollten sie drücken, um das Richtige zu tun, um uns zu schützen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und die Dinge, die in Kindern, nicht nur in Kindern, in hochprozessierten Füßen, die Mikroplastik, die Thalys, die BPAs, alles, was wir tun müssen, ist, unsere kanadischen Nachbarn zu schauen, weil sie sagen, sie erlauben es nicht. Sind sie so gesund wie wir? Ich weiß es nicht. Aber sie erlauben es nicht. In Europa erlauben sie es nicht.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und ich würde sagen, dass unsere Nahrung wirklich schrecklich ist. schmerzhaft mit Dingen kontaminiert, die mir wirklich ein Wunsch sind. Und jetzt fangen mehr Leute an, darüber zu sprechen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Also, ich gebe dir mein, mein Glauben darüber, dass MDMA als Methylen-Dioxymethamphetamin entwickelt in den frühen 1900er-Jahren, und dann wiederhergestellt von Sascha Schulgen, der wie ein Renegade-Chemist in Berkeley war. Er und seine Frau mussten alle diese verschiedenen Drogen mischen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Die Therapie-Community in der Bay Area nahm sie an und hatte dann Gespräche darüber, was funktioniert oder nicht. Und sie sagten, oh, das ist ein wirklich starkes Empathogen, das die Gefühle des Liebes und der Selbstakzeptanz verbessert. Das war so, wie es war. Es gibt einen tollen Buch, der PIKAL, P-I-K-A-L, ich glaube, es steht für Phenol-Ethylen. Das heißt, ich habe es gekannt und liebte es.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es ist wie der schlechteste Buch-Titel jemals. Und ich habe wahrscheinlich die erste Karte im Akronym missprononiert. In jedem Fall. Ich denke, als ein Drogen, das synthetisch gemacht ist, steht MDMA die höchste Chance, als eine Pharmazeutik zu entwickeln. Wobei, wie du gesagt hast, Du siehst keinen Cannabin, der eine Pflanze ist. Du siehst keinen Preskript-Cannabin.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Nun, es gibt jetzt kommerziellen Cannabin, weil er in einigen Orten legal ist oder in einigen Orten dekriminalisiert wird. Aber ich denke, du hast hier deinen Finger auf den richtigen Knopf. Es kann auf Milligramm-Niveau getestet werden, bis zu einem hohen Akkurat für das, was in Trial gearbeitet hat. Es kann von einer Pille oder einer Kapsel verpackt werden.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und das macht für einen guten Drogen für den Verkauf in der pharmazeutischen Industrie. Während bei Psilocybin gibt es eine natürliche Alternative. Es gibt auch synthetische Psilocybin, die oft in diesen Studien von Psilocybin benutzt wird. Aber... Menschen haben herausgefunden, wie viele Gramm Mischung zu wie vielen Gramm Psilocybin entspricht.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Also wenn Menschen sagen, sie haben vier Gramm, eine Heroik-Dose oder zwei Gramm genommen. Typisch die Studien von Depressionen, wie ich mich erinnere, haben Menschen zwischen zwei Gramm genommen. Sie haben natürlich eine Dosis-Response gemacht, aber, oder sie hatten verschiedene Dosis-Bedingungen. Aber die Mikrodose war, glaube ich, drei Milligramm.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und ich glaube, die klinisch effektive Dose war irgendwo zwischen zwei und drei Gramm. Jemand sollte das beobachten. Aber das waren nicht zwei bis drei Gramm Mischung. Das waren zwei bis drei Gramm Psilocybin. Und abhängig von der Mischung oder der Spezies der Mischung, dann wissen die Leute. Oh gut. Richtig.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Also, um es schlicht zu machen, kann MDMA in eine Verschiebungsmedizin verwendet werden, die von einer pharmazeutischen Firma verkauft wird. So kann Silicibon, es kann synthetisches Silicibon sein, aber es gibt natürliche Alternativen, mit denen es schwierig ist, zu kämpfen, aufgrund der Kosten. Sehr schwierig, aufgrund der Kosten zu kämpfen. Okay.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wobei, mit etwas wie, wir haben über LSD gesprochen, das ist ein bisschen separat, weil LSD von Ergot natürlich hervorgehoben ist, Die meisten Leute werden es nicht machen. Obwohl die Formulare irgendwo draußen sind. Ich weiß nicht. Ich gehe nicht auf die dunkle Webseite. Aber die Formulare sind draußen. Aber eine Pharmakompanie könnte wahrscheinlich damit arbeiten.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Mit LSD arbeiten und ein Drogen machen. So wie sie es in diesen Studien in der Schweiz erforscht haben. Die Schweiz liebt ihre Pharmakompanien. Wenn man also nachdenkt, wie effektiv ein Drogen auf den Markt gebracht werden wird, macht MDMA am meisten Sinn. Es ist interessant, denn eine große Depression ist sehr, sehr normal.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich denke, 10% der Bevölkerung wird einen großen depressiven Ereignis haben. Manche Menschen haben eine recurrente große Depression. Also denkt man, Silizid wäre der größte Markt, den man sich vorstellen würde. Aber dann gibt es eine natürliche Alternative,
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Während bei MDMA und PTSD, ja, PTSD ist sehr üblich in der Veteranengemeinschaft, es ist sehr üblich in anderen Gemeinschaften, aber ist es so abhängig wie Depressionen? Nein. Nein. Das beantwortet deine Frage. Ich denke, es gibt mehr finanzielle Hinweise. Und ich denke auch, die FDA ist... mit etwas, das synthetisch ist, als etwas, das natürlich entsteht.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Denn es ist mehr das, womit sie gewohnt sind. Okay. Es ist einfach das, was sie tun. Sie handeln mit Komponenten. Sie sind Chemiker. Sie sind Gruppen von Chemikern und Ärzten und Toxikologen, die die chemischen Strukturen betrachten. Und Psilocybin hat eine chemische Struktur. Es sieht eigentlich viel nach Serotonin aus. Aber es ist einfach... Es ist einfach nicht wirklich ihr typisches Domain.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Jetzt ist Ibogaine noch mehr in der Frage, wie man ein pharmazeutisches Aber weil die meisten nicht wachsen oder ihre eigene Ibogaine finden, ist es schwer zu vorstellen, dass die Leute davon aufhören könnten, wenn es nicht eine wirklich valide Suche gab, die sie verpackt hat und so weiter.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich meine, die Veteranen-Community hat so viel aus dem Fakt, dass du in Mexiko diese Klinik hast, glaube ich, dass sie bereit ist, mit amerikanischen Universitäten zusammenzuarbeiten und so weiter.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Das sollte nie geschehen haben, nicht einmal. Und gemeinsame Freunde in der Gemeinschaft, in deiner Gemeinschaft, ich meine, sie werden dir sagen, du hast einen Anruf von so und so, sagen sie, er hat eine Waffe, die er bereit hat, in seinen Mund zu legen. Diese sind echte Geschichten, wie Sie wissen. Ich kenne sie nur, weil ich einen solchen Portal in diese Gemeinschaft habe.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und die Leute haben mich genug vertraut, um zu sagen, okay, so und so schläft überhaupt nicht. Wer weiß, wer sie helfen kann, mit ihrer Angst zu helfen. Ich habe einige Geräte, und ich habe Episoden gemacht, und ich kann Leuten Dinge anzeigen. Aber wenn die Leute über eine bestimmte Linie des runtergehenden Spirals gehen, Es ist ein bisschen schwarz und weiß an diesem Punkt.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Sie werden sich entweder töten, oder sie werden sich nicht töten. Und diejenigen, die sich nicht töten, versuchen, sich aus dieser Spirale zu entfernen, indem sie ihre Optiken zu einigen fremden Freunden aussorgen und bemerken, dass sie nicht in Kontrolle ihrer eigenen Vorstellungen über sich selbst oder die Welt haben.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und es ist beeindruckend, so viele Leute zu sehen, die den Ibogain-Test machen, zurückkommen und sagen, ich bin gut. Es ist wirklich erstaunlich. Und ich habe, wegen der Veteranen-Solutions und dieser Fundraiser, die ich gesprochen habe, und ich bekomme keine Rückmeldung. Sie bezahlen mich nicht.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich nehme Zeit aus der Arbeit, wo ich Geld verdiene, um zu diesen Dingen zu gehen, um Geld für Nolans Lab zu erzielen. um diese Dinge zu tun. Ich will es einfach klar machen, weil die Leute immer sagen, was ist der Incentiv? Der Incentiv ist, wie du gesagt hast, Menschen sterben, die nicht sterben müssen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und manchmal wird etwas passieren, und das ist ein paar Mal passiert, ich nenne keine Namen, weil sie ihre Privatsphäre lieben, aber die Weibchen von einigen von den Leuten, die sich getötet haben, zeigen sich zu diesen Dingen. Das sind diejenigen, die wirklich, wenn du sie hörst sprechen, oder ihre Kinder sind da, und sie sind einfach so, Bitte, bitte, bitte, bitte.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ja, die klassischen unvergleichbaren Unterschiede. Ich weiß es nicht. Ich glaube, sie wollten verschiedene Dinge, diese Art von Messungen, die man hört. I think it was different values. I think fundamentally different values. So at 14, 15, all the kids in my school, I went to a very academically ambitious school. The school is Gunn High School with two Ns.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und ich denke, einfach verstehen, dass es eine Lösung gibt. Sie wünschten, sie hätten Zugang zu dieser Lösung. Ich bin froh, dass wir darüber sprechen. Es wird immer erst in der Veteranen-Gruppe sein, und dann wird es in der größeren Gruppe kommen. Die Suizide-Rate ist unglaublich hoch. Eine Sache, über die ich mich immer mehr interessiere, ist die Erfahrung, die ich kenne.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich bin für alle betroffen, aber ich bin sehr betroffen mit den Suiziden-Raten und den Depressionen von jungen Männern in den USA und überall. Aber wir haben eine ernsthafte Identitätskrise. über die die Leute anfangen zu sprechen, aber auch nur die Anmerkung davon klingt so, als würden sie alle zusammen reisen und schlechte Dinge tun.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Nein, diese jungen Leute sind so verwirrt darüber, ob sie überhaupt einen Wert in der Welt haben oder wie sie ihren generativen Druck in positiven Wegen ausdrücken. Ich denke, die meiste von ihnen beginnt mit einer Lack von, ich werde es nur sagen, einer starken, im richtigen Sinne des Wortes, paternalen Figur.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich fühle mich sehr glücklich, dass ich jetzt eine wirklich gute Beziehung mit meinem Vater habe. Es hat viel Arbeit gedauert, um ihn zu reparieren. An seinem 80. Geburtstag habe ich ihn bemerkt, dass wir gut sind. Er kommt eigentlich auf meinen Podcast. Das ist unglaublich. Ich liebe meine Mutter, ich liebe meinen Vater, ich liebe meine Schwester bis zum Ende und zurück.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Mein Vater und ich hatten unsere Unterschiede. Ich meine, und einige meiner Familienmitglieder werden wahrscheinlich sagen, oh Gott, ich kann nicht glauben, dass er so spricht. Aber ich sage, es war tatsächlich durch meine Beziehung mit Eddie, durch das Prägen regelmäßig, durch das wirklich Gottes, durch die Bereiche meines Lebens, in denen ich nicht wirklich aufgewachsen war, und...
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich habe gehört, dass es wichtig war, mit meinem Vater etwas richtig zu machen. Nicht nur für mich und für ihn, sondern auch für die Mission, auf der ich bin, um Menschen zu helfen. Das war für mich wie... Ein Wort kam wieder und wieder und wieder in der Glauben. Und... Ja, wir stimmen immer noch von Dingen ab. Und ich kann auch...
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Er ist ein Mann, der das Beste mit dem, was er hatte, versucht hat. Und er hat mir so viele tolle Geschenke gegeben. Ich meine, ein Lieb des Wissenschafts, ein Lieb des Lernens. Ja, es gibt Dinge, die ich wünschte, dass er nicht gemacht hätte. Und ich bin sicher, wenn ich Vater bin, fühlt mein Sohn das gleiche.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber tatsächlich, wenn ich darf, habe ich dieses Buch gelesen, das mir von einem anderen Teamleiter vorgestellt wurde. Was ist mit euch? Es ist ein etwas kontroverses Buch, aber wenn ich es hätte... Das Buch heißt Iron John. Habt ihr das Buch von Robert Bly gelesen? Ein sehr mächtiger Buch über Mädchen und Männer, ihre Beziehungen zu sich selbst.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es ist ein bisschen ausgedacht in bestimmten Dimensionen, aber nachdem ich in einem Zuhause bin, in dem mein Vater separat lebt, und dieses ganze Ding, ich denke, es hat mir wirklich ein Kord geschlagen. Aber es gibt dieses... Es gibt einen Vers, kann ich ihn lesen? Es ist ein sehr guter Vers. Absolut.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Bly sagte, und ich weiß nicht, ob er es für sich sagt, oder ob er es jemand anderem bezeichnet, aber er sagte, dass der gesamte Allgemeinvater in den Jungs Leben eine Flasche verlassen lässt, durch die Dämonen durchgehen können. Und das schlug mich überall hin. Und ich dachte mir, das ist richtig.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Für jede schlechte Sache, die zu mir gekommen ist, durch mich, aus mir, die ich vergesse, die ich anders machen wollte, die Herausforderungen, die ich anders auswählen wollte. Ich blöde meinen Vater nicht. Darüber geht es nicht. Aber ich denke, wir sind jetzt an einem Punkt in der Evolution dieses Landes. Ich glaube, es ist eine Evolution, nicht eine Devolution. Ich bin ein Optimist. Wo...
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wir wissen nicht, wer zu suchen ist. Es gibt einen Lack eines internen oder externen, paternalen Modells, der uns hilft, zwischen einer wirklich nicht guten Straße, einer wirklich nicht guten Straße, einer okayen Straße, einer ziemlich guten Straße und einer besten Straße zu unterscheiden.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
It's also the school that's infamous for having one of the highest suicide rates at one time. Really? Yeah, so it's a very academically intense school. I lived over the fence from high school. It's a lot of pressure. A lot of pressure. Kids were killing themselves by standing in front of trains on the train tracks in Palo Alto at a frequent enough basis that it was covered by national media. Wow.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wir lernen das in Teilen durch Trial und Error, aber wir lernen das auch in Teilen, indem wir uns gefragt werden, was zu tun ist. an wichtigen Momenten. Und ich schaue auf die Landschaft von Podcasts. Du, Joe, Lex, Jocko. Ich schaue auf Figuren wie Goggins, Andy Stumpf. Es scheint viele Teamleute in der Mischung zu sein. Aber es gibt auch andere. Chad Wright, Rich Roll, Jay Shetty.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich möchte nicht das Bild darstellen, dass es nur ein einziger Archetyp ist. Und was ich sehe, ist eine Menge, sicherlich eine Fraueneinrichtung. Meine ist sicherlich sehr viel 50-50.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber ich höre von diesen jungen Leuten, und auch von Leuten, die mein eigenes Alter haben oder älter, dass wir von der Idee fliehen, dass es eine gewisse Art und Weise von Protokollen gibt, die man folgen kann, um sich durch die Wicke zu bringen, um eine solidare Person innen und außen zu werden. Und es gibt keine Ausgaben, richtig?
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber wenn ich die psychische Krankheit zwischen Männern in diesem Land und Frauen betrachte, aber wir fokussieren uns hier auf Männer, denke ich, dass wir, auch in Häusern, in denen die Väter da waren, manchmal waren sie nicht da, weil sie Verbrechen verursachten. Ich denke, manchmal waren sie nicht da, weil sie nicht da waren. Und ich denke, manchmal waren sie da und waren wirklich tolle Väter.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und ich habe Freunde wie diese, sie waren tolle Väter, tolle Kinder. Ich bin sehr dankbar für meine Erfahrungen. Und ich bin sehr dankbar dafür, dass ich mit meinem Vater Dinge aufgebaut habe. Und ich glaube, dass ich die Fehler, die ich gemacht habe, meine eigenen. Das ist ein Teil meines Erwachsenen. Aber ich glaube auf diese Quote.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich glaube, wenn wir jung sind, wenn wir fünf, zehn, 15, 20 Jahre alt sind, Wenn es nicht jemanden gibt, der uns rechtfertigt, oder wir haben die Botschaft nicht internalisiert, was die richtige Sache ist, driften wir. Und das ist für mich das, wo die höhere Macht und die Beziehung zu Gott und die Beziehung zu Gott und die Beziehung zu Gott das auch unterstützen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich versuche nicht, das in einen Sermon zu machen. Das ist nur meine Erfahrung. Und wir brauchen etwas außer uns selbst, das wir schauen können, wenn wir Probleme haben, um uns richtig zu steuern. Das können Brüder, Familie und Freunde sein. Wir brauchen mehr Männer, die andere Männer unterstützen, um ein guter Mann zu sein.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und nicht nur die Beispiele, wie sie in der Geschäftsführung erfolgreich sind, oder das und das. Eigentlich habe ich einen Freund, den ich als sehr, sehr wissenswert ansehe, eine Frau. Sie ist eine Mutter. Sie sagte, es ist ein bisschen seltsam, wenn man sich alle Toys in einem Toyshop anschaut. Sie hat einen Sohn.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Glücklicherweise hat sich das, soweit ich verstehe, entschlossen. Als ich dort war, war es nicht so. Nun, es gibt zwei Schulen in der Stadt, wo ich geboren wurde. Die anderen Schulen waren Kinder von Kindern, die viel reicher waren.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und die Boxen von all diesen Toys, die es heutzutage gibt, sind wie ein Krieger, der von all dieser Zerstörung hinter ihm rauskommt. Er hat gewonnen, und er ist alleine. Und ich frage, wirklich? Sie sagt, ja, geh' schauen. Ich sagte, okay, geh' schauen. Und es ist wahr. Es gibt kein Bild, dass man in einer Gemeinschaft ist, oder mit der Familie.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wir haben dieses Modell geschaffen, dieses Lohn, Wolf und Triumph. Interessant. Ich glaube, sie ist an etwas. Ich glaube nicht, es ist das komplette Bild. Aber ich muss sagen, was du hast, Beziehung, Kinder, wachsende Business, du hast deine Geschichte in den Teams und Geschichte in der CIA, du transmutierst jede Schmerz, die du hast, so weit ich kann, in Gnade für die Welt. Danke.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Du spielst eine vaterliche Rolle für Millionen von Menschen. Und ich glaube, dass, ob es intentionell oder unabhängig ist, ich denke, das ist, was viele der Podcast-Community und Inventoren wie Elon sagen, Und Zuck hat seine Version davon gemacht. Hier spreche ich von Männern, und ja, ich weiß, es gibt Frauen, die das auch tun. Ich verstehe das. Aus Silicon Valley, ich verstehe das.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Sie tun tolles Arbeit. Aber hier sprechen wir von Beispielen von Männern für andere Männer und Männerinnen. Und ich denke, diese Lohn-Krieger-Sache ist... Ich glaube nicht, es wird funktionieren. Und ich bin einfach glücklich, dass die Brüder, in denen ich war, genügend gesundheitliche Leute inkludiert haben, um mich durchzuführen. Ich meine...
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es ist nicht notwendig, darüber zu sprechen, aber der Jim Thiebaud-Mann hat mich mehrere Male nach anderen Dingen geholfen. Er hat mich geholfen. Er hat mich verantwortlich gehalten. Rick Rubin hat mich verantwortlich gehalten. Manchmal durch eine starke Liebe, manchmal nur durch eine gute Freundschaft und Liebe der Art. Aber ich bin sehr glücklich, dass ich diese Leute in meinem Leben habe.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Die Kinder, die in meine Schule gingen, waren die Kinder von, du weißt, vorder-, mittlerer oder mittlerer medizinischen Physikern und Ärzten, Menschen, die mit der Universität zusammenhängen, und so weiter. Als ich 14 oder 15 war, war ich ziemlich depressiv. Ich hatte sehr viel Frustration in mir. Ich fühlte mich überhaupt nicht sicher über meine Heimat.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und ich habe es versucht, es auch für andere Menschen zu tun. Aber wenn ich höre, dass Leute ihre Waffen in ihre Mäuse legen, wie mein Freund Johnny Ferrer, oder Drogenverdosen. Es ist vorhanden.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es ist vorhanden auf dem Niveau von, ja, Regierungsinstitutionen, aber ich sage, ich stelle den Anruf jetzt aus, ich denke, wir müssen uns um uns herum kümmern und uns um uns um uns kümmern, weil die Zeit geht. Es ist gut, dass du das sagst. Ich denke...
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ja, ich liebe es, weil du ein Mann der Daten bist. Du siehst es passieren, es passiert. Ich meine, es passiert wirklich. Und ich denke, dass... Eine Sache, die ich fühle... Ich muss sagen, du hast über die Podcaster und andere Leute gesprochen. Als ich erwachsen bin, war ich glücklich. Ich hatte einen PE-Teacher, der mir mein Körper stark gemacht hat.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich hatte Professoren, männliche und männliche Professoren, die mir mein Gehirn stark gemacht haben. Freunde in der Skateboard- und Musikgemeinschaft, die wirklich glückliche Menschen waren, wie Eilenden der Gesundheit, und die mir und vielen anderen Leuten geholfen haben, stark zu werden. Sie haben mir geholfen, sauber zu werden und wirklich Leute auszulösen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Eine Sache, die ich sehr klar mache, ist, dass ich denke, wenn Menschen hören, Männer wie uns, mit Medienkanälen wie uns, darüber sprechen, There's a group that gets really scared. And I want to be really clear what we're not talking about. I'm not trying to appease these people, but I want to just make very clear what we're not talking about.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich war sehr, sehr traurig, verwirrt und voll mit Hormonen und allem, was mit einem jungen Mann zu tun hat. So pretty quickly what happened was I stopped paying attention to school. I started hanging out with a group of really good kids, mostly skateboarders. This was in the early 90s, skateboarding late 80s, early 90s, so 89, 90, 91. Skateboard war damals kein cooles Sport.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
We're not talking about a group of men trying to reduce the accountability of other men. We're actually talking about the opposite. We're also not talking about perfect people being perfect. I am not perfect. I've said for years, and I said it intentionally, I am replete with flaws like anyone. That's the whole reason to have a relationship to God and to have a community that you're
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
working with that helps you be the best version of yourself. We're not talking about any of us being perfect. We're talking about, if I screw up, I want you to call me out. I want Joe to call me out or Lex to call me out. And then I want to know how I can do better and improve it just like I would do for any of them. So what we're not talking about is a bunch of guys banding together to be bad.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
We're talking about men banding together to be better versions of themselves and teach other people how to do that. Und es ist eine Art Duh, wenn du bereits an Bord bist. Aber wenn du nicht bist, denken die Leute, oh mein Gott, Leute, die zusammenkommen, denken über die Verletzung von Macht. Sie denken über Menschen, die sich nicht aneinander halten. Das ist nicht das, worüber wir sprechen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wir sprechen über das Gegenteil davon. Wir sprechen über Männer, die inhaltlich falsch sind, wie jeder Mensch, die versuchen, die beste Version von sich selbst zu sein und anderen Menschen zu erlernen, wie sie das tun. Wenn sie es wählen. Wir sprechen auch nicht darüber, irgendjemandem etwas zu forcieren. Das ist wirklich wichtig, weil ich fühle, als hätte ich über die Bro-Science gehört.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Meine Bro-Science-Freunde wissen viel mehr über die Gesundheit als einige meiner Physiotherapeuten, wie man wirklich gesund ist. Nicht alle. Und ich sage nicht, dass Leute mit großen Muskeln gesund sind und Leute, die lecker und dünn sind, nicht. Es gibt verschiedene Versionen von Menschen und verschiedene Phänotypen und Archetypen. Und das ist alles gut.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich spreche auch über mehr echte Aufmerksamkeit. Ich bin ziemlich müde davon, von Toleranz und Diversität zu hören, wenn es tatsächlich Ich bin in einer kleinen Stadt geboren, in der es nicht so viel Diversität gab. Ich bin in eine Gemeinschaft eingetreten, durch Skateboard und Musik und durch die anderen Gemeinschaften, in denen ich involviert war, in denen ich Freunde von jedem Hintergrund habe.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Jedem Hintergrund. Und das sind echte Freunde, mit denen ich kommuniziere. Und ich würde gerne sehen, für die Leute, die das Virtue-Signal-Ding machen, wie viel was auf der Maske steht, was sie glauben, passt mit dem, mit wem sie täglich sprechen. Wie viel eigentliche Diversität von Gedanken, eurer echten Hintergrund ist eigentlich in deiner Gemeinschaft?
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Von Freunden und Leuten, mit denen du kommunizierst. Und ich wette, wenn wir auf deine Aufmerksamkeit schauten, würden wir viel mehr Diversität sehen, als man es sich vorstellen könnte. Ich bin müde, diese Wörter zu hören, die nicht mit der Realität zusammenhängen. Und gleichzeitig möchte ich sehr klar machen, was du sprichst, mich wirklich aufregt, weil ich fühle, dass ich nur noch lernen möchte.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich bin 49 Jahre alt mit meiner Geschichte und dem, was ich von meiner Erfahrung kenne. Ich versuche immer noch zu lernen und voranzugehen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und ich denke, eines der zentralen Themen von Robert Blois' Buch, und ich erkenne, dass es nicht ein perfektes Buch ist, es hat seine outdaten Aspekte etc., aber es hat einige echte Gems darin, ist, dass Jungs und Männer von anderen Jungs und Männern lernen mussten, um sie herum und älter als sie, die sie führten. Und wir haben das in diesem Land in den letzten Jahren wirklich verloren.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wir haben das Verhältnis verloren, dass wir einander mentorieren können. Und es ist beidirektional, richtig? Und deshalb muss eine Art Restoration daraus entstehen. Und natürlich macht es Sinn, dass die Menschen auf kleinen Farmen gelebt haben, wo sie mit ihren Vatern gearbeitet haben und mit ihren Großvatern gearbeitet haben. Es macht Sinn. Menschen gehen weg von dort, wo sie geboren haben.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Sie haben weniger Brüder, die Erkrankungen sind niedriger, etc. Ich versuche nicht, die Art und Weise, wie das Leben läuft, zu verwandeln. Aber wir können nicht weg von den Kernfunktionen des menschlichen Gehirns, die gehören, um positive Beiträge zu erzielen, um idealerweise sinnvoll zu sein. eine Liga von rechtlichen Leuten wäre wirklich schön, die nicht in irgendein Extrem fallen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Niemand hat sich um Skateboard interessiert. Als wir nach San Francisco gegangen sind, gab es eine Gruppe von, damals waren es meistens Männer, jetzt sind es viel mehr Mädchen und Frauen, die Skateboard spielen. Es waren ein paar junge Jungs in einem Ort namens Embarcadero, der berühmte EMB. Das war der Justin-Herman-Plaza in San Francisco.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich könnte weitergehen, aber der Punkt ist, was wir hier nicht sprechen, ist Kollektion und Koagulation und Missbrauch von Macht. Wir sprechen darüber, um uns selbst zu heilen. Und ich kenne eine Erfahrung, und das ist, männlich zu sein.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und ich habe ein oder zwei Dinge zu sagen über meine Erfahrung und das mit anderen Menschen zu kombinieren, in Weisen, die ich hoffe, dass ich Menschen helfen kann, sowohl durch bestimmte Dinge, die ich als nötig fand, Und ich versuche, Dinge zu vermeiden, die ich als besonders bedrohlich fand. Fehler, die ich gemacht habe. Lern von meinen Fehler, damit du sie nicht machst.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich lerne sicherlich von anderen Menschen ihre Fehler. Und ich werde weiterhin anstreben.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich denke, dass... Ich denke, es ist Instinkt. Ich denke, es ist Instinkt. Es gibt einige Kernaspekte unserer Psychologie und Biologie, die nicht negotiabel sind. Man kann keine bestimmten Aspekte des Menschenpsychos zerstören. Ich spreche nicht über die schlechten Dinge. Ich spreche nicht über die Entschädigung. Es gibt genug davon in der Welt, Gott weiß. Ich spreche über...
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Man kann nicht als biologische Organismen, als psychologische Organismen jemanden nehmen und versuchen, die Art und Weise, wie die Kultur ist, zu beschleunigen und alle zu erwarten, dass alles okay ist. Diese Idee, dass alle einen Weg haben, eine generative Leben zu haben, ich glaube, das ist möglich. Aber es braucht uns zuerst zu schauen und zu fragen, okay, wo bin ich stark, wo bin ich weich?
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich mache das immer noch. Wo bin ich stark, wo bin ich schwach? Wo kann ich das Wissen erzeugen, das mich stark machen wird, wenn ich schwach bin? Von meinen Freunden, von Leuten älter als ich. durch eine Beziehung zu Gott, durch eine Beziehung zur Gemeinschaft, können wir nicht mehr auf ein Modell schauen und so weitergehen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und deshalb ist wichtiges Arbeit gemacht worden, ich möchte es nur anerkennen, in den letzten 20, 30 Jahren, mehr Raum für Menschen zu geben, die nicht in die Standard-Archetypen befinden. Aber das bedeutet nicht, dass wir keine Bedürfnisse als Gemeinschaft der Menschen haben. Und hier sprechen wir von Männern, die versuchen, in der Welt zu sein, die beste Version von sich selbst zu sein.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ja, ich denke, viel davon ist... Es ist ziemlich hart verarbeitet. Wir versuchen, das seit Beginn der Zeit zu tun. Und ich will nicht darauf kommentieren, wie es ist, eine Frau zu sein, weil ich noch nie eine war. Aber ich kann darauf kommentieren, wie es ist, ein junger Mann, ein Teenager, ein junger Alter und ein Alter in meinem Alter zu sein.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich kann dir nicht sagen, wie es ist, 75 oder 80 zu sein, weshalb ich weggegangen bin und weggegangen bin, um meine Beziehung mit meinem Vater zu retten. Und ich lerne von ihm. Und ich denke, das ist die Art, wie es funktionieren sollte. Ich auch. Ich auch.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Du konntest dort an einem Wochenende mit Hunderten von Kindern Skateboard spielen, trinken, Drogen trinken, kämpfen. Und, das möchte ich aufmerksam machen, es war unglaublich viel Skateboard. Ich erinnere mich an den jungen Rob Dyrdek, der für einen der Back-to-City-Kontests kam. Mein Freund LeVar McBride, ein wunderbarer Skateboarder. Es gab den jungen Mike Carroll, Henry Sanchez.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich bin ein großer Fan, also ist es auch sehr surreal für mich. Ich fühle mich sehr erfreut, hier zu sein. Und auch, dass ich hier draußen bin, im Publikum, Seite für Seite.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
in an an effort to make the world a better place you know if there's one thing that's absolutely clear is that you're trying to do that and you're doing that and um yeah there aren't enough words to express how grateful i am but um i'm just excited to keep going so thank you you are doing a hell of a job my brother thank you right back at you cheers
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Diese Namen sind legendär. Wow. Javonte Turner. Ich wurde also von einem wunderbaren Skateboarder ausgesprochen. Ich fand mich sehr schnell in einer Gemeinschaft von Kindern. Wir waren auch nicht ohne Eltern, aber wir hatten keine parental oversight. Und wenn wir Eltern hätten, könnten sie uns nicht kontrollieren.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
In der Tat habe ich recht schnell bemerkt, dass viele der Kinder, die am Wochenende auf dem Markt waren, eine ganze Woche lang nicht zur Schule gegangen sind. Und so habe ich angefangen, in die Truanz zu gehen. Ich dachte mir, ich werde einfach nicht mehr gehen. Und diese Art von Rebellion ist nicht gut, weil man sich zu mehr und mehr Dingen auswirkt, wie Drogen und Kämpfe.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und man ist auch nicht in der Schule. Es gibt ein gewöhnliches Lernen, das der Gehirn an dieser Zeit braucht. Und ich ging in die Klasse, setzte meine Hüte an und ging schlafen. Skateboard. Ich kann dir mehr über die Kurve im Parkplatz in meiner Highschool erzählen, als ich über jede Klasse ging. Ich mag die Kreativwissenschaften-Klasse, aber auch die Ceramics, Autoshop.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich mag die Wissenschaftskurse, die Biologie-Klasse, aber ich war einfach nicht konzentriert. Ein Jahr dauert und man fällt ziemlich weit hinterher. Was auch anfing, war, Ich war glücklich, dass die Gruppe von Kindern, mit denen ich skateboardete, keine Drogen und Alkohol trug. Wir haben wirklich Glück gehabt. Das war nicht meine Sache, es war es nie wirklich.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber einige dieser Kinder wurden wirklich gut beim Skateboarden, wirklich schnell. Mein Freund Paul Zuwanich war bald ein Pro-Skateboarder. Unser Freund Aaron Curry war ein guter Skateboarder. Er wurde schlussendlich Graffiti-Artist. Leider passierte er, aber er war ein wirklich guter Artist. Und einige dieser anderen Kinder, deren Namen ich abgeräumt habe,
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wir hatten Pro-Modelle, als wir in der Hochschule waren. Ich wurde immer verletzt. Ich glaube, ich hatte Puberty, aber mein Körper war noch nicht stark. Also brachte ich immer noch meinen linken Fuß. Und es war super traurig. Und so über die Zeit, wie ich, weißt du, ich bin wie verletzt in der Skateboardung. Ich bin nicht gut in der Schule. Mein Heimleben ist wirklich schwarz und traurig.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und ich bin ein ziemlich intensiver Kind. Und ich bin wie, ich beginne, zu spiralieren. Und ich habe es nicht wirklich gesehen. Ich weiß nicht, ob es jemanden um mich herum gesehen hat, aber jemand hat es gesehen. An einem Punkt haben sie mich in den Büro in der Schule angerufen. Sie haben mich gesetzt. Sie haben mit mir gesprochen. Das ist alles vor Therapie, vor Goodwill-Hunting.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und ich dachte mir, was ist das? Und dann habe ich recht schnell gemerkt, dass sie versuchen, mich wegzunehmen. Ich habe es verstanden. Etwas klickte und ich dachte mir, okay, dieser Mann ist da. Sie werden versuchen, mich wegzunehmen. Sie versuchten und verletzten zuerst, dann versuchten sie und erfolgten. Sie haben mich in ein Residential-Treatment-Programm eingeführt.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Das war kein Jugendhaus, okay? Das ist ein Ort auf der Peninsula. Und du bist dort mit ein paar anderen Kindern. Und ich erinnere mich... Wofür haben sie dich entfernt? Sie haben es so gemacht, dass ich mich nicht sicher fühle. Ich war so depressiv. Ich war so visibel. Ich habe es nicht gesehen. Als ich aus der Schule ging, habe ich den 7F-Bus nach San Francisco gefahren. Ich hatte die beste Zeit.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich meine... Kinder machen das nicht, aber ich habe Dinge gemacht, wie Signaturen zu den Renownationals geformt. Ich war gut genug beim Skateboarden, dass ich zu Konzerten gegangen bin. Aber wenn du im late 80s, early 90s im Skateboard-Kontest bist, sind es alle Jungs. Und die Jungs in ihren Zwanzigern, die auch aus einem ähnlichen Hintergrund wie ich sind, sind die Älteren.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wir waren in Hotels in Reno und haben gefeiert, und andere Jungs haben gefeiert. Und man wird immer mehr ausgewogen. Es geht viel los. Ich habe nicht zu viele dreckige Drogen beobachtet, aber es war einfach wild. Wir waren ein paar junge Kinder, die sich eigentlich auf die Eltern richten. Und das wird nicht funktionieren. Skatecamp in der Sommerzeit bei Vesalius Skatecamp.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich erinnere mich an die Frage, warum ich den Preis für Skatecamp bezahlen würde. Ich würde einfach gehen. Also haben wir jemanden gefunden, der uns fährt und wir sind einfach weg. Wir sind einfach in die... Also es gibt eine leichte und eine dunkle Part von allem. Denn zuerst hatte ich tolle Freunde in der Skateboard-Community.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich war nicht einer der super talentierten, aber ich hatte eine wirkliche Gemeinschaft von Leuten, die mich interessiert haben. Ein Mann, mit dem ich jetzt Freunde habe, das kommt gleich wieder, ein Mann namens Jim Thiebaud. Er ist Teilnehmer einer Firma, die DELUXE ist, die Antihero, Spitfire Wheels und Thundertrucks hat. Er ist seit langer Zeit da.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Er ist ein echter Powerplayer in dieser Industrie. Ich erinnere mich noch an einen Tag, als er mit mir auf dem Embarcadero ging und mir einen Kaffee gegeben hat. Ich war 14 und er war mit mir zu sprechen und er konnte mir sagen, dass ich, wie viele andere da waren, ein unglücklicher Junge war.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wir haben ein bisschen über Skateboard gesprochen, er hat mir ein paar Sticker gegeben und er hat gesagt, dass ich schreiben sollte. Ich dachte, was heißt das? Er hat gesagt, dass ich nur journalieren sollte. Das hilft. Und dann hatte er ein paar Poesiebücher, was er als schlechte Poesie bezeichnen würde. Für mich waren diese sehr wichtige Bücher. Er gab mir zwei Bücher.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Einer hieß Loose Change, der andere hieß Do the Distance. Ich habe immer noch Loose Change. Und ich habe diese Bücher gelesen. Es war wie ein Punk-Poesie-Bücher. Und ich erinnere mich daran, dass das für mich eine Leitlinie war. Ich wusste nicht, dass man all diese Dinge im Kopf haben könnte und darüber schreiben könnte und es jemandem helfen könnte. Also habe ich damals viele Bücher gelesen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Dann war es so, Ja, sie wurden aus der Schule entfernt. Sie haben mich weggezogen. Und was war die Grundlage? War es Depression? War es, dass es im Grunde Tatsache war, dass ich nicht zur Schule gegangen bin? Also war es eher, dass ich in irgendeinem Art und Weise in ein Fördersystem eingefallen bin, was sie nicht tun wollten.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Sie wollten mich nicht wegnehmen, weil die Dinge nicht so schlecht zu Hause waren. Aber ich hatte einen guten Freund, meinen Freund Aaron Curry. Eventuell wurde Aaron King, er hat seinen letzten Namen verändert. Er war ein Förderer, den ich kannte.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und ich erinnere mich an ihn, als er mir sagte, bevor ich weggegangen bin, er war so wie, er war so wie, schau dich nicht da hin, weil der nächste Schritt ist viel, viel schlimmer. Er hat das ganze System durchgemacht. Ich bin dann da gekommen und habe mir gedacht, das tut weh. Ich bin von meinem Skateboard und meinen Freunden entfernt. Das sind die einzigen zwei Dinge, die ich gebraucht habe.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und die ich gebraucht habe, obwohl ich wusste, dass meine Eltern mich gebraucht haben. Sie handelten mit ihrer eigenen Sache. Ich konnte es nicht durchgehen. Und plötzlich bist du da mit all diesen anderen Kindern. Und sie mussten sitzen und sagen, es waren wahrscheinlich 15 Kinder. Und sie sagten, du wirst Gruppentherapie machen. Und ich war so... Verstehst du? Ich war kein hartes Kind.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Du und ich kennen, und du bist wahrscheinlich einer davon, ich weiß es nicht, aber du und ich kennen wirklich starke Leute. Ich habe jetzt Freunde in meinem Leben, die in verschiedenen Gruppen leben. Ich möchte es nicht erwähnen, nur weil es nicht gesund ist. Aber das sind wirklich starke Leute, die in wirklich schwierigen Umständen geboren sind, und sie sind hart.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und du und ich wissen beide, dass sie die am liebsten, am prinzipiellsten Menschen sind, die du jemals treffen wirst. weil sie wissen, wo und wann sie ihre Nicht-Niceness beurteilen. Ich war also kein schwieriger Typ, aber ich war ein Kind, der ziemlich aufgewachsen war und ich wollte nicht mit den anderen Menschen über meine Probleme sprechen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber dann führst du dich um die Runde und du merkst, dass es hier viel Gemeinsamkeit gibt. Einige Kinder waren bereits in Drogen, wie LSD und hartere Drogen. Es war nicht ich. Einige von ihnen hatten viel at-home körperliches und sexuelles Verbrechen. Das war nicht ich. Ich konnte also sehen, wo ich besser im Leben war als viele andere. Ich konnte das sehen, hören und fühlen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Denn du musst nur einmal davon hören, von jemandem, der das erlebt hat, und sagen, okay, ich habe Probleme, aber... Als ich ein Kind war, habe ich in einem Skateboardshop in Palo Alto gearbeitet. Da war ein Mann da, der mich auf den Weg gebracht hat.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich war 14 Jahre alt, ich hatte blaue Haare und ich weiß nicht, er dachte vielleicht, dass er ein Signal gelesen hat, dass ich irgendwie weniger furchtbar war als zu beobachten oder so etwas. Also kam er auf mich und ich explodierte auf ihn. Es explodierte. Ich rief sie an und stand für mich selbst auf. Ich hatte nie jemanden, der mich verletzt hat. Ich war sehr glücklich.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich erinnere mich, dass meine Mutter von diesem Verhalten Wort bekommen hat. Meine größte Angst, weil sie aus New Jersey kommt, war, dass sie da runtergehen würde und sie töten würde. Sie sagte zu mir, hat etwas heute passiert? Ich sagte, nein, es ist alles gut. Sie sagte, wirklich? Ich dachte, sie würde ihn töten. Sie ist eine starke Frau, schützend. Ich bin dankbar dafür.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Niemand wurde in dieser Situation verletzt. Ich bin dankbar. Die Leute haben wahrscheinlich ihre Ideen darüber, was sie tun sollte und nicht tun sollte. Aber so ging es. Ich bin in diesem Ort und Leute sprechen über Dinge. Und ich dachte mir, warum bin ich hier? Ich weiß gar nicht, warum ich hier bin. Ich konnte es nicht verstehen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und dann haben sie angefangen zu erklären, du bist noch nie in der Schule gewesen, wenn du gehst, dann gehst du nicht in dein Zuhause. Ich dachte mir, was? Und? Ich war einfach nur ein blöder Junge. Und ich fühle mich jetzt sehr glücklich, wenn ich zurückblicke. Die Situation schlug an, weil ich dachte mir, wie komme ich aus diesem Ort?
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und es kam heraus, dass einer der Kanzler da erklärte, du kommst raus, indem du das Programm machst, indem du teilnimmst. Und was ich bemerkt habe, war, dass ich sicher Probleme hatte. Aber ich hatte keine Probleme, die unvermeidbar waren. Und dass ich mich besser weggequält habe, oder ich wäre in Schmerzen. Ich musste meine Umstände stoppen, und ich musste in meinem Leben mehr Kontrolle nehmen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wie alt warst du damals? Ich war 14. Verdammt. Also, ich bin aus diesem Ort gegangen, und es gab eine gewisse Bedingung, dass ich regelmäßige Therapie mache. Es gab keine Filme wie Good Will Hunting, niemand ging damals zur Therapie. Aber ich wurde zu diesem Mann angemeldet, der mit einer halben Weile mein Lieblings-Skateboard-Spot war. Die vorderen fünf.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es waren fünf Stiefel, alle kongregierten dort nach der Schule und wir skaten dort. Ich konnte also in sein Büro gehen. Wir saßen unten und sprachen darüber. Und er brach durch, richtig? Er brach durch in einer Art und Weise, die zumindest für mich sinnvoll sein würde.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Er sagte, Skateboarding scheint dir wichtig zu sein, aber du solltest wahrscheinlich auch etwas haben, mit dem du nicht verletzt wirst. Also habe ich ein bisschen Push-Ups und Run-Ups und solche Sachen gemacht, um mich ein bisschen zu kümmern. Und er sagte, du solltest weiter journalieren, richtig?
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und du solltest verstehen, dass es nicht viel parental oversight und Home-Life für dich gibt, aber wenn du dich kümmerst, wird es schlussendlich besser. Das Gute ist, dass ich Menschen wie ihn und andere Menschen hatte, die versucht haben, mich zu bemerken. Das Schlimme ist, dass es viele andere Kräfte in meinem Leben gab, die mich in eine andere Richtung gedrängt haben.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Yeah. Your? Your child? Yeah. I'm sorry, how old did you say? I was 16.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
And, you know, I couldn't blame anyone else for that. How did you deal with that in particular? I didn't tell anyone. We didn't tell anyone. And, um... Ja, das ist das erste Mal, dass wir darüber gesprochen haben. Du bist 16 Jahre alt und denkst, du verstehst die Welt. Hier ist, wie ich damit umgegangen bin. Ich dachte mir, dass ich die Leute kümmern muss. Was bin ich gut an?
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Bis dahin wusste ich, dass ich nicht gut an Skateboarden bin. Viele meiner Freunde in der Skateboarding-Industrie, wie Jim Thiebaud, haben Firmen gegründet. Er ist ein guter Skateboarder, aber er hat die Wissensmacht, Firmen zu gründen. Ich dachte, ich könnte eine Firma gründen, weil ich kein Pro-Skateboarder bin. Das war klar. Ich erinnere mich, mein Teamleiter bei Thunder, Spitfire,
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Mein Name ist Steve Ruge. Wir nennen ihn Shroogie. Jetzt ist er sauber. Damals hat er viel Weid getrunken. Ich erinnere mich, dass ich ihn von dem Residenzprogramm angerufen habe. Ich habe einen Anruf bekommen und ich sagte, Shroogie, ich bin hier verschlossen. Und er sagt, Mann, du bist der normalste Typ, den ich kenne. Und er sagt, warum nennst du mich?
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und ich sage, Shroogie, ich weiß nicht, was ich tun soll. Und er sagt, ich kann mich kaum kümmern. Und ich dachte mir, oh, Shrug, was mache ich? Und er meinte, ich weiß nicht, Mann, mach einfach das Programm. Lass niemanden wegwerfen oder so etwas. Aber Steve war gut genug, um mich auf Thunder und Spitfire aus Sympathie zu bringen, okay?
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber an einem Punkt erinnerte ich mich an eine Gespräche mit ihm, die mein Herz zerstörte. Es war auf dem Telefon. Ich habe ihn angerufen. Ich war so, hey, Shrug, ich habe meinen Packagel von Wheels oder so nicht bekommen. Und er meinte, hör mal, Mann, du wirst nie einer der großen Jungs sein. Und ich erinnere mich, als 15-jähriges Kind, war es so, oh mein Gott, ich dachte, mein Leben sei vorbei.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Das war das Einzige, was mir geholfen hat, Skateboard zu machen. Es war das Einzige, was ich teilweise tun konnte. Und wenn ich zurückblicke, denke ich mir natürlich, dass ich in der Schule studieren sollte. Das Wahnsinnigste an der Schule ist, dass sie dir genau das sagen, was du wissen musst. Es ist so offensichtlich. Aber damals war das nicht so, wo ich war.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Also, ich hatte die Freundin-Sache, die Kämpfe. Dann habe ich in ein paar Drogen begonnen. Welche Kämpfe? Kämpfe wie... Dieser Kerl hat mir dumme Kämpfe geäußert, stupide, stupide Kämpfe. Einige von ihnen waren etwas weniger stupide. Wie, diese Person kümmert sich nicht um ihren Hund, also frage ich ihn, ob ich seinen Hund haben kann und er sagt nein. Und dann stupide Knucklehead-Stuffe.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ja, nachschauen. Nachher gab es eine Kämpfe, die ein bisschen mehr kompliziert war, die wir in die Geschichte bringen können. Ich weiß nicht, ob ich dafür gesucht habe. Ich glaube, es war auch unglaublich, weil ich 6'1 war. Ich war 6'1 damals, aber ich war etwa 150 Kilo. Ich war also wie ein dünnes Mädchen, ein Skateboard-Mädchen, richtig?
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und ich erinnere mich einfach daran, ich bin kein wachsender Mann. Ich kann mich nicht schützen. Ich bin nicht so gut am Kämpfen. Es gibt einen Jungen, den man lacht, und er hat wahrscheinlich einen guten Lächeln. Es gab einen Jungen, den wir als Mayor des EMB genannt haben, James Kelch. Und dieser Jungen konnte kämpfen. Und er kämpft immer, besonders wenn er trinkt.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Er ist auch ein wirklich guter Skateboarder. Jetzt ist er verbreitet. Ich denke, er lebt in Ohio mit seiner Familie. Er ist ein guter Junge. Er war immer cool für mich. Aber wenn du da hochgefallen bist, um Embarcadero zu kommen, und du ein bisschen zu viel Attitüde gezeigt hast, es war nicht wichtig, ob du ein Pro-Skateboarder aus einer anderen Stadt warst. Sie hätten dich gewonnen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es gibt einige berühmte, lustige und nicht lustige Geschichten darüber. Es war eine schreckliche Umgebung. Sie haben auch Touristen geräumt und gesagt, das ist schreckliche Scheiße. Aber die Leute, die das Schlechte gemacht haben, waren nicht wirklich Skateboarder. Sie waren die Leute, die daran hingekommen sind. Es ist so, als hätte Washington Square Park das gemacht.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Das war die Basis für den Film Kids. Ich hatte auch ein paar Freunde in dem Film. LeVar McBride war in dem Film. Keine Ahnung. Ich habe den Film noch nie gehört. Als ich den Film sah, dachte ich mir, das ist LeVar. Ich glaube, Nick Lockman ist auch da. Und Harold Hunter ist auch da. Harold ist jetzt leider tot. Das ist ein seltsamer Film, für viele Gründe.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Er würde heute nicht mehr veröffentlicht werden. Es war ein Fenster in die feralen Straßenkinder, die nicht aus der inneren Stadt waren und nicht im Militär waren. Es war ein Mischmasch der late 80s und early 90s. Was also passiert ist, ich dachte mir, was soll ich tun? Ich sagte mir, ich liebe es, zu rennen, und ich habe geheim begonnen, zu trainieren.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es gab einen Fußball-Coach in unserer Hochschule namens Bob Peters. Er liebte mich zu irgendeinem Grund, und ich liebte ihn. Er war ein großer Buffer, und er sagte mir, du schaffst dich schmerzhaft, weil du schwach bist. Ich konnte keinen Pull-Up machen. Ich konnte nichts machen. Er sagte mir, das coole an Resistenztraining ist, dass man stärker werden kann.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich begann, meine Pull-Ups und Push-Ups zu machen. Mein Körper wurde wie verrückt verändert. Ich wuchs wie verrückt. Ich war wie der Mann in meinem Haus. Mein Vater und ich versuchten, Dinge auszuarbeiten, aber wir hatten viel Konflikt. Meine Mutter und ich waren sehr sicher von meiner Mutter. Ich habe sie gerade gesehen und mein ganzer Körper hat verändert. Es war verrückt.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es muss eine selbstbestimmte Disziplin geben, aber sie muss nicht in jedem Bereich eines Lebens sein. Menschen müssen ihre Beziehung zu Licht, Sonnenlicht und Dunkelheit erreichen, korrekt. Das könnte seltsam klingen, aber es gibt eine wunderschöne Studie, die das, was ich gerade zu sagen habe, substantiiert. Das ist eine Studie, die in über 80.000 Themen aus den USA gemacht wurde.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich fühlte, als ob ich durch die Puberte gegangen wäre. Und dann bin ich durch eine komplette physische Transformation gegangen. Und ich dachte mir, was kann ich tun, damit ich meine Arbeitsskillen nutzen kann? Ich war immer sehr intensiv und sehr arbeitslos, als ich mich an etwas eingestellt habe. Und ich mag es, zu arbeiten. Und ich dachte mir, ich werde Feuerwehrleiter werden.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Jeder mag Feuerwehrleiter. Die Polizisten haben verschiedene Gefühle. Und ich habe auch Respekt vor der Polizei. Auch wenn ich Skateboarder bin, habe ich auch Respekt vor der Polizei. Ein Freund meines Freundes, der nicht mein Freund war, aber Jims Geschäftspartner, Mickey Reyes, wurde ein Polizist. Er wurde Skateboarder und wurde Polizist. Ich glaube, jetzt hat er eine Bar in Portland.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber ich wollte ein Feuerwehrleiter werden, also habe ich angefangen, Feuerwissenschaftskurse an der Mission College zu machen. Und ich dachte, ich werde ein Feuerwehrleiter werden. Ich werde arbeiten, mit ein paar Männern verbringen, meistens Männer damals. Es gab damals sehr wenige Frauen in der Feuerwehr, also meistens Männer. Und die Leute lieben sie und respektieren sie.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Cool, dann mache ich das. Was dann passierte, war, dass meine Freundin nach der Schule ging. Sie war ein Jahr älter als ich. Sie war wie meine Familie an diesem Punkt. Ich ging also herunter, um sie zu besuchen. Ich lebte im Dorm, als sie mich verlassen haben. Ich war mit ihr, aber ihre Ruhepartner würden überrascht werden. Oder ich schlief in meinem Auto im Parkzimmer im Dorm.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und ich war einfach da, und ich war auch immer noch in Kämpfen. Ich war immer noch in Kämpfen. War es so, dass du die Kämpfe genossen hast? Weißt du, ich habe es nie wirklich gefreut, Leute zu schießen und zu schießen. Jahre später habe ich Boxen gespielt, als ich in meinen 30ern war, als Junior-Professor, bevor ich in die Tenure kam.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Dr. Andrew Huberman, willkommen zum Show. Danke, ich bin super froh, hier zu sein. Ich bin ein großer Fan deines Shows, habe es schon von Anfang an gemacht. Und ich bin einfach nur gespannt, darauf zu kommen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich habe Boxen gespielt, weil ich etwas brauchen musste, um ein bisschen Steam auszulösen. Und ich habe jeden Sonntagabend Spar gespielt. Das war, als ich in San Diego lebte. Eigentlich kommen viele Teamleute durch das Gym, Roll-Jujitsu. Und ich erinnere mich an Boxen. Ich war in Ordnung. Ich hatte einen langen Zugang, ich konnte ein bisschen wechseln.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich bin nicht sehr schnell, aber ich lande ein paar. Aber ich erinnere mich, dass ich einmal direkt durch einen Mann durchgeflogen bin und sein Kopf zurückgeknallt hat. Mein erster Impuls wäre, oh Mann. Ich hatte nicht mehr die Angst in mir. Das war, als ich in meinen 30er-Jahren war. Ich denke, man muss ein bisschen überrascht sein. Als ich jünger war und ich Kämpfe hatte,
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich war immer überrascht, wie wenig es schmerzte, in dem Moment zu werden, und wie viel es später schmerzte. Das ist Adrenalin.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich habe es nie genossen, es nie ausgesucht. Ich denke, ich brauchte etwas, in das ich meine Zähne drücken musste, Das war generativ. Ich brauchte das so sehr. Und die Schule hat mich nicht gehackt, als ich in der Hochschule war. Das ist wild. Du sprichst von der Heiligen Intervention. Damals habe ich in der Hochschule einen Fehler gemacht. Und das ist ein Fehler.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich glaube nicht, dass junge Kinder Psychedelik machen sollten. Ich glaube wirklich nicht. Sie haben ihren Platz, um das Gehirn später zu heilen. Sie tun das absolut und vielleicht kommen wir dazu. Aber ich habe einen LSD genommen, einen halben LSD hier, einen halben LSD dort, als ich 16 oder 17 war. Es kam die Zeit, den SAT zu nehmen. Und meine Mutter hat mich aufgewacht.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich werde das nie vergessen. Sie sagte, du solltest den SAT nehmen. Es ist heute. Und ich sagte, keine Ahnung. Ich war die ganze Nacht auf einem halben LSD. Ich war immer noch ein bisschen... Ich sagte, keine Ahnung. Und sie sagte, geh einfach. Du musst gehen. Mein Zuhause war durch die... Ich hatte eine geschlossene Tür in meiner Tür, die in die Schule führte.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Gunn High School war dort, Georgia Avenue über der Tür. Ich konnte in der Schule durch die Tür gehen. Mein Vater-Vater hat jetzt eine Tür in die Tür gesetzt. Ich sitze dort und denke mir, ich kenne nichts davon. Aber sie sagten, auch wenn du nur deinen Namen ausfüllst, und Informationen bekommst du, ich weiß nicht, ein bestimmtes Anzahl an Punkten. Ich dachte mir, okay. Ich habe das ausgefüllt.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und dann, und ich weine auf mein Leben, habe ich nur Kunst mit den Bubbeln gemacht. Das auszufüllen, das auszufüllen. Ich habe nur die Bubbel gefüllt. Hast du die Frage sogar gelesen? Nein. Verstehst du mich? Ich habe nur die Bubbel gefüllt. Und ich habe 1.000 gebrochen. Ich weiß, dass die Leute das hören und denken, oh, oh, oh. Nein, ich habe 1.000 gebrochen. Ich habe 1.000 gebrochen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Das ist die Heilige Intervention? Oder gib mir einen anderen Grund. Es gibt keinen anderen Weg, dass das passieren könnte. Ich habe 1.000 Euro verdient. Ich habe an die Universität eingeladen. Ich habe an zwei Orte eingeladen, vielleicht drei. Ich bin nicht in die anderen zwei Orte eingeladen. Ich bin in die Orte eingeladen, wo meine Freundin hingehört hat. Und mein Vortrag war folgendermaßen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Die Schlussfolgerung ist im Grunde die folgende. Genug Sonnenlicht im Frühjahr, und ja, auch wenn es dunkel ist, gibt es Sonnenlicht, vergleiche einfach, wie dunkel es ist von Tag zu Tag, auch an einem dunkeligen Tag, Leute. Etwas Sonnenlicht in die Augen zu bringen und ein kaltes Licht, vielleicht auch aus Artifizierungen, während des Tages. Und es dann nachts dunkel zu halten.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Hier ist meine Kindheit. Ich hatte eine gute Kindheit bis jetzt. Dann hatte ich eine hohe Komplexität. Ich erzählte die Geschichte. Und ich sagte, ich will in der Feuerwehr sein. Und ich habe gehört, dass wenn man einen Vorabschluss bekommt, dass man eine höhere Mobilität in der Feuerwehr hat. Das ist das, was ich für mein Entrance-Examen gemacht habe. Und ich bin da reingegangen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Jemand auf der Kommitee hat das gelesen und gesagt, okay, hier ist ein Kind. Ich war einfach ehrlich. Ich war einfach ehrlich. Ich bin da reingegangen und bin dann nach der Schule gegangen. Es ist lustig, ich erinnere mich, als ich nach der Schule gegangen bin, und alle anderen waren so, als ob ihre Eltern sie wegwerfen. Alle sagten Tschüss und Hüfte und Träume.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Meine Freundin, die schon ein Jahr da war, wir fuhren zusammen zurück. Ich war nicht Teil des gesamten Systems. Und ich bin in dieser schönen kleinen Stadt geboren, wo es nicht gewaltig war. Und so, bis zu diesem Punkt, ich bin 17 Jahre alt, ich bin ein Frühling, also als ich 17 Jahre alt war, habe ich gemerkt, ich bin wirklich nicht Teil dieser normalen Trajectorie, auf der ich sein sollte.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und ich komme zur Universität und alle partieren viel und ich denke mir, Ich hatte schon viel davon. Aber ich wurde auch nicht in der Schule verurteilt. Ich ging raus, trank und partierte, hatte viele Kämpfe. Als ich in die Uni kam, gab es all diese Nudel-Head-Behörden von anderen Leuten. Ein Mann hat eine Kugel durch meine Knie gesteckt während eines Kämpfs.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich habe einen Mann gesehen, der seine Tochter hinter seinem Motorrad gedrängt hat. Wir haben uns in einen Kämpfe befasst. Das große war, nach dem ersten Jahr in der Schule, hatte ich schlechte Grätschritte. Ich wurde aus den Dorms gehackt, weil ich dumme Sachen machte. Ich ging also nirgendwo, richtig?
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich lebte in einem Haus, in dem ich über den Sommer schwattete, weil alle meinten, man könne ein Haus verkaufen. Ich dachte mir, all diese Häuser sind leer. Ich bin ein Skateboarder, ein Punkrocker. Ich bin einfach durch das Fenster gefahren. Meine Freundin ist nach Hause gegangen. Ich dachte mir, ich bleibe dort. Die Wasserarbeit, die Heizung, jemand hat dafür bezahlt.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich bleibe hier, warum nicht? Es ist eine kleine College-Stadt, es ist nicht gefährlich. Ich dachte mir, warum würde ich Renten bezahlen? Ich arbeitete an einem Bagel-Store, dem Bagel-Café, um Bagel zu bestellen. Ich weiß gar nicht, wie man einen Stickschiff fahren kann. Aber ich habe mir gelernt, wie ich auf dem Job bin.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich werde nie vergessen, der Junge, der dort gearbeitet hat, ist ein toller Mexikaner. Er hat mir gezeigt, wie man das macht. Er war furchtbar. Und wir wollten einfach nur Bagels anbieten. Ich habe es ziemlich schnell bekommen. Ich habe gesagt, okay, cool. Ich habe gelernt, wie man einen Stickschiff fahren kann, auf dem Job, was auch immer. Garbage Geld. Aber es war Geld.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber im Sommer gab es eine Party, weil es nicht viele Kinder gab, die im Sommer nach Hause gingen. Und das ist eine wilde Sache. Meine Highschool-Vereinin war damals mit College-Vereinen zusammen. Diese Frau, ihre Name ist Kim, sie war Jack Johnsons Freundin. Sie ist aus Monterey, eine tolle Person. Und Jack ging mit uns zur Schule.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Damals war er kein Musiker, er spielte für Spaß, aber er war ein Pro-Surfer. Er war wie ein Rockstar in dieser Schule, weil alle surfen lieben. Es gab also eine Party, die unsere Freunde hatten. wo alle mit Barbecue ihre Sachen rüberbringen. Eines Tages gingen wir Steaks holen. Wir kamen am 4. Juli zurück. Und jemand sagte, hey, die Jungs robben uns.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es gab Jungs, die Surfboards und Skateboards stehlen. Und sie sagten, lass uns sie holen. Und ich sagte, hey, ich habe genug Stöße genommen. Hey, hör mal, das ist nicht so, wie es funktioniert. Du kannst nicht einfach jemanden aufstehen und ihn schießen. Zuerst nicht, wenn du nicht weißt, was sie tun. Und zweitens, das ganze Pigeon-Chesting, das ist nicht so, wie du es machst.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es muss nicht schwarz sein, aber an den meisten Nächten zwischen 11 Uhr und 4 Uhr, ohne dass man Shift-Arbeit macht, und wir können darüber sprechen, danke Shift-Arbeitern. Aber es nachts dunkel zu halten und Licht in die Augen zu bringen während des Tages. hat sich zusätzlich gezeigt, um viele der negativen Effekte von Dingen wie Depressionen, OCD, ADHD, Bipolarschmerzen zu verhindern.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wenn du jemanden schlagen wirst, musst du ihn schlagen. Das ist so, wie es geht. Es kam heraus, dass sie uns besiegt haben. Und das ist wirklich schlecht. Es ist seltsam. Ich habe dieses Gefühl in meinem Körper, wenn ich diese Geschichten erzähle. Ich möchte sehr klar sein, dass es so dumm ist, sich in die Schmerzen zu bringen. Jemanden zu kniffen, dich zu schießen, was auch immer.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es ist einfach eine schreckliche Idee. Ich will niemandem denken, dass es eine gute Idee ist. Aber was passiert ist, dass alle, mit denen ich war, nicht Jack, alle, mit denen ich war, geboltet wurden. Und so komme ich damit mit einigen Leuten zusammen. Und die Leute werden super gewaltig, richtig? Ich habe früher immer einen Knife mitgebracht, so kam das alles raus. Die Polizisten kamen auf.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Also kamen die Polizisten auf. Ich werde es nie vergessen. Sie kamen zu mir und sagten mir, gut gemacht. Ich erinnere mich daran, weil diese Leute haben uns geräumt. Ich erinnere mich daran, dass ich nie in meinem Leben schlechter gefühlt habe. Ich habe nie in meinem Leben schlechter gefühlt. Also, ich weiß nicht, ich denke, wir hatten wahrscheinlich das Barbecue an diesem Tag.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Die Leute waren so, ich habe ein paar Gegrüßungen bekommen. Es gab eine sehr schöne Frau, mit der ich eigentlich immer noch Freunde habe, die sagte, das war großartig. Und ich erinnere mich, das ist der Boden. Wow. Also, ich erinnere mich zurück, wo ich stand und dachte, das ist es. Ich bin offiziell ein Verlierer.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich war in Kämpfen, habe die Hochschule noch nicht beendet, bin in die Universität eingegangen auf eine divine Intervention. Ich habe nicht geflogen, aber sicher nicht gut gemacht. Ich habe einfach das erste Jahr geblieben. Meine Freundin ist weg. Sie wollte nichts mit mir zu tun. Sie war witzig. Und ich dachte mir, das ist es. Was soll ich tun? Ich kann Musik nicht spielen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich habe Freunde, die Musiker sind, aber ich trage es nicht. Ich bin kein guter Skateboarder. Ich musste also ein paar Tage lang tiefes Interesse haben. Und ich war immer ein Leser. Und ich erinnere mich, ich werde emotional über diesen Teil reden, weil er mir viele Male über die Jahre herumgekommen ist. Thiebaud gab mir diese verdammten Bücher, weißt du?
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und ich erinnere mich, ich habe das, ich habe das geschrieben, ich habe das gelesen, und ich habe, und es ist etwas drin, ich glaube, es ist in Do the Distance. Man, ich muss vorsichtig sein, dass ich nicht zu schnell aufhören muss. Es ist zu früh in unserer Diskussion. Es gibt ein Poem, das Jim geschrieben hat. Er wird verärgert, wenn ich es sage.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es ist ein kurzer, hartgelegter Mann-Poetrie, der sich um die Distanz handelt. Und ich erinnere mich einfach daran, okay, I'm not really good at anything, but I have drive. That I've got. I always knew this. I've got a lot of fire in me. I've got a lot of energy.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
And if it's fish tanks or birds or skateboarding or working out or unfortunately also fighting and being an idiot, I'm going to go 11 out of 10. So I decided then, I'm like, I'm going to buckle down. And I wrote my mom a letter promising that. I still have the letter. No kidding. I have the letters. July 4th, 1994 was when that fight happened. The letter sometime right around.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und ich bin nach Hause gegangen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich habe einen Abstandsabschluss gemacht. Ich bin nicht nach der Schule gegangen. Ich habe einen Abstandsabschluss gemacht, bin zur Gemeinschaftskollegin gegangen, bin zurückgekommen, wo ich geboren habe.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und bis dahin haben sich die Dinge super schwarz gemacht, weil mein Freund, der ein Pro Skateboarder war, noch immer ein Pro Skateboarder war, aber jetzt hat er und ein paar andere Leute angefangen, viel schwieriger Drogen zu machen. Pills, Trinken. Und einer der Leute, der ein berühmter Skateboarder war, der... Ich war nie mit ihm nahe, aber wir wussten einander.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
In anderen Worten, nur, wenn du schlafen möchtest, deine Zimmer nackt zu halten, hat einen positiven Effekt auf die mentale Gesundheit. Die Lichter in deinen Augen, besonders die Sonne, am Morgen und am Tag, haben einen enormen positiven Effekt auf die mentale Gesundheit. Die Leute starten zu diskutieren. Kann ich das durch ein Fenster machen? Kann ich ein Video von einem Sonnenschein sehen? Nein.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Er ist legendär in der Skateboard-Community. Ein Typ namens Phil Hsiao, der ohne einen Vater kam. Er hat seine jüngeren Brüder geholt. Er hat sich durch Berkeley eingelassen. Er hat das Publikum von Thrasher-Magazin erhoben. Leider ist er in einem Trank-Driven-Akzent gestorben. So, er ist tot.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Freunde daheim, viele von ihnen, die noch Skateboarden machen, aber viele von ihnen, nicht alle, aber viele von ihnen, unser Freund, das ist lustig, ich wusste, dass diese Leute verschiedene Namen haben. Dieser Junge, Brandon, ich lasse seinen letzten Namen raus, aber manchmal versuchen die Leute, mich auf diese Sachen zu prüfen und zu sagen, Faktenprüfung, okay, ich hoffe, er tut gut.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Brandon Tierney, nicht gut. Unser Freund Johnny Ferrer, Er hat sich im Jahr 2017 verletzt, schade. Aber es gibt viele Leute, die nicht gut sind. Drogen, mentale Krankheiten, schwere Krankheiten. Ein paar Leute sind in die Gefängnis gefahren. Das ist eine schreckliche Geschichte. Bei Skateboarding hatten wir einige gute Freunde.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Einer von uns ist in einem Kampf gestorben und ein Mann ist gestorben. Er hat 20 Jahre im Gefängnis gelebt. Ein paar Jahre zuvor hat er darüber gesprochen. Ich bin also nach Hause gegangen und dachte mir, wow. Das war der Weg, der in diese Richtung geht. Und ich bekomme eine zweite Chance. Also habe ich einfach die Bücher geschlossen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich bin in eine Gemeinschaftskollegin gegangen, um mein Leben zu retten. Wie hast du deine neue Leidenschaft gefunden? Ich habe mich dann entschieden, egal, was das Thema ist, ich werde es gut machen. Sie erzählen dir, was du wissen musst. Schule ist der offensichtlichste Weg zum Erfolg für jemanden wie mich. Sie erzählen dir, was du wissen musst. Du brauchst keine physische Fähigkeit.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich schaue es mir jetzt an und es sagt dir, was auf dem Examen sein wird. Es gibt nichts einfacher. Es gibt Themen, wo es schwer ist und du nicht immer A's bekommst. Aber wenn du in der Klasse gehst, du hörst, du nimmst Noten, du fragst Fragen über das, was du nicht verstehst, und du gehst da rein, wirst du ziemlich gut machen. Du wirst zumindest passen und wirst ziemlich gut machen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Was ich gefunden habe, war, dass ich ziemlich gut machen konnte. Ich habe also Art, Geschichte, Psychologie, Biologie, Physik genommen. Ich habe mich zurückgezogen und all diese Lücken aus der Hochschule gemacht. Es gab viele Themen in der Hochschule, die ich einfach komplett... Ich habe viel gelesen, aber ich war einfach komplett hinterher in allem.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich habe also zwei Viertel des Gemeinschaftskolleges gemacht. Und übrigens, das Gemeinschaftskollegesystem... Vielleicht kommt es jetzt auf einen anderen Namen. Aber diese Gemeinschaftskollegen sind unglaublich. Sie halten die Tuitionen ziemlich niedrig. Die meisten haben einen direkten Weg zu einer lokalen Staatsschule. Und diese Gemeinschaftskollegen bekommen einen schlechten Rappen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Du gehst draußen, bekommst ein bisschen Sonnenlicht in deinen Augen. Ohrglocken und Kontakte sind in Ordnung. Du setzt deine Physiologie richtig. Dieser Zirkaden, dieser 24-Stunden-Schedule, den wir haben, wird durch Licht durch die Augen an bestimmten Zeiten des Tages ausgedrückt und Dunkelheit in anderen Zeiten des Tages. Die Augen sind geschlossen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Sie sehen sich als nicht so prestigios. Und sie sind nicht so prestigios. Der Herausforderung ist, dass... Du reist dort. Es gibt keine Kultur, um dich zu studieren und dich zu involvieren. Du wirst nicht mit den anderen Kindern in den Dorms gehen und dich für die Finale vorbereiten. Du musst wirklich selbstmotiviert sein. Es bringt das Beste von jemandem, der Selbstmotivation finden kann.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und für diejenigen, die es nicht können, stoppen sie ihre Units, arbeiten und machen Geld. Ich lebte damals zu Hause, weil ich nirgendwo anders leben konnte. Meine Mutter war in und aus dem Bild. Meine Schwester kam von der Schule nach Hause. Das war wirklich gut. Ich liebe meine Schwester mehr als das Leben selbst. Ich würde für sie alles tun.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich spreche nicht so viel über sie, weil sie wirklich als Vater für mich eingestiegen ist. Wirklich? Großartig. Und ich bin als Vater für sie eingestiegen. Aber auch unsere Eltern wissen, dass es lustig ist, weil wir jedes Jahr an unseren Geburtstagen in New York zusammen verabschieden.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Eines der besten Dinge an dieser Podcast-Welt ist, dass ich nicht Geld verspende, aber ich meine Schwester in New York in diesem Jahr mitnehmen konnte. Sie liebt Spiele, ich bin nicht wirklich in Spielen, aber lass uns ein paar Spiele sehen, gute Tickets zu Spielen bekommen oder in einem schönen Ort bleiben.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Für Jahrzehnte würde ich und wir beide aufsteigen und wir würden nach Manhattan gehen und wir würden in den schlimmsten Airbnbs bleiben. Es wurde fast Teil der Geschichte. Nur Plätze, wo wir dachten, oh mein Gott, das sind schlechte Bedingungen. Aber wir haben uns wirklich zusammengehalten. Sie ist eine großartige Person.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und wir verabschieden uns von sehr vielen Dingen in der Leben, aber wir halten unsere Familie, das Körner. Sie war zuhause. Und ich begann, mein Leben zu verbreiten. Und ich dachte mir, okay, diese Schule, ich kann das. Warum? Und hier ist es, Die schwierigen Sachen zählen in einem seltsamen Weg. Das ist so viel einfacher als Skateboarden. Skateboarden kann man sich ausbrechen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wie die Kinder sagen, man kann seinen Bein zerstören. Man kann sich eine Konkussion geben. Das Studieren kann ich studieren, bis ich zerstöre. Ich stehe auf und mache es weiter. Und ich werde klüger. Das ist unglaublich. Und dann war ich auch kompetitiv. Ich bin nicht normalerweise ein kompetitiver Mensch. Aber ich dachte mir, der Junge vorne will die Kurve setzen. Das ist meins. Das ist meins.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich werde so hart arbeiten. Und ich denke generell nicht, dass Kompetition der beste Weg ist, Energie über die Zeit zu füllen. Aber... Man, I fell in love with some of those subjects, fell in love with biology, fell in love with psychology. There wasn't even a field of neuroscience at that time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Die Anwendung von Telefonen und Bildschirmen ist fantastisch. Sie haben tolle Dinge für unsere Progression als Menschen und Kommunikation gemacht. Das zerstört unsere Zirkadien-Schedule und die Gesundheit, insbesondere die mentale Gesundheit. Es ist nicht nur die Inhalte, die die Menschen auf diesen Geräten erhalten. Es ist auch das Licht selbst.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
But then I looked things up and I was like, all right, well, I either can go back to the school I was in, because I had taken a leave of absence, or I can... Ich ging zurück, weil es eine Staatsschule war, also eine öffentliche Institution.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Das System der Universität Kalifornien ist ein sehr gutes System für diejenigen, die bereit sind, ihre Arbeit zu machen, in Bezug auf den Kostentum in Bezug auf die Qualität der Bildung, die man bekommt, ist sehr hoch. Ich ging also zurück und bin in ein Studio-Apartment geflogen. Ich lebte alleine. Und Leute, die ich mitgebracht habe, waren so wie, oh, wann kommst du raus zum Party?
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich habe die Wildheit des Skateboarders der 90er-Jahre mitgebracht. Wir waren so frei. All diese Sachen wie Jackass und all das, das wurde aus dem Skateboarden geboren. Das waren Skateboarder. Spike Jonze, er hatte Big Brother Magazine. Er hat Fotos für sie gedreht. Er hat eine Skateboard-Familie. Wir waren wild und frei so früh.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Als ich zurückkam und alle fragten, ob ich kämpfen oder Party machen würde, sagte ich, nein. Und ich war einfach super verabschiedet. Es war also Workout, Studie, Workout, Studie, Workout, Studie. Einmal im Monat gehe ich raus und ziehe einen an. Und dann habe ich über die Zeit gedacht, das ist nicht wirklich gut. Und so habe ich von der Universität mit Honoren graduiert.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Meine Eltern waren so, was ist denn hier passiert? Mit einem Professor, für den ich gearbeitet habe, der mir in seinem Labor gearbeitet hat. Ein Mann namens Harry Carlyle, ein wunderschöner Kerl. Ich liebte ihn, weil er Kaffee trinkt und er trinkt Zigaretten. Er leuchtet sie in den Bunsen-Burner und er trinkt in der Fumehütte. Und sie kommen in die Halle und sagen, du kannst hier nicht trinken.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und er wäre so, ja, ja, ja. Und er war einfach ein alter Kerl, ein alter Navy-Kerl. Und ich habe für ihn gearbeitet. Und ich habe endlich etwas Gutes gemacht. Ich konnte lernen, ich konnte Dinge verstehen, ich habe eine gute Erinnerung. Es kam heraus, ich liebe die Forschung. Ich habe gelernt, wie man Gehirn aufzutun und sie aufzutun und sie unter den Mikroskop zu schauen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und ich war nicht die klugste Person, aber ich hatte ein bisschen Intellekt und ich konnte jemanden ausarbeiten. Ich bin so, dass ich gewinnen kann durch hartes Arbeit. Und so, als ich graduierte, Und ich dachte mir, wow, ich habe eigentlich was Gutes gemacht. Also habe ich in zwei Schulen eingeladen, Princeton und Berkeley. Bin in beidem eingeladen. Ich war so überrascht, wie ich war.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich wollte nicht nach Princeton gehen. Ich bin kein Ostkosten-Ivy-League-Typ. Ich meine, du bist einfach... Great respect for all that, but that's not me. I'm from California. So I went to Berkeley, spent two years there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
I did a Master's there, fell in love with circadian biology, studied hormones and behavior circadian biology, had a good run there for reasons mostly related to topic of interest. I moved up to UC Davis. Ich habe für eine Frau gearbeitet, die Barbara Chapman, als ich dort war. Eine unglaubliche Arbeit. Sie hat zwei Stunden in jeder Richtung geübt, also war sie nicht da.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es ist auch das Inhalte, aber auch das Licht selbst. Also, das richtig zu machen. Es braucht keinen Kosten und setzt Dinge in die richtige Richtung. Das Zweite wäre, Während der Sonnenscheinung, wenn du nicht schon morgens trainierst, willst du gehen, dann geh einfach in eine Runde, wenn du musst. Geh in Richtung der Sonnenscheinung, okay? Das sind keine komplizierten Dinge.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Also hatte ich viel Autonomie. Sie hatte ein Budget. Und ich habe angefangen, Gehirnentwicklung zu studieren. Und ich war so, das würde funktionieren. 15, 16-Tage-Tage, manchmal 20-Tage-Tage, schlafen auf dem Boden, unter der Bühne. Ich hatte ein kleines Wohnzimmer, aber ich dachte mir, warum gehe ich nach Hause? Ich schaue im Gym, rühre meine Zähne im Sink am Morgen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und ich erinnere mich an jemanden, der zu mir kam. Ich war damals immer noch ein wenig schockiert, weil ich Angst hatte. Normalerweise ist man schockiert. Angst vor Verletzungen. Jemand, der jemanden schockiert sieht, ist normalerweise schockiert. Es ist eine Art, sich zu kompensieren. Ich erinnere mich an jemanden, der sagte, du solltest langsam gehen, du wirst ausbrüllen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und ich habe gesagt, du hattest nie eine Flamme, um rauszugehen. Ich war so der Typ. Um fünf Uhr würde es runtergehen, alle würden weggehen, Tintenfäule auf die Fenster legen, fliegen, ranzig. Lieblingsband, experimentiere bis drei Uhr morgens. Verlässt, wachst du auf, am nächsten Morgen sind sie noch da und ich sage, du bist weg. Ich war also wie ein Tier.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wir haben zehn Bücher veröffentlicht, nicht alle in diesen vier Jahren. Aber mit Barbara arbeitete ich am besten. Und so weiter und so weiter. Aber ich habe dann einen Post-Doc gemacht. Ich habe als Junior-Professor in San Diego gearbeitet. Ich wurde dann mit der Recherche nach Stanford zurückgekommst. Was war das für ein Gefühl, von Stanford zurückgekommen zu werden? It felt good.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
I didn't want to go back to my hometown. There's this thing in neuroscience called conditioned place aversion. When something bad happens in a place, you forever feel kind of not right when you're there. There's also conditioned place preference. Something good happens, you just like the place. So it took me a little while to get over that. Back in the town where I grew up,
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber ich habe als Post-Doc bei Stanford gearbeitet und das hat wirklich gut funktioniert. Stanford ist ein wunderschöner Ort. Ich meine, das Wunderschöne an Stanford ist, dass, wo auch immer man schaut, es jemanden gibt, der im Top 1% in seinem Bereich ist. Und es gibt mehrere davon. Und man denkt sich, wow, es sind nicht nur die Nobelpreisträger.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Man kann in die Politik- und Wissenschaftsabteilung wandern und es gibt tolle Leute dort. Es ist auch ein sehr vermischtes Land politisch. Leute vergessen das. Condi Rice ist dort, es gibt die Hoover-Institution, es gibt auch rechte-lehnende Leute, rechte-lehnende Leute, alles inzwischen. Leute vergessen das. Es hat seinen eigenen Zip-Code. Es hat auch große Spots, wie die Front 5. Es ist...
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es ist eine großartige Sache, wie du es weißt, von den SEAL-Teams zu sein, von Leuten zu befinden, die super hoch erzielt sind. Die Bedeutung ist so hoch, so hoch, dass du denkst, wow. Und die Leute sprechen über Imposter-Syndrom. Ich habe gesagt, nein, ich habe hart gearbeitet, bis hierher zu kommen. Ich war Postdoch hier. Ich verstehe. Ich weiß, dass ich nicht die klugste Person in der Raum bin.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und ich weiß auch, dass ich viele Dinge weiß, die andere hier nicht. Es ist sehr spezialistisch. Niemand erwartet, dass du alles über alles weißt. Du wirst also gewonnen, wenn du wirklich gut an einer Sache bist. Aber es war eine Reise. Aber ich sage das, weil ich denke, in der Erinnerung auf all das, Jahre später, als ich in Hawaii besuchte, Es gab ein Surf-Event. Ich surfe nicht.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Sie nehmen nicht viel Zeit. Sie nehmen keine finanziellen Kosten. Okay? Kein Geld. dann wäre es wütend, ein paar Übungen am Morgen zu machen. Jocko hat es richtig gemacht. Vielleicht musst du es nicht um 4.30 Uhr machen, aber zu Beginn der Übung und zu Beginn der Übung und die Sonne in deinen Augen macht ein paar Dinge. Du hast einen Kortisolpuls jedes 24 Stunden, ein Stresshormon.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber es gab ein Surf-Event. Ein Freund von Brian McKenzie, ein sehr talentierter High-Performance-Coach, hat mich da rausgezogen. Brian hat sich ohne Angst auf seine Nacken getätigt. Er hat sich mit Nacken-Tätigkeit getätigt. Er ist ein schwieriger Kerl. Wir sind Freunde geworden, weil er mit den East Coast SEAL-Teams gearbeitet hat.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich möchte nicht ein Bild von einer tieferen Beziehung bilden, aber ich habe viele Freunde von den Teams und habe mit einigen Leuten in dieser Gemeinschaft gearbeitet.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und Brian hat mich nach Hawaii genommen für dieses Ding. Wir haben darüber gesprochen, was mit Atem und Autonomie zu tun hat. Und da ist ein Typ da draußen namens Kai Garcia. Sie nennen ihn Kaiborg. Er war früher ein Anführer. Er war ein blöder Kerl. Die hawaiianische Kultur hat seine eigene Sache. Er ist ein wirklich guter Kerl. Er ist sauber. Er ist ein Familienmann.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich werde mich noch nie vergessen. Wir waren in der Sauna und wir sprachen über Geschichten und so weiter. Und er kam zu mir und sagte, nie vergessen, egal wie weit du fährst, du bist immer die gleiche Distanz vom Dach. Und ich erinnere mich an die Zeit, das ist ziemlich dunkel. Und ich habe mich viel über dieses Statement vorgestellt. Und er ist absolut richtig.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
In den Jahren, in denen ich Postdoctor war, Ein paar Dinge sind wertvoll zu bezeichnen. Zuerst einmal hatte ich einen seltsamen Karma mit Unterrichtsleuten. Ich hatte einen tollen Unterrichtsleuten, für den ich arbeitete, in seinem Labor. Meine Unterrichtsleute, sie war toll, und mein Post-Doc-Leute, er war toll. Suizid, Krankheit, Krankheit. Also bei 50 und 60, rund 60 Jahren alt.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es ist kein schlechtes Hormon, es ist ein guter Hormon, aber du musst es am höchsten Niveau am Morgen lösen. Wie tust du das? Die Sonne in deinen Augen erhöht diesen Peak um etwa 50%. Wenn du das nicht tust,
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Also ich habe mich wissenschaftlich früh verletzt. Ich dachte mir, was ist das? Bin ich verletzt? Oder wie der dritte sagte, bevor er gestorben ist, er sagt, du bist der gemeinsame Denominator. Und ich dachte mir, verdammt. Aber, weißt du, mit dem parentlosen Ding wieder, und ich habe Eltern, ich will sehr klar sein, ich habe meine Beziehung mit meinen beiden Eltern beendet.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich habe kein Resentiment vor meinen Eltern. Ich komme darauf zurück in einem Moment. Was ich bemerkt habe, war, dass die Tatsache, dass alle drei meiner Anwesenden gestorben sind, tragisch war. Aber dann, 2020, Ende 2021, als Lex Friedman nach einem Podcast nachgedacht hat und gesagt hat, du solltest einen Podcast starten, Ich dachte nicht, was meine wissenschaftlichen Vorschläge denken.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Alle in der Wissenschaft wissen, dass durch die Mentorarbeit, was deine Vorschläge denken und was sie für dich wollen, was für dich vorhanden ist und was dir sicher ist. Alle meine Vorschläge sind tot. Ich werde tun, was ich richtig fühle, nämlich die öffentliche Information über die Gesundheit und die Wissenschaft.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Auch mein Vater und andere Leute waren so, oh, das ist keine gute Idee, die Leute werden das nicht mögen. Wie fühlt Stanford das? Wie fühlen die Leute darüber? Das ist etwas, was sich nicht gut macht. Und ich war so, nein, das ist Informationen, die von den Betroffenen bezahlt werden. Es gibt wichtige Informationen, die die Leute wissen müssen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Nicht nur werde ich es machen, du konntest mich nicht stoppen, ich konnte mich nicht stoppen. Ich setzte eine Kamera auf in meinem Wohnzimmer mit Rob, meinem Produzenten, dem jetzt Produzenten, meinem Bulldog Costello, um es auf der Internetseite rauszunehmen. Es gibt also diese dunklen Dinge, wie Verbrechen und Krankheiten von Mentoren. Es gibt Freundinnen, die weggehen. Es gibt Kämpfe.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und dann gibt es auch die leichte Seite davon. Es gibt all die, weißt du, verzeih mich, aber sorry, nicht sorry. Es gibt die dunkle Seite der Leben. Es gibt das echte Schicksal, wie du es weißt. Und es gibt den Teufel in uns allen und in der Welt.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und dann gibt es die leichte Seite davon, wo Gott im Universum, wähle deinen, ich habe meinen ausgewählt, kommt und sagt, nein, wir werden all diese Energie in Dinge, die gut für dich und die Welt sind, verwandeln. Und so ist das passiert. Und es hat sich immer wieder passiert. Also 2017, drei meiner künftigen Freundinnen,
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Du wirst in Schwierigkeiten starten, wenn du zu früh ins Leben gehst, wenn du zu früh ins Leben gehst, wenn du zu früh ins Leben gehst, wenn du zu früh ins Leben gehst, wenn du zu früh ins Leben gehst, wenn du zu früh ins Leben gehst, Ich könnte 20 Dinge listen, die man tun könnte und sollte.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aaron Curry King, weil er am Ende adoptiert wurde, wurde ein großer Graffiti-Artist von einem Graffiti-Namen Orphan. Er war in der SF-MOMA. Das war ein Kind, mit dem wir aufgewachsen sind, mit dem die Scheiße aus ihm ausgelöst wurde, seit er jung war. Er wurde endlich von einer schönen Familie adoptiert. Er ging also in unsere Schule. Er wurde dann ein Street-Artist, ein Graffiti-Artist.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Er wurde als Artist gemacht. Er starb von Stomach-Kanzer, Johnny-Ferrer, Suizid. Super traurig. Dieser Mann war einfach der radigste Kind. Es gibt etwas über Kinder mit dem Namen Johnny, die immer ein bisschen wild sind. Wenn du dein Kind Johnny nennst, weißt du, dass er ein Feuer im Kopf hatte. Und John Eichelberry. Dead, dead, dead. Boom. Phil Schau, dead.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Look around skateboarding guys I used to know that I wasn't tight with. Addicts, dead. A lot of them. A lot of them are soaring. X Games, winning medals, companies. And a lot of them aren't. And so you look and I just remember going like, whew. Like, that was a close one. But Kai was right, you know. I mean, you're never that far from the ditch.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
And I know this because I've had colleagues just this last year, neuroscientists, dass wir etwas seltsam wirken. Niemand wusste, warum. Oxy-Adductor. Einer ist einfach gestorben. Einer der berühmtesten developmentalen Neurobiologen, die ich kenne. Verdammt. Er ist tot. Und du merkst, dass niemand von diesem Ding immun ist.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich bin nicht super gegen irgendeine Sache, aber diese Drogen, die auf das Dopaminsystem greifen können, greifen auch NeuroscientistInnen. Es sind nicht nur diese feralen Skateboard-Kinder. Das sehen wir jetzt. Was ich also bemerkt habe, war, all that back story, all that stuff, man, I wouldn't change it for anything.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
You know, I do get kind of like rattled when I talk about it, because it's like, I still feel a little bit that way. I've never really like, I'm over whatever trauma was there, but I just feel like, man, I'm so lucky. That guy came at me at work. I remember he put his hand on top of my hand while he was trying to give me my paycheck. And I was like, turn the desk over on him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich sage nicht, dass das die richtige oder die falsche Antwort war, aber ich stand für mich selbst als 14-Jähriger auf. Niemand hat mich verletzt. Okay, also dann nimmst du diese Art von Energie und legst sie in den richtigen Ort, wie in der Schule. Du legst sie dorthin, dass großartige Dinge passieren, du legst sie dorthin, dass schwere Dinge passieren.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und ich denke, wenn ich zurückblicke, wenn ich die Geschichte erzähle, denke ich, dass das, was ich damals hören musste, und was Thiebaud mir in diesem verdammten Buch gegeben hat, ich nenne es das, weil es für mich so viel bedeutet, aber er sagt immer, oh nein, sprich nicht über das Buch, weil er mein Freund ist. Ich brauchte jemanden, der sagte, du bist ein junger Mann mit viel Energie.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Du musst lernen, diese Energie zu kontrollieren. Und du musst lernen, es in Dinge zu machen, die dich wachsen werden, die generativ sind. Und ich brauchte, dass sie das sagen. Und ich habe das nicht gesagt, aber jemand, den ich wirklich respektiere, hat das gesagt. Es gibt im Leben zwei Arten von Menschen. Sie sind Gewinner und Sie sind Verlierer. Und die Definition ist diese.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Verlierer nehmen Dinge, die zu ihnen passen, und die sie in sich fühlen, die schmerzen, und sie schmerzen, und sie benutzen sie für Selbst- oder Auferstehung. Gewinner nehmen, was sie fühlen. Sie fühlen es, es schmerzt, und sie verwandeln es in Dinge, die gut für sich selbst und für die Welt sind. Ende der Geschichte. Und wenn ich sage, es ist wie das Teufel-Gott-Stuff, ist es tatsächlich so.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Das ist so, wie es funktioniert. Es gibt nichts dazwischen, wo man sich nur ein wenig traurig fühlt und etwas schlecht und etwas gut macht. Und ich denke, das, was ich gesagt habe, der Grund, warum ich gesagt habe, dass die Distanz von der Dichtung ist, ist, dass ich über die Jahre meine Schwierigkeiten hatte, die sich weiterentwickelt haben. Ich will das klar machen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Das letzte, was ich je machen möchte, ist, es zu sagen, okay, nach einem Kampf am 4. Juli 1994, wurde mein ganzes Leben verbreitet. Ich habe Zeiten gehabt, in denen ich große Fehler gemacht habe, über... working too hard, neglecting my personal health. As a postdoc, I was genuinely depressed. They wanted to put me on medication.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
I took it for one day, stared at my plate of noodles like a moron, excuse me, like a zombie, and was like, I'm not taking this stuff. habe ich meine Beziehung zu der Sonne aufgeräumt, indem ich mit jemandem gesprochen habe, der die Zirkadien-Biologie versteht. Dann schlafe ich besser, jetzt fühle ich mich besser, jetzt arbeite ich besser, jetzt fühle ich mich nicht off-kilter.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber diese Mental-Health-Krise muss an zwei verschiedenen Ebenen und zwei sehr unterschiedlichen Seiten getroffen werden. Ich beschreibe den ersten. Du musst deine Physiologie richtig machen. Bekomme den Cortisol-Peak. Zu Beginn des Tages wird das Sonnenlicht auch Dopamin, Epinephrin, all das erzeugen. Bekomme etwas Aktivität zu Beginn des Tages.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Also habe ich gelernt, mich zu kümmern. Und dann, weißt du, über die Jahre würde es passieren, als mein erster Anwesender gestorben ist, hat das gescheitert. Als mein graduierter Anwesender, der wie eine Mutter zu mir gestorben ist, habe ich gespürt. Mein Freund hat mir damals gesagt, ich bin in einem wirklich unheiligen Verhalten. Ich war einfach selbstdestruktiv.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und ich versuchte Boxen zu machen, also habe ich das gemacht. Und dann habe ich mich in den Kopf geschlagen. Ich bin ein Neuroscientist. Das ist keine gute Idee. Ich habe zu hart gespart. Das ist keine gute Idee. Also habe ich gelernt, das abzuschalten. Glücklicherweise kam das gut aus. Ich hatte mein Gehirnbild. Ich hatte keine weißen Spots, um mich zu interessieren. Ich bin sehr glücklich.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Vielleicht habe ich einen dünnen Hals oder so etwas. Als die Jahre übergingen, habe ich bemerkt, dass ich vorsichtig sein muss. Ich muss es immer noch beachten. Ich muss nicht überarbeiten. Nicht zu viel übernehmen. Der Punkt ist, dass in den ersten Jahren, waren super hart, weil sie furchtbar und furchtbar waren.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und was ich sagen kann, ist, dass jede junge Person, die sich fragt, was sie tun wird, findet etwas, das generativ ist, das sie furchtbar ist. Und dann alle die schwierigen Dinge, ja, du wirst durch das arbeiten müssen. Aber damals hatten wir keine Sprache von Trauma, Angst, Stress oder Depression. Ich wünschte, wir hätten das gemacht, aber ich bin auch froh, dass es nicht...
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
ein Ort, um all meine Zeit zu verbringen. Ich denke, es ist ein enormer Wert, weiterhin generativ zu sein und Dinge zu tun, die adaptiv sind, während man versucht, seine Scheiße auszuarbeiten.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Bekomme einen Rucksack oder einen Jump-Rucksack und schiebe den Rucksack, wenn du die Sonne anschaust, wenn du musst. Manche Leute sagen Burpees, dann beginnen die Leute, über Burpees zu argumentieren. Aber einige Übungen im Sonnenlicht zu Beginn des Tages. Und natürlich auch Hydration. Dann abends, am meisten Abends,
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich wünschte, ich hätte den Naval-Quote gekannt. Ich habe ihn nur sehr recently gehört. Diese Höhle voller Liebe ist so wichtig. Und eines, was wir über den Gehirn und Stress und Motivation und Ziele und all das wissen, ist, dass es deine Überzeugung in Tunnelvision ändert. Dopamin macht dir Tunnelvision. Ich habe noch nie Kokain gemacht. Ich bin sehr stolz darauf, das zu sagen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber ich weiß, dass es eine hochdopaminergische Drogen ist und es Menschen in einer dünnen Band von Versuchung, mentaler Versuchung macht. Und es geht um zukünftige Erwartungen, wie ich das mache, ich mache das, ich mache das, ich mache das, ich mache das. Hard work is great, but it puts you in that tunnel.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Not to the same degree, presumably, as something like amphetamine or cocaine, but it changes your perception of time so that you're not thinking about the past. That's one reason why it's so soothing to people that have stuff they don't want to think about. Hard work, focus, being amped up. But it also doesn't let you see far enough into the future to understand...
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wie wirst du am Ende von diesem Ding herunterkommen? Und du willst etwas, in dem du wachsen kannst. Ich denke, die kurze Antwort ist, dass die beste Lösung ist, jemanden zu haben, der dich wirklich versteht und diese Teil von dir versteht und weiß, wann zu sagen, hey, es ist Zeit, die Brüste ein bisschen zu pumpen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Weißt du, meine Freundin, die ich als Junior-Professor hatte, das war 2012 bis 2017, als wir beteiligt waren. Wir sind jetzt immer noch gute Freunde. Sie hat versucht. Sie ist aufgewachsen, sie hat den Feuer in mir gesehen. Sie hat einen roten Kopf, sie hat viel Feuer und sie hat gesagt, ich kann dich beheben. Sie hat versucht, sie hat versucht, mir das ein bisschen mehr zu channeln.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und ich war einfach nicht bereit. Ich war nicht bereit. Und wir verstehen das jetzt. Wir haben eine Geschichte über unsere Geschichte, wo wir beide davon sprechen. Ich war nicht bereit, zu lernen, das zu schließen. Und in den letzten Jahren habe ich gelernt, es zu schließen. Ich arbeite nicht so, wie ich es gewohnt habe.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich meine, als ich mit ihr war, und sie wird sich verabschieden, habe ich gewohnt, zu schreiben, zu arbeiten auf Büchern oder Gründe, bis ich zerstörte. Und dann wache ich in der Mitte der Nacht auf und fahre weiter. Wow. Wir haben mal zusammen Skiing gefahren. Ich habe gesnowboardet, sie hat geskiiert. Sie ist ein toller Skier. Ich hatte Diarrhoea und ich habe auf der Toilette gedreht.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es ist gut, wenn man einmal in der Nacht eine gute Zeit hat, aber an den meisten Nächten muss man versuchen, es dunkel zu machen. Man muss eine Augenmaske tragen, wenn man es braucht, ein T-Shirt drücken, wenn man so wie ich ist, wenn es nicht dunkel genug in der Wohnung ist. Man muss nichts Fanziges hier brauchen. Und man muss 6-8 Stunden schlafen. Manche Menschen können mit fünf schlafen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Entschuldigung für jene, die den Grant gelesen haben. Ich habe den Grant bekommen. Ich habe den McKnight Foundation Fellowship bekommen. Das wurde mit Diarrhoea auf der Toilette geschrieben, um eine Zeitung zu machen. Es ist wie, wenn du mich stoppen willst, musst du mich töten. Ich schlafe, wenn ich tot bin. Das ist nicht gut.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich denke, als ich in eine Balance kam, dass ich etwas für einen sehr langen Zeitraum machen wollte, hat das mir wirklich geholfen, es zurückzudrehen. Und ich denke... Ich mag es, dass es mit der Zeit langsam geht, aber es ist es nicht. Man lernt, wie man seine Schüsse besser und besser befindet und es fühlt sich besser und besser an.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und heute, mit dem Podcast, nehme ich große Freude daran, die Solo-Episode so großartig wie möglich zu machen, die Gast-Episode so großartig wie möglich zu machen und so präzise wie möglich zu machen. Wir haben so viele Podcasts in den ersten Jahren veröffentlicht, und der Fakt, dass wir wirklich produktiv waren. Aber es gab ein paar Dinge, die durchgekommen sind, die ich ausgesprochen wurde.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich habe einen Mikron- zu Millimeter- Ich habe eine dumme Lüge gemacht über die 120-prozentige kumulierte Wahrscheinlichkeit, die auf der Internetseite veröffentlicht wurde, die darauf hingewiesen hat, dass ich die Wahrscheinlichkeit nicht verstanden habe. Mein Labor hat viele Male die kumulierte Wahrscheinlichkeit veröffentlicht, und das war schrecklich erschreckend.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und die Lüge am Ende, wo ich sage, das ist eine andere Sache, waren nicht genug, um zu zeigen, dass ich verstanden habe, dass das eine Lüge war. Dann habe ich es richtig erklärt, aber ich musste eine Entschuldigung ergeben. Diese Dinge schmerzen. Und sie sind so gut, weil wir jetzt jeden Solo-Episode durch einen anderen Experten oder zwei machen. Wir machen es durch AI-Prüfungen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wir haben gestern Morgen, bevor wir unseren Mikroplastik-Episode veröffentlicht haben, zurückgekehrt und die Millimeter-Mikron-Konversion veröffentlicht. Diese schmerzhaften Fehler machen dich wirklich stark in deinem Spiel. Und du merkst, dass du langsam musst, um alles genau richtig zu machen. Und die Wissenschaft lehrt dir das auch.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich habe ein Zeichen in der Wissenschaft, du gehst so schnell wie du kannst. Wenn Leute sagen, wann können wir das machen? Wann können wir das Papier senden? Wir gehen so schnell wie wir können. Je schneller wir gehen, Das ist nicht gut. Ich denke, am Ende des Tages lerne ich, es jeden Tag abzuschalten. Ich bin nicht verheiratet, ich habe keine Kinder. Das ist voll im Plan.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich kenne Leute, die sagen, du bist 49 Jahre alt und du hast einen Bachelor gemacht. Nein, ich habe einen Plan. Und eines, was ich weiß über mich, ist, dass es, wenn ich meinen Sinn zu etwas setze, passiert. Es ist nur eine Frage der Zeit. Und ich denke... und es auch zu genießen. Ich werde ehrlich sagen, ich bin hier, ich podcaste viel, ich spreche mit dir, ich bin auf anderen Podcasts.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich bin gerade auf dem Weg, weil ich deine Podcasts und diese Schuhe schaue und ich denke mir, ich hätte nie gedacht, dass ich heute hier sein würde. Ich habe den Tim Ferriss Podcast gehört, den Joe Rogan Podcast gehört, den Les Friedman Podcast gehört. Ich fühle mich wie auf einem anderen Planeten. Wie bin ich hierher gekommen? Ich fühle mich wirklich so.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Manche Menschen können nicht so viel schlafen. Manche Menschen brauchen mehr. Aber man muss das richtig machen. Und wenn Leute das für drei, vier Tage tun, ist es unglaublich, wie viel besser sie sich fühlen. Es ist erstaunlich. Du beginnst, bessere Entscheidungen zu machen, wie oft du auf deinem Telefon mit Social Media bist. Du beginnst, diese Zeit zu verringern.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich denke, es geht auch darum, diese Momente zu genießen. Das ist mir dieses Jahr oft in der Betrachtung gekommen. Es kam mir vor, dass man das, was passiert ist, genießen kann, nicht nur das, was man machen will. Und ich denke, jedes Mal, bevor ich in die Betrachtung gehe oder in ein Atemübungs-Exerzise gehe, denke ich viel darüber nach.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich denke, irgendwann werde ich einen Atem einziehen und ich werde wissen, dass das mein letzter ist, bis ich im Schlaf sterbe. Ich dachte mir, das ist schrecklich. Aber dann habe ich gemerkt, wenn ich mir damit komfortieren kann, dann bin ich in Ordnung. Denn ich denke, alle Erkrankungen, zum Beispiel, sind nur Angst vor dem Tod. Bist du dir damit komfortieren? Angst vor dem Tod oder Erkrankung?
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Angst vor dem Tod.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ja, und ich weiß, dass Leute sagen werden, das sei Bullshit. Nein, es ist wahr, weil es ein paar Dinge gibt. Ich fühle schon, als hätte ich eine großartige Leben. Es ist einfach wild, richtig? Es ist einfach wild. Die Wissenschaft, die Tenure bei Stanford, der Podcast, hier mit dir, Rogan, Lex, um Teil einer Möglichkeit zu sein, Wissenschaft und Gesundheit zu lernen und mein Herz zu geben.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich hole so viel Energie in mein Herz, in das, was ich tue, um zu wissen, dass ich es nicht richtig bekomme, um die Schüsse von traditionellen Medien zu nehmen, um zu sagen, ja, bring es. Ich will nicht mehr davon, aber wenn du es bringst, Ich kann nicht glauben, dass alles passiert ist, also bin ich gut damit. Aus dieser Sicht möchte ich immer noch eine Familie errichten.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich hatte einen Bulldog, der war der beste Bulldog, den ich je vorstellen konnte. Ich bin in Momenten, in denen ich mich über alles beschleunigen kann. Ich denke, die Tatsache, dass ich tot bin, ist nur schwierig, wenn ich nicht fertig bin. Und ich hatte ein paar kurze Brüche.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich hatte diese dumme Idee, einen Kaisenabflug zu machen, Great White Shark Diving, um die VR-Stuffe für mein Lab auf Fears zu filmen. Es war eine lustige Abenteuer. Ein Teamleiter kam mit uns raus. Es war viel Spaß und wir haben den Kaisen verlassen und so weiter. Aber ich hatte einen Luftverletzungen in der Tiefe, während ich im Kaisen war, auf einer Hookah-Linie, nicht auf Skuba.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und es war super schrecklich und ich war alleine im Kaisen. Oh Mann. Meine Lösung dazu, weil... Frankly, I grew up skateboarder, punk rocker, was after that air failure, go down again. And do it on scuba and come back alive and no PTSD. And I don't even like to say I almost drowned. I like to think that the reaper came in and was like to give me a fist bump. And I was like, how about this instead?
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Du beginnst, bessere Entscheidungen zu machen, was du isst, mit wem du interagierst, was du sagst und nicht sagst, was du tust und nicht tust. Du beginnst, herauszufinden, ob du Stimulanten benötigst, die so hoch sind, wie die, die du gerade nimmst, oder ob du sie ab und zu entfernen könntest. Ich sage nicht, dass jemand plötzlich die Medikamente, die er benötigt, auslöst.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber wir kamen aus dem Dive und kamen zurück auf die Grenze. Und ich erinnere mich daran, dass ich keine Risiken mehr mit meinem Leben hatte. Das war zu nah. Und ich habe einige Beziehungen gehabt, die sich wie große Weißschark-Dives gefühlt haben. Wo ich dachte, diese Person ist gefährlich, nicht mehr. Nicht mehr.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es ist nicht wirklich wichtig, in die Details zu kommen, aber diese Person ist sehr gefährlich. Ich hätte nie mit dieser Person im ersten Moment zusammengearbeitet. Und was du über die Zeit lernen wirst, wie ich sicherlich auch du weißt, ich sage das nur für dich und den Publikum, für uns alle und für mich selbst, ist ein bisschen Placidität. Frieden ist die Sache, die wir alle suchen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und jetzt sind meine Frieden auch Frieden für Frieden, nur innerliche Frieden, nicht nur Frieden. um es einen anderen Tag zu machen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Menschen, die nichts zu verlieren haben, sind die gefährlichsten. Menschen, die über und über in der Lebenseinschränkung gefehlt haben. Ob durch ihre eigenen Unfähigkeiten oder durch Intentionen. Wir hatten vorhin einen Mann auf dem Podcast, der in der Episode ist, Bill Eddy. Er ist ein Lehrer und klinischer Psychologe. Er hat fünf Arten von Menschen geschrieben, die deine Leben zerstören können.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und er hat gesagt, du willst wissen, wen du verhindern sollst? Verhindere die Menschen, die diese Verletzungen in verschiedenen Bereichen ihrer Leben haben. und oder, die andere Leute verurteilen. Man muss immer eine Verurteilungsgeschichte haben. Ich sage immer, egal, welche Fehler ich gemacht habe, ich habe sie.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich kann sie nicht in der Art haben, wie andere Menschen sie haben wollen, aber ich habe sie. Ich sage nicht, dass das passiert ist, weil sie schlecht waren. Nein, wenn du mit schlechten Leuten involviert wirst, passieren schlechte Dinge. Das bringt das Schlimmste heraus. Ich denke, unsere Neuralzirkus ist auf einem hohen Niveau.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es wird nicht in limbische, non-limbische, hypothalamusische Kortexe geteilt. Nein, das sind nur Gehirnzellen und Zirkus. Aber es gibt Gutes und Böses in uns. In uns allen. Jung hat das verstanden. Wir haben alles im Innern von uns. Und einige Leute, durch ihre großartige Elternschaft und großartige Ausbringung, sind gegen einige der Teilen von sich, die sich sonst ausdrücklich ausdrücken werden.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es kommt also mehr Gnade aus ihnen. Andere Menschen müssen hart arbeiten. Und sind es wirklich schlechte Menschen? Ich weiß nicht. Christianity would say no, that even those people need help and are deserving of the belief that they can be good. So I like that idea. I'm an optimist.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
But I do believe that when we have agency and we have choice over who we associate with and what we do with ourselves, that we should always be striving to do better. And so any message that comes back about a way I've screwed up, I try and improve. Es ist einfach ein bisschen schwierig, denn in der heutigen Zeit erhält man so viel Beurteilung, ob man sich öffentlich befasst oder nicht.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Du beginnst, Alkohol anders zu schauen, weil es deinen Schlaf zerstört. Du fängst an, andere Praktiken anzuschauen, wie das Lernen und das Lesen. Okay, also, dass du deine Physiologie richtig machst, setzt den Ball in Bewegung. Und dann, wie wir wahrscheinlich mehrere Male während des heutigen Episodes sagen werden, braucht man ein Werkzeug, um sich zu kühlen. Dein Geist wird schlafen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Jeder beurteilt sich. Und ein Teil von einem Groschen ist, zu verstehen, wann man sagt, okay, du hast recht, ich muss das anschauen. Und andere Zeiten, wenn du sagst, nein, das bist du, nicht ich. Ich werde mein Ding machen. Das ist schwierig. Es ist nicht immer eine klare Bildung. Als du den Podcast begonnen hast, wie hat Stanford darauf reagiert? Sie waren sehr unterstützend.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Sie haben sogar ein Feature in Stanford Magazine veröffentlicht und so weiter. Ich meine, es war eine starke Bewegung in dem Sinne, dass es keinen Voraussetzungen gab, richtig? Professoren schreiben Bücher, populäre Bücher, das ist ziemlich akzeptabel. Wir haben den großen Robert Sapolsky an Stanford, Carol Dweck, Growth Mindset.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es ist normal, Forschung zu machen und dann ein Buch zu schreiben und ein populäres Buch zu machen und es zu verkaufen. Der Podcast hat großen Unterstützung. In Wahrheit gebe ich eine Redezeit an Stanford in diesem Jahr als Teil ihrer Lektionsserie. Ich lehre auch noch an Stanford. Es gibt einige Argumente auf der Internet, die ich nicht mache.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich habe einen Kurs, den ich für Untergründige desinitiiere. Ich habe medizinische SchülerInnen bis jetzt gelernt. Es ist wahr, dass ich mein Tier-Labor abgeschlossen habe. Ich habe das gemacht, weil ich nicht mehr in einer Position war, Studenten und Postdochstudenten zu mentoren. Aber alle meine Leute wurden in gute Jobs eingestellt. Und einige von ihnen sind Professoren und machen sehr gut.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Das macht mich glücklich. Stanford ist wie alles andere ein Geschäft. Es ist seine eigene Stadt mit einem Zip-Code. Es hat viele Dinge, die man managen muss. Und so, du weißt, zu einem gewissen Zeitpunkt haben wir eine... explicit, non-explicit handshake.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
I understand I'm an ambassador for the university in addition to doing the podcast, even though they are separate at a financial level and other levels. Ich habe sehr viele Kollegen von Stanford mitgebracht.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Der Podcast hat auch eine Philanthropie-Arm, bei der wir die Forschung an Stanford unterstützten, insbesondere die Arbeit von Nolan Williams, der die Forschung von Ibogaine für PTSD und Verletzungen in Veteranen betreibt. Wir unterstützen Mike Eisenbergs Labor. David Spiegel's Lab, Ali Krum's Lab, und anderen Läden außerhalb von Stanford.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich denke, sie verstehen, dass das ein neues Mediengebiet ist. Und sie haben sehr unterstützt. Ich denke auch, sie verstehen, dass es als privates Institut schön ist, jemanden zu haben, der im Publikum für null Kosten informiert. Das ist für mich das Unglaublichste an Podcasts. Ob es dein Podcast ist, oder Lex, oder Joe, oder jemand. Die Leute bekommen die Informationen gratis.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Advertisern haben eine Beziehung mit dem Publikum, sodass wenn Leute interessiert sind, bestimmte Dinge bekommen sie. Wie du weißt, veröffentlichen wir nur Dinge, die wir wirklich glauben und lieben. Du bist nicht gezwungen, irgendetwas zu kaufen, um den Podcast zu hören, also bekommst du die Informationen gratis.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Manche Leute sagen, die Ads, komm schon, öffne irgendein Medien-Venue, du musst überleben, du musst deinen Produktionsteam bezahlen, etc. Es war alles symbiotisch. Und ich denke, dass... Als Lehrer liebe ich es, zu lehren, und der Podcast gibt mir die Möglichkeit, das zu tun. Ich bin dankbar für sie, und ich glaube, sie sind auch dankbar für mich.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Niemand hat ein Geist, das sich ständig kühlt und fokussiert, wenn sie es wollen, und perfekt schlafen lässt. Niemand bekommt das. Kein Mensch bekommt das. Also musst du ein bisschen Arbeit daraus machen. Das betrifft vielleicht fünf Minuten Meditation pro Tag. Ich bin ein großer Glaubwürdiger in der Glaubwürdigkeit. Ich denke, das kombiniert...
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
I saw that the other day, you corrected something. I have to say, thank you for the kind words. I must say, for both of us, it's a labor of love. I know that. Es gibt eine Phrase, die jemand mir vorhin gesagt hat, die so wahr ist. Ich weiß, dass ich wahr bin bei deinem Werk. und Joes und Lexes und es gibt natürlich auch andere.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und ich weiß, dass es wahr ist bei meinen Podcasts, dass für jeden Bruststreu, den du siehst, 12-15 Bruststreu drin sind, die du nicht siehst. Und es gibt Leute, die sich so sehr um ihre Kunst kümmern, um das zu tun. Und das ist so, wie es ist. Ich denke, Leute können es fühlen, wenn man sich darauf kümmern lässt und du liebst, was du tust. Wir spielen hier keine Spiele.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Das ist das, was mir so interessant ist. Ich habe mich letztlich in professionelles Wettbewerb interessiert, wegen von Rick Rubins Obsession mit professionellem Wettbewerb. Er hat mich ermutigt, es zu sehen. Und ich dachte mir, ich kriege es nicht. Aber dann habe ich diesen Dokumentar über Vince McMahon und die WWE gesehen. Und ich habe gemerkt, dass jeder weiß, dass es nicht wahr ist.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Deshalb funktioniert es. Traditionelle Medien, ich bin mit National Public Radio in unserer Heimat geboren, ständig. Die Standard-Nachrichten, die man hört, sind aufgestockt. Es gibt Leute, die sie lesen, die darüber sprechen. Und ich dachte, es sei wahr. Ich habe es wirklich gemacht. Ich dachte, es sei wahr.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und vergesst mich nicht, ich denke, es gibt einige tolle Berichterstatter und tolle Journalisten, die versuchen, Dinge richtig zu machen. Sie sind wirklich an ihrer Arbeit beteiligt und wollen es richtig machen. Aber es war nicht bis zu Podcasting, als ich effektiv eine Medienfirma wurde.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich habe Psycom, das ist der Huberman Lab Podcast mit Rob und ein paar anderen Mitgliedern, die ich verstanden habe. Ich dachte mir, warte, das, was so cool an Podcasting ist, ist nicht nur, dass es independent ist. Es ist, dass niemand Podcasts gut oder lang oder erfolgreich podcastet.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
unless it's real, like they know the topic matter and they're genuinely curious about their guest or the subject. und sie wollen das Beste für ihren Publikum. Es gibt keine Agenda für alles, außer um die Wahrheit herauszufinden. Und wir sind alle in unserer Fähigkeit, das herauszufiltern. Etwas kann also akkurat und nicht exhaustiv sein.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
wenn nicht alle Features der Dinge, die wir hören, wie Meditation und all diese anderen Dinge, in eine Praxis zu bringen, mit der man ein bisschen Zeit verbringen kann. Ich denke, das kann sehr nützlich sein. Ich bin nicht hier, um das zu drücken, ich weiß nur, dass das wahr ist. Also, mach deine Physiologie richtig, und das Rest wird anfangen, in den Platz zu fallen. Und, weißt du,
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es ist also nicht so, als hätte ich alles über Alkohol besprochen. Aber der Alkohol-Episode war mein bestes Versuch, wie Rick es sagen würde, mein Geschenk, mein Gebet an Gott. nicht ein Geschenk, sondern mein Offering, was ich in mir habe und meine beste Fähigkeit, das zu tun. Ich habe Monate lang darauf vorbereitet.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Der Mikroplastik-Episode, der gerade herausgekommen ist, habe ich Monate lang vorbereitet. Ist es perfekt? Nein. Ist es perfekt für meine besten Fähigkeiten an dieser Zeit? Ja. Bin ich grundsätzlich interessiert in Mikroplastik und was wir damit tun können? Ja.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich sage nicht, dass das traditionelle Medien das nicht interessiert, aber wenn man sich anschaut, wie schnell sie sich bewegen, wenn man sich anschaut, wie hoch der Kontur ist, was sie veröffentlichen, und ich werde einfach blödsinnig sein, wenn man sich anschaut, was sie veröffentlichen, ist ein guter Teil davon, dass sie sich jetzt aus Podcasts bewegen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Sie bewegen also die Reputationen von Leuten, nicht nur von Podcastern, aber auch von uns. Warum? Weil, sagen wir mal, hier ist die andere Wahrheit, alle. Sie sind mit uns in Kompetenz. Sie sind mit uns in Kompetenz. Wir informieren sie nicht, weil wir ehrlich gesagt nicht mit ihnen in Kompetenz sind. Ich denke nicht daran, was die New York Times-Health-Sektion darstellt.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber ich habe bemerkt, dass sie über Super-Agers, Alkohol, Schlaf sprechen. Hm, das sieht sehr ähnlich aus wie meine Newsletters. Ich komme aus der Wissenschaft, wo mehrere Leute die gleiche Sache publizieren können, und es ist eine gute Sache, weil es die Wahrheit einfach verstärkt. Ich mag es, wenn sie das tun.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber ich bin auch überrascht, weil ich aus einem Weltraum komme, der Wissenschaft ist, wo dein Ziel ist, die Natur zu präsentieren, die Wahrheit zu präsentieren und etwas zu tun, was jemand anderes noch nicht getan hat.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und ich weiß auch, dass du, wenn du zuerst gehst, Wärme bekommst, weil du es nicht perfekt machen kannst, weil andere Menschen Fehler finden können, die anders sind, wenn sie nicht der originelle Kreator sind. original creator meaning of the work, right? So to me, it's rather amusing that people think that these are reports about podcasters. No, this is competition for clicks.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
But the thing is, podcasters, because they're just being themselves, it's like the opposite of professional wrestling. Everyone knows that's fake. With podcasting, it's real. Lex... seine Tweets darüber, ob er diese oder jene Person anziehen soll, oder ob es schmerzhaft ist, sie zu hören. Das ist Lex. Das ist, wie er auf der Kamera ist. Das ist, wie er auf der Kamera ist.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Leute sagen, er drückt nicht hart genug zurück. Ja? Wie kannst du einen Gästen überzeugen, zu kommunizieren, was sie wirklich glauben, wenn du sie ständig ermutigst? Das ist nicht die Art, wie du sie kommunizierst. Du gibst ihnen die Möglichkeit, voranzugehen. Er macht intellektuellen Jiu-Jitsu. Lex ist ein Podcast-Genius. Er macht intellektuelles Jiu-Jitsu. Joe ist ein Podcast-Genius.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Er verbindet all seine Dinge. Seine Fähigkeiten, seine Interessen, seine intensiven Wünsche, seine Komödie, seine Fähigkeit, Dinge mit seinen Emotionen im Podcast zu zeigen. Und du machst das Gleiche durch deine Arbeit in der Regierung und in den Spezial-Operationen und deine intensiven Wünsche. Podcasting ist real.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Die Online-Kultur, mein Podcast, dein Podcast, Rogan-Podcast und andere Podcasts, ist voll mit Informationen darüber, wie man richtig exercizieren kann, wie man richtig essen kann, wie man all diese Dinge macht, um deine sozialen Verbindungen zu bauen, die auch wichtig sind. Aber wenn du nicht deine Physiologie richtig bekommst, wird das Rest nicht funktionieren.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
It's as real as it gets. And traditional media, I sometimes look at it still. But they're in competition with us. We're not in competition with them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es wird einfach nicht funktionieren. Du wirst einen sehr schwierigen Zeitraum haben, dich an alles zu befassen. Die Mental-Health-Krise wird also zuerst kürzt werden, indem wir unsere körperliche Physiologie betreuen. Es beginnt mit Licht, Schlaf, Alltagsverhalten, natürlich dann Hydration, Nahrung, Übungen und so weiter. Aber es beginnt damit, all diese Dinge richtig zu machen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und sie haben sich umgedreht. Ich denke, in den letzten Jahren oder so, im Jahr 2021 haben sich die Dinge für uns geblieben, im Jahr 2022, im Jahr 2023 war es, als ich dachte, wow, das ist ein bisschen wild. Ich habe noch nie etwas öffentlich befasst und das ist ein bisschen wild, aber wir werden einfach weiterhin das Beste tun, was wir können mit der Information.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und dann, ich denke, es ist jetzt ein Art Rite of Passage in der Podcasting, dass sie Trad Media kommt und nimmt dir einen Schuss. In manchen Fällen nehmen sie drei oder fünf Schüsse. Es ist nur Teil der Art und Weise, wie sie die Macht erzwingen. Das ist es, was sie tun. Sie finden also einen Krack.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Sie finden einen Krack in einer Person oder einem System oder etwas, was gesagt wurde, und sie versuchen, die Macht zu erzwingen. Aber ich möchte... Es ist eine Part von mir, weil das meine Natur ist. ist, ich möchte meine Arme um sie herum legen und sagen, hör mal, ich weiß, du bist alle unbezahlt. Ich weiß, es ist super frustrierend. Ich weiß, du musst alle diese Leute antworten.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
You should go independent, right? It's like, look what Barry Weiss did. Go independent. I saw this in skateboarding. You know, I saw a lot of these companies. It was friends with cameras recording, went out and recorded their own stuff and put it out. There were big structures prior to that. Prior to the early 90s, Vision, Palo Peralta, there were these big brands.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Those all collapsed from the small companies. Then guys like Steve Rocco and Rodney Mullen, these two wild renegade skateboarders, started their own magazine. Der Big Brother hat dann Jackass gespawnt. Jeff Tremaine und Spike Jonze haben all das gespawnt. dann war Thrasher Magazine immer independent und der Industrieleiter.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber es waren immer ein paar kleine Unternehmen und Leute, die DIY-reale Dinge machten. Und Podcasting ist die gleiche Art. Und natürlich, einige von ihnen verkaufen sich in großen Podcast-Häusern und sie haben mehr Macht. Aber was wir realisieren, ist, dass independentes Medien... independent music, independent action sports is what created punk rock music, which eventually became popular.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
We just saw Green Day, like, what, 70,000 people? I saw them when they were at Berkeley Square, a little band, but they didn't sell out. They showed people, this is what really good, in their case, pop punk, Nicht meine Lieblingsmusik, aber die Leute mögen sie natürlich. Das ist, wie unsere Version von guter Musik aussieht. Das selbe ist mit DC Shoes passiert.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Unsere Freunde haben damit angefangen. Danny Way, Colin McKay, Ken Block und diese Leute. Ken liebte Rallye-Karrieren. Glücklicherweise ist er weggegangen. Das ist ein Snowmobile-Achsen. Aber er liebte Rallye-Karrieren. Er hat es in eine ganze Sache verändert. Das gleiche gilt für Podcasting, das gleiche gilt für alles, was real ist, Hip-Hop-Musik.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Alles, was real ist, kann etwas Großartiges werden. Und traditionelle Medien öffnen andere Dinge, weil sie nicht mehr ihre eigene Sache sind. Und sie haben auch viele Fehler gemacht. Und ihr größter Fehler war, ihre Fehler nicht anzunehmen. Sein größter Fehler war, eine kleine Page-2-Vorgabe zu haben, die wirklich jemand anderes Leben beschädigt hat, als es stattgefunden hat.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und dann, wenn du gezwungen bist, macht es Sinn, eine spirituelle Lehnung zu erlernen. Das kann verschiedene Dinge für verschiedene Menschen bedeuten, aber wenn du die beiden Bereiche besuchst, bin ich bereit, zu beten, dass du in Wochen, wenn nicht Monaten, viel Erfolg machen kannst. Und die Leute beginnen, diesen Sinn der Angelegenheit zu fühlen, wie, wow, das ist wild.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber dann haben sie es einfach verletzt. Das ist ihr größter Fehler, dass sie sich nicht das Fenster umdrehen lassen. Und ich möchte meine Arme an diese Leute umdrehen und sagen, hör mal, ich denke, du bist gut geplant. Starte deine eigenen Kanäle. Or at least play nice. Because we're playing nice. And in fact, we don't even think about you. We don't even think about it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
People are like, did you see this article? Yeah, and no. It's all signal to noise, as we say in the brain. They tried so hard to do the same thing over and over, that no one trusts them anymore. They've lost the public trust. And I don't think they're ever going to get it back. Nein, meine eigenen Eltern. Ich meine, ich kenne nicht nur eine Seite meiner Familie, sondern auch die andere.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und sie sind einfach so... Kann man das überhaupt glauben? Also, sie müssen einen Restart machen. Sie müssen etwas herausfinden. Und es beginnt mit Integrität. Es beginnt mit... Ein Beispiel, das für Leute interessant sein könnte, ist... I covered drinking water and oral health. Turns out oral health is super important. Brush your teeth twice a day. That's the key.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Don't use alcohol-based mouthwashes. It kills the oral microbiome, makes you more vulnerable to infection and a bunch of other things. This is not Wu-Biology. The dentists told me this. By the way, the dental community are a great community. They're very open, very generous. They also taught me that the reason there's fluoride in the drinking water is fluoride makes stronger teeth.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
It gets in the mineral structure of the teeth and Es hilft wirklich, starke Zähne zu bauen. Aber es gibt noch einen anderen Mineral, der natürlich hervorgeht, den Hydroxyapatite, welcher die Zähne normalerweise zu remineralisieren benutzt. Ich wusste das auch nicht. Wenn du eine Flasche hast, kannst du sie remineralisieren, wenn du die richtigen Dinge anbietest.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Du kannst deine eigenen Flaschen füllen, so lange sie nicht tief, tief in die Rüste gehen. Kein Witz. Absolut. Du tust das, indem du dein Oralmikrobiom kümmerst. Und es gibt ein paar Dinge, die man tun kann. Aber Brushing und Flossing sind wichtig, richtig? Aber diese alkoholbasierten Zähne zu vermeiden, Und es gibt ein paar andere Dinge, die wir in der Episode beobachten werden.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich bringe einen Link dazu. Ich habe schon erwähnt, dass Fluorid, nichts klingt mehr hippie-woo und Konspirationstheorie, wenn man sagt, Fluorid könnte nicht gesund sein. Aber dann habe ich angefangen zu schauen, und da gibt es Daten, Published on PubMed, Library of Congress, that say that it might impact thyroid hormone and neurodevelopmental issues might. Okay, so I covered that a little bit.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
My Wikipedia slammed. I'm a fluoride denier. Suddenly I'm not a fluoride denier. Suddenly they accused me of being a fluoride denier. And I started catching a lot more heat from trad media. Gosh, same way I said mineral-based sunscreens Sie sahen großartig aus. Zinkoxid, Titaniumdioxid, chemische Sunscreens. Sie interessierten mich ein wenig. Ich habe einen schlechten Witz gemacht.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich sagte, sie interessierten mich mehr als Melanoma, was nicht ein guter Witz war, weil das auf meinem Wikipedia-Kanal landete. Jetzt akzeptieren sie mich, dass ich nicht Sunscreen-Beliebter bin. Okay. Nun, nachdem ich sechs Monate lang war, Es gibt zwei Gesetzgebungen in diesem Land. Einer gegen eine große Stadt auf der Westküste, um Fluorid zu entfernen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Einer gegen eine große Stadt auf der Ostküste, um Fluorid zu erhöhen, weil sie behaupten, dass es nicht genug Fluorid da war, um die Zähne dieser Kinder zu schützen, die das Wasser getrunken haben. Aber jetzt öffne ich die Internet die andere Nacht und plötzlich sagen die NIH und die CDU, hey, wir könnten uns über neue Daten und alte Daten über Fluorid und Neuroentwicklungsprobleme interessieren.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich schlafe ein bisschen besser, und ich fühle mich viel besser. Ich schlafe viel besser, und ich fühle mich viel besser. Und plötzlich kannst du bessere Entscheidungen machen. Einen Entscheid in der Tagzeit zu finden, der alles verändern wird, das ist unnötig. Du könntest vielleicht eine Pille fragen, die alles verändern wird.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Jetzt ist es okay, darüber zu sprechen, weil sie darüber sprechen. Aber wir waren vorhin richtig und wir sind jetzt richtig. Ich habe nicht gesagt, trinkt nicht Wasser aus der Tafel. Ich habe gesagt, informiert euch. Schaut, wie viel Fluorid in eurer Wasser lokal ist. Filtert, wenn ihr es braucht. Nehmt das Wissen in Auseinandersetzung. Was sie falsch machen, ist,
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
ist, dass sie sich so viele Male zu diesem Flip-Flop gezeigt haben. Das gleiche gilt für die Lab-Leak-Hypothesis. Du hast gesagt, dass es an einem Punkt der Pandemie herrschte, dass es aus einem Lab kommen könnte, und du hast deinen Job verloren. Tradmedia hat das jetzt beschlossen. Und jetzt ist es eine Diskussion, die du haben kannst. Was sie verloren haben, ist, dass ihr Titel Gatekeeper ist.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und du hast vorhin über Stanford gefragt und über große Institutionen. Es gab einen großen Druck auf akademische Freiheit in Städten wie Stanford. Und das ist wunderschön, das ist wichtig. Was bedeutet akademische Freiheit? Solange du niemanden nicht schädigst, kannst du...
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
research what you want and as long as the data are collected well and stringent and you can work on what you want and you can talk about what you want. I mean, I wasn't vocal during the pandemic about anything except anxiety and sleep, etc. But, you know, it was a back and forth heated argument among even some faculty at our own university. I mean, this is not controversial.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
I mean, the head of the Coronavirus Task Force was Scott Atlas from Stanford, right? Then you had people at Stanford who disagreed Und das ist wunderschön. Das ist super wichtig. Man, das ist erfreulich zu hören. Ich wusste nicht, dass das irgendwo passiert ist. Aber das ist großartig zu hören. Und das spritzt.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und wenn du nicht glaubst, dass du das tun kannst, dann beginnst du an der Glaubensseite und betest dafür, und dann gehst du in diese Richtung. Was es dauert, um das zu erforschen, mach es. Das ist meine Botschaft, denn es kann absolut gemacht werden. Mann, es klingt nicht so, als würde es viel dauern. Es ist die Konsistenz. Und Menschen sind gewohnt, etwas zu tun, das...
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich würde sagen, dass die Kultur der akademischen Freiheit sicherlich bei Stanford gehalten worden ist. Ich habe nie die Druck gehabt, dass ich an irgendeiner Sache arbeiten konnte. Kollegen sprechen offensichtlich darüber, was sie interessiert sind. Du wirst immer mehr Leute haben, die den Boot nicht rocken wollen, als die Leute, die den Boot rocken wollen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und die Leute, die den Boot rocken wollen, gehen gegen die traditionellen Ansichten von Dingen, die immer Wärme erzeugen werden. Aber... Ich denke, weil es in Silicon Valley ist und weil Silicon Valley eine Geschichte von Steve Jobs-Typen und einer Art Maverick-Kultur hat, wie z.B. Zuck und das Bau von Facebook, das war ein sehr frisches Bau.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wenn sogar die Hälfte der Geschichten wahr ist, ist es ein hohes Friction-Building. Ich meine, er ist jetzt beliebt. Ich meine, wenn du siehst, wie die Leute mit Zuck, mit diesem tollen Rebrand, richtig? Aber ich denke, dass die Leute realisieren, dass er eines der wichtigsten Dinge über die letzten 100 Jahre gebaut hat. Ob du mit jedem Aspekt, wie es gespielt hat, oder nicht.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich meine, er ist eine wichtige Figur, so wie Elon, so wie Jobs. Steve Jobs hatte eine Reputation für das Schreien von Menschen. Sind wir das zu verurteilen? Nein, du sagst, der Kerl war ein geniöser Kreator und Inventor. Und so wird der Geist der Neuen Dinge immer mit Friktion getroffen werden. Ich denke, in der Landschaft von Medien und Politik, aber besonders Medien und Podcasts,
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich schaue Rogan an, der es auf den Hintern genommen hat und hart, über und über und über gemacht hat, damit der Rest von uns reinkommen konnte. Ich meine, er hat wirklich seinen Weg durch die Dschungel gehackt und er hat viele Kutsche auf den Weg genommen. Und es ist nicht verloren worden bei mir und es sollte nicht verloren worden sein bei jedem einzelnen...
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ein Mann oder eine Frau, der einen Podcast startet, jetzt oder zehn Jahre nach jetzt, der gehört auf den Rutsch des Podcasts. Er hat die Wege geschliffen. Ich wusste nicht, dass es so viele Leute gab, die mit Fluorid verbunden waren. Was ist das Problem? Es ist in der trinkenden Wasser und es macht die Zähne stärker. Die Frage ist, ob es schlechte Effekte hat, wenn die Leute es nicht ausfiltern.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wir filteren alles aus.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es ist wahrscheinlich Reverse Osmosis und dann remineralisiertes Wasser, das du willst. Was ich von der Forschung von Mikroplastik gelernt habe, ist, dass sie überall sind. Wir können nicht versuchen, sie aus dem Umfeld zu bringen. Sie sind überall. Es ist gut, wenn man aus diesen Metallkannen trinkt. Ich trinke aus Plastik, jedes Mal. Ein Glas-Vessel ist gut, Metall ist gut.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es gibt ein paar Dinge da draußen, wie bestimmte Branden von karboniertem Wasser, die mit der Analyse besonders hart getroffen wurden. Sie machen eine Analyse von sparklendem Wasser. Topo Chico landete flach auf dem Gesicht mit vielen dieser Endokrindesruptoren. Nein, bist du ernst? Oh ja, das ist das Schlimmste. Das war im Jahr 2020, 2021. Ich liebe Topo Chico.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Das sind etwa neun Teilen pro Trillionen. Aber die Coca-Cola-Familie, die sie besitzt, hat gesagt, dass sie das reduzieren werden. Ich glaube, sie haben das halbiert. Aber in Bezug auf die Anzahl von Endokrin-Disruptor-Forever-Chemikalien, die da drin sind, sind sie viel höher als in allem anderen. Selbst wenn es Glas ist, ist es das Wasser. Sie haben das vielleicht aufgeräumt.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
quote unquote, works the first time and every time. And there are certain practices that we'll discuss during today's discussion, I'm sure, that can calm us down very quickly, that work the first time and every time, because they're grounded in physiology. But these things like getting a good night's sleep, getting sunlight, at first it's subtle.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Jemand sollte wieder eine Analyse machen. Aber dann geht es auch andersherum. Man hat gehört, dass wir pro Woche einen Wert von Plastik aus Kreditkarten ingesten. Das Studium wurde von einem anderen Studium verweigert, das zeigte, nein, diese Messung war von rund 1 Mio. Folgen entfernt. Es ist eigentlich viel niedriger.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Du kannst auch Phase-II-Liver-Detoxing durch Brokkoli und cruciferöse Gemüse essen. Sulforaphane und cruciferöse Gemüse helfen mit Phase-II-Liver-Detox. Leute, um es klar zu machen, ihr betäubt nicht euren Blut. Ihr unterstützt euren Blut, Dinge aus deinem Körper zu betäuben. Wenn ihr betäubt, das ist wie, die Trad Media liebt es, auf das zu springen, ihr könnt nicht betäubt werden.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ihr könnt betäubt werden, ihr habt Toxine in eurem Körper, ihr könnt ein paar von ihnen auswärmen, aber nicht alle von ihnen. Dein Blut hilft, bestimmte Wachstumsprodukte zu entfernen. Sulforaphane könnt ihr in Supplementform nehmen, ihr könnt es von kruzifischen Vegetablen, Broccolisprouten usw. bekommen, das hilft.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber wir versuchen, die Menge von Mikroplastik zu reduzieren, insbesondere für schwere Frauen und junge Kinder. Shana Swan, die auf Rogans Podcast gearbeitet hat, hat gesagt, dass diese Endokrin-Disruptoren während der Pregnanz die Distanz zwischen dem Skrotum und dem Anus in Jungs kürzen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Der Tintensatz schrinkt in Richtung einer mehr weiblichen Farbe, mit prognostizierter Ausbeutung von Phthalaten und Endokrin-Disruptoren, die in Rezepten und Plastikbotteln vorhanden sind. Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome and Egg Count. Egg Counts are going down in women at a given age. Polycystic Ovarian Syndroms are going up.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Shana, who's a researcher for several decades now, thinks this is related to the prevalence of endocrine disruptors in receipts, forever chemicals, and so on. So these have real implications. Reduced sperm counts Diese sind echte Effekte. Die Testosteron-Rate sinkt, die Sperm-Rate sinkt, und es korreliert gut mit Phthalaten und Dingen in der Trinkwasser. Nicht Fluorid, aber andere Dinge.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Was trinkst du? Ich trinke nicht mehr Topo Chico. Ich trinke Pellegrino. oder Calistoga oder Pellegrino. Ich versuche, aus Metall oder Glas zu trinken, aber ich trinke manchmal aus einem Plastikbottel. Auch Kans sind schlecht, weil die Kans-Linie, aber die meisten sind jetzt ohne BPA. Ich mikrowave nichts in Plastik, sogar mikrowave-safe Plastik, wenn ich es verhindern kann.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
And then pretty soon you start to notice, yeah, I'm waking up and feeling more energized during the day. I don't need quite as much caffeine. Or I don't need, you know, I'm finding that like, Ja, Zeit auf Social Media ist großartig. Ich lehre auf Social Media und natürlich mag ich Social Media und ich mag die Inhalte, die da drin sind, inklusive einiger blöder Inhalte.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber wenn ich auf dem Flugzeug bin und das Essen gut ist, dann esse ich es. Ich bin kein Fanatiker. Die Idee ist, deine Aufmerksamkeit zu verringern. Keiner geht ohne Aufmerksamkeit. Und sie packen einige der besten Mehl in Plastik. Also musst du mit der Realität arbeiten. Aber für schwere Frauen, für junge Kinder ist das Verringern der Aufmerksamkeit zu diesen Dingen sehr, sehr bedeutend.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und nicht zu verringern ist potenziell bedeutend. Was gibt es noch in unserem Trinkwasser? Einiges von hormonrelevanten Dingen, wie das Herz-Kontrollen und das Urin, die Hormone enthalten sind, die es in das Trinkwasser machen könnten. Ich denke, es ist eine gute Idee, das Trinkwasser zu filteren, wenn es möglich ist.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und für die Leute, die es nicht ermöglichen, ein einziges Filtersystem zu haben, ein Tabletop, ein Poor-Type Filtersystem ist ziemlich gut, so lange du die Filter verändern kannst. Was gibt es noch? Die BPAs und die Phthalate, die BPAs und diese Forever-Chemikalen sind sehr anstrengend. Diese Forever-Chemikalen lassen den Körper nicht weg. Das ist ihre Angelegenheit. Oder eher die Angelegenheit.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich denke, für mich ist es wichtig, nur aus Plastikbotteln zu trinken. Wenn man Dinge in Plastik kauft, wie Früchte oder Vegetable, was sie jetzt oft tun, was ich auch tue, ich kann es nicht immer in den Landwirtschaftsmarkt machen, dann muss man es in eine Pfanne geben und es wegrennen. Das ist wichtig. Diese kleinen Schritte und das Nicht-Handeln von Anzeigen sind wichtig.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wenn du Anzeigen für Arbeit handeln musst, solltest du Nitrite-Glöcke tragen. Nicht Nitrite, Entschuldigung. Du solltest Nitrite-Glöcke tragen. Nitrite wäre etwas anderes. Nitrite-Glöcke. Latex wäre nicht so gut, aber immer noch besser als Handeln von vielen Anzeigen. You know, Shana has done this work where they go in and work with couples that are trying to conceive and have trouble conceiving.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
And they remove a lot of the things from their life that I just described. And they see pretty impressive shift towards successful pregnancy. Not making any other changes. Wow. Which is really impressive. Wow. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Hast du das jemals gehört? Nein, aber ich schätze, Wenn das wahr ist, ist es wahrscheinlich, weil das Wasser, das aus dem Topf kommt, andere Partikel hat, in denen die Kristalle hervorgehen, um dir mehr deformede Kristalle zu geben. Ich meine, es gibt viele Sachen, die durch den Topf kommen, und Pfeifen. Ich bin nicht... in den Konflikt-Theoristen-Kampf.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber muss ich wirklich so viel Zeit damit verbringen? Oder ist das mir ein bisschen das Wichtigste? Weißt du, wie viel Zeit du auf Social Media verbringst? Ich habe jetzt eine neue Praxis, wo ich ein Handy mit... Instagram und X und das ist es. Keiner hat die Nummer. Und wenn ich posten muss, kippe ich Dinge auf und poste sie.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber was ich sicher sagen kann, ist, dass ich jetzt 49 Jahre alt bin, also kann ich Dinge sagen, wie ich jetzt 49 Jahre alt bin. Ich kann auch Dinge sagen wie, ich erinnere mich an das, als die Leckermaschine ein Problem geworden ist. Leckermaschinen, Kinder mit Neurologischen Schmerzen, die von Leckermaschinen essen oder von Leckermaschinen ausgewogen werden. Asbestos-Warnungen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Asbestos ist schlecht. Du willst nicht ausgewogen werden. Leckermaschinen oder Asbestos. Ich denke, Fluorid hat mehr getan, um die Zähne zu stärken, als es für die meisten Kinder in den meisten Städten getan hat. Ich denke, sie mussten also eine Best-Case-Decision machen, eine Risiko-Benefiz-Analyse.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber nachdem die meisten Menschen wahrscheinlich einen günstigen Filter für ihre Wasser haben können, und das, was über Fluorid gezeigt wurde, etwas bemerkenswert ist, ist es wahrscheinlich besser, es auszufiltern, jetzt, dass wir es wissen. Trans-Fatten waren überall. Als ich aufgewachsen war, dachten alle, Margarine sei die heiligere Nahrung.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Jetzt wissen wir, dass das wirklich gut ist, um zu vermeiden. Das ist auf der Ebene der Regierung. Mikroplastik, ich meine, es war 2015, glaube ich, ich habe die Date vermutlich falsch gemacht, dass sie die Nahrung dieser kleinen Mikrobeads in Soap verabschiedeten. Erinnerst du dich? Die Mikrobeads.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Weil diese in das Umfeld rauskommen und ein paar ernsthafte Probleme für maritimische Tiere verursachen. und der maritimen Lebensweise generell. Und jetzt beginnen wir, über Mikroplastik für Menschen zu denken. Wir sprechen über es für Ältere, und jeder sagt, oh Gott, das klingt wirklich wu. Guck dir das an. Sie wurden von Sippe-Kuppen von Kindern und von Trinkbotteln von Kindern verboten,
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Die Regierung weiß, dass wir diese Dinge nicht in Babys verwenden wollen. Gleiches gilt auch für chemische Sunscreens für Babys, weil ihre Haut viel mehr abflüssig ist. In welcher Phase ist deine Haut so abflüssig, dass es sicher ist, diese Dinge aufzunehmen? Mineralbasierte Sunscreens mit Zinkoxid sind generell sicher. Chemische Sunscreens, ich bekomme viel Wärme dafür.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Die Leute sagen, ich kann nicht glauben, dass er das sagt. In Europa lassen sie das. Okay, gut. Das ist in Ordnung. Aber für mich, wenn es sogar eine remote Möglichkeit ist, dann warum würdest du das machen? Weckst du eine Hatte oder eine langsame Schuhe an? Warum wendest du dich auf das, was die Leute nicht wissen?
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Das macht Sinn für mich, vor allem, weil ich mit Wissenschaftlern zusammengearbeitet habe. Ich verstehe, wir wissen bestimmte Dinge, aber wir wissen nicht alles. Und dann findest du, wenn du in irgendein Feld schaust, es ist sehr interessant, über Sonnenblumen zu sprechen, weil Dermatologen einen Grund für Sonnenblumen haben.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Jede Dermatologin, insbesondere ein Dermatologen-Onkologe, ein Experte in Hautschmerzen, hat mir folgendes erzählt. Ich wusste das nicht. Stanford-trained, Harvard-trained, er hat mehrere Qualitäts-Recherche veröffentlicht und hat eine klinische Praxis. Er hat gesagt, ja, zu viel Sonnenspannung kann Hautschmerzen geben, aber es gibt nicht die schlimmsten Hautschmerzen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Die können trotzdem aufstehen. Was ist das Ergebnis? Selbst wenn man die Sonnenspannung verringert, muss man den Körper für... nicht nur die Äußerungen, die sich verändert haben. Die meisten sterblichen Melanomen passieren auf de novo Haut, also nicht, wo eine Äußerung ist. Niemand hat mir das gesagt. Ich war immer nur so besorgt über Sonnenbrunnen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich habe nicht mehr Sonnenbrunnen bekommen, also habe ich nicht mehr darüber nachgedacht. Er hat Mineral-Based Sunscreens gesagt. Niemand. Niemand kann testen. Interessant.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber durch das weiß ich genau, wie viel Zeit ich dort verbringe und es ist etwa eine Stunde und eine halbe. Aber ich poste auch ziemlich viel. Aber das ist eine Stunde und eine halbe, wo ich weiß, dass man schreiben kann oder ein Geschäft bauen kann. Aber für mich ist das Teil meines Geschäftes, weil ich natürlich in der Online-Kultur und Podcasting bin.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
So this would be like, and I'm not saying this to be true, but this would be like if the Navy and the Army hated one another, and I don't know, because I'm a civilian, and I'm talking to one group, and then the other one's saying, well, they're full of it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
And so what you start to find out when you look into science and health is that most of what we see out there, most commercial products, are filtered through the path of least resistance. They'll put things out until they can't. And I place a lot of faith in good doctors. I'm not anti-medicine. Ich kenne Doktoren, die unglaubliche Ärzte sind. Ich versuche, diese Leute auf meinem Podcast zu hosten.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich kenne tolle Wissenschaftler. Ich kenne auch Wissenschaftler, die verrückt sind. Und deren gesamte Karriere ist es so, dass sie Sachen publizieren, die niemand glaubt, weil die Daten nicht sehr gut sind. Nicht, weil ihre Ideen so richtig sind und niemand sie hören wird.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wenn du eine wirklich gute Idee in der Wissenschaft hast und gute, solide Daten bekommst, kommt die wissenschaftliche Gemeinschaft um. Das Problem ist, dass wir oft hören, Jemand wird Fluorid ausruhen und dann wird er plötzlich einen Verschwörungstheorist genannt und dann ist es für sie alles vorbei.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wenn wir jetzt in der Tat von Trad Media und ein paar anderen, die wir vor einiger Zeit geredet haben, hören, Fluorid hat seine Probleme. Also wenn du ein junges Kind hast, filterst du vielleicht das Wasser. Aber versuche, dass das Kind ihre Zähne brüht. Ich sage nicht, dass sie ihre Zähne ausruhen lassen. Was verloren ist, ist die Nuance und diese Tendenz, dass es sich um uns und sie handelt.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und ich habe versucht, es der Mission des Podcasts zu machen, wirklich alle Angeln dieser Dinge zu erforschen. Aber deine Kinder sollten ihre Zähne mit einem Toothpaste brüllen, das Hydroxyapatite hat, was eine großartige Suche ist, um Zähne zu mineralisieren, um starke Zähne zu machen, besonders wenn du Fluorid aus dem Wasser holst. Wenn sie Kaviten bekommen, ist es so,
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wenn du deine Zähne morgens waschst, besonders bevor du nachts schlafen gehst, und dich im Mittelpunkt des Tages hydratierst, gibst du der Kavette, die Bakterien verursacht, keine Möglichkeit, sich zu formen. Die Bakterien, die Kavette verursachen... Zucker verursacht keine Kavette. Die Bakterien, die Schmerzen verursachen, das sind die Streptococcus mutans Bakterien, füllen auf Zucker.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wenn du also geringe Dinge in deinen Zähnen hast, ist das, wie diese Idee vorgegangen ist. Und das ist wahr. Wenn du viele geringe Dinge in deiner Mauer hast, dann füllen die Streptococcus mutans Bakterien Sie wird genutzt, proliferiert und kann in deine Zähne brüllen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber wenn du Streptococcus-Mutans von der Möglichkeit versorgen kannst, durch Bruschen und Flossen, idealerweise mit einem Toothpaste, das Hydroxyapatite besitzt, weißt du was? Deine Zähne können remineralisiert werden. Du kannst sie in die Lippen füllen. Du weißt, sie gehen in den Dentist und sie puk, puk, puk, puk. Du hast dort eine Pizze. Diese Pizzen können sich wieder reinfüllen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Sie haben mir das nie gesagt. Sie können das? Absolut. Vier Ärzte haben mir das gesagt. Vier Ärzte haben mir das gesagt. Dies sind board-certifizierte Ärzte, insbesondere pädagogische Ärzte. There's a dentist on Instagram and it's Dr. Downstore Stacy with an I, who's just like, here's the truth on fluoride, here's the truth on hydroxyapatite, here's how to give your kids really healthy teeth.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Das ist etwa eine Stunde, eine Stunde und eine halbe. Das ist wirklich gut. Und ein separates Handy für das hilft wirklich. Weil wenn Leute mir Sachen schicken, kann ich sie nicht anschauen. Ich muss sie an meinen anderen Handy schicken. Da gibt es also eine Barriere. Aber ich bin nicht hier, Online-Kultur zu dämonisieren. Meine Profession ist Online-Kultur. Oder Teil davon.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
The other way to give your kids really healthy teeth, encourage them to be nose breathers. This mouth breathing thing is really bad. A friend of mine who works with methamphetamine addicts, who works with methamphetamine addicts, do you know one of the reasons their teeth are so bad? Why? Because they mouth breathe. Es gibt also diese Dinge, die so grundlegend sind.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Manche werden sich fragen, ob ich wütend bin. Ich bin gar nicht wütend. Ich bin jetzt an dem Punkt, wo ich das Hinterkopf gesehen habe. Und ich denke mir, okay, so funktioniert Medien. Wie weiß ich das? Nun, ich habe einen wirklich großen Medienkanal. Und ich lese auch, und ich höre, und ich spreche mit Ärzten. Und du fragst, wie mit der Vetcare. Ein weiteres Beispiel.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich habe Costello gewechselt. Und später im Leben war er wirklich schmerzhaft und schmerzhaft. Also habe ich ihm eine hohe Dose Testosteron gegeben. Und er war so, danke. Und ich dachte mir, oh Gott, ich habe es mit Rogan gesprochen, ich dachte, die Vets kommen nach mir. Die Vets kommen nach mir. Er legt seinen Hund auf Testosteron. Ich wurde von vielen Vets kontaktiert.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und weißt du, was sie sagten? Danke. Es scheint, dass sie versuchen, dich zu erschrecken, dass dein männliches Pferd Testikulärkanzer bekommen wird oder mit jedem Pferd in der Nachbarschaft kämpft, wenn du es festhältst.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es scheint, wenn du ein junges Pferd kastrierst, entwickelt sich nicht nur das Gehirn normalerweise, was ich wissen sollte, weil ich in der Beziehung zwischen Gehirnentwicklung und Hormonen gearbeitet habe, Sie haben alle Art von Krankheiten. Costellos Schädel stoppte, seine Zähne stoppten so schnell, er war viel glücklicher. Aber ich sagte, warum sagst du das nicht den Leuten?
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Oder gib ihnen zumindest Testosteron für ihre Pferde. Das scheint kein großes Krankheitsproblem zu sein, aber ich sagte, warum? Hälfte der Pferde sind geschlossen. Und sie sagten, oh, der Grund ist, dass wir wissen, dass wenn du Koffer-Medizin für Kofferhändler gibst, die Pferde werden besser fühlen, aber die Menschen könnten die Koffersirup abwenden.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und wenn man Testosteron Pets anbietet, können die Anwohner sie als anabolische Steroide verwenden. Wir entlasten also die Tiere mit diesem potenziell nützlichen Betrieb, um ein Problem zu vermeiden. Aber es ist großartig, dass du das gemacht hast und wir sind froh, dass du es öffentlich gesprochen hast.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich hatte noch nicht einen, jetzt bekomme ich einen, aber ich hatte noch nicht einen Vetter, der mir gesagt hat, das war unverantwortlich, dass du da drauf gehst und darüber sprichst, dass du deinem Hund Testosteron anbietest.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Man beginnt also zu erkennen, dass es Dinge in jeder medizinischen Gemeinschaft gibt, ob es Veterinär- oder Oral-Gesundheit ist, oder Hautschutz, wie die Derm-Onkologen-Gesundheit, oder Kanzler-Gesundheit, Das sind smarte Leute, die ein bisschen von ihrer Kultur verabschiedet sind, der Kultur, in der sie existieren. Und ich bin mir sicher, im Militär gibt es das Gleiche.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Du bist nicht frei, alles zu tun, was für alle am besten ist, weil es eine größere Struktur gibt.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber diese Mental-Health-Krise beginnt mit der Verständnis, dass die Menschen ihre Physiologie kontrollieren können. Und sie können ihre Verständnis kontrollieren. Es klingt so kompliziert, aber es ist es nicht.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Das ist ein Bereich, von dem ich viel kenne. Ich habe Neuralink angeschaut, was sie tun, nicht auf einem Detail-Niveau, wo ich zu diesem spezifischen Ingenieur sprechen könnte, aber ein Typ, der durch mein Labor aufgetreten ist, er arbeitete tatsächlich bei Stanford, aber er hat ein bisschen Zeit in meinem Labor verbracht. einen Mann namens Matt McDougall. Er ist ein mediziner Neurosurgeon.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Er ist der Leitneurosurgeon bei Neuralink. Hier ist, was sie da tun. Sie nutzen kleine implantierbare Geräte, um Neuronen zu stimulieren und oder Neuronen zu erzeugen. Das ist wirklich mächtig, weil wenn man Neuronen erzeugt und einen Eindruck bekommt, was ihre Führungspattern sind in einem gesundheitlichen Individuum, dann könnte man die gleichen Führungspattern in eine
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
ein Gehirn oder ein Auge eines Patienten, der nicht genug oder nicht die richtige Neuralaktivität in dieser Region hat. Und sie haben ein paar andere Dinge, die sie machen, die wirklich cool sind, wie Robotik, um sehr präzise und sehr schnell über die Implantation dieser Chips zu sprechen, sodass man keine Neurosurgery machen muss, wie es traditionell gemacht wird.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Sie bauen eine Menge tolle biologische Werkzeuge in Bezug auf Robotik und AI. Zudem. Okay, hier ist die Partie über Blindheit. Es gibt viele verschiedene Formen der Blindheit. Es gibt Formen der Blindheit, die durch das Verlust der photorezeptiven Zellen verursacht werden. Das sind die Zellen, die Licht in elektrische Signale konvertieren, die dann ins Gehirn gebracht werden.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es gibt also viele Krankheiten, bei denen der Verlust der photorezeptiven Zellen stattfindet. Dort muss man ein Lichtsensiertes Tissue oder Gerät zurückgeben. Es gibt auch Formen von Blindheit, wie zum Beispiel Glaucoma, das ist eine Degeneration von Neuronen, die Retinalganglienzellen sind. Sie befinden sich in der Rückseite deines Augen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Das sind eigentlich Gehirnneuronen, die zentralen Nervensystemneuronen. Und sie senden diese kleinen Verbindungen, die wir Axonen nennen, die wie kleine Räder sind, in den Gehirn, um die Transmission von visuellen Bildern zu ermöglichen, damit man die visuelle Perception sehen kann.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Oh ja, in einem Tag oder so, weil dann schaue ich auf meinen anderen Telefon und erinnere mich, oh, Instagram und X sind nicht da. Aber wie heute Morgen, es wird klingen, als ob ich Namen verliere, aber sein Name wird wahrscheinlich ein bisschen aufkommen, weil er ein guter Freund ist und er hat eine Menge Wissens, die ich die Freiheit nehme, zu teilen. Wie Rick Rubin hat mir etwas von X gesendet.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und natürlich gibt es Formen der Blindheit, die erfolgen, weil der visuelle Kortex verletzt wird, der tiefste Bereich im Gehirn.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Also was Neuralink recht rationell tut, ist, dass sie herausfinden, hey, wir haben kleine implantierbare Geräte, die Stimulationen und die Simulationen der Neuralaktivitäten, die in normalen, heiligen Neuronen stattfinden, die normalen, heiligen Menschen zu sehen ermöglichen. So they've been recording these patterns of activity.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
And mind you, there have been researchers within the field of visual neuroscience like E.J. Ciesielnicki at Stanford and others who have been doing this for a long time. But Neuralink is gaining really good ground on this problem of measuring what are the patterns of firing in these neurons that normally occur when light comes into the eye. And
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Welche Art von Aktivitätsmöglichkeiten werden im Gehirn durch diese Retinalganglien-Zellen transmittet? Welche Art von Aktivitätsmöglichkeiten entstehen im Gehirn, wenn diese Aktivität entsteht, die den Eindruck erzeugt, dass meine Hand vor meinem Gesicht bewegt ist, was ich jetzt mache, für diejenigen, die gerade hören.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
So, was sie tun, ist, dass sie die beobachtbaren Ereignisse wie Bewegung, Farbe, Gesichtskennung usw.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
nehmen, um herauszufinden, welche Neural-Aktivitäten notwendig sind, und dann in den gebrochenen visuellen System eines Menschen, der vielleicht Retinalganglien-Zellen benötigt, oder vielleicht in einer bestimmten Region ihres visuellen Kortexes verletzt ist, und die heiligen Aktivitäts-Pattern einfach wiederholen, diese Aktivitäts-Pattern an der richtigen Position auf dem visuellen Weg zu bringen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wow. Das ist wild, weil es sehr wenige Fälle gab, eine in der Tat von einem Mann namens Botan Roska und Karl Deisseroth, einer von denen ist in der Schweiz, der andere in Stanford, der die Lichtsensitivität der Photorezepte verstärkt und eine blinde Patientin ermöglicht, das war in einem Patienten gemacht, eine blinde Patientin zu ermöglichen, krude Licht- und dunkle
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Objektformationen in ihrem visuellen Umfeld. Also ist das nicht die Restauration von präziser Sicht. Okay. Okay.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Was Neuralink versucht zu tun, so weit ich es verstehe, ist etwas viel präziserer, um die exakten Pattern der Aktivität herauszufinden, die es braucht, um visuelle Szenen zu erschaffen, um Bewegungsbeobachtung zu erschaffen, um Gesichtsbeobachtung zu erschaffen, und dann ein kleines implantables Gerät an der Location im Gehirn, wo es am meisten benötigt ist. Es könnte im Auge sein, aber mehr...
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Technisch wird es im tieferen Gehirn gemacht. Bereiche wie der Thalamus, der visuelle Kortex, für diejenigen, die wissen wollen. Und dann ein Gerät im Auge ermöglichen, denn das kann gemacht werden, selbst wenn jemand Lack der Augenblut hat, um den visuellen Welt zu sehen. Denn eine Kamera kann den visuellen Welt sehen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
und dann diese Informationen dem Gerät geben, was dann das digitale Bild in ein Neural-Signal übertragen kann, das dann mit den restlichen Neuronen im visuellen System sprechen kann. Der Grund, warum ich sage, dass sie es sehr wahrscheinlich machen können, Sie haben eine FDE-Erkennung bekommen, zumindest für den ersten Versuch in den Menschen, ist, dass alle Komponenten, die man braucht, da sind.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und es kam zu dem Telefon, das er hat. Und ich musste es auf Exxon, meinem anderen Telefon, aufschauen. Da war es wertvoll. Er hat mir etwas Interessantes gesendet, also habe ich es geschaut. Die meiste Zeit, wenn Leute mir Dinge schicken, kann ich es nicht sehen. Aber ich bin... Ich denke, es ist, weil Social Media und Text ein bisschen verbunden sind.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Man weiß, was die visuelle Szene ist. Man kann eine Kamera anwenden, wo die Augen sind. Man kann sogar Augenlöcher mit nur einer Kamera haben. Ein kleines Gehäuse, das durch den temporalen Bein geht. Ein kleines Gehäuse, ein kleines Gehäuse, vielleicht sogar ein Kontaktlens mit einem kleinen Gehäuse. Das ist jetzt möglich.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Dann nimmt das Wire das visuelle Bild, das digital erhoben wird, wie ein Bild auf dem Handy. Wenn man sich die Kamera auf dem Handy anschaut, ist sie nicht viel größer als ein Augenblick. Und dann gibt es die elektrischen Signale, also die digitalen Signale, an den Chip, damit sie die elektrischen Signale an die Neuronen bieten, die dann die richtigen neuronalen Signale erzeugen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Sie haben die visuelle Prozessung dekodiert. And they can introduce whatever component happens to be missing in that patient. So if the patient has photoreceptors and ganglion cells, but is lacking a patch of neurons in the visual system because of damage or what have you, a stroke, they could replace the signals that would have originated from those neurons.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
If they're lacking ganglion cells, they can replace those signals. If they're lacking photoreceptors, that's a little bit trickier, but you could use a camera that views the outside world. The camera has perfectly good photoreception. eine Kamera-Video-Image in die richtige Neural-Image. Wow. Also, sie versuchen das.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es ergibt einen sehr guten Sinn, warum das die erste Sache wäre, die Neuralink in Bezug auf das Gehirn-Augmentationen und die Restauration von Funktionen durchführen sollte. Denn das visuelle System hat diese wichtige Bedeutung, nämlich dass man weiß, welche Inputs man zu der Schippe erzeugen will. Vergleiche das zum Beispiel zu einer Erinnerung.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich gehe hier raus, nach diesem Rekord, ich habe eine Erinnerung davon. Sagen wir, ich hatte Gehirnschmerzen und ich habe meine Erinnerungen verloren. Welche neurale Signale würdest du dem Gehirn geben, um diese Erfahrung wiederherzustellen? Du weißt es nicht.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Mit visuellen Bildern weißt du alle Statistiken der visuellen Szene, wie leicht oder schwarz etwas ist, die spatiale Frequenz, also nur das Spazieren zwischen Dingen. Du weißt, wie hochkontrastig oder niedrigkontrastig es ist. Und man kann all das durch eine qualitativ digitale Bildung erzeugen und dann einfach an den Chip übertragen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Die Aufgabe des Neuralink-Implantat-Devices, das herausfordernd ist, aber ich denke, dass sie es überwinden werden, ist es, einen Chip zu erstellen, der all diese Informationen, viele, viele, viele Informationen nehmen kann und sie dynamisch in der realen Zeit in Neuronsignale übertragen. Denn die Leute schauen nicht nur, wie ihre Hand vor ihrem Gesicht für zehn Minuten bewegt ist,
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Sie schauen nach dem, dann legen sie es runter, dann gehen sie in diese Richtung. Es gibt Optikflöte, es gibt Dinge, die durchgehen. Aber ich bin sicher, dass sie das erreichen werden, weil alle notwendigen Komponenten bekannt sind. Das ist wichtig. Wir wissen nicht alle notwendigen Inputs, die es braucht, um eine Erinnerung an deine Großmutter zu schaffen. Wir wissen einfach nicht, was sie sind.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber wir wissen alle notwendigen physischen Weltkomponenten, die kommen. Wir wissen, was von der Kamera entdeckt werden muss. Das ist einfach mit einer Kamera zu tun. Kameras sind sehr klein jetzt. Wie man das zu einem Chip fügt, damit man es dann in die Sprache des Nervensystems übersetzen kann, nämlich elektrische Signale, die durch chemische Entfernung von Neuronen geführt werden.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Oh, ja. Es gab ein Experiment von zwei Leuten, Bill Newsom, Tony Movshun und anderen, die es so gemacht haben. Sie haben es in einem Mäkaken-Monkey gemacht. Sie haben einen kleinen Mikrostimulator in ein Bereich des Gehirns gelegt, das beobachtet, ob sich Dinge nach oben, nach unten oder nach links bewegen in der visuellen Welt. Du hast dieses Bereich in deinem Gehirn.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wenn jemand dich auf Social Media sendet, dann bist du auf Social Media, dann bist du wieder auf Text. Es ist alles ein bisschen ein Messer. Meine Meinung ist einfach nicht so organisiert, um diese Dinge alle im gleichen Ort zu halten. Ich glaube nicht, dass jeder das sagt. Ich weiß nicht. Du magst SpekOps, Leute. Ich kenne viele Leute aus deiner Gemeinschaft. Ihr seid wirklich verbreitet.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wenn ich ein Elektrode dazugeben würde und ein paar Dinge hochdrehen würde, würden bestimmte Neuronen schießen, andere nicht. Einige Neuronen würden nach links schießen, andere nach rechts.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Sie haben tatsächlich das Experiment gemacht, in dem sie dieses Tier trainieren, um die Punkte zu beobachten, die in eine bestimmte Richtung bewegen, und dann im Grunde zu korrespondieren mit einer Leberpresse oder einem Joystick, um zu sagen, in welcher Richtung es sich bewegt. Und wenn du Tieren beurteilst, um die Antwort richtig zu bekommen, werden sie bald lernen, wie sie das tun.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Sie haben ein Experiment vor vielen Jahren gemacht, in dem sie ein kleines Mikrostimulierungssystem in diesem Gehirn haben, in dem sie hatten, dass der Mönch die Knoten nach unten sehen und der Mönch die Joystick nach unten drückt, indem er sagt, dass die Knoten nach unten gehen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Dann entscheiden sie, die Neuronen, die aktiv waren, während der Perzeption des Mönchens, die Knoten nach unten gehen, zu stimulieren, während die Knoten nach oben gehen. Also bewegen sie die Knoten nach oben und der Mönch denkt, dass die Knoten nach unten gehen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Sie tinkern mit der Aktivität im Gehirn, sodass, obwohl das Tier beobachtet, was im Umfeld passiert ist, es denkt, dass das Gegenteil passiert. Die Punkte erhöhen sich, aber sie stimulieren die Neuronen im Gehirn, haben in der Vergangenheit zu der perceptuellen Entscheidung geführt, dass die Knoten nach unten gehen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und der Mönch macht das nur, und die Neuronen schießen nur, wenn die Knoten nach unten gehen. Sie wissen also, dass es nicht nur der Mönch antizipiert wird. Die Knoten gehen also nach oben, und der Mönch sagt, dass sie nach unten gehen. Warum denken sie, dass sie nach unten gehen? Weil sie die Neuronen im Gehirn simulieren, damit sie denken, dass die Knoten nach unten gehen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es klingt extrem, aber auf dem Gesicht sollte es so sein. Denn wenn z.B.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
ein Neurosurgeon, und das hat man schon oft gemacht, sich in die Epilepsie stimmuliert, das ist so, wie sie die Epilepsie prüfen, mein Freund Eddie Chang, der Chef der Neurosurgery bei UCSF, ich habe es erwähnt, weil ich diese Geschichten liebe, ich frage ihn, ob er mir eine Geschichte über eine furchtbare Gehirnstimulation erzählen kann.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Er sagt, oh ja, ich war in der medialen Thalamus und stimmulierte mich, um diese um Epilepsie zu stimulieren, damit ich die Epilepsie behandeln kann, die kleinen Stücke der Neuronen auslösen, und dann stürzen sich die Neuronen, die sie stimulieren, und die Person wird sagen können, ich bin bereit, in eine Rache zu gehen. Und manchmal fühlen sie sich, als würden sie in eine Rache gehen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Das ist tatsächlich eine Möglichkeit, etwas sehr Nützliches zu teilen. Es gibt ein Bereich des Gehirns, das ein Neurosurgeon in Stanford, Joe Parvizzi, entdeckt hat, im Anterio-Midsingulat-Kortex, das, wenn stimuliert wird, All three of them, separately, these patients said, when you stimulate there, I feel like there's a storm coming or some challenge and I want to lean into it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
This area, the anterior midsingulate cortex, is super interesting because it's the brain area that grows. It actually gets larger in volume, increases its activity. When we do something challenging that increases ist ein bisschen schrecklich, was wir nicht tun wollen. Und dieses Gehirn-Area wächst in Menschen, die erfolgreich sind.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ausübenden und Ernährern, es schrinkt in Größe und in Menschen, die ihre Ziele nicht erreichen. Es ist auch das Bereich, das Größe und was die Super-Agers genannt wird. Es ist ein Missverständnis. Das sind Menschen, die nicht zeigen, wie normal der kognitive Verlust mit der Erwärmung aussieht, genauso wie andere. Also dieses Bereich, der Antero-Midsingulate-Kortex, scheint eines der Säden zu sein,
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Das Willen, Druck in einem positiven Weg zurückzumachen. Es geht um Willenskraft und Genesigkeit. Und es geht auch um Gehirn- und Körper-Longevität. Ich möchte das ein bisschen weiterentwickeln. Es geht um das Willen, zu leben. Es geht um das Willen, die Herausforderungen zurückzumachen. Diese Dinge von Stimulationen von verschiedenen Gehirnbereichen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich brauche wirklich Tunnels für mich selbst, um die Arbeit zu machen, die ich machen muss. Ich versuche auch, eine gesundheitliche, personal life and maintain friendships and things, I really have to create some separation. So having social media separate is key. It's really key. Thank you for saying that. If you try it, it will probably only take a couple of days. I'm going to do it again.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wir kommen dazu, weil wenn du ein Gehirnbereich stimulierst, Es ist egal, was in der Außenwelt passiert. Darum ist Neuralink so interessant, aufregend und etwas furchtbar für uns, wenn wir darüber nachdenken.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wenn ich ein kleines Stück in deinem Gehirn stelle, das Rache verursacht, wie ein kleines Stück von Zona in Serta oder der Midthalamus, da gibt es bestimmte Nukleare, wo du ein ziemlich aggressives Verhalten generieren kannst. Oder ich würde ein Bereich des Gehirns stimulieren, das mit Depressionen verbunden ist, wie die Hebennula.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Oder ein Bereich des Gehirns, das mit der Inhibition der Hebennula verbunden ist. You could potentially remove some components of depression, encourage rage, discourage rage. All of this is possible because ultimately all of our behavior and thought processes come through these little neural hubs and these neural circuits. So what Neuralink is doing is developing ways to get in there and
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
auf bestimmte Arten von Vorstellungen und Verhältnissen, Emotionen und Erinnerungen zu drücken, die völlig unabhängig sind. Aber es ist hundertprozentig möglich und es passiert hundertprozentig erst im visuellen System. Wow.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
You could do that two ways. You could either present it through a VR-like experience, but the person probably knows it's VR. Oder man könnte es durch die Ensembles stimulieren, die Gruppen der Neuronen in der richtigen Ordnung innerhalb des Gehirns, um die Idee zu geben, dass das passiert, obwohl nichts passiert. Wow, das ist Mind Control. Es ist Mind Control.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es ist Mind Control durch Neural-Circuit-Kontrolle. Und das wurde in Tiermodellen wieder und wieder demonstriert. Und in einigen Fällen, wo Menschen Neurosurgery hatten, hat man das in der Neurosurgery-Klinik beobachtet. Eddie Chang wird dir das als Neurosurgeon sagen. Matt McDougall wird dir das als Neurosurgeon sagen. Joe Parvizi wird dir das als Neurosurgeon sagen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und das ist, was sie in diese Bücher schreiben, wo du wirklich interessante Dinge lernen kannst. Wie, du weißt, von all den Gehirnbereichen, die Menschen stimulieren können, wenn sie eine Wahl haben. Diese Studien wurden von einem Mann genannt, Robert Heath, in den 1960er-Jahren. Ein sehr kontroversialer Typ. Aber er hatte... die Elektroden in diesen Menschen im Gehirn verbunden waren.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Sie hatten die Möglichkeit, überall zu stimulieren, wo sie es wollten. Sie stimulierten, und sie fühlten sich etwas trank. Oder sie stimulierten ein anderes Gebiet, und sie fühlten sich schmerzhaft. Sie stimulierten ein anderes Gebiet, das sexuelle Auslösung war. Weißt du, welches Gebiet sie am meisten stimulierten? Aus der Wahl. Es generierte Gefühle von milder Frustration und Angst.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Are you serious? It's a highly rewarded circuit. It's woven into the dopamine circuit. It has its own rewarding properties. And actually animals, certain animals in particular, and certain members of certain species will actually work hard to get the opportunity to fight. It is a hardwired circuit, which does not say everyone should fight, but these circuits exist within us. Interesting.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Because it's like a computer for social media. And for people that can't afford two phones, I always say, wait until you almost, you know, go to an old phone and just put on your old phone. Yeah, yeah. Das macht viel Sinn. Du kannst sogar Fotos mit deinem neuen Telefon nehmen, wenn du das Telefon-Kamera magst, und dann einfach auf das Telefon einladen und dann posten. Ja.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Okay.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Neither cannabis nor nicotine will give you cancer, but smoking, vaping, dipping and snuffing can increase your risk of cancer. So the delivery route matters. So nicotine is actually protective, it's thought, against Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Did you know that? No, I didn't know that. But it's highly addictive. And most people smoke, vape, dip or snuff it, which is carcinogenic.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Okay, so the route of administration is important. So let's talk about cannabis. So who should not do cannabis at all? Let's just kind of get that out of the way. There is a growing body of research supporting the fact that
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
dass manche Menschen, besonders junge Männer mit einer genetischen Prädisposition zu Bipolarschmerzen oder Schizophrenie oder anderen Formen von Psychose, wenn sie High-THC-Cannabis machen, kann es exacerbieren oder vielleicht sogar Psychose triggeren. Ich habe mich in etwas, sagen wir mal, Friction-Territorium eingelassen, indem ich das da rausgebracht habe.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Du fängst wirklich an zu sehen, oh, ich spende eine Stunde am Tag oder eine Stunde und eine halbe am Tag. Mein Team hat versucht, mich so zu machen. Nun ist der Zeitpunkt. Aber...
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber nach dem Angriff wurde ein weiteres Grupp von Forschern dazu eingeladen. Man sieht Daten auf beiden Seiten. Meiner Meinung nach ist es klar, dass jeder, der eine Prädisposition zur Psychose hat, Schizophrenie oder andere Dinge, Bipolarität, etc., hohe THC-Cannabis verhindern sollte, besonders junge Männer.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Das bedeutet nicht, dass junge Frauen es ohne Probleme tun können, aber manche Menschen trinken nur psychotische Episoden. Was betrifft High THC? Das wird schwierig. Für diese Individuen ist die genetische Prädisposition so, dass wenn sie Cannabis trinken, sie es oder was auch immer, für ein paar Jahre, manchmal können sie später eine permanente Psychose verursachen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Das Dosen von Cannabis für die meisten Leute, ich muss mir hier auf meine Sprache kümmern, ist, ich will nicht sagen best done, aber für die Leute, die trinken oder vapen. Die meisten Leute können trinken oder vapen, wenn sie es schon gemacht haben, bis zu einem Punkt, wo sie wissen, dass sie in der Fläche des Effekts sind, den sie suchen, und dann stoppen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wir hatten einen Experten auf meinem Podcast, der dieses Zuhause wirklich gegründet hat. Edibles, auf der anderen Seite, Menschen werden oft zu viel zu schnell ingestiviert und dann werden sie über diese Zone hinaus, in der Paranoia-Zone oder in einer anderen Zone, in der sie nicht sein wollen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Also, wenn, und ich ermutige nicht die Leute, das zu tun, aber wenn die Leute Cannabis benutzen und Edibles machen, sollten Sie nicht glauben, dass eine Hälfte nicht genug oder zu viel ist oder was auch immer. Man muss sich darauf einigen, bis man den Effekt erreicht, den man sucht.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Mit Smoking und Vaping werden die Leute generell inhalieren, einen gewissen Effekt bekommen, warten, vielleicht wieder machen und dann wissen sie, dass sie gut sind und stoppen. Mit einem Edible ist es in deinem System, du bist weg für die Reise, was auch immer die Reise ist. Und für manche Leute kann es wirklich schrecklich sein.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Also in deinem Fall, weil du dich um Kanzer beschäftigst, bist du nicht über Psychose beschäftigt. Es ist offensichtlich, dass du eine kleine Menge Cannabis machen kannst. Für dich hilft es deinem Schlaf. Wir werden darüber sprechen, aber es scheint dir dein Schlaf zu helfen. Und du hast keine psychotischen Probleme oder Psychose überhaupt. Das ist sehr offensichtlich.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Du bist hochfunktionell in allen Bereichen deines Lebens, so weit ich kann. Die wichtige Sache ist, warum nicht eine kleine Menge durch einen Edible nehmen? anstatt beim Vapen, und dann eliminierst du den carcinogenischen Aspekt. Du kannst den krankhaften Aspekt entfernen. Vapen ist nicht so schlecht wie Smoking, aber Vaping kann auch Lungenverletzungen verursachen. Vaping ist besser als Smoking?
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es ist. Für Nikotin und Cannabis ist es sicherer für die Lungen, aber das bedeutet nicht, dass es komplett sicher ist. Ähm, ja, so wie, und hier möchte ich wahrscheinlich große Kanten Wurzeln heute öffnen, so wie Kratom ist wahrscheinlich sicherer als ein Präzision-Opioid, aber das bedeutet nicht, dass Kratom komplett sicher ist.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber es gibt eine Kratom-Community, Kratom, glaube ich, wie es sich nennt, die sich wirklich überrascht, wenn ich das sage. Aber ich sage nicht, dass etwas gut oder schlecht ist, ich sage, dass das relative Schäden sind, und dann musst du dich gegen die Potential Benefits somebody is seeking. So in your case, a small amount of cannabis, vaped, seems to help you with your sleep.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
It's probably robbing you of some slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep that would be beneficial, but I'll mention an alternative that you could try. But in the meantime, why not use a small amount of edible and then you essentially remove the cancer risk. Dann musst du einfach entscheiden, ob du weiter Cannabis benutzen willst.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich stimme deiner Frau zu, dass nicht schlafen sehr gefährlich ist. Sehr gefährlich für deine Herzkrankheit, sehr gefährlich für alles. Ich würde auch fragen, warum du nicht schläfst. Ist es Rumination oder du fühlst dich einfach nicht genug müde, um schlafen zu lassen?
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und das ist üblich bei den ehemaligen Operatoren. Und Operatoren, ich meine, wie gesagt, wir haben genügend gemeinsame Freunde in der Gemeinschaft, die einfach eine wirklich schwierige Zeit haben, sie auszuschalten. Und ihr seid einfach so effektiv. Ich meine, ihr wurdet in Teilen auf... in BUDS auf der Basis davon, weiter zu denken, zu bewegen und zu kommunizieren ohne Schlaf.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Also gibt es hier eine Art Selektionsprozess. Es gibt ein paar Dinge und hier, weißt du, ich komme in ein neues Territorium, aber es gibt ein paar Non-Prescription-Gruppen, die Leute benutzen, um Schlaf zu verbessern, die mir sicherlich nützlich waren. Ich meine, es gibt die ganze Supplement-Route von Magnesium-3 und 8, etc. Das kann für viele Menschen helfen. Ich kann einige suggerieren.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich habe über diese Magnesium-3 und 8 gesprochen, die T-H-R-E-O-N-A-T-E, bevor man schläft. Für einige Menschen eine sehr niedrige Dose Melatonin, aber man will das nicht langfristig machen. Vielleicht ein halbes Milligramm oder ein Milligramm klein. Warum nicht? Warum willst du es langfristig machen? Es kann einen Krossover-Impakt auf andere Hormonsysteme haben.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ja, also um klar zu sein, war die frühe Zeit meiner Leben ziemlich einfach. Viel einfacher als für die meisten. Mein Vater ist aus Argentinien. Er ist der erste Immigrant der ersten Generation in die USA. Er kam in die USA auf einem Scholarschaft. Er wollte Physik machen. In Argentinien gab es kein Geld, um Physik zu machen. Er kam also in die Vereinigten Staaten, um an der Schule zu studieren.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Das, was gerade ziemlich spannend ist, ist ein Peptid, das von einem Arzt versprochen werden kann. Es ist sehr günstig. Es ist momentan zur Verfügung. Es heißt Pinelin. Und die Leute werden es mit Glycine komponieren.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich empfehle nicht, dass Leute rausgehen und Grey-Markt oder Black-Markt-Peptide kaufen, weil sie nicht sauber sind von etwas, was Lippipolysaccharide heißt, was wirklich eine massive Immunreaktion verursacht.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und es gibt viele Leute, die Peptide kaufen, die literally gelabelt sind, nicht für Menschen- oder Tierverbrauch, sondern nur für Forschungsbedürfnisse, aber sie werden auf der Internetseite verkauft. Und diese sind, meiner Meinung nach, ziemlich gefährlich. Okay. Aber es gibt einen wirklich guten Doktor, der auf meinem Podcast war, Craig Conover, der ein MD ist. Er ist in Südkarolina.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich kann ihn mit Ihnen in Kontakt bringen. Und es gibt auch andere wirklich gute Peptid-Doc-MDs. Ways to Well, die ist in Austin. Ich denke, diese Leute machen einige dieser Sachen. Aber Pinelin ist ein interessanter Peptid, weil es einige Daten gibt.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
human research data, but there are clinical data out there, Conover's talked about this and he could chat with you about it, that it might be able to help regenerate the pineal sites of the pineal gland and lead to more regular secretion of melatonin.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
So, get sunlight early in the day and throughout the day, limit your exposure to dark at night, we should probably get you some red lens glasses, because some people are very susceptible to light at night, that can help you transition to a calmer state. These aren't traditional blue blockers, but these kinds of things. But a small injection of pinelin, it's like a little insect pin thing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
It hurts less than a California mosquito bite, so not at all that means. A little bit of pinelin compounded with glycine. In meiner Erfahrung kann es wirklich dein Schlaf verbessern, auch wenn du es nicht nimmst. Es scheint die Funktion der Pineal zu verbessern. Und die Leute, wenn da irgendwelche Physiker zuhören, werden sie sagen, wie kann man darüber sprechen, dass es ein Peptid ist?
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Nun, GLP-1-Agonisten wie Osempic und Monjaro, das sind Peptide. Insulin, das ist ein Peptid. Peptide ist nur eine kleine Protein. Aber ich habe mit einigen Menschen beobachtet, die wirklich Probleme beim Schlafen hatten. Das ist nicht etwas, das du regelmäßig nimmst. Das ist etwas, das dich auf den Weg bringt. Du nimmst es etwa eine halbe Stunde bevor du schläfst.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es kann eine Doppelung des Rappiteye-Movements schlafen, was fantastisch ist. Weil das Problem mit Cannabis und Alkohol vor dem Schlafen ist, dass es dir helfen kann, zu schlafen, aber es wird dich von diesem Rappiteye-Movement schlafen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Also ich würde sagen, die kurze Antwort wäre, wenn Cannabis für dich funktioniert und du keine Psychosis-Issue hast, die du nicht hast, dann vielleicht ein Low-Dose-Edible, damit du den Kanzer-Risiko wechselst, weil du nicht trinkst oder wapst, tippst oder schnappst. Meiner Meinung nach gibt es keinen Kanzer-Risiko von Cannabis per se, es ist die Entfernung. Und dann vielleicht versuchst du,
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Sie werden natürlich von einem Arzt besorgnisiert. Man probiert ein bisschen Pinolenglycine-Cocktail. Das ist eine kleine Injektion. Man probiert das ein paar Mal, um zu sehen, ob das funktioniert. Ich werde sagen, ich habe es niemals nicht gesehen, dass es nicht funktioniert. Das heißt, jedes Mal, wenn jemand mich am nächsten Tag anruft, sagen sie, ich habe zum ersten Mal geschlafen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich bin einmal aufgewacht oder ich habe nicht aufgewacht. Und ich sage, ich weiß, das ist ein bisschen wild. Weil Dinge wie Xanax, Propranolol, das ganze Routen von Preskriptionen. Während es für einige Leute funktionieren kann, gibt es für viele Menschen Zombie-Schlaf. Sie fühlen sich nicht aufgewacht, wenn sie aufwachen. Und für viele Dinge, z.B.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Er hat meine Mutter getroffen, die in New York City lebte. Mein Vater lebte in Philly. Sie haben sich verheiratet, sind nach Kalifornien geflogen und haben mich und meine Schwester getroffen. Ich habe eine ältere Schwester, drei Jahre älter. Von der Zeit, als ich 75 war, bis zu der Zeit, als ich 11 oder 12 war, waren die Dinge ziemlich großartig.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
für Xanax, kann es eine sehr schlechte Habitsform sein, oder sehr enttäuschend. Ich bin glücklich, dass ich diese Dinge nie genutzt habe. Ich habe einmal eine Viertel von einem Xanax genommen, um zu schlafen. Ich fühlte mich wie Garbage für einen Tag und einen halben. Also bin ich sehr sensibel zu diesen Dingen. Das ist also das Problem mit Cannabis.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Für die meisten Leute trinkt man Cannabis, weil sie das Gefühl haben, dass es ihre Angst entfernt. Und es scheint, dass es viele verschiedene Varianten gibt. Manche Leute werden sehr apathetisch und arbeiten nicht viel. Man hat heute viele junge Männer, die viel Wein trinken. nicht viel mit sich selbst zu tun, und das ist nicht gut.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Dann gibt es auch wirklich hart fliegende Leute, die Cannabis benutzen, um sich zu entspannen und sich zu entspannen. Und die Argumentation ist immer, dass Alkohol das Schlimmste ist. Leute sagen, Alkohol ist das Schlimmste. Ja, das würde ich wahrscheinlich akzeptieren, außer für diejenigen, die in den potenziellen Psychosom-Kampf fallen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Gleichzeitig ist Alkohol nicht eine gute Vergleiche, weil man sagt, dass es nicht so schlimm ist, sich in den Fuß zu schießen, als in den oberen Arm zu schießen. Das funktioniert für mich nicht wirklich. Es ist kein sehr gutes medizinisches, wissenschaftliches Argument. Aber es scheint für dich zu funktionieren, ohne zu viel Probleme.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ich würde mich sehr interessieren, wie Pinealenglycine funktioniert. Und diese Drogen sind nicht so mächtig wie Xanax. Es gibt eine neue Schlafmedizin namens Quivivac, die ein bisschen anders funktioniert als die anderen, die da draußen sind. Sie reduziert das Erwärmungssystem, das Ruminieren und Denken, das du sprichst, anstatt dich schlauer zu machen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Du hast mehrere Systeme, einen, um dich wach zu machen, einen, um dich schlau zu machen. Es drückt dich auf das Erwärmungssystem herunter, ohne das schlauere System zu bewegen. Es ist ziemlich effektiv beim Maintanen einer normalen Schlafarchitektur, normaler Slow-Wave-Schlaf, Rapid-Eye-Movement-Schlaf. Es gibt also kein Zombie-Schlaf. Das Problem ist, dass es sehr teuer ist.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wir hatten Abendessen zusammen, jede Nacht als Familie. Keiner meiner Eltern hatte oder hatte irgendwelche Verbrechungsprobleme. Es war eine sehr friedliche, liebende Heimat. Aber es war eine wirklich magische Erkennung. Mein Vater ist Physiker. Er hat mich über Wissenschaft und Biologie interessiert. Ich mag auch Fußball und Schwimmen. Wir wuchsen in einer kleinen Stadt.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Also, wenn irgendeine Drogenfirma das hört, ist es etwa 25 Dollar pro Pille. Ich meine, es ist für die meisten Menschen prohibitiv teuer. Aber unter den Preskripten für Schlaf geht es sicher in die richtige Richtung, aber der Preis ist immer noch zu hoch.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Aber ich bin ein großer Glaubwürdiger, dass man am Tag Licht benutzt, am Abend Dunkelheit, am Abend Alkohol reduziert, am Abend Kaffee reduziert, obwohl das für mich schwierig ist, weil ich Kaffee im Nachhinein liebe. Die roten Lens-Glasen können dir wirklich helfen, dich zu verlassen. Und dann vielleicht dieses Glycine-Pyneolin-Peptid.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und wenn das alles noch nicht funktioniert, würde ich sagen, du hast eine ziemlich gute Lösung gefunden für dich. Aber für eine 15-Jährige oder eine 16-Jährige, die nicht schlafen kann, würde ich nicht auf Cannabis gehen. Ich würde sagen, nehmt es, weil das Gehirn immer noch wächst. Und ja, ich sollte sagen, es gibt echte medizinische Nutzungen für Cannabis. Chemotherapie, Glaucoma.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Manche Leute können es ohne Probleme machen, und manche Leute, es wendet ihr Leben in einem Vielleicht nicht in eine schlechte Richtung, aber es macht sie ein bisschen müde. Und dann kenne ich Leute, die eine große Packung Weide wapern und wie ein Dämon arbeiten. Und sie wissen, dass diese Leute da draußen sind.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Du machst Cardio-Exerzise, Cardiovaskular-Exerzise. Ich würde mindestens einen Hits-Workout pro Woche einlegen, also einen Max-Hart-Rate-Workout pro Woche. Okay. Eine gute Regel ist, Du siehst in guter Form aus, aber in Bezug auf Training versuche ich, einen langen, langen Rennen pro Woche oder Ruck zu machen. Eine Stunde oder zwei, irgendwo zwischen einer Stunde und zwei Stunden.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Normalerweise sind es 75 Minuten. Also am kurzen Ende, voller Ausdruck. Mitte der Woche gehe ich für einen 30-Minuten-Rund raus. Du könntest das auf einem Treadmill machen, oder du könntest schwimmen, oder du könntest biken, was auch immer. Es wird dich nicht verletzt. wie ein Hard Clip Run. Du drückst, du atmet hart, aber du bist nicht maxiert.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und dann einen Tag pro Woche, sehr kurz, hoppst auf die Assault-Bike oder findest etwas, wo du maxiertes Herzwert bekommst. Also gehst du 20, 30 Sekunden hart, Ich kann dich in Kontakt bringen mit Brian McKenzie. Er ist ein Meister bei diesem Thema. Er lehrt Menschen, wirklich diaphragmatische Atmung zu machen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
wirklich mit ihrem Diaphragm zu atmen, mit dem Bein raus zu gehen, und dann... diese Art von Sachen, wirklich ihre Lungen trainieren, wie ein Freediver das tun würde. Es gibt einen coolen Test, eigentlich habe ich das noch nie auf einem Podcast präsentiert, das ist ein bisschen lustig. Es gibt einen Test, den Carbon-Dioxid-Toleranz-Test, den Freedivers machen. Das ist modifiziert.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Brian McKenzie hat das wirklich entwickelt. Wo du drei oder vier normale Atemzüge machst. Dann atme wirklich tief. Fülle deine Lungen wirklich. Und dann entlastest du dein Atem so langsam wie möglich. Und du zeigst diese Entlastung. Und wenn du die Lungen leer machst, nimm die Zeit. Du siehst also nicht, wie lange du deinen Atem halten kannst.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Du siehst nur, wie langsam du das Ausatmen kontrollierst. Das ist ein langsam kontrolliertes Ausatmen. Du kannst es durch den Mund oder durch den Mund machen. 20 Sekunden oder weniger sind ziemlich schmerzhaft. Das bedeutet, du hast keine große mechanische Kontrolle des Diaphragms durch den phrenischen Nerv. 25 bis 45, vielleicht 60 Sekunden sind ziemlich gut.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
60 Sekunden oder länger, du hast eine gute mechanische Kontrolle deiner Lungen und du wirst kein Über-Breather sein, was nicht gut für dein Gehirn und Körper ist, und du wirst auch nicht unter-Breathen sein. Du willst, dass die Balance von CO2 und Oxygen richtig ist, wenn du auf Reste bist, wenn du jetzt einfach nur rausgehängst und sprichst und bewegst und auch exercizierst.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Es gibt einen Weg, damit zu verbessern. Bilde diese Lungen-Kapazität. Du hast also ein Box-Breathing gehört. Inhalieren, halten, Ausatmen, halten. Also gleiche Dauer, Inhalieren, halten, Ausatmen, halten. Das ist für etwa fünf Minuten gemacht. Wie lange sollte die Seite des Boxes dauern?
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Ist es Inhalieren für drei Sekunden, halten für drei Sekunden, Ausatmen für drei Sekunden, halten für drei Sekunden, oder ist es acht? Wenn du den Kohle-Dioxid-Toleranz-Test tust und dein Discard-Rate 20 Sekunden oder weniger ist, kannst du wahrscheinlich nur ein Box-Breathing für etwa fünf Minuten mit drei Sekunden der Seite des Boxes durchführen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Damals gab es keine Silicon Valley. Ich wuchste in der Südsee, in der Peninsule. Es war ein Ort mit einem großen Paar Jungs in der Nähe, vielleicht 15 von uns. Die meisten hatten ältere Schwestern, die meiner Schwester alt waren. Es war einfach perfekt. Dirtbikes, Dirt-Claw-Wars, es war einfach Spaß. Es war wirklich cool.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wenn Ihr Kalburten-Dioxide-Discard-Rate zwischen 25 und 55 Sekunden ist, könnt Ihr wahrscheinlich mit einem 5- bis 7-Sekunden-Inhalts-Halten-Exhalts-Halten-Ratio für fünf Minuten kontinuierlich machen. Das ist schwieriger, als es klingt, wenn man es wirklich macht.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Wenn jemand keine gute mechanische Kontrolle über seine Lungen und Diaphragmen hat und sie versuchen, ein Box-Breathing mit 7-Sekunden-Inhalts, 7-Sekunden-Halten, 7-Sekunden-Exhalts, 7-Sekunden-Halten zu machen, Es wird schwer. Du kannst es für ein paar Minuten machen und dann fühlst du dich ziemlich schmerzhaft. Dein Adrenalin wird erhöht. Die Idee ist es, das ruhig zu machen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#147 Andrew Huberman - Neuroscience, Sleep Hacks and Mental Health Improvements
Und dann, wenn du eine Erhöhungsrate von 60 Sekunden oder länger hast, kannst du Box-Breathing mit wahrscheinlich 8 bis 10 Sekunden auf der Box machen. Die Freedivers und die Freediving-Community sind ein bisschen nass. Ich respektiere sie, aber sie sind ein bisschen wie die Triathleten-Community. Sie werden mich auf die technischen Details bringen.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
we can, again, look at things through the lens of biology and say, well, what are we talking about when we're talking about energy? What is this energy thing that people are talking about? And I think it largely boils down to these catecholamines, the dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine cocktail that is setting the brain into a mode of attention, of motivation.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
You know, I don't want to oversimplify the biology, but when we talk about energy, for instance, taking time to rest at night, sleep, taking time to maybe meditate a few minutes or do this practice that I'm a huge fan of, non-sleep deep rest, which is kind of a body scan, deep relaxation, long exhales.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
That's it for that muscle group. Move on. People always say, well, volume is where it's at. Okay, great. But when I do 16 to 20 sets per week per muscle group, I'll tell you, I'm depleted. It doesn't work for me. And I sort of, well, I'll just be honest. I kind of chuckle at the exercise scientists who say, well, this is the way it is in this study. Great. That's not how it works for me.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
And even though I'm a scientist and I trust data, I also trust my own experience. And no one's going to tell me that it's placebo because it's what's worked for me. So I think that you have to find what your capabilities are. And I do think if you look at dog breeds, of which I'm obsessed by, if you go to a dog show, which everyone should go to a dog show once, but don't watch the show.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
Go behind the show where you see all the different dog breeds. What you'll see is what I saw the first time I did that. You have dogs where they're wagging their tail all the time. They're super excited. They're alert. You can see their eyes, right? They're just bright-eyed. You can see the Great Danes. They're super still. And then my favorite breed, and the reason I own them, is the bulldog.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
The essence of economy of effort. They don't even lift their head off the ground. You walk over, you pet them, they'll look up at you, they might wink. Very still animals. Very powerful, but very still animals. Now, I'm not wired like that, as you're probably getting the impression. I have a little bit more spontaneous movement, et cetera.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
So I need a lot of mental and physical stimulation in order to be happy. in order to feel fulfilled.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
So for me, there was a lot of work and I still do a lot of work in order to learn how to downshift, take it down, become a good sleeper, become a good resetter, reset myself during the middle of the day with things like non-sleep deep rest, which for me has been one of the most powerful tools or long exhale breathing to just bring myself down.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
Other people, they tend to have a little bit less energy than life demands of them. So they need to do a bit more cold shower, a little bit more caffeine, but then those people probably need a little bit more rest. They're like the bulldogs of life. I think even though we're all the same species, just like dogs, there's a lot of variation there.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
So you have to know thyself, as the Oracle said, understanding a little bit about the catecholamines, understanding that certain things like exercise, deliberate cold exposure,
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
stimulants like caffeine and prescription drugs like Adderall, et cetera, powerfully caused the release of these catecholamines, dopamine, epinephrine, and norepinephrine, leading to big increases in energy and focus, but then always, always, always, there's a cost, a trough that follows. Accept that.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
relax through it then return to baseline and then go forward or avoid those things altogether i'm not telling people what to do obviously the prescription drug thing in particular can be you know problematic for some people even addictive And certainly I'm not a fan of drugs of abuse like cocaine, amphetamine, absolutely categorically. Never done them, never will.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
And then other people who tend to veer toward, you know, being hyperactivated, a lot of spontaneous movement. These people tend to be a little bit thinner, a little bit leaner, or just have a ton of natural energy. These people should really learn to incorporate more kind of what I would call calming and relaxing practices, maybe a bit more sauna than cold plunge.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
Maybe don't crank the sauna to 220. You know, I find myself doing that. I'm like, just relax, like enjoy the sauna. And so I think the key to a good life and a productive life is, again, to learn to master the transition states, understand some of the biology, and to really –
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
Know yourself, not just your natural tendency, more bulldog-like versus, you know, I don't know, pit bulls always have their tail going, a lot of spontaneous movement. There are other breeds as well. But also know that on any given day, you may be more or less rested.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
It's a practice very similar to an ancient practice called yoga nidra, which has been practiced for thousands of years. It's a kind of pseudo sleep. And we know from a really nice study that NSDR, non-sleep deep rest, aka yoga nidra, can increase the baseline levels of dopamine in a brain area called the basal ganglia, which is for...
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
You might be more or less depleted from life experience and kind of recognize where you're at and figure out what's optimal for that day. In fact, I forget who the guy is. He's on Instagram and there are a lot of self-help accounts out there.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
But one of the best things that I've heard recently, and I try to incorporate it into my life, in fact, it's in my notebook, is when I wake up in the morning, I sort of take stock of where I am in terms of how rested I am. I certainly take stock of what I need to do that day. And then I ask, what's something that I can do to make my life that day and the life of others better? better.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
Sometimes that means rest a little bit more. Sometimes that means push a little bit more. Sometimes that means call a relative that you haven't spoken to. But thinking about how to make things better on the timescale of a day for oneself and for others, I think is what's manageable. And it's what's realistic.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
And it takes this whole concept of protocols and biohacking and prescription drugs and supplements and workouts, and it brings a real world perspective to it. So I think we're living in the time of kind of...
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
almost avatars of these different things like i think about david goggins who i know well well from the perspective of co-worker right where i consider him a friend but we've never hung out outside of the work context but i first met david back in 2016 and i'll tell you he's always that way at least when i've interacted with him he's always been you know forward center of mass
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
It was late in the day on a work. This was a thing in Silicon Valley. It was down in San Jose, Santa Clara, San Jose area in, I believe it was 2016. And we had been working all day in this part of this consult for this company. And in the afternoon, you know, there was like, do we take a break? Do we push? He's like, no, we push. We're going to do this.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
And I thought, whoa, like this guy's intense. And he was changing because he was going to run to the airport, but not run to the airport in an Uber or drive to the airport. He meant run to the airport. And he did. So, you know, he's forward center of mass. He clearly has the energy or he's found the energy.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
It's a great question. I don't know that we have the answer. I think you can if you become more economical about whatever dopamine or other neurochemicals you happen to harbor inside. We know there's a lot of genetic and individual variation to these things. You know, There's a joke among parents, right? Like how they come out is how they stay.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
Like the mellow kid, the mellow baby that didn't cry much. The happy baby remains the happy person. There are circumstances that can alter that versus the fussy baby that's always fussy even as an adult. Parents talk this way, but parents say all sorts of things. But I know people, for instance, like Rick Rubin, for instance, who is – Very high energy, but very calm. It's part of Rick's magic.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
He knows how to regulate and control his energy. He has this uncanny capacity to get near things, in particular art, music, and to experience them, really feel them, but not get absorbed by it. not feel, at least to my knowledge, depleted by it. Some people get kind of absorbed by things and then depleted.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
action generation and also withholding action by about 60% from baseline, just a short period of doing this practice can kind of re-up dopamine levels to a considerable extent. It's a remarkable study and there are others like it. So what does that mean? Well, it means that in rest, we build up this capacity to be forward center of mass when we emerge from rest.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
Yeah. Yeah. I'm similar to you and I have an ex-girlfriend who loved parties. She would just get so much energy from parties. And I like certain parties, but I like the small conversation I might have at a party. So that resonates with me. I think we can shift. Well, to answer the introvert extrovert question, I do think that some people get energy from social interactions, other people less so.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
But I know people who are quite quiet, who like social interactions. They're just more an observer in those interactions as opposed to a participant. The introvert, extrovert thing also, at least my understanding of the science, is that it depends a bit on how quickly you fill up with social engagement. I like a good party, but after a couple hours, I'm
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
like done, you know, and other people, they can just go, go, go, go, go, go. They get more energy from it. I think, you know, we think of Goggins as kind of an iconic example, because he is, of somebody who is capable of pushing himself regardless of what the internal narratives might be.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
That's my sense, having spoken to him about it on my podcast and observed him on social media and other podcasts. Some people like Jocko Willink embody the Don't even think about it. You do it because it's 4.30 in the morning, and at 4.30 in the morning, you work out. Like, don't think do. Whereas when I think of David, I think of many things, but in particular about overcoming
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
the voice in the mind that's trying to pull you down and defeating that. In fact, having multiple representations of self in the brain, which is a fascinating thing unto itself. And then when I think about Rick, I think, you know, Rick is iconic in my mind for his sense of creativity, his ability to sense what is truly new and unique. He has incredible taste, right?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
to really be able to sense like this is new and different and exciting. And he seems to understand without trying to seek what people are going to like, what people inevitably love. So that's his, one of his many superpowers. And everyone has their superpower. Those are just so extremes. I think of Lex Friedman as somebody who is so thoughtful and
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
And I mean, I don't think people really understand just how hard Lex thinks about the tragedies of the world, the darkness in the world, but also the love that's in the world. I mean, he really like hyper affiliates with what's happening.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
in his mind and he's able to really like absorb himself in that and you can feel like his his like he gets right up next to the fire like right up next to these things and i think he represents a kind of iconic example of an explorer who will look anywhere even if people are going to give him a hard time for it but i think mostly people celebrate him for it
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
You know, so I think, you know, different people have different lenses on life and different capacities. I think if one wants to increase their baseline level of dopamine, I think it's important to regulate those peaks and troughs. I'm not a believer in like never having peaks in dopamine. A great wedding party, like I've been to some weddings where we just like partied all night.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
or great concerts. I'm actually a huge fan. It's kind of a genre of music I don't know much about, but I've always loved that band, James. Do you know the band? We Are James? Oh, it's so good. Okay, I'm going to lose punk points for saying this, but best live shows ever. Just the best live shows I've ever seen.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
And I know there are a lot of different ideas about best live shows based on genres of music. It's like the best party you've ever been to. And I get a lift in energy that lasts two, three days from that. I don't consume any substances at those shows. They happen very seldom. But when I've gone for two or three days, I feel like a changed person. It's a market shift in neurochemical state.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
That's why I think we have to sleep every 24 hours. This is why practices where we deliberately calm ourselves and still ourselves allow us to be more forward center of mass mentally and physically afterwards. It's kind of a duh. When we hear it, we kind of go, oh, duh, of course, rest, action, rest, action. But there's a lot more to it.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
And I don't feel a trough afterwards. So I want to be very clear. There are certain things like celebrations, concerts. They seem to give us these big surges in neurochemicals, but they don't leave us depleted. And I'm very intrigued by these experiences. Because when I look to some examples, I have some friends who've been very successful in the tech sector and finance sector.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
They make a lot of money. And I always worry about them afterwards. Inevitably, they end up depressed, not knowing what they want to do. So I always encourage them to keep working. In fact, the happiest people in tech and finance are the ones that keep working even after they get rich. So the people I see who are very happy are the people who
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
take stock of their natural levels of energy, curiosity, motivation. You know, we could say dopamine, but that's kind of a surrogate for a bunch of other things. And it's incomplete, right? There are other chemicals involved. But for sake of conversation, we could say dopamine, catecholamines, epinephrine. And you sort of know what they're capable of on a consistent basis.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
I think one of the best pieces of advice that I ever got was from a neurologist by the name of Bob Knight when I was a graduate student. He said, figure out how much work you can do over the course of the next four to five years on a consistent basis, because it's going to change as you get older, might not even go down. So for instance, I know that I can work a good solid 12 hours a day.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
That's me, 12 hours a day, five, maybe six days a week, but I like one full day off per week. I just like that. Typically it's Sunday for me. I'll do some exercise and some other things, but if I try and go 15 hours a day or 12 hours a day, seven days a week, I'm gonna run aground. For other people, they need to work less. And now some people will say, okay, but do you have kids and this and that?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
I'm not saying what work means. It could be career, it could be family or both, but I'm not somebody who has an infinite amount of energy, but I have a lot of energy. If you have less energy, you can do things like try and get great sleep, try and eat as well as you possibly can. You may have to do more to get more energy, but you sort of have to accept your own kind of baseline state
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
And I think, I certainly know many people who are like mellower, calmer, have quote unquote less energy. They're just more efficient with that energy. They place it correctly. They're not wasting their energy. I know people that can scroll Instagram all the time, talk about what's going on on Twitter, watch three podcasts, program and do a million things. I'm like, they're fine.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
So I think we have to know where our groove is and that we can deviate from that about 15 to 20%. But anything more extreme than that, we're going to end up in trouble.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
If you start exploring the layers, you start realizing that excitement for things versus burnout. What's burnout? It's just trying to be forward center of mass for too long. It's misuse of our dopamine circuitry. It's ignoring the fact that these catecholamines and dopamine in particular, they are not infinite in their availability, right?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
Yeah, so we could operationalize this in a very clear way. Get enough sleep for you. For some people, it's six hours. For some people, it's eight hours. I'd like to dispel the myth, even though my friend Matt Walker will probably get upset at me for saying this. Not everyone needs eight or nine hours of sleep, okay? I got six last night, okay? I actually went to bed at midnight last night.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
Oh, excuse me. I got six hours and 45 minutes last night. I went to bed at midnight, which is kind of late for me. Woke up at 6.45. But get enough sleep. If you wake up in the morning and you can't get more sleep for whatever reason, can't fall back asleep or you have to get out of bed, if you do not feel rested, I recommend doing a 10 or 20-minute non-sleep deep rest or yoga nidra protocol.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
They are available zero cost on YouTube. You could put NSDR My Name. If you want to listen to me do one, you could put NSDR Kelly Boys does wonderful yoga nidras. She has a very pleasant voice if you prefer a female voice. There's some wonderful yoga nidras by a woman named Kamini Desai. Anyway, these are all zero cost scripts that are available on YouTube. What is that? So non-sleep deep breaths,
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
I did one today on the way here. Okay. Yeah. Here's what we know it does. Replenishes baseline levels of dopamine in the basal ganglia. Prepares you for action, both mental and physical action. Can indeed help offset some of the sleep that maybe you didn't get, but you needed. We know that the brain goes into a kind of pseudo sleep in this state.
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Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
And there's also some evidence that yoga nidra and similar practices can improve rates of learning. Okay, so that's sort of the benefits. What is it? It involves what most people will call meditation, but it's different than meditation. You lie down, you could do it seated as well, but you lie down, eyes closed, and you do long exhale breathing.
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Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
When we exhale, we actually slow our heart rate down. I could talk about how this is. This is through respiratory sinus arrhythmia. This is a relationship between the vagus nerve and the beating of the heart. But in any case, when we inhale, our heart actually speeds up its beat slightly. And when we exhale, it slows down its beat slightly. So it involves a lot of long exhale breathing.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
It involves a body scan where you deliberately relax different aspects of your body. So first your feet, then your legs, then your hands. It's sort of a body scan of sorts with long exhale breathing. And it takes you into a state that's pseudo sleep. You're somewhere between sleep and awake. Now, the beauty of NSDR and yoga nidra is that part of the instruction at the beginning is to stay awake.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
We now know dopamine is more about motivation to seek rewards as opposed to feeling of pleasure or reward. There's a lot to be said about that. And keep in mind that these three neurochemicals, dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine, have been the neurochemical cocktail by which humans and other mammals have set and pursued goals for hundreds of thousands of years.
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Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
Now, if you fall asleep, it's okay. Just make sure you set an alarm if you have to go to work or do something else. But- By staying awake while being very relaxed, it seems that the nervous system can continue to stay in a sleep-like state enough that you replenish some of these neurochemicals that prepare you for cognitive and physical action.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
Now, there are 10-minute NSDRs, there are 20-minute NSDRs, there are even hour-long yoga nidras and things of that sort. So it depends on how much time you have before you need to get up. So if you sleep well the night before, you wake up after six, eight hours, and you're ready to go, boom, go. But if you're not, I highly recommend doing a 10, 20, or 30-minute NSDR practice.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
You will find that you will be far more rested you will feel far more mentally and physically vigorous when you emerge from that. It's remarkable. And Matt Walker's laboratory and I are gearing up to do some studies on this to figure out exactly what's happening. Is the brain really going into sleep or is it something entirely different? We don't quite know yet.
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Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
There's a reservoir of them that can be depleted, but it can be replenished as well. And one of the best analogies for this was actually explained to me by a guy named Dr. Kyle Gillette. He does some online work as a public facing physician, endocrinology in particular. And he said, with dopamine, it's kind of like a wave pool.
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Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
In any event, it most certainly works. And soon we'll know the exact mechanism in the brain, but this re-upping of dopamine is very, very clear from the existing studies. So what are you doing there? You're essentially filling the reservoir for the day of activities, okay? Then I recommend hydration, which has a profound effect on energy levels. So 16 to 32 ounces of water,
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
People debate, drink out of plastic or don't drink out of plastic. Do you have to purify your water, et cetera? You know, listen, it depends on budget and interest and level of paranoia. I drink a filtered water. I tend to drink out of ceramic or glass, but I am somebody who will occasionally drink out of a plastic water bottle. I'm not neurotic about that sort of thing.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
But look, if you are, fine. And we could all do well to limit the amount of plastic waste in the oceans. So there you go. Hydrate, then some people like myself do very well to get some exercise and sunlight, ideally simultaneously, but certainly get some sunlight and exercise prior to caffeine. Some people do, some people don't, okay?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
I also understand and totally support people who just want their coffee or tea first thing in the morning. There's no rule that says that you can't do that. But for me, what I would do is I'd get up, use the restroom if you need to, hydrate, and then get some bright light in your eyes, ideally from sunlight first thing in the morning. Why?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
Well, there's a whole story about circadian biology here that I could tell you, but I I've done that many times before. Suffice to say that getting bright light, ideally from sunlight in your eyes, even through cloud cover, so if you're in the UK, even through cloud cover, increases the amount of cortisol release in your brain and body markedly.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
That is a good, healthy increase in cortisol that is associated with the transition to waking up. So we know that bright light in the morning, especially from sunlight, increases daytime mood focus and alertness, and it will improve your sleep later that night.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
You have this reservoir that can allow you to pursue things or scroll the internet or build businesses, whatever it is. if you are really forward center of mass very intensely, you start generating these waves. And if you get big waves of dopamine and they crash out of the pool, you start depleting the reservoir.
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Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
So when I think about drugs of abuse, like cocaine, which leads to huge surges in dopamine, or amphetamines, huge surges in dopamine, what do we know about huge surges in dopamine? Well, after those huge surges, you drop below your initial baseline. to a state in which the same thing doesn't feel as good anymore. You need so much more energy to get the same output.
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Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
That's what this is. I'll put this on the screen for anyone. Yeah. So my colleague at Stanford, Dr. Anna Lemke, who runs our dual diagnosis addiction clinic and wrote the wonderful book, Dopamine Nation, described this best. It's sort of like a seesaw, but what whereby you get a big peak in dopamine, let's say from a drug of abuse like cocaine.
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Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
People on cocaine, it's all about ideas and what's next. They're not like, hey, let's just kick back. It's all about what's, in fact, they have a million ideas per second. Most of them are terrible ideas, but they're very forward center of mass motivated. And then when the drug wears off, they feel very low and very depressed. The dopamine is actually depleted below baseline.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
People that work excessively, right? We all have different abilities to work out, but people that work excessively and abuse stimulants in order to do that achieve these peaks.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
Yeah, I'm not anti-pre-workout. Listen, I love to be well-rested, hydrated, have a nice pre-workout drink. maybe even a little shot of espresso, listen to some music and have an incredible leg day workout. It's an amazing feeling, right? But if you do that every single time, you start stacking all these catecholamine release-inducing drugs, okay?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
So you're getting adrenaline, you're getting epinephrine, which is adrenaline, excuse me. You're getting adrenaline, you're getting noradrenaline, also called norepinephrine. You're getting dopamine release. You're highly motivated. You're in that state that everyone is seeking. And you try and do that seven days a week, you're not going to do it.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
And then you wonder why in the afternoon you're just completely cooked and you can't do any cognitive work. Well, your dopamine and other things have crashed below baseline. So I think it's important to understand that being, as I'm calling it, forward center of mass, like really kind of motivated and pursuing goals is great. But most of the time, we're probably...
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
best off just coming off the gas pedal just a little bit to maintain that ability to continue to be forward center of mass. The same thing is true for stress. We hear stress is bad. Well, stress is bad, but it also sharpens your ability to learn. It creates energy. It actually boosts your immune system in the short term. I say tolerate as much stress as you can
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
provided you still behave like a kind person, right? Don't say or do things that are unkind. And make sure that you still get great sleep at night. Most people stress, stress, stress, stress, stress, run around and then they can't sleep at night. And then the next day they're depleted. But a little bit of stress is healthy. Life is stress. Things are stressful.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
But again, you're going to be in your best state of mind if you're calm and alert. Alert and calm is the magic recipe and the ability to sleep at night. If you want to take a bunch of pre-workout and you want to listen to some loud music and have a great crush at workout, great. But you should probably also be able to train without all of that.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
If you're somebody who loves new goals and you're very excited about travel and this and that, great. But do you have to layer in 50 things and then you're sitting around at home and you're wondering why you're so bored when you're back home and why life is so depressing and you need more travel, more stimulation?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
So we don't have like a unique system, a unique neurochemical system for seeking out of mates versus food versus creating shelter versus creating technology and whole societies. And it's not just these three neurochemicals. Certainly there are other things involved, acetylcholine and a bunch of other things, neuroplasticity for that matter.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
In every domain of life, we see whether or not it's food or exercise or stimulants or sex or... Media, if you push things to the max, you're going to feel depleted and understimulated afterwards. And this trough below baseline, as Anna Lemke taught us with Dopamine Nation, that trough is a state that can last a long time. And how long, it's proportional to how high that peak in dopamine was.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
Not how long, but how high that peak in dopamine was. And when you're in that trough, that dopamine depleted state, typically what people do is they try and go out or access things that are going to reactivate the dopamine circuitry. And all it does is drive them further and further and longer and longer into that trough.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
What's needed is a period of waiting, of non-indulgence in any of these excesses. that allows them to return to baseline. We know this from drugs of abuse. It takes more and more drug to try and get what turns out to be less and less of a high.
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Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
Most all addiction, most all compulsive behavior can be cured essentially through a period of abstinence lasting somewhere between 30 and 60 days, which to somebody who's highly motivated to seek that thing or do that thing sounds like an absolute horror, but that is highly effective.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
So for some people it's work and stimulants, you know, a number of people taking Adderall and work, work, work, work, work. I hear from these people all the time. Typically they are from the tech and finance world. And they're like, why am I burnt out? Well, you've been blasting these catecholamine regulated circuits for years. You need to just accept you're going to feel a little low for a week.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
Then you're going to feel a little less low and you're going to come back to baseline. And then, and only then can you really get back into like full forward center of mass. But at that point you can introduce, you know, I do think there is a clinical use case for certain ADHD meds, which are amphetamine. There are certain people that need those meds.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
Other people have driven themselves into this dopamine trough. And so they're seeking out anything and everything to get them out of that trough when really what they need to do is stay away from all that stuff and just wait, just wait. Go on holiday or something. Go on holiday. Try and find reward in smaller things. You know, this is why dogs are wonderful in simpler things.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
And if that sounds heavy and dull to you, chances are you're a bit in the dopamine loop. I've been in these loops before. They're hard to exit. But once you exit them, you look back on them and you go, what was I thinking? Well, you were in a different state. You're kind of a different animal when you're in pursuit.
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Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
That's right.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
But it's clearly the case that the currency that the brain has set around getting us into forward center of mass, as I say, to like envision something, explore. Nope, not down there, this way. Ah, there's a scent here. And trade out an actual scent for, oh, there's something interesting here. There's someone interesting here. And like exploring that, no, that's a dead path too.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
Right. That's a great observation. It's the perfect analogy. Perfect analogy. Because these regulatory systems are all about trying to maintain homeostasis. We all hear about, we learn about homeostasis, like the desire for balance. The human body and human physiology is actually geared more towards something called allostasis, which involves kind of stress modulation.
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Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
But without getting into too many details, these are dynamic systems, right? meaning brain systems that are designed to allow us to overcome challenges if need be, right? This is why I always push back on the idea that stress crashes your immune system. You know what crashes your immune system? Being very, very stressed, working a lot, a lot, caretaking for someone else, and then stopping.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
You always get sick when you stop. Why? Because actually stress activates the immune system. Makes sense that it would do that evolutionarily, right? And then when we rest... boom, our immune system kind of relaxes a little bit. And then we succumb to that, you know, the bacteria or virus. So what does it mean? It means that we should probably learn to modulate. It's like driving a car.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
Anytime we feel that we're headed toward or in a peak state, we should probably kind of like lean back off that state just a tiny bit, just a tiny bit, especially if that peak state is coming by way of pharmacology or some extreme circumstance, just back off a little bit, maybe a lot. Okay.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
So when we do that, we learn to master the transition states between these, what I'm referring to as forward center of mass, flat footed or back on my heels. It's a term I learned from a former Navy SEAL operator. He said, with anything in life, you can either be back on your heels, like really challenged, flat-footed, kind of like calm and forward, or forward center of mass, like full tilt.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
I think most people would do very well to learn to master the transition states between waking and going to sleep, right? Many people can't fall asleep. Many people just kind of can't turn it off.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
You can learn how to do that by doing things like non-sleep deep rest, some long exhale breathing, simple self-directed zero cost tools that help adjust your autonomic nervous system to be more what we call parasympathetic, more rest and digest, just long exhales.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
Might not work the first time, but over time, these become very effective tools to self-direct the shift from forward center of mass to flat footed to just kind of laying back, back on your heels. And there you go, you're off to sleep. When you wake up in the morning, some people are just depleted. Maybe you didn't sleep enough, but learning to get forward center of mass shouldn't require
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
excess caffeine and stimulants and super loud music and a shocking text or email. Ideally, you can transition pretty quickly into being forward center of mass, but not full tilt forward center of mass. Why do I say this? I think for anyone who seeks to be successful in any domain, academics, business, creative endeavors, whatever, if you want to have a long arc life and a long arc career,
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
You really strive to control these transition states. And when I say control, all it really takes is paying attention to them and paying attention to the fact that, yes, some people just have inherently more energy. They can do every single workout at max output, then shower, they're talking in the gym, then they're off to that. Some people are like that. Some people...
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
Like myself, if I give 100% to something in the morning, by the afternoon, I'm a little bit depleted. So I require a 10 or 20 minute non-sleep deep rest or a nap or just some quiet long exhale breathing, maybe a little bit of caffeine, which I'm drinking now. I mean, there's nothing wrong with healthy stimulants provided they're consumed in moderation.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
Maybe an energy drink, those can be great too for some people. And then, you know, really going like full tilt, focusing one's attention. And then afterwards, taking a few moments, just moments to downshift. I think we hear so much about the power of meditation or non-sleep deep rest or ice baths. What do cold plunges and cold showers do? They stimulate the release of what?
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Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
Cul-de-sac, turn around, go, oh, here. And then connecting these nodes of progress. What's progress? Ah, there's kind of another surge of these catecholamines, which sets us in forward center of mass.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
The catecholamines, dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, long duration release. That's why it's useful in my opinion. For all the debate about deliberate cold exposure, does it increase metabolism? Does it not? The answer seems to be probably not much. But it's absolutely clear that it causes a huge increase in adrenaline, dopamine, and norepinephrine that are very long lasting.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
And that makes you feel great, especially when you get out of the cold. And I think that's the value of it. It also saves you on your heating bill. Like you don't have to have a cold plunge. You take a cold shower. Nobody likes it. But the point is you get out and you feel different. It's a state shift.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
So that's great, but you don't want to do it to excess because then, you know, for instance, people always say, how long should I go in the cold plunge or cold shower? And I say, do it the minimum amount so that you get the effect that you're seeking, which is to be more alert and motivated. I have a friend, he did 30 minutes, for some reason, naked.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
He said, I did 30 minutes naked in the cold plunge, and then I got sick and I'm feeling really low. And I'm like, because you did 30 minutes. I mean, I don't know about the naked part, what that had to do with it, but you had to throw that in there. He's kind of an extreme guy. And I said, how about one minute? How about 30 seconds?
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Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
How about don't even pay attention to the time, just get in and stay in as long as until you want to get out and then push through that barrier and then get out. That might be a minute, might be three minutes. you know, protect yourself, be safe, but just learn to overcome some challenge and then get out. You know, we have this fixation that more is better and more is not better.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 211: Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Real Reason You're Always Exhausted & Have No Dopamine!
You want the minimal effective dose, maybe a little bit more because we don't know where minimal is. People say, how many sets in the gym? Is it, you know, now it's like all about the volume hypertrophy or like I've always... fairly low recovery quotient. So for me, I like to do a couple of warmups, a few hard sets, two or three hard sets, another exercise, two or three hard sets.
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The Brain-Body Fix: How Magnesium, Omega-3s, & Vitamin D Transform Your Health
The studies that look at EPA, essential fatty acids, and the gut microbiome, those are the two things that to me, it's like, It's undeniable. I don't understand how anyone nowadays could even question the idea that getting proper lipid intake, you know, essentially the brain is fat.
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These omega threes are so important. I mean, in a double, several double blind placebo controlled studies that I've read. it appears that getting 1,000 milligrams or more per day of EPA, so not just taking 1,000 milligrams of fish oil, but making sure that you're getting above that threshold of 1,000 milligrams of EPA from quality sources,
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compares just with similar effect as ssris antidepressant prescription antidepressants but without the side effects right which is incredible and that if you are taking ssris it allows you to take a much lower dose yeah to still be effective to me like incredible data and then the other one is that um getting ferment ingesting fermented foods one or two servings a day
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Yeah. Sauerkraut for the brain or whatever given culture. Because what I learned, and this is very new and emerging data. There's a guy at Duke. He's incredible. He was a nutritionist, but then he has PhD in nutrition, excuse me. And now he's a neuroscientist. His name is Diego Borges, not to be confused with the Argentine writer Borges.
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He's Ecuadorian, and he found that there are neurons in our gut of the vagus nerve. So these are neurons that live in the gut endothelium, and they sense three things. They fire electrical signals to the dopamine centers of the brain in response to fatty acids, right? When fats are, you know, meats and things are broken down in the fatty acids.
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amino acids of other kinds, so from protein, and sugar. And so these neurons can easily be tricked into signaling the brain to release more dopamine, because dopamine is really the molecule of craving, into craving more of whatever activated those neurons.
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And so if you give these neurons enough EPA or enough amino acids, so protein and essential fatty acids, the dopamine centers of the brain are just firing like clockwork, which is going to enhance mood, motivation, energy. I mean, dopamine in proper amounts is a beautiful thing. Too high, obviously you don't want, but you're not going to get it too high.
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People don't get addicted to chicken breasts, but they get addicted to sugar. Right. And I actually think that's because these neurons seem to be responding best to particular amino acids. They seem to want glutamine of all things. They seem to want the omega-3s. And what's interesting is that even if they numb the taste so that people can't taste sugar,
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If people ingest sugar, these neurons, receptors in your gut, and they crave more sugar even if they can't taste the sugar. So I always thought that the dopamine released to sweet things was because it tastes so good. But the Borges lab results and some other work on dopamine more generally from my colleague Anna Lemke at Stanford shows that dopamine isn't so much about pleasure.
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We all, including myself, were taught it's about pleasure. Dopamine is about craving more of whatever it is triggered dopamine release. Yeah.
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The Brain-Body Fix: How Magnesium, Omega-3s, & Vitamin D Transform Your Health
Or sugar. Or sex. And so these neurons that trigger dopamine release, they are powerfully affected by these quality omega-3s and by amino acids. And then what's really interesting is that they trigger the release of dopamine. But then you say, well, okay, that should be pretty simple. Like you said, people don't get addicted to chicken breasts.
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The Brain-Body Fix: How Magnesium, Omega-3s, & Vitamin D Transform Your Health
And I wonder whether or not that's either because omega-3s are too low, so these neurons are not, the full concert of these neurons is inactive, or it could be that for some reason that the other things that people are ingesting has messed up these neurons, and so the whole brain-body relationship is disrupted. And it's, I guess Robert Lustig is his name at UCSF? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Brain-Body Fix: How Magnesium, Omega-3s, & Vitamin D Transform Your Health
And others are now showing that some of the emulsifiers and foods and other things like that, what they do to the gut endothelium. I never really understood how the gut brain thing worked. But what I realize is, is that these microbiota, they don't care about us. What they do is they they're trying to find conditions in the gut where the mucus is pH of the mucus is just right.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Brain-Body Fix: How Magnesium, Omega-3s, & Vitamin D Transform Your Health
And that if people ingest emulsifiers and sugars, what happens is these neurons and Borges lab has shown this, that these neurons that are in the gut endothelium and can sense amino acids and can sense essential fatty acids, they actually start to retract their processes into the deeper layers of the gut.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Brain-Body Fix: How Magnesium, Omega-3s, & Vitamin D Transform Your Health
In other words, if you ingest the wrong things, pretty soon the neurons in the gut remodel the bad kind of neuroplasticity and you lose your gut brain sensing system. And so it's not just a matter of giving it the right things. It's really about, for many people, it's going to be about repairing this system and allowing this portion of our nervous system to grow back.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Brain-Body Fix: How Magnesium, Omega-3s, & Vitamin D Transform Your Health
Now, the nice thing about peripheral neurons is that they grow back.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Brain-Body Fix: How Magnesium, Omega-3s, & Vitamin D Transform Your Health
Yeah, these neurons and really, you know, I tip my hat to the Borges lab. It's cool. You know, science, as you know, can get really entrenched and that someone comes from a completely different perspective of, you know, his background in nutrition. And he described, it actually, it's a relevant story here.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Brain-Body Fix: How Magnesium, Omega-3s, & Vitamin D Transform Your Health
He had a friend who was, she was very overweight and she ended up having a gastric bypass surgery and she lost a lot of weight and her diabetes went away. And, but she also started craving runny eggs, you know, easy over runny eggs. But previously just the thought of runny eggs made her nauseous, made her want to vomit.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Brain-Body Fix: How Magnesium, Omega-3s, & Vitamin D Transform Your Health
And he heard that story and he realized that cravings themselves are modified by the conditions of the gut. How could this be? So he started exploring what are these neurons in the gut? Who are they? What brain areas are they talking to? It's very clear that these neurons, they innervate the gut, they're part of the vagus nerve, connect to the brain areas that release dopamine and create craving.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Brain-Body Fix: How Magnesium, Omega-3s, & Vitamin D Transform Your Health
And so the health of these neurons in your gut is strongly going to impact what you want. And so what so what I love about the literature and I haven't had anything to do with the research I'm describing, but but I've spent a lot of time with that work. What I love about the work that he's doing and others are doing is that it really points to a the brain body connection is mediated by neurons.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Brain-Body Fix: How Magnesium, Omega-3s, & Vitamin D Transform Your Health
Be that what we crave and what we seek really can change. I think that a lot of people that are having a hard time shifting towards healthier eating or healthier relationship to light. So we talked about a few moments ago.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Brain-Body Fix: How Magnesium, Omega-3s, & Vitamin D Transform Your Health
It starts becoming reflexive because not just because it's better for us, but because our nervous system actually remodels itself in ways where the good stimulus starts to evoke dopamine release.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
This episode of the Joe Rogan Experience is brought to you by Call of Duty. You know, when a new Call of Duty drops, everyone's trying to find a way to squeeze in those extra hours of gameplay. I get it. Life is busy, but sometimes you just need it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Well, he's just a fascinating guy, period. But I think what he's locked onto is getting out of your own way. And there's a lot of self-chatter that comes in whenever you're creating something. Where instead of engaging with the idea, you're thinking about how can I make this better for me? What would people like more? What would get a better response? And you lose the magic.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Let me say something, because I know that bears have insane senses of smell that are many times stronger than a bloodhound's and famously can smell people from 100, 200 yards away.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
You also show a path to other people. When you can actually just be yourself, people realize, maybe I can be myself too. And people love that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
That's him. People love that. They love authenticity. That's why they love Old Dirty Bastard. You know who that guy was? Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Yeah, but that's always why he's down in the dumps too. Always telling him, you're taking in too much negativity, bro.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Maybe, maybe. If he didn't drink, he wouldn't be Mike. Maybe. Maybe Mike shouldn't be drinking every day. You know what I mean?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Yeah. He was also brilliant as a writer and he would write all of his own narratives. All the narration was all his writing and he was just so good at it. So good at expressing his joy for different cultures and trying out their cuisine and what he admired about them as human beings and about their spirit. He loved people. He loved people. He loved being around people.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
He did not love being famous though, man. That guy got fucked up by fame. He did not like it. It was very uncomfortable. And that thing that you were talking about Basquiat experienced, I think everybody experiences. There's a temptation towards audience capture.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
There's this desire to appease those and please those who love you, maybe at the expense of your own self-esteem and your own perspective. Because you see things through others' eyes and how they perceive you to be rather than who you actually are. And you're so aware and so painfully self-aware that you lose your ability to just be yourself, what Rick's talking about, just to be you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
And that happens to most people because it is a complicated drug, which is why it's a terrible drug to give to young people. Fame is a terrible drug to give to young people. And one of the ways that I mitigate all this stuff is through... voluntary adversity, voluntary physical adversity, and then mental adversity, doing difficult things.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
And the more difficult things that I do, the easier this weird state that I find myself in is. And I think one of the reasons why I'm so comfortable with it, because I'm uncomfortable all the fucking time. I'm voluntarily uncomfortable most of the day. So regular uncomfortable, it's like, yeah, whatever. It's not 196 degrees for 25 minutes. I did that this morning before I got here.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
That shit's hard. That's really hard. That's like you're going to die hard. You're going to die hard is so much harder than, oh, somebody doesn't like me. Oh, somebody took my clip and took it out of context.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
And cardio is really important for that. Cardio is one of the very best things for alleviating anxiety. And I know there's a lot of studies that have been done on weightlifting. And about strength resistance training and alleviating anxiety. And I think that's a fact. I think that's true as well. But there's something about I might die cardio. I might die cardio is a different kind of cardio.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
It's like if you can swim and to the point where, you know, you do laps in the pool and you do laps in the pool where you're like. I don't know if I'm going to make it to the end of that fucking pool. And when you do get out of that pool, regular life is way easier. Period. Full stop. No discussion. I think when people are talking about cardio, they're engaging in maybe zone two type cardio.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Which is a walk. Which is very good for you. Very good for you, by the way. I do zone two cardio. I will get on the assault bike and not go very fast and do 50 minutes and watch television. I will do that, but I also do Tabata sprints on that motherfucker where I do 20 minutes sprinting, 10 second rest. Excuse me, 20 second sprinting, 10 second rest, 20 second sprint.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
And I do that in sets of four, four, eight reps. So eight reps, four times. It's only like 20 minutes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
And maybe it's just the time involved, who knows? It's a lot of time involved. It's also overwhelming. So it takes over your mind, your body. I think if you're doing a marathon, you're just, you're grinding for hours. You're doing three hours if you're really fast.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
I don't really run, so the longest distance I've ever run is only a few miles. I did a 5K once. My friend, well, Cam Haynes, you know Cam. Cam had a 5K once in Vegas, and I had zero training. I didn't run at all, and I was like, wow, this is hard. And at the end of it, I was like, that's a lot harder than I thought. I thought I was in pretty good shape.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
I'd be able to run, what is it, three point something miles?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
It's just bizarre that he's running on that foot. He knows he's going to have to get it fixed. But if they get it fixed, he's probably going to have to be off of it for like six weeks or something.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
It's very hard to get now. He's got a gap in that broken foot.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Yeah, they need to put some screws in that bitch. But he would run on stomps.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Goggins got another knee surgery recently. Yeah, he's had a bone. I mean, he's bone on bone, and he's essentially getting surgeries to shape his bone so his bone on bone is flatter. Because, you know, when you have bone on bone, it distorts and grows weird. So what does he do? Does he stop? Does he get a fake knee? Nope. He gets it cut flat.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
He gets a wedge cut in the bone and shifts it down so it's flat. So bone on bone, at least it has... the correct geometry, like what?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
I just wish that there was stem cell technology and regenerative technology available now to help his joints stay healthy. Because the problem is that will, that mind, that power is eventually going to break down his body and mechanically it's not going to work anymore.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
I think they're close. They're real close. There's been some studies recently that regenerate cartilage. And so I think they're real close. I think if you could just hang in there for a few more years, they're probably going to be able to fix things.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Yeah, it's legit. It's legit. And unfortunately, the FDA is trying to get rid of it. There's a lot of things that are really good for you that unfortunately are not regulated correctly.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
The difference is that has a tremendous windfall in terms of the amount of money you can generate from it. BBC 157 can be made by virtually any laboratory. And it's probably going to cut back on orthopedic surgeries. And that's the gross cost. The gross reality of a lot of this stuff.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
A lot of this stuff is going to cost companies money because people won't be taking pain medication, they won't be taking anti-inflammatory medication, they won't be getting as many surgeries. And that's where it gets fucked up. Because the healthcare system, the business of healthcare, is really set up not...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
looking at people is like, what's the best way and the most efficient way and the most cost-effective way in terms of for the actual patient to treat them? No. It's how do I make the most money from this person?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Yeah. Listen, man, it's always a fascinating conversation with you. I appreciate you very much. I'm really glad you have your own podcast and that it's so popular. And I love it. I listen to it all the time. Thank you. And you put out a lot of great information, man. I really appreciate you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
This episode of the Joe Rogan Experience is brought to you by Call of Duty. You know, when a new Call of Duty drops, everyone's trying to find a way to squeeze in those extra hours of gameplay. I get it. Life is busy, but sometimes you just need it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Man, the replacer always gets it done. Seriously, though, if you're hooked on Call of Duty, this is your time to jump in. Head over to callofduty.com slash blackops6 to get in the game. Call of Duty Black Ops 6. Available now. Rated M for Mature.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
They just do it subconsciously? Yeah. We're captains, I think. also known as theoles. How do you say that? Theoles? Sulfur-containing organic compounds with a strong unpleasant odor. They are colorless, yellowish liquids. It can be flammable. Mercaptans are found in nature and in living organisms as a waste product of metabolism and in oil and gas.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
They are also present in certain foods such as some nuts and cheese and in decaying organic matter and marshes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
I bet that's in your mind. I bet you don't like them anymore. Because if you're really in love with someone, you don't even care if they have bad breath. You still want to kiss them. That's true, too. Because you just love them. You don't care. That's true, too. Yeah. That's true, too. You don't care if they smell. You don't care. You just love them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
But if they're gross and then they smell, you're like, ugh. Right. You fucking stinky asshole. This is a mule deer skull. So this is not as extreme as an elk, but you get a look at the internal if you look inside of that and you see. Oh, yeah. Because they can wind you from 100 yards away easy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
This episode is brought to you by the Farmer's Dog. Dogs are amazing. They're loyal. They're lovable. Just having Marshall around can make my day ten times better. I'm sure you love your dog just as much, and you want to do your best to help them live longer, healthier, happier lives. And a healthy life for your dog starts with healthy food, just like it does for us.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
So if someone's getting COVID and they start to lose their sense of smell?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
What other viral infections cause a loss of sense of smell?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Was it COVID that you lost your smell with? It was.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Is it only positive smells, or what about if you use smelling salts or something like really intense?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
There's a reason having a balanced diet is so important. So how do you know if your dog's food is as healthy and as safe as it can be? Farmer's Dog gives you that peace of mind by making fresh, real food developed by board-certified nutritionists to provide all the nutrients your dog needs. And their food is human-grade, which means it's made to the same quality and safety standards as human food.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
These are the ones. This is Ah. Jamie's laughing. This is Jujumufu, who is a real athletic freak who uses these. I don't know him, but shout out to him. Okay. This is the strongest shit we have ever tried. This one's sealed, too.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
We'll get to that in a moment, but you're about to get your mind blown here, son. So this stuff is so strong that it's sealed in this bag.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
No, you'll be fine. It's so strong that even though it's sealed in this bag, I have to rip this bag open. Oh, my. Goddamn, my hands are slippery. Got a knife? Okay. It's so strong that I've broken the seal of this bag just slightly. Look, it's still kind of sealed. Look, you could smell it through the bag. Give a sniff. Just give a sniff.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Right? Okay. This bag is still sealed. I haven't even cut the bag yet.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Okay. Now take a sniff. It's still sealed. You learn to waft it. The bottle. The bottle is sealed. Oh, it's not even out of the thing. Oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The bottle's still sealed. Oh, this is just the beginning.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
That was legal in the state of California. And I think everybody's getting a little out of hand.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Okay. Now, again, this is totally legal. Now, what you're going to do here is take this.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Unscrew the cap. Look, it's my initials. Ah. Unscrew the cap. All right. Put it about six inches from your nose. Take a big sniff. Get in there. All right. Yeah, baby. Let's go. Now imagine if you had COVID.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Yeah, take it in. Well, you know what's interesting? Or it wouldn't be fair.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Now, I would imagine if you had COVID, you could smell it over there, huh? I imagine if you had COVID and you lost your sense of smell, this might be the key to getting it back.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
I don't think it's killing it. You can smell everything after it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
I'm obviously biased because I like that thrill for whatever reason.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Very few pet foods are made to this strict standard. And let's be clear, human-grade food doesn't mean the food is fancy. It just means it's safe and healthy. It's simple. Real food from people who care about what goes into your dog's body. The Farmer's Dog makes it easy to help your dog live a long, healthy life by sending you fresh food that's pre-portioned just for your dog's needs.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
That makes sense because he can smell his ball. Like if I throw his ball and he misses it, he just starts doing a circle and then he finds it with his smell.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
But I don't know if I really can smell it, but when someone's lying, I feel like there's a smell.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
there's a thing that people do when they're full of shit where they're anticipating your response in a different way. Like when someone's telling the truth, like if you tell me the truth, you seem relaxed to my response. Like you're telling, even if it's something that you're not proud of, you're telling me the truth, this is the thing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
When someone's lying, it's almost like they're waiting to see how you buy it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
They counterpunch quick. Well, they're selling it. They say it. And they're like, does he buy it? Like you feel the does he buy it? And like, ooh, you're full of shit. Oh, interesting. You know what I'm saying?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Because every dog is different. And I'm not just talking about breeds. From their size to their personality to their health, every dog is unique. Plus, precise portions can help keep your dog at an ideal weight, which is one of the proven predictors of a long life. Look, no one, dog or human, should be eating highly processed foods for every meal. It doesn't matter how old your dog is.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Yeah, but it's not reliable. Like I just be to be completely honest. I've been bullshitted before, but I think I'm better at it than most. And I think maybe that's because I've had more conversations with people than most people have. But it's not 100%. Sometimes people are full of shit and you're not sure or you have your defenses down.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Yeah, it happens. Especially if you like someone. That's part of the problem. You don't want them to be full of shit.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
My friend Tony always says that erotic and psychotic are so close to each other that, you know, like it crosses over back and forth. And I think there's something to that, too, that some of the craziest people are also some of the sexiest people for some weird reason. Like you want to be with them even though you know they're dangerous, like they're crazy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Like there's some weird thing going on there. Almost like you want wild kids because wild kids could survive better. That's an interesting one.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
It's always a great time to start investing in their health and happiness first. So try the Farmer's Dog today. You can get 50% off your first box of fresh, healthy food at thefarmersdog.com slash rogan. Plus, you get free shipping. Just go to thefarmersdog.com slash rogan. Tap the banner or visit this episode's page to learn more. Offer applicable for new customers only.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
It sucks that you have to think that way, though. Can't you just enjoy someone? Yeah. Enjoy their company.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Yeah, but that's the problem. You can zig when you should have zagged when you run into a 10%er.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
A year is a long time, though. Also, people can learn what you tolerate and don't tolerate and hide certain types of behavior from you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
A lot of it is paying attention to you. A lot of it is like listening to what you have to say or asking you questions about your thoughts and your feelings, which a lot of people are unaccustomed to. And that's intoxicating to people because a lot of people just want to talk about themselves.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
So when someone wants to talk about you and really is asking questions about your feelings, you know, that can kind of manipulate you in a weird way.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
That's interesting. And it's probably makes sense why a lot of men with like very overbearing mothers seek overbearing wives.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
It's also, I think there's some people that are very sheltered and they've been well taken care of and they're not accustomed to manipulative people and they're not accustomed to dangerous people. And so they don't know. I've seen that before, both with people choosing the wrong friends and people choosing the wrong partners.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
All right, we're good. Mr. Huberman, how are you, sir? Good to see you. Good to see you. So what were you just saying about dog breeds that, like, we're talking about Carl, like the little bulldog breeds have more mastiff than wolf? Yeah, so... So mastiff is a different thing?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
I think it's also exciting, which is part of the problem is that people like excitement. And if you have a boring life and a life that doesn't have a lot of stimulation in it, and then you find someone, even if they're bad for you, but they're exciting, there's some, some conflict, some something there's, there's fights and breakups and then makeups, which are exciting, you know?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
And so then you get locked into this stimulation pattern, which is, or I've seen that multiple times with people. It's a real problem.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Yeah, I think that's probably the healthiest way to do it. But I think people like, like I said, I think people like stimulation. And I don't think a lot of people are stimulated by their day-to-day existence. I think they're bored. I think a lot of people are just, like, trudging along every day.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
And then when someone comes along that makes you excited in your life, you know, someone who's just a little wilder, a little crazier, maybe some lady's got a bunch of tattoos, like, look at her, you know, like, whoo. You know, people get excited by people that are a little bit dangerous.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
They could do anything. They're risky people, you know? Someone's got tattoos on their hands. Like, Jesus, what is she doing?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
I thought about doing my hands. But the face is a real problem. Like, that's a little wacky. But I have a lot of friends, like Jelly Roll's a good friend of mine. He's got tattoos all over his face. Post Malone, good friend of mine. I think if you're a musician. He's got a bunch of written shit all over his face. Yeah, I mean, they're the nicest people.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
The thing about Jelly Roll and Post is once you talk to them, once you're talking to them, you don't see the tattoos anymore. You just see the human. It's just like them wearing a shirt. It's nothing. It's normal.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
People that had checked out of society completely. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Yeah, we're a little bit more open-minded to decorations. But it is a thing, though, that you're taking a giant-ass chance by tattooing your hands.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Sort of. Yeah. I don't know. It's just art. I like art. I like art on my walls. I like art on my arms. I like art.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Yeah, there's a lot of, that's the weirdest one is tattoos of people's faces on your body forever. And there's, I don't know how many of them are me. There's thousands of them. I mean, I used to post them on Instagram all the time, but then I thought I was encouraging people to get my face tattooed so that they can put it up on my Instagram. But it's kind of crazy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
There might be some reward loop circuitry going on there. One hundred percent. But before I forget this, can I ask you this? The people that are into this smelling salt stuff, they're power lifters and they take a big sniff of that stuff before they lift weights. Why would that help them?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Well, they have those lateral lines that detects. Exactly. sense sounds and things and vibrations in the water.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
But he's also never experienced anybody being mean to him. Except a few dogs apparently. But most of his experiences are play. Like he knows he can just run up to you and bite you and you play with him.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
They used to give it to boxers when they got hurt in the corner. They'd give them smelling salts and wake them up.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Chihuahuas, and then what are those enormous shepherd dogs? What are those ones, those insane dogs they use to fight off wolves? What the fuck are those things called? Those gigantic hairy things? You know what I'm talking about? We've talked about them before. They're terrifying looking dogs. Yeah, I mean, just the... What's it called? Snap of the tongue. Oh my goodness. Oh yeah, those things.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Adrenaline unless you get kicked hard to the body to liver shots Doesn't matter how much adrenaline you have pump and there's something about getting hit in the liver The liver when you get hit like right here if you get kicked or punched right here. It's a crazy feeling It just shuts everything off. It's real weird. Your body just shuts off. I
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Well, some shots go away. So some pain, like if you get punched in the gut, and you're tidying up in anticipation, it still hurts. It hurts. But then you move a little bit, and then you're okay again. But the liver is the opposite. The liver, you get hit, and then there's this sharp pain and a delay, and then...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
everything just shuts off it's very it's very hard to fake and that you're fine and move away you see like telltale signs like one thing guys will do all the time when they get hit in the liver they drop their right arm down and they pin it to their body so maybe they're fighting like this they're moving they whacked in the liver and you see them do like that and they're still moving but they can't help it they have their arm press because they know one more shot there and they're so they barely can keep a poker face and move around
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
But there's telltale signs that you see that are just instinctive. You see them just drop their hand. And a lot of times guys will use that to set them up with a head kick. So, like, they'll hit you a bunch of – a good example of that is Islam Makachev and Alexander Volkanovsky.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
He hit him with a left kick to the body multiple times in that fight and then fired off one to the head and knocked him out.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
You see the leg come up, and it's very hard to recognize. There's a kick called a question mark kick, and it's called a question mark kick because in Taekwondo, we used to call it a fake front kick roundhouse kick. And what it is is you're lifting the knee up as if you're kicking to the body in a straight line, and then you whip it over and go like that and turn it to a roundhouse kick.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Pull up Glaube Fictosa. Glaube Feitosa was the best at it. So much so that a lot of people started calling it the Brazilian kick. Because this guy was a K-1 champion who had the most flexible hips and the craziest question mark kick. And he would literally bring it up and down over the guard. So your hands would be up this, like you think your hands are protecting your head.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
He would bring it up around like this and drop it down on your head and knock people out. Crazy. It's... So wild, because to this day, I don't know anybody who can kick as good as him with that kick. Like, to this day, he has the best highlight. There's a lot of people that are really good at that kick. But Glaube had a very unusual flexibility of his hips. Watch this. Look at this.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Well, that's just a regular one, but he's got some of them that go over the... This is some of his highlights. Look at that. See how he does that? See how it just goes up and around?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
He's going to do it in slow motion. Watch the whip of it. Look at that. That's so crazy. So you don't even know it's... Look how he... Just whip it down. And it's just... There's a lot of people that are good with that, but he was the best at it. I mean, the best. It was just weird to see how he could do it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Oh, yeah. Will Glaube was... It's just flexibility of the hips. It's leg dexterity. But the way he could do it, man, it's just... He had the finest question mark kick of all time. I mean, here's knocking out Semmy Schilt, who was seven feet tall with it. I mean, it was bizarre to watch that kind of flexibility.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
What the fuck is that thing? What is that called again? I don't know, it doesn't say it. But we've seen it before. Doesn't it say the name of the dog? I don't know why it's not saying it. Well, find the name of those dogs because there's... Brian Callen knows all this shit.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
And also bizarre that no one else seems to have really kind of captured that technique as well as he did. And Glaube used to fight... I mean, this is like, hey, well, there's Israel Adesanya had a really good one, too. He still has a really good one. Look at this one. Wow. But that's a little bit more straightforward. I mean, that's like straight to the chin, and it's a beautiful kick.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
But the way Glaube used to do it, it would go over the top and down. See that? Like, that is so crazy. I can't do that. I've been throwing kicks my whole life. I can't throw it like that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
You've been doing it so many times and you know, so really good fighters one things that you see is they don't just charge out in the first round and The first round is like a feeling out process. So you're downloading a lot of data points. You're downloading foot movement. And a lot of guys watch tape and they download it from that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
But then you don't really know until you're in there with a person. So they're downloading positions. They're downloading what a guy does. Like if you... If you pivot to the left, does he move forward? Does he move back? Does he throw the left hook? Does he throw the right hand? What does he do? And how good is he at closing distance? Does he try to fire from where he's at?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Or does he skip forward and fire? Does he give any telltale signs? Does he telegraph? So there's a lot of things that a fighter looks for. Mayweather had... Some of the best counterpunchers in the history of the fucking sport. He was so good at, like, staying in the pocket. So he was an elusive guy. There. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Pattern recognition. Pattern recognition. So he knows that left hook is coming. And so look how straight he throws that right hand. See how straight he threw that? So Canelo is throwing these big, wide punches, and Floyd is just cutting them off at the path and then moving his head out of the line of those hooks that come his way.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Well, you know how you do it, but you've also done it so many times in the gym and in fights that it's second nature. So you're not thinking of it as you're doing it. One of the things about countering people is and I used to. when I was in my prime, when I was fighting all the time, I would throw kicks and they would land before I even knew I was going to do it because someone would do something.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
And as they would do something, I instinctively knew because of pattern recognition, there's going to be an opening. Like say if some guy lifts his left leg, if he's standing with his left leg forward and he lifts his left leg and he's coming towards me with his left leg, I know that he's balancing on that right leg and that the left leg is coming this way.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
So that's where drills come in. OK, so you do drills and you do drills constantly. And one of the things that Mayweather's father was a great fighter, Mayweather's father fought Sugar Ray Leonard back in the 1970s. when Sugar Ray was in his prime and gave him a hell of a fight. And his brother, or his uncle rather, his uncle Roger, was Roger Mayweather, the Black Mamba. He was a great fighter.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Jozo dogs? No, that's not it. There's a name for them, though. Oh, Tibetan Mastiff. Tibetan Mastiff. Yeah. They're really furry, and they're like 250 pounds. Look at that puppy. That's seven weeks old. That's so crazy. I wonder how many they have in the litter. How could they have very many? Yeah, it's got to be just a few. Poor mama. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
So he grew up as a child around some of the best boxers in the world. And so he was constantly seeing the successful motions that they did and constantly seeing them exploit weaknesses in other fighters and then constantly sparring. So in sparring, You're not just fighting when you're sparring, but you're sort of downloading data. You're downloading data points for a real fight.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
And then you're doing drills where a guy will – some guys, they'll do it with mitts. Well, they'll throw a hand at you, and they'll slip and counter. Here, let me show you this. There's this guy, Ilya Topuria. And Ilya Topuria is one of the absolute best fighters in the world. He's the current UFC featherweight champion. And the dude is just fucking phenomenal.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
But one of the things that's phenomenal about him is his technique. His technique is perfect. There's like no... fat in his technique. There's no wasted movement. So when an opportunity presents itself, everything is so fast because the technique is so streamlined. But look at how he hits the pads. And when you watch how he hits the pads, and Mayweather is a great example of that as well.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Did I send it to you? No? Didn't go through? I totally sent it. Hold on. It says I sent it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
No. Yeah, it's on Instagram. I sent it to you, though, on a text message. Really? I sent it twice. You got it? Okay. Ilya, like I said, some of the best hands in the sport, current UFC featherweight champion, and knocked out Volkanovski, who was maybe the greatest of all time. Watch him hit the punches. Look at this. See how he's moving his head when the guy throws punches?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
And the speed, man. The fucking speed of that. Look at the hand. Look at the hand speed. Fucking incredible. I mean, if you know how difficult that is to do and do it that fast. Give me that sound again. Let me hear this. I mean, these are like five, six punches a second.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
But it's not. And just phenomenal technique. But see how those punches, they're not even talking. So when he's throwing the mitts at his head to get him to duck, there's no communication. He just sees that hand coming towards him and he's ducking. He sees this hand coming towards him and he's ducking.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
It's all like slight slips away and it's slight motions, which is all you need to get away from a punch, right? You don't wanna move too far, you're wasting a lot of energy and you can't counter attack. One of the best things about Floyd and one of the most brilliant things about him, he's one of the most elusive fighters of all time, but he didn't move around.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
He stood right in front of you and you couldn't fucking hit him. That's true mastery of space and true mastery of technique. In my opinion, he's the best boxer that's ever lived.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
He just fought last weekend, this weekend. Yeah, he fought a match against John Gotti's grandson. Which is crazy. That's scary for a lot of reasons. Yeah, for a lot of reasons. This is the second time they fought. The first time they fought, it ended in a brawl. A bunch of people jumped in the ring.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
It was crazy because they stopped the fight because they were talking too much shit to each other and holding on to each other too much. So the referee stopped the fight. For whatever reason, I don't know. And this fight was even crazy, too, because the first referee was terrible. And the referee said Floyd Mayweather hit him behind the head. Absolutely incorrect call.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Floyd threw a right hand, and it caught him on the side of the head. And the referee claimed that it was behind the head. So Floyd fired the referee in the middle of the bout. He stops the bout. He's like, get the fuck out of here. Get out.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Well, I guess. I mean, also, it's Floyd Mayweather. Like, what's the referee going to do? Fuck you. You know, I'm going to stop the fight. Also, they're in Mexico City. Like, you could get killed. Like, just get out of the ring, buddy. So Floyd throws this punch, and he's 100% correct. The punch landed at the side of the head. It's a right hook. It's a perfect punch.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
And the referee was saying, watch the back of the head. He's like, what the fuck are you talking about? That wasn't the back of the head. And so he kicks the guy out and they bring in a different referee who finishes the fight. It was insanity. And Floyd won. It was an exhibition. It's kind of a bullshit money grab, honestly. So this is, you see the punch? That's the punch right there.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
It's just a right hook. See, same back of the head. So Floyd's like, get the fuck out of here. Just get out of here. Fuck you. Get out of here. He's like, get the fuck out of here. And if anybody's qualified to say get out of here, it's fucking Floyd Mayweather, the best boxer of all time. He's 100% correct. That referee made a giant, stupid error. He's like, get out of here. Get out of here.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Yeah, and he's right. Everybody watching it is right. No one thinks it's a bad punch. Let's see it again. We can see it one more time. It's a counter right hand. We can see it in slow motion. So he throws the punch. Boom. It's just a perfect right hook. It's a perfect right hook. What it does is a punch that goes over the top of the guard and catches him in the exposed area of the head.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
It's a perfect punch. And for the referee to interfere there. And also, it's literally like someone who probably doesn't know how to box at all telling the greatest boxer of all time that what he's doing is wrong, which is just bananas. That's crazy. So he got rid of the guy in the middle of the fight. But he's still doing these bouts at 46 years old, still boxing these young kids.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Again, John Gotti III, who is a very good up-and-coming MMA fighter. So he has all the weapons, takedowns, submissions, kicks, all that jazz. But he's choosing to fight Floyd in a boxing fight just for money, just like Conor McGregor did. It's really a trick. He gets these people to box with him. They have no business boxing with him.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
And he's making millions and millions of dollars doing this way after his competitive career is over.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Hey, man, he's a genius. He really is a genius. He's a genius in figuring out a way to keep making money. And one of the reasons why people watch him fight is not because he's like Mike Tyson, just goes out and destroys people. They like watching him fight because they hate him. Because he talks so much shit, and he's like, look at my million-dollar watch. Look at my fucking jet. Look at my house.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Look at this. He's, like, constantly showing you all these things that he has. Like, he'll lay out watches in a hotel bed. Like, this is a million dollars worth of watches. This watch goes for $2 million. And they're like, this is my small watch that I take sometimes, but I want to show you. When I show up, I bring out the big boy, and it brings out this watch that's covered in diamonds.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
It's like fucking $5 million. And so you hate him. People hate him. He creates envy. Yes. Yeah. It creates envy and you want him to lose, but he's not gonna, he's not gonna, he's too, he's so good. But the other thing is discipline, right? You don't, he's not just this cocky guy who's like really good at boxing. He also has incredible discipline.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
He would go to a nightclub with everybody else, be drinking water. Everybody's partying, having a good time. Floyd would leave the nightclub at 2am, have his bodyguards drive the car and he would run in front of the car for hours. Run home, 2 o'clock in the morning. Run 5, 6 miles. And did it all the time. Just always did. He was always fit. Always in shape. Never got fat. Never got lazy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Always was ready. And so never really experienced decline. And then decided at a certain point in time, like after the Conor McGregor fight, okay, I'm done. Done. Did it all. Beat everybody. Undefeated. Bye. And now he just has these demonstration fights where they're weird little exhibitions where he's just beating people up that have no business in the ring with him.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
And one of them, he was walking around with a fucking card, a ring card. He took it from the ring card girl and he started dancing around.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Sure, but Twitter is the one the most because it's mostly just talking or mostly just text. Instagram is photographs. I don't comment on people's photos very, very rarely. I might have commented on photos 12 times in my life. You know, just a friend. Like, that's awesome. Way to go. Something nice. But I don't even read comments. But I look at pictures. I go, oh, that's cool.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Oh, look at that video. That's fucking crazy. I'll give it a little tap, double tap, give you a little heart, give you a little love, and then move on about my day. But in Twitter, I'm constantly just engaging with people's thoughts and arguments and debates, and that's why I think Twitter is the most addictive of all the social media platforms.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
In terms of engagement, but not as addictive as TikTok in terms of – it compels you to continue to watch. I want to keep going with this, but I have to pee so bad. I did the sauna before we got here, and I drank 64 liters of water. Or 64 ounces, rather. All right, we'll be right back. We were at, people like to get angry.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
And you were saying that you had another urge to take another sniff of these smelling salts.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Me too. Same thing. I've never tried Adderall either, but I've been tempted.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Because people tell me about them. I'm like, Jesus.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Well, we did double-blind placebo-controlled studies for alpha brain.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
But theanine is also really effective for that, too. And I don't know how many studies there are on that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Was it designed for that or was it designed as a performance enhancing drug, but they needed a way to prescribe it?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
I took that stuff for a while. I was taking it. And you know what? I would really like to take it. Like, say if I had a gig in San Diego. And I was done with my gig at like 11 o'clock. I was like, I want to go home. I don't want to stay in a hotel. Fuck it. Let me drive home.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
And if I would drive home, there'd be that risk of the sleep coming on because there's a weird thing about being on the highway, about those lines. They fucking hypnotize you. Oh, yeah. It's really weird. Oh, yeah. And the... Yeah, and so for anybody out here, listen to this because my manager told me this. It's really important.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
If you think you're going to fall asleep, there's a great way to mitigate it that's pain-free. Get a rag like a washcloth and some ice and some water and have like a little thing next to you with a cold, wet rag and just wipe that rag on your face. And then you're good for like five more minutes. Reach in there and start, oh, man, I'm just going to sleep again. Wipe that rag on your face.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Would it be bad to do sauna and then cold plunge and then try to go to sleep?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Which is why I start the day with cold, to wake up.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
By the way, I don't know if I'm right. I'm probably wrong. My wife doesn't want, she wants to get a second cold plunge because she doesn't like how cold mine is because mine has ice in it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
I've got a new one that I got from Morosco. We have two. So we have one here at the gym that's a blue cube that's, This one's insane because you can crank it and you turn up the knob and it'll be like a flowing, raging river.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
It's painful for me to just check my watch to see how much time I got left. It sucks. Yeah. I have a system now. If I count slowly to 10 two times, so I count to 20 and I know exactly how long my breath is for it to be three minutes. I know how to do it. So I do it now. That's awesome. It's a little cheating. You know what I do?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Well, here's what it is. I don't know if the cold is any better to be 34 degrees or if it's any better to be 45 degrees or 50 degrees. But what I do know is that I don't like 34 degrees. So that's why I do it. Because if I feel like I can get away with making it a little bit easier, I feel like a bitch.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
So that's why I do it as cold as it can get before it freezes solid, which seems to be 34 degrees. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
And you've explained that there's actually a part of your brain that grows.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Well, it completely makes sense that your brain would have to develop an ability to continue to do difficult things. And that ability to not hesitate and push through, the ability to not procrastinate and go forward, and that that thing is probably like all things. It's like cardiovascular endurance, muscular endurance. You develop an ability to do more of it because of that. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Because your brain recognizes this is something that we're going to have to deal with. Let's figure out how to respond to this.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Let me see what you got. I got a lot of dicks in there. It's like super bad.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Yeah. Okay. So here's some of you. Oh, wow. Pretty good. They're not great. They're just for fun.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
That's good. Like the anatomy of the hand is dead on. That's really good. So I'm trying, I'm trying. No, that's really good.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
One of my daughters is insanely good. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, I wanted to be a comic book illustrator when I was young. And I always wonder how much of talent gets passed on to kids.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
There's something there. There's something there. Because there's certain people that if their parent was a singer, but then you go, well, maybe they were singing around the house a lot when they were growing up.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Right. Right. Also, he's a good boxer. Is he really?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Those guys get banged up, though. Those guys get a lot of concussions.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Oh, yeah. And they ramp up the dosage, too. I like threes. I like mild. Three milligrams. Three milligrams. But Lucy sent me some that are 12s. Jesus, Louisa's.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
I put that, the 12 in my mouth for like 30 seconds and my body's like, get it out of here.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Yes. Well, I'm a control freak in that way. I know I want to be in control. I don't ever want to be out of control. Like I've never been addicted to a sub other than coffee, I guess, but I've, I've taken time off of coffee, too, just because I know that I like it too much. But coffee doesn't overwhelm me, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
So if I felt like coffee was overwhelming me or if it was difficult to acquire or illegal, I probably would quit coffee. A chuckle, but at the rate the world's going, it's probably going to be illegal. Well, it's always good the reason why coffee is legal and is the reason why they created meth really because it's good for Productivity like coffee it keeps you from getting tired.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
It's good for productivity It's also enjoyable people like a nice warm liquid I love and since I really got into coffee from doing this podcast really I drink it black. I like coffee. I like taste I look forward to it have one every morning. I look I like it, but I love it in the afternoon and But if I thought it was fucking with my life, 100%, I would quit. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
You know, I mean, I've had times in my life where I was drinking too much, mostly because of comedy. Because at nights, you're out with your boys, and everybody wants to drink. They're all drinking. My friends are all drunks. Like... Like a good solid percentage. Not all of them. Whitney doesn't drink. No, Whitney does not drink. But a good solid percentage of my friends drink a lot.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
They drink all the time. They drink at clubs. I tried to get Burt to quit. Burt is not going to quit.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
He doesn't mean that. He just wants you to talk to him. Just talk about Burt. I'll talk about him. But that's what he wants. So let's talk about me. Let's talk about me about how I have to quit. Come on. Talk to me about me. Let's make it all about Burt. That's what Burt likes. He's not going to quit.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Did he get fat again? He sent me a picture the other day. He was all skinny. Is he lying?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Son of a bitch. He got big, at least. He got jacked. He started lifting weights.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Well, the thing is, Bert is on tour, right? He's got painted toenails, too. What the fuck are you doing? He's on tour, so he's on this fully loaded tour where he's doing all these arenas with all these friends, and they're doing activities constantly. They go to water parks. I don't know if they go to water parks. You know, shit like that. Can't he bring a kettlebell or something?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
they do that too but he gets drunk every night and it's not just like a little bit of beer it's a lot of beer it's a lot of they have a vodka company now that's not good now they have their own vodka so he's what's that saying everybody loves a young drunk but as time goes on it does not look pretty Yes, but there's a curve when it comes back around again.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
You see a 90-year-old guy that's hammered. That guy's fun. Then they're wild again. A 90-year-old guy with a fucking straw hat on and a gun. He's drunk. Yeah, I must say. Like Hunter S. Thompson before he died.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Thank you. So that one was another example of doing something I didn't want to do because they offered me to do it live, and I was like, fuck that. I want to be able to edit mistakes out. I want to have four shows and pick the best one and do that. I don't want to do it fucking live. Who fucking needs that pressure?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Yeah, they don't care. But there's always some people that are just, they're not, this is not in good faith. Everything they're doing is just trying to find something wrong with everything you're doing. And it's usually people that their life is a mess.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
There's no one who does that who is a healthy, accomplished person who has great relationships in their life and is doing really well at some skill or chosen profession that they enjoy very much. They're not fulfilled.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
There's a lot of that, for sure. So there's a business in that. And then there's also people that are doing, like MSNBC did this recently. And this has gotten so popular that my fucking stepdad contacted me to tell me he's happy that I'm suing MSNBC. I'm like, I'm not suing MSNBC. But this is what MSNBC did. They took a clip of me talking about Tulsi Gabbard.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
And they edited it up and made it look like I was saying great things about Kamala Harris.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Yes, they did it about politics, but they didn't do it like AI. They just deceptively edited the things that I was saying, took it completely out of context where I was talking about, first of all, I was talking about Tulsi Gabbard, and then I was talking about that
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
the media behind kamala harris all this surge and all these people just deciding that she's good she could win and they put the two of those together and made it seem like i was praising kamala harris and saying a bunch of things that aren't even true about her like i was talking about tulsi gabbard being a congresswoman for eight years and about how she served overseas two deployments in medical units dealing with people who are blown up from the war like
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
That's not something Kamala Harris did. It's something Tulsi Gabbard did. I was just saying things about her and they put it out there as a clip of me praising Kamala Harris. But they don't care about the truth. They just want a narrative to get out there amongst enough people because most people are just surface readers. Right. They read a headline. I'd be guilty of that many times.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
You read a headline. Oh, I know what that is. And then you shut your laptop. I got it now. I got the whole—so if you read an article that says, you know, Andrew Schultz is a liar, like, oh, he's a liar. I heard he's a liar. And then you just start repeating he's a liar. It doesn't have to be real. And so all they have to do with—like, how many people are actually going to watch my Netflix special?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Well, it's a lot, but— As compared to the amount of people in the country, not a lot, you know, small percentage. So all you have to do is take something out of context from someone who's never going to watch it in the first place, put it in front of them like, oh, that piece of shit. Can't believe he said that, even though I'm literally talking about things being taken out of context.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Man, the replacer always gets it done. Seriously, though, if you're hooked on Call of Duty, this is your time to jump in. Head over to callofduty.com slash blackops6 to get in the game. Call of Duty Black Ops 6. Available now. Rated M for Mature.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Do you know what pink trip is? No. You don't know Pink Trip? Pink Trip is hilarious. He's a guy on the internet who takes clips of podcasts and creates narratives of things that are totally not happening. Oh yeah, I've seen some of you. There's one recently, me and Tucker Carlson are having an argument.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
It's good. Somebody sent it to me. Who fucking sent it? See if you can find it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
So Pink Trip is- It's called Pink Trips? No, it's a dude. Oh, okay. This name is pink you see here it is pink trip. So it's visible what space is real Are you joking? You're a science denier what?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
I think you are a far-right, white supremacist, racist.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Yeah, yeah, yeah. About completely different things. It's really masterful. Do you want to die? Watch.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
But this is funny, right? He does that with a lot of stuff, like people pretending to be in love with me makes it like there's a romance between me and different people. But that's funny. That's art, right? He's making a story that doesn't exist. It's really funny, right? But there's people that do it just to either, in this case, it was to promote Kamala Harris, to get the passive,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
the people that are, you know, the casual, to go, oh, wow, Joe Rogan likes Kamala Harris.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Yeah, I can't even say I like somebody without it being an endorsement and people getting mad. But I think the MAGA people are happy now that Robert F. Kennedy is now with Trump.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Yeah, I think we're in a very weird time with the media. And I think truth is super important. And I think someone that's willing to do something like that That's a real offense. It's a real offense. It's not a small thing. It's a real lie. And it's a lie that changes other people's opinion.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
You take what's perceived to be an influential person and you distort their views in either a way to shame them, make them look bad, or to promote someone else. That's a real lie. That's a dangerous lie. It's a real offense. And I think that there's no laws against that right now. Except libel law. I mean, you could take someone to court, I guess. But...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
It's a real gross lie, and it's used right now to manipulate public opinion.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
It depends on who the public is. This is the issue right now with boomers, right? old liberals in particular, all they do is watch the news and read the newspaper. And whatever's printed, they believe. And it's very difficult to get them to consider like, hey, maybe someone's lying. Maybe there's propaganda campaigns.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Maybe there's like this widespread media narrative that they're pushing because corporations are behind it and advertising is behind it. And they're figuring out a way to manipulate the public opinion on things. It's very hard to get old boomers to believe that. Because... They're old, okay? So they're set in their ways. Their mind has formed around, you know, I am a liberal. I am a Democrat.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
I've been a Democrat my whole life. This is how I feel about these issues. This is my community. This is my tribe. These are my people. And the news says this, and I'm with them. And, oh, great, we're up in the polls now. And for them, it's like they're on a team. It might as well be the Dolphins versus the Raiders. It's the same kind of mentality in their head.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
And they don't want to be challenged. That little part of their brain that exists when you challenge yourself and do things you don't want to do, that bitch is shriveled up to almost nothing. And they're real boring and their lives are entirely excited by political discourse.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Yeah, it's mostly boomers. I think young people are way less likely to buy into bullshit now. There's young people that are ideologically captured, for sure. You see that both with right-wing people and with left-wing people.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Yes, it's mostly because they grew up with it. They're the ones. The kids today, they don't buy it at all. Like Gen Z kids and whatever the fuck they are. What's the newest? What's the latest? Whatever these kids are, these young kids coming up today, like people in their 20s, they don't believe it at all.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
You're, you're allowed to do it for whatever reason. You know, I have a friend who used to work at New York times and said they were encouraged to do it. They were encouraged to just try to take someone down. Like that was the whole idea of a piece.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Isn't there some science about why they're bad for you?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
And it literally has better statistical results than SSRIs, which is pretty nuts.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
So what is the hazard of the participant with the person that's helping them?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Well, it's also the conversion to 11-hydroxymetabolite. It's five times more psychoactive than THC. I used to do a joke about it that lets you talk to dolphins. It's a true story about edibles and dolphin experience.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
And this is what- Especially long form, because then you get to understand how a person thinks about things, not just the subject at hand, but maybe other things. You get to hear their speech patterns and their thinking patterns.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
But also it helps me to know whether or not you have any discipline. So there's people that think about a certain thing because it comforts their own thoughts about their decisions that they've made. And there's certain rationales that people make.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
They rationalize certain aspects of their life and certain things that are going on in society to sort of make up for the fact that they haven't done the work that they probably should have done in the first place.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
So when I see a guy that's built like Chris or Lex or someone who I know or yourself that I know stays very physically fit and takes care of their health, then I have more respect for them because I go, okay, I have more respect for this person's opinion because this person is doing difficult things on a regular basis and confronting their own hesitations, their whatever procrastination, discipline issues.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
And the, the, Physical ability to put in work which requires mental strength and for the longest time for whatever strange reason people have had this mutually exclusive notion that a person who is physically fit is probably stupid and a person who doesn't care about their body and only concentrates on the mind and
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
for some reason that is admired, that this person has no ego at all and doesn't care. But I think that person's a fool because you don't have as much energy to think because your physical body that you have, you've let decay to this terrible point where your posture is down. I've had some unfortunate conversations with older intellectuals that don't take care of themselves.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
And you realize that at some point that they've gotten lazy physically and they don't have the energy to engage. And so they sort of just sort of repeat things that they've said over and over and over again. And when you ask them to think on the spot, they almost don't have the will to do it anymore. Yeah. You know, well, there's sucks.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
No worries. But it's just we get a rough understanding of it all.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Okay. I can tell you were thinking about it. All right. Get in there, sir. All right. Take a step. I almost. Oh, yeah. And now to the right nostril.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Remember the alternator? Let me see if I alternated. I don't remember which one got me the first time.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
It makes your eyes water a little bit, but boy, it does shock your system. Wow.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
That's what McKenna used to say about cannabis. McKenna, who would, Terrence McKenna would freely admit that he had a problem with cannabis because he was like a daily cannabis user. But he said the real way to take it, he said, is to take a long time off, a long time off. so that your body's completely desensitized to it, and then take as much as you can stand in one dose.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
He was interested in it as a psychedelic, especially if you do that in edible form. It is a very, very potent psychedelic. But there is that concern, and I think this is a very important thing to bring up. It's not benign, and certainly not to everybody. Nicotine. Marijuana. Oh. Everybody has a different reaction to it. And some people have a terrible reaction to it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Yes. And I don't understand it because I don't get it. It doesn't happen to me. But I also know that it's real. And to deny it as a zealot and to say, oh, marijuana is just great. Everybody should be high. Like, no, no, no. Everybody shouldn't eat peanuts either. You know, some people have a weird reaction to things. And there's a certain... I mean, Alex Berenson wrote that book, Tell Your...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
you and cam haines and others about dogs that hunt or go on hunts and like the coonhound breeds are amazing yeah i've always wanted a redbone coonhound their ears waft up smell that's why they're so long yeah i didn't know that yeah the reason why they have those long floppy ears is as they're running their ears are wafting up smell and it gives them a better sense of the the chase oh amazing
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Tell your parents or tell your children? Tell your children. It's all about that. There needs to be some recognition, but there's a certain percentage of people that have a tendency towards schizophrenia or maybe psychotic breaks, and they can get triggered by high doses of cannabis for sure.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Well, there's also people that write articles with a specific narrative because they're gamifying the social media algorithms. They're gamifying clickbait. So it's business. Gamifying clickbait is real. Unfortunately, one of the things that happened in journalism is people stopped buying newspapers.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
And when people stop buying newspapers, the only way you can get someone to go to your website and click on a link is you have to have some sort of inflammatory headline, something that excites you. Something that angers you, something that gives you some information, some secret information that wasn't available before. Oh, let me click on that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Well, they're making themselves obsolete. And this is what I believe. I believe that human beings should be able to differ on opinions. But I should know that you're being honest and you're telling the truth. So as soon as you write something that I know is biased and twisted and you've distorted things and taking things out of context, well, I know that you're not in the truth game.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
So your opinion's nonsense. Whatever you say is horseshit. I want to talk to someone that's trying to figure out what's right and what's wrong, not someone who's trying to win. And everybody's trying to win. This is a real problem. And it's a real problem when the discussion.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
They attach whatever the discussion is, whether it's weightlifting is more important than cardio or you should be a vegan versus you should be a carnivore. They attach whatever this argument is to their own sense of self-worth. And it's very important to them that they counter your arguments and win this little chess match. And that's what it is. They're playing a little game. I play games.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
So I don't like playing games when I talk to people. I like playing pool. The game is like making people laugh. The game is jujitsu. How do I get your back? These are games I like. I like games. So when I communicate, I don't like games. But I recognize that especially earlier in my life before I... started recognizing patterns in podcasts. Like, what don't I like when people are talking?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
I don't like when someone's biased. I don't like when someone is talking over people. I don't like when someone's misrepresenting someone's words or someone's trying to win rather than considering what the other person's saying. So when someone's considering what the other person's saying, then you get this beautiful sort of sharing of ideas without ego. And the real problem is the ego.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
The ego getting attached to winning a conversation and being correct. And they get in this fucking frenzy where they can't even communicate anymore. And they're completely attached and married to their ideas. The best thing, the best advice I can give people on this is don't be attached to your ideas. They're just ideas. Examine why you believe them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
There's many times in my life where someone has hit me with some facts and I've thought about my – I go, oh, you know why I believe that? This is why. Because I thought this. And then I was saying, well, if you believe that, then this has to be untrue. But I don't want to say that. So I've attached myself to this thing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
And now I've connected my – and when I'm engaging with someone, I'm not just engaging in this – pure intellectual sharing of ideas and a discussion of merit, I'm now in a win-lose situation. I'm trying to win. And I could win by deception. And you see people do that all the time.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
And it's so gross when you catch people doing that on a podcast, when you realize you're not even considering these other possibilities because you're dismissing them without any consideration because you just want to achieve a goal of victory. You just want to play checkmate. And that's all they're doing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
And that's why the media's gonna make themselves obsolete, because that's not happening in podcasts. In the best podcasts, whether it's Chris Williamson, whether it's Lex Friedman, the best podcasts are a true conversation. And I wanna know why you think the way you think. And when I get that in my head, I can consider it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
And then I can say, well, this is why I don't think that's true, because I think this way, this is my perspective. I might be wrong, I might be right, who knows? But this is just how I feel. And when you can do that and learn how to do that, and it took me a while to learn how to do that, it makes all conversations better. It makes all friendships better.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Like you get to really understand why a person, like maybe you and a buddy had a disagreement about something. You said, well, what did you think? You're like, I thought you were going to do that. I'm like, I never said I was going to do that. Why would I do that? Like, I thought you were going to do that, but we didn't talk about that, did we? No.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
So you're mad at something that you didn't even talk to me about. And you thought that I should have just known. Like, come on, man. That's crazy. Like, you're just, like, attributing all these negative things to a person. And then you can work things out. You can talk about things. As long as the person's not bullshitting you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
As soon as you've got people in your life that are bullshitting you, it's like, oh, you're not even having real conversations. You're playing a stupid game of tic-tac-toe all day long with your friends. When your friends can open up to you. And this is one of the reasons why people like sharing embarrassing information with friends. Because they know I can trust you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
I can tell you this stupid fucking thing that I did. And you go, oh, my God. I did that too. You're like, ah! And then you, no. But when a person goes, well, I would never fucking do that. I would have figured that out a long time ago. I wouldn't have done it that way. Like, oh, well, that guy's a dick. He's not willing to be vulnerable with me because he always wants to be socially a step up.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
He wants his status to be in a position of this is the guy that doesn't make those mistakes, which is crazy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
There are people that are way better at certain things than I am, that I'm friends with. And that's how it should be. There's people that I'm friends with that are way smarter than me, you included. And I'm But it's okay.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Right, but too many people are attached to the outcome, and I think that's a tremendous trap, and that's why I wanted to talk about it because it's something that I had to learn because I was always attached to winning an argument. If I got in a discussion, a disagreement with someone, I was always attached to being the one who was correct.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
All right, so you're 50 years older than me. You know, I've gotten way better at it over time. I wouldn't want to sit and figure out when I figured it out, but I figured steps of it out along the way. You know, I remember being 21 and watching a comedian go on stage and I wanted him to bomb. And I realized that there was a terrible weakness and I was embarrassed that I had that feeling.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Well, it was also how I developed as a child. I mean, I went from all my puberty years competing. So that like from 15 on, that's literally what I did all day long. Your goal is to knock the other guy out. Yeah, it's a fucked up way to develop your mind. You do develop this insane kind of hyper-competitive, because the consequences are so grave.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
I always say about MMA that it's high-level problem-solving with dire physical consequences. And that's really what it is. It's high-level problem-solving. You're literally doing hand-to-hand combat with... with your body, with someone who's an expert at it, which is so crazy. So you're fighting a black belt is so crazy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
This is a person who's dedicated their life to kicking people into the shadow realm, and you're deciding to try to kick them first before they kick you, which is just nuts. It's a nutty way to live. But the negative aspects of it, You develop this hyper competitiveness because you're also developing at an accelerated rate when you're a teenager. When I was a teenager, I had no bills.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
I had no problems. I lived at home. I didn't have any real... like an adult type stress, you know, bills, family to feed, dealing with the community, work problems. I had nothing. So my entire focus was just on this one thing, martial arts. And you can get way better when you're a kid. It's like this neuroplasticity involved.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
That's a big thing. She draws all day long. And she's been doing it since she was really little. But also like going back to Floyd Mayweather. Floyd Mayweather started boxing when he was a little kid. And there's a thing about striking.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
And it's not a hard, fast rule because there's some freaks out there, some athletic freaks, and there's some people that come from other sports that have incredible speed and dexterity and an understanding of their body that allows them to pick up striking better than others. But there's something about people that learn when they're young that are always better than everybody.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
No matter how good you are, there's certain guys like Anderson Silva or there's certain fighters that learn at a young age and you just can't fuck with them. They're just too good.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
That's why when Floyd sees those punches coming, he knows all he has to do is this. And it's going to just barely touch his chin. And then he fires back. He knows. He's been in those patterns for his whole life. And his body evolved. It literally developed in those patterns.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Sniffers show that humans can track scents and that two nostrils are better than one.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
What do you mean by box him in? How do they box him in? You'll see what happens. So it seems like he's going on the outside now.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
So it's just like they try to keep you from, you can kind of fit two people in the lane and they try to keep you from doing that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Do you think there'll be maybe a shift today because there's so much more material that's available to young people? Like if somebody has an interest in science.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Well, this is a problem that I see in combat sports. Because in combat sports, you have guys who have a championship mentality. Like they could have been a champion, but they didn't start early enough. And even though they have this extraordinary mind, so do the people that started when they were four.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Like this idea that you're tough or you're the only one that's tough, that's an egocentric idea that a lot of men have. And it's a very bizarre conversation to have with these men. I don't think he's tough. I think if the going gets tough, you're never going to find out the going gets tough. He's going to fuck you up. It's not even going to be hard for him.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
You don't even understand what you're saying. But there's the mind, the ego plays this cruel trick on you that doesn't allow you to accurately assess your abilities. So you have this bizarre notion that you are exceptional for no reason whatsoever. And there's a lot of men have that. A lot of men have that bizarre thing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
The problem with if you have an incredible drive, an incredible discipline, but you didn't start striking until you're 26. If you have a Thai boxing fight against like a guy like – there's a guy right now who's one of the best in the world. His name is Thawen Chai and he has this insane left kick. He's like so left kick dominant. Like most of his game is his left kick, but it's so goddamn good.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
He just slams into the guy's arms, slams into the guy's legs, and he has this snake-like movement of his ability to just slide out of the way and then counter and then slam you with a hard left low kick.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
he's terrifying and i don't care how tough you are you you don't have that ability and you probably are never going to get there like the margins the differences of tenths of a second hundreds of a second here and there he's so good you're not going to catch him so even if you're the baddest dude in the world in your mind this is talent chai let me hear some of this But go for the beginning.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Go to the beginning so you can hear the volume of him hitting the pads. This is not what you were looking for exactly. This was like a highlight reel. Yeah, but it's fine. Go to the beginning where he hits the pads. Oh, it's just gonna music over it? Oh, okay. It's just music over it. But this guy is fucking nasty, but he's all left kick. Like, it's like 80% of his game, man.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
It's crazy how much of his game... I mean, he can do everything. The guy does everything. But his left kick is so fucking powerful that every time it hits you, your power bar goes down. If he hits your arms, if he hits your body, it's just like all left kick. Bang, bang, bang. And it's so smooth. He's so good, man. He's so good.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
So if you're a guy and you're some badass Navy SEAL dude and you're 30 years old and you make it to the Muay Thai gym and you decide, hey, I'm only 30. I'm going to fight pro. Sigh. You don't have enough time. There's not enough time in the world for you to get to where he's at, and he's going to get better quicker.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Bruce Lee had a saying that don't fear a man who knows 10,000 kicks. Fear a man who's practiced one kick 10,000 times. There's a thing about a guy who's got this one thing that's so, like, Ryan Garcia has this nasty left hook. That's getting super fast. Yeah, it's a crazy left hook. It's so goddamn good.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
It's so much better than most people's that everybody who fights him doesn't understand what he can do until he does it to you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Fast, powerful, distance management, angles that it comes from. It comes up. It comes around. It just hits you faster than you know it's supposed to get there. It's so much quicker and has so much pop on it. It's so dangerous. He fought Devin Haney, who is one of the best pure boxers in the sport. He's so good.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
But he just didn't have the understanding yet that a guy can whip that left hook so fast and catch him and fuck him up in these weird angles. Watch this dude's left hook. There's his liver shot. That's it. melted. He melts a lot of guys that liver shot. See if you could just see, give me a highlight of Ryan Garcia's knockouts.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Oh, it's just, well, his speed is just different than other guys. So you don't know that he can, like, look at that. My goodness. Look, it's a fade away left hook. It's so perfect. And when he connects, everybody goes night-night. It's really extraordinary. And it's extraordinary because it's that one weapon that's so good.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
And when he fought Devin Haney, he was like, Devin Haney's like, he's only a left hook. What? Whatever. It's like saying Talon Chai only has a left kick. It's so good.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
A left hook that's so much better than everybody else's. He's got a right hand too, but that left hook is just freakish. It's freakish. Bink. Right there.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Sheer will, numbers, there's a lot of things going on. Like what kind of conditioning he went through as opposed to the other guy, like what edge he got.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Isn't it unfortunate, though, that Kentucky's not associated with intellectual prowess? Not so much, but it's a great department. You're trying to be defensive. No, no, no.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
One of the greatest pool players in the history of the world came from Paducah, Kentucky. Guy's name was Buddy Hall, the rifleman. To this day, one of the all-time greats. And great horses. Oh yeah. Yeah. Great horses. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2195 - Andrew Huberman
Right, so it's almost like they're selecting the same way like someone, if you wanted to build a Floyd Mayweather, you would select, you know, great father was a great boxer, uncle's a great boxer, boxing's in the family, starts up young, he's got great genetics, the whole deal.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I think he did porn or maybe that was just a headline that I saw, but whatever. Well,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Do you think it exposes who they always were or do you think it actually changes their character?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
A broken clock is right two times a day though. It was real weird when people were like, yeah, more of that please. To me, that's just desperation and you get to see it manifested. It's like, if you're like a really, really, really, really, really rich person with power, you want to make sure the poorest people have enough to survive.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
The second they don't feel like they have hope and they don't feel like they have enough to survive, they start storming your estate.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
No, you're right, because you want the smartest people to be the doctors. You don't want them running hedge funds. There's a lot of probably really smart people running hedge funds. I don't want them doing that shit. I want them fixing diseases. And if there's not enough money in it, yeah, they're going to go to the hedge fund shit, which is meaningless. So it's like, it is a tricky problem.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
How do you create a system that incentivizes the most brilliant people to be in positions where they help us all? But how do you make sure that the nefarious actors are not finding ways to squeeze probably the most vulnerable?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
They're there and they will pop into these positions.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And if it's a simulation once, it can be a simulation twice. So if we can create the simulation and we were created as a simulation, that means that we could be like the 20th version of it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
So go check it out, man. Yeah, go check it out. Also, go check out Derek Poston's- Look at that stash, son.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
So I think we're, I think we're, today we're number two. You know, maybe after this we beat Kate Hudson. Kate Hudson got me, man.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Oh yeah. He's just the fuck. Bro, he was killing us last night. He said that the greatest art ever created is Harry Potter. And we go, like, better than, he was like, yes, if it's the most consumed, it's the best. And we're like, what about the Bible? He goes, ain't nobody read that shit.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
He goes, you might have read like part of it, but you didn't read the whole Bible. He goes, nobody's stopping at book three.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
But yo, go check out his Don't Tell comedy. He's very funny and a great person. Absolutely. All right. I love you, brother.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I don't know what it is, man. I don't know what it is. You have a lot of people that depend is tricky because they have the autonomy to not do that. But there are a lot of people that definitely rely on you and... Yeah, do you feel pressure from that? Me? Yeah. No. Really?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Oprah's out here pushing it. I wonder if it's like a... Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I feel like you took care, like before you opened the comedy club, you were taking care of these people that you asked to come out here and work for you. So you must have felt this concern for them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
So you knew it was going to take time. You're like, okay, I'm going to take care of them in the interim. But again, so you're not burdened by people feeling like they rely on you or anything like that?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
What are those two philosophies, like determinism and free will? Yes. Are you a huge free will guy? Do you believe in determinism at all?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yeah. I wonder if the ayahuasca thing is for some like a quick fix. You know, they're looking for like immediate life change.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
But I feel like it's not completely dependent on that. I wouldn't say that I had this life of pain. I've dealt with my shit, but I feel incredibly competitive and ambitious.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yeah, but you also have to sacrifice and you have to commit to things. Right. I do feel like it takes... I mean, in the beginning, I don't think I celebrated a birthday for a decade. I don't think I ever considered taking a vacation or anything. I was just so hungry to get after it, to get good, to be undeniable. That was this goal. How can I be undeniable?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I would see these guys go up, like fucking Greer Barnes or Mike DiStefano, and I'd just be like, they're just undeniable. And... Yeah. I don't know. I just I didn't even fucking drink, I think, for like a decade. I was like, I got to get better at this. I got to just kind of work. And maybe that comes from like watching my parents work hard or something. I'm sure that helps.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
They were really hard workers. Yeah. And that's like the expectation of work.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Keep that foot on the gas. Let's go. That's like the balance. Like, you just put something out. So I imagine you took a little time off afterwards. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Okay, so you're building back. And, like, I find in order for the next thing I do to be different, I have to take time away.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Because I have to, like, reflect on the changes in my life. And if I keep going, like, earlier in my career, I would just go, go, go, go. And I found I was writing different versions of the same jokes. Right. Like, they were different jokes, but it was same topic, same kind of reaction. And I think it was, I just wasn't, You're trying to fill time. I'm on the road.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yeah. And then, yeah, so it's like... I think Louis took a whole year off.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yeah, because he was trying. You know, he was really battling this stuff. He needs to get off that vegan diet. Yeah, maybe that's it. What if it's just chicken is all he needs? Just a ribeye.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Now, Joe, I just want to make the point here. You're making the argument for determinism. No, I'm not.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
So is somebody in control of it or they're allowing us to have some semblance of control?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
He takes one bite and he's like, I am worthy. But I think he was talking about it and then like, and he was, you know, one of his like superpowers is his like cynicism, right? And it's really debilitating. And I tell him this all the time, but like, it's also amazing because he's like hyper aware of what the most negative thing could be.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Okay, so it's a show being put on for our consciousness, right? And then somebody's put on the show. And then we get the ability to go to the moon. And then they got to scramble and make a moon? No, there's a moon. I mean, it doesn't matter.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
It's like if our technology gets so good and they're just going, fuck, we got to make this thing real.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yes, yes. I just don't know if they're there all the time. So they're only there in reference to us looking at them. Oh, I get what you're saying. Wait, wait, wait. So you're playing a video game, and as you move throughout the map of the video game, it presents itself. But you're saying without us accessing it, it isn't presenting itself.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And this is one of those things, like, what does it matter either way?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
That's the manifestation of everything, though. So I get what you're saying. The structure. Existentially, does it exist if we're not touching it, feeling it? It's what they say about the Native Americans when they first saw the ships. They didn't know what they were. Yeah, that's bullshit. That's not real. Exactly. But I wouldn't –
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I wouldn't say that it's not real in that they didn't understand what it was. In the distance, they think there were mountains moving closer. They probably just saw these giant pieces of wood and was trying to figure out. They had structures.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I don't know if they're fishing at that time. I'm not sure. But if you see them in the distance, you see them moving forward. Right, right. I get the idea like your brain can't map what that is yet.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
So it's mapping to whatever you know. So it's like, oh shit, is it low tide and there's some like sandbars out there that are slowly approaching? What the fuck is that? That's kind of what you're saying. I can't understand like what a glacier is without knowing what it is. When I see a glacier for the first time, I can recognize glaciers everywhere.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
But if I take somebody who's never seen a glacier to it. I think this guy's going further than that. I think he's saying the glaciers aren't real unless you're there. But if someone is there at every point in time throughout the world, then everything is. Yes. And we have enough people where there's some people in Antarctica. All right. So Antarctica is always there. There's some people in Alaska.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
OK, so that's always there. If we have enough people throughout the world, the world is this congealed substance that we can look at, feel, touch and experience.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
It's like he's constantly wondering, like, what would his biggest hater think? I actually think it was one of the reasons why Chappelle's show was so successful because it's like to create things, you need to be super confident. You need to not worry about who's going to criticize you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
When you're sitting at home and you're thinking about these things, do you talk to your kids about it? No, that's too weird to talk to kids about. What about your wife? Are you just going, hey? She would go, what?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
You have a nice sweat. You're walking around your house. You're looking at the stars. You see fucking Saturn or whatever in the sky.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Okay, so do you struggle battling with the, because some people, when they think about this stuff, they feel their own insignificance, and it's very depressing for them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
So you're unaffected entirely that your existence in this lifetime, over the grand scheme of things, could not be important.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And if that makes up our reality, then it's important.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Maybe important is like a pretentious word. Not important.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
But some people won't play the game if they know there's no game at all. Or they know it is completely a game. I think that there's this like urgency that is applied. Like, okay, I have to create the art that I want to create in this time in my life. Like time is something I've been thinking about like nonstop since I had a kid.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
How do I spend time? It maybe is cliche, but it is the thing that I like value the most. And everything gets broken up into these little quadrants of time. Okay, I'm out here. I'm doing some pods. Okay, I'm away from my daughter. I'm away from my wife. How do I get back that time? How can I create these events? I don't even buy expensive shit. I like to take a vacation with my friends.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
So if you can outsource your criticism... So if Dave can think about these things and be like, okay, this is awesome, and then Neil can be like, yeah, yeah, but this would be said if we do this. And then together, you have this perfect combination of uber confidence and then this insecurity, and then you make these things that are just masterpieces.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I want us all to stay in the villa together because when we're in different hotel rooms, we miss out on those little moments in between. Time, time, time. To me, it's like I'm putting an importance on this, I guess, the game you say you're playing. I want to experience the most of this game as I possibly can while I'm here. And I have all these examples of people, like, finishing the game.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
You know, my dad, you know, he's got dementia and all this stuff. It's like you're seeing your ability to, I guess, manifest that reality. You're at the kind of end of your game, you know, knock on wood. Yeah. Yeah, the idea of me being important, I don't care about that in terms of how people see it. But in this time I have here, I want to believe it's really important.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And I want to soak as much of it up as I can. And I think sometimes when you're like, oh, it's pointless, it's nothing. I felt like Jim Carrey was going through that moment. There are these times where I'd see Jim talking about the insignificance of the world. And I feel like that can kind of lead people to sadness and depression. I feel like sometimes you need the battery in your back of...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I thought that was a beautiful way of showcasing how people look at the nothingness of life. This girl sees it as potentially nothing and falls into her own kind of, I guess you would call it just depression. Why is it worth it? What the fuck is going on? And she kind of sees her father as this weak guy that's getting walked over.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And then comes to realize that he chooses to deal with the nothingness with kindness and love with everybody. And in reality, he's a hero. His perspective on the world is the best. When confronted with the nothingness of life, he chooses to be compassionate and loving. And it's actually the most heroic stand you can take. I think it's very easy to just submit to nothingness.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
You're a determinist, maybe the wrong word, but you like hard shit. The day... The day you're no longer here is when you can no longer do hard shit. I feel like your day is full of it. And it's just constant. Like, wake up, I'm getting in the fucking ice bath. Like, everything I see you do is hard. You know what I mean? Like, you could shoot a fucking thing with a gun if you want.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
You could shoot animals with a gun. I'm surprised you don't run on them with a fucking knife. Like, literally, like, I feel like one day I'm going to see you go, I'm going knife hunting. I'm going bear knife hunting. Just because it's a difficult thing to do. And I don't know, maybe that's how you process the... Process existence.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
When you're smart and insecure, it's even worse. Dumb and insecure, you can manage that. But then he did the ayahuasca and he was like, he gave me this like, I don't know, feeling of connectedness or whatever people experience through it. And he's like, it was really liberating. I think I did my best work afterwards because I wasn't constantly beating myself up. Like I was able to create.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
You have to feed it. You have to deal with these difficult things because for millions of years, that's how our brains and bodies have been processed to work efficiently. And if you don't put in those situations, is the messaging like... You're wasting this time here? What is that internal messaging?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
What do you, like... When you're talking to these high-functioning dudes, you're talking to an Elon, did they value exercise and stuff like that at all? Can he even put that in his day?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I'll never forget Lex coming to my wedding uninvited and blacking out.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
So I think there is value in it, but I do think sometimes people are looking for like the quick, okay, my life has changed now and now I connect with the world and we're perfect.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
It was so funny. Whitney was like, yeah, I'm going to take Lex. I was like, oh, okay, cool. Yeah, I like that guy. And then I remember seeing him on like a beach chair just pass the fuck out.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yeah. You guys went to Vegas later that night, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I feel like less people are drinking. Well, it's really a good idea.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I wonder if the alcohol companies are concerned. They're trying to find something. There's always going to be drunks. I see it like beer consumption way down.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Do we have a nice little red going on here? Do we have any red wine here? I want to know what you're drinking.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yeah, but it's got great social utility. Oh, yeah. I feel like people undermine the value of alcohol and how- It ain't around for all these years because it sucks. And if you travel- You don't get to experience certain cultures in their truest form without them consuming alcohol.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Like, if you've gone to, like, Ireland, you go to Dublin. Like, during the day, there are very different people. And they seem kind of, like, tight and dour. And then at night at the pub after, like, a few Guinness, it seems almost cliché. But everybody's singing and dancing, and there's so much love and connectivity.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And you see why all this great literature, music, and poetry just comes from this tiny little island. And you're like, oh, wow, you really need that. It is a tough place to live, and you've got to stuff everything down, and you need a release valve. Same thing with Russia. When I was in Russia, seeing them on the drink... On the drink. On the drink. They're warmer. There's warmth in the culture.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
97 is a long time ago. How do you find that balance where you kind of need it? That's old-ass wine, huh? Yeah. How do you find what balance? Just like it allows people to access this part of themselves that they might feel is like pushed down or.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
They say that can induce insanity faster than anything, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
But what if you come home late from the club? When I do, if it's...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
It makes you more disciplined, and it makes you feel more productive. It's weird, like even going out and like say having some drinks or whatever and waking up and feeling kind of shitty. Without like the kid, I kind of feel guilty by halfway through the day. I'm like, what was I doing? Why the fuck did I go out partying?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
But when I'm like up at seven and I'm fucking tired, I'm hungover, and I'm with my wife taking care of the baby, by 12 I'm like... I'm a good fucking parent. Like I, I feel like this, I feel like a positive sensation in the place of this, like guilt ridden one that I would used to feel maybe. And I think it's that immediate productivity, that purpose.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
There's this human being you love more than anything that is like deeply relying on you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yeah, so I'm 41, so I was, yeah, it's the same thing. Yeah, it's every cliche. It's amazing you spend all this time as a comedian thinking of unique or different angles, and then you're presented with your child, and every feeling you have is the most cliched feeling that everybody's ever described in having a child.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Dude, it completely... Changes everything. It is adorable when they're crying on the airplane. Yeah. You almost want to help the mom.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And I grew up in the city where it just wasn't that rewarded. It's like a rare thing to even be a kid in the city.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
But it is, I wish that, I would like us to change that a bit. I think that's the thing that's kind of missing in like this masculinity movement is fatherhood. I hear a lot of guys talking about- Is there a masculinity movement going on? Apparently on these pods that we do. Is that what it is?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
But that's the thing. None of those guys have kids or they talk about what it is to be a man. And it's like, buddy, you're missing out on the most important part of the entire process.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I want to hear the guys who have a bunch of kids telling me what it is to be a man.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
To me, that's way more valuable. And I feel like they're missing out on like the defining moment in a man's life. Even bitches have alpha bitches.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yeah, I think that was... The results of the election, I don't think that they would like to believe this, but it was a rejection of what was happening. I think the assumption is everybody just loves Trump and he's just this populist and every person that voted for him is like, I just love everything about this guy. But I actually think that a lot of people...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
We're just like, I don't like what's happening now. And this current administration is saying that they don't want to change much that's happening now. So I'm voting against that lack of change. And I think it's important for them to realize that. I talk about this a lot.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Especially with Charlotte on the pod and it's just like you have to be reflective like what the people are telling you like when that the Mangione thing happened and the reaction by the people was to laugh at it Yeah, they were kind of pumped but you gotta look at that and you got to pay very close attention to what people are feeling and
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Don't tell them what they should feel and you know better and, oh, we have to lead them to the water because they're too stupid to know how to find it. No, no, no. They are disillusioned by the medical system. And if you don't meet them there, you're never going to win. Ever. And I feel like that's, at least from talking to Trump, that was something that I got from him.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
It doesn't seem like it when you see him on the news and shit, but he's like an acute listener. He listens to what people are saying. And he listens, more importantly, what they're feeling. And he can tap into those feelings. And I think that that's what people who've had a lot of success in politics were able to do. Barack did it. Bill Clinton did it. Probably, maybe the best.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Bill might have been the best. His ability to communicate to people what they were feeling. I know you feel pain. I do feel pain, Bill. I'm here for you. You are? I am. I would love that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
But think about that decision, right? It's like those people are all echoing sentiments that the majority of Americans feel. They're we do not trust the food. Here's the guy who says the food is bad. Right. Maybe we should put them in control of the food. Kind of like a simple thing. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Instead of going, well, this guy is the food doctor and we're going to hire the food doctor because he knows what food is good for you. And you guys should just shut up and listen. And I feel like there's a lot of this like top down. on the left, and I'm not trying to just like bag on the left. I don't care really about that. I don't even care about the politics.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I care more about where the cultural liquidity is. And it's like, you can't talk down to people. There's this like Ivy League pretentiousness in the Democratic Party, I feel, where they're like, we know better and just, you must be stupid if you don't agree with us. And it's like, all right, well, I'm stupid. I'm dumb. I'm dumb then.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
So why doesn't somebody meet me where I'm stupid and start at least making me feel like I'm not an asshole for the way that I, you know, for my, I guess you could say political leanings now. Yeah, I feel like they need to meet. And it's a very simple thing. Make it a class issue. And I think they win. And say what you want about America.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
But I think it's better if we have two president or two people running for president that we're stoked about. And it's a really hard decision.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Well. Shit ain't right. To be specifically authentic. They're like, we need to speak to working class people. To the kids. Yeah. And it is kind of like bigoted in a weird way where like, it feels like they're almost in a think tank like, hey, listen, these poor dummies, they like it when you curse.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
So if you use a few curse words in your speech, they're going to really relate to you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And it's like, no, no, no. We actually need somebody disruptive. We need somebody on the left that is... that might speak like that, but authentically speaks like that, and is willing to disrupt even what's happening in the left. Because if you look at what happened with the Trump and the movement, he disrupted the right. The right looks very different now than it did five, 10 years ago, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yeah, like for real. And what is that? What do we at our baseline want, right? We like abundance. Tell me how great America is going to be in your version of it. You want a Bill Clinton. Talk that shit. Come out talking shit.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Bernie was talking shit, and I want you to come out, and if Trump can say we're gonna take Greenland, there can be some Dem that goes, one dollar eggs, and straight up says, we're gonna subsidize it. Wait, how would you do that?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Subsidize corn, you subsidize dairy, you subsidize everything. Why can we not subsidize it? But say something that's actually gonna impact people. Now, Trump's not gonna take Greenland, so maybe you don't get the one dollar eggs, but you get this messaging across that you're actually trying to help people,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
and you're gonna have to deal with those lobbies that are bankrolling you, and that might piss them the fuck off, but that's the disruption we need for us to trust you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
So here's my concern about that. How much did they spend in California on homelessness? $24 billion. And then nothing changed, right? No, they got worse.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
So maybe we could spend $36 billion. So there's also this idea that the current administration...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I mean, clearly it's a metaphor for, I don't know, there's a lot of things that go on to it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
in these places even with an abundance of money is not going to make change so you need somebody from inside from the left to go hey these people are corrupt on my team we're going to root out that corruption but we are going to take care of homelessness we are going to make eggs cheaper we are going to build fucking 10,000 affordable housing housing units so that the price of you know your rent can go way down there has to be something disruptive instead of hey let's just go back to normal let's not ruffle any feathers like let's see what you're saying
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And also, shout out Ben Stiller. I didn't even know Ben had this level to him. I've always respected Ben. I thought he was hilarious making great comedy movies. But I didn't know he was like an avant-garde storyteller. Right, right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And what are the downstream effects of that? You have way less health issues, which takes down the cost of health care.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Have you heard of the guy? He's the president I think of El Salvador
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
The first episode... Every shot, I don't know who the DP is, like we should find out who that guy is, but every shot has like perfect symmetry. Did you notice that? I didn't notice it. You could cut the screen in half every single shot. Really? It is a masterpiece. But I think about that like... This idea of like severing yourself. A lot of people are doing that at work anyway. A hundred percent.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
But I think El Salvador has become like the safest country in Central and South America. Yeah, there's no criminals. They're all in jail. They're all in jail. And I'm sure it's some like, there might even be like a little North Korea shit where it's like, yeah, you're not in the gang, but like your cousin is and you hang out with him and now you're in his prison. Sure. Of course.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
But what they've done is completely like revolutionized the country. And if you ask the other people that are not gang affiliated at all, there's this undying support. I think he has a 91% support rating or whatever that is. And it's like, these people feel like they got their lives back. Now I'm sure, as I'm saying, there's gonna be people going like, oh, these are civil rights violations.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yeah, yeah, you know what else is also a civil rights violation? When your city is completely run by a gang and you're terrified to let your kid leave the house. So there is a version where having more punitive measures for people that are breaking the law will increase safety and the prosperity of the people in that region.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
In order to get investment into the south side of Chicago, you need to make it safer. Starbucks is an opening if it's getting broken into every fucking week. 100%. So, yeah, I like that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
That's where I went when I was a kid. You know, I went to the Carmine Street Recreation Center. That's where I played basketball. And it was this beautiful place, this amazing oasis where, like, not only are you getting to meet friends and stuff like that, but I'm getting to compete. I'm getting to play against guys way better than me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And there are these, I mean, even as I say this right now, I'm like, I got to, like, donate money. Like, they created this place where there was a lot of kids in those programs. They might have ended up doing some fucked up shit, man. and they had a place where they could go. There was like a safe haven. And look at us talking like some libs on this pot, man.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
That's the biggest misconception of all of this is that we don't want this place to be better, but there have to be certain changes that we make.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
athletes or whatever the fuck it is what's happening at the mothership classes like like what's what's happening there like i feel like you you've created an environment where it's like these guys can make enough money to survive which is a very hard thing to do as a fledgling comedian right and some of these guys who are door guys they're starting to get spots around even like some of my guys you know like obviously derrick poston is like making real money yeah right
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And learning how to flourish as a comedian instead of working 60 hours at a job and then doing comedy when he potentially can. Right. And you hopefully get to see this artistry grow. Like, I've watched Derek explode as a fucking comedian. Like, this guy's so fucking funny. He's so lovable.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
It's what you're describing. They're this other person at work for eight hours a day. Yeah. They aren't their self. There's a different identity. They make up these little terms like, oh, it's my work wife. It's like, yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
He's got a Don't Tell coming out April 16th. Nice. And I've watched it. It's fucking amazing. So everybody go check that out.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
But that's the type of environment that I imagine that you can curate. Now, you're very benevolent, right? But you would hope that the government can create that same level of benevolence without leaking too much money?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Oh, so if we're already pretending here, what else are we going to pretend about?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yeah, there's a, like creating environments where art flourishes is, so I did Kill Tony the other day. And it's been a while since I've done like the whole show. I came out for MSG. That was fun. That was incredible. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And I was on it, and I'm watching in the interviews. The interviews are really fun. A lot of these comics are really green, and they're going in there and trying to find something. But the interview portion, and I'm probably saying something that everybody already knows, but when I watch Kill 10, I'm watching it in clip form, right? So I'm seeing these 60-second versions. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
What I thought was really interesting about the interviews is there's a real generosity with Tony. I don't know if even the comics realize this. He's trying to get you to write your first good joke. He's asking you questions where you don't have to be funny. but they are funny because you're just speaking truthfully. And it is generous.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
It's easy to just like, you could bang on every single one of the people that go up there. But that's not exactly what's happening. Sometimes, of course, people are gonna get jokes. But there's this moment where you get to watch some of these guys like hopefully they're realizing, they're like, oh, I am, oh, that is a kind of funny thing about me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And that's like the first kernel of like where they'll write their first good joke. And it's a really cool thing to witness. And yeah, there's a couple of guys that went up and like, there's one guy, like his joke sucked, but he had something. Like, I just kept watching him.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And I was like, you're going to be good. Like, I hope you keep doing this because you're going to be good. And, like, we started asking him questions. And there's this Mexican guy from San Antonio. And he works at, like, Office Depot. And there was something funny about, like, hold on. So, like, there was, like, something about, like, you know, he's selling, like, papers. And I was like, hold on.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
So, there's, like, a Mexican guy. Like, people are asking for paper. Like, there's just, like, there's all these, like. Yeah. Like it seems like a setup. So, but it was just really cool to see it happen. And like, it reminded me of these early stages of comedy where you're putting together these things that you think are funny and funny is kind of already existing in you, you know? And, um,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yeah, it was a cool aspect of the show that I'm sure the people that watch it, and this is a massively successful show, so they're familiar. But maybe the people that don't watch it don't know about the show.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And it's interesting to see how little pushback there is from the workers now that all these programs are being wiped away. Well, the people that are losing their job are complaining hard. And then the senators are complaining hard. But everybody else is happy. Yeah, the people who have been faking it at work that are still working there are not like, damn it. You know what I mean?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I've seen it, and they're doing fucking theaters, man.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
You know he's an MMA fighter. I remember seeing... Fought three times. Wow, wow, wow. He's a big guy, too.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yeah. But, like, yeah, I remember, like, he even had a joke yesterday. I mean, whatever, it will come out. But, like, it was funny. Like, he tapped into something at the end of the bit that he did when he does the minute. And then in the interview... it really became the thing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Because what you get to watch is like, he's like, he's a veteran comic. Like he's probably been doing it 10 or 12 years.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
So like you get into real comedian mode around 10. Right. Yeah. And, You got to witness live what we do backstage, which is like, yo, I like that idea. Why did you do this? And he said a line at the end of when we're just doing the interview that I think is going to be what this joke builds out into. I don't want to give it away. Obviously, people are going to watch it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And it is, I don't know if people know this about us, like, it is really fun to, like, work on someone else's bit. Like, there's almost, like, more freedom because you're less attached to it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
You know, like, if you have something and you're, like, telling me the idea, like, I'm not, you're attached, like, a direction for it. And I'm just coming from all these other places. And if my tag bombs, it doesn't matter. You're the one going to do it. But it is this exciting thing when you have a colonel. And, yeah, this moment happened with it. And you can even see him go, oh, shit, that's.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And for me, it's like, I need to talk to get it out. I'm not like a sit at home and like, I write the ideas. Like I need to, I need to get, yeah, I got this idea. And what do you think about this? And then you have to like, give me pushback on it. And then confronting that pushback is like, where the bit develops for me. And that's the beauty of the audience not laughing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
It was like life was beautiful. Everybody was caring about family and everything. And it was just so comfortable. And I was like, I didn't have any resistance. That's so funny. I'm used to that chaos. I need the opposite. What do you mean? Your whole life is resistance.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
They're just going, all right, I get to be a little closer version to myself.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yeah. Anyway, to what you were saying about like hope, it is interesting and I see like – I see that for comics, especially here. There's this idea of getting on the show and seeing a pathway to success. It's a real pathway.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I was like... You give this minute out and it goes out to the whole comedy world. And that's what I was asking Ari. I was like, can you still do those bits? Because some of these aren't finished. They're just the fucking beginning of it. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
At Disney? You're saying at Disney? What do you mean? I'm saying all these programs have come out. Maybe not Disney, but it was like Zuckerberg comes out and goes, yeah, Meta, we're not going to do the DEI shit. I think Amazon even came out and said it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And I didn't know who was putting on the music because it was just this random collection of music. And then this Fetty Wap song comes on, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Like, if they walked into your Green Room and they heard the music playing, there's nobody that would go, oh, yeah, Joe picked this song. Nobody. It might be one or two songs that pop up. 90s, like, deep cut rap.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
No, I'm talking about corporate jobs, people who have corporate jobs.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yeah. I remember the first time I came down here and it was like blasting. And I was like, yo, who the fuck? I'm looking around like nobody's old enough to even know Cool G rap in this green room. And I just see you like bopping. Getting ready to fucking go on to just a bit.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
It's kind of cool how people exist through us. You know, like, obviously she's passed, but...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
There's a couple guys, like Atel did that for me in New York. I would close the late show at the Cellar and Atel would go up and then I would go up after him. and that shit will turn you into a man. It'll humble you. You just realize when somebody's operating on every single cylinder firing and you get up after it and you're like, oh wow, I'm missing something.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
He has something that I don't have and I need to find that shit. When you're going up in the cushy spot second or third and you're killing it, you think you're the funniest in the world. And then when you follow somebody that levels the room and the whole room is kind of unsure if he's just inventing these things in the moment, if these are bits.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
They just get caught up in this tornado of creativity. And you've got to follow it. And that shit, following him, following Mike Britt, following Greer, following these guys that are just masters. Yeah, it just turns you into a man. That's why I started taking Joey on the road with me, because I couldn't follow him. Really? Yeah. Yeah, you love hard shit.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
This is... I feel like this is something that... There's a lot of importance to this. I don't know if comedians are doing this all the time, but your openers that you take on the road with you, they should really be pressing you. They should set the tone of the show. And they're going to set the expectation of the show. I think sometimes people want to save the day. That's weak.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I love when I get the message or like tagged in a post on Instagram and it was like, all three of them were fucking great. And it's like... And also, I understand what it means probably for them, because I've been in maybe that situation where you're like, holy shit, yeah, they're bringing me up with the show? And they're in a tougher spot than me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Derek going up hosting, people are walking into an arena. So to kill that, to command attention while people are walking down an aisle.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And Mark too is just fucking like crushing and like seeing them go up there and like really lay in. Yeah. Like hearing it before I go up. Yeah. Like that's a fun thing. Like I'll be locked in my room, but then when I come out like a few minutes before and just hearing them light up.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Just get better. You're headlining. You're clearly good at this, and it's going to make you better when these guys bust your fucking ass sometimes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yeah, it's like they're paying money, man. I keep thinking about that. All these people that come out to a show, it's not just the ticket price. It's the babysitter. It's everything. It's the Uber. It's the dinner. This is an expensive fucking night for them. And they're looking forward to it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Especially if you have family. Bro, I was in not Seattle. What's the other one in Washington? It's not Tacoma. Something more inland. I forget there's a comedy club out there. Spokane? Spokane. This was years ago, and I did a show, and a couple came up afterwards, and they were like, this is our first night out in eight years. Whoa. And I think about that every single time before I go on stage.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yeah, I feel like sometimes people, I don't know if they pretend to not care or maybe they think not caring is cool.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Caring is cool. I really care and I work really hard and I think that you should work really hard. I want to make really great stuff I'm proud of and I don't want to just be like, oh, it's fucking gay to care. It's like, no, it's not gay to care. It's not gay to have people come out and spend a lot of money and then you just fucking flop on stage and don't give a fuck. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
It's cool to try to give them the best possible show. Yeah. That's cool.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Oh, yeah stylistically people are so influential that like it changes the way people do their comedy and and it's tricky because you can only be great at the thing you do. That's how I feel, at least, about it. If you are profound, then profound comedy is popular, then you will be really good at it. But if you're a silly goose, It's not worth trying to be profound.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Because you being silly is going to be the best version of you, and the people will appreciate that the most. Also, you can't trick people. They know. Even if they're not aware of it, they know. They know something's off. Yeah. Something's off. That's the honesty in it. Yeah. There's brutal honesty in it. Sometimes they'll even laugh, but they know that you're lying. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
They know that it's not real. It exists for maybe 10, 15 minutes, but I think it kind of gets exposed once you get into those hour-long sets. It can, for sure.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
If it's real to them. I think that's the thing about Joey that I've always admired. It's pure. It's authentic. You can kind of get away with whatever you want if it's pure.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And when we know you're faking and you're doing something that makes me feel uncomfortable, now I'm double uncomfortable. Right. I can be uncomfortable if it's real to you. Yeah. I can sustain that. You might be talking about some shit that makes me feel a little weird, but it's real to you, so I go, okay, I'm going to rock with you on this. This is a pure version of your art.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
You like doing pop music comedy. But there are people that get attached to what works.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And they can't run away. They're like scared to run away. And I kind of empathy for it because it's like you probably struggle for so long. You find something that works and you're like, OK, finally, I'm able to make some money. Finally, I'm able to have some security. But you've got to keep growing past it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
You're not addictive to creating, which is like the coolest part about this. We get to create whatever the fuck we want. And if you get to a point, like luckily, where you get a couple bucks in the bank... Those creations should be even more specific to you. Yeah. Right? Because you're not doing it so you can buy another house, right? Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
You're doing it because you truly spent 20 years of your life trying to get good at something, and then you can create whatever the fuck you want.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
That shit exists. before you that's what I always try to say like comedy is there and then we stumble you gotta find it yes you gotta find it you're not making it and when you're making it it feels too contrived but the comedy exists bro I gotta pee so bad let's do a little pee let's pause pause real quick yeah right back and pee are we back in yeah we're back dog we're back yeah comedy's great
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
a lot to lose perception wise like maybe he doesn't care but that's where like bravery comes in like when you got nothing to lose it's like yeah you can kind of say whatever the fuck you want it doesn't really matter he's kind of grandfathered in oh really he's Woody Harrelson but you don't think it could affect him at all yeah it could but I don't think anymore I think the world's kind of woken up the fact that first of all he's accurate like you really can't attack what he's saying you know so like you don't think he should be saying it okay well that's kind of debatable and that's on you
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yeah. The tricky thing about this Doge thing is like- Like I don't think there's any American out there that is supportive of waste, fraud and corruption. It should be a bipartisan issue. Right. Right. Like it's a very easy thing to get on board with. Right. And this is where I feel like. I feel like Elon's being a little antagonistic.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I have a lot of respect for Elon, don't get me wrong, but it's becoming easier to be a bipartisan issue in the way that it's communicated. Whereas having that political decorum, having that ability to pull everybody into this thing might be a little bit more effective on an issue that we can all get behind. There's no American that wants waste, fraud, and corruption.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I hate that this is becoming bipartisan. It drives me fucking crazy because on the surface, nobody wants the waste. Right. Like, both Democrats should be... This shouldn't be... They shouldn't be booing or whatever the fuck was happening at that, like, hearing last night. Not even hearing. He was, like, addressing the Senate.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
State of the Union. It should be everybody going, hey... We agree this is fucked up. This is happening in some of our regions or whatever it is where you're responsible for those constituents. What's that called? If you're a congressman, your district. We need to be better about this. We need to fix this. We got to take this on the chin and we agree.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And it could be this great revolution in America that could really support everybody. And it's become this fucking bipartisan issue. I understand there's a lot of currency and making the opposition look radioactive. I get that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
But this is where you wish that there was some sort of masterful communication version of this instead of a little bit more of this putting the knife in and twisting it a little.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
The way that he was saying it. Did you watch it? I mean, it's hilarious. Oh, you got to watch him talk about it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yeah, it's got to come from outside. Or they got to be a guy like Trump who could take the hits. And keep on trucking. You need to have a very strong constitution to do that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
But at that distance, you're saying that there isn't too much drop.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I know it's going to drop. This is with bows or this is with bows?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
So you have to make sure that on the drop it passes through that gap in the tree.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
That's the thing that, like, I never accounted for. I was watching, I don't know if it was some video you posted or maybe it was Cam, but, like, I always thought about the hunting part. Like, okay, let's find it, let's track it, let's shoot it. But I never thought about getting home with all the meat. Oh, yeah, man. That seems so...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
In New York City, this is where Comic-Con would be and all these different things. Big stuff. And it was mobbed up, right? Mobbed up. So they would have all these fake jobs that you could give to the guys around the block. Everybody's getting paid. And it's probably supported by the city in some way, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
All right. So is there ever like a distance that they deem too far because walking back with the elk, it wouldn't be worth it? So, like, I imagine you're tracking for a while. It's not like you just walk in and there are all the elks, right? You have to find them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
But is there a point where you go, I'm not going more than five because five back carrying the elk would be too difficult?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And now you have elk carcass. You have all the other animals that also like to die on elk.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
So getting it, it's like, what is that, Old Man and the Sea? Is that the book? Where he finally hunts and gets this big fish, but he's got to bring it back. And by the time he brings it back, it's just like a skeleton. Nobody believes he got this amazing big fish. But you don't ever think about the journey back.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
But like an NBA player eventually reaches the end of his professional playing ability. He might play in a gym. But like what does a cam do at like 75?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I'm not fucking around. Fuck that. I feel like that's my whole workout regimen is just so I could play this sport called paddle. It's not pickleball. It's called paddle.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
It's a racket sport that I'm absolutely obsessed with. I swear to God. It started in Acapulco, Mexico, and then it goes to Spain, and it gets blown up there. And it's essentially like squash and tennis mixed together. So there's walls. There's this glass wall in the back and these fences on the side.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Bro, it is the most obsessed. It's the fastest growing sport in the world right now. It will take over tennis.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I probably am the only person that is talking about it at this level. Look at you. This is me. Yeah, this is shout out Paddle House in New York. They got one in Williamsburg and one in Brooklyn. Amazing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
So you play with a deflated tennis ball. So essentially what it is, you got to show highlights because I'm so fucking horrible that it's not going to do it justice. But the idea behind it is, at least for me, is there's always hope. So the ball gets past you in tennis, you're cooked. The ball gets past you in paddle, it bounces off that back wall and you're playing it off the back wall.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of construction jobs and stuff. This is kind of how things work. Well, this is what USAID is finding.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
So you're never fully out of the game. And you're constantly, it is the only thing outside of like surfing and boxing and then comedy where I'm not, look at this. What? It is... That guy went out the door. Oh, you're allowed to leave and go get it. Yeah, I mean, it's just... Dude, I was down in Miami. There's a thing called the Reserve Cup. Shout out Reserve.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
This is the... I'm telling you, this will extend my life by, God bless, 10, 20 years. Really? Also, you've got to watch the chicks play because they don't have the power to smack it out, so it's just pure skill and... And cleverness? Yeah, exactly.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
It's delicate placement. So what they're trying to do is, I'm telling you, it's unbelievable. And everybody that's playing tennis and squash and all these other racquet sports is starting to convert to this. Really? Tennis? Everybody from tennis is coming over. Now I'm talking about professionals. I'm talking about people that played in college or whatever. Really?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And now they're starting to come over to this. Miami, they're obsessed. In Europe, they're completely obsessed. You go to Sweden, there's thousands... Like all, like Cristiano Ronaldo and all the soccer guys are all playing it. They own the facilities.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
You guys got one here. What's it called? They just built one.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Something like that. But it's just, it is. I'm upset. Oh, it's just never ending. Dude, I take lessons.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
That is crazy. But the fact that there's hope, the fact is like it's not just brute strength. There's that little guy that was playing on the right right there, Chingoto. This guy's like five foot three. And he's so skilled. And since it's not, he's not in this court. But that guy, Tapia, is the best in the world.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I'm obsessed with this in the way that you're obsessed with jujitsu.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I got to play with some of these guys. Really? And they toy with me. Like, they'll just bring me up to the net on drop shots and then bring me back to the end. And I'm just running around like a little bitch. But it's like, these guys to me are like Michael Jordan or like LeBron James. Like, I get, like, giddy around them. I'm so excited. And, like, I'm telling you, I...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And it's fucking, no one was there. Completely empty. To me, this is not shocking, but... Bro, it's the numbers are shocking. No, the numbers can get shocking. But it's funny that Jesse Jackson thing is an actual job because I remember like I had a joke that it could never work out. But the idea was based on it was Black Lives Matter when Ukraine started popping. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I'm taking lessons once a week. Shout out my boy Lucho in New York, the best fucking instructor on the planet right now. He works at Paddle House. He's incredible.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I'm playing three or four times a week. What? Yeah, my whole workout regimen is built around making sure that my shoulder is okay so I can play. The entire dedication to this. The only thing I've been obsessed with this about is stand-up comedy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
It's the only thing. And I have no racquet sport background. I never played tennis growing up. I grew up in the city. I went to public school.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
The point isn't over. You know what I mean? There's always hope. And that's the beauty of, you're a really competitive person. When you play against someone who's got more strength than you, even when I would box and shit like that, somebody who was just bad, eventually if they can connect, it's over. And even in this, in power, you can mitigate their power. You can move them around the court.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
There are guys that are way better than me at tennis, squash, and all these other things, but strategically in this game, If you don't hit it out, I got a chance. Wow. And it just... You should do commentary. Dude, I was telling the guys... You should do what I do for the UFC. I literally told the guys... Dude, I was telling Wayne, who owns Reserve, man. Shout out, Wayne.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And I was like, I know you have your guys doing it, but, like, dude, I am obsessed with this, like Joe is with the UFC and MMA. Like, you don't need to pay me. Like, I just want to talk about the sport. Like, I want to build this fucking thing up. How do we build this enough?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And I literally thought about you. I've never seen you like this before. Bro, I get excited... Dude, it drives my wife crazy. I go to fucking brunch on a Sunday, and me and my boy Jason are just talking about our paddle games this week. Oh, no.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Dude, my boy Jason just hit me up, and he's like, listen, I know you've got the special and everything going on, but my calf is feeling better, so we've got a game Wednesday. And I'm like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm ready. That's crazy. It's just the coolest thing. Wow. I know you don't fuck with team sports, but this is... It looks fun. It definitely looks fun. It's great.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I'm so obsessed with it. That's incredible. Even now, just the idea that Paddle has spoken about on the Rogan podcast is just crazy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
That's not real. Dude, it is real. And these guys are starting to make money now. The top guys are starting to make a decent amount of money. That looks like ESPN for sure.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, but he played pickleball because he's down there in Miami.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Norway or Sweden? Where's the other place that they do it?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
If you want to get some bougies, if you want the white stem cells. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
So everybody had the Black Lives Matter posters in their windows in New York. And when Black Lives Matter kind of came down... Well, it's once those ladies got caught buying houses. Of course, of course. That put a dent in it. It wasn't great. So now there's all these white people in New York that have Black Lives Matter in their window, but they're like, I got to get this out of my window.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
There's an island in the Caribbean that they do it too, that they like bring a, they bring the, they like fly in the medical office essentially for the week or two week periods. Okay.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yeah, and then they have stem cells that have been harvested in some place, and my neighbor did that, so I forget which island it is, but.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
So I had this idea for a joke where it's like, if I was a black dude, I would set up a business where we will take down your Black Lives Matter poster for you and then replace it with a Ukraine flag. You know what I mean? So you're still a good person. Jesse was doing it in the fucking 70s.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Like minimal scapular movement, I think that was the issue. So I was making up for the fact that my scapula doesn't move that much with just stretching out the muscles around it. Mmm, does that make sense? So like you're I guess that the scapula is this bone here The scapula is that the one that kind of like hangs?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yeah, and like that's supposed to move up with your arm when you extend it and it was staying there But I was still moving my arm. So I'm stretching all I guess the muscles or tendons or whatever What did happen to your scapula that made it freeze like that? I don't know like some I was told that I might have like a small tear in the rotator cuff like hang Do you ever hang from your hands?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I mean, I do pull-ups as part of my exercise routine when I'm doing any other body.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Wow, and now you're using gravity to pull it all out.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Whereas like when you're lifting weights, you can kind of manipulate what part of your body is lifting. You can.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
That's, I got to do the, cause that's my biggest concern right now is, I mean, you know, to bring it back to your friend is how do I play? That's so crazy. Everything I do, I do PT twice a week. Shout out my boy, Mike Helgeson. He's fucking great.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yeah. It's like I'm lifting, but I'm with a guy who is a PT. So if there is an issue, we can- Oh, I see.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
But he'll just take me through weightlifting if I'm feeling good. And if I'm not, then we're doing some work and-
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yes, and my shoulder was fucked before, and he brought it back. Him and this guy, Kyle, were like, don't do surgery. They were like, once you do surgery, you're fucked. And so let's try to work this thing out by building muscle around it, getting mobility into the joint. And they brought the shoulder back.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And that's the thing, once you get something that you're addicted to, longevity exercise or regiments or whatever it is, are very easy to do. Because you're not really doing them so you can live to 100. You're like, how do I play this thing next week? And all the motivation comes from it. It's really simple.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I actually can't wait to go do the PT, whatever it is, because I'm like, okay, I have a game Wednesday and I want to be good to play. It sounds ridiculous. I'm 41. I'm not going pro at this thing, but I love it so much that I would literally, I'm looking up the fucking BPC 157. I'm like, do I need the, yeah, the Wolverine shit that they say, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And it's like, do I get that so I can recover faster? Yeah, get that. Is it, have you tried that? It's legit.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I recommended it to a buddy with no research. I was like, you should do this. And then a couple of weeks later, he's like, I'm on it. And I was like, Did you look up it? I'm not a doctor or anything. But he said he did it for his, he got an ACL surgery and his doctor, he asked about it and his doctor goes, I take it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
That's the thing. I feel like there's like old guard guys. They're a little bit hesitant to use some of the maybe newer technology. And I'm sure they have their reasons. I don't know more than them about the science. But there are these new technologies that can maybe extend our playing age. Again, I don't need to be a pro, but I love this thing and I want to do it as much as I can.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I want to get as good as I possibly can. Yeah. It feels good to be getting better at something at this age.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Wait a minute. Why would they not? Wouldn't it be advantageous for the athletes to be able to recover?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And what would their argument? I mean, the only argument I've heard is like it increases cell growth.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Only recovery. I think any recovery drug. Like obviously there's risks to all this. Like you increase cell growth and if you have cancer, God forbid, in your body, those cells are going to grow as well, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
How do they... How did they test that? What is the term? The something group?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yeah. I mean, that's interesting because the easiest way to discredit would be like, well, yeah, the people that do saunas want to increase their life. But what you're saying is there's an increased amount of assistance if you do it more.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I think this is the biggest mistake that the Democrat Party has made is not making it a class issue. The most successful people in the party, like Bernie, and you could like her politics or not, but like AOC, they make it a class issue every single time. I think AOC polled the same as Trump in her district. Why is that? Because people think that she wants to help.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I've seen, not passed out, but I was having breathing issues. I didn't understand what the fuck it was. My wife and I were trying to get pregnant. It was really difficult because my sperm sucks. I would have, I guess it was stress related. I didn't know what the fuck it was. I went to a doctor and I was like, I feel like I can't catch my breath.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And I started doing these, it's like a Navy SEAL breathing technique or whatever. Box breathing? Box breathing, yeah. And I would try to do that. I mean, it was so weird. It wouldn't affect me on stage because once I'm on stage, I'm locked into the performance. And that's how I knew it was all psychological.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
But when I was off stage, there were times where I'd be at the cellar and I'd have to leave the cellar and there's this little park on 6th Avenue that's like... not even really a park, but there's like benches. And I would just sit there and I would just fucking box breathe by myself trying to get a full breath. And I go to this doctor and I was like, what the fuck is it?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And it was a stress-induced asphyxiation or something like that. Wow. And I was just so like... What was so stressful to you at that moment? We couldn't get pregnant. I found out my sperm sucked.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yeah, well, my sperm wasn't swimming. That was the issue. Gotta get those bitches in the pool. Cold flush.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Bro, I hit up Huberman. Heat's the worst, apparently. They said heat and cold. I hit up Huberman, and I was like, yeah, what should I do? And he's like, all right, take these pills. And then the doctors even tell me they're like... They're like take these pills and then also you got lazy jizz, bro. Did I got the laziest? It's not you just wait for it. I gotta take the pills.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
They're like don't drink I'm like, okay. I'm not gonna drink. Don't smoke. Okay. I'm not gonna smoke They go wear baggy underwear and they're like ice your balls once a day holla So I do that for a month I go get or two months. I go get my sperm tested again It got worse Really? Yeah, and they're like, we haven't even fucking seen this. And yeah, so we had to do IVF and everything.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
That's what the special is about. It's just this story of us trying to get pregnant.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And Bernie has just been taking shots the entire time. He's like, look at all these billionaires. They got a lot of money. You don't have enough money. Campaign finance is fucked up. We need to stop that. There's too much influence with people with money. And it resonates with people.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
So my issue wasn't even the tea. They were like, yeah, your T-levels are good. It's just the swimmers. It was the swimmers. And then they were, like, shaped weird. Like, I mean, it's just like... Bro. Yeah, it was... Bro. No, dude, it was... I mean, it was too funny. I told the guy... I mean, this is... I don't even do this in the special, but, like, I...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
They were like, the shape is a little off or whatever. And I was... Because you're so defensive. I go, well, maybe when they hit the cup... So hard.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
But it was crazy. Once we got pregnant, it went away. And it was like... immediately went away. Wow. I could breathe again. And it wasn't this feeling that I couldn't breathe. It was about catching a full breath. You know when you're like running and at the end of your... Yeah. You're doing like a hard cardio intensive exercise, this idea like you can't get to 100% in your lungs.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And I never had experienced in my life like... I can work pretty hard. I feel like maybe that's a competitive advantage of mine. I might not be the most skilled in certain things, but I can go. I have a good motor. I can fucking push it. And it was the first time in my life where a psychological issue affected my body physically. I didn't even know that that was possible.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
We feel like you want to help. I mean, I feel like you were like a big Bernie dude.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I think that does happen to people and then there's a different version of them afterwards because they don't want to experience that again. It is, it is weird. Like I'm not as affected by that kind of stuff now. Maybe I haven't gone through on that level, but, and I also think there's something about having a kid.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Like I just care less about the, like I care very, the very few people I care what they think about me. It's like really liberating in a lot of ways, you know? Right. But, um, But yeah, there was something about like, are we not gonna be able to get pregnant? And then like feeling, you feel horrible. Also you start like going, why would God not want me to have a kid? Like did I do something bad?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Like you start thinking like if there's some sort of karmic reason for that shit. Also, before, I knew it was me. I don't want to share it with anybody. It's really isolating because I thought it was my wife. Everybody always thinks it's the woman who's got a fucking problem with her eggs or whatever. That's such a bitch-ass dude thing. That's what we think because we don't know it could be us.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
When did you ever... Every time I looked at my sperm, it was fire. It's an arrogant male thing. It couldn't be me. It can't be me. Look at the amount of fucking jizz I'm producing. Yeah, I'm killing it, right? Killing it. Literally. And then you think about it, and I will say this, though, like...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Like finding out that it was me and being able to, I felt more comfortable talking about it on stage because now I'm not talking about this incredibly embarrassing thing to this woman who does not want to be in entertainment at all, like the most private person. About me, I was like, oh, I can talk about this a little bit.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And being able to talk about it on stage and I would talk about it on stage and like there'd be these dudes that would come up to me after shows and they wouldn't admit they were going through it, but they'd be like, yo, that was really funny, bro. Like, yeah, you should keep talking about that shit.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And then I would talk about it on tour, and I'd get these fucking DMs, and all these people would start telling me that they're going through IVF, and even close friends start to be like, yo, actually, that's how we got pregnant. And I didn't realize it was this almost last taboo thing where... There's this incredible isolation because you don't want to feel the judgment.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
When Bernie started popping, what did they say? Right. They had to. I don't know who they is. You could call whoever the fuck they want. But like. there was this idea that they had to like thwart his success. And these articles started coming out where it was like the Bernie bros. Bernie's got a problem.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
There's all this pressure to obviously have a family. You don't want to feel like you're the person that's stopping that. But I didn't realize, and I'm 40, so a lot of older people are probably going through this. Maybe young people are not. But everybody in my immediate circle going through this shit.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Brother, brother, brother. There were three things when I talked to Trump that I wanted to ask him about specifically. And one of them was securing IVF. Because I know a lot of people who are against abortion also... Look at IVF and like, OK, you're throwing out embryos, you're killing people or potential people, and they want to use the anti-abortion argument to get rid of IVF. Really?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Is that a thing? Yeah, of course. It's happening now.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I guess we could look that up. I think that it was in... There's a few states that it was happening in.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yeah. Why would you not want more people? Well, they look at it as killing people because life starts at conception and the embryo is essentially conception. Which, like, I understand your logic. I don't disagree with the logic behind that. But at the same time, that is the way that... The only way some people can get pregnant. And...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
But what I'll say is Trump said that they're going to back it with the full power of the Republican Party and that anybody that goes against it, that they would campaign against. And then he even signed that executive order to expand it. He wants to expand access to it. Oh, that's great. Which is fucking, yeah, it's incredible.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Also, we got to deal with the downstream. Like I'm sure some of this shit is probably, it might, me, it just might be genetic. I don't fucking know, but maybe it's microplastics all in my balls. Maybe it's my phone. Like there's a lot of things that are not in our control that are negatively impacting us. And then to restrict our ability to have a family, I feel like it's kind of unfair.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
You like, if, bestowed this thing upon me, it has affected our ability or some woman's ability to conceive.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
His fans or his supporters are sexist, they're racist, and they're these bros that are fucked up and they're radioactive and they're bad people and he's got a real problem. So they're trying to make him radioactive. And I remember seeing the reaction to Trump coming on the pods, and it was the exact same playbook. It was like, the Manosphere pods. They're sexist. They're racist.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Oh, dude, every time a car breaks, the amount of microplastics that go into the world are way more than using a plastic bottle to drink out of.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yeah, I mean, I didn't have a car until like a year ago. What do you got now? Got anything good? No, nothing. Well, I got a fun one. I got a really, I got a Suzuki Samurai. Ooh. It's the coolest fucking car on the planet. Those are fun. They're so cool. It was, yeah, it was sick.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Well, I got it out in the Hamptons, but yeah. What year is it? It's 87.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Oh, it's a piece of shit, but it is like, it's also just so fun. I'm not trying to compete with you on having a fancy car or whatever like that. I just love how fucking rugged, I don't care.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
What a cute little car. Isn't it adorable? I wouldn't take that thing around the block. But wait, you're saying you wouldn't get in that car with six guys?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Shouldn't that be on the cover of every gay magazine? It should be. I'd be like...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And they're reliable as fuck. That's the thing about them. Every Japanese car is reliable.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
They're the best. That's the thing about Japanese culture is that, like, it's refinement culture. So, like, I feel like there's this Japanese DJ I saw. His name is Yosuke Yukimatsu. Okay? He had brain cancer, and then he thought he was gonna die, so he was like, fucking, I'm gonna be a DJ with the time I got left, and it went into remission, but he basically quit his construction job.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
He just did this boiler room set, and it is just like, I could be putting this energy on it because I want to believe it or whatever, but the intensity of it is, this is my shot, and I'm gonna be unrelenting, right? And the second I saw that he's Japanese, maybe this is my, like, this is the guy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
But... Can you, like, can you, look at this motherfucker. A Japanese person being a DJ, before I even listened to the set, I was like, oh, this is gonna be the best set I've ever heard. Because they would never put themselves out there and do it half-assed. Like every 30-year-old model in America is like, I'll be a DJ now. But in Japan, the culture is so like, don't bring shame upon your family.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Don't bring attention to yourself unless you are the greatest.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Look how fucked it is. Like, you're doing the same thing. You're making it about identity politics. I think Americans are kind of simple in that we want abundance, but we want access. So if eggs are expensive, I can't care about your bathrooms. And you need to tap into that feeling right there. So if I'm a Democrat, this is a class issue.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
But culturally they can't put out shit. It's shameful to put out shit. And I feel like they're almost done refining their culture, and now they're tapping into other things.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
But they do it with pizza. The best pizza I've ever had, and I'm from New York City, is in Tokyo. Really? Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
The best pizza I've ever had is in Tokyo. I forget the name of the place.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
But my wife and I were in Tokyo. But it was the best steak I've ever had is in Tokyo.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And it's something about doing something half-assed, I think, is shameful. And there's this great honor in this refinement process. Now, there is a social cost to that. there's a rigidity, meaning like, it's very, here's a perfect example, like the oldest hotel in the world, I think, is this hotel in Japan. It's like started in 703, the year 703. Whoa. Oh, I've seen that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yeah. And it's been owned by the same family for 52 generations. Right. Which is like an unbelievable feat when you think about like American families or British families that like have gotten rich and then three generations, they've squandered it all. Like really successful families. It's all been destroyed. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And there is this thing in, I think, Japanese culture, which is like there's this great honor in taking on the tradition of your family. The cost of that is there was probably a comedian or a chef or somebody in that line that didn't do the thing that they really were passionate about to honor their family. But the societal benefit is probably the majority of people don't have those dreams.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And having purpose in this job is probably better for them than... And I think there's a middle ground where you can still go dream and do these things, but also we have some respect for being a cobbler when your dad was a cobbler and his dad was a cobbler.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
I feel like we've lost that a little bit in like American dream culture, where it's like, if you don't go out and achieve your craziest dream, well, some people don't have that dream, but taking over their dad's business is something that they can feel good about and honor instead of like, oh yeah, so I just took over the family business.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
But I feel, unfortunately, a lot of them are in the pockets of these wealthy people.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Fame above all, like moms, being a mom isn't really valued.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
It's a real, I think it's a real problem. I think that, and it's not all places, like I'm sure there are places that are more like family oriented where like being a mom is an honored, respected thing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
They might shame those moms that decide to stay home and take care of their kids. Oh, yeah? Yeah, I don't think that that's... It would be great if there was less rigidity and there was a lot of honor in that. And it was something we really respected. Because I know in New York, even my wife, like my wife is like, you know, she got her fucking MBA. She was working for Apple on AI projects.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And then she goes, that's my dream to be a mom. And I feel societal scrutiny about it. But I don't fucking care because I want to be a mom.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
You do ayahuasca, we're going to pay attention a little bit.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
The biggest lie about having kids is that you won't be able to provide for them. I think a lot of people go, oh, I just need to get my life ready to do it. It's like, oh, no, no, no. That's going to put a battery in your back like you wouldn't fucking believe. Hopefully.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Amen. Yeah. That's true. Yeah, it's the coolest thing that's ever happened to me and absolutely has transformed me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
So how do you do that? How do you find someone who wants power but is also benevolent?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
That's the thing. Most people who want power don't exactly want to give back. It's a bottomless pit.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yeah, every risk you take that is successful, you get a little bit more confidence in taking those risks.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Well, yeah. I mean, failure is not an option once you have a kid. No. You have to figure it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
Yeah, you relate. You just become like a real human being. It's interesting when I hear people that don't have kids kind of complain about the world. And I'm like, oh, you actually don't really understand how high the stakes get. Right. Yeah. The way that I relate to every bit of stimulus has completely changed. It's heightened and reduced.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
The little frivolous shit, I do not give a flying fuck about. I really don't care. And then the big ticket things, I care deeply about. How could they impact my kid? It's very easy for people to, even with the vaccine shit, it's very easy for people who don't have kids to tell you, oh, just trust the doctors, whatever. The second you have a kid...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
It is probably the most terrifying thing you'll ever do in your entire life is injecting something into the most perfect thing you've ever created and then every single day wondering and seeing if she's still smiling and seeing if she's still okay. And feeling responsible if anything negative happens.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And then if you don't do it, feeling responsible if she got fucking the measles or mumps or whatever the fuck it is. I have so much more empathy And it's something that people just can't understand because they're not put in that position. And every new parent that I talk to is concerned about this shit. Every single one. So it's like you have to have a little empathy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
You've created the most perfect thing you could ever imagine. Nothing comes as close to that. And every decision you make could greatly impact that person's life. So, yeah, we're going to be scared if we watch a fucking video on the Internet that says this thing is bad for them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
And don't call us some fucking quacks. Just call us like parents who care for our fucking kids.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
So it's like we know one name. We know the Sacklers. And we don't even know their first name. Well, you might, but the average person doesn't. I think that it would be a lot different if these people's names were public record. It would be a lot different if they went to jail. That's the thing. They'd just get fined. They'll get Mangione'd. Yeah. That would happen. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2285 - Andrew Schulz
They're going to get that Luigi treatment immediately. It will be that way. People don't fuck around with their kids, man.
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
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The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
Ooh, because they did everything else, and they're like, oh, he doesn't have this stuff. He's doing it himself. Yep. How long did that take? A year, six months? It was probably a year.
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
It was a year. So you were essentially lying. You knew the whole time, but you were doing all these tests, but you just didn't want to say, I'm doing this intentionally.
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
Was there something that you, I mean, I'm sure you've been able to assess this now, but was there a disconnect you had to reality or a disconnect from your parents or did you not feel seen or accepted for who you were? Was there something going on where you felt picked on by kids?
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
Into a healthier version of yourself. There's a safe pain and then there's probably an unsafe pain of just like jumping off a building and, you know, whatever and trying to land on 20 floors or something. It's probably not the safe way to do things. But doing 200 miles of endurance running is like a different way of pain, looking at pain.
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
And that's what I've been looking for my whole life is like finding the pain. And I talk about like do something every day that's painful. Right. In a good structured environment. You've been doing that for the last couple of years now. It's like you work out every day. You haven't missed a day.
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
For the body to recover, right? Makes sense.
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
Yeah. When someone's lacking confidence in themselves, what's the answer you would give them if they're like, how do I gain more confidence?
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
It's all up here.
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
What's your biggest insecurity today?
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
What was the last one you had and when was that?
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
Is this in Buffalo?
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
Now you didn't have that. I didn't have anything. Now you just had to sit alone. Alone. And not train. And that's what changed me.
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
You hadn't reflected yet.
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
You're like onto the next. I get in the car and I go. You wouldn't even take the medal? Gone. Don't care about it. Like I'm not going to waste an hour sitting around for this ceremony.
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
I'm just getting started.
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
Well, also, if you're going to wake up at 5 a.m., you have to start sleeping earlier. So you are awake as opposed to exhausted at 5 a.m. So you probably don't go to bed at 2 a.m.
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
Like a bootcamp for the bootcamp.
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
Why weren't you training them?
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
Really? She doesn't acknowledge it and reflect back?
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
Have you talked to her about this?
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
I really think this is going to help you transform your relationship with money This moment moving forward. We have some big guests and content coming up. Make sure you're following and stay tuned to this episode on the School of Greatness.
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
That Cracker Barrel is that Midwest life.
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
That's right. That's right.
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
Indiana, Cracker Barrel everywhere. Dude, that's amazing. Bringing back memories. This is powerful because I've been telling people this. I've been living that way unknowingly my whole life of like, whatever the thing is I'm afraid of. When I was in high school, I started doing those things. And it was just like, I'm sick and tired of feeling afraid.
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
So I need to do the things that scare me the most. Is there something we should be thinking before we shut it off to set our sleep up
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
for success mentally, and then to really build into the next day where we wake up feeling like clear-minded and without this brain fog, where we have more motivation, where we have more energy and excitement towards the next day, and then doing that in a pattern every night. Is there any science around that? Is it like listening to a hypnosis? That could be very helpful.
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
Which will help you clean out whatever is going on through the day and get clear and ready for the next day, but also fall asleep so you're not thinking about it. You know, is there anything that can help you have better dreams so that you sleep better? Like, what have you found there in the neuroscience?
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
Chamomile tea is okay.
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
What happens when you don't follow that morning routine? Can you still have a great day or do you feel like you're not as successful?
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
Relax. Okay. And what about... working out and sleep. So you work out in the morning, afternoon, night. How does that affect the sleep when you work out and how you work out?
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
So cold air is key to drop the temperature down. Keeping the room cool. Cool. Yeah, but you don't want that really... Not like an icebox where you're shivering.
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
Now, you know, obviously you were trained in the Army to prepare for the worst case scenarios, right? To prepare for what could go wrong and when this happens, because it will go wrong at certain times, how to react and respond from a place of focus and clarity and calm, essentially under stress.
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
What is happening to the brain as you're sleeping? Is it just connecting neurons? Is it flushing? Is it... creating these images for you to remember. What's the actual mechanics of it?
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
So let's say someone isn't able to get their morning routine in or they weren't able to wake up early for whatever reason. Life happens. They plan for perfection, but life happens once in a while. How can they mentally stay in a focused, present mindset and not feel behind even when they miss their morning routine?
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
I remember for months, my knees would hurt when I was a teenager.
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
Bones are like spreading, right?
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
How much fat are we exhaling a week?
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
Yes, I'm not trying to be vague here. What does that do for sleep if you have sexual activities before sleep?
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links.
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review.
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
Everything you've learned from morning routines, from being in the army to now being a civilian now and not being in the army anymore, but running a successful, thriving business.
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
How does someone train to do that? When you've never done that before and you need to be in control and life feels out of control for these moments, how do you train and prepare to be that cool and calm like that officer was? I think it's awareness and then repetition. So
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
So is there anything that you learned from the army that you still apply today that has allowed you to separate yourself emotionally, physically, mentally from others, and also that's given you tools to thrive in your business and life?
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
Now, how long you been married? A little over two years now. Two years. Does your wife have a morning routine? And was it different before you guys had your child or after?
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
Why do you think morning routines or creating your own routine that works for you is a common trait of successful people in general versus those that don't have a morning routine?
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
You just don't feel as prepared probably, right? If you're not waking up early, if you're not moving your body and sweating some way, and if you're not searching for solitude, which could be running or processing problems or finding solutions in your mind, essentially. then you're getting to the office and you're not feeling ready for the day. That's what I'm hearing you say. Correct. Yeah.
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
And you just could be more on edge or triggered or reactive, right? Yeah. I've heard a lot of people saying, kind of being like the anti-morning routine talk online lately, where people are like, the morning routines are, you know, you don't need them, just wake up and start working. What's your thoughts on that?
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
If you're, for the opinion of people just saying, why waste an hour of your day in the morning when you can wake up, start getting to work, and start making progress?
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
They don't let you just kind of relax in the mornings and just do what you want?
The School of Greatness
How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
I'm curious, what was the hardest obstacle you had to overcome growing up?
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
First of all, this is not a diet. This is... These are basic common sense strategies that probably your grandparents already had implemented into their lives, but now backed up by this modern science that allows us to see why they're so powerful. And to me, the hacks that I share, they're not on the same level as like the paleo diet, the keto diet.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
For me, they're on the same level as drink water, brush your teeth, wear sunscreen. We're talking about- Get eight hours of sleep. Yeah, exactly. We're talking about just basic physiology, basic health, Stuff that should be taught in schools. It's not a diet. It's not a fad.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
It's just how your body functions and it's understanding physiologically how and when to eat your carbs with less impact on your health.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
You can eat whatever you want. So let me give you an example.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
Of course. But so of course, sugar is not good for us, right? Sugar causes glucose spikes that leads to inflammation, aging, insulin release. But the solution to this crazy food landscape that we live in food environment is not to cut out stuff. I don't believe in that. I think you try that for a week or, you know, you're like this year, I'm never going to eat sugar at all. That doesn't work.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
It never does. So what I recommend people try is try some of these techniques. For example, if you really want to eat some sugar. Let's say a cookie, a donut, whatever. The best time to eat that sugar so that you have maximum dopamine from it, maximum pleasure and less impact on your body is going to be after a meal as dessert.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
You want to always avoid eating sugar on an empty stomach and always avoid eating sugar in the morning. Okay. Really? Yes. So breakfast should be savory. Okay. In the morning, nothing sweet. Really? Yeah.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
Keep them for dessert after lunch. Because if you have them in the morning, then what's happening in your body? As you digest that sugar and those carbs, they turn into glucose molecules. And these arrive into your bloodstream really quickly and cause what's called a glucose spike, so a blood sugar spike. And then about 90 minutes later, Louis, your glucose levels are going to drop.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
You're going to feel a crash. And now it's 10 a.m., 11 a.m., and all of a sudden, you feel more cravings for sweet foods. You're like, I need a cookie. I need some chocolate. I need a snack.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
And then you spike again. And then all day you're on a roller coaster where you feel addicted to sugar because your brain, when you're experiencing a glucose crash after a spike, the cravings center in your brain actually activates and says, Louis, find a cookie, find a cookie. And you want to avoid that because then you cannot, you cannot fight against the craving center in your brain.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
Yeah, that center is very powerful. And it's linked to evolutionary responses that we have to low blood sugar. So you want to avoid that from happening. The way you do it is have sugar after a meal as dessert, never on an empty stomach, never as a snack, never for breakfast.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
Exactly. Or if you really need the snack, the sugar snack, what you do is another hack that I call put clothing on your carbs. So what does that mean? So first of all, carbs. Carbs are two types of foods, starches. So that's bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, oats, or sugars. Anything that tastes sweet from a banana to chocolate cake. Those are carbs, okay?
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
When you eat them on their own, for example, a slice of cake on its own or a bowl of pasta on its own, well, carbs break down to glucose molecules. So those naked carbs, very quickly, they end up as lots of glucose in your bloodstream, therefore, a glucose spike. What you want to do instead is put some clothing on your carbs. And the clothing are proteins, fats, or fiber.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
or with them. You can have them before or with them.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
Yeah, you could have, like, some Greek yogurt with the chocolate cake, or with a bowl of pasta, add some chicken or some cheese or some spinach, right? Put clothing on your carbs.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
Exactly. Never eat your carbs naked so that they don't cause as big of a glucose spike. Because when you put clothing on those carbs, digestion happens more slowly. So you're still eating the carb that you love with less impact on your glucose levels.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
And this is just one of many different hacks that I have that help us eat the stuff we love with fewer consequences on our physical and mental health.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
It causes us to age faster. Really? Through a process called glycation. Yeah.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
So glycation and glucose kind of sound like the same word. They're similar. Glucose glycation. And this is why. First of all, before we talk about glycation, I have to explain something to you. So glycation You know, when you put a chicken in the oven and it goes from pink to cooked to brown, what actually happened is that in the oven it glycated. Glycation is the cooking process of the chicken.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
Now, did you know that as a human being, from the moment you're born, you slowly glycate, you slowly cook.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
Yes, like a chicken in the oven. And then when you're fully cooked, you die. I know it sounds crazy, but it is true. And on the inside, you're actually browning. So if you look at the cartilage of a baby, it's white. If you look at the cartilage of somebody who's 100 years old, it's brown. It's been glycated. Glycation is cooking and it's aging. Now, why am I telling you this?
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How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
Because every time you have a glucose spike, it accelerates glycation. Glucose causes this cooking, causes this glycation, causes this aging. So the more glucose spikes you have, the faster you age. And this shows on your skin as wrinkles, right? I'm actually 85 years old, but you can't tell because I don't have glucose spikes. And it also ages your organs within.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
And that's just one of the few things that happen when you have too many glucose spikes over time.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
As little as possible, I would say.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
You avoid eating too many carbs on their own, too many carbs for breakfast, too many processed foods. But I don't want people to become too obsessed with keeping their glucose levels perfectly steady because you can actually do that in some unhealthy ways. What I want people to think about is Do they have symptoms of glucose spikes? Do they feel cravings for sugar?
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
Do they feel tired throughout the day? Do they ever experience brain fog, mental slowness? Do they not sleep very well? Do they have inflammation on their skin like acne, psoriasis, eczema, etc.? Those are all signs of glucose spikes. If you can never leave the house without a snack because you know you're going to be hungry every couple of hours, that's glucose spikes causing that.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
And so as we implement these hacks, you can actually check in with yourself and see that these symptoms are improving. You don't have to wear a glucose monitor. You don't have to track your glucose levels to see the spikes or the no spikes. You will feel better and pretty quickly too because your glucose levels respond in a matter of minutes to what you eat and what you do.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
So I recommend people learn to check in with themselves and see how they feel.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
Are you into intermittent fasting?
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How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
It's been very trendy recently. But you don't actually need to fast for many hours a day to have healthy glucose levels. No. It's more about what you eat, right?
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
Well, so there's the order thing. But the hacks that I share, they allow you to stop focusing on the calories, stop focusing on the restriction, and just kind of understand what molecules are in your food. And then naturally, as you focus on these glucose hacks, a lot of other things fall into place because you're less hungry. You have fewer cravings for all the processed junk.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
Exactly. Your hunger hormones are more balanced instead of you feeling famished every two hours. So naturally, when you focus on the hacks, a lot of things fall into place into your body. And then on the fasting topic, I just want to remind people that intermittent fasting is not necessary to have a healthy body. You don't need to fast in order to be healthy.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
It's much more important to eat well in a way that keeps your glucose level steady than to restrict your eating window, for example. Especially for females, we have to remember that fasting is actually a stressor on the body.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
So if you already have a life where stressful job, kids to take care of, you don't sleep a lot, you drink coffee, you do intense cardio exercise, maybe you do cold showers, you add fasting on top of that, that is a lot of stress for your body to handle. And that's why you see some women who are piling on all these things, their hormones are breaking down. They feel exhausted all the time.
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How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
Their body is just being like, no, that's too much stress. So I love fasting when I'm on vacation, for example, and it feels like an easy... stress to add on. But when I'm working and I'm doing lots of stuff, I prefer to have breakfast, to have a savory breakfast, as I explained, to keep my glucose level steady, and to just eat three times a day. Really? Yeah.
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How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
Well, first of all, if it's not calling you, don't do it, right? It's totally fine. Whatever works for you. But I found a lot of benefit from people switching from the fads and the restricting and the intense stuff and that relationship with your body that becomes... a forceful relationship. It's like you're battling with your body every day, right?
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How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
You're like holding on really strongly and trying to prevent this hunger and these cravings and just trying to be really tight. Willpower. Yeah.
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How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
So hard. Forever. So hard. And a lot of these fads, unfortunately, they're just not based on science, right? They are marketing machines. And that's also being used by the food industry to sell you more processed foods, et cetera. So I think what people will find in my work is I'm a biochemist. And so I'm coming back to the principles of physiology. How does your body actually work?
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
And how does food impact your hormones, your cells, your energy levels, your mitochondria? I'm not trying to push some crazy new extreme diet. I'm just showing you Some simple stuff that actually has been used for centuries, but it's not very groundbreaking when you think about it. Let me tell you and give you an example.
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How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
So the four hacks in my second book are savory breakfast instead of a sweet one, vinegar before you eat carbs, a vegetable starter. So starting your meals with veggies and moving after eating.
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How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
Okay. So savory breakfast instead of a sweet one. First of all, that's been done since forever. Sweet breakfasts, that's an invention of the food industry, okay? We didn't used to have dessert for breakfast. It doesn't make any sense. We used to have meat and potatoes. So savory breakfast instead of a sweet one. Because if you have a savory breakfast that's built around protein and not, let's say,
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
orange juice and granola, which is pure glucose, then your glucose levels are going to stay nice and steady with the savory breakfast instead of having a big spike and then that addiction rollercoaster we talked about. So the spike and the cravings and the spike and the cravings and the spike and the cravings.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
You don't want to be on that rollercoaster because then that prevents you from living the day you want to live. It prevents you from being able to use your energy and your passion and your talents to express in the world. you are being controlled by that cravings roller coaster if you start the day with a sweet breakfast.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
So that's the first one, savory breakfast, built around protein, nothing sweet except whole fruit if you want something that tastes a little bit sweet. Yeah.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
Exactly. So, for example, you know, this morning I had some leftover salmon cakes. I had some green beans. Sounds good. Yeah. Green beans and some rice and some Parmesan cheese. And to me, treating my breakfast like I would any other meal has completely changed my life.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
And it almost feels like, I often get people who tell me, I was having a sweet breakfast my whole life, and now I'm having a savory breakfast, and it feels like I walked through a mirror. You know in the movies, like the Alice in Wonderland, like walking through to this alternate universe, parallel universe?
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
That's how it feels, because all of a sudden you're in control, you're energized, you feel good. Anyway, so that's breakfast. Second hack that I love talking about is vinegar. Now, everybody has vinegar in their kitchen.
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How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
True. But it's an ingredient that's been around for centuries in our culture. And actually, in some countries, it's very well known that it's something that is good for you. It's healthy. In Iran, for example, they have apple cider vinegar every day. It's a health drink. But only recently have we understood why it's good for us. So the reason vinegar is so cool.
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How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
Vinegar contains a molecule called acetic acid. Okay. And acetic acid, what it does when you have it before a meal is that it slows down the breakdown of carbs into glucose molecules. So it acts on enzymes in your stomach and it slows down how quickly the food you just ate is going to be turned into individual glucose molecules and then into your bloodstream.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
So the second hack is one tablespoon of vinegar in a big glass of water before a meal that contains carbs.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
You can try white wine vinegar. You can try making a dressing and putting it on your meal instead of drinking it. Interesting. And I know it's not great. And so I have some ideas about how you could use other things to have the same effect. But nonetheless, the scientific studies are there showing us it does have an impact. And it's very simple. It's cheap.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
But if you don't like it, don't force yourself.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
No, I would say once a day. Once a day. Before a meal that's high in carbs, right? That's it. Yeah.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
You see 30% reduction in the glucose spike.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
Tablespoon and a big glass of water diluted before eating carbs.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
Five to 10 minutes.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
Yep. So you still eat the carbs you love with less impact on your glucose levels. Interesting. Yeah. But if you hate this hack, it's fine. The other hacks are just as powerful, right? So the savory breakfast one will transform your entire day. The experience of your whole life, essentially. And then the third hack is called the veggie starter hack.
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How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
So that hack means having a plate of vegetables at the beginning of a meal. And you might think, OK, actually, this has been done for a long time. In France, we have this concept called crudités, which is raw veggies at the beginning of a meal. In Italy, antipasti, all the roasted nice vegetables. In the Middle East, they eat herbs by the bunch at the beginning of a meal.
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How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
You know that salad with vinaigrette? It's quite a common way to start a meal. And now we understand why. It's because veggies contain an amazing substance called fiber. Fiber, she's amazing. I love her. She's on fire. She's amazing.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
And fiber, when you have fiber in vegetables at the beginning of a meal, the fiber has time to go and coat your upper intestine and to create a sort of protective shield, like a superhero deploying herself on the walls of your upper intestine. Really? Yeah. And it's this sort of gooey, viscous mesh that is improving your gut lining.
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How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
And then any glucose coming down afterwards will not be able to get through to your bloodstream as quickly. Wow. So the veggie starter is an incredibly powerful hack. And you can even combine it to the vinegar hack by making a little vinegar dressing and putting it on your veggies.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
does that what does that do does it decrease even more it decreases even more the glucose spike of the meal yeah so you still have the pasta and whatever you like but if you add this hack yeah so you see what happens when you do these hacks is that you can still eat the carbs you love but then you're creating less of a spike therefore the carbs are first of all not having as big of a negative impact on your health less inflammation less glycation less insulin release and
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How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
you're avoiding the creation of that cravings roller coaster, which is the main issue because most of us, when we have something sweet, then two hours later, we want more sweets. And then it's 11 p.m. and you've eaten 56 cookies, right? Yes. That's what we want to avoid. We want to have the stuff we love without creating this cycle of becoming a victim to more sugar cravings.
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How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
The last hack I'll mention, and you'll love this one, it has to do with muscles. You got some good muscles, no? Yeah. Yeah. So you know how to use these.
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How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
You want bigger muscles?
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How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
Yeah. You want more. You know why? It's for your glucose levels.
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How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
Exactly. And the reason is, so glucose is your body's favorite source of energy. Every single cell in your body burns glucose for energy. So right now, your brain cells are burning glucose to understand what I'm saying. You're holding a pen. That means your hand cells are burning glucose to contract and hold that pen up.
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How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
If you're listening to us, you know, every single part of your body is currently burning glucose to perform its function. And your muscles, as I mentioned, also burn glucose to contract, okay? And we can use this to our advantage. The fourth hack in my method is once a day, After one meal, use your muscles for 10 minutes.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
Exactly. You can even clean your apartment, do the dishes, fold your laundry, go grocery shopping. If you're at work and you can't do any movement, you can do some calf raises underneath your desk for 10 minutes. Lots of easy little ways to get that movement in so that your muscles will absorb some of the glucose from the meal.
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How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
Well, you're going to experience a very big glucose spike as you're watching the movie and eating the Ben and Jerry's. That's going to have impact on your brain. It's going to increase inflammation. It's going to mess up your sleep hormones. You're not going to sleep as well. Your sleep is not going to be as deep or as restful. You might even wake up the next day feeling hungover.
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How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
You know, you never get hungover because you don't drink, but sometimes you can feel hungover from sugar. Wow. If you've had it late at night, you're going to feel a bit groggy. You might feel like your hands have swollen a little bit during the night.
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How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
Yeah, exactly. Interesting. And then with that glucose spike, you're also increasing glycation, aging. You're also increasing insulin release, which over time builds up to a diagnosis of prediabetes, for example. And whatever sort of health background your body has, if you've ever experienced symptoms from brain fog to psoriasis to fertility problems, that spike is going to make those worse.
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How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
So let's say you're watching that movie, eating the Ben and Jerry's. You have a few options. You can have a handful of almonds as you're having the ice cream to put some clothing on the ice cream. Interesting. Yeah. You could do a vinegar drink. You could also grab a book or a bottle of water.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
And after you eat the ice cream, maybe do some bicep curls as you're watching the movie to help your muscles soak up some of that glucose.
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How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
I do those things.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
The best thing to do afterwards is movement. So do them calf raises. You're sitting on the couch, calf raises for 10 minutes during the movie. That's going to help actually. And you can do that up to 90 minutes after eating. the movement, the muscles.
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How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
Yes. So these are the four most powerful, important ones to start with. But in my first book, I have some other ones that are really lovely as well. So we talked about clothes on carbs. That's one I really enjoy. And another one is about snacks. So when you want to snack.
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How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
If you want. It's better not to. It's better to wait between your meals. But sometimes you're hungry. Sometimes it's 4 p.m. and you're hungry. So what are you going to do? Ideally, you would have a savory snack, as I explained, right? Not sweet. Not sweet. Keep the sweets for dessert, okay? Sweet equals dessert. Have some eggs, have a piece of toast with some avocado on it.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
Try to think savory always as much as you can. That's going to be incredibly helpful to keep your glucose levels nice and balanced. Because when you're hungry, when you want a snack, whenever you feel that hunger, That means your digestive system is quite empty. So if you feed it something sweet, the glucose is going to arrive really quickly into your bloodstream and create a big spike.
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How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
If you want, if you can. You should use these hacks and compose with them as you wish. And then you know what? If you can't do any of these hacks one day, it's totally fine. I don't want people to stress out. It's not like something super strict you have to do all the time. There are weeks where I don't do a single hack because of X, Y, Z reason. You can't fall off the wagon.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
This is not a restrictive diet. For me, these principles... are things you keep with you for your whole life. Like, for example, if one day you don't drink enough water, you're not going to go crazy about it and be like, oh, my God. It's like, fine, just drink more water tomorrow. Or if one day you forget to brush your teeth, it doesn't matter. We're here for the long haul.
The School of Greatness
How To Optimize Your Brain Health With Your Morning Routine
We're here to build these habits into our lives and to be able to call upon them like little fairy godmothers whenever we want.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Today's guest is a neuroscientist. He's a professor, he's a podcaster. He hosts one of the biggest shows in the world called Huberman Lab, where he focuses on helping us to become our best selves and get the most out of our bodies. I believe that he's one of the people who's responsible for bringing health and self-evaluation into the mainstream.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
I'm just saying the child has a slight resemblance to the remarkable crooner, Dermot Kennedy. And look, whoa, hold on. Whoa, bro. I'm going to have to call my sponsor, dude. Oh, that's a great photo. That is super cool.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Yeah. It's like seeing a duck, like a little duck, try to take it, learn to fly or whatever, you know, that's the funnest part. Once you see a duck flying, you're like, oh, it's fine. Yeah. You know, it can fly. That's great or whatever. Looks cool. Still beautiful.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
But seeing that duck give those give those tries and take that shot out of the nest or whatever, that's kind of like the funnest part, you know?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Right. So let me think about that. So dopamine is when people say dopamine, cause you hear it all the time, right? Dopamine hits dopamine. Right. You hear about dopamine or give it, you know, you're getting dopamine out of that. So what is it? It's a, it's something that's in your body naturally.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
So, and where is it hidden in your body behind your ears?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Let me slow it down just real quick. Because sometimes it's hard for me, so I know it might be hard for some of our listeners. So the dopamine is, is based on the motivation. So it's not about like the fact that when I'm sitting there and I'm making my quesadilla, like that's the, that's the dopamine is like knowing that I'm going to get the quesadilla soon. That's dopamine.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
But then when I actually get the quesadilla, what? Okay.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
I've heard of Nat King Cole, and I've heard of Cole. There he is.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
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This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
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This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
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This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
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This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
What happens when your health becomes the punchline? It's a good question. With the revelations of seed oils and brain fog and toxins, pollutants, the things that we're ingesting that we didn't even know. The modern world is screwing with our health at the cellular level, leading to digestive issues and more stress, everything. But here's the thing.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
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This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
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This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
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This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
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This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
How much dopamine does an activity release? Baseline is 100%. Food is 150%. So an 50% increase. Video games, 175%. Sex, 200.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Cocaine goes to 450% amphetamine, 1000% methamphetamine, 1300%. That meth, that meth, that methyl group increases the speed.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
So it's almost the same. It could potentially almost be kind of the same, but the speed at which it happens is so much greater that it intensifies it so much. That's right.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
This is so sick. It's just him trying it over and over and over and over. And you can kind of start even just watching this. You start to gain the, and it's all bolts as they say, he's Lance. Perfect. God, it just so crazy how many times it's just such a little piece of perfection. It's like just such an organized, specific moment, like the point of a pin when they when they land those things.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Which goes to show why when it comes sometimes to like sex addiction and pornography addiction that people's – what the kink that they need or the thing they need to see gets more out there. Because they have to – just to even get back to the baseline, they have to – They've got to find more. They need a higher arc. Definitely. I had a couple questions. Sorry. No, no. And say where you're at.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Can you distill dopamine? Like is it manufacturable, dopamine?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
I had a surge of dopamine when I saw you. I was excited, nervous about it. And then it happened.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Super satisfying to watch. It's got to feel incredible. Yeah. Oh, that's amazing. He looks a little bit like your assistant that came in today, too. Oh, yeah, he does look a little bit like Greg.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
And so the ways that you can manage it, almost orchestrate dopamine to use it to your advantage. It's very usable.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
But, yeah, that baby, God, I would have loved to have been her son or been – Or just had a change. Yeah. Like even I'm glad that, yeah, I'm happy that she has a baby.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Is that genetic then? Sorry to interrupt you, but is that genetic, your baseline level for dopamine? Is that genetic? No. This is all behaviorally driven.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
All behaviorally driven. So I'm just saying, yeah, say if like you had a, like, you know, your father was an addict or somebody, and then it could, to the next generation, have that same like need to get back to that baseline. And it could be inherited type of thing.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
I'm grateful for the chance to finally link up today with the one and only Andrew Huberman.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
But do some countries then suffer with the higher alcoholism rates then? Yes, yes. Even European ones?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Well, and Lex has the depression to show it, man. He's got that emo side of him that takes over him. You know, he's definitely.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
I mean, it's perfect. No, I love Lex because there's this transparency about him to me that is remarkably human, you know, like this, like ever hopeful, talented, but also very like honest. This is so Lex. He just said, I'm an introvert who hides from the world often way too much. One thing I wish I did more is call and text my friends.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
I think about them often and feel lucky to know them, but experience a strange anxiety that prevents me from texting and calling them. Silly introvert brain wants to pull me into isolation and darkness. Then again, once I hang out with said friends, it's like we've been talking every day. So maybe there's no problem. And it's just how dude friendships are.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
BSC thoughts brought to you by a brain on six shots of espresso. That's perfect.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Well, that's Russian communication. I mean, it can take five generations to get a hug out of somebody, you know. I love the Russians. Oh, they're unbelievable. And they, you know, a lot of them had carried stone dolls as children. Like imagine if your doll, your baby doll is made of stone. It's like your whole concept of the world is going to be so different. Stone dolls.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Bring back that chart up again. I want to see what they were doing over there. Alcoholism by country. Cool. United States, 13.9%. Canada, only 8%.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
uk 8.7 and what's the darkest one over there it's russian what's it at 20.9 hell yeah bleak oh yeah you got to be fucking brain dead north korea's lowest but but we don't really know what's going on no we don't know this is just a fun chart but it's also exciting to just make that's one place i never want to visit be reminded that the russians live like that i want to ask you about this about um
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
so one of the big things that i think is a huge problem that's about to happen in the world is um uh pornography addiction right i think it's i believe it's humongous i believe it's bigger than alcoholism i believe it's like the wave of it that we're we're starting to see like people really suffering from it i think it's one of the reasons why there's a lot of divorce um
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
What do you see like neuroscientifically about how we can, how people can start to manage that? And then even as what you just talked about, about dopamine, it's like. I think it's helping people realize with that, that it's like such a hole that you're getting into. No, no, whatever that thing is called. No pun intended. How does that how can people start to cut that off for themselves?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Is there anything they can do manage like or do they have to get help if they believe that they're suffering from like pornography or sexual addiction?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
It takes a while for science to catch up to culture.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
No, she's always at excitement and she definitely will free an animal if there's even – she'll release a damn animal from anything.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Sex and – I love how they used to call it human loving. Human loving. That's nice though. Yeah. At least it makes more sense. It puts even your head into something, you know, instead of like Britney's butt world or whatever, you know, which takes it to a whole different deal.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
When you say plastic, you mean it's more like it's not solid yet? That's right.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
She's obviously in control of her own life. I think I just saw the other day, I don't know what Barbara, is it Barbara Blue? Body Blue.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
She's a real animal lover. She's definitely, uh, who's the guy, William Wordsworth or whatever. Who's no, who had the animal movie? Dr. Doolittle. She's like the female Dr. Doolittle. I can talk to the animals. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would love to see her do show just for animals, even like a live performance, just for animals. Um,
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
I was thinking the other day watching some other dude like have sex with a woman. It's kind of like, I don't even know if it's homoerotic. I don't know what it is. It's definitely when you really, when you take a step back from it, it's a little bizarre. It's definitely intrusive, right? But for surely it alters the way that you think about things.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
I mean, I know in my own life, I got exposed to pornography real early. I would bike across town to get a little look at some pornos. Perfectly normal behavior for a young male.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
I was breaking into houses to freaking, you know.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
I remember. Yeah. It would be crazy. You would like, you know, yeah. Just like breaking in and just like, yeah, we made some poor choices, but I think the fact that, um, And here's one thing I noticed for myself, right?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
So, well, I had like a lot of – like I had kind of a disorder, I guess, where like I had some intimacy issues where I couldn't – I had like some issues like just like probably with my mom from growing up of not having a connection. And so if a woman – if I got around a woman, I got very nervous, right? It was like a very –
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
extremely nervous right so I think it made it like once I saw pornography I was like okay well here's a way that I can be near a woman or near as a female where I can have some form of intimacy without having to have a real person there so that for one for me was it was okay it made sense that that's how I
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
adapted to it as a kid or how I understood it as a kid it makes sense but as an adult it didn't help me at a certain point and then the secondary part for me was you know you would just see you would see sex like in images or scenes or a way a camera set up and so then that's how you start to think of intimacy it's like You know, it's like, okay, well we have to do this scene.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
You know, it's not like you would stage things around your room or anything. You didn't have any cameras or anything, but you would just like, you thought of each thing as like a scene or a scenario. So, um, yeah, you're not out there shooting baskets.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
So it was a ton of pressure. So it was like, and you almost couldn't even. Yeah, there was no real connection. So that for me was a real cul-de-sac of like trying to figure out how to evolve like intimately, you know. And some of that's taken a long time to get through and different like – not classes, but like ayahuasca really helped me a lot. Different medicines helped a lot with like –
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Just unbinding all that anxiety that was just like this young person who just didn't know how to relate to females, you know? You know, so I've been speaking recently about MoonPay and what it is and what it ain't, baby, because, you know, I've had that. I've been I've had one foot in crypto and one foot out over the years.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
I'm walking that line, you know, but I'm not going to stop telling you about MoonPay because it's where I'm at now. It's what's brought me back into the crypto game. MoonPay powers the entire world of crypto. Thank you for watching.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
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This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Crypto trading can be volatile and you could lose your investment. MoonPay is a tool to facilitate your transactions, not a source of financial advice. Trade responsibly. It's that time of year, baby. It's the season is ahead, that sunlight season. And they say the sun is going to be brighter than ever. They say this will be one of the hottest summers on record down in New Orleans.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
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This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
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This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Go to ShadyRays, S-H-A-D-Y-R-A-Y-S.com and use code Theo to get 35% off polarized sunglasses. You know, this is going to sound crazy because it's June, pretty much. Pretty much, it's almost June. And I'm still recovering from... the Christmas holidays. That's just who I am. I'm still recovering from the previous. I just, I never, I never put it all together after that, to be very honest with you.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
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This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
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This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
I'm sorry. The Nelk boys. Well, he mentioned us and the Nelk boys, and then he mentioned and the most powerful person, Joe Rogan. We definitely were like some satellites in the orbit, but it was really sweet of him. I mean, I think you catch Dana White at 2 a.m., And he'll drop some different names and stuff. But yeah, that was crazy when that happened.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Oh, dude, my first girlfriend slept with a dude before me who wore a cape, dude.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
No, is that what it's called? Yeah, it's a famous term. Who brought it up? Let's get to the bottom of that term really quick because people have heard it a lot. And you don't know where it really started. The phrase Chatty Cathy originally came from the name of popular talking doll manufactured by Mattel in the 1960s.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
The doll's pull string mechanism played pre-recorded phrases when the string was activated. Like, you don't make any money, or... You get your own dinner. I made those up. But damn, Kathy's a vibe. Look at her. She had a buck tooth, a little buck tooth there. Back when you get a good British gal. But go on. Was there anything left on that information?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Over time, the term chatty Kathy became a common idiom to describe someone who is especially talkative. And I'm just joking, ladies. But that's interesting where that came from. I never knew. Always heard that.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
I remember my ex-girlfriend's mom just texted me like, they just mentioned you on the inauguration address or something. And I was like, what is going on that podcasting has become this thing is just such a part of the universe? What do you think it is? What do you think it is? Because you may even have more of a scientific look at it. Why is podcasting just...
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Now you can have a thing where it's like say you go out on a date with a girl and then they could make a video like, oh, this guy tried to kiss me. What a lose. Just like – but I guess guys could do that too. But just the risk of that on either side, it's like then that wins. It's like how many times are we going to let technology defeat what – just means being human. Right.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
And like, and at what point do we start to choose like, Hey, I'm going to make a moral, like a choice for myself and whoever I'm going to date with, maybe have a talk with them first or something like, you know, but it's like every time it's like technology is the one that seems to like take away. like things that used to be so real to us.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Yeah, because then you're both in a cave, you're both just masturbating or whatever, and you're both like brokenhearted in some semblance, it seems like. Is that crazy to say that?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
No, it's nice to go get them out. But I agree, man. I get nervous because sometimes like for a date or something I would like to do, well... let's do a Zoom call or something first because it's like, you know, especially if we live a little bit away from each other, let's see if we even talk well or something. But then you're worried like, well, is somebody recording this or what's going on?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
it's as common as like somebody saying the New York Times five years ago.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Well, it's just funny you say that because I just realized that the majority of my childhood was some woman. I don't even know who it was laughing in the distance in my head. Oh, man.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Like especially when I got into puberty and that kind of time.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
But this is one of the most important conversations to our audience because I think this is the thing that's, it's killed, you know, relationships are falling up. It's like, if we don't, if this doesn't get fixed now, it's going to be- I think it's – societies can change and end really fast especially with like technology now. To me, it's just like we're at a crucial moment for relationships.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
you know do something wrong or and i'm not talking about like wrong like they were forceful i'm talking about wrong like they they made a mistake yeah they said something dumb or you know i think a lot of one nick didn't you have a site you're pulling up this is one right here are we dating the same guy women turn to facebook to uncover cheating and violence experts say use of groups to warn others about dangerous men is indictment on government's failure to keep women safe
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Well, that's intimacy in its own right, is that it's something here, it's between us, right?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Yeah. I love that. That would be a great musical. Lesbians are going to save us all. And I believe that I would love to see that. And I think that, yeah, I think there is this, you know, for a while there, people were like gays and gays and, you know, don't be gay and that kind of stuff. Probably like 50 years ago, that was like a thing, you know?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
And then, but now I think one of the, one of the neat things about gay folks is there are that they have like a special recipe, you know, that's built into them.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
You know, the grill and cum. That'd be my team, dude. If you had a gay flag football team in college, dude, at the rec center,
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Now- Can you get exposed to testosterone in your mom's belly if someone ejaculates into the mom?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
So in the gay men, the point of fingers is a little bit more shorter than the ring finger.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
We got to find some good lesbians, man, in the future.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
A lot of my gay friends are like, it's not a choice, right? It's just like, it's who you are. And I'm like, well, why, after you've had a drink, are you trying to get me to choose it? That's a thing for me.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
But I don't blame gay dudes. Because I think the ultimate thing you can get as a gay dude is a straight dude.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Yeah, some of that intimacy disorder stuff was a nightmare for me because when I was in my 20s, I was so nervous around women that a lot of times I had erectile dysfunction. Could you talk to your partner about it? Back then it was probably taboo, right? Oh, yeah. No, I think I just felt defeated. It felt very much like, damn, something's wrong with me. I don't know what's wrong with me.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
And it was like – I remember I had – it's funny because kind of with like my first girlfriend, I didn't really have it. And then it started to happen. And then the same thing happened with my second girlfriend. And then after that, once I kind of got into like age 23, it was – or like 24, it was like a problem for a long time.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Oh, yeah. So once it was like I knew it was there, then it was like always this thing. So, oh, fuck, I can't even I forgot about all these nightmare times where you'd be on a date and you'd be like, how's this date going? And then like, are we going to get like intimate and what's going to happen? And I would like.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
You know, I remember like, um, I would eat like, you know, those gas station wiener pills, like, uh, you know, like black attack 40 or whatever.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Yeah, just zoom in on some of those. No, that's Dayquil. I mean, that's not going to help anybody. Yeah, Triple Green, Rhino87, Macho Man, White Black Guy. That's a crazy name for one. Wait, what? Yeah, I made that up.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
I, yeah, I remember I would take some of them so much sometime. I remember one time I was trying to like perform, like have sex with this gal or something. And my, I'd taken some of those winter pills. My nose just started bleeding all over this woman. And I was like, what is happening? Did she freak out? I don't know. It was in Miami. Everybody had like a belly full of crab or whatever.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
But it was like this nice crab place. But it was like – and my nose just – it was just like that was crazy. But it just became this crazy dance in my head where it was like wiener pills, trying to be normal, like trying to calm down, like putting ice in my shirt, just all these things to like chill, like just be able to be normal for sex. That shit was a nightmare. Yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
I mean – It was a nightmare. And then you're stuck in this universe where that is becomes like your whole battle. And then you get afraid to even talk to girls sometimes or relate to them. Cause you're like, well, what, you know, if I take a girl down this road and it's not able to work out, then who am I, then where am I at? You know?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Yeah, dude. I remember, oh dude, I remember this fricking, my girlfriend at the time was, I was like, I thought I couldn't get an erection, right? So I had her call me a different name like we were making out.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Well, this dude Robert in our grade was getting mad erections, everybody was saying. And I'd be like, call me. And I, oh, this is so embarrassing. But I'd be like, call me Robert, call me Robert. and it didn't fucking help. And she's like, it was just the most embarrassing. That shit was super embarrassing, dude. Because even if I was Robert, I couldn't even get an erection at the time.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
So that was horrible. Trying to think of what else happened. Dude, I've gone, I mean, you know, over the years I've gone, you know, down the gamut of all of it, like hiring escorts or, you know, thinking like, oh, we need more than one part. Like all that, like just thinking like all these things would change it, you know, drugs, alcohol, like all these different things to like trying to,
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
fine tune how I would feel okay. I think even just to be in like a
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
conversation like just to be like in an intimate conversation like oh i wished i would have from the beginning been like just with a girl i've been hey like this is what's going on and this is how i'm feeling and this is what's popping you know and like and even made it cool or whatever and it would have brought us closer together but instead i took this huge bypass of like things that i thought would like i thought that intimacy was just a um one man
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Yeah, you wonder how it started. Boom, look at this guy. Beanbag.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Yeah, he's really good. That man, lethal shooter right there.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
And I think the Dutch drink coffee late at night. Bring that up real quick. Who's drinking coffee very late at night? Or see if Tony Hawk is Amsterdamian, if he's an Amsterdamian. I believe he looks Amsterdamian to me. Tony is like six foot five. I know the Dutch are tall.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
He'll knock up a fucking parking meter. That dude, he don't give a damn, boy. He's the only dude who put, yeah, he put definitely, he'll get it. I want to pivot a little bit. I saw an, there's, we're starting to see stuff, like I've been noticing recently these articles about measles. Have you seen this stuff hitting the airwaves? Is that realistic?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
It just starts to seem, if you can see one of them, Nick, and bring it up. Person may have spread measles at Shakira concert in MetLife Stadium, health officials say, right? This just seems like a person who attended a Shakira concert at MetLife Stadium on May 15th was infected with measles and may have spread the highly contagious virus at the event, health officials say.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
This almost reads like the beginning of a movie, right? Like highly contagious, infected, spread measles. at a concert. So it makes it super scary, right? All these, but like all the viruses tend to spread more quickly indoors. Measles can live in an airspace for up to two hours and it's highly transmissible, especially amongst the unvaccinated. So this is an article. What's this in?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Okay. Okay. Conventional media. So, so I'm just like, what is going on here? Are we, are they just trying to see another thing that will stick to society? What do you, as a scientist, what do you even think when you read something like this?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Texas outbreak drives up early US measles cases in early 2025. Number of measles cases reported in the US per year.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Every couple months, there's something that pops off like this. Every few months, it's like hoof-mouth syndrome or canary baby.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Well, that's another reason I believe that he's, in addition to his talent, which has helped him stand the test of time, is such a moniker. There's nothing like that. Tony Hawk. Totally. Tony is the most relatable name in the world. And then just like, who don't want to be like, Tony Hawk is a predominantly British Isles descent. Oh, damn. I was hoping we'd get him in Amsterdam. All right.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Andrew Wakefield did not go to prison, although he was found guilty of serious professional misconduct by the UK general medical council and was struck off the medical register, effectively ending his career as a physician. There was no record or evidence that he was ever criminally prosecuted or in prison for his actions related to the fraudulent 1998 murder.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Lancet study linking the MMR vaccine to autism. The sanctions against them were professional and civil, not criminal.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
That's all good. But yeah. So what were you saying, brother?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
But how can those scientists be manipulated as a group? Like when you look back at, like, how can that happen? Like, is it journals that are compromised? Is it the medical energy that gets compromised? But how do you have like a whole, you know?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Well, and it also leads to impairment. It leads to disease. It leads to, you know, atrocities that happen to people. And it's for usually for the sake of profit. Do you believe that big pharma would lobby against certain tests being done or residual testing, re-examination of past findings, et cetera, in order to keep things a certain way? Okay, so- Does that make sense?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Somebody told me I went to the middle East or something. Somebody said I was working for something, Bangladesh or something. I was like, dude, I don't, I've never had anybody ask me to do anything.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
That something gets kind of shoehorned in and working for something, but the- Very expensive drugs for everybody.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
And how do you get on that circadian rhythm, man? That's something that I've struggled with. I think my circadian rhythm is, God, I'm going to turn into a cicada.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
So does that mean you need to go to bed at like 8 p.m. for a week to get your circadian rhythm set or what's the truth there?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
If you're going to have any kind of social life, like Mark Wahlberg or something, he's always, the thing is like, I wake up at three.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Got it. So how many milligrams of caffeine are you taking a day? Are you usually taking a day for this? Yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
But- I got a buddy got a fucking mouthful of my buddy, like damn Cotton Eye Joe over there.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Can you get just as much dopamine from doing those positive things as you can from doing things that we would consider, you know, that sometimes add a level of disappointment or shame? And maybe shame is not the word I want to use.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Ah, the will to live. 31-year-old guy who sells his startup for 100 million shares. Why he is depressed and how to think about your career and life. I sold my company, MVMT. I know that company. They made watches, right? a few years ago for a lot of money and thought all my problems would be solved. I made my life really cushy and comfortable. I optimize for being as stress-free as possible.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
I play video games when I want. I wake up when I want and really have no reason to get out of bed if I don't want to. I always thought this was a dream and I'd be happy forever. I realize I'm in an incredibly unique situation and wanted to share some things I've learned and I'm still working through.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
I think it's like... Yeah. I didn't know that I liked to work really, you know, I mean, I knew that I was persistent maybe, and I liked comedy, but then like, as other things have started to arise and like learning a podcast and then you're running a business and then, you know, I, I like to work, you know, I really enjoy it. I think I'm probably competitive in some ways.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Oh, no. I think it's just can you still make yourself laugh? That's my thing.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Oh, I'll talk to somebody. Usually I'm trying to talk with a gal and entertain her or talk with one of my buddies and entertain them, and there's something that'll get said that's just kind of like, oh, that's perfect, man. Um, so that's kind of how I'll do it.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Oh, the baby is beautiful. I think bring up Henry, bring up Henry Cummins. I don't even know if it has a stage name. I have no idea if the baby has a front name or last name. I'm pretty sure it's Henry Cummings. Oh, my God. That's beautiful.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
And then I'll put it on a stage from there, you know, and I'll record my sets and, um, and I've started to put some of them into like chat GPT or AI. So it can like show me what was new during this one to the last one and learn a little intricacies and things like that. Things that worked and things that changed.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Ayahuasca? I've gotten ideas. I've gotten, um, I got like some good bits. Uh, how often are you doing Ayahuasca? Maybe every 18 months. I'm kind of due again to do something like that. I want to talk to this guy, Brian Hubbard, I believe is his name, who does the Ibogaine.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
A lot of bootleg stuff going on out there. But I do think that, yeah, it's like getting back to nature, getting back to the roots. And literally you're getting back to the roots of,
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
of like what will uh what can reorganize i think the nature inside of us that gets so rattled by us maneuvering it and existing in the world i don't know how we manage to damage our own nature so much over time well maybe it's uh instead of saying lesbians will save us all it's uh lesbians and psychedelics will save us all that's kind of my new campaign
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Yeah. I mean, I think it's fascinating. And I think just the fact that we can get, this thing is awesome, man. How'd y'all get that?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
That's like me and David Spade. I just can't even believe that we're buddies. And then I get to like ask him about stuff or even listen to him tell jokes over dinner. Like, yeah, sometimes things like that, like not to name drop, but yeah, it just blows your mind. Some of the people you'll get to come across, you know?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
But you didn't hear about it 10 years ago, for sure.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
And just, I think what you, what you, what you can be called upon to be a part of, you know, and taking agency, having some more agency. The biggest thing I noticed in my life is how do I get to know myself better and get to utilize myself better? And not just for me, but for like, and really to listen to God better.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
How do I learn to have a relationship with something that's bigger than me so that I can get better direction, you know, in better ways? and better peace at times because God's not just there for direction. I believe that he's also there for reflection and for rest, you know, and just to be able to, you know, I don't know. Do you pray every day?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Oh, I think the funnest thing sometimes is like getting an idea. Cause I'm like, this didn't come from me. Right. What the hell am I doing? I'm just like something out here that's trying to position myself to be the best receptor. It's almost like when you're trying to like put those dog ears out for a television or whatever, like an old black and white TV, and you're trying to pick up the signal.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
It's like, I'm just trying to best get myself in situation to receive a decent signal.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Oh, I love that. Have you considered, because we will sometimes interview people who have had a miracle experience happen to them. And it's really fascinating sometimes just to hear some of their stories. It's something I would like to do more. One of the things I want to do is just – I want to come over to your pod, man, next time I'm in town. Let's do it. And we can do this again sometime.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
I feel like we only got to talk about a few things, but that's perfect. It will give us more stuff to talk about in the future. And just thank you, Andrew, for just being a good voice. You have a lot to say, and you share information well. And it's like I think we're at a time where people just need to have information that isn't compromised by –
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
like a bank or an advertiser that's telling someone they have to speak a certain way, you know, unless it's an advertisement where you're reading for Tocovas or for a liquid IV or something, you know, but yeah, thank you for all your commitment to sharing information with us, man. Thank you. Yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
That's very nice of you to say, man. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. That's a very thoughtful thing to say. And yeah, thank you for being here today. And I look forward to seeing you out in Malibu. Yeah. Let's do it again on the HLP. Amen.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
He does, dude. And you can tell he cuts it himself, too. Yeah, I've met him and he's just such a good natured kid. He looks AI right there. He looks like Dermot Kennedy a little as well there.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
Pete Holmes was a big one early. Remember, Pete Holmes was before everybody. Yeah. Pete Holmes was a very early podcast. But no, it's definitely gotten where... I think it's nice not having... People are like... Sometimes I'll see things, people seem like, oh, this group, now you're working with this group, or you're working with this group, or you've been infiltrated by this...
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#585 - Andrew Huberman
country or this idea. It's like, no, I don't work for anybody. It's just, I try my best, you know, and, and, um, Oh, you do an amazing job.