Maximizing Productivity, Physical & Mental Health with Daily Tools

1. 0:00 – 4:08

   Introduction: Protocols for sleep, mood, focus, exercise creativity

   1. AHAndrew Huberman0:00

      (mellow music) Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, we are going to talk about science-based protocols for sleep, mood, learning, nutrition, exercise of various kinds, strength and endurance, and hypertrophy, and we are going to talk about some protocols that relate to creativity. We're going to talk about behavioral protocols, supplement-based protocols, all science backed by quality peer-reviewed literature. The reason that we're holding this episode now is that in the recent previous episodes, we've covered some pretty intense and in-depth topics. We've talked about vision and how we see and how to get better at seeing and how to maintain vision. We've talked about hearing and balance. We've talked about chemical sensing, and we had a guest episode that covered a lot of information about new and emerging technologies in neuroscience as well as mental health. That was the interview episode with Dr. Karl Deisseroth. So given that we've covered so much detailed information in the previous 27 episodes of the Huberman Lab Podcast, I decided that we would hold office hours. Office hours in the university setting are when students come to the professor's office or you meet outdoors on campus or in the classroom to review the material and questions from lecture in more detail. Now, unfortunately, we don't have the opportunity to meet face-to-face in real life, but nonetheless, you've been sending your questions, putting them in the comments section on YouTube, et cetera, and I prepared a number of answers to the questions that have shown up most frequently. Now, in order to provide context and structure to the way that we will address these questions, I've arranged the science and science-based protocols that relate to various aspects of life such as mood, exercise, sleep, waking, anxiety, creativity, et cetera into the context of a day. Selecting the unit of a day in order to deliver this science information and protocols is not a haphazard decision on my part. It's actually the case that every cell in our body, every organ in our body and our brain is modulated or changes across the 24-hour day in a very regular and predictable rhythm. And it's no coincidence that the Earth spins once on its axis every 24 hours. These two things are coordinated by virtue of genes and different proteins and things that are expressed in every cell of your body. And so selecting the unit of the day is not just a practical one, but it's one that's related to our deeper biology. You may have heard in my interview episode with Dr. Karl Deisseroth that he himself in order to juggle a tremendous workload, a full-time clinical practice, a lab of 40-plus people, a family of five children, et cetera, breaks up his life into units of days. And so today, we are going to further dissect the day as a unit that one can manage and manage extremely well, and in fact, can optimize. So we're basically going to talk about how to leverage science-based protocols. And when I say science, I mean quality, peer-reviewed science published in excellent journals. We're going to talk about how to take that science, convert it into specific protocols that break up along the course of a single day and direct certain types of behaviors in order to optimize the various features of life. I will couch this in the context of what I do across a daily 24-hour rhythm. That doesn't mean that you have to follow this schedule at all or even in part. It's just by way of example. Any number of the different things that I describe could be applied to any number of different schedules or frameworks, but if there's one truth that applies to all of us, it's that we all have to exist within the context of this 24-hour rhythm that we all possess. So that's what we'll focus on. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that

2. 4:08 – 8:50

   Sponsors

   1. AHAndrew Huberman4:08

      this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost-to-consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is ROKA. ROKA makes eyeglasses and sunglasses that I believe are the very highest quality possible. Developed by two all-American swimmers from Stanford, ROKA sunglasses and eyeglasses were developed with their intention to create sunglasses and eyeglasses that could be worn anywhere, so while exercising or while working, at home, while driving. The reason I like ROKA glasses so much is that, first of all, they're extremely lightweight. The optical clarity of the lenses is excellent, and so I often just forget that I even have them on. When I'm outside and I'm wearing sunglasses, they have this really terrific feature, which is that I can move in and out of shadows or the cloud cover can change and I can see perfectly well the entire time. You know, many eyeglasses and sunglasses that I've tried, depending on the l- what we call the ambient lighting conditions, the local lighting conditions outside, I have to take them off or put them back on. It's really annoying for me. But with ROKA glasses, somehow, I'm assuming because they really understand the science of the visual system, the eyeglasses and sunglasses work seamlessly with whatever environment you're in. So that's absolutely terrific. Another thing about ROKA eyeglasses and sunglasses is that their aesthetic is really terrific. You know, I don't think I'm alone in saying that many performance glasses as they're called, th- end up making people look like a cyborg, but the sunglasses are of the sort that, you know, you can wear while running or biking or driving or out to dinner. Um, I don't typically wear, uh, sunglasses while out to dinner, but you get the idea. You can wear them anywhere and they look very natural. They have a n- huge number of different styles to select from. If you'd like to try ROKA glasses, you can go to ROKA, that's roka.com, and enter the code Huberman to save 20% off your first order. That's ROKA, roka.com, and enter the code Huberman at checkout.Today's podcast is also brought to us by InsideTracker. InsideTracker is a personalized nutrition platform that analyzes data from your blood and DNA to help you better understand your body and help you reach your health goals. I've long been a believer in getting regular blood work done for the simple reason that many of the factors that impact your immediate and long-term health can only be analyzed from a quality blood test. With InsideTracker, it alleviates a specific problem that's associated with most, if not all, of the other blood tests and DNA tests out there, and that problem is you get information back about the levels of various things, metabolic factors, hormones, et cetera, but you don't know what to do with that information. With InsideTracker, they have this terrific dashboard that allows you to both see your levels of hormones, metabolic factors, and the rest, but also it suggests specific things that you can do with your nutrition, your exercise and lifestyle, and so forth in order to bring those levels into the ranges that are best for your immediate and long-term health. In addition, they make the whole process of getting your blood and DNA taken very easy. They'll even come to your home to take the sample. If you'd like to try InsideTracker, you can go to insidetracker.com/huberman, and if you do that, you'll get 25% off any of InsideTracker's plans. Just use the code Huberman at checkout. That's insidetracker.com/huberman to get 25% off any of InsideTracker's plans. Today's episode is also brought to us by Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are ideally matched to your sleep needs. I started sleeping on a Helix mattress about eight months ago, and I can honestly say it's the best sleep that I've ever had in my entire life, and that's because the mattress was actually designed for me, and you can have a mattress designed for you. If you go to helixsleep.com, they have this free very brief two-minute quiz that asks you a number of questions like, do you sleep on your side or your back, do you tend to run warm while you sleep or you tend to get cold in the middle of the night. Maybe you don't know the answers to those questions and that's fine too. After taking that quiz, they will match you to a specific mattress that's ideal for your sleep needs. I matched to the so-called Dusk mattress, D-U-S-K, because I wanted a mattress that was not too firm, not too soft. As I mentioned, I absolutely love it. If you're interested in upgrading your mattress, you can go to helixsleep.com/huberman, take their two-minute sleep quiz, and they'll match you to a customized mattress, and you'll get up to $200 off your mattress order and two free pillows. They also make these terrific pillows. They have a 10-year warranty, and you get to try out the mattress for 100 nights risk-free. If you don't like it, they'll come pick it up and they'll take it away. Uh, but I think you'll love it. I certainly love mine. Again, if you're interested, you can go to helixsleep.com/huberman for up to $200 off and

3. 8:50 – 12:07

   Protocol 1: Record Your Daily Waking Time & Temperature Minimum

   1. AHAndrew Huberman8:50

      two free pillows. So let's talk about how to apply quality peer-reviewed science to your day and how to optimize everything from sleep to learning, creativity, meal timing, et cetera. As I mentioned earlier, I'm going to do this in the context of my day and what I typically do. However, the specific protocols for any number of different things, sleep relaxation, meal timing, exercise, et cetera, any one or all of those could be rearranged to suit your specific needs. I'm going to tell you what I do from morning until waking, and even what I do while I sleep in order to optimize my sleep. So let's start with getting up in the morning. Now for me, I tend to wake up sometime around 6:00 AM, 6:30, sometimes as late as 7:00 AM. I don't typically sleep much later than 7:00 AM. The first thing I do after I wake up is I take the pen that's on my nightstand and the pad of paper on my nightstand and I write down the time in which I woke up. Now, I do sleep with my phone in my room, I realize this is considered a sin and has certain hazards associated with it, but I put my phone on airplane mode about an hour before I go to sleep, and then I set my alarm typically for 6:30 AM, and some days the alarm wakes me up. Other days I wake up before the alarm, and yes, some days the alarm goes off and I hit snooze a few times, and then usually by 7:00 AM I am up and out of bed. The reason for writing down what time I wake up is because I want to know that average wake up time. That average wake up time informs what's called my temperature minimum. It tells me when my body temperature was lowest. The temperature minimum is the time in each 24-hour cycle that your body temperature is lowest. I don't sleep with a thermometer in my mouth or elsewhere, and I don't think you should either. Instead, I know that the lowest temperature that my body will be at across the 24-hour cycle tends to be two hours before my typical wake up time, and I want to know that number. It's called our temperature minimum. So if you're somebody that typically wakes up at 8:00 AM, then your temperature minimum is sometime around 6:00 AM. Remember, the temperature minimum is a time in the 24-hour cycle. I don't care what my actual temperature is, I care when my lowest temperature is, and I know that that lowest temperature is approximately two hours before my average wake up time. So I highly recommend that you write down when you wake up or track that in some way that works for you and use that as a reference point to determine your temperature minimum. We will return to the temperature minimum and how you can leverage the temperature minimum for several things, shifting your clock, shifting your circadian sleep schedule and wake schedule, also for shifting your eating schedule, et cetera. We will return to that, but even if you don't travel, even if you don't care about things like jet lag, even if you sleep fabulously all year round, never have a poor night's sleep, knowing your temperature minimum, that time when your temperature is at its lowest point, is a valuable thing

4. 12:07 – 17:00

   Protocol 2: Self-Generate Forward Motion (Outdoors)

   1. AHAndrew Huberman12:07

      to know.The second thing I do after I wake up is to get into forward ambulation, which is just nerd-speak for taking a walk. Now, I have a dog and as many of you know, he's a bulldog and he doesn't really like to walk, especially not in the morning, but for humans and for animals there's a phenomenon whereby when we generate our own forward motion, forward ambulation, visual images pass by us on our eyes, so-called optic flow. And for those of you that are low vision or no vision, the same phenomenon occurs in the auditory system; sounds pass by us in so-called auditory flow. Getting into a mode of forward ambulation and especially experiencing visual flow has a powerful effect on the nervous system. The effect it has is essentially to quiet or reduce the amount of neural activity in this brain structure called the amygdala. Amygdala means almond and many of you have probably heard about the amygdala for its role in anxiety and fear and threat detection. And indeed, the amygdala is part of the network in the brain that generates feelings of fear and threat and anxiety. It does a bunch of other things too but that's one of its primary functions. There are now at least half a dozen quality papers published in quality peer-reviewed journals that show that forward ambulation, walking or biking or running, and generating optic flow in particular, has this incredible property of lowering activity in the amygdala and thereby reducing levels of anxiety. There are two papers that I'd like to highlight in particular that relate to this phenomenon. The first one was published in the journal Neuron and the title of this paper is Whole Brain Functional Ultrasound Imaging, that just means they have a cool technique to evaluate the activity of structures in the brain across the entire brain, Reveals Brain Modules for Visuomotor Integration. What they found in this study, and I should mention the first author is Masse, this comes from Botond Rasca's group. This was work done in mice but I will talk about other species in a moment. What they found was essentially that when these mice walk forward and their eyes move from side to side, which is a natural consequence of moving forward, so-called optic flow is flowing past their eyes, many brain areas are activated, increase in their level of firing, but the amygdala in particular reduced its levels of firing. That's a very interesting finding but it is in mice. However, another paper, Eye Movement Intervention Enhances Extinction via Amygdala Deactivation, was published in the N- the Journal of Neuroscience, a strong journal, and shows that, again, these eye movements, these lateral eye movements from side to side reduce activity levels in this fear/threat/anxiety center in the brain, the amygdala. Now, those are eye movements, they didn't specifically look at forward ambulation, and yet other papers have looked at forward ambulation and we know that forward ambulation, walking forward generates the sorts of eye movements that cause optic flow and reductions in amygdala activation. So for me, this process of taking a walk each morning isn't about exercise, it's not about burning calories, it's not about any of that, it's really about getting into optic flow and reducing the levels of amygdala activation. Now, I don't have anxiety, at least I don't have chronic anxiety or generalized anxiety. I tend to have a lot of energy, but at these points in the morning I'm not very energetic. Sometimes I'm sort of shuffling more than I'm walking in fact, and Costello is almost always shuffling and I'm almost always trying to drag him first thing in the morning. But that walk is a particularly important protocol each day because it really serves to push my neurology in the direction that I'd like it to go which is alert but not anxious, and it's kind of a fine line sometimes especially as events surface throughout the day, emails come in, text messages come in, get bombarded with a number of things. I want to be alert and responsive, I want to be able to focus but I don't want to feel anxious or, um, reactive to these things. So the forward ambulation and this optic flow is the way that I ensure, based on quality peer-reviewed data, that my amygdala activation is slightly suppressed. Now, at the same time I also want the alertness. I want alert and focused, I don't just want to be sleepy or super re- super relaxed. I want to have a high degree of focus and alertness because I'm soon going to move into a bout of work. I need to lean into the day. So in order to do that, I make sure that the walking is done outdoors. That might be sort of a duh, but many people

5. 17:00 – 22:43

   Protocol 3: View Natural Light For 10-30min Every Morning

   1. AHAndrew Huberman17:00

      get up and start moving around their house, their apartment and they don't go anywhere, and just walking around inside it will generate some optic flow but nothing like the sort of optic flow that you can generate in larger environments like out-of-doors environments. If you can't get outdoors, doing it indoors is perfectly fine, but it's not going to have the same magnitude of positive effect. Now, in order to get the alertness I do it outdoors because I also want sunlight in my eyes. I know many of you have heard me talk about this ad nauseam on various podcasts and this podcast, but getting sunlight in your eyes first thing in the morning is absolutely vital to mental and physical health. It is perhaps the most important thing that any and all of us can and should do in order to promote metabolic wellbeing, promote the positive functioning of your hormone system, get your mental health steering in the right direction. There are a number of reasons for this, but before I get into those reasons let me just emphasize what the protocol is. The protocol is get outdoors, ideally with no sunglasses if you can do that safely, even if there's cloud cover. More photons, light information, are coming through that cloud cover than would be coming from a very bright indoor bulb. So getting outdoors is absolutely key. How long should you do this? It's going to depend on the brightness of the environment, it's going to depend on a number of different factors. Two minutes would be a minimum.10 minutes would be even better, and if you can, 30 minutes would be fantastic. Now, if it's a very bright day or, you know, you live in a place where there's bright sunlight, clear day on a snow field, you would only need something like 60 seconds, but most people aren't living in those sorts of conditions. So getting outside for a 10-minute walk or a 15-minute walk will basically ensure that you're getting adequate stimulation of these neurons in the eye that are called the melanopsin intrinsically photosensitive ganglion cells. I know that's a mouthful. These are neurons that don't care about shapes of objects or the motion of objects. These are neurons that convey to the brain that it's daytime and it's time to be alert, and it sets in motion a huge number of biological cascades within every cell and organ of your body, from your liver to your gut, to your heart, to your brain. It really sets things down the right path. Early in the day, we experience a natural and healthy bump in a hormone called cortisol. Cortisol comes from the amygdala. That cortisol, as I mentioned, is healthy and normal and promotes wakefulness. It actually promotes a healthy immune system. So I know you've heard that stress and cortisol disrupt the immune system, but not the short little pulse of cortisol that you get each morning. It's very important that that pulse of cortisol arrive early in the day. I want to emphasize this again, it's very important that that pulse of cortisol arrive early in the day, and that pulse of cortisol is going to happen once every 24 hours no matter what. It's going to happen and you get to time it. How do you time it? Primarily by when you view bright sunlight or bright light of another kind, and we'll talk about that in a moment. So you want that cortisol pushed early. If you wake up before the sun comes out, it's fine to turn on artificial lights, but then you would want to get outside as soon as you can to get this art- this, excuse me, natural light stimulation of your eyes, and it does have to be to your eyes. Just to really drill down into the details for a moment, you don't want to stare directly at the sun or any light that's so bright that it feels painful. If it's, if you feel like you have to close your eyes or blink, please do. You don't want to damage your retinas. The point here is to get the sunlight indirectly. It's going to essentially be scattered everywhere through the cloud cover, but you know from looking at a s- at a flashlight directly into that flashlight versus looking at the beam that flashlight generates on the ground that if you're standing in the shade, you're going to get less of that sunlight than you are if you're out in an open field. So this is why the time outside, it's going to need to vary depending on your particular environment, but do your best to do this every day. If you miss a day, no big deal, but try not to miss more than one day. Otherwise, your mental and physical health will start to suffer, and doing this each day costs nothing. It's just time. You can combine it with the forward ambulation, with the walk, and the optic flow that I talked about before, and that's what I do each morning to generate a sense of alertness in my body and brain, to generate a sense of calm yet alert, and that's also what I do with Costello, with my bulldog. People have asked me, "Do these same mechanisms apply to animals?" Well, the reality is many of these mechanisms were actually discovered in animals and then were tested in humans and verified that they also exist in humans. Not always, sometimes it was the reverse where they were tested first in humans and then brought to animals, but indeed, your dog, your horse, uh, you know, I don't know what other animals are out there, they need this. Now, if you have a hamster or a nocturnal animal, the reason why they like to run on their wheels at night is because they're nocturnal. They don't like being in the light. Light actually causes them to freeze, right? Actually, the, if you are into aquaria, you like fish, they always say, "Don't overfeed your fish. You'll kill the fish." That's true, but guess what the fastest way to kill a fish is? To keep the lights on 24 hours a day. They also need circadian s- circadian rhythms, these 24-hour rhythms. So we'll do an entire month at some point about pet health, but meanwhile, get that morning sunlight. So we, now we have our first protocol, which is to write down the time of day that you wake up. The second protocol is to get, take a walk first thing in the morning, and the third protocol is woven in with that walk, at least for me, which is to get that sunlight exposure.

6. 22:43 – 26:50

   What To Do If You Can’t View The Sun: Blue Light

   1. AHAndrew Huberman22:43

      Now, if you can't get sunlight exposure, you absolutely can't, I don't necessarily recommend buying one of these dawn alarm lights. They, they're, and I'm sorry to say this, but they're just vastly overpriced relative to what they are. They're basically a bright LED. I instead use, I have a pad that's a 930 lux light pad, I think it was designed for drawing. Those are available at a fraction of the cost that a, that a morning light, uh, simulator w- would provide and yet it's really, uh, bright enough, at least for me. I tend to put it on my desk while I work each morning. So here's a principle that you can leverage. If you want to be alert, view bright lights and make those lights above you, they tend... Or in front of you. If you want to go to sleep soon or you don't want to be awake for whatever reason, try and eliminate your exposure to light. And this, again, is not about exposure of the skin to light, this is about exposure of your eyes, of your neural retinas to light. For those of you that are concerned about blue light, I want to emphasize that blue light is precisely the wavelength of light that is optimal for stimulating these neurons in your eye which set your circadian rhythms properly, so you don't want to shield yourself from blue light early in the day or throughout the day or any time you want to be awake. In fact, that could have a number of detrimental consequences. Fortunately, all those consequences are going to be reversible after a short period of time of making sure you don't wear your blue blockers during the day, please. The time to wear blue blockers, if you do, is at night and in the evening when you're headed towards sleep. My colleague, Samer Hattar, who is head of the chronobiology unit at the National Institutes of Mental Health, has spoken about this before on my Instagram. We held an Instagram live and I said, "Samer, what do you think about blue blockers?" And he said, "I don't think that's a good idea at all, unless it's really late at night and you're in a bright environment and you're trying to limit the amount of bright light that, that impacts the eyes."...eliminating specific wavelengths of light, in Sammer's opinion and also in my opinion, is not a natural thing for the visual system in the brain to experience. Some people get headaches while they work on the computer all day or staring at screens, and so they get blue blockers thinking that's going to protect them from their headaches. However, any protection that you get from headaches from blue blockers is going to be minimal in comparison to what's really going on there, which is that people are viewing devices and screens up close for too many hours throughout the 24-hour cycle. A better remedy would be to step away from that computer from time to time, and to make sure that you can look far off into the distance, ideally a distance longer than 20 feet, like view a horizon, go out on a balcony, things of that sort, take a walk around, get into optic flow. So if you're into blue blockers, make sure you're only wearing them in the late evening and at night. I personally don't wear blue blockers at all, I prefer to just control my light viewing behavior by doing this, um, I do the other form of circadian control, which is to dim the lights. And I do that because dimming the lights and setting them lower in the environment sets up the brain and body for sleep much better than simply just wearing some blue light, blue blockers, excuse me. And please know if you do wear blue blockers, that if the light in your environment is bright enough, it doesn't matter if you're blocking out the blues. These cells in the eye will respond to other wavelengths of light. So I have no vendetta against the blue blockers and, you know, I fully expect the blue blocking-istas to come after me with, I guess, blue blockers, but as you do that, please understand that the biology points in the direction of get a lot of bright light throughout the day, including blue light, and at night just limit the total amount of overall light that you're exposed to, including from screens. So then Costello and I get back from our walk. Sometimes that walk was 10 minutes, sometimes it was 60 minutes, depending on how slowly Costello is walking that day. Indeed, many mornings I'm the guy carrying his bulldog back up the hill. My neighbors know me so well, they know Costello so well that they've since stopped pulling over and asking if the dog is okay. Sometimes they'll ask if I'm okay. Nonetheless,

7. 26:50 – 28:00

   Protocol 4: Hydrate Correctly

   1. AHAndrew Huberman26:50

      we get back, I give him his food, I give him his water, and I give me my water. I'm a big believer based on quality peer review data that hydration is essential for mental performance. Now, I confess, I don't really like drinking big glasses or big jugs of water first thing in the morning. I don't know why, but my thirst doesn't tend to kick in first thing. You may be different. Either way, I force myself essentially to drink at least 16, and most days 32 ounces of water. I also put a little bit of sea salt in the water. As many of you know, neurons require ionic flow. What that means is neurons need sodium, they need magnesium, and they need potassium in order to function. We do tend to get dehydrated at night. Even if the day is not very hot, I try and top off or I try and make sure that I'm hydrated early in the day before I begin any work. So I make myself drink this water with a little bit of sea salt. How much sea salt? If you really want to get detailed, it's y- I suppose it's about half a teaspoon. It's not much. That's what I do, and I drink that more

8. 28:00 – 30:48

   Protocol 5: Delay Caffeine 90-120m After Waking

   1. AHAndrew Huberman28:00

      or less room temperature. I find that drinking really cold water first thing in the day kind of, like, cramps up my insides, so I don't do that. At that point, I start thinking about and fantasizing about and craving caffeine, but I don't drink that caffeine yet. I purposely delay my caffeine intake to 90 minutes to 120 minutes after I wake up. Of course, I know when I wake up because I wrote it down, although it's pretty easy to commit to memory. The reason I delay caffeine is because one of the factors that induces a sense of sleepiness is the buildup of adenosine, or as some people call it, adenosine in our system. The buildup of adenosine accumulates the longer we are awake. So when I wake up in the morning, when you wake up in the morning, your adenosine levels are likely to be very low. However, caffeine is an adenosine blocker. I- it's actually a competitive antagonist for you aficionados, it sort of parks in the receptor that adenosine normally would park at and prevents adenosine from acting on that receptor. That's why you feel more alert, because it's essentially blocking the effect of this sleepiness factor that we all create called adenosine. The reason for delaying caffeine intake 90 minutes to two hours after waking is I want to make sure that I don't have a late afternoon or even early afternoon crash from caffeine. One of the best ways to ensure a caffeine crash is to drink a bunch of caffeine, block all those adenosine receptors, and then by early or late afternoon when that caffeine starts to wear off and gets dislodged from the receptors, a lower level of adenosine is able to create a greater level of sleepiness. It took me years to figure this out. I used to wake up and I'd think, "Oh, I don't want to drink caffeine too close to bedtime, so I'm going to start drinking my caffeine really early." I let my cortisol naturally come up in the morning. I avoid drinking caffeine until about 90 minutes or two hours after waking, and when I do that, I find that I don't experience the afternoon crash. At least I don't experience that crash unless I do something foolish like ingest far too much food at lunch or s- I stay up all, all night the night before. But provided I don't do anything foolish like that, delaying caffeine by 90 minutes to two hours optimizes this relationship between adenosine and wakefulness and sleepiness in a way that really provides a nice consistent arc of energy throughout the day and brings energy down as I'm headed toward sleep and falling asleep. My primary objective early in the day is to get into a mode of being focused yet alert so that I can get work done.I found that the best way for me to achieve that state is through fasting. So I don't eat anything

9. 30:48 – 32:30

   Protocol 6: Fast (or Fat-Fast) Until Noon

   1. AHAndrew Huberman30:48

      until about 11:00 AM or 12 noon. I'm not absolutely religious about it, there are days when I'll have a few Brazil nuts or a spoonful or three of almond butter, for instance, but most days I'm not doing that. I'm just not eating anything. I'm drinking some caffeine, caffeine source for me is yerba mate, guayusa tea, those are my preferred sources. I tend to avoid coffee these days. Occasionally I'll have a cup, but most often I stick to the teas. I drink water as much as I feel I n- I need to and want to, and I also drink my Athletic Greens, which is compatible, at least for me, with fasting. Let's talk about why fasting works to create this heightened state of alertness yet calm brain state. Fasting increases levels of adrenaline, also called epinephrine, in the brain and body, and when our levels of epinephrine and adrenaline are increased, we learn better, we can focus better, there's terrific data supporting that. You don't want epinephrine, AKA adrenaline, too high, that feels like stress and panic, you get jittery, you can't focus, but in its optimal range, adrenaline really provides a heightened sense of focus and the ability to encode, meaning bring in, and retain, remember information. And so since my job is mainly a cerebral one where I'm writing grants and working on papers, et cetera, I fast in the early part of the day. I mentioned ingesting things like guayusa or yerba mate or, in my case, Athletic Greens, many people ask, in fact, there's a whole community and discussion boards, et cetera, and YouTube comments on the internet about what breaks a fast and what doesn't. The fact of

10. 32:30 – 34:30

    What Actually Breaks A Fast & What Doesn’t?

    1. AHAndrew Huberman32:30

       the matter is that's going to be highly individual because it's going to depend on how sensitive your blood sugar is, in oth- and more, more accurately it's going to depend on things like your insulin sensitivity. So for instance, if you're somebody who gets up in the morning, hydrates, and goes out for a six-mile run, you could probably eat a jar of almond butter and still be what's called fat fasted, your insulin levels will still be very low because even though that is a large volume of almond butter, even to me and Costello, that large number of calories come from a source that doesn't increase blood sugar very much and insulin very much. Now, I'm not suggesting you do that, but what I just described is a vastly different situation than somebody that ate their last meal at 2:00 AM and that meal was essentially a feast, and for that person, fasting until 10:00 or 11:00 AM, their blood sugar might still actually be pretty high or even lowish such that they might eat one almond and it would bump them out of fasting. So you get the idea, it's going to depend on your recent eating history, your blood sugar history, your glycogen stores, et cetera. So if anyone tells you that breaks a fast or that doesn't, that's kind of silly. Would one grain of sugar break your fast? No. Would an entire tablespoon of sugar break your fast? Yes, you'll get a big blip in blood sugar and insulin from that. However, how long that lasts, how long it breaks your fast will depend on how glycogen depleted you are (laughs) and a number of other factors. So for me, I just keep it fairly simple, I ingest water, caffeine from yerba mate and guayusa, and I drink my Athletic Greens with some lemon juice in it. That constitutes my fasting, and there are days when I do all those things, there are days when I do none of those things, although most days, I would say about 355 days out of the year, I'm ingesting water, caffeine, and Athletic Greens during this period of fasting early in the day, and that's the period of time when I do my work.

11. 34:30 – 37:30

    Fat Loss & Glucagon-Like Peptide 1 (GLP1), Yerba Mate, Guayusa Tea

    1. AHAndrew Huberman34:30

       One interesting fact about yerba mate and guayusa teas is that they increase release of something called GLP-1. GLP-1 is related to glucagon. Glucagon is a hormone that you can sort of think about as opposite to insulin and blood sugar, it's more complex than that, but GLP-1 has a couple of positive properties. One is it increases lipolysis and mobilization of body fat stores, so burning of fat. In fact, there are now a number of clinical trials that are achieving good success and there are drugs out there only available by prescription which mimic GLP-1 and are being used to treat, quite successfully, certain types of diabetes and obesity. Now, I'm not diabetic nor am I trying to shed a ton of body fat, but I figure as long as I'm fasting and as long as I like yerba mate and guayusa, which I do, uh, they're delicious, I'll tell you which type, uh, I use in a moment, I might as well increase my GLP-1 because it's probably not as good as getting out and doing some cardio work, but nonetheless, if I'm fasted, increasing GLP-1 in my system, I'm going to be alert from the caffeine, the adrenaline, et cetera, and I'm going to be burning body fat while I'm doing my work. So for me, it's just an efficient, biochemically rational, or I should say grounded in quality biochemistry sort of approach. Yerba mate comes in a lot of different forms, there are a lot of different brands out there, et cetera. I don't have any relationship whatsoever in a business sense to any of these brands. Some of them are very, uh, smoky. I, just because of something in my genetic makeup or, I don't know, maybe it was, um, some sort of Y chromosome associated, uh, lesion early in life, but I don't like smoky flavors, so I'm not a, a Gouda cheese guy, I don't like smoky stuff, you may love it, but I tend to avoid smoky-tasting mates. Instead, there's a particular brand that I just found on the internet called Ana Park, I don't know Anna, I don't know if she has a park, and I certainly don't know what Ana Park is, but for me, that's the best tasting yerba mate. Again, I don't have any relationship to them, uh, but it's affordable in the context of, of yerba mate and it's the one that I use. And I should mention along the lines of affordability and GLP-1 is there's a nice feature of yerba mate which is if you put it in a-... a filter or a metal strainer and you pour, uh, hot water over it and then drink it, keep the- the leaves. The yerba mate leaves can be used over and over again. It seems that the GLP-1 stimulating aspects of mate actually are enhanced with subsequent pour overs. So there's something interesting about these teas that my tea aficionado friends tell me allows the tea to release more of some of the beneficial compounds by reusing the tea leaves. Now, eventually it'll grow mold and other sorts of disgusting things. Um, you don't really want to run that experiment. I would say you can use it for a day or two before it starts to go bad, but that's a feature that will extend the life of whatever, uh, yerba mate you happen to use, if you decide to use it, and that's certainly what I do. Next,

12. 37:30 – 48:30

    Protocol 7: Optimize Deep Work: Visual Elevation, Ultradian Cycles, White Noise

    1. AHAndrew Huberman37:30

       I want to talk about what I'm doing while I'm drinking all this yerba mate, 'cause I'm not just sitting there thinking about all the GLP-1 circulating in my system; I'm working. A couple of things for optimizing workspace that are grounded in neuroscience and physiology. I've talked before about the fact that when our eyes are directed upward, literally when our eyelids are open, no surprise there, and when our eyes are directed upward, it creates a state of heightened alertness. And this has a relationship to the brain stem neurons that create alertness and their control over the muscles of the eye and, believe it or not, the eyelids. Now, it's not the case that if you are absolutely exhausted and you need to feel more alert that looking upward is going to make you feel wide awake, although it will help support your levels of alertness. The point here is that you can optimize your workstation in a physical way that leverages this aspect of the visual system and your level of alertness. Since most of us want to be awake while we're working, try and position your screen or your tablet, whatever device you happen to be working on, at least at eye level, and ideally slightly higher. If you think about it, most people are not doing this. Most people are looking down at their computer or tablet or are angling their eyes at their screen at about 30 degrees. That is not going to support heightened states of alertness and optimal attention. In fact, the opposite relationship between eye position and alertness is also true. When we look down, when our eyelids are slightly closed, it tends to decrease our levels of alertness and increase our levels of sleepiness. I really want to emphasize this, that there is a bidirectional or reciprocal relationship between the brain stem l- areas that control alertness and the eyes, meaning how alert you are controls how open or closed your eyes are, no surprise there, but also that how open and upward directed your eyes are will increase your levels of alertness. And if your eyes are pointed downward and your eyelids are hooded, like they're slowly closing, like Costello's are- always are, you'll feel more sleepy, especially if you're somebody who tends to have that mid-morning sleepiness or mid-morning crash. So what I do is I have a standing desk, but I also prop the computer up such that it's at least at eye level, and I haven't figured out yet how to develop a workstation where the computer is above me. I think the only way to really do that is actually to tilt one's body back, but actually, that's not a good idea either. They have done studies recording from areas of the brain associated with alertness, areas like locus coeruleus in the so-called reticular activating system. What they found is that depending on how reclined you are or upright you are, you will decrease with reclining and increase with sitting forward your levels of alertness. So body posture and whether or not you're upright or reclining will impact your levels of alertness in the predictable ways and where you position your eyes, whether or not your eyes are upright, so to speak, looking up or directly forward, or looking down will dictate whether or not you are feeling more alert or more sleepy respectively. So try and arrange a workstation or a position of your body in your chair or your standing desk, whatever it is, that allows you to work with a heightened state of alertness. This is really, really key for me because I found that when I would sit down, not only would my hip flexors start to get sore, I'd feel tight in the back, etc., but if I was staring down at my screen all day or even for short periods of the day, I would start to feel sleepy and I couldn't figure out what was going on. I also thought maybe I needed glasses. I do wear readers at night, but it was really a problem, and simply by getting the screen directly in front of me at eye level, it's been completely transformative. So we're now at the description of my day and these protocols in which I would do a 90-minute bout of work. Now, why 90 minutes? Well, the brain is going through these 90-minute so-called ultradian cycles throughout the entire day and night. Every 90 minutes we shift over from being very alert to being less alert and then back to alert again. Here's how it works. At the start of one of these 90-minute ultradian cycles, my brain is not quite engaged in whatever it is I'm trying to do, and oftentimes I have things jumping into my mind, I've got distractions, etc. I'll talk about how to deal with those distractions in a moment. But I set a timer for 90 minutes and I try and get a strong bout of work done inside of that 90 minutes with the full understanding that the entire 90 minutes is not going to be uniform in terms of my ability to focus. There will be kind of peaks and valleys within that, but that 90 minutes is about what the brain can handle in terms of a dedicated effort for high degree of focus. Some people can push out a little bit further, some people can't handle more than 10 minutes, but that's what I'm striving toward. You'd be amazed how much you can get done in 90 minutes if you are focused. So how do you increase that focus and how do you use the- the timer feature? Well, you can combine those. I use a program called Freedom. It shuts me out of the internet completely. So that means no checking the markets, no checking social media....no checking, uh, you know, the, the news, no checking email, none of that. I get a dedicated bout of work done. I confess, I don't allow myself to go to the restroom in that period of time. Here's an interesting little tip that's grounded in physiology. You have a direct neural connection from your bladder to your brain stem areas that increase alertness. This is why when you have (laughs) to go to the bathroom, when you have to urinate, it is extremely agitating, right? It can be very, very agitating. I'm not encouraging you to get so agitated by filling your bladder so much and resisting going to the bathroom that you are uncomfortable and can't focus, but I generally will just drink liquids and work away and work away, and I won't walk away to go use the bathroom unless I absolutely have to. Sort of odd that we're talking about this, but this is one way in which I've learned to funnel my attention into whatever it is I'm doing, because as you all know, the moment you sit down to do some serious work and you flip off the internet, all of a sudden, it's as if the phone has a voice. It starts calling you. It's almost as if the restroom has a voice. But we all are familiar with the fact that if we are focused on something that w- all that just kind of melts away. So the goal is to get into what I call the tunnel, to really get into a tunnel of quality work. The brain loves that state, but it's very hard for many of us to access. My phone is absolutely off. It's not on airplane mode. It's absolutely off during this time. If I've been struggling with that, and I confess, you know, I, there are times when, for whatever reason, something going on in life, it's been harder to put away the phone. I will sometimes put it in my car. I used to joke that I used to throw it up on the roof or something like that. Look, I've done and I suggest people do whatever they need to in order to inf- self-regulate that activity. And if you're somebody that feels that you absolutely need to be on your phone and on the computer for this w- work bout or the work that you do, well, that's a different matter altogether. This is just simply how I work. So I will do 90 minutes and I do set a timer and I turn on the program Freedom, locks me out of the internet. If someone rings it on the doorbell, um, I will often shout, "Not coming to the doorbell. Leave it there." I mean, unless there's an, a real emergency, I'm not going to step away from that work. I learned how to do this when I was a graduate student under different conditions where I used to slice brains on what's called a microtome. So I used to spend time just cutting very thin slices. It's like a deli slicer but for a brain, of, uh, various types of brains. (laughs) And I've sectioned through a lot of brains, and we had a rule, which is that when the blade hits the brain, you don't stop pulling even though it's very, very slow, even if a nuclear bomb goes off, even if a fire alarm goes off. Now, I don't want anyone, you know, burning to a crisp because, uh, they didn't step away from their workflow. That would be foolish, but that's the mentality that I've embedded in myself, that there, there is nothing more important than what I'm doing in that 90-minute block, and that's what works for me. You can try various other things. That's what works for me. In addition, I use low-level white noise. This is something that is supported by quality peer-reviewed data. We covered this on the episode on hearing and balance, but it turns out that white noise, which is essentially all frequencies of sound or all frequencies of sound that we can perceive mixed up kind of randomly, there's no structure to it, turned on at a low volume, not with headphones most of the time, puts the brain into a state that's optimal for learning and workflow, and I covered two papers during that episode, one that showed that indeed brain areas involved in attention, brain areas involved in focus and cognition and memory, those are engaged to a greater degree when there is low levels of white noise playing in the background. The other paper that's really interesting did brain imaging and showed the areas of the brain that are associated with dopamine release are increased by low levels of white noise. Dopamine release is associated not just with pleasure, but with motivation and craving. So everything about this 90-minute block from the low levels of white noise to the position of my computer, how I'm standing, where my eyes are positioned is geared towards putting me in this tunnel of work. And I have to say that while it can be a challenge to try and achieve this state and this tunnel of work some days, you start to get kind of addicted to it. It feels really good. It's like a workout for the mind, and it, uh, is something that as you exit that 90 minutes, you really feel like you've accomplished a lot because often, um, you have, and it just feels deeply satisfying. And I'm convinced that that's because of the release of neuromodulators like dopamine and the, uh, norepinephrine that's circulating in your system. And I want to be clear that I'm not perfect about this 90 minutes. Occasionally, I get drawn away. Occasionally, uh, something will happen or I'll, uh, go use the restroom or, uh, Costello will have a need or somebody will have a need that I'll, that I will have to respond to, but I really try and achieve this most if not every day that I'm alive because for me, that work session is kind of holy. It's where I k- where I set up a relationship not just between me and the work that I'm doing, but between me and my ability to control my own state of mind using these various supports of the white noise, etc., but really, those supports are peripheral to the fact that I'm creating this space. I'm funneling my brain into a state rather than allowing whatever events and contexts on social media and elsewhere might be occurring in the world that would yank me out of what for me is my purpose and my mission in life, which is to do the sorts of work that I do. There's a powerful way in which you can

13. 48:30 – 52:07

    Optimal Time of Day To Do Hard Mental Work

    1. AHAndrew Huberman48:30

       place the timing of this 90-minute work bout in an optimal way. You have access to a very important piece of data that dictates when this bout should start more or less and when it should end. That piece of data is your temperature minimum. If you're somebody who wakes up on average at 7:00 AM, well, then your temperature minimum is 5:00 AM and-... you can be reasonably sure, I want to underscore reasonably, but you can be reasonably sure that your best work is going to be done anywhere from four to six hours after your temperature minimum. So for me, I tend to wake up around 6:30 AM. That means my temperature minimum is at 4:30 AM. You can add five hours to that, so that means that a 90-minute work bout could fall at 9:30 AM and it would be fairly optimized. Or I could do it at 10:30 AM or I could do it at 8:30 AM. Somewhere in there, all right? That we can't say that it's exactly six hours after your temperature minimum. You will find it, however, there is a precise and best time for you to do this 90-minute work bout. Whether or not it's five or six hours after your temperature minimum is going to vary from person to person. How do I know this? How do I know this relationship between temperature minimum and focused cognition? Well, temperature minimum defines the trough, the- the nadir, as they say, of the- of your temperature across the 24-hour cycle. And immediately after that, your temperature will start to rise. That temperature rise is actually what triggers the initial cortisol release that you experience and wakes you up further. And then of course, that sunlight that you're getting is going to further enhance that healthy release of cortisol. That cortisol will then provide fuel, if you will, for that increase in temperature, and your body will continue to increase in temperature throughout the day toward the afternoon. What you're trying to do in this c- in this idea of optimizing this 90-minute work bout to a particular time of day is catch the portion of the steepest slope of that temperature rise. Now again, you're not working, walking around with a (laughs) with a thermocouple or an, uh, thermometer, um, in some, uh, orifice of your body, so you don't have accurate information about temperature, but you can make very good guesses about when your body temperature is rising fastest by virtue of that temperature minimum. So again, just to be clear, it's a 90-minute work bout. That's about what the brain can handle for a very intense work bout. Do understand, again, that there are going to be portions of that 90 minute that your brain is flickering in and out of focus, other portions where you're going to be entirely focused. That's entirely normal, but when to place that 90-minute work bout, when to start it and when to end it will depend on that temperature minimum. So if you're somebody who wakes up at 8:00 AM each morning, your temperature minimum is 6:00 AM, chances are you're going to want to start this work bout somewhere around 10:00 AM or 11:00 AM. Now, some people wake up and feel very alert first thing in the morning. They can really do their best work first thing in the morning. Please, if that's you, continue to do that. Leverage that time up- use that time, but if you're somebody who struggles to find focus, definitely let your physiology and this rise in your body temperature support your efforts to focus rather than trying to do your best work at times of day when your physiology is actually directing your body and your brain toward de-focus and towards being more lethargic. It just is setting yourself up for success when you try and capture this rising phase of your temperature.

14. 52:07 – 1:03:54

    Protocol 8: Optimal Exercise; 3:2 Ratio

    1. AHAndrew Huberman52:07

       So up until now, we've been emphasizing practices that allow you to optimize your level of alertness and your levels of mental focus. Data going back to the 1990s supports the idea that physical movement of particular kinds can support brain health and brain function, both in the immediate term and in the long term. Now, this has had a profound impact on the field of neuroscience, but frankly, it's also had a profound impact on how I structure my day. So after I've finished a bout of work, this 90-minute bout of work, I force myself some days, other days I want to, but I force myself to do some sort of physical exercise that is going to be supportive of my brain health and brain function and organ health and bodily function in general. So I just briefly want to touch on what the structure of that exercise looks like, how it's structured within the day and how it's structured across the weeks, in fact, based on the scientific data and what the scientific data say is best or optimal in order to promote longevity of the brain, ability to focus, as well as cardiovascular health, and all the other things that we know exercise supports. Now, there are various forms of physical activity or what we call exercise, but those can generally be batched into two categories. First is strength and hypertrophy work, so physical movements that are designed to make you stronger and/or make your muscles larger. There's also endurance work. Physical exercise and movements that are designed to allow you to do more work over time or to extend the amount of time that you can do work of any kind, both physical and mental. Now, we did two full podcast episodes on the details and the science and the protocols related to these topics. We did an episode on the science of strength and hypertrophy, of building strength and muscle building, and that included a lot of protocols, and we did an episode on endurance, how to build any one or all of the four types of endurance, which are muscular endurance, anaerobic, aerobic, long distance endurance, et cetera. So if you're interested in the specifics of those protocols, please see those episodes. However, right now, I just want to emphasize how the data impact my day and how I structure my day in a way that I can incorporate physical movement in a way that supports my brain and health. Basically, after I finish that cognitive work bout, that 90-minute work bout, I do some form of physical exercise for about an hour. The data all point to the fact that working out hard for longer than an hour can actually be detrimental because of the way that it raises cortisol, and cortisol can be a good thing if it's appropriately timed and in the appropriate low levels, but you don't want to have your cortisol levels up....throughout the day or have big spikes of cortisol repeatedly. So keeping workouts relatively short can definitely help with that. And certainly if you're training hard, 60 minutes or less should be more than sufficient. And for many people, including myself, 45 minutes or 50 minutes is probably even more optimal. The basic design of this physical exercise is that it be approximately 60 minutes, so maybe 60 plus or minus 15 minutes should be well within the margins of keeping hormonal health proper and not going too long nor making the workout so short that it's not beneficial. And essentially what the data tell us is that in order to optimize cardiovascular and brain health and other systems of the body, we want to exercise at least five days per week. I know that seems like a lot, uh, it certainly is a lot for certain people. Some of you, you compulsive exercisers, um, might gasp at the idea of taking two days off, I personally find that taking two full days off per week is actually, um, both beneficial to my, uh, exercise training performance as well as, uh, pleasant. I like those rest days. But essentially the structure of the exercise regimen that works for sake of supporting health is going to be one in which there's a three to two ratio where for a 12-week period or so, maybe 10 to 12 weeks, three of those five workouts per week emphasize strength and hypertrophy and the other two emphasize endurance. Then after 10 or 12 weeks, one switches over to a 10 or 12-week regimen of doing a three to two ratio where you're prioritizing endurance work, so primarily the sorts of workouts that are described in the endurance episode and those protocols, and the other two days you're focusing on strength and hypertrophy work merely to maintain strength and hypertrophy, to not lose the strength and hypertrophy that you've created. And there are a lot of data now supporting the fact that maintaining muscular health and bone health is supported by resistance training, weight training of various kinds, it can also be done with body weight if you don't have access to equipment, and of course that doing cardiovascular endurance work is very beneficial both to the muscles of the body, the organs of the body, but also to the brain. Many of you have probably heard that doing physical exercise of various kinds can support the production of new neurons in the brain. Frankly, those data are specific to research animals. As far as we know, increases in neuron number are not supported by exercise in humans. There's a little bit of data that supports that maybe a few neurons might get created by running or weightlifting or things of that sort in human beings, but there's still a host of other reasons to have this hour or so per day where one is doing physical exercise, and those include increased blood flow to the brain. Remember, the brain is an organ too, it's the most metabolically demo- demanding organ in your body, and it's receiving those metabolic factors, it's receiving its fuels by way of vasculature of blood vessels and capillaries and veins and things of that sort. So movement is very crucial to get your brain to function properly. Movement of various kinds is very important to get your brain to function properly. Resistance training turns out to be as important as endurance training because of the way that it stimulates the release of particular hormones actually from bones, things like osteocalcin, which can positively impact brain function and can support the health of existing neurons as opposed to increasing the number of neurons. Turns out increasing the number of neurons may not actually be as beneficial as we think. It all sounds great, more neurons, more neurons. Certainly more neurons is better than fewer neurons and losing neurons, but incorporating new neurons into existing brain circuitry is actually very challenging for the brain to do. I make sure that after that work about, I get this one hour or so of exercise five days per week because of the ways that it supports my general health, and there are now hundreds of studies supporting the fact that both endurance work and strength training or hypertrophy training done in combination, meaning not necessarily in the same workout, but done across the week, is immensely beneficial for the production of things like brain-derived neurotrophic factor, for limiting, uh, inflammatory cytokines like IL-6, for promoting anti-inflammatory cytokines like IL-10 provided that exercise is of the proper duration and that it's not so intense that you're actually creating damage to the various systems of the body. Now, where is the threshold between optimal, uh, sub-threshold, and detrimental? This is a, this is a complicated, uh, theme if we don't put some structure around it, so let's put a little bit of structure around it. We already said that about 60 minutes, so 60 minutes plus or minus 15 minutes is going to be optimal for all these health benefits. What about the structure of the actual workouts? Well, we need to address this issue of intensity. A good rule of thumb based on the literature, and I discussed this with Dr. Andy Galpin prior to the strength and hypertrophy and endurance episodes and the literature that's published in quality peer-reviewed journals really points to the fact that approximately 80% of the resistance training you do should be resistance training that doesn't go to what they call failure where you can't actually move the resistance anymore. The other 20% can be of the higher intensity to failure-type training. Now, with respect to endurance work, one can build up endurance without having to log long, long mileage or extensive mileage in the pool or, or by running, and that's because there are these other forms of endurance that can build up, for instance, the capillary beds within the muscles. Building up the capillary beds within the muscles will allow more oxygen utilization within the muscles and thereby will increase your endurance both of the muscles, but also will improve brain metabolism and the way that the heart functions, so cardiovascular function. That 80/20 rule of-Less-than-failure and work-to-failure in the resistance exercise regime can be transported or translated to the endurance exercise portion by focusing on that thing that we're familiar with, which is the burn. When we're running hard or cycling hard, we'll experience a kind of burning of the muscles that's associated with the lactate system. During the episode on endurance, I pointed out that that burn is not lactic acid. Contrary to common belief, it is not lactic acid. It's associated with lactate metabolism and... Again, about 80% of the endurance work should not incorporate that so-called burn, but if 20% of that work or so, I should say approximately 20% of that work, does include that so-called burning sensation, that burning sensation actually triggers the activation of release of certain compounds and molecules from glia, this brain cell type that supports neuron health. And actually, the lactate system is its own form of fuel for the brain. And so there's increasing interest in generating the lactate th- or pushing past that lactate threshold for a small portion, 20% or so, of endurance work in order to support brain health and function. So, what does all- this all look like as a protocol? Well, as I mentioned before, this three-to-two ratio. So maybe you spend, uh, 10 weeks or so or 12 weeks or so focusing mainly on endurance work, three workouts per week on endurance work, 80% of those workouts. Meaning 80% of the time, you're below that burn threshold, you are not experiencing a burning sensation, but that for 20% of it, you are. That, based on the scientific data, should support lactate metabolism, brain health, et cetera, as well as cardiovascular health and oxygen utilization, all the forms of- of endurance that we're aware of. And then the other two workouts would involve resistance training, again with this 80-20 split where 80% of the work is not-to-failure and 20% is. And then maybe after 10, 12 weeks, you switch, where you start emphasizing strength and hypertrophy work for three of the workouts and endurance work for two of the workouts. Now, of course, some of you will be able to train six days a week or you'll compulsively need to train seven days a week. If you decide to do that, please be aware that this cortisol threshold is a real thing. So for me, the three-to-two ratio works out perfectly 'cause I like two full days off a week. When I take those really depends on my schedule and how I'm feeling. Sometimes it's two days in a row, sometimes they're interspersed throughout the week. But in reviewing the scientific literature for those two episodes of the podcast and in talking to people who are really informed in the world of resistance training and endurance training and how that relates to brain health and body health, this seems to be the most rational and grounded protocol, so that's the one that I follow. So, on any given day, I finish that work block and I train. I do some sort of resistance or endurance training. I put those on alternate days, or different days rather. So, we've now talked about

15. 1:03:54 – 1:10:00

    Tools for Training & Mental Focus: Fasting, Salt, Stimulants, Alpha-GPC

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:03:54

       the arc that spans all the way from waking to a morning bout of focused work to physical training. I have not mentioned ingesting anything or nutrients. One of the most common questions I get are, "What should I eat for my brain?" Well, um, ironically enough, uh, one of the best things you can do for your brain is to not eat. But of course, we all have to eat sooner or later, and eating is wonderful. I absolutely love eating. I even enjoy the mere act of chewing. But the question of what to eat is an important one as it relates to brain health and brain function. Before we talk about that, I want to emphasize that training fasted actually has some immediate and long-term benefits. Prior to having my lab at Stanford, I was down in San Diego at UC San Diego and had an appointment at the Salk Institute of Biological Studies. I had a colleague there by the name of Satchin Panda. He wrote a wonderful book called The Circadian Code. He runs a serious biology laboratory focusing on metabolism, circadian rhythms, and so forth, as well as the effects of fasting. Satchin and his book, The Circadian Code, describe how engaging in physical exercise while fasted can amplify the effects of that exercise, not just for sake of increasing the percentage of things like body fat burned, et cetera, but for cellular health, liver health, and the health of other organs. So, where possible, I do strive to do my workout without eating anything first. However, some days I'm very, very hungry, and so I do ingest water which contains electrolytes, so that means sodium, magnesium, potassium, for the simple reason that sodium, magnesium, potassium are required for neurons to function properly. It's part of the way they generate electrical activity. As well, ingesting electrolytes, for me, can quell hunger. And this points to a whole other topic we could do another episode on at some point, which is many times people think that their blood sugar is low and actually that's not the case, um, and frankly, one wouldn't want their blood sugar to be high. You don't want your blood sugar too low, but you also don't want it too high. Very low blood sugar is terrible, but low-ish blood sugar tends to give us a sense of mental clarity and focus related to this adrenaline sys- um, phenomenon that we talked about earlier. In order to be able to focus on exercise or work or anything else, you need sufficient electrolytes. And so many people find that if they simply ingest some water with salt, maybe a 99 milligram potassium tablet, all of a sudden they feel very mentally clear and able to do physical work and mental work. So, what I do is prior to this, um, morning exercise, although it's now late morning in this, um, way I'm describing it, and typically it does occur late morning, I'll have some water with either... So a little, maybe half a teaspoon of sea salt with-... a 99 milligram potassium tablet, or these days I'm fond of taking, uh, what's called LMNT, L-M-N-T, LMNT. I learned about this from Lex Fridman's podcast. I know many of you are familiar with Lex. He has an excellent podcast, excellent scientist. Um, I don't have any business relationship to LMNT. They're not a sponsor of the podcast. But LMNT is a product that essentially contains electrolytes; sodium, potassium, as well as magnesium malate, which has been shown to offset things like delayed onset muscle soreness. Th- that form of magnesium doesn't make people drowsy. It's not an anxiolytic like some other forms of magnesium. An anxiolytic is just one that reduces anxiety. So whether or not it's LMNT or whether or not you're just putting a little bit of salt into, uh, some water and ingesting that prior to training, that can be an excellent way to ensure that you're able to complete the physical exercise, um, even though you haven't eaten anything. And I confess some days I will eat a little bit before my workout, um, just because I can't seem to resist eating. I want to mention the use of stimulants before physical training. This has certain benefits and certain drawbacks. The benefits are sometimes it can facilitate motivation because things like caffeine can increase the release of dopamine, can increase the release of epinephrine, it can reduce that adenosine level in the bloodstream. So some people use caffeine before training in ways that benefit them. It can also increase fat oxidation and kind of fat metabolism and things, if that's your goal. I am not a particular fan of ingesting stimulants before training because of a whole set of problems associated with most forms of stimulants in the form of energy drinks, et cetera. I am not a fan of energy drinks. I did a, a decent portion of a previous episode on food and mood on energy drinks and some of the detrimental things they contain. Rather, I try and train simply by ingesting the caffeine sources I mentioned before, guayusa, latte, some electrolytes, some water. Occasionally I'll have an espresso or a cup of coffee before I train. And on rare occasions, I should emphasize rare occasions, if I really need help increasing my motivation or I decide I want to push extremely hard, I will ingest something like Alpha-GPC. Alpha-GPC supports the release of a neuromodulator called acetylcholine. So 300 milligrams of Alpha-GPC has been shown to increase physical performance, but also cognitive performance. Some people might not be interested in ingesting anything to improve their physical performance or anything at all, but they might be addressing how they can imp- improve cognitive performance and focus. And Alpha-GPC is a non-stimulant way to approach that. Again, definitely check with your doctor before, um, taking anything or stopping to take anything. But Alpha-GPC has been shown in various studies to improve cognitive performance. And in people who have age-related cognitive decline, it, there have been some positive benefits reported in quality peer review journals. If you want to explore those references, please go to examine.com. Go, please put in Alpha-GPC, go to the human effect matrix, and there you can find details of those studies, references to PubMed, et cetera. So let's talk about food timing first. As I mentioned, I eat my first meal sometime around noon, plus or minus an hour for the reasons we've discussed.

16. 1:10:00 – 1:17:39

    Protocol 9: Eat For Brain Function & Mood

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:10:00

       The volume of food is also important. If you eat a large volume of anything, because it diverts blood to your gut, you will feel lethargic and you will have less blood going to your brain. That seems like a simple and trivial fact, but if you want to be able to think you can't ingest large volumes of anything into your gut. So the discussion about what foods give you energy is kind of moot if you eat enormous volumes of that food. Now, the volumes (laughs) are going to depend on you and your needs and your activity levels. I'm going to discuss what I do in terms of food content, but I'm not going to discuss food volume. I sort of know where that mostly full, like 80% full line is and I usually eat a little bit past that, frankly. And I'm able to maintain a decent degree of alertness into the afternoon. And that's my goal, and I think that's the goal of most people, to not work out in the morning or do some work and then just collapse into a slumber that lasts all afternoon, but to be able to, uh, generate alert, calm, focused states throughout the day. So for lunch, I do emphasize slightly lower carbohydrate or low carbohydrate intake for the simple reason that adrenaline and dopamine and their associated neuromodulators are going to support alertness. So for me, I fast up until about noon, then I eat a lunch that consists of some sort of protein thing, like a, some meat or some chicken or some salmon and some vegetables, et cetera. And if I've exercised previously, which I do, as I mentioned five days a week, then I will ingest some starches. I'll ingest some red or br- bread, excuse me, or rice or oatmeal and butter and nuts and things like that. I will consume the various food groups, as they say, but I will keep the total amount of carbohydrate a, a little bit on the low side, or if I haven't trained, I won't have any carbohydrate at all. Not because I'm ketogenic, not because I'm anti-carbohydrate, not because I'm on a pure carnivore diet, far from it, but because starches cause the release of serotonin in the brain and lend themselves to a state of sleepiness. Now, I should mention that about 25% of individuals have genes that encode for enzymes that allow them to eat large amounts of carbohydrate and not suffer from this lethargy, this kind of sedation from carbohydrates. But I don't have that gene. And so for me, eating a noon-ish meal that is not enormous but is decent in size, but that is mainly protein, healthy fats and low-ish carbohydrates or no carbohydrates, is what allows me to achieve heightened states of alertness throughout the day, which is what I need for my purposes.So just knowing that meats and nuts support alertness, provided you don't eat too much of them, that vegetables are healthy for us and therefore we should eat them, and I happen to like them as well, and that carbohydrates tend to have a kind of sedative-like quality to them. That should help you kind of guide your food choices in an intelligent way that's grounded in the scientific literature as it relates to alertness. Now, what about components of foods that are not about alertness but are about mood? We did an entire episode on mood and food, and it's very clear based on now dozens of studies that ingesting sufficient levels of omega-3 fatty acids is going to support healthy mood and even can act as an antidepressant. More than a dozen studies have shown that ingesting at least 1,000 milligrams per day of the EPA form of essential fatty acid is as effective as prescription antidepressants in relieving depression. And if you're somebody who requires prescription antidepressants, Prozac, Zoloft, et cetera, it can allow people to take lower doses of those medications, which in many cases is a positive thing or a good thing to do because of the side effect profiles that many of those drugs carry. So I find these data remarkably compelling. I mean, here we have a food or a substance from food that can improve our mood and our sense of wellbeing, and it does that by way of increasing certain neuromodulators in the brain, in particular dopamine, but also some other related neuromodulators. So if you're eating fatty salmon regularly, if you're eating krill regularly, meaning if you're a, a, uh, a whale, if you are, uh, ingesting foods that tend to have a lot of omega-3s, you probably don't need to supplement with omega-3. Most people are not ingesting sufficient levels of omega-3s, and I'm certainly one of those people. Despite an effort to eat good foods and whole foods, et cetera, and unprocessed foods, I've made the choice to ingest at least 1,000 milligrams per day of EPA. I do that in the form of fish oil and EPA/DHA, uh, combination fish oil, but the r- but the threshold of 1,000 milligrams is not 1,000 milligrams of fish oil, it's 1,000 milligrams of EPA. Now, for those of you that don't want to consume fish oils and prefer to get your omega-3s from non-animal sources, there are non-animal sources, various forms of algae, et cetera. You can just look that up online and you should be able to find that. There are also a number of foods that include these essential omega-3s. We did an episode on food and mood where I go into more detail than you could ever want on that, as well as, um, some additional recommendations. We also did an episode on thyroid function, this hormone that's important for metabolism, and that pointed to the importance of getting sufficient iodine, which you should naturally get from the salts you're ingesting, provided you're ingesting enough salt. I'm not somebody who eats a lot of kelp, um, but, or seaweed, although I don't mind the taste of seaweed, I don't ingest it regularly. But ingesting sufficient selenium, or selenium, has been shown to be important for proper thyroid production and thyroid function, which is why I tend to eat a few Brazil nuts each day typically with my lunch or sometimes before my workout. Doesn't really matter. The point is that the volume, the amount, the content, and indeed the ratios of protein to fat to carbohydrates are going to impact how you feel and they're going to impact your brain health. And of course, the timing. We know that allowing periods of 12 hours or more each 24-hour cycle where you're not ingesting anything is beneficial for your brain and body health. That's what Satchim Panda and his colleagues' work has shown over and over again in these quality studies. So when people ask me, you know, "What should I eat for my brain?" More often than not it's really a question of how you're structuring your day, when you're eating for the first time, how long you're allowing yourself to fast each 24-hour cycle, and also whether or not you're getting sufficient omega-3s, whether or not you're getting sufficient selenium to support things like thyroid function, which has an impact both on the metabolism of the body, but also the metabolism in the brain. And when I say metabolism, I don't just mean burning energy, I actually mean the rebuilding of things. So in the episode on growth hormone and thyroid hormone, we talked about how metabolism means not just the breakdown of fats and carbohydrates, but also the building up, the repair of muscle tissue, the repair of bone, the reinforcing of bone, and the repair and the buildup of brain tissue. And so those are the things that I emphasize because they are so strongly supported by the scientific data done in mice, studies done in humans, and basically there's a lot of biochemical evidence that supports everything that I just described.

17. 1:17:39 – 1:24:00

    Protocol 10: Get Your Testosterone & Estrogen In An Ideal Range

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:17:39

       Along the lines of health and wellbeing, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention hormones. Hormones have broad effects on the body and brain. We did an entire month on hormones if you want to hear about any of those hormones in detail. We talked about testosterone and optimizing testosterone, estrogen, et cetera. The sex steroid hormones which include testosterone and estrogen, which of course are present in varying ratios but in both men and women and in kids, they are manufactured from cholesterol. We hear about cholesterol as this terrible thing, but they are actually made from cholesterol. And so if you don't get sufficient levels of cholesterol, that can be problematic for your hormones and that can be problematic for your brain and your body health. So without going into too much detail, I'll just point to a couple things that I do that at least from my blood work and from my subjective experience have been very beneficial for me that some of you might want to consider. First of all, I am not shy about my love for butter. I will eat pats of butter directly. I believe if people are going to eat cheese without a cracker, I will eat butter without a cracker. Butter is high in cholesterol, so I don't eat a ton of it, but at least for me and for my lipid profiles, it's fine. Uh-Butter has cholesterol, which is a precursor to the sex steroid hormones, and men and women need testosterone and estrogen in order to feel good and to be able to think. You do not want your estrogen too low or your testosterone too low. So I eat butter in order to ensure that I get sufficient cholesterol. Butter also has some other things that are beneficial, various small fatty acids that are, that are interesting, um, in terms of their effects on metabolism, et cetera. You can look those up, the benefits of butter, but again, volume is important. You can't overdo it. Costello instantly loves butter as well. Along the lines of hormones and testosterone, get a lot of questions about this, I think because a lot of online communities are sort of obsessed with testosterone, and I just want to emphasize that, yes, having sufficient levels of testosterone is vitally important for brain function and having sufficient levels of estrogen will allow your brain to actually function. It turns out that estrogen is one of the main ways in which the brain maintains longevity and maintains its ability to think. So we should all be seeking optimal testosterone levels for ourselves, both testosterone and estrogen. And many of the things that we've discussed up until now, morning sunlight, exercise, fasting, those can support testosterone and estrogen in meaningful and positive ways. I get a lot of questions about hormone optimization, we did an entire month on this topic. We did an entire episode on testosterone and estrogen optimization, I just want to briefly highlight two things that could be relevant, and then if you want more details, please go see that episode. The first is that testosterone can exert its various functions only in its unbound form, free testosterone. We all make a particular binding protein called sex hormone-binding globulin that essentially binds up testosterone and prevents it from being free. This sounds like a terrible thing, but actually it's a good thing because it allows testosterone to be transported to the various tissues, including the brain where it can exert its various functions. For those that have lower than desired levels of testosterone or too much sex hormone-binding globulin, it turns out that 400 milligrams per day of something called tongkat ali, which is a form of ginseng, can actually help increase levels of free testosterone. Many people experience a positive subjective effect and some objective effects as well, meaning increases in free testosterone when they do blood analysis. There is some data on that, not a ton in the peer-reviewed literatures, and again, always approach these with a sense of, of caution and definitely talk to your doctor. If you want to learn more about that, you can go to examine.com. There's lo- there's a lot of, um, information there listed about that. The other compound that's relevant both to men and women, or I should say people that are trying to optimize testosterone and or estrogen, is Fadogia. Fadogia agrestis is a, actually an herb that increases the levels of what's called luteinizing hormone. Luteinizing hormone is a hormone that's released from the hypothalamus within the brain that travels to the gonads, either the ovaries or the testes, to stimulate the release of estrogen or

Episode duration: 2:07:00