Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast,
where we discuss science and
science-based tools for everyday life.
I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor
of neurobiology and opthalmology at
Stanford School of Medicine. Today's
episode is a solo episode of the
podcast, meaning no guest. However,
there will be a large number of outside
voices heard on today's episode, and
that's because I solicited for your
questions on social media. that is
people had the opportunity to call in
and literally record their questions
about anything related to science and
health. Well, really anything. But
today, we're going to focus on science
and health. And I would answer them in
real time, meaning I'm hearing them for
the first time today as you hear them
for the first time today. And we're
going to cover, I'm told, because I
haven't heard the questions yet, a large
number of topics related to signs and
health that are relevant to women, to
men, to people of all ages, and covering
everything from health and fitness to
mental health, supplementation, and on
and on. I should mention that if you
called in with a question for today's
episode, and you don't hear it on
today's episode, that does not
necessarily mean that it won't be
included in a future Q&A episode. Again,
we got many, many more questions than we
could possibly include in a single
episode. And I also want to say to
everyone who called in with a question,
thank you. We really appreciate the
feedback even if your question isn't
included. It does cue us to what people
are interested in and absolutely will
shape the future of guest episodes, solo
episodes, and again perhaps a future Q&A
of this sort. So without further ado,
let's get to your questions. Okay, so
just to remind you, you're going to hear
the question from the audience member
played in real time. And again, this is
the first time that I'm hearing these
questions. Hello, my name's Anthony
Richards and I just want to thank you so
much for all the content that you put
out. It's helped me profoundly in so
many aspects of my life. My specific
question right now is on preworkouts. I
work out late at night because of work
and I generally go to bed an hour and a
half or so after I complete my workout.
I'm curious as to what's the most
effective pre-workout I could take to
maximize my strength training without
impairing my sleep. Thank you.
>> Well, first off, Anthony, thank you for
the kind words. I love to learn. I love
to teach and I especially love to teach
information that I hope can be of use to
people in their health journey. So, in
keeping with that, you asked, "What is
the best preworkout for someone who's
working out late in the day?" And in
your case, going to sleep about an hour
and a half after finishing your workout.
And your workouts, as you mentioned, are
going to be for strength and presumably
for some muscle size as well, which
suggests that they're going to be of
moderate to high intensity, which means
that they're going to pretty
impressively increase cortisol over its
baseline late in the day. And everyone
hears that and they think, "Oh my gosh,
cortisol stress hormone. We don't want
to do that." Yes and no. It is true that
we want our cortisol high in the
morning. You all know the ways to do
that. You get your morning sunlight, you
hydrate, you exercise, you maybe drink
some caffeine. If you like to drink
caffeine, you get into your day, maybe
even some stress, that's okay. But if
you can't work out early in the day,
what do you do? So, your question about
pre-workout is really a question of how
do I get energized enough, enough
autonomic arousal, enough alertness that
I can generate the kind of intensity
that's going to stimulate that cortisol
peak, right? We don't want to avoid that
high cortisol level during these
workouts. That's part of the stimulus
that's going to induce the adaptations
that we want. How do we do that? Well,
you've all heard me say that drinking
caffeine in the 8 to 10 hours before
sleep is going to disrupt your sleep,
even if you can fall asleep after
caffeine. So to be quite direct, one
thing and perhaps the only thing that
I'm aware of that can give you an
increase in alertness and that will
allow you more focus and intensity for
your workout, but that can also help
your sleep is something that increases
levels of acetylcholine. And the most
direct way to do that over the counter
and the safest way that I'm aware of to
do that is to use the supplement alpha
GPC. 600 milligrams to 900 milligrams of
alpha GPC taken simply with water will
give you a increase in focus and
alertness that you can devote to that
high intensity or moderate in to high
intensity workout. Alpha GPC is also one
of the few supplements that I'm aware of
that can increase the amount of rapid
eye movement sleep that you get REM
sleep. And that REM sleep is critical
for a number of things for inducing
neuroplasticity. So any learning that
you did in the preceding day or days is
going to be consolidated during REM
sleep. And importantly, REM sleep is
critical for removing the emotional load
of previous days, not just one day, but
days memories. And if we don't get
enough REM sleep, we tend to feel more
emotional. We tend to feel like the
emotional load of stressful things in
our prior days are not coming off those
memories. Okay. So, alphagpc has been
shown to modestly increase REM sleep.
But the great news here is even if alpha
GPC doesn't increase the amount of REM
sleep that you're getting, alpha GPC is
not going to hinder the amount of REM
sleep or slowwave deep sleep that you
get. So, it makes it a unique sort of
quote unquote stimulant. I'm reluctant
to call it a stimulant because it's not
really stimulant in the classic sympathy
sense, right? Things like caffeine, um,
other forms of stimulants that increase
dopamine, epinephrine, and
norepinephrine, the so-called
catakolamines are called sympathy
because they actually increase the
activity of the sympathetic arm of the
autonomic nervous system, which is just
nerdy speak for increased alertness.
Alpha GPC is a unique tool in its
ability to increase focus and alertness
by virtue of increasing the output of
the acetylcholine pathway which is
involved in focus and to some extent
energy. but it's not a classic sympathy
and it either doesn't seem to hinder REM
sleep or it can slightly again slightly
increase the fraction of REM sleep that
you get. So that makes it a great tool.
Now it's not a perfect tool and I'll
tell you why. Increasing the amount of
choline in your system can after a few
biochemical steps increase the amount of
TMAO that is circulating in your body.
Now TMAO can be increased by any number
of things, fish, meat, etc. Anything
that increases choline levels can do
this, but alpha GPC does it pretty
potently. And so the key thing here is
you don't want too much TMAO
consistently over time because it does
carry some cardiovascular risk. And
there was one paper a few years back
that suggested that perhaps people who
use alpha GPC regularly at high dosages,
so 900 milligrams multiple times
throughout the day over long periods of
time may have increased risk of stroke
and other cardiovascular insults. And so
that's something to pay attention to.
There is some literature that suggests
that taking 600 milligrams of garlic
pretty much any time in the 24-hour
period that you take alpha GPC, but
probably best to just take them
together. Garlic has something called
allisonin in it, which can inhibit some
of the production of TMAO. We don't have
time to get into the whole TMAO
production pathway, but this has to do
with your gut, and a lot of these
conversions are done in the gut. And
garlic can inhibit that. It's probably a
good idea to be ingesting some garlic
regularly anyway. These garlic capsules
aren't um stinky like garlic. Some
people like the smell of garlic, others
don't, but it's not going to give you
garicky breath. It's very inexpensive.
So, my suggestion would be just to be on
the safe side if you're going to take
alpha GPC pretty regularly. And you
didn't mention how often you're doing
these workouts late in the day. I don't
know if this is 5 days a week or if this
is three days a week. I would say
anytime you're going to take alpha GPC,
you should take 600 milligrams of garlic
along with it. or if you can't do it
along with it, take it at some point in
the in the next, you know, 12 to 24
hours to try and offset this TMAO. I
think you'll notice also that if you
take alpha GPC very regularly, like
every day or any more than like three,
four times a week, it's going to have a
diminished effect. So, I would reserve
taking the alpha GPC to just maybe once
or twice a week, maybe three times
maximum. And hopefully, you'll be able
to generate the kind of intensity that's
required for your workouts to stimulate
those adaptations that you're seeking in
strength, etc. without taking it every
single workout. How do you do that?
Well, you go into the workout relatively
rested. Okay, so this means getting the
proper amount of sleep the night before.
I think we vastly underestimate the
extent to which just getting your mind
in the right frame can help you generate
the kind of intensity that you need to
get a really terrific workout in. And
that doesn't require taking anything.
And if you happen to take alpha GPC2,
now you're doubling up these tools,
right? So when I say we vastly
underestimate, you know, most people
just kind of go into the gym, they're
looking at their phone. So if you can
afford to, if your life is arranged this
way, Anthony, and others, I recommend
make your workouts for you. Pour
everything you can into them mentally
and physically, maybe use alpha GPC
once, maybe twice, maybe three times a
week. Offset that TMAO effect. And then
there's another piece to this, which is
how can you ensure that you get the best
possible sleep coming off a workout
regardless of what you took. Okay, maybe
you drank some caffeine too late in the
day, maybe you didn't. I can understand
where there's kind of a pushpull of
things here. Here's what I suggest.
After you finish your workout, doesn't
have to be immediately, but take a hot
shower. Believe it or not, taking a hot
shower by virtue of the fact that you
warm up the surface of your body, will
trigger neurons in the medial preoptic
area of your hypothalammus, which act as
sort of a thermostat on your core body
temperature and will actually help drive
core body temperature down, which is a
prerequisite for getting to sleep. So in
other words, for many different reasons,
right, removing bacteria, etc., take a
nice hot shower after your nighttime
workout. And while you do that, or
perhaps while getting in or out of the
shower, do some long exhale breathing.
I've talked a lot about physiological
sigh. It's called physiological sigh,
not just sighing because it involves
this double inhale, long exhale, which
is involved in reducing the amount of
so-called sympathetic autonomic arousal.
Again, just alertness. When we do a
deliberate exhale, okay, so not just
passively exhaling, but when we draw out
our exhale
like so, you activate a descending
portion of the vagus nerve. Everyone
thinks about the Vegas nerve, like
sensory information coming up from the
body. That's 85% of the vagus pathway.
The other 10 to 15%, no one knows the
exact numbers, comes from the brain down
to the organs of the body. And one of
the main pathways there is to your
heart. And when you exhale, you slow
your heart rate down. And I've talked a
lot about this on previous podcasts. So
just doing that three or four times,
like so after your workout, could be
through your mouth, could be through
your nose, maybe while you shower,
getting out of the shower, you're trying
to bring your level of autonomic
activation down, down, down, and your
cortisol levels will follow. So even
though you spiked your cortisol levels,
you know, triple or quadruple from a
really effective workout, you can bring
them down deliberately using long exhale
breathing, nice hot shower to which is
warm and relaxing, right? It's not like
a cold shower which is stimulating. It's
going to help bring your levels of
arousal down. And then is the food
thing. Everyone has heard, me included,
don't eat two or three hours before
sleep because it will increase your
heart rate and it'll increase your
nighttime and morning glucose. will
impede your sleep. Well, yes and no.
Being super hungry and waking up in the
middle of the night because you're
hungry from a really hard workout, that
also will mess up your sleep. And I've
had that happen where I fall asleep
after a shower, I worked out later in
the day and then I'm awake at like 3:00
in the morning and I'm eating a bowl of
oatmeal or something and it's not
convenient. Okay, then usually I can
fall back asleep, but it's just not a
good not a good way to arrange things.
My suggestion would be after you work
out, especially if it's a moderate to
highintensity workout, that you should
eat something. There's some literature
out there that suggests that the slower
digesting proteins such as milk
proteins, casein, you could have some
Greek yogurt. You could get some, you
know, casein uh protein powder if you
wanted. It's easily available out there.
Any number of different, you know,
quality brands will work. Uh maybe a a
bowl of oatmeal, some starch after you
work out to replenish glycogen stores.
These are all good things to do even in
that final hour before sleep. And no,
it's not going to completely nuke your
growth hormone levels during sleep. you
just spiked them tremendously during
that workout anyway. Now, if you're not
working out late in the day, folks, then
probably good to put a little bit of a
buffer between your final uh meal,
certainly full meal, and your sleep if
you can. But if you don't do that every
day, it's not the end of the world. But
for you, Anthony, and others who are
working out late in the day, if you do
these things right, sometimes alpha GPC,
sometimes no. Get it get your head
straight before you go in the gym so you
can really focus. That's the main one I
have to say. You know, I was recently
down in Spain working out with six time
Mr. Olympia Dorian Yates. And before the
workout, you know, you said, you know,
you're going to go in the corner, you're
going to, you know, ride that stationary
bike for three, four minutes. And it's
as much about warming up your mind and
really focusing on what we're going to
do today than the warming up of your
core body temperature. Yes, that too.
But you have to get into the right frame
so that you're training. You're not just
working out. I actually prefer to call
it training because you're practicing
every single time trying to get better,
bringing more focus. Don't underestimate
the value of that. and it doesn't
require taking anything at all. And then
if you do the other things I described
and afterwards you take a nice hot
shower and you're feeling really jazzed
up, do a bit more long exhale breathing.
And then as a final final point, no one
does all these things perfectly every
single week, week in and week out, year
in and year out. Do some of these
things. You'll notice a significant
difference. I do believe that. These are
the things that I know to be most potent
for addressing the question that you're
asking. If you do all of them, great.
And if you can't do all of them, you're
still going to derive some benefit. So,
good luck with uh your later evening
workouts transitioning into sleep. I'm
sure it's going to go great. And if you
have additional questions, call us back
the next time we solicit for them. I'd
like to take a quick break and
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All right, let's hear the next question.
>> I have been making a concentrated effort
to get outside first thing in the
morning to help reset my circadian
rhythm. Is it okay to just be outside
even though all I really see is the sky
above me and the western sky or do I
really need to walk 20 minutes so I can
see the eastern horizon?
>> Okay, this is a great question. The
person remained anonymous which is also
terrific but thank you for your question
whoever you are. I get asked this
question all the time. Here's the deal.
Any amount of ambient daylight that you
can get in the first hour after waking
will greatly benefit you. It'll increase
your morning cortisol peak, which by the
way is a great thing. No, it's not going
to give you Cushing syndrome. No, it's
not going to make you gain weight. Quite
the opposite. In fact, it's going to
kickstart so many beneficial mechanisms.
Okay? It's also going to increase your
mood focus and alertness all day long as
a consequence of that early morning
cortisol peak. So, get ambient daylight
in your eyes in the first hour after
waking. Of course, if you wake up before
the sun comes out, you're going to have
to wait. A 10,000 lux artificial light
can be beneficial in those
circumstances. I don't have any
relationship to any company that sells
them, but they're out there on the
internet. They're all basically equally
effective.
If you get outside and you can walk
eastward,
sunglasses off, brimmed hats off,
because the light's coming from above
and you don't want to olude that with a
brimmed hat. Wear sunglasses. Eyeglasses
and contacts are fine. If you can do
that, great. Many people can't. Many
people only have the opportunity to step
out onto their balcony of their
apartment and it's west facing. Okay,
you're still going to benefit from all
those photons, all that ambient light.
And the reason I say daylight and not
sunlight is that for some reason, it's
semantic, but it's semantic and it leads
to a lot of confusion. When people hear
you got to get sunlight in your eyes
early in the morning, they think, "Oh, I
have to see the sun as an object." No.
Compare how bright it is at, say, 9:00
a.m. in the depths of winter on an
overcast day facing westward in the
morning compared to midnight the night
before. It's so much brighter. There's
just so many photons. And that's what
are going to trigger these special cells
in your eye, the intrinsically
photosensitive melanopsin retinal
ganglen cells that literally send a
direct connection to your circadian
clock, set your circadian rhythm. So any
amount of ambient daylight that you can
get into your eyes, westward, eastward,
eastward being better, but westward
still being great. Clear day better than
overcast, but you can't control the
weather and neither can I. All are going
to help increase that morning cortisol
peak lead to larger increases in the
catakolamines, dopamine, epinephrine,
norepinephrine, which translates to more
daytime energy, improved mood, improved
focus. And here's the real key that most
people miss. By spiking all these
pro-arousal chemicals early in the day,
in particular in the first hours of our
day, ideally the first hour itself,
you're setting up the whole system to
have low levels of these proarousal
chemicals circulating come nighttime,
come evening. It makes it so much easier
to fall asleep. and cortisol and all
these other stimulatory chemicals that
you make they are in opposite phase to
melatonin. So by getting them high in
the morning and low in the evening and
at night with this daylight viewing and
that is the most potent stimulus to do
that you're setting yourself up for
increased melatonin your own natural
melatonin release at night and better
sleep more ease in falling asleep more
ease in staying asleep and more restful
sleep and on and on. So, the short
answer, totally fine to face westward.
The other short answer, please remove
your sunglasses. Please remove a brimmed
hat while you do it. You'll get more
ambient light in your eyes that way. If
you can rotate eastward and still get
some daylight, even better. If you can
walk eastward into the rising sun, even
better. Never look at any light,
sunlight or otherwise, that's so bright
that it's painful to look at without
blinking to protect your eyes. You have
a natural blink reflex to protect your
neural retinas, right? You don't want
blasting your eyes. You don't want to
force yourself to hold your eyelids
open. But I promise you, promise you,
promise you, if you do these things
regularly, you're going to benefit
tremendously. There's just so much
literature on that in humans in all
these different populations, ages, etc.
And as a final point, you mentioned that
you're benefiting from this to set your
circadian rhythm, and that's wonderful.
Just as a favor to everybody, I want to
take this as an opportunity to tell you
that your circadian rhythm when you feel
alert and when you feel sleepy is
dictated by these mechanisms. Okay? But
these mechanisms are slow integration
mechanisms. Meaning that your
supercismatic nucleus, your brain's
central circadian master clock that
organizes all of this is literally
integrating the number of photons that
you saw light energy in the previous two
or three days. So, if one morning you
have to just jump in the car and rush
off with your sunglasses on and get to
work and you can't do this, fine. Try
and get outside for a little bit longer
the next morning, okay? If you get a ton
of sunlight in your eyes one morning
because it's nice and clear and the next
day it's overcast and dreary, okay? or
god forbid you stay in bed and scroll
your phone which I don't recommend but
if you do that your super chaismatic
nucleus is making its physiological
decisions as to when your cortisol
should increase and your melatonin and
so on according to your previous two or
three days early day light exposure.
Yes, late in the day light exposure
matters. It really does. And you want to
keep your lights low late in the
evening. I talked about that just a few
minutes ago previous question. But that
morning bright light is really the thing
that sets the whole thing in motion. And
it's your last two or three days of
post-waking
bright light exposure that really
dictates your circadian rhythm. There
are other things too. Exercise, eating,
social interactions, etc. But that's the
biggie. That's the big what they call
zeitgeabber. That's the classic language
in the circadian literature. The classic
timekeeper. It means timekeeper. So if
you miss a day, double up on the amount
you get outside the next day. This, by
the way, is also why when you travel
someplace, your circadian clock doesn't
shift right away. It's still on your
previous city's schedule. It takes a few
days for things to adjust. That's a bad
thing when you travel. It's called jet
lag. It's a great thing when you're at
home because it gives you some
flexibility. So, you don't have to
optimize everything to the point where
you're like 20 minutes every day, 10
minutes every day. Get 20 minutes one
day, get five the next, perhaps get 15
the next. Do what you can. More photons,
better as long as you blink to protect
your eyes. But if you're getting fewer
photons, make it a little bit longer and
give yourself some ease. Give yourself
some grace. These mechanisms will take
really good care of you all on their
own. And next question, please.
>> Hello, Dr. Hub Berman. My name is Dr.
Datillos, MD. I have a simple question
about longevity and optimization
culture. I've seen people be strict and
diligent with their optimal protocols.
However, sometimes it becomes a source
of stress. When would you say longevity
protocols do more bad than good if
people worry about them?
>> Oh, thank you so much, doctor. I'm just
going to refer to you as doctor because
forgive me, I couldn't make out the
pronunciation of your name and if I were
to attempt it, I would probably not get
it right. So, uh, forgive me. I'm just
going to refer to you as doctor. But I'm
also going to extend my gratitude for
your question again because I know a lot
of people are thinking about this
overoptimization question issue these
days and it's a very important one. You
know I've uh spent the last six years or
so talking about protocols for health
for all sorts of things on the Huberman
Lab podcast and others have of as well
of course and the real issue I think
that everyone's dealing with right now
is kind of protocol overwhelm like like
what am I supposed to do? I barely have
time to do the basics and now we're, you
know, getting right down into the
details of, you know, particular
mechanisms at particular times of day.
Like, what am I supposed to do? Here's
the big picture. At least in my opinion,
optimization in its truest form is about
addressing each day of your life as an
independent unit and asking yourself,
okay, what can I do today to set myself
up for the best possible day given the
constraints upon me? Right? Maybe you're
dealing with a sick family member. Maybe
you're dealing with jet lag. Maybe
you're dealing with a deadline. You
know, I've dealt with all these things,
some of them recently. Maybe you're
dealing with being extremely well-rested
and you're on vacation and you wonder if
you should just kind of take the day off
and relax. These are real life issues
and optimization has to meet those real
life issues, not the other way around.
So optimization is about stepping back
and saying, "Okay, what are the things I
really enjoy doing and that clearly give
me energy, clearly make me feel better?"
These are the ones that are easy to do.
For me, that's getting morning sunlight.
It's hydrating in the morning. It's
exercise. I happen to like exercise.
Okay? Some days more, some days less,
but I happen to like it. Some people
loathe it. Okay? If you like a
particular protocol, you're more likely
to do it. That just stands to reason.
But then we also have to ask ourselves,
what are the most important protocols to
do consistently over time? And those are
very straightforward. Everyone knows
what those are. You want to do what you
can to get the best possible sleep.
Enough of it and high quality sleep. But
we're all human and it's also great to
stay out late doing fun things every
once in a while. Perfectly fine. I do
that. All of you should give yourself
permission to do that. In my opinion,
you will be just fine in the short and
in the long term. Okay. I do believe
that getting bright light in our eyes,
ideally from sunlight in the first hours
of the day, is one of the things to
really strive for because it's so brief.
It costs nothing and it is so well
supported by human data to create to
create excuse me outsized positive
effects on your mental and physical
health. It sets everything into its
right place. But as I just talked about
a few minutes ago to the previous
question, if you miss it one day, no big
deal. The next day, just make up for it.
I do think that a neurotic approach to
trying to get everything exactly right
is going to harm our mental health.
Maybe not severely in the short term,
but in the long run, it's just going to
lead to a different kind of burnout.
Kind of health optimization burnout,
which again is not about true
optimization anyway. So, we say morning
sunlight, great. Dimming the lights at
night. These are all zerocost, very
effective ways to improve our health and
well-being. If you're under the bright
lights at an event or doing something
fun, or god forbid, you have to be at
the hospital for a loved one or you
yourself in the hospital and the lights
are bright, you'll be okay. You want to
try and mitigate that if you're
confronted with it day after day after
day. You may get an eye mask, etc. But
every once in a while, no big deal. We
know that hydration is critical and is
very overlooked as a tool for increasing
energy and well-being. This is just
true, right? Most people don't think of
hydration as, you know, as exciting or
interesting, but it's very, very
important for mental clarity, physical
and mental energy. So, do that, right?
People argue how much you need to drink,
whether or not your urine needs to be
clear or not. It doesn't, by the way,
but making sure that you're getting
enough fluids. And by the way, the idea
that all fluids that aren't water are
dehydrating you, including coffee and
caffeine, the literature just doesn't
support that. I do think you should
drink some just good old water every
once in a while, but if you're getting a
lot of your liquids from, you know, I
drink a lot of yerba mate or coffee,
you're getting hydrated. Okay? Also,
drink some water if you can. And then we
know that exercise, nutrition, and
social connection are also vital. These
are the core pillars. Now, it's highly
individual as to whether or not somebody
needs these every single day, right? I
resistance training three times a week.
I do cardio three times a week. So,
that's six days a week of exercise. But
some of those sessions, in particular,
the high-intensity interval training,
it's very brief. 6 to 12 minutes to get
a sort of quote unquote max heart rate
V2 max type workout and very brief. One
of the cardiovascular exercise training
sessions is longer. It's an hourlong
hike or jog once a week. You have to
figure out what you can do consistently
over time. This is the other critical
feature. Overoptimization is going to
come from feeling that you have to do
everything all the time, right? Which
undoubtedly will lead to mental or some
other form of burnout or resentment of
this whole protocols health optimization
thing. It's what you can do consistently
over time. And when I say over time, I
don't mean your whole life. When I was
in graduate school, I literally only
exercised two to three days a week
because I was in lab all the time, but I
was going back and forth to the, you
know, I had to go to the vivarium. I had
to go back and forth and back. I was
doing so much physical activity. So, two
or three times a week. I wasn't happy
about that, but I was in heaven doing
experiments and I love doing science.
So, I was full and I was young, too. So,
I probably offset some of the whatever
health detriments would have been there.
And I didn't take very good care of my
sleep. It eventually caught up with me.
I made adjustments to my sleep. So what
I'm trying to say here is that true
optimization is about taking a rational
look at your life over the next 6 months
or year or if you're confronting a
deadline over the next month or two or
if you have a newborn child over the
next, you know, 6 to 12 months and
you're, you know, as anyone who's had a
kid will tell you, you know, you have to
constantly update what you can do and
what you can't do at particular times of
day because your job is to make sure
that they are taken care of first and
then that you're taken care of, right?
Uh this is obvious, but optimization is
not going to be about being rigid. It's
going to be about being adaptive. So
there's no simple prescriptive like when
you travel, cut back on exercise. In
fact, when I travel, I try to exercise
as much or more than when I'm at home
because I tend to do better on travel,
less jet lag, etc. I actually try to eat
better when I'm traveling. That means
mostly unprocessed or minimally
processed foods. And I enjoy doing that.
For some people going on vacation for
them is really just an opportunity to
just like I just want to be a complete
you know uh lazy lump and enjoy myself.
Okay, if that's your thing that's your
thing. You are in charge. I think this
is the key point. You are in charge of
which health quote unquote optimization
protocols you use. You are in charge of
which ones you don't use. I think the
burnout and the stress that people are
experiencing and I do think your point
is a good one that it can be detrimental
if we internalize the stress. I have to
I have to I have to can only be
addressed one of three ways. The first
one is to change your attitude about it.
Okay. Well, do I like this? Do I like
the effects? All right. Well, if I don't
like it, but I like the effects and
they're big enough for me, cool. I'll do
it anyway. Ideally, you like it and you
like the effects, right? That's ideal.
You're more likely to do those things.
The next one is you have to ask
yourself, can I be consistent about
this? Can I be consistent with six
workouts a week, even though some are
very short? Maybe I just need to work
out longer three times a week, or maybe
you just get two times a week to work
out. Can you eat clean, mostly
unprocessed, minally processed foods,
plenty of fiber, plenty of low sugar
fermented foods, get enough protein,
etc. whatever that means to you if
you're vegan, vegetarian or you, you
know, eat meat does, you know, everyone
has their different, you know, kind of
regimens. But you need to be able to do
that in a way that you enjoy. I like
eating healthy food, okay? I don't
really feel good after eating garbage
food. So, I don't like garbage food. I'm
not drawn to garbage food, but some
people really like their their treats.
They like their quote unquote bad food.
You're going to have to allow yourself a
little bit of that if you're going to
remain a happy person. And certainly if
you're going to resent all of the
process, that's the third category. If
you're going to resent something, you're
going to resent yourself or whoever you
think told you to do it. Look, I don't
tell anyone what to do. I make
suggestions that you can take or leave.
And that's what other people in the
public health communication space are
doing, too. So, you know, and this is
true for alcohol, too, as well. You
know, I've talked a lot about alcohol.
Zero is better than any. Two is probably
fine for non-alcoholic adults, etc.,
etc. But that doesn't mean that I
condemn people that drink. I personally
don't like drinking. I feel better when
I don't. But I have many people in my
life that enjoy having a drink every
once in a while and I've insisted that
they not apologize to me when they order
a glass of wine. I don't want that. I,
you know, that can only lead to resent.
Okay. So, the big one is to ask yourself
what you can do consistently over time.
And then really understand what that
time word means for you. This week, this
month, this period of your life. And
just be willing to be flexible, update,
and then check yourself for resentments,
right? Do you resent me? Do you resent
the world that's telling you to do this
or are you like, "Oh, this is cool."
Like, "I can take it or leave it." You
know, you're your own person. I'm
telling you this to everyone, not just
you, uh, doctor. Uh, of course, I'm
telling this to everyone. You're your
own person. You are in charge of you.
Self-care for you is going to mean
something different than it does to me
or somebody else. And by no means should
you feel guilty for coming off the the
the gas a little bit, as we say, and
like easing up a little bit. And I will
make this point. By no means should any
of you feel guilty for doing every
little thing perfectly as you see
perfect to be because you enjoy that and
because you think it makes you feel
better. Do not apologize for being you.
That's the most important point. And I
think that's what real optimization is
about. You know, the saying that I've
put out on social media a few times over
the years, but perhaps I haven't put out
enough is do what you want for you,
provided you're not hurting anyone else.
But know what you're doing. This podcast
is about trying to educate people about
what they're doing when they do A or B,
what you might benefit from if you do A
or B, but you have to be your own
laboratory, and most importantly, like I
just said, be you. I'd like to take a
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questions. So, let's get another.
>> Hello, Dr. Huberman. My name is Sarah
and I come from the south of England in
the UK. And I would love to know what
your top health hacks um from a
neuroscience perspective were for
improving your memory and also improving
your sense of smell. Um, those two
things I would really like to work on
and I was wondering if you could tell me
what the best things to try would be.
>> Great. Well, thank you Sarah from south
of England. Just came back from London
recently. Used to get over there a lot
more uh to the UK. It's a lovely place.
I won't attempt my British accent, but
I'm envious of the British accent. It's
um delightful. Okay. Neuroscience
supported tools for improving memory.
There is a vast neuroscience literature
on memory in particular that memories
are encoded, right? They're first made
in the structure that we call the
hippocampus. You actually have two of
them, hippocampi, one on each side of
your brain. And then memories once
they're formed are kind of pushed out.
They're not really pushed out, but
they're sent to uh different circuits in
the neoortex, which is the outer part of
the brain, the bumpy part of the brain
that appears wrinkly uh when the skull
is removed. And what we know about that
process is that memories change from
when we first make them to when they're
first stored to many years later
depending on whether we rehearse or we
have to recall in some instances what
those memories were. Meaning a memory
that you formed in the fifth grade that
might have been very relevant to your
life then. remembering the the um
intersection where a good friend, not
your best friend, but a good friend uh
lived and how to navigate there.
Important perhaps when you were friends
with that person in the fifth grade, not
later. Right? So, the memory was made.
It was put into your neoortex
and elsewhere presumably and eventually
it just sort of dissipates, but it's
still there. And the reason I'm giving
you this brief neuroscience lesson, this
and it's only a tiny tiny fraction of
what we know about the formation and
storage of memories, is because when
you're thinking about neuroscience
supported ways to increase your memory,
there's really two approaches to that.
One is about recall of things that you
very likely will lose if you don't
continue to practice them. The other is
about learning new things. Okay? And
these operate differently in terms of
how your brain is able to remember
additional things going forward. In
other words, you need to practice both
forms of memory. That is recalling
previous memories to keep them available
to you as well as learning new things in
order to keep the whole memory system
vital and able to continue to both
remember things like names, which people
often are upset that they start
forgetting as they get older. that they
see that as a warning sign that they
might be developing dementia or
something of that sort, which it isn't
necessarily, I should point out, and
their ability to continue to learn new
things. So, we can break this down into
either a 4-hour podcast or a brief
answer. And I'm going to try and provide
a brief but sufficient for now answer
for you and anyone else interested in
this issue.
If you are interested in forming new
memories, the most important pieces of
the formula are the following. And this
is very well supported in the
neuroscience literature. You must be
focused at the time of encoding. At the
time when you're trying to learn the
thing. Okay, that means you also have to
be alert. There's no focus without
alertness. That also means getting good
sleep. That also means exercise. And
this is a point about exercise and brain
longevity that most people miss, which
is that many, not all, but many of the
benefits of exercise on brain health and
memory are because of the pro- arousal
effects of exercise. Meaning, if you do
a 30-minute jog or brisk walk even, or
you do a moderate to high-intensity
resistance training session, or you hop
on a uh like an one of those uh
aerodyine bikes with a with a fan, which
you'll quickly learn is not designed to
cool you off, but rather to provide
resistance and you warm up for a minute
and then you sprint hard for a minute or
half a minute and then, you know, pedal
easy for a minute and then go 30 seconds
again. That sort of thing will get your
heart rate up up. There is now a vast
literature showing that all those forms
of exercise and others as well. Even
things as mellow as Tai Chi, which turns
out to be pretty difficult. I tried it
recently. It's not that easy to do
correctly. Tai Chi, a yoga class, all
forms of exercise because they raise
your levels of autonomic arousal and
alertness. And they get these again the
catakolamines is a repeating theme, the
dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine,
and circulating. Yes, they increase
things like brain derived neutrophic
factor etc. They set you up to learn
better in part because of the chemicals
and their ability to make your brain
connections more plastic. But the
biggest effect of exercise is the
pro-arousal effect. Put differently, it
increases alertness which allows you to
focus better which is the first real
step in triggering learning and
neuroplasticity. So this is a very
important point for people to understand
because people want to hear ah you know
um it's this form of exercise or that
form of exercise. It's the form of
exercise that gives you a boost in
alertness. Sure BDNF and there are other
things too. IGF-1. I mean, why could
make a list of 50 chemicals that
exercise increases that facilitate
neuroplasticity? But the most potent
effects are by virtue of the fact that
exercise increases arousal, which then
allows you to focus better in the
following one to six hours.
What do you do in those 1 to six hours
is really the key to actually learning
something that benefits your memory.
Just being more alert but not focused on
anything specific is not going to help
your memory specifically. Okay? It might
facilitate brain health. So the exercise
thing is the first domino that needs to
fall, but if you can be alert and really
focused on any kind of learning without
doing exercise first, yes, you should
still exercise for other reasons, but
there's nothing special about exercise
in terms of neuroplasticity of learning
other things except this arousal effect.
Okay. Alertness allows you to be
focused. When you're focused, the
neuroscience tells us that you have to
make errors. You have to make errors.
Whether or not you're trying to learn
dance, you're trying to learn uh do a
cross word puzzle, you're trying to get
better at chess, you're trying to learn
um how to code, you're trying to learn
um how to be different in certain social
interactions, whatever it is you're
trying to learn or a physical skill, you
have to push yourself past the limits of
your abilities. Why? Well, put simply,
if your nervous system can carry out
something that you're trying to do,
there is absolutely no reason for it to
change. Period. End of story. You have
to make errors through deliberate
effort to do things correctly, right?
You can't just do throwaway errors.
Like, you can't go just, this is
obvious, but just for sake of uh
example, you can't go out to the tennis
court and intentionally miss a bunch of
of serves and get better at serving.
That's obvious, right? What you have to
do is serve to the best of your ability.
serve to the best of your ability. And
when you fail, when you screw up, that
sends a signal through a very
interesting set of circuits that's
relayed through your mini brain, as they
call your cerebellum in the back that
then carries the error signal forward,
and then the rest of your brain has to
reshape itself. And here's a critical
point. The reshaping occurs during deep
rest, in particular, sleep. Both
slowwave deep sleep and rapid eye
movement sleep, which we talked about
earlier in this episode. Both are
crucial. Some people need six hours of
sleep a night, some seven, some eight,
some nine. Okay, do your best to get
what you need consistently. So you need
that sleep in the ideally the night
after you try and learn something or
every night. Please see previous
question about the problems with
overoptimization. I don't want anyone to
take these things as rule of law. If you
don't sleep well for a night or two,
it's not like your learning is
completely nuked, but you don't want to
do that consistently. The deep rest
piece is critical. But then there's
another one. There's a really impressive
literature that shows and this is backed
by neuroscience. Okay, so brain imaging,
it's backed by performance, which is
perhaps the most important thing,
people's ability to learn new
information. And remember the other
important aspect of memory to call back
memories of things from the past, and
it's self- testing. This is the most
overlooked powerful protocol for
neuroplasticity. In fact, I covered a
bunch of studies on this in the how to
study and learn episode of the podcast.
I'm guessing a bunch of students watch
that podcast. Very popular episode. Um,
but I'm guessing a lot of non-
studentents probably didn't because the
word study probably sounded like if
you're not in school, this wouldn't be
relevant. But it's highly re relevant.
And here are the the key takeaways.
People were given a passage of
information to read and they could
either do it once, twice, three times,
or four times. This has been done with
multiple uh iterations in different
studies. Some studies included taking
notes. Some studies included
highlighting. You know, all the
different ways that people study
information to try and learn. By far the
most impactful thing for forming stable
memories over time or calling back old
memories to keep this memory system
thriving was self- testing. That self-
testing can take the form of just, hm,
can I do a mental walk back to my
friend's house from the fifth grade?
Now, you have to ask yourself, is this
relevant information for your life now?
Well, perhaps not, but maybe you're just
testing your memory system, right? And
here's the key. Errors should be
expected and embraced. Whether you're
trying to learn some new information
from two days ago, whether you're trying
to remember information from uh three
years ago or 30 years ago, when you
can't remember, that's your nervous
system's cue that it's going to need to
draw it out of those circuits which are
now in your neoortex. It's deep within
your memory. Although it's a bit of a
misnomer because your hippocampus sits
deeper to your cortex, but anyway,
that's a nerdy side point. It's
distributed out there and you need to
call it back. And the only way to really
call back those memories in a way that
they're going to stay with you going
forward to keep your memory and keep
these circuits going that allow you to
continue to form new memories keep this
whole system robust is to make errors
where you go I can't remember what came
after three
in well question one of the Hubberman
Lab podcast Q&A like right now what was
that third thing? So you have to test
yourself. Now, if you go right back and
you just get the information, that's not
going to help you much. That's just like
reading it again or hearing it again or
highlighting it, it's not going to help
you that much. You have to remember what
you can remember and then you have to
hit the point of ah, I can't remember
that. Darn it. That friction point, that
tip of the tongue phenomenon. Like, I
can't remember that person's name.
Great. Those memories are now
resurfacing. If you wait some period of
time, typically they come back. If you
have to go look them up later, great.
You won't forget them as readily as if,
of course, you didn't go look them up.
The point here is that all of learning
is anti-forgetting. It almost sounds
like a giant duh when you hear it, but
all of learning and memory is
anti-forgetting. And we need to push
both the learning, right? Alertness,
focus, trigger that plasticity. Deep
rest and sleep allow the plasticity to
actually occur. The physical reshaping
of circuitry that's going to carry those
memories. But then we have to
consolidate that over time. We have to
recall it. Okay? and self- testing with
errors, pushing ourselves to the point
where we can't remember something and
then looking it up and reconsolidating
it. That's the key. That's what the
neuroscience literature says. That's
what the psychological literature says.
And there's just so much data to support
this. So Sarah, my suggestion would be
test yourself on things that you're
interested in learning regardless of
whether the learning occurred recently
or it's from the the past. Both forms of
of testing yourself. And again, this can
just be done mentally on a walk. You
could write down questions for yourself.
Most people won't do that. These days,
I'll use chat GPT to test myself on
material either from a podcast or even
some material that I learned long ago
and I'll sort of say design a basic test
at the level of kind of second year
graduate school at I don't know for me
it was you know graduate school
neuroscience and you know in synaptic
transmission. And I of course remember
that stuff, but they're little details
that over time, if you don't practice,
can Wayne. And of course, I'm learning
new things all the time. And in order to
put those to memory to really
consolidate those, I'll use chat GBT to
generate a a test for myself. And it is
really good because I can say, you know
what, that was too easy. Make it harder.
Okay. So, there's a lot more to say
about that. Um, I suggest listening to
the how to study and learn episode if
you'd like to go deeper into that. We've
done a number of episodes on memory,
including working memory elsewhere. But
the general themes here are consistent
across all forms of memory, all ages,
and all forms of learning. Your second
question, Sarah, was about how to
improve sense of smell. The one very
wellsupported way is to test yourself on
smells, to actually take a lemon. You
will probably also want a quite
different smell, maybe a rose, maybe
some chocolate. This could be a fun one
to do. Any number of different smells.
Let's avoid noxious smells. And I'll
tell you why you can avoid noxious
smells in this because there's a
hardwired pathway for that. You never
you actually never uh lose your core
ability to detect noxious smells unless
you've had some damage to the alactory
system. It's a different pathway. But
all these other smells, coffee, you can
lay those out and you simply want to
take some time to
do more sniffs than you think you need
to do. We had a very popular episode of
the podcast with Noom soil who's one of
the world experts in uh olfaction in in
our ability to detect smells and he
taught there and I followed up on what
he taught and it's a beautiful
literature showing that our sense of
smell is actually on par with that of
canines. I know dogs and you might say
that's impossible. Well, it turns out
that if you look at the sheer number of
olfactory neurons, we don't have quite
as many but we're headed in that
direction.
our ability to smell at a given level
and their ability to smell at a
remarkably higher level has much more to
do with the amount of sniffing that they
do per unit time than the olfactory
system itself. And it turns out that
some people can get really really good
at detecting smells. The alactory
neurons, the ones that are critically
involved in our sense of smell, not only
do they turn over throughout the
lifespan. So this is very different than
other central nervous system neurons,
which you basically get one set for
life. There are a few others that turn
over, but the alactory neurons are
really the world heavyweight champions
of turnover throughout the lifespan.
You're constantly turning them over.
That turnover and their tuning to
particular smells, which translates to
your ability to smell, is activity
dependent. It requires the electrical
activity of those neurons. How do you
generate the electrical activity of
those neurons? You sniff. Sniffing is
what does it and smelling particular
odors is what does it as well. You need
those two things in combination
obviously. So,
or and really paying attention. So,
close your eyes. Try and make it a quiet
environment. There's some background
noise. No big deal. If this is in a
crowded restaurant or something, give a
really good set of sniffs, a really good
deep long inhale. Why am I telling you
this? Well, the more act times that you
sniff, the longer those inhales, the
more those cells fire in the presence of
that odor. And by the way, odors are the
actual molecules of that thing entering
your nose, which is why we're not
talking about noxious things as well.
It's clear now why this is such a
beautiful system. I could talk about it
for hours, but I'm going to keep this
brief going forward. I promise just a
few more minutes. Dogs, when they sniff,
they're actually getting many more
sniffs through one inhale. How can that
be? Well, if you've ever seen that sort
of J-shaped nostril on uh the dog's
nose, it's kind of like little notches
on the sides. It creates a a physical
environment where every inhale, keeps
the odor in and keeps it circulating.
So, they're spending a lot of time with
each odor, even if they smelled
something a few seconds or even minutes
ago. They're integrating odors across
space. They actually have stereo, which
simply means they're comparing the odors
coming in through one nostril versus
another unconsciously presumably paying
attention to odor plumes, what direction
they're coming from. They are so
spectacular. In particular, the scent
hounds. Other animals do this too of
course, but dogs are a great example.
And so when they sniff what's there,
they're getting a rich amount of
information in part because they have a
lot of neurons to detect it, but also
because they're paying total attention.
Watch a dog when it's really fixated on
a smell. They're almost, you know, it
almost seems as if they're deaf to
anything you're you're saying and blind
to anything that's around. They're
really focused. They're cutting out all
other sensory cues and they're spending
a lot of time with that odor by virtue
of the physical structure of their nose.
There's a beautiful literature on this,
by the way. So, to build up your sense
of smell, spend some time with some
smells. Inhale longer.
Pay attention. Focus on it. This might
sound like kind of just kind of trivial,
you know, uh, nuts and bolts type stuff,
like, oh yeah, well, of course, right?
You know, how else would I build up my
sense of smell? But this is really the
way that the activity dependent rewiring
and reestablishment of this ongoing
turnover of this population of neurons
occurs. Now, if you have a respiratory
illness or uh god forbid someone takes a
head hit, the cribopform plate, which is
a kind of it's like a Swiss cheese
shaped uh bone at the back of the nose
where the alactory uh neuron axons go
through, they can often get sheared off
and people can become so-called adnosmic
anosmic. So, they can't smell for some
period of time. And a lot of people
think they'll never get their smell
back, but these sorts of things have
been shown to help, especially
immediately after the injury. Although
there is some evidence that uh you can
get enhanced smell over time. And if you
haven't had such an injury, you can
really build up your sense of smell. So
improving our sense of smell is vital
enough that when it's reduced or
removed, it can be really rough on
people in a serious way. Okay? It um it
can really in inhibit their quality of
life. But if you're going to put in
major effort to get your sense of smell
back, well then I can just say if it
were me, I would do the kind of smell
training or I should say the multiple
sniff training. All right, let's hear
your next question.
>> Hi, this is Van Spina. There's a lot of
advice on the internet around eating
specific foods for fertility. What do
you see in the literature around any
specific foods that boost either male or
female fertility beyond just eating a
healthy balanced diet?
>> Thank you, Van, for your question. This
is a very interesting question and I've
hosted a number of guests on the
Hubberman Lab podcast, including some
female fertility experts. I had a
discussion about male hormone health and
fertility with Dr. Kyle Gillette who's a
medical doctor and there are a couple of
basic principles that apply to both men
and to women. So I'll cover those first
and those at least in the context of
nutrition can be summarized the
following way. You need adequate
calories to ensure fertility but you
don't want an excess of calories. Now
that might seem obvious but when you
think about it a little bit more deeply
it has some important implications not
just about caloric load but food choices
as well. So, I was in a discussion with
Dr. Kyle Gillette, MD, who is truly an
expert in male hormone health and
fertility. And we were talking on the
podcast a while ago, and I've had some
offline conversations with him as well
about should men be wary of cutting
calories too much if they want to have
their testosterone and their fertility
in the ideal range. Okay, what are we
talking about when we talk about ideal?
Yes, there's a reference range, the
so-called 300 NOGS per deciliter up to
typically 900 or in some countries 1,200
NOGS per deciliter. That's a huge
reference range. But keep in mind that
that's just one indication of hormone
health and testosterone health. There's
also your free testosterone, which is
critical. There's also the testosterone
to estrogen ratio. And contrary to what
many people believe, men do not ideally
want their testosterone really high and
their estrogen really really low because
estrogen is is actually very important.
So we were having this general
discussion and Dr. Gillette explained it
very simply. If a man is carrying excess
body weight, if he's starting to carry
more than, say, 20% body fat, then he
would be wise to cut calories to a
submaintenance level and lose some of
that body fat, ideally while doing
resistance training in order to preserve
or even build muscle and bring that body
fat percentage down. And that's going to
improve his testosterone, free
testosterone, and other hormone markers
of verility, vitality, and fertility.
However, he pointed out that if a male
is, you know, 15% body fat or less, if
he cuts calories below maintenance level
for too long, so I'm not talking about
one or two days per week. I'm talking
about consistently across the week, six
or seven days per week perhaps, and
doing that for two or three or more
weeks in order to lower body fat
percentage. That's very likely to reduce
his testosterone and free testosterone
levels. And in the context of fertility
that could could potentially have a
negative impact on his fertility. Now
fertility in males has a number of
different metrics. Okay? It's it's not
assessed by just one thing. It's not
just sperm count. It's also sperm
quality which has a number of different
measures itself. Fortunately, the
measures of male fertility in the
context of a sperm sample are very
inexpensive to obtain nowadays. Uh
there's some mail home kits that men can
use uh if they'd like to do that at
home. There are clinics that can do
this. It's and it's very inexpensive and
easy to assess. So, if you're a male and
you're interested in conceiving or
you're just generally thinking about
your fertility given some other things
you might be doing or your medical
history, you might want to get a sperm
analysis. It's easy to do. It's
inexpensive. All of that is fairly
straightforward to do nowadays and you
can get a snapshot into your fertility
at basically any age and in the context
of other medications and things that you
might be taking. Okay, so that's the
caloric either excess. Okay, so men who
are carrying excess body fat should try
and get that body fat level down. Men
who are in a healthier range of body fat
percentage would be wise to not go into
at least a severe caloric deficit. Okay,
probably no more than 500 calories per
day caloric deficit for extended periods
of time if you're thinking about
conceiving or you want to maintain
fertility. And then I should just put
this out there and this wasn't part of
the question, but I know there's a lot
of interest nowadays in testosterone
replacement therapy, be aware, this is
the critical point. If you take
exogenous testosterone, even a little
bit, even if you're quote unquote micro
doing it, so less than 100 milligrams
per week or so, it will negatively
impact your sperm count. It will
negatively impact your sperm count. It
can be partially to completely offset by
taking hCG which is typically taken you
know something like 500 IUs three times
a week. Some people do higher doses etc
alongside the the testosterone therapy.
But if you don't take hCG and you're
taking any kind of exogenous
testosterone because of the negative
feedback loop by which testosterone is
is made in the in the male body it will
deplete your sperm count. Okay. And
whether you can bring that sperm count
back up with hCG and other therapies
later on. Usually the answer is yes. But
sometimes the answer is no. So you want
to be very careful, very, very careful
about using exogenous testosterone. Do
it in the context of a well-informed
doctor. Let them know your fertility
goals and let them also tell you that
your fertility goals may change over
time. So if you're like, I don't want
kids, maybe someday you will and you
need to think about that. Maybe even
just freeze a sperm sample. Okay. for
women
who on average carry higher percentages
of body fat than do men, right? The same
general principle applies and this is
based on conversations that I've had
with Dr. Natalie Crawford who's a
fertility expert and I've had other
fertility experts on the podcast, Dr.
Tais Aliabati and they agree on several
things related to female fertility
generally in this context of nutrition
and calories and and so forth which is
if a woman is carrying a much higher
than is healthy percentage of body fat
there's a higher degree of inflammation
in the body and it would be wise to try
and bring that percentage of body fat
down somewhat or even considerably if
the goal is to get pregnant. the general
principle of if you're carrying excess
body fat, then trying to reduce that by
virtue of eating a submaintenance, not
by a ridiculous amount, but a
submaintenance caloric intake for some
period of time in a healthy way. Still
eating a nutrient-dense diet and so
forth, getting enough protein, getting
enough fiber, getting enough fruits and
vegetables and micronutrients, but
bringing that body fat percentage down,
excuse me, often can help. But as most
everybody knows, if a woman's body fat
percentage comes down too far, she may
stop menrating entirely or it could
adversely impact fertility in other
ways. So that's really a discussion that
you have to have with your OB/GYN. The
point being, you don't want to be too
lean, nor do you want to be carrying too
much excess body fat. What all the
physicians who work on either male andor
female fertility
agree on is that you want to consume a
low inflammation diet. Okay. What's a
low inflammation diet? Well, immediately
people jump to okay lots of fruits and
vegetables and you lots of fiber and you
know Mediterranean diet. Yes. Yes. And
we need to add a bit more information
here. High in micronutrient diet is
something that's often overlooked. And
in terms of reducing inflammation in the
body, I'm aware of one study that talks
about specifically what to do in
addition to what not to do because I
think we all now know too much
hyperprocessed food, you know, too much
packaged food, any food that can survive
for long periods of time on the shelf in
its near to ready eat form is considered
highly processed, right? You know, when
I talk about, you know, rice can sit for
a long time on the shelf, but it has to
be prepared, right? So, you're not
really processing it, you're preparing
it. But yes, fresh fruits and
vegetables. Yes, lean proteins like
chicken and fish. Probably some lean red
meat like beef if that's with within
your diet as well. Eating
monounsaturated fats like olive oil. I
think we all know this stuff by now.
Lentils, rice, starches, but not too
many. So, the whole idea behind this
lowinflammation diet is really also
thinking about micronutrients that are
going to be rich in fruits and
vegetables, eating quality proteins.
When I say quality proteins, it's about
high quality protein to calorie ratio.
Meaning, look at foods like lean beef,
chicken, fish, if you like shellfish,
scallops, this sort of thing. Think of
those as quality protein with all the
essential amino acids without, you know,
a high caloric load. The fruits, the
vegetables, and some of the starches
without excess fats. And if you're going
to eat fats, mostly unsaturated fats,
maybe a little bit of saturated fat from
the animal proteins. That's basically
the low inflammation diet. And I
mentioned there's one thing specifically
that has been shown in the human
literature to reduce inflammation and
that's low sugar fermented foods. Highly
overlooked, highly beneficial. This has
been shown in a beautiful study from my
colleagues Justin Sonnenberg and
Christopher uh Gardner at Stanford
University School of Medicine. people
were given either a low sugar fermented
food um sort of call to action to eat
more of those each day or increase their
fiber intake pretty marketkedly. They
did a ramp up because they need to you
need to do that kind of slowly for a few
weeks in order to get your system
acclimated to it. You don't want to go
from like no low sugar fermented foods
to tons of them. But slowly adding, you
know, a few servings a day, one serving,
two servings, you know, up to about four
servings a day, which isn't very much by
the way. you know, few spoonfuls here,
some, you know, Bulgarian yogurt there,
you know, maybe some low sugar kombucha
there, and, you know, you're getting
essentially what they quote unquote
prescribed in this diet for the
subjects. What they saw is that many
inflammatory markers were significantly
reduced in the low sugar fermented food
group. Whereas in the fiber addition
group, they found something interesting.
Some people who significantly increase
their fiber intake experienced a
reduction in inflammatory markers.
Others had an increase in inflammatory
markers. Does that mean fiber is bad?
No. It means that certain types of
high-fiber foods might cause some
inflammation in some people, not others.
And that's a important discussion going
forward. Personally, I have family
members who will take some selium husk,
like a small amount of pselium husk.
It's very inexpensive to increase fiber.
So, you could do that route, but ideally
eating fruits and vegetables plus maybe
a little bit of that for increasing
fiber is going to benefit most people
terms of colon health and reducing
inflammation. But the low sugar
fermented foods is a recommendation that
you know I've certainly adopted into my
own life. I eat Bulgarian yogurt. I eat
sauerkraut. It's you have to eat the
type that needs to be refrigerated. And
the low sugar part is important. So no,
we're not talking about beer. We're not
talking about sweetened pickles. We're
not talking about that sort of thing.
We're talking about the stuff that has
to be in the refrigerator. Natto,
kimchi, and so on. And really striving
for the low sugar variety. So low
inflammation diet. Okay, that's enough
about diet. I touched a little bit on
TRT in discussions with the other people
I mentioned earlier in this answer as
well as in the episode that I did about
male and female fertility which
admittedly is a very long episode. In
that episode I did touch on some of the
things that have some I want to be
really careful have shown some positive
impact on egg quality which is an
important um metric when trying to
conceive as well as sperm quality. I
talked about some of those metrics as
well. And those include things like
Lcarnitine,
co-enzyme Q10. Why would those be
potentially useful? And I should mention
when having discussions with now three
different fertility doctors, okay, about
male and female fertility. Okay, so
we're talking sperm and egg health and
quality. All three of them say, "Yeah, I
recommend to my patients co-enzyme Q10.
I recommend to my patients some LC
carnitine. Some fertility experts will
also recommend other things. And for
that, I'll just cue you to Natalie
Crawford's excellent book on the titled
the fertility formula as well as her
podcast episode that she did with us
where she gets into some details of some
other things that can be beneficial
because some experts will recommend
things like lowd dose melatonin at night
presumably to improve sleep uh perhaps
other things as well. Some don't. Some
will recommend DHEA, others not. So here
I'm just going to focus on the overlap
in the vin diagram as they say where
everyone says yep I recommend that to my
patients. I don't think it's necessary
for my patients but as long as they're
trying to increase their fertility their
egg quality or their sperm quality I
suggest they do it if they can afford
it. And that's Lcarnitine and co-enzyme
Q10. Both of which have been shown to
well in the case of males to improve
sperm motility. not so much count but
motility and quote unquote quality
because that's a multimetric
label quality as well as egg quality and
Lcarnitine can be taken orally as
capsules. Typically those are high
higher dosages. So those can be as high
as you know 500 milligrams or 750
milligrams a day. You don't absorb as
much of it when you take it orally. Some
people will actually do the injectable
form of Lcarnitine. And then with
co-enzyme Q10 the dosage recommendations
vary. I'll point you to Natalie's
podcast with me. We'll put a link to
that particular segment in the show note
caption. But these are the things that
seem to help with egg quality and sperm
quality. Why? Because they seem to
indirectly, perhaps directly, but
indirectly support mitochondrial health.
And so much of what's happening in
conception and the formation of the
early embryo is about taking that
fertilized egg and creating more cells
from it. And that's highly dependent on
a number of different factors that
mitochondria are critical for. And
mitochondrial health within the early
embryo, within the egg and the and the
sperm, but within the early embryo is
crucial for the normal development to
lead to a successful pregnancy. So I
want to be really clear. I'm not saying
that the lynchpin factor in fertility is
co-enzyme Q10 or it's Lcarnitine. It's
going to be multivaried. I think the
most important thing is to set a context
for overall reproductive health. So
that's going to be bodywide keeping
inflammation relatively low through the
low inflammation diet, exercise being
critical. So yes, nutrition, sleep being
a critical one to keep inflammation low,
you know, and so on and so on and so on.
a lot of it's age dependent. There
probably is some genetic variation, but
if somebody's struggling to achieve or
maintain fertility or somebody's at the
kind of um age threshold where they're
more and more concerned about these
things, then it just stands to reason to
do more to try and support fertility.
So, if you're trying to get your
fertility in the right direction for
you, well, these things have been shown
to help. I'd like to take a quick break
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question, please.
>> Hello, Dr. Hubberman. This is Josima
from Brazil. My question is as women
enter pmenopause, what is the actual
impact on mental health during this
stage? Is it common for women to
experience more panic attacks or panic
disorder symptoms or are these not
related to perry menopause? If they are
related, how long do these symptoms
typically last? Thank you so much.
>> Thank you, Joseada. I think that is the
pronunciation of your name and forgive
me if it's not. Thank you, Joseada, for
your question. We received a lot of
questions about pmenopause and menopause
um suggested treatments, what's new in
the literature and so on. And so I just
want to start off by saying that this
topic and set of questions deserves an
entire episode of the Hubberman Lab
podcast or indeed several. And I've been
looking for guests uh to have this
discussion with in more depth. So I want
to be very clear about that. We have
also done a few episodes that cover
pmenopause and menopause from different
perspectives. So, we'll put a link to
some of those in the show notes caption.
Just to take a step back from all of
this, um, as most people know, per
menopause menopause reflects massive
changes in hormones, in particular,
estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone
in women at a particular stage of their
life. And it can be fairly gradual or it
can be more accelerated over a shorter
uh time period. That means that the
range of symptoms that women experience
is highly variable from one to the next.
And I think this has been part of the
challenge in the literature. The other
big challenge in the literature is that
indeed there were far too few studies of
pmenopause and menopause and possible
treatments in the previous decades. You
know, we're now entering what hopefully
is a new era where there's more studies
devoted to women's health, permenopause
and menopause, but also PCOS and indeed
all the things that potentially differ
between women and men as it relates to
cancer, cancer treatments, um you know,
nutrition, etc. There are a huge number
of unanswered questions in the women's
health space that hopefully will be
resolved u in the upcoming years. also
and many people are now aware of this
one of the largest scale studies about
hormone replacement therapy for
menopause to some extent permenopause
but it was mainly focused on menopause
from some years back it's largely
general consensus now there might be a
few hold outs but many many people now
conclude that the early conclusions of
those studies were wrong meaning the
early studies concluded that hormone
replacement therapy was either dangerous
or ineffective or only mildly effective
And I think a large number of people and
this is independent of politics. This is
independent of whether or not people are
pro hormone therapy or anti hormone
therapy. They will conclude that there
does appear to be a beneficial effect of
certain hormone replacement therapies
for pmenopause and menopause if the
therapies are started early enough.
Meaning if the therapies were started
too late, there was some evidence of
some detrimental effects perhaps. But if
the therapies were started early enough
either in menopause or permenopause,
then there were some beneficial effects
observed that weren't advertised,
weren't popularized enough on the basis
of the actual data. So that's created a
landscape now where fortunately people
are re-evaluating those data, doing new
studies, right? We always need more, but
doing new studies to evaluate the best
timing for hormone therapies. And when I
say hormones, I'm deliberately being uh
broad about that. Um because we know
that estrogen, testosterone, and
progesterone and other hormones all
change during pmenopause and menopause.
And there are now different forms of
hormone replacement therapy. To be very
direct in answering this specific
question, which was, is there a
relationship between pmenopause and
menopause, the changes in hormones?
Because it's not always reduction.
Sometimes it's increases in certain
hormones because all these hormones are
have intense interplay in terms of how
they regulate themselves and each other.
Is there a relationship between that and
things like anxiety? Now the short
answer is absolutely yes. In pmenopause
and menopause when steroid hormones like
testosterone and estrogen are changing
and hormone other hormones as well of
course like progesterone and on and on.
So many hormones change during
permenopause, menopause.
Many cells are not just changing the way
that they're quote unquote behaving.
They're not their short-term
physiologies, but some cells are turning
off the expression of certain genes and
proteins and other cells are turning
them on. And so we know that many
hormones have a strong effect on
neurons, nerve cells in the circuits of
the brain, including the hypothalamus,
which regulates all sorts of things,
hunger, sleep, body temperature. Um, and
yes, it's also involved in anxiety. You
have the so-called hypothalamic
pituitary adrenal axis, which is
involved in the production of cortisol.
So the short answer is yes, yes, and
yes. When hormones change, neural
circuit activities change in the short
term, but the propensity for those
circuits to be active or hyperactive or
hypoactive, not active enough, is going
to be strong strongly regulated by
steroid hormones as well. Hormones in
particular, they're impacting hundreds
if not thousands of systems. So, I don't
throw all this out there to confuse any
of you. It's simply to say that you
should trust your experience, right? You
have to trust your experience. If you're
seeing a reduction in a particular
hormone on a blood test in permenopause
or menopause or frankly at any stage of
life that is a correlated in your
experience with an increase in anxiety,
right? Can you really tack your change
in anxiety to that hormone directly? In
some cases, yes. In many cases, no.
Because there just so many little
tributaries of mechanistic overlap here.
I think the key takeaway is this. The
early studies that concluded that
hormone replacement therapy was either
not beneficial or could be detrimental
were apparently flawed either by virtue
of the conclusion, meaning the
conclusion didn't match the data or
those studies weren't done correctly.
The therapies in many cases were started
too late, right? And it does seem that
starting the therapies at the right
these hormone therapies at the right
time and at the right dosages, not
surprisingly, is very important. So that
almost forces the conclusion that if
you're experiencing anxiety in
pmenopause menopause, well, it may not
be directly related or even indirectly
related to a change in hormones, there
is a mechanistic basis to suspect that
it could be. And therefore, you should
absolutely talk to your doctor. Any
doctor that truly cares about your
health should be willing to have a
conversation about whether or not your
levels of estrogen, perhaps even
testosterone, progesterone need
adjusting through any number of existing
therapies, many of which are very
inexpensive nowadays, by the way, in
order to bring things back to uh a place
where you're feeling less anxious, more
vital, whatever whatever symptoms you
may be struggling with that those could
be overcome. But of course, there are
other ways to approach this as well. I
will mention that on previous episodes
of the podcast where I had experts in
pmenopause and menopause on to discuss
these specific issues. There was also a
lot of discussion about the importance
of eating a low-inflammatory diet to
making sure that you get adequate sleep
and many people often say that in
parmenopause and menopause their sleep
suffers. So whether or not that needs to
be approached from the symptom level
like going after sleep specifically like
okay you're going to make certain
lifestyle changes to try and make it
easier to get to sleep but if there's
middle of the night wakings um night
sweats these kinds of things perhaps
hormone therapies are going to get more
at the foundation of those issues and
any doctor that cares about you will be
willing to have this multi-pronged
conversation. Again, this is a
absolutely critical area of women's
health and therefore human health. We
receive so many questions about it. I
will apologize again for not getting
into more depth about this, but that
really deserves having an expert guest
on the podcast to go into what's latest
in this area in terms of the research
and the clinical trials. It's not
happening fast enough, but there are new
data. So, stand by. We'll talk about it
more soon. Okay, next question.
Hello, Huberman Lab team and Andrew. My
name is Nick Ferendo. I live in North
Carolina, United States.
Me and my fiance are getting married
this October. And when planning our
outdoor wedding ceremony,
we got to thinking about whether doing
the ceremony during the sunrise hours of
the day or sunset hours of the day uh
would have a different mental effect on
our guests u because of the sunlight
being received during those two times
and didn't know if it was different or
the same. uh and would love your input.
Thank you very much. Later.
>> Well, I never predicted that I'd be
giving marriage advice on the Huberman
Lab podcast, but here we go. Nick, and
to your fiance, congratulations.
Um, super happy for you guys. And the
fact that you're thinking about sunlight
and its effect on your guests just shows
not only a compassion for your guests,
but uh that you're fully integrating
your wedding and presumably your your
life together going forward in this
incredible thing that is our circadian
rhythm. In any event, the answer here
can be pretty direct and brief, which is
I would go for the sunset wedding. And
I'll tell you why.
Otherwise, you're going to be getting
ready very very early in the morning.
And uh typically people like some time
to get ready for weddings. While I would
say about 20% of people fall into this
category that we call early birds by
virtue of chronotype, meaning they are
genetically hardwired to prefer to get
up very early and to go to sleep very
early. Most people are either night
owls. They like to get up later, you
know, after 9:00 a.m. and stay up late.
Or the majority of people prefer to get
up between 6:00 and 8:00 a.m. and go to
sleep somewhere between 10:00 p.m. and
midnight. That's just the majority of
people in the world. And people are
going to want to have time to prepare
for the wedding ceremony. They're going
to want to get up, hopefully get some
sunlight, um, you know, get get dressed
and do all those things. And it's going
to be tough for people to push early
into the day for an early ceremony, but
of course they're there to honor you
guys and they can do it. And I'm saying
all of this because it illustrates a
really important larger point, which is
that although our circadian rhythm is a
really powerful force in our energy
levels and when we like to go to sleep,
most everybody has the ability to stay
up later than we would prefer to.
meaning we can push a couple more hours
past our normal to bedtime and stay up
later, but it's very hard for people to
get into gear and be wide awake and
alert earlier than their normal wake up
time. So, you're being kind to all your
guests by putting the event in the
afternoon. I suppose the night owls will
be happiest because to them that's sort
of their, you know, it's not still their
morning, but it's kind of their early
afternoon. Uh to the people that tend to
be on a more normal chronotype schedule,
waking up between 6:00 and 8:00 a.m. and
going to bed between 10:00 and midnight.
Hopefully, they'll stay for the entire
party. I imagine you'll have a
celebration of some sort, and they'll be
able to do that just fine. They might
get to bed a little bit later than they
normally do. They'll be just fine. And
the early risers might struggle with the
party, but they'll be fine as well. Uh,
it just so happens that by time the
ceremony rolls around at sunset and I
don't know what time of year if it's
going to be in the Carolinas or or
elsewhere. So, I don't know exactly when
the sun is setting. Now, we could get
into details as to whether or not uh the
ceremony is going to be east facing or
west facing, but I don't think we need
to do that. Um, that's too down in the
weeds. Very simply, if you want to have
the most number of people alert and
rested and prepared and felt like they
had enough time to get there, the few
stragglers who are going to be late and
all of that, um, make sure everyone's in
attendance, I would go for the evening
wedding. And, uh, as a more general
point, going forward, I again wish you
congratulations and definitely get that
morning sunlight uh, as a couple if you
can. If one of you sleeps in a little
bit later, honor that, too. All right.
Chronotypes are a real thing. Some
people will argue that having aligned
chronotypes and schedules is critical
for a relationship. Some people would
argue that it's good to have slightly
asynchronous ones. Look, there are no
real studies on that. And were they to
do those experiments, and I doubt they
ever will. I think what you find is that
either can work. Uh, watching a sunrise
together is great. Watching sunsets
together is great. And watching both is
even better. Hello, my name's Kelly and
I had a question about recovering from a
kidney donation surgery
and what you can do following the
surgery to retain as much muscle mass as
possible during that recovery time. Um,
also if there's anything you would do
beforehand to increase the odds of
less loss
in that post-surgical time period. Thank
you very much.
>> Well, thank you for your question,
Kelly, and really thank you for uh the
incredible um act that you're uh that
you're asking about a kidney donation. I
mean, these things save lives. Gosh,
there aren't even words for it. I mean,
to give a kidney to save somebody's
life, what a wonderful and remarkable
thing. So, thank you so much for that.
What a beautiful example of uh humans
helping humans.
how to best go into and recover from any
surgery and in particular this one. The
short answer is go into it as fit and
rested as you possibly can. Now, life
constraints will determine what that
means for you, but it's very clear and
in particular if you're thinking about
maintaining muscle and maintaining
general fitness and speed of recovery,
that having your strength and your
cardiovascular health as good as it can
be heading into the procedure. And that
also means not exhausting yourself or
injuring yourself by overtraining is
going to be immensely beneficial. And I
can say this because I have several
friends who are surgeons that will say
to me always, you know, that the
athletes that come in, even if they're
dealing with major surgeries, even if
they're not proathletes, they're just
sort of, you know, recreational athletes
always recover faster. Why? Well, their
metabolic health is better, their
circulation is better, and yes, they
probably also are used to pushing into
challenge and coming out of surgery um
can be challenging. I've had surgeries
before and I can tell you that it's
always striking to me how absolutely
dreadful I would feel coming out of it.
You know, 2 3 days I was like, "Oh my
god, I don't know how I'm ever" and then
5 days later like, "Wow, I can't believe
how quickly I've healed." And I don't
consider myself a, you know, any kind of
serious athlete. I mean, I'm athletic. I
exercise and so forth. Um, those
surgeries were when I was younger from
broken bones and things like that. So,
they weren't nearly as intense and
invasive as as what you're asking about
here. But have your cardiovascular
fitness um in place if you have time
before this surgery. So great time to do
and I imagine you might be doing any
number of things that I'm about to
describe but perhaps more as well but as
we talked about earlier at least one
long slow distance you know of about 45
minutes to an hour zone two three-ish
cardio per week um some highintensity
interval training at least once per week
maybe maybe twice and something more
moderate in the middle kind of moderate
intensity of about 30 minutes or so and
some strength training for both the
lower body and the upper body pro most
probably on days other than the
cardiovascular training, two to three
days per week. And again, not
overtraining, right? Not pushing
yourself to try and get so fit that
you're exhausted because you don't want
to go into a surgery exhausted.
But you do want to go in getting
adequate sleep. It's normal the night
before a big surgery to perhaps not get
as great sleep as you normally do.
That's normal. I think most surgeons
will attest to the fact that while not
ideal, that doesn't uh, you know,
prohibit a really great recovery either.
It's just normal kind of pre-surgery
anxiety is is is common. But in the days
and weeks before the surgery, being as
rested as possible, and here's the big
one, both going into and out of surgery.
And I know some of you are going to go,
"Ah, here he is again with the sunlight
thing." I will tell you based on a lot
of experience visiting people in the
hospital which was just adjacent to my
lab at Stanford. These are people who
are dealing with everything from cancer
to surgery
patients of different ages. I actually
was uh I sat in on I didn't participate
of course I'm not a surgeon uh on a
brain surgery recently up at UCSF and
I'll tell you in talking with the brain
surgeons that when patients get and stay
on a as normal as possible circadian
rhythm coming out of surgery it helps
immensely. There are even data showing
that recovery from surgery and other
illness in the hospital is significantly
improved if the patient is next to a
window where they get some natural
light. If you can't do that, really
think about eye mask at night so that
you can get it as dark as possible. It's
really hard in some hospitals to get it
really dark because there's and quiet
because there's a lot of noise from the
equipment and people are coming in for
the checks all night and you know you
have the night staff. Great eye mask for
sleeping at night. Great earplugs to
keep it as quiet as possible so you can
sleep on as normal as is possible for
you schedule. If you can be positioned
next to a window. I think if you're
giving a kidney, they should put you
next to a window and they should put you
next to an east facing window. I don't
know what hospital you're at. This
person is giving a kidney. They deserve
to be near a east facing window. Uh darn
it, uh for their recovery and that will
allow you to get on and stay on a normal
circadian schedule or even west facing
as we talked about earlier, get some
ambient light in the early part of the
day and get that outdoor time, some
fresh air. This is going to massively
help your overall state. It's going to
tremendously help your sleep, which is
going to tremendously help reduce the
inflammation postsurgically. It's going
to accelerate your healing and on and
on. This circadian rhythm stuff, folks,
is real. It is absolutely real and it is
foundational to our health. Then in
terms of what you can do to just get
back the muscle that you had or maintain
it through this period, if you have been
exercising and doing strength training
and perhaps hypertrophy and strength
training for some period of time going
into this, you will be amazed at how
quickly an atrophied limb or an overall
reduction in muscle and strength comes
back. A lot of the quote unquote muscle
memory that we talk about is skill-based
muscle memory. I haven't write ridden a
bike in years, but I can still do it.
Muscle memory. But there's the other
kind of muscle memory, which is the
nerve to muscle, the motor neuron to
muscle, which controls muscular
contractions, quote unquote memory,
which is the reestablishment of
strength, the reestablishment of
hypertrophy when you had it prior. So,
regaining strength and and muscle size
is far easier than gaining it for the
first time. with the one exception being
that when you're young, if like you're
in your late teens, early 20s, it's
pretty easy to gain muscle fast when you
first start uh exercising, but that
tapers off pretty quickly after about a
year or so. And then you have to fight
for every bit of it. And as you get
older, it's harder to to get stronger
and to build muscle, but you can do it.
Now, that's the conventional stuff. And
even that doesn't sound that
conventional. I'm guessing that a lot of
doctors probably are not talking about
this, but that's not because they don't
talk about it. It's just it's hard to
prescribe to a lot of patients. And in
particular, and here I'm calling out the
hospitals, not Stanford Hospital, but
other hospitals. They treat people, they
want them to heal, they want to free up
beds, they want to send them home, but
the environment in the hospital is not
circadian friendly to the patients or
the staff. It's just not. It's not the
nature of how hospitals work. And I'm
not just talking about the emergency
rooms. It's just not. you know, the
bright lights, the noises in the middle
of the night and the lack of, you know,
uh, natural daylight coming through and
it has a negative impact. It really
does, uh, at multiple levels. So, you
have to kind of push back on on the
system in order to try and, uh, get the
best possible circadian,
if you will. Once again, Kelly, thank
you ever so much. You're a godsend for
somebody out there, and we need more
people like you. Okay, before our last
question, I just want to put a note out
to Cody Morrison who asked a great
question about careers in science. First
of all, Cody, good luck on your PhD
defense. Let me know how it goes.
Second, I'm happy to talk about postocs
with you. I don't know if you're in
neuroscience or another field. I'm not
currently taking postocs in my lab, but
I've had several including several who
have laboratories of their own now and
graduate students who now have
laboratories of their own as professors.
So even though the landscape has
changed, the funding and other
landscapes have changed since I started
uh my research lab. I have some things
that perhaps will be of interest to you
that we can discuss. So I'll be reaching
out directly to you. And the only reason
I didn't take your question publicly is
because I think that most people
listening are probably not in the
research science track, but also because
I'd like to give all your questions uh
adequate time. And obviously I have a
soft spot for anyone who's seriously
considering going into research science
and would love to be of help in any way
that I can. All right, final question
for today. We'll do more in the future.
>> Hello, Mr. Andrew Heberman. My name is
Kevin and my question is how does one
find what they are truly passionate
about? Because anyone that follows you
and what you do can safely assume that
you're passionate about health science
and teaching the community about those
things.
And as someone who just graduated from
college and is finding themsself in the
world and I'm sure I can speak for
millions of other people. I was
wondering if there was any sciencebacked
evidence of being able to find what
someone is really truly passionate
about.
>> Kevin, thank you so much for your
question. This is a vital question in
our lives regardless of age. Oh, and
congratulations on graduating college.
That's no small feat. I know people have
mixed feelings nowadays about the value
of degrees, etc. I, you know, and here
I'm heavily biased. I'm a university
professor. Um, and I'm, you know, super
enthusiastic about learning and teaching
and all the rest, but I I still think
for many, not all, it it's a wonderful
choice and and it's no small thing to
finish uh a degree. So, congratulations
to you and to your family. Finding your
passion, that's a big question. It's
actually one that I touch on in the
final chapter of my book, among other
things in that chapter. And that's not a
plug for the book. Um, it's just simply
to say that I go into this in in some
detail beyond what I'm going to offer
here, just for sake of time. I'll do my
best to give you and anyone else
listening to this what I think are the
key things regardless of age.
First of all,
if you don't know what your passion is,
and even if you think you might, even if
you are absolutely sure you do, it is
absolutely critical that if you want to
be successful, that you continue to be
structured about your daily life. Now, I
don't mean overoptimization,
doing every single health protocol.
That's not what I'm talking about. What
I'm talking about is you need to have a
purpose each day and waking up even if
it's not the thing. It doesn't feel like
the thing. So I think it's very
important if you're a student to focus
on your studies. If you're able to do
that and not work, more power to you.
Many people have to do that and work. If
you're working a job, no matter how far
from where you would like to be
eventually internally, you know, if it's
the completely wrong career for you,
until you start to feel something
pulling you or even just tilting you in
a slightly different direction, it is
vitally important to continue to take
care of yourself, to try and get the
sleep that you can, to get your morning
sunlight, to get some exercise. Do those
things. Doesn't matter if you're a store
clerk, you're selling shoes. I mean,
long before I became a scientist, I
mean, I worked in skateboard shops. I
sold shoes. I assembled um uh radio
flyer wagons and toys at a toy store. Um
I mean, I worked in a bakery. I had a
paper route. I mowed lawns. I did all
those things. Um I can't say that I
loved all those jobs. Some of them I
liked more than others. Some of them
paid barely anything. Some of them paid
a little better. But it's just so
important to to stay busy and to
continue to work and work on yourself.
And this isn't just theory, right?
You're you're cultivating the skills
that in some way you're going to apply
to your passion once you find it. Now,
how do you find the passion? The way you
find the passion can be best summarized.
Not to sound uh mystical here, it sounds
a little bit like a riddle, but you know
the great Joe Strummer from the Clash
who in my opinion started the better
band, the Meascaleros later, which
wasn't punk rock. It's not I don't even
know if it's rock and roll. It's just
music. Amazing. He created three
masterpieces later in his life. You
know, he had this saying which was it
was literally called Strummer's law,
which is no input, no output. You need
to be interfacing with the world in
order to have ideas and to discover what
your passion is. You know, the other
day, um, because I had a bunch of just
kind of wrote things to do. I had to
handle a bunch of stuff that could be
done kind of mindlessly, but it had to
be done. I was listening to a lecture on
modern art history. I just decided to
put that in modern art history
documentary into YouTube. Just saw what
came up and I discovered two artists
that just completely blew my mind. And I
love art. I love modern art. I hadn't
really gone down this rabbit hole of
these two particular artists and it
doesn't really matter who they are or
what they did but in that listening I
had a couple of ideas about things
related to the visual system that I
worked on years ago and some interest
that I have in eye health as it relates
to some of this emerging peptide science
field. Okay, that's the way the brain
works. It's taking different nodes of
interest and combining them and that's
what your original contribution to the
world whatever it happens to be in
whether it's in exercise science or
finance or you're a high school teacher
those things are going to converge in
the unique version that is you. Now the
only way that you can find your passion
is to keep an active interest in the
world. That also means not getting
pulled into other people's rabbit holes.
You need to avoid two things critically.
These are the don'ts. Avoid drama,
especially getting pulled into it, and
avoid numbing out. Anything that
activates you, gets you angry. Okay,
that might be something that could turn
into a sense of justice and advocacy.
Great. If that's your path, okay, maybe
you go into public policy or something
of that sort or into advocacy for
animals or the world or certain group of
people. Great. But you have to be very
careful that you're not getting pulled
into meaningless dramas that you're not
also numbing out because a lot of what's
out there in the world is designed to do
one or two of those things. So stay
structured in your life. Do some job
work. This is critical. I also think at
a certain age for some people earlier
than others because they have to earning
your own money just feels good. Even if
it's not a lot, just earning your own
money, putting in savings, maybe
spending some of it, putting into
investment account, that kind of thing,
feels really good. You're building
something.
That algorithm, that underlying
operation of doing something, showing
up, trying to be good at it, maybe even
great at it, even though it's not your
calling, sets the stage. It prepares you
for when you get kind of pulled towards
something. Oh, I'm really interested
also in this aspect of fitness or this
aspect of film making. And eventually
you'll pick your trajectory. And the key
thing is to remember that's not your
final trajectory. You're heading off in
a vector that will take you someplace
that will take you someplace else
someplace else. You may have one career.
You may have several in your lifetime.
But no input, no output. Remain curious
and become good and ideally great at
listening to your own inner compass or I
like to think about it antenni.
Occasionally I see something I'm just
like, "Wow, this is I don't know why
it's interesting and I don't care."
You're inspired by it. Some element of
it gets into your consciousness and you
move forward with that. I actually have
a notebook. This is something I've done
um since my teens. Early in my academic
career, I had a a list. I update that
list and I have names of different
people. Some were from the world of
science, some from health and fitness,
some from art, some from music. I'm not
a musician. I have zero minus an
infinity musical talent, but I love
music as a consumer. I just really enjoy
being a consumer of it. These are people
whose kind of careers or what they did
really impressed me. They resonated with
me. That's that's the thing because I
mean a lot of people impressed me, but
it resonated with me. And over the
years, I would cross some out and add
some in. And in many ways, the career
arc that I've taken, the passion arc or
passions plural arc that I've taken is a
reflection of all of that, plus my own
unique experience.
By the way, this was long before
podcasts or even heard about personal
development or any of that.
Get in touch with what moves you, what
wakes you up, what kind of gives you a
charge in your body that's not
meaningless drama. And also avoid
numbing out. And here's the other piece.
If you're going to go down a particular
path, this is so critical. If you're
going to go down a certain path, don't
try and bring your unique spin into it
too early. Every career path, whether
it's biological sciences or psychology
or exercise physiology or finance,
there's a chop wood carry water phase of
that where you have to develop the
competency
and go from unskilled to skilled and
hopefully from skilled to mastery in
that thing. And first of all, no one
wants to work with a person that's
trying to bring their own unique spin to
the thing that they barely understand
too early. Okay? You have to get your
chops in something. So you have to
apprentice yourself to something. And
that can be very difficult for people
who have a sense of self that they're a
little different. They don't want to do
things the way everyone else does. They
need to see themselves, their unique
gift in the thing. And I'll tell you
what, you will be able to do that and
you can transform an entire field. You
will literally change the game of what
you do. But you got to get the core
mechanics and the basics first. You
don't get to come in there and be like,
I'm me and I'm going to change the game.
No, it's chop wood, carry water. So
that's like, you know,
dribble, shoot, guard, pass, like you
know, basketball, whatever. Whatever
your
at that time vocation turns out to be,
you have to work through the core
mechanics of that. You have to see the
things you're proficient at, the things
that come naturally. And then of course
there going to be things that are much
harder for you and you're going to have
to overcome those to be in that field.
And this can be a tough pill for a lot
of people to swallow. But if you can
accept that you're going to apprentice
yourself to this thing for a short while
knowing that it's not or a long while
knowing that it's not your final
destination and that you'll eventually
be able to bring in some probably not
all but some of your unique gifts to
that craft. And that's where your unique
contribution is going to come through.
So, what I'm describing here are a
number of different tributaries that all
start with you that eventually converge
in your unique gift to your passion. But
in the meantime, stay structured. Take
care of yourself. Avoid meaningless
drama. Don't numb out. Try different
things. Develop a sense of taste. What
moves you toward or away from things?
Learn yum yuck me. Like if you see
something or like something in a given
area of whatever any vocation like yes I
love that or no I definitely don't like
that or meh there can be some mess and
some yums but the uh no that's not going
to work but with that said once you take
on something you decide to do it there
going to be some things that are hard
confuse that for yuck it just means you
haven't developed the skill set yet and
you're going to have to embrace and
tackle certain things that are hard for
you have to chop wood carry water for a
while but once you go from unskilled to
skilled and you're starting to
transition from skilled to mastery. And
certainly once you've developed mastery
in an area, then you can bring together
or include some of your unique
experience and do something truly
unique, truly exciting and transform
your field, likely transform the world
because in some small or large way,
you're going to transform the world. So
that's the recipe for finding your
passion. It's really about being you,
but plugging yourself into some sort of
system long enough to get really good at
something so that then you can put your
stamp on it. Worked for me. All right,
everyone. That closes out our Huberman
Lab podcast Q&A session. I really
appreciate all of you joining. Extra
special thanks to those of you that
called in with questions. And again, if
your question wasn't selected for today,
there's still a chance it will be
selected for a future Q&A session of the
Huberman Lab podcast. And of course to
all of you the question askers and all
of you listening. Thank you for your
interest in science.