Huberman LabDr. Andy Galpin: Maximize Recovery to Achieve Fitness & Performance Goals | Huberman Lab
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,062 words- 0:00 – 4:17
Recovery
- AHAndrew Huberman
(rock music plays) Welcome to the Huberman Lab Guest Series, where I and an expert guest discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today's episode is the fifth in a six-episode series on fitness, exercise, and performance, and today's episode is all about recovery. That is, how to maximize your recovery to achieve your fitness and exercise and performance goals and how to avoid overtraining. Dr. Andy Galpin, great to be back. Today we are discussing recovery, and I'm very excited to have this discussion because, as we know, despite the fact that different types of exercise can be used to trigger different types of adaptation such as increased long distance, endurance, anaerobic capacity, strength, hypertrophy, et cetera, the workouts themselves are not actually when the progress occurs, when the adaptation occurs. And this to me is extremely interesting because it parallels what we see with so-called neuroplasticity, which is the nervous system's ability to change in response to experience. We sit down to learn something, we experience something, and that is the trigger for rewiring of the nervous system. But the actual rewiring occurs away from the experience or the learning. So too in fitness and in exercise, recovery is where the real results actually emerge, where we get better. So I'd love for you to explain what recovery really is and the different types of recovery, certainly different ways to enhance recovery, and I'd also love for you to explain whether or not there are ways that people can become better at recovering. Because if indeed recovery is when progress emerges, when we get better, well then anything that supports our recovery and gets us better at recovering ought to increase our rate and our degree of progress.
- AGAndy Galpin
Absolutely. You nailed it in the description. What people really want is some sort of change, whether we were talking athletes or general population, this change is, uh, some sort of improvement in muscle function, reduction in body fat, higher functioning, uh, metabolism, w- whatever the case is. And the only way that happens is, we talk about the equation of stress causes adaptation, but as you alluded to, the piece in the middle is only if you can recover from it. And so the game we're playing here is we all agree we want more adaptation. That means we need to bring more stress into the system, but we then have to ensure that our recovery outpaces the stress input or else we will... no adaptation will occur. In fact, what happens is you will actually be in a negative spot and start going backwards. And so what I would love to do is, is talk about how we've handled this. Um, and I've had a decent amount of experience here. I was fortunate enough to do my master's degree in the laboratory of a gentleman named Andy Frey, who is an NSCA Lifetime Achievement Award winner, and he studied in large part recovery, overtraining, overuse, overload, a- and a lot of areas. In addition, I've been fortunate enough to work with individuals from high functioning CEOs and executives who have little time for recovery, high job stress, to in- to athletes, uh, in the... think of the example of pitchers in Major League Baseball who have to recover in a matter of four days so that they can pitch again at maximum velocity. So I would love to outline some of the tools and tactics, strategies that we use for all these individuals, um, give you some foundational stuff, and I would love to maybe actually cover some things that most people have never heard of, um, some stuff you may not have access to, some technologies that we use, some biomarkers, um, and then even a whole bunch of things that are, keeping with the theme of your show here, cost-free or extremely low-cost, so all those strategies. Um, what I'd also like to do is cover nutrition and supplementation and fueling and hydration and things, but that's probably gonna have to be saved for an additional conversation that we'll do in the next episode.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yes, so we will absolutely hold a conversation about nutrition and supplementation, where you can educate us about all the top contour stuff all the way down to the, the, uh, fine details.
- 4:17 – 11:35
Exercise & Delayed Muscle Soreness, Pain
- AHAndrew Huberman
I do have a question about recovery, and it's one that I think most people are familiar with themselves, which is soreness. We think of it as muscle soreness, but I was trained early on in my scientific career to always question the seemingly obvious.
- AGAndy Galpin
Mm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
So couple of questions about soreness. First of all, what does soreness really reflect? Is it really muscle soreness? It feels like it's in the muscles, uh, but what other organ systems and tissues and cell types does it involve? And then I'm particularly interested in this concept or this experience that many of us, including myself ha- had, which is delayed onset muscle soreness. Why would it be that when we are less in shape or when we perform a movement that is extremely novel to us, the soreness seems to arrive after a reasonable delay of maybe even a day? You know, we're fine the next day but then 48 hours later, we are exceedingly sore, and as we get more fit or more familiar with a movement, the soreness seems to arrive earlier? So I realize I just asked you about three questions or more. First of all, what is muscle soreness at a cellular level? Which cells, which organ systems, and so forth? What does it mean if we are sore, is something I know we'll get into a little bit later, and then why the delayed onset muscle soreness?
- AGAndy Galpin
It's actually one question, so it's totally fine you answered all th- you asked all three, because I'm gonna actually answer number three, which will answer number two, which will actually answer number one.
- AHAndrew Huberman
I'd love to tell you that I set it up, uh, that way intentionally-
- AGAndy Galpin
(laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
... but, uh, I'm just happy to hear that where I was unable to be concise, you are able to be concise. Thank you.
- AGAndy Galpin
Yeah. We are still learning a lot about this area. It's actually really difficult to perform these studies. Anytime you ask a question about something like pain-... or soreness, you're immediately talking about perception. And there is obviously a physical component to that, but then there's also perception. And so teasing those things out is extraordinarily challenging. That said, there has been a lot of work in this area. In fact, probably, um, uh, you may have a show already out on pain or maybe one's coming down the road.
- AHAndrew Huberman
We did an episode on pain, uh, a while ago, but it's definitely time to revisit that literature. I also have some amazing colleagues at Stanford who work on pain both from the, uh, cellular and molecular side, but also from the psychological side about how our, um, understanding of pain and what we believe about pain shapes the experience of pain and pain relief.
- AGAndy Galpin
Amazing. That's, that stuff is incredibly important and I'm, I'm glad we flagged that and maybe we'll just call that good for now. They can come back later for another one of your shows. So that being said, why does it happen, uh, 28 to 48 hours after you exercise? Well, that actually should give you some clues into what's happening. So the traditional dogma of delayed onset muscle soreness, is what this is called, is that it is a result of, quote-unquote, "micro-tears in the muscle." And so you can sort of think, "I challenged the muscle, uh, there were some small tears in there and I'm feeling the results of that." Well, w- in fact, that certainly does happen and it can happen. That is not what's explaining your muscle soreness. And in fact, you can be quite sore from exercise and have no measurable amount of muscle damage. And so much like anything else when we're in this idea of pain, it's not a one-to-one explanation. There are multiple factors that are probably causing your perception of pain. Muscle damage can be one of them. It is not the only one and it is probably, in my opinion, though this is yet to be shown definitively, probably not even the leading cause of it. And so what's actually happening? Well, the reason it's taking you 24 to 48 hours is, is you can actually, uh, find various papers, uh, literature reviews dating back in a number of years now, over a decade, that show these wonderful curves of an inflammatory, uh, and immune response. And, and we don't need to necessarily go through the entire physiology right now, but effectively what's happening is those things have a little bit of a time delay. And so some of those steps happen immediately, like right when the exercise is there, and then some of them are delayed six to 24 to 48 hours. Um, if you know a little bit about this, uh, physiology, it's, you have a combination of neutrophils and macrophages and a bunch of things happening and this has a time sequence. So what happens is by the time we get to this 28 to 48-hour window, now the muscle soreness kicks in. Which wait a minute, if I, if this was a result of my muscles being torn and that happened immediately, wouldn't that pain start immediately? Well, the answer is it would. And so that, that, that, uh, is your first clue that that's not responsible for it. When we look at that immune response and we see that that is actually peaked 24 to 48 hours later and then that's the same time the pain kicked in, that's cluing you in with the problem. So we have this immune response happening and inflammation, then all of a sudden we start getting fluid accumulation. And now there are what are called nociceptors and you're probably very, well, obviously you're very familiar with these, and these are your pain receptors. What's actually interesting is we don't necessarily know a lot of information about how many pain receptors are in muscle. They're not really in the belly. In fact, this is why I can perform my muscle biopsies and they don't really hurt.
- AHAndrew Huberman
You mean in the belly of the muscle?
- AGAndy Galpin
Correct.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah.
- AGAndy Galpin
We do have pressure sensors though. And so if you change the volume of the tissue, you will respond to that very, very quickly. So by enhancing swelling in the actual muscle, that is immediately putting pressure on those pressure receptors, if you will. That's the signal. So what's probably happened here, and I just, I just hate to give you another bone, but a lot of delayed onset muscle soreness is probably just a neural feedback loop rather than it is actual muscle damage.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah, makes a lot of sense. There's a lot of interactions between the, um, types of neurons that control touch sensation and pain sensation and itch sensation. In fact, a lot of people, um, kind of collapse itch and pain together.
- AGAndy Galpin
B- bingo. Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
You know, that's something, it's painful and it itches is, is a familiar thing for people. Mosquito bites and such.
- AGAndy Galpin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Um, and then of course there's the, uh, classic gate theory of pain, uh-
- AGAndy Galpin
Y- this, yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... which, uh, people will be familiar with and then I'll explain why I'm explaining this. Um, which is if you, y- you, something hurts, you know, you, you bonk your knee or you stub your toe, we tend to grab that body part and try and rub it.
- AGAndy Galpin
Totally.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And that rubbing is not a coincidental thing. It activates a set of, uh, touch sensors that are, that respond to kind of broad, dull touch, um, and that actively inhibits through the release of an inhibitory neurotransmitter the fibers that control the pain signal. So any time we, we rub a, you know, like a charlie horse leg or we stub our toe and we, you know, we wince and then we grab the toe and we go like squeezing it a little bit, that's actually deactivating or partially inactivating the, the pain mechanism. So the idea that, uh, a swelling response would then trigger a neural response that the, then would recruit the pain receptor response, here I'm using broad, broad brush, um, strokes here to explain this, um, makes very good sense to me, um-
- AGAndy Galpin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... now and only now that you've explained how this process works.
- AGAndy Galpin
I can actually even add more
- 11:35 – 18:56
Muscle Spindles, Reduce Soreness
- AGAndy Galpin
to that. So if you remember how muscles work. So we have to have some sort of signal from the nervous system that has to actually go in and tell the muscle to contract. Well, remember there, uh, a few episodes ago we covered, uh, the physiology here of what's called the motor unit. Okay, well, what I didn't explain to you are called muscle spindles. And we have talked about proprioception in, uh, an episode before as well, but we never tied this picture together. So let me walk you through that really quickly and it's gonna tie this loop in a, into a nice bow. So what happens is, um, this motor unit is, is coming in from what's called an alpha-... motor unit and that's going to be innervating your muscle fibers, and that's going to tell the muscle fibers to contract. Those are typically spread out throughout the, uh, all- all sides of the muscle, in- interior, exterior, all over. On the outside though, there is another type of muscle called a muscle spindle. Now these are non-contractile, so they don't have that actin and myosin, and they don't produce force. They are responsive, they are proprioceptive. So what that means is, they sense stretch and this is why, for example, if you were to, um, stretch a hamstring or stretch any muscle group, it doesn't really matter, or muscle, its innate response is to fire back to close that distance. And this is what keeps you from, say, if you're leaning to the right, um, you can imagine that... The example we give is if you- if you're standing on one foot and you start swaying to the right, all right? Let's say you're standing on your right foot and this will make this easier for folks. When you start swaying to the right, like you're gonna fall on your right ear, will hit the ground. The inside of your right calf muscle will start being stretched. The outside will start being compressed, right? So the stretch on the inside of the right calf muscle will sense that stretch, and it will respond by contracting, that pulls you back to the middle and stops you from falling. That's proprioception, and muscle spindles sense stretch and tell you to contract. The way that they work is- is through gamma motor neurons, and so these are sensory things. So what's happening is, unlike when you tell your muscle to contract, it goes alpha to the muscle, contract. These muscle spindles work such that it is, "Oh, I've been stretched." Sends signal back to some central point, typically in the spinal cord, and we don't actually want to go all the way up to the brain. We've got a time delay. This is why these are subconscious, autonomic, right? Versus somatic. So the gamma is going to go back to the central location and then come back through the alpha motor neurons and tell it to contract. So you have this wonderful mechanism of sensing stretch going back. Well, one theory that's been put forward regarding muscle damage is that, the pressure is actually being applied to those nerve endings of the muscle spindles and that's actually responsible for the pain signal that's going back and coming up to your brain and you're registering that as pain, rather than it is actually in the- the contractile units, so the muscle fibers.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Tha- that's a very intriguing idea, uh, because it would suggest that stretching muscles in order to alleviate soreness might be the exact incorrect thing to do.
- AGAndy Galpin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Now I'm not saying that's for sure- for certain, I'm just building off the mechanistic logic that we've laid out here.
- AGAndy Galpin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Really, that you've laid out here.
- AGAndy Galpin
There is a-
- AHAndrew Huberman
The-
- AGAndy Galpin
... more effective principle based on exactly that, which is, this is wh- generally why low level movement is effective at reducing acute soreness.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Because that's low level contraction of the muscles-
- AGAndy Galpin
And you're gonna contract-
- AHAndrew Huberman
... anti-stretch.
- AGAndy Galpin
... and get tissue out. And- and get fluid out.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Wow. Um-
- AGAndy Galpin
You're literally pumping it out of the- the cell.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yes, and in our previous episode where we were talking about programming or... I keep using the "we," but let's be fair here, where you were educating-
- AGAndy Galpin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... us, including me, um, and the audience about different structures for programming exercise for specific adaptations, et cetera, on the month, week, year, sce- scales, et cetera. We had a brief, um, discussion about the fact that if one trains legs very hard with resistance training, you know, some heavy squatting or deadlifting it-
- AGAndy Galpin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... or, and there's some soreness that oftentimes doing some, quote unquote, "lighter cardio" or, um, some, uh, low impact work the next day or- or any number of different things that involve, um, not high intensity, uh, contractions of the muscles but that do require contractions of the muscles, that it can alleviate soreness more quickly than if one were to simply lie around and, you know, watch Netflix or something.
- AGAndy Galpin
Yeah. That- that's exactly right. The, um... To- to go back just a little bit as well, the, if that's really the case, um, the question is like, where is this inflammatory signal coming from? And while there's much to be learned there, uh, there is a little bit of information right now that suggests it's potentially coming from free radicals released from the mitochondria. Again, that may or may not hold up as more research comes, I'm not sure. But if you remember back to our, uh, conversation on endurance, so we talked about the electron transport chain and aerobic metabolism, and regardless of whether or not you're getting energy from glycolysis or carbohydrates, remember, they have to be finished through aerobic metabolism. So even if you're lifting weights and you're using carbs for your fuel, you have got to finish that metabolism by running it into the mitochondria and performing oxidative metabolism. As a result of that, that electron transport chain runs. So theoretically, if free radicals, which is, um, which are hyperreactive oxygen species, basically they're o- oxygen molecules that are missing an electron so that they react to a lot of things. Um, they're the opposite of antioxidants, by the way. This is, you know, the oxygen molecules with extra protons so they can balance the charge. If those leak out, that in and of itself is going to be a massive inflammatory signal and that's probably what signals the cause of these neutrophils and macrophages and kicks off this entire cascade. A- again, I- I believe we need more research there. Uh, I need to look into it, maybe it's more definitive than I- than I know. Um, but that's probably what's happening, potentially what's happening rather, that causes that cascade in signal. Also, um, what you have is this combination of, well, if that's the case, why am I not getting tremendous amount of muscle damage when I do more aerobic-based exercise? Well, because you don't have the mechanical tension pulling on the fibers that's actually causing damage to the cell wall, that allows these free radicals to escape the mitochondria and the cell wall. So that's the best we can postulate at this moment as to why those things are happening and then why, again, low level exercise tends to enhance even things like percussion. Um, so using either instruments that put a low level of vibration into your leg or like-... pneumatic boots so you can massage. All these things are generally probably helping because they're moving that stuff out, edema most specifically, so pressure comes off of those nerve endings and the muscle spindles and allows you to stop receiving that signal of pain despite the fact that you didn't actually regenerate tissue at all yet.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Fascinating. And I think that beautifully frames where we're headed next, which is to talk about all the different modes of recovery and how to accelerate them, and perhaps even how to combine different forms of recovery in order to become better at recovering, and in doing so make faster progress with fitness.
- 18:56 – 30:20
Exercise, Homeostasis & Hormesis; Blood Test & Fitness Level
- AHAndrew Huberman
Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is also separate from Dr. Andy Galpin's teaching and research roles at Cal State Fullerton. It is, however, part of our desire and effort to bring zero-cost-to-consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, we'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Momentous. Momentous makes supplements of the absolute highest quality. The Huberman Lab Podcast is proud to be partnering with Momentous for several important reasons. First of all, as I mentioned, their supplements are of extremely high quality. Second of all, their supplements are generally in single ingredient formulations. If you're going to develop a supplementation protocol, you're going to want to focus mainly on using single ingredient formulations. With single ingredient formulations, you can devise the most logical and effective and cost-effective supplementation regimen for your goals. In addition, Momentous supplements ship internationally, and this is, of course, important because we realize that many of the Huberman Lab Podcast listeners reside outside the United States. If you'd like to try the various supplements mentioned on the Huberman Lab Podcast, in particular supplements for hormone health, for sleep optimization, for focus, as well as a number of other things including exercise recovery, you can go to Live Momentous, spelled O-U-S, so that's livemomentous.com/huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by LMNT. LMNT is an electrolyte drink that contains the exact ratios of the electrolytes sodium, magnesium, and potassium to optimize cellular functioning for mental and physical performance. Most people realize that hydration is key. We need to ingest enough fluids in order to feel our best and perform our best, but what most people do not realize is that the proper functioning of our cells and nerve cells, neurons in particular, requires that sodium, magnesium, and potassium be present in the correct ratios. Now, of course, people with pre-hypertension and hypertension need to be careful about their sodium intake. But what a lot of people don't realize is that if you drink caffeine, if you exercise, and in particular if you're following a very clean diet, that is, not a lot of processed foods, which of course is a good thing, chances are you're not getting enough sodium, potassium, and magnesium to optimize mental and physical performance. LMNT contains a science-backed ratio of 1,000 milligrams, that's one gram of sodium, 200 milligrams of potassium, and 60 milligrams of magnesium, and no sugar. 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So to kick off this discussion about recovery, and with the understanding that recovery is when the specific adaptations to exercise actually occur, I'd love for you to share with us what happens or needs to happen during recovery in order for us to get better at anything, endurance, strength, et cetera, but also how specific types of exercise stimuli and specific types of adaptations that we trigger, so running a bit further, lifting a bit more weight, slowing the cadence of a given movement, et cetera, how those specific types of triggers for adaptation relate to the specific or maybe similar types of recovery that are required for us to make progress.
- AGAndy Galpin
In one of our previous episodes, we were talking about how the Harvard Fatigue Lab really identified this idea of homeostasis, or at least sort of championed it for it. And that's important because in all levels, physiology wants to return to homeostasis. So what happens in terms of adaptation is you've challenged it to a level that it realizes if it does not make a change, it will not be able to get back to the same level of homeostasis. That's fundamentally what's happening. That is recovery, that process of taking an insult, being temporarily reduced in functionality, causing a change so that now we come back and get what we often call in sport performance super compensation. All that really is doing though is bringing you to a new level of homeostasis. Effectively, it is understanding if that same insult comes again...... I need to be able to make sure that that doesn't cause the same level of disruption, and so we raise the bar. Whether this is enhancing our ability to take the same level of mechanical tension on the muscle and not result in micro-damage, whether this is being able to take the same reduction in energy and not have that compromise, uh, f- sleep or anything. It's really fundamentally changing so that we can have a new level of homeostasis because it's presuming, it's predicting that that same insult is going to come again down the road.
- AHAndrew Huberman
I want to clarify for people that when Dr. Galvin says insult, while he may actually insult me, um, insult is the nerd speak terminology for some sort of damage inflicted to a tissue or system. So, um, he's speaking about the insult to the muscle or insult to the neuromuscular connection created by adding more weight to the bar, um, running a further distance, um, uh, s- running a bit fast or, or pedaling faster. That creates a micro-insult or an insult, and now because everyone is familiar with, um, psychological and verbal insults-
- AGAndy Galpin
Fair.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... uh, you'll never forget that biological concept.
- AGAndy Galpin
It's important we tag another thing here which is called hormesis. I- it's one of my favorite phenomenon and it effectively means this, that there is a dosage or toxicity response to almost everything. And if you think about this in the context of say drugs, what this means is if I gave you 10 milligrams of something, that it would be okay, but if I gave you 20 it'd be a problem, and eventually if I go up and give you enough, this thing turns toxic. This is the case of everything from cyanide, uh, where it can actually be in small dosages in nature. In fact, it's in many of the fruits that you eat, but it's at a dosage that it doesn't matter. If that dosage gets higher though, that actually can cause problems and if it is high enough, it can actually kill you instantaneously. The back end of that though is because you introduced this micro-insult, as you framed it for me perfectly, your body will then adapt to it, and that's really what's happening with exercise adaptation is, is it is a hormetic stressor. And why that's important is if you look at the immediate responses to exercise, you see an extremely large increase in inflammation. You see oxidative stress. You see a whole cascade of autophagy. Like all these "problems" happen. And it's like what's actually quite funny here is, um, as a part of my PhD, the academic portion I had to go through the medical side of the school, and so I was... My physiology class was in med school, so I'm the only non-medical doctor in that class, right? I'm a PhD student. So I leave my lab, I walk across campus, and I take physiology class with these folks. And I, I died the whole time internally because every time we would cover a new area, it was basically the, the exact same value or number in a medical setting is like oh my gosh, they're going to die, and in performance setting is like this person's in fantastic shape. It's like I, I, I never... Uh, it still amuses me to this day obviously 'cause it's just simple things like total blood volume, right? And you cover like okay, if you have a patient come in, their blood volume is six liters, you know, immediately get them on a diuretic of some sort because they're going to have a heart attack as blood pressure gets up, right? And I'm immediately thinking damn, six liters, that, that person is super fit 'cause that is actually a positive adaptation to training. It's one of the most important, if not the most important adaptation to endurance training is enhanced total blood volume. So you'll, you'll store more blood in your body when you're more fit than you are less fit. So I mean I could go on. All, all these things, sodium concentrations, potassium concentrations are like you look at these things on paper and you don't know if that person's about to die because they're 65 years old and out of shape or if that person's going to break a world record in the marathon.
- AHAndrew Huberman
This brings up a very important tangent which is, uh, for instance if you go and take a blood test and you are somebody who exercises very intensely, uh, with resistance training, your blood creatinine levels can be-
- AGAndy Galpin
Oh.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... way out of range.
- AGAndy Galpin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And if your physician doesn't know that you're doing certain forms of exercise might say wow, there's a lot of muscle tissue damage occurring in your body.
- AGAndy Galpin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Um, as you mentioned before, your total blood volume is, is dangerously high-
- AGAndy Galpin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... when in fact you are far healthier and, and indeed much fitter than the person who's numbers would be in range. That said, obviously there are, um, limits to these, to these statements whereby you would want to be cautious, uh, and take action to ameliorate a very elevated, um, blood creatinine level or something of that sort.
- AGAndy Galpin
Yeah, this is-
- AHAndrew Huberman
But the point you're, you're bringing up is also one about the field of medicine which is that many, not all, but many physicians don't take into consideration, uh, the outside activities that people are doing and so it becomes a kind of plug and play type, um, type way of looking at blood charts. Um...
- AGAndy Galpin
Yeah, we- we've done many thousand athletes' blood chemistry and, uh, we, we don't use... F- first of all, we never look at disease stuff. That's not what we do. We take people that are healthy and try to optimize performance. And blood chemistry is one of the best tools. If you really understand what you're doing there, you can, uh, get some incredibly powerful information out of blood chemistry. That actually relates to what we're going to talk to today, uh, in terms of measuring, uh, e- everything from acute to chronic dehydration to sleep deprivation can be identified in, in blood chemistry to optimization, uh, improvements in nutrition supplementation. There's just a lot you can get there. Um, if people are interested in that field, I would, I point them to a gentleman named Dan Garner who, who's just an absolute juggernaut and wizard in blood chemistry for high performance. Uh, but what you can get a ton of information from that be- if you understand the difference between exactly what you talked about, looking for signals of increased risk of cardiovascular events 25 years down the road versus is this the optimal value for high performance in an athlete which is what our, our database and all of our software and stuff does is, is only looking for those things. So, uh, I'm going to talk about some of the biomarkers to look for, uh, a little bit later, um, salivary stuff, some blood stuff, uh, but we'll maybe save that part of the conversation
- 30:20 – 35:10
Recovery Timescales, Adaptation & Optimization
- AGAndy Galpin
for down the road.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Tell me about different timescales of recovery.
- AGAndy Galpin
... sure. This is actually where I was trying to answer your question for, and then I got myself way off track. But the reason I brought up the hormetic thing is, if you understand that some things in the acute, say 24 to 48-hour period, look terrible, it's actually fine, right? So this is the stimuli that's causing adaptation, so the reason I brought up the medical, um, exchange there is because, uh, you, if you looked at inflammatory markers, and, and then you mentioned some of them, you would see that they are highest acute, within seconds to minutes to hours after exercise. However, that's exactly the stimuli needed to bring them down chronically, okay? And so chronically meaning, maybe in that moment they're elevated, and then maybe they're coming down 24 hours later and 48 hours. However, if you were to compare your resting levels, say that Monday before you worked out, to your resting level that Monday the week following, the week following that, what you would probably see is your baseline inflammation goes down. And so we gotta be really careful. Are we talking immediately post-exercise? Man, these markers look terrible. Maybe my recovery score is awful. Et cetera. That's not necessarily a bad thing, because what we're lu- looking to do is to not only change what's happening today, but we're trying to cause adaptation that may take us weeks or months to actually access.
- AHAndrew Huberman
I love that you're highlighting this principle, because one of the more obvious ones to me now that you've said this is heart rate.
- AGAndy Galpin
Absolutely.
- AHAndrew Huberman
If my heart rate goes very, very high during exercise, and I do that fairly consistently, or even semi-consistently-
- AGAndy Galpin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... my resting heart rate will actually be quite a bit lower.
- AGAndy Galpin
That's a fantastic example. Really, what you're getting at here is this concept where I think it's important to differentiate between adaptation and optimization. Now, we hear that word, and I use it, and most scientists hate it, but it's a good communication tool, optimization. If you're optimizing for the current moment, you're almost surely compromising delayed adaptation, right? If, if I were to say, "Do the thing right now that makes you feel the absolute best in the world," and you're like, great. You took a nap, and you ate a donut. Like, awesome, you feel amazing. But you know it's causing long-term issues. The same can be said on the back end. If you're never choosing things that make you better right now, you're never actually going to see any adaptation, so what we're really doing with this recovery conversation is playing this game of balancing immediate gratification with delayed gratification. Uh, and how do we identify how much to do now versus not? How do I use a value or a marker, whether this is how tired I feel today, how sore I am today, versus a score on an app or a, a tracking metric, whether this is a blood marker, anything, and understand if that's what I need to cause the adaptation I want a week, a month, three months from now? In the case of some of our other athletes, it's even up to four years, right? We're trying to cause adaptations that will get us where we wanna get in the Olympics or World Championships or World Cup or wherever we're going to be. So, that's the framework we have to think about recovery. Uh, we, we maybe falsely think about it as, "I need to maximize my recovery today." A- and you could do something like take an anti-inflammatory. Whether this is a supplementation or a drug, or maybe this is ice. "Oh, cool. That's great. That will enhance your recovery in this moment. That'll make you feel better today, probably tomorrow." But what we know is that blocks the signal for adaptation, so you're not gonna get the same results, you know, four, six, eight weeks from now. So, when we talk about recovery, we have to understand, what tool am I using and why? And i- in order to do that, we have to understand, what am I training for and what am I trying to maximize? Um, if I am in the middle of a season with an athlete, and we are competing tomorrow, I am going to hedge towards acute recovery, right? Because I have to att- actuate that performance right now. If I am starting the off season, I'm not hedging towards recovery. I'm actually hedging towards adaptation. So, we're not going to deploy any of these, especially things like, uh, there's evidence that a combination of vitamin C and vitamin E will blunt hypertrophic adaptations, because they're anti-inflammatory. They're antioxidants, right? Um, other e- other studies have shown maybe they don't have, uh, in- inhibitory effect. They may or may not. Point is, conceptually, you wanna be careful of what you're trying to optimize for, and you have to have that forethought, and that alone is gonna dictate your decision-making with whether or not, again, you get in the ice, uh, you do that. Now,, uh, we will cover some tools, um, like massage, that are pretty fine to use. You don't have to worry about those blocking long-term adaptation. But others, you're gonna wanna be very careful
- 35:10 – 40:36
Adaptation & Biomarkers Levels
- AGAndy Galpin
about.
- AHAndrew Huberman
So, this principle that you've laid out for us, which is that there's a set of events that occur during exercise that trigger the adaptation, and that sets in motion a number of adaptations that occur during recovery, that then give us the exact opposite response to what the trigger was.
- AGAndy Galpin
Exactly.
- AHAndrew Huberman
So, and I'll go back to the heart rate example. Um, heart rate is close to maximal or maximal. You do that enough times within a short, you know, week or so, or two weeks, and your resting heart rate goes down. As I recall, a few episodes ago, you said that your maximum heart rate doesn't really change that much. Is that correct?
- AGAndy Galpin
Yes.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Okay. But your resting heart rate can go down quite a bit.
- AGAndy Galpin
Yep.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Is that a general theme? Meaning, do we have a more or less set upper limit or ceiling for things like inflammatory markers, for heart rate, maybe even things like stress, and what we do when we deliberately trigger stress or a dramatic increase in heart rate or dramatic increase in inflammatory markers is that we are lowering the floor, but that the ceiling remains the same?
- AGAndy Galpin
It's very dependent upon the marker. So, in the case of maximum heart rate, it will not change...... with the exception of one thing, which is age. Age brings it down. Training will not change it up in most circumstances. If you look at something like an inflammatory response, I suppose theoretically there is a ceiling, though I'm not aware of it. Um, I can tell you (laughs) right now looking at blood markers and things like creatine kinase. So remember the conversation about metabolism and w- that, uh, we use phosphocreatine as one of our primary fuel sources for explosive exercise. Well, if we're using phosphocreatine, uh, this creatine kinase... Now remember, kinase are enzymes that, that function to break things down for the most part. So creatine kinase is the enzyme you use to break down creatine. Well, when you do that a lot, then that creatine kinase gets out of muscle and seeps into the blood. Um, myoglobin is actually another fantastic marker, by the way. Um, myoglobin is, uh, if you think about hemoglobin being in blood as w- uh, the molecule that carries oxygen around, when it's in the muscle tissue, then it's myoglobin, myo meaning muscle. And it's the same globulin thing. So there's a bunch of markers you can look at muscle breakdown and one of the things that you can see is, uh, uh, creatine kinase level that's elevated after, say, um, one bout of exercise and, and you might... It, it might be up, you know, five or six-fold. Um, I've actually seen this number in, uh, offensive linemen in the NFL be something like 500-plus fold. So w- even within just one category to the next, that, that number can get extraordinarily high. And if you know... E- This is actually one im- an important point here. If you're paying attention to any mechanistic research or use- you're using that to inform your decision-making, you have to be extraordinarily careful of magnitude. And what I mean by that is if, if I were to, to be running a, a Western blot looking at a signaling protein, um, in, in a muscle, does, did this activation of this protein turn on mitochondrial biogenesis and I saw that whatever intervention we gave it, whether it was a nutrition thing or a drug or an exercise, and I saw that that signaling protein increased by 20%, I would basically assume that to be totally physiologically irrelevant because in order for that to be important... It totally depends on the marker you're looking at but you, y- some markers I might need to see four or five, six hundredfold increase before I know that that will actually be enough to be what we call physiologically relevant. Others, if they're up one or two percent, that is relevant. And so you really want to be careful when you're e- either reading papers or looking at social media stuff. If people are just talking about this marker increased this much, it may not matter. It may be totally irrelevant physiologically. And so you have to... That, that's also if you're wondering like, "How the hell are the all these people..." Well, that's how they can trick you a little bit, I- m- wh- intentionally or not. It could be just they're trying to their best, but they don't really understand that area enough. And so, um, that's an important point to pay attention to. So to answer your question again fully, it would be hard to determine if there is truly a maximum level. Um, some things don't want to move, like blood pH. It doesn't really wanna move. The range that you're gonna move from is, you know, like 6.8 to 7.4. And if you get up to like 7.9, like- ... y- you're probably (laughs) in big, big, big trouble. Other things, again, can go up 500, 5,000-fold. And so it... The markers will really determine that answer.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Well, at some point in the future, I'd love to continue this discussion around the topic of stress specifically.
- AGAndy Galpin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Um, and maybe we will get into that a little bit later today when we, um, get into the use of deliberate cold exposure because that certainly, um, has effects related directly to temperature on tissue, but it certainly has mental effects in terms of raising one's level of, uh, perceived pain.
- AGAndy Galpin
It's fun.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Um-
- AGAndy Galpin
It's also good. (laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
(laughs) Yeah. We- Some people love it.
- AGAndy Galpin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And some people love it for the feeling they get during it. Um, deliberate cold exposure, some people only like it for the feeling that they get after it.
- AGAndy Galpin
Right.
- AHAndrew Huberman
N- not unlike exercise.
- AGAndy Galpin
Totally.
- AHAndrew Huberman
I, I love to train, I love exercise, but I know many people who, uh, um, they loathe exercise, but they love the feeling afterward. So this will be a theme that we will come back to. Thank you for indulging my interest in that, uh, semi-tangent. I think it's a relevant tangent, if there is such
- 40:36 – 47:28
4 Recovery Levels, Enhance Recovery
- AHAndrew Huberman
a thing. If you can now return us to the different timescales-
- AGAndy Galpin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... and modes of recovery, 'cause I think where we are headed is how to get better at recovering.
- AGAndy Galpin
Yep. Let's talk about the tools. Let's talk about what to measure and identify for all four of these distinct levels. So level one is what we call overload. And just very quickly what that means is I did a workout today. The sign and symptom of overload is you're fatigued. Per- acute performance is down. So I worked out hard right now. If I were to go try to do a maximum effort, I would be reduced in my ability. The recovery period for acute overload is minutes to days, all right? That's generally what we call acute overload. And that's what we're looking for, right? So we... System should theoretically see that hormetic stressor, come back and response, come back bigger, better, more efficient, et cetera. If you were to continue training in that state, like most of us do, and say I did a workout today, I had a little bit of acute overload. Gonna work out again tomorrow, a little more acute overload. Gonna work out the next day, a little more acute overload. Even if you took a day in between, it's... That doesn't matter, right? You just continue these acute bouts of insult. Then you're gonna be pushing into the absolute golden target, which is what we call functional overreaching. So you have overreached what you can currently do and it results in a functional outcome. And what we mean functionally here is performance is enhanced. And again, performance being whatever you deem it to be. You're stronger. Uh, you've enhanced muscle size, your mitochondria has improved. You've... Wh- whatever the thing is. It's not just a physical performance thing, right? Amazing. Recovery time for functional overreaching is typically a few days to maybe even a week or so. And so typically what we see happen is prior to a competition, individuals will do what we call a taper, which is a reduced training volume.... For some short period of time. And the rea- the reason they do that is to, again, uh, actualize, is the phrase we use here, the adaptations. And so you worked hard for six weeks and, you know, theoretically, the workout you did three, four, five, six weeks ago, once you allow the system to recover, will be actualized, which means your performance will be enhanced here. So functional overreaching is the golden target. Okay. If you were to be at the point of functional overreaching and you continued to train, so it intensified, whether this is through intensity, this is through volume, or really, as you said earlier, you had something holding back your recovery, it doesn't really matter. Right? It's, it's, it's sort of two sides of the same coin. Then you would move into what we call nonfunctional overreaching. So you've overreached again, but now it is nonfunctional, as in you did not see a positive benefit once recovery allowed. This typically means you have weeks, it takes weeks to come back from, and you basically just get back to baseline. And this is where a lot of folks are who end up in this vicious cycle. And so you're like, "Man, I'm not getting the results I want. I'm going to train harder. I'm not getting the results I want, I'm gonna train harder and harder." But because you've ca- uh, recovery isn't improved, you just end up in the same spot, so then you train more and you end up in the same spot and you end up then just either blowing up or quitting and you're not getting where you want. If you were to continue past that point, you may actually be in what we actually call overtraining, and that typically is, uh, considered to be overtrained if it takes months to recover from. So most people think they're overtrained are really not. They're just probably nonfunctionally overreached. And again, the classic distinction is if you took three or four days off and you felt better, you weren't probably, quote unquote, "overtrained." You were probably just in this area of nonfunctional overreaching, you needed a little bit of a back off. If you, and this has been the case, I've had this happen with gymnasts, uh, and a cheerleader, and some other things, where they take a month off and we're barely seeing them start to come back to their baseline numbers, uh, in, in any number of areas: mood, desire to train, testosterone/cortisol ratios, um, bowel markers in a number of areas, physical performance, vertical jump height. Like, all these things. They just start to get back to baseline. So over- true overtraining is actually quite rare. Nonfunctional overreaching is much more common, and, uh, it is a shorter timeframe scale. So when we talk about recovery, those are the four pieces that we're really thinking about. And so if you are concerned about, "Oh, I'm super sore. How do I get less sore? How do I either not be as sore next time I do that same workout?" Or, "I'm super sore and now how do I recover?" Those are playing in that first category of overload, and we can certainly talk about how to figure that out. But the quick answer is, you gotta go back to our previous episodes and just pay attention to the volume intensity recommendations. If you're getting significantly, uh, more damaged or fatigue in a workout, you probably have increased your volume too qu- too quickly or something else is dragging your stress bucket down. But generally, this is a problem of training. Um, you either didn't warm up sufficiently, your fueling strategy is off, which we'll talk about in the next episode, or you violated one of our principles of increasing intensity and volume sort of too quickly. Um, if it's past that and you're getting to a stage where you're just like, "I'm feeling beat up all the time. My energy is going down. I'm just not feeling like I'm recovered," now we're in this overreaching stage. So the, the story I kinda tell here always is, uh, a few years ago, I was working and, uh, my wife, Natasha, was in the garage training. And I'm doing something and, like, she comes stumbling and she has this look on her eyes and they're, like, you know, giant. Her eyeballs are giant. She's just, like, wobbling. And she's like, "I effed up." And I was like, "What do you mean you, like, effed up?" And she's just like, "I read the program wrong." And she's like trying... I'm like, "What'd you do?" Like, she was supposed to be doing 10 sets of three every minute on the minute, and she did three sets of 10 every minute on the minute. (laughs) And she was absolutely wrecked. She couldn't move for a few hours afterwards, and then for days she's just like, "You have to handle the kids. Like, I can't get out of bed. I can't move." So that was, like, a (laughs) classic example of, all right, like, we don't need to fix recovery here. You're just a dummy, and you did (laughs) the training way too hard, too long. Like, this is not... We don't have a problem here. So if it's a ca- a situation like that, it's generally you just... The program was way off. Um, if it's constantly happening where you're just like, "Man, like, for whatever reason, every once in a while I'm getting really sore or having a really bad performance in these workouts," then we need to go to our other stress bucket, take a look at our allostatic loader, allostasis, and get figured out what's happening there. Um, so those are the, the easy ways to flag acute overload problems.
- AHAndrew Huberman
I'd like to take
- 47:28 – 48:19
AG1 (Athletic Greens)
- AHAndrew Huberman
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- 48:19 – 52:53
Overreaching vs. Overtraining
- AHAndrew Huberman
special offer. I'm happy that you pointed out the distinction between functional overreaching, overtraining, and being overtrained. I think one common mistake that people make in thinking about biology generally is that they think in terms of nouns and adjectives and not verbs.
- AGAndy Galpin
Amazing. I love that so much.
- AHAndrew Huberman
You know, uh, b- biology is a, uh, collection of processes or processes, depending on who you are and where you live and who you trained with.Being overtrained is a state that, in many ways, is an adjective. You're overtrained. I'm overtrained. It's like saying, uh, you know, "I'm an American." "I'm a, you know, Czechoslovakian," whatever it happens to be, right? And in many ways, people do start to associate with an identity, at least a transient identity, and they start making all sorts of decisions, it sounds like, about what sorts of verbs they will and will not engage in. Whereas I think if we look at things as processes, and we assign verbs to them, then we can say, "Okay, I'm functionally overreaching," or, "I'm truly overtraining," which is just a matter of degrees.
- AGAndy Galpin
Correct.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Right? Or under-training, for that matter. "I'm not, I'm reaching, but I'm not functionally reaching." It's just, uh, it's just performance. And it, you know, just as with the nervous system, won't change unless you give it a reason to. This is the reason why if you can perform something perfectly or speak a language perfectly, there's- there's no rewiring of the nervous system. This myth that we've all been told, that every experience rewires your nervous system, it's different now than it was two seconds ago, that's a, that's a ridiculous, illogical statement. We know that's not true. If your nervous system can perform something, it has no reason to change, and it won't.
- AGAndy Galpin
Muscle's the same way. This is why you have to progressively overload. You have to learn something new or challenge your muscle to do something new. It's the same thing.
- AHAndrew Huberman
So in the example that you gave, uh, with your wife doing this workout that turned out to be far more strenuous, she had functionally overreached. In some sense, she might have been overtraining or heading in the direction of overtraining, but the mistake would be to assume that she was overtrained, right? As a kind of... It almost becomes a bit of a state or a character assignment, um, as opposed to a verb. In- in any case, there's no perfect way to describe it. So we're talking about nouns and adjectives and we're also, um, uh, talking about verbs. But I think the verbs are really anchored down in processes and things that we do, actions that we can take. And so, um, if I may, I'd like to just highlight this- this idea of shifting one's thinking towards verb actions rather than labels on the state that we happen to be in, or the person that we happen to be (laughs) , right? Sometimes it even does become kind of characterological in the way that people describe it. And, uh, so I have to believe that there is something called overtraining. That overtraining is real, in other words, but that we don't ever really know if we're overtrained.
- AGAndy Galpin
You nailed it. You abs-... Sorry.
- AHAndrew Huberman
There's- there's no... You know, it's not like a red flag, uh, you know, shoots up out of your shoulder and say, "I'm overtrained," you know? It's... Um, so in doing so, I hope that we can start thinking about some of the verbs, the actions that we can all take, in order to ensure that we stimulate progressive overload one way or another, and at the same time that we don't fall into these bins of character assignment where suddenly we decide that we need to do X, like take a month off or something like that. Because I- I'm beginning to realize, um, from our discussion that that's exactly the wrong way to go.
- AGAndy Galpin
Those are fantastic points. I- I want to make sure it is clear that there is no clinical diagnosis for overtraining. There are no standards, there's no test or, uh, blood panel you can pull that would actually identify you in that state. So your- your distinction here, Andrew, of these are verbs rather than nouns, is- is so wonderful, 'cause that is exactly the case. Uh, the only way we could really come retroactively diagnose one with overtraining is if, again, we had... You did weeks of recovery and you only got back to baseline. So we can't do it in the moment. I can't take a single test. Um, there's no subjective marker or anything that says, "You are overtrained." It is simply, "You are probably overtraining and we need to reverse that quickly." Or in the case of the step before, "You are probably funct- non-functionally overreaching, and if you continue to do this, you will probably enter into a stage, uh, where this is... You're overtraining and we need to come back." So that's an important thing to let people know, is there's no one thing we can actually point to that says you are here. You are not a noun. This is a verb.
- AHAndrew Huberman
So what are some
- 52:53 – 1:03:39
Tool: Acute Overload & Recovery, Breathwork
- AHAndrew Huberman
tools that we can use to enhance our recovery?
- AGAndy Galpin
Yeah. Let's start off with that acute overload phase. So in other words, I just did a workout and I'm feeling awful, or I just did one two days ago and I'm super sore. How do I get rid of that right now? Well, there's a couple of things you can do immediately after your workout, and then others that are maybe more actionable a day later or two days later. And we'll just cover a handful of them. We'll do some nutrition and hydration and supplementation in the next episode. I'm going to cover everything else not in that category right now. So a couple of things. Number one, uh, you can actually start, kickstart that recovery process at the end of your current training session. And I guess I should say it this way, I strongly suggest you (laughs) start this recovery process immediately after the workout. You mentioned earlier about this idea of you got to get a really high peak of stress to cause adaptation. But I actually didn't explain that correctly, 'cause what has to happen is you need that extremely high peak, but you then you have to be met with an extremely sharp recovery back down. And so, you know, you've talked about this before in some of your neuroplasticity stuff and in terms of what has to happen that cause the insult, and then you immediately need to be able to recover to make sure that that causes changes in the brain. Same thing happens here. So we need a really sharp and high inflammatory response, and then if you do not meet it with an immediate recovery period, the signal won't be there to maximize your results. So what's that mean? You can actually do a couple of things. Number one is actually listening to slow-paced music. There's evidence to suggest fast-paced music may, uh, slow down your recovery, and slow pace would actually enhance it. So if you just change from, you know, your maximum get-you-up and get-going music during the workout to a slower, lower cadence, that will help you kickstart the idea. Of a similar note, you can also use what we call downregulation breathing.... you could do them in conjunction or one or the other, whichever is up to you. So my personal favorite method here is somewhere between three to 10 minutes of finishing your training session, laying down. Uh, I like to be in that position. You could certainly do it in the lotus position, but I think laying on your back is generally more effective. Personal preference there, no science. Uh, I like the eyes being covered, getting into this dark, quiet sort of area, and then just breathing through your nose in a structured cadence. There's a lot of different things you can try. An easy example is just box breathing. So, uh, you can imagine a box having four squares. So what you're going to do is inhale for somewhere between, like, three to eight seconds, and then whatever number you choose, you keep that same tempo. And so let's say you chose to do a five-second inhale, that's gonna take you up vertically, and then horizontally for your box is a five-second hold, and then a five-second exhale, and then a five-second hold. And you just need to repeat that for the time domain. Uh, I typically, honestly, don't use a timer. You'll actually notice a lot of people will, like, fall asleep or get really close to falling asleep in this period. You could do a triangle version of that where you do an inhale, hold, exhale, and then go right back in your inhale, or a bu- there's a bunch of different tricks you can try here. You need to play around and see what actually works best for you. Um, 10 minutes is probably better, but if you can just at least give me three, uh, that'll work. If you're really, really resistant, you can actually do that just in the shower. And so if you're gonna finish your workout, get in the shower. Again, just close your eyes in the shower and give me three minutes of focused relaxation breathing, and that will accelerate the recovery process.
- AHAndrew Huberman
I love it, and I particularly love it because my laboratory works on stress and respiration, AKA breathing, and the interactions between the two. And I'll just mention a result that was just accepted for publication, so should be out by time this episode airs.
- AGAndy Galpin
Hey, congrats.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Uh, thank you. Uh, this is the beautiful work of, uh, not me directly, although it took place in my lab, but as we know, it's the students and postdocs who-
- AGAndy Galpin
(laughs) Always, al- always.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... really do the heavy lifting of, um, Dr. Melis, uh, Bulban, uh, in my lab, so a phenomenal researcher, that showed that a short period of five minutes of box breathing, of exactly the type that you described, or, uh, cyclic sighing, so two inhales followed by an extended exhale till lungs empty. Ideally, the inhales are done through the nose, the exhales are done, uh, through the mouth, although it could all be done through the nose, um, or the mouth for that matter, but probably nose, nose for inhale, inhale, mouth for exhale, or, um, uh, in- inhales through the nose and- and exhale through the nose. Cyclic sighing, as we refer to it, done for five minutes, both of those produce very significant, uh, decreases in resting heart rate, that over time will increase things like heart rate variability and so on and so forth. Um, so provided that there are extended exhales, it seems like the calming response and the reduction in overall stress o- occurs. The only thing that really sends things in the other direction would be something like cyclic hyperventilation.
- AGAndy Galpin
Absolutely.
- AHAndrew Huberman
I'm sure you've observed that. Um, and interestingly, uh, when we had people just do five minutes of, uh, meditation, which, during which, of course, they are breathing, but they're just allowing their breathing to progress however it happens to be in that moment, um, or moments across the five minutes, uh, there were reductions in the same sorts of markers of stress that I described, but not as significant as breathing. So I love the box breathing tool post-workout, um, and there's some other alternatives there too, uh, that I just mentioned. But I think people greatly underestimate the potency of breathing for shifting one's nervous system function away from stress, or if one wants, toward more alertness and stress.
- AGAndy Galpin
I actually have a couple questions for you on that.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Sure.
- AGAndy Galpin
I think the audience would appreciate this. Uh, how long were those boxes? Was it just user-selected?
- AHAndrew Huberman
Great question. So we used the carbon dioxide tolerance test-
- AGAndy Galpin
Amazing. (laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
... uh, in order for people to determine how long the different sides of the box should be, and you covered carbon dioxide tolerance test in a previous episode. Uh, we can provide a link to that clip, um, in the show note captions. But as you point out, it involves a long extended exhale till lungs empty, um, and of course people could sit with lungs empty, but, uh, they have to accurately re- faithfully-
- AGAndy Galpin
It's true, sure.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... as we say, report how long it took them to empty their lungs. We use that as a, as a gauge. Typically, if it takes, if people go to lungs empty in 20 seconds or less, I believe, I have to go back to the paper and look, but I believe that the, um, duration for each of the sides of the boxes as it were, was somewhere between, um, two and three seconds if they had a, uh, CO2 discard time of anywhere from, uh, 20 seconds up to about 40, 45 seconds.
- AGAndy Galpin
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
We used a d- uh, the sides of the box were, I believe, um, between four and six seconds. And then for people longer than a- who could discard their air over a period of a minute, um, or more, we used a, uh, box duration that is inhale hold, exhale hold duration of somewhere between, I believe it was, um, seven or maybe it was eight and, um, as long as 11 or 12 seconds.
- AGAndy Galpin
Yeah, those numbers are low.
- AHAndrew Huberman
'Cause you get your kind of free diver types who can really do this, um, who are really well-trained, uh, for this sort of thing. The, uh, don't quote me exactly on those numbers, but that, th- that was approximate.
- AGAndy Galpin
That, those line up exactly with what, what we've done, so I, I believe it's, it's gonna be close, within seconds of non-important distinction is, it's gonna be close enough. So that's great. And that was, uh, it took them what, six weeks before they noticed?
- AHAndrew Huberman
Uh, so this study was done over the period of a month, and then when they were swapped into a new pattern of breathing, um, condition or meditation condition, and this was all done-
- AGAndy Galpin
Oh, crossover.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... in, in the natural world, as we say. Um, they were wearing WHOOP bands. They were, were getting heart rate, heart rate variability, sleep data, subjective data about mood, et cetera. So there were a lot of measures, but this was, um, m- more than 100 subjects out in the wild of life.
- AGAndy Galpin
I love it.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Um, and we tried as best we could to track life stress events and exercise and things like that. Eh, that was harder to control outside the laboratory. Really, all those results speak to exactly what you're describing here, which is that...... deliberate respiration that involves controlled holds and exhales, really has a dramatic and very, uh, immediate impact on reducing our levels of stress.
- AGAndy Galpin
That, that's wonderful. I'm not surprised at all, uh, with your findings. And what's really interesting about that is, you mentioned how the exhalation portion is primarily responsible for the downregulation, and that's actually goes back to our previous endurance conversation, which is that in general at rest, at non-altitude, increases in CO2 are the primary driver for ventilation. And so what that generally means is inhales are associated with an uptick in sympathetic state, and exhales are associated with a uptick of parasympathetic state. Uh, this is generally why folks will do things like exhale and finish that exhale right before they perform a very high precision neurological task. So if you're going to, say, aim at a target and shoot, you're going to exhale fully and then almost always execute that movement at the end of the exhale because that's when you in your highest parasympathetic state and lowest drive for ventilation. I have to say, I'm not surprised at all that you guys found that. There's actually other data that point to individuals, uh, particularly after endurance training, that can get back down to baseline heart rate, is going to be correlated with who gets the most actual results of their training. Said that, uh, if you take a bunch of individuals and put them through an endurance training program, and if you measure how quickly they can get back down to baseline after each workout, in general, those folks that are better at that are going to see greater improvements in performance at the end of your, say, four or six or eight-week training block. And so there's a little bit of causation and correlation there that we have to untie, but I think it's enough to say, hey, if you invest these three, and in your case, your, your, uh, study was five minutes, um, it's only going to enhance recovery. You have a likelihood of increasing your results from your training, and now we also have additional benefits like being able to transition more appropriately into our next task, going to work, going to see family, whatever the thing is. And it's, it's a nice close to, I asked you to be in a high sympathetic state, body, and I asked you to perform and to be under stress. I gave you recovery, and now we're ready to transition in our next thing so that we don't take that exercise energy, if you will, into our next, uh, task, which may or may not want me in a sympathetic drive state.
- AHAndrew Huberman
So if somebody
- 1:03:39 – 1:08:27
Tool: Alleviate Acute Soreness, Compression Clothing
- AHAndrew Huberman
is sore following a workout, either locally sore in a muscle group or group of muscles, maybe in their legs or chest or torso, or maybe their whole body-
- AGAndy Galpin
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... is sore (laughs) , as it sometimes is the case, what are some tools that they can implement in order to accelerate the, I want to call it moving out of that soreness, but it's really, uh, as we know, the alleviation of the soreness through a bunch of different processes. What are the most effective tools to push back on that soreness and dissipate it?
- AGAndy Galpin
Yeah, absolutely. First of all, it's not lactate. That's just a really (laughs) important thing that we still hear people talk about is, you know, you're sore 24 hours later. You got to do this thing to get the lactate out of there. As we talked about in the metabolism, uh, conversation and episode, that, that is not the cause of fatigue, and it's certainly not the cause of soreness. So not an actionable tip there, but just a pet peeve of mine when I hear people (laughs) say that, that I get irritated. So we can maybe end that conversation. Um, strategies, tools. Here's what you can do. You can actually wear compression gear. That will help a little bit. There's, uh, a decent amount of evidence suggesting if you just were to, you know, put some tighter fitting clothes on, leisure wear or compression gear if you have it, that that can actually prevent a little bit of soreness from occurring. So if you're in the case of poor Natasha and you realize you've just done way, way, way too much or you went and hung out with your bowhunting friend and you trained way too hard and you realize, "Oh my goodness, I'm gonna be very sore here," you can immediately put on compression gear and wear that really for as long a- as possible.
- AHAndrew Huberman
What, what are some examples of compression gear? I've seen people on the plane with those high, high socks, um.
- AGAndy Galpin
Yeah, I mean, anything that you wear compression gear for what you do for exercise. So whether these are just, uh, you know, compression pants and leggings, tight-fitting leggings, uh, whether this is, uh, a long-sleeve shirt that's, uh, like a rash guard you would wear in, you know, jujitsu or, or surfing or something like that. As long as it's tight-fitting, it doesn't have to be much more than that. You can wear... Yeah, I suppose you could get the socks, would be great, but, um, we generally just tell our athletes, um, they would put on, you know, long-sleeve compression shirts that they would wear for their training, and then long compression, uh, leggings, and that'd be fine.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Can people apply these compression, um, garb after training and still get some of the positive effects?
- AGAndy Galpin
Yeah, I have not seen any evidence to suggest that that would block adaptation. That may be the case. I, I am not aware of those studies if that happens, but, um, I certainly know that the information suggests it enhance a little bit of muscle recovery.
- AHAndrew Huberman
But ideally one knows if they are about to do a workout that could trigger a lot of soreness.
- AGAndy Galpin
Yep.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And then wears compression gear of some sort to-
- AGAndy Galpin
Uh-
- AHAndrew Huberman
... offset that. Uh, and if so, does it have to be local to the muscle groups that you're working on? The reason I asked about the socks is my understanding of the socks, uh, the, uh, the compression socks people wear on the plane is that it's going to shift the patterns of blood flow, not just in the lower legs, but all over the body.
- AGAndy Galpin
Yeah, you're probably gonna want to focus it on the actual exercising tissue, though actually that's a really good question. I don't know the answer of whether or not you did an upper body workout only or lower body compression gear, if that would actually help. That's a great question. It may have been done, I don't know, uh, but I don't know the answer to that. In general, we just tell people like wear, wear the whole thing as much as you can. Um, I actually am not concerned that you're wearing it during your workout. Uh, it is something you could put on afterwards or even wear just a little bit of compression the other day. Um, we've actually did a really fun study. Uh, I collaborated with, um, Bill Kramer, who's...... uh, you know, Sports Scientist of the Year Award is the Bill Kramer Award, if that gives you any indication, out of, uh, University of Connecticut. As well as with Lee Brown, so two Lifetime Achievement Award winners. And we (laughs) , we put people on a, a plane in Storrs, Connecticut and flew them to Cal State Fullerton, so a cross-country flight. And some of 'em got to wear compression gear during the flight and others did not. And then they landed in California, did a training bout, put 'em back on the plane, went back to Storrs, and I think they did another training bout when they got back there. There was a lot of data that came out of that paper, but one of the things that was clear is the compression group was effective, um, at handling some of the blood-related coagulation and other issues associated with, uh, long flights, and particularly athletic performance. So that's actually a sneaky little insider trick that I'll use a lot with people, uh, particularly with athletes that are traveling, is just wear that compression gear on the plane. So you, you talked about that and that sort of brung that study to mind that- as another effective strategy. So compression gear in general, as well as particularly on a plane, um, basically, the tighter you can get it, the better, without, obviously, making your hands purple and being uncomfortable and things like that. So it doesn't have to be overly tight. Uh, anything will work a- and probably help. So I'm also doing that personally anytime I'm taking a flight like that, as much as I can, uh, just to feel a little better when I get there.
- 1:08:27 – 1:14:21
Tool: Acute Soreness, Massage, Temperature
- AGAndy Galpin
- AHAndrew Huberman
So what are some other methods that we can use to alleviate acute soreness?
- AGAndy Galpin
Well, if we continue down this same theme, which is saying, okay, we'll use some sort of pressure manipulation to enhance recovery. If compression is one strategy, you can also use things like, um, compression boots or garments, and these are pneumatic devices that will, you know, pump, uh, air outside you and compress, um, back and forth. There's any number of devices that will do this. Um, you can also use the physical hand, so this would be massage and body work. Um, they're all really working, as best we can tell, on s- the same mechanisms, uh, which are effectively moving fluid in and out of the tissue, as well as potentially enhancing blood flow, uh, increasing capillarization, and which is going to only get nutrients in and waste products out. So you can kind of pick and choose based upon your budget, uh, preferences, availability, timing, things like that. So those are all, uh, effective strategies. Outside of that really is the next largest category, which is now thermal. And, uh, and so far in this discussion we've mentioned cold water immersion, and I talked about it in the hypertrophy section how you would not want to do that immediately post-exercise, which would be getting into cold water or an ice bath, if you're trying to grow muscle mass. Having said that, there is good evidence showing that cold water immersion specifically is effective at reducing muscle soreness. So it is a fair consideration, and it's a classic example of how there are no free passes in physiology. Nothing is always good or always bad. It's always about what are you willing to give up and, versus what you're willing to get. And in the case of, like, cold water immersion, you may be thinking, yeah, I might blunt some of the hypertrophic adaptations, but if you're in that phase of training where you're actually trying to push more towards optimization in that moment, rather than long-term adaptation, then a- an ice bath might be a great choice. In addition, if you fall into a scenario like Natasha did, a- and you realize like, "I'm just so unbelievably sore, this might cost me three or four or five or six days of training," it might be worth it for you to accelerate that recovery process by a couple of days so that you don't miss so much training. So it's- it's just a- it's an algorithm, it's an equation. What am I looking for? Uh, again, if I'm in season or trying to compete, or if I have just done way, way, way too much exercise and I am really in significant pain, you would probably be willing to give up some small percentage of eventual muscle growth after a single session to get out of pain. So, um, all of the cold strategies, cold water immersion is clearly the best approach, rather than cold air or some other tactic. So a cold shower is probably not enough here. You really do, uh, want to be either in moderately cold, this is maybe 40 to 50 degree water, uh, for probably north of 15 minutes, or you can be in sub-40 for as little as maybe five minutes to get some of the effect. A- and there's been a number of studies, um, so I'm sort of summarizing a bunch of that kind of into one rather than going through them point by point.
- AHAndrew Huberman
The numbers you just threw out, uh, which I'm assuming are, um, uh, Fahrenheit, um-
- AGAndy Galpin
(laughs) .
- AHAndrew Huberman
... seem, seem really cold to me.
- AGAndy Galpin
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Right? Uncomfortably cold.
- AGAndy Galpin
Ab- absolutely.
- AHAndrew Huberman
So I always recommend that people ease into it as a protocol overall, that they not immediately go to 35 degree, uh, cold water if they've never done it before (laughs) . Uh, that said, once people are comfortable being uncomfortable, because I always answer to the question, "How cold should it be exactly?" Would you agree that it should be very, very cold, so much so that you really, really want to get out, but that you are able to stay in safely, whatever that value happens to be?
- AGAndy Galpin
You absolutely need to be safe. Having said that, we have actually, in our XPT retreats, put do- dozens if not hundreds of people at this point, uh, immediately into the sub-35 degree water their first time ever and done, you know, three minutes, multiple rounds, uh, in a session. So they can handle it. But you don't need to go that crazy if you don't want. You kind of have to play a game, right? Do you wanna be really, really cold for a short amount of time, or do you wanna be like kind of cold for a longer amount of time? I- I- Really, the only mistake you can make is doing something like, you know, 65 degree water, which is m- for most people is not very comfortable, and doing, you know, five or 10 minutes.
- AHAndrew Huberman
It's just not gonna be effective.
- AGAndy Galpin
It's probably not gonna be effective. So if you're like, "Man, 35 is- is absolutely crazy," and you want to do 55 degree water, and there's literature in that area, uh, but it's going to say you need to probably be there, you know, somewhere almost surely north of 10 minutes, and some of it will actually show you need to be in there like well north of 20 to 30 minutes. So for my money, I would rather go really, really cold and get it done in five minutes, but, um, personal preference on this one. You can also make it a little bit easier on yourself-There is not nearly as much evidence, but there is some on contrast stuff. So, uh, this is when you go cold, hot, and sort of back and forth. There are no really good rules in terms of how much should you go, how many rounds, how long in cold, how long in hot. Again, there have been a couple of studies, but... And obviously those studies use numbers, but that doesn't mean those have been tested to see what, what are optimal, which is a very big different. So, um, you can really just kind of play that by feel. Hot is good for recovery, you just have to be careful because you are going to put more blood flow in the area and so you, you may walk out of there with some additional acute swelling, which is then gonna put greater pressure on there. So, um, you have to kind of play with it. I personally really like hot, uh, for recovery. I will feel maybe not great in that moment, but the next day I tend to feel really, really good. In addition, if I wake up the next morning and I'm really, really hurting and, and I'm super stiff, a hot bath will, will help that, um, quite a bit. So you can play with some of those protocols. Again, you don't have to do ice. There is absolutely no requirement to do so. It is just an option if you're interested.
- 1:14:21 – 1:20:44
Cold & Heat Contrast, Cold Shower vs. Immersion, Sauna & Fertility
- AGAndy Galpin
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah. The studies of Dr. Susanna Søberg, um-
- AGAndy Galpin
Sure, yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... uh, are not directly aimed at alleviating soreness or recovery. They're more about, uh, increasing thermal capacity by a storage of, uh, brown adipose tissue, not the blubbery fat, but the stuff around the clavicles and around the heart that help you generate body heat at rest and metabolism and so on. And the numbers there that, um, she's come up with, again, have not been tested against all the possible derivations. Just like with breathing, we did five-minute sessions, but who knows, maybe a minute would have been equally effective. We just, there are constraints on these sorts of studies. But the values that she's come up with which seem to be good thresholds for making sure that an adaptation response is triggered by heat and cold is it ends up being 57 minutes per week total of uncomfortable but safe heat-
- AGAndy Galpin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... in that case sauna, and that can be all in one session or breaking it up into a couple of sessions on the same day or, or different days, and then 11 minutes per week of cold either in one single session or multiple sessions. Again, one could do more. Um, one could break that up over, you know, multiple days or do it all in one day or do it all in one, you know, an hour in the sauna and then 11 minutes in the cold or vice versa, although that seems a little bit extreme, especially for the uninitiated. But those are the numbers that have been studied. But as you point out, there are not a lot of really thorough studies examining different cold protocols according to temperature by time requirement, so there is a bit of subjective feel required to e- establish a routine.
- AGAndy Galpin
And I would actually say this is another time to re-emphasize something we talked about at the beginning of our conversation, which is that pain itself is not a defined outcome. Uh, it's heavily influenced by your perception, and so if you don't feel like they work for you, they won't work. If you feel like they work fantastic, they do. So it's a challenging field to get really objective data on, so there's always going to be a little bit of, um, subjective nature to some of these things. I, I can tell you anecdotally we've used hot and cold contrasts for a long time with athletes. Um, some love it, some don't care for it, and everything in between. So it's one of those things where I never mandate it. Now, of course, I can't mandate anything for anyone I work with, but I'm never, you know, like, "Hey, are you interested? Great." If you're struggling in this area and you wanna try this, you did and you liked it, great. If you're struggling in this area and you tried it and you didn't love it, okay, fine. And I'm not... We'll, we'll find other routes as we, we'll get into. There's a lot of ways to enhance recovery. Um, this is only one, and it hasn't even really come down to stopping the problem in the first place. We're n- we're just treating symptoms, uh, which is first line of defense, but you really need to go back and figure out why it's happening to begin with as a solution. Um, these are just different, again, acute symptom management tactics.
- AHAndrew Huberman
One final point about, uh, deliberate cold exposure I think worth mentioning is one of the reasons the shower is effective but not nearly as effective as cold water immersion or immersion in ice up to the neck is simply because of the reason you stated before, which is that most showers are not going to get that cold.
- AGAndy Galpin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
You're not gonna get down, you know, into the sub-40s. Um, also, cold showers haven't really been studied that much. They have, but not nearly as much as immersion and people always ask why. Uh, just think about the challenges of studying cold water, uh, exposure in the shower where you can't really control for-
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