Science of Mindsets for Health & Performance | Dr. Alia Crum

1. 0:00 – 3:15

   Introducing Dr. Alia Crum from Stanford University

   1. AHAndrew Huberman0:00

      (uptempo 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, my guest is Dr. Alia Crum. Dr. Crum is a tenured professor of psychology at Stanford University, and the founder and director of the Stanford Mind & Body Lab. Her work focuses on mindsets, how what we think and what we believe shapes the way that our physiology, our biology reacts to things like what we eat, or stress, or exercise. Indeed, as you will soon learn from my discussion with Dr. Crum, what you believe about the nutritional content of your food changes the way that food impacts your brain and body to a remarkable degree, and the same is true for mindsets about exercise, and stress, and even medication. For instance, recent work from Dr. Crum's laboratory shows that what we believe about the side effect profiles of different drug treatments or different behavioral treatments has a profound impact on how quickly those treatments work, and the effectiveness of those treatments. I just want to mention one particular study that just came out from a graduate student in Dr. Crum's laboratory, Lauren Howe, H-O-W-E, showed that how kids react to a treatment for peanut allergies can be profoundly shaped by whether or not those kids were educated about the side effects of the treatment, such that if they learned that the side effects were a byproduct of a treatment that would help them, and they learned a little bit about why those side effects arose, and that the side effects might even help them en route to overcoming their peanut allergy, had an enormous impact on how quickly they moved through the treatment, and indeed how much they suffered, or in this case, did not suffer from those side effects. And that is but one example that you will learn about today as we discuss what mindsets are, the number of different mindsets that exist, and how we can adopt mindsets that make us more adaptive, more effective, allow us to suffer less, and to perform better in all aspects of life. I personally find the work of Dr. Alia Crum to be among the most important work being done in the fields of biology and psychology, and the interface of mind/body. Everything that she's done up until now and published, and indeed the work that she continues to do, has shaped everything within my daily routines, within my work routines, within my athletic routines, and we probably shouldn't be surprised by the fact that Dr. Crum works on all these things. She was not only an incredibly accomplished tenured research professor, she's also a clinical psychologist, and she was also a Division I athlete and ele- elite gymnast at one period in her life. So, she really walks the walk, uh, in terms of understanding what mindsets are and applying them in different aspects of life. I'm sure you're going to learn a ton from this conversation, as did I, and come away with many, many actionable items that you can apply in your own life. In fact, as we march into today's conversation, you might want to just put in the back of your mind the question, "What is my mindset about blank?" So for instance, ask yourself, what is my mindset about stress? What is my mindset about food? What is my mindset about exercise? What is my mindset about relationships of different kinds? Because in doing that, you'll be in a great position to extract the best of the information that Dr. Crum presents, and indeed to adapt those mindsets in the way that is going to be most beneficial for you.

2. 3:15 – 8:26

   Thesis, ROKA, InsideTracker

   1. AHAndrew Huberman3:15

      Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Thesis. Thesis makes custom nootropics that are ideal for the particular brain states that you want to be in. The term nootropic means smart drug, and it is not a term that I like, because there's no such thing as a universally useful smart drug. The reason for that is that our brain can be creative, we can be focused, we can be good at task switching, and each of those different things, creativity, focus, and task switching, involves different neurochemicals in different states of mind and body. So, the notion that there's one best nootropic is just not accurate. There's just no way that could possibly be. Thesis understands this, and for that reason, designs custom nootropics that are designed to bring your brain and body into the states that you want, and that are specifically designed to your neurochemistry. They use only the highest quality ingredients, many of which I've talked about before on the podcast. Things like DHA, ginkgo biloba, phosphatidylserine, Alpha GPC is one that I particularly like, and is in several of the formulations that are customized for me. However, ginkgo biloba, which has a lot of research to support it, and is well-tolerated by many people, doesn't work well for me. It actually gives me headaches, so it ... That one is not included in any of the custom formulations that Thesis has made particularly for me. Thesis has this tremendous asset, which is that they give you the ability to try several different blends over the course of a month and discover which nootropics work best for your unique brain chemistry and genetics. So, the formulas that work for me may not be the best ones for you, and vice versa. But in a short period of time, you can dial in the exact nootropic formulas for the states of mind and body that you want to be in. I've been using Thesis for close to six months now, and I can confidently say that their nootropics have been a total game-changer. I love the Motivation formula. I also like the Energy formula. I use those for different things, it turns out, but I love those, and I use their Logic formula and their Clarity formula that they've customized for me. In addition to their personalization, Thesis takes it a step further. They'll offer you a free consultation with a brain coach to help optimize your experience with the nootropics and dial in the best formulas for you. To get your own personalized nootropic starter kit, go online to takethesis.com/huberman, take their brief three-minute quiz, and Thesis will send you four different formulas to try in your first month. That's takethesis.com/huberman, and use the code "Huberman" at checkout to get 10% off your first box. Today's episode is also brought to us by ROKA. ROKA makes eyeglasses and sunglasses that are of the absolute highest quality. I've spent a lifetime working on the visual system, and I can tell you that our visual system has to contend with a huge number of different challenges, not the least of which is when we go from a very bright, sunny spot outside into the shade, our visual system has to adapt in order for us to continue to see clearly.Many sunglasses out there just don't allow that adaptation to occur in a seamless way. ROKA eyeglasses and sunglasses are designed with all of the biology of the visual system in mind, so that you always see things with crystal clarity, no matter what environment you're in. They also have a terrific aesthetic. They have many, many different styles to choose from, so their eyeglasses can be worn to dinner or out to lunch or to work. Their sunglasses can be worn essentially anywhere. They're very stylish and they were designed for performance. They won't slip off your face if you get sweaty. Indeed, you can wear them while running or while cycling. They're really terrific. They're really versatile. If you'd like to try ROKA glasses, go to ROKA, that's R-O-K-A, .com and enter the code Huberman to save 20% off your first order. Again, that's ROKA, R-O-K-A, .com, enter the code Huberman at checkout. Today's episode 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 meet your immediate and long-term health goals. Now, I've long been a believer in getting regular blood work done, for the simple reason that many of the things that impact your immediate and long-term health can only be assessed from a quality blood test. And nowadays, with the advent of modern DNA tests, you can also get a window into how your genes are impacting your health in the short and long term, and the various things that you should do in order to adjust your health in the right direction. Now, one of the major issues with a lot of blood tests and DNA tests out there, is you get numbers back and you learn whether or not your lipids or your hormones, et cetera, are within the proper range or not. But there aren't a lot of directives about what to do with that information. InsideTracker makes all of that very easy. They have a personalized dashboard that allows you to, of course, see the numbers that come back to you, and to make various changes in nutrition, various changes in exercise, various changes in all sorts of lifestyle factors that can bring those numbers into range. And so if you have a particular value for a particular metabolic factor or hormone or so forth, you click on that, and it will actually bring up the full menu of things that you can do in order to adjust that factor into the ranges that you like, all based on quality peer-reviewed research. If you'd like to try InsideTracker, you can visit insidetracker.com/huberman to get 25% off any of InsideTracker's plans. Just use the code Huberman at checkout. And now my conversation with Dr. Alia

3. 8:26 – 14:45

   What Is a Mindset & What Does It Do?

   1. AHAndrew Huberman8:26

      Crum. Well, great to have you here.

   2. ACAlia Crum8:28

      (laughs) Great to be here.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman8:29

      Yeah. For the record, it's Alia Crum, but you go by Allie, correct?

   4. ACAlia Crum8:34

      That is-

   5. AHAndrew Huberman8:34

      Okay, all right.

   6. ACAlia Crum8:34

      ... that is correct, yeah.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman8:35

      Dr. Allie Crum, I guess would be-

   8. ACAlia Crum8:36

      (laughs) Or just Allie.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman8:37

      Okay, great. Well, I've been looking forward to talking to you for a long time. Just to start off, you know, you've talked a lot and worked a lot on the science of mindsets. Could you define for us what is a mindset and what sort of purpose does it serve?

   10. ACAlia Crum8:54

       Of course, yeah. Mindsets have been described or defined in a lot of ways. We define mindsets as core beliefs or assumptions that we have about a domain or category of things that orient us to a particular set of expectations, explanations, and goals. So that's kind of jargony. (laughs) I can a little-

   11. AHAndrew Huberman9:18

       Mm-hmm.

   12. ACAlia Crum9:18

       I can, uh, distill it down for you. So mindsets are an assumption that you make about a domain. So take stress, for example, the nature of stress. What's your sort of core belief about that? And mindsets that we've studied about stress are, do you view stress as enhancing, good for you, or do you view it as debilitating and bad for you? Those mindsets, those core beliefs orient our thinking. They change what we expect will happen to us when we're stressed, how we explain the occurrences that happen or unfold when we're stressed, and also change our motivation for what we engage in when we're stressed. Uh, so we have mindsets about many things. Mindsets about stress, mindsets about intelligence, as Carol Dweck's work has shown. Mindsets about food, mindsets about medicine, you name it. Uh, it's sort of distilling down those core assumptions that really shape and orient our thinking and action.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman10:12

       Mm-hmm. I've heard you say before that mindsets simplify life in some way by constraining the number of things that we have to consider. Um, and it sounds to me like we can have mindsets about many things as- as you said. What are some different mindsets? I think, uh, many people are familiar with our colleague Carol Dweck's, um, notion of growth mindset, that if we're not proficient at something, that we should think about not being proficient yet, that we are on some path to proficiency. But what are some examples of mindsets, um, and how early do these get laid down, or do we learn them from our parents? Maybe, um, if you could just, um, flesh it out a bit for us in terms of what use- what you've observed in your own science or your own life even.

   14. ACAlia Crum10:53

       Yeah, sure. So I think it's important with- with Carol Dweck's work, a lot of people kind of get focused on growth motivation and all these things, but her work really originated from thinking about what she called this implicit theories or core beliefs about the nature of intelligence or ability, right? So do you believe that your baseline levels of intelligence or your abilities are fixed, static, set throughout the rest of your life? Or do you believe that they can grow and change? Now, those are oversimplified generalizations about the nature of intelligence. And the reality is, as it always is complex, and it's a bit of both, and it's all these things, but as humans, we need these simplifying systems to help us understand the complex reality. So those assumptions that we jump to, oh, intelligence is fixed or intelligence is malleable, um, they help us to simplify this complex reality, but they're not-Inconsequent- inconsequential, right? (chuckles) They- they matter in shaping our motivation. And as she has shown, if you have the mindset that intelligence is malleable, you're motivated to work harder to grow your intelligence. If you have a setback in your learning, you think, "Okay, there's something there that I can grow and learn and build from." If you have the mindset that it's fixed, you know, why work harder at math if you don't think you're good at it? So, it- you know, in retrospect, it's pretty clear how these mindsets can affect our motivation. What our work has aimed to do is to expand the range of mindsets that we are, uh, studying, (laughs) focused on, and also understand and expand the range of effects that they have. So, by and large, we've focused on mindsets in the domain of health and health behaviors. Uh, so I mentioned, you know, mindsets about stress. We've also looked at mindsets about food and healthy eating. So, do you have the mindset that foods that are good for you, healthy foods, are disgusting and depriving? Or do you have the mindset that healthy foods are indulgent and delicious? Now, you know, it could be a variety of different foods. You might have different thoughts about different healthy foods, but generally people, at least in our culture in- in the West, have this view that stress is debilitating, healthy foods are disgusting and depriving. And those mindsets, whether or not they're true or false, right or wrong, they have an impact. And they have an impact not just through the motivational mechanisms that Dweck and others have studied, but as our lab has started to reveal, they also shape physiological mechanisms by changing what our bodies prioritize and prepare to do. Uh, so those are just two examples.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman13:42

       Mm-hmm.

   16. ACAlia Crum13:42

       Mindsets about stress, mindsets about food. We've looked at mindsets about exercise. Do you feel like you're getting enough or do you feel like you're getting an insufficient amount to get the health benefits you're seeking? Uh, mindsets about illness. Do you view cancer as an unmitigated catastrophe or do you view cancer as manageable or perhaps even- even an opportunity? Uh, we've looked at mindsets about symptoms and side effects. Do you view side effects as, you know, a sign that the treatment is- is harmful or do you view side effects as a sign that the treatment is working? Again, these are sort of core beliefs or assumptions you have about these domains or categories, uh, but they matter because they're shaping, they're synthesizing and simplifying the way we're thinking, but they're also shaping what we're paying attention to, what we're motivated to do, and potentially even how our bodies respond.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman14:39

       Yeah, um, I'd love to talk about this notion of how our- uh, the mindset shaping how our bodies respond,

4. 14:45 – 22:28

   Mindsets Change Our Biological Responses to Food

   1. AHAndrew Huberman14:45

      and, uh, maybe as an example of this, if you could share with us this, uh, now famous study that, uh, your- uh, you've done with a milkshake study, if you wouldn't mind sharing the major, you know, contours of that study and the results, 'cause I think they're extremely impressive and they really speak to this interplay between mindset and physiology.

   2. ACAlia Crum15:05

      Certainly, yeah. This was a study that I ran as a graduate student at Yale University. I was working with Kelly Brownell and Peter Salovey. Peter Salovey had done a lot of work on really coining the term emotional intelligence, studying that.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman15:18

      He's now the president of Yale, right?

   4. ACAlia Crum15:18

      He's now the president of Yale, yes.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman15:20

      So he's done well.

   6. ACAlia Crum15:20

      He's- he's done well for himself and for the university and society. Uh, and Kelly Brownell, who was doing a lot of research on food and obesity, and I had come in doing some previous work on mindsets about exercise and placebo effects and exercise, and was in this sort of food domain and this emotions and food domain, and it really occurred to me that there was a very simple question that hadn't been probed yet. And that was, do our beliefs about what we're eating change our body's physiological response to that food, holding constant the objective nutrients of that thing? So that question might sound outrageous at first, but it was- it's really not outrageous if you're coming from a place of having studied in depth placebo effects (laughs) . Placebo effects are this ro- in medicine at least, are this sort of robust demine- demonstration in which simply taking a sugar pill, taking nothing under the impression that it's a real medication that might relieve your asthma, reduce your blood pressure, boost your immune system, can lead to those physiological effects even though there's no (laughs) objective nutrients. And we have more evidence on placebo effects than we have for any other drug (laughs) -

   7. AHAndrew Huberman16:37

      Really?

   8. ACAlia Crum16:37

      ... because of- because of the clinical trial process in which all new drugs and medication are- medications are required to outperform a placebo effect. So we have a lot of data on the placebo effect. Now, you know, we can get nuanced there. We don't have a lot of data comparing the placebo effect to doing nothing, uh, which is important for distilling mindset effects or belief effects from sort of natural occurring changes in the body. But anyways, going back to this question, it was like, all right, we've moved from, you know, medications solving our health crises to behavioral medicine solving our health crises, increase people's exercise, get them to eat better. To what degree are these things influenced by our mindsets or beliefs about them? So to test this question, we ran a seemingly simple study. This was done at the Yale Center for, um, Clinical and Translational Research, and we brought people into our lab under the impression that we were designing different milkshakes with vastly different metabolic concentrations, nutrient concentrations, um, that were designed to meet different metabolic needs of the patrons of the hospital, right? So you're gonna come in, you're gonna taste these milkshakes, and we're gonna measure your body's physiological response to them. This was a within subjects design, so it was the same people, uh, consuming two different milkshakes.... two different time points, separated by a week. And at one time point, they were told that they were consuming this really high fat, high caloric indulgent milkshake. It was like a- the 620 calorie, super high fat and sugar. At the other time point, they were told that it was a low fat, low calorie sensible sort of diet shake. In reality, it was the exact same shake. It was right in the middle, it was like 300 calories (laughs) moderate amount of, of fats and sugars. And we were measuring their body's gut peptide response to this shake, and in particular, we were looking at the hormone ghrelin. So as you know, ghrelin, uh, hunger, uh, medical experts call it the hunger hormone, re- rises in ghrelin signal, you know, seek out food, uh, and then theoretically, in proportion to the amount of calories you consume, ghrelin levels drop, signaling to the brain, okay, you don't- you can- you don't need to eat so much anymore, you can stop eating. And also revving up the metabolism to burn the nutrients that were just ingested. What we found in this study was that when people thought they were consuming the high fat, high calorie indulgent milkshake, in response to the shake, their ghrelin levels dropped at a threefold rate (laughs) stronger than when they thought they were consuming the sensible shake. So essentially, their bodies responded as if they had consumed more food, even though it was the exact sha- same shake at both time points. So this was really, (laughs) you know, uh, interesting and important, uh, for two reasons, really. One was that it was, to my knowledge, one of the first studies to show any effects of just believing that you're eating something different on your physiology. Lots of studies has sh- have shown that believing you're eating different things changes your taste, (laughs) you know, and your, even your satisfaction and fullness after. But this shows that it has a metabolic or a physiological component. Um, but the second piece was really important as well, uh, and especially for me. This was, uh, one study that really transformed the way I think about how I approach eating. And that was, the manner in which it affected our physiology was somewhat counterintuitive. So I had gone in thinking the better mindset to be in when you eat is that you're eating healthy, right? Like, you know, it just makes sense. Like placebo effects, think you're healthy, you'll be healthy, you know? But that was a far too simplistic way of thinking about it, and in fact, it was the exact opposite, because thinking that they were eating ... When these participants thought they were eating sensibly, their bodies left them still feeling physiologically hungry, right? Not satiated, which could potentially be corresponding to, uh, l- slower metabolism and so forth. So if you're in the interest of maintaining or losing weight, (laughs) what's the best mindset to be in? It's to be in a mindset that you're eating indulgently, that you're having enough food, that you're getting enough. Um, and at least in that study, we showed that has a more adaptive effect on ghrelin responses.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman21:10

      So interesting, and, uh, especially interesting to me as a neuroscientist who has worked on aspects of the nervous system that are involved in conscious perception, like vision and, uh, you know, motion and color perception and so forth, but also our lab has worked, um, and is increasingly working on autonomic functions that are below our conscious detection.

   10. ACAlia Crum21:31

       Mm-hmm.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman21:31

       In this case, uh, a, a lie about-

   12. ACAlia Crum21:35

       (laughs) .

   13. AHAndrew Huberman21:35

       ... uh, how much something, uh, uh, these milkshakes contain affected a subconscious process, because I have to imagine that the ghrelin pathway is not one that I can decide, oh, you know, this, uh, particular piece of chocolate is going to really reduce my ghrelin, 'cause it's very nutrient rich. As opposed to one, if you told me that a different piece of chocolate, for instance, is, uh, l- low calorie or s- or sugar-free chocolate or something of that sort. The ghrelin pathway, however, it seems, based on your data, th- that the ghrelin pathway is susceptible to thoughts.

   14. ACAlia Crum22:06

       Yeah.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman22:06

       Which is incredible. But then again, there must be crossover between conscious thought and these subconscious or kind of autonomic pathways, so it's really remarkable. Uh, I, it raises a question that, um, uh, I just have to ask, because it, increasingly so, I'm, uh, involved in, you know, online discussions and, you know, social media. And one of the most

5. 22:28 – 25:57

   Beliefs About Our Food Matter

   1. AHAndrew Huberman22:28

      barbed wire topics out there, and that's being generous, is this topic of which diet-

   2. ACAlia Crum22:33

      Mm-hmm.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman22:34

      ... or nutrients are best. You've got people who are strictly plant-based, um, you've got people who are omnivores, you've got people who are carnivores, you have every variation. You have intermittent fasting, also called time-restricted feeding, and it seems like once a group kind of plugs into, uh, a particular mode of eating that they feel works for them-

   4. ACAlia Crum22:53

      Yeah.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman22:53

      ... for whatever reason, energy-wise, mentally, maybe they're looking at their blood profiles, maybe they're not, but once they feel that it sort of, um, it works for them, e- each camp seems to tout all the health benefits and how great they feel. Could it be that mindset effects are, uh, involved there, that people are finding the nutritional program that they feel brings them the most, um, enrichment of life, but also nutrients, and that their health really is shifting in a positive direction, but not necessarily because of the food constituents, but because of the community and the ideas and the reinforcement?

   6. ACAlia Crum23:28

      Yeah, and the belief-

   7. AHAndrew Huberman23:29

      Mm-hmm.

   8. ACAlia Crum23:29

      ... that this is the right way of doing something. I, I think 100%, uh, uh, (laughs) 100% it has something to contribute, you know? I don't want to, I'm not gonna weigh in on the debate, which is better.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman23:41

      No, but, but it-

   10. ACAlia Crum23:41

       What I will most certainly weigh in on is, is the notion that, look, going back to the placebo effect, right, we have a outdated understanding of what that is, which is based on this randomized control trial. You compare a drug to a placebo.If the drug works better than the placebo, you say, "Great, the drug works." If the drug doesn't outperform the placebo, you say the drug doesn't work. That's really s- oversimplified it's a good test for the specific efficacy of the drug. It's not a good test for understanding the total impact of that drug. Because in the reality of things, you know, if a drug outperforms a placebo, then, you know, you start prescribing it, but you w- the reality is that the total effect of that drug is a combined product of the specific chemical, you know, attributes of that drug and whatever's going on in the placebo effect, which is, you know, at least from our perspective, it's beliefs, it's social context, and it's your body's natural ability to respond to something. So, you know, that's in the placebo effect example. The same is true for everything we do or consume. So when it comes to what diet you're- you're eating, um, eh, both are true. It does matter what it is, and it matters what you think about that diet, and what others around you and in our culture think about that diet, because those social contexts inform our mindsets. Our mindsets interact with our physiology in ways that produce outcomes that are really important. So, let's not get dualistic and say, you know, it's either all in the mind or not in the mind. Let's also not be unnecessarily combative and say, "Oh, it should be all plant-based," or, you know, keto or whatever. It's, all of those things are a combined product of what you're actually doing and what you're thinking (laughs) about. If you believe in it, if you don't, if you're skeptical or, you know, in some cases you think you should be eating a certain way and then you don't live up to that, it might have a, even an adverse effect, because of the- the stress and the anxiety associated with that.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman25:55

       Very interesting.

6. 25:57 – 28:57

   Placebo vs Beliefs vs Nocebo Effects

   1. AHAndrew Huberman25:57

      Um, along the lines of belief effects, is that... could we call these belief effects?

   2. ACAlia Crum26:01

      Sure.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman26:01

      Or mindsets?

   4. ACAlia Crum26:02

      Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman26:02

      Is- is there a difference between these, uh, what I'm calling belief effects and placebo effects? I mean, are placebo effects distinctly different from mindset effects, or are they more or less the same thing?

   6. ACAlia Crum26:14

      They're- they're related. So I think placebo effects, you know, maybe should be reserved for the, you know (laughs) conditions in which you're actually taking a placebo, which is a inactive substance. When you get out of that sort of placebo versus drug, you know, realm and you start looking at, you know, placebo effects, I use quotes with my hands here, in behavioral health, it, the term kind of becomes confusing, because you're not... You know, in the milkshake study, we didn't give people a placebo milkshake, right? We just changed what they believed about it. So, how I like to think about it is that placebo effects, as they're traditionally construed, are made up of three things. It's the social context, mindsets or beliefs, and the natural physiological processes in the brain and body that can produce the outcomes. Um, and so, we could c- just call them belief effects, because (laughs) the beliefs are triggering the physiological processes, and the beliefs are shaped by the social context. Does that make sense?

   7. AHAndrew Huberman27:19

      It makes sense.

   8. ACAlia Crum27:19

      Yeah.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman27:20

      Yeah, there was a paper a year or two ago published in Science, um, Science Magazine, about brain regions involved in psychogenic fever.

   10. ACAlia Crum27:28

       Mm.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman27:29

       That if people, or, uh, you can actually do this in animal models too, think that they are sick, you get a genuine one to three degree increase in body temperature. Three... One to three degrees Fahrenheit increase in body temperature. It's pretty- pretty impressive.

   12. ACAlia Crum27:41

       Yeah.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman27:41

       Um, and I guess plays into, you know, symptomatology generally. So, I- I'm a believer in belief effects. Uh...

   14. ACAlia Crum27:47

       Well, it's also, uh, and I would just say that, you know, the term that we use in the f- in our field is nocebo effect for that, which is sort of the placebo's ugly stepsister (laughs) . You know, it's when negative beliefs cause negative consequences. So, you are told you will have s- you know, it's- it's very well demonstrated that when people are told about certain side effects, they're far more likely to experience those side effects. Uh, when people think that they're sick or going to get sick, sometimes that can create, you know, the- the physiological, uh, symptoms. And, you know, there's- there's, you know, various debates that it's not only that physiology changes, it's also that your attention changes. So, we're experiencing things like f- uh, fatigue and headache and upset stomach all the time, and then when you take a drug and somebody says, "You're gonna feel fatigue and headache," you start noticing that you're tired (laughs) and have headaches and attribute it to the drug. So, some of the mechanisms are attention, uh, and some of them are real changes in- in physiology.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman28:54

       Love, uh, for you to tell us about, um,

7. 28:57 – 33:44

   Mindset (Dramatically) Impacts the Effects of Exercise

   1. AHAndrew Huberman28:57

      the hotel workers study.

   2. ACAlia Crum28:58

      (laughs) Yeah, sure.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman29:00

      I know you get asked these questions all the time, but I- I find these just, these results also amazing.

   4. ACAlia Crum29:04

      Yeah, no, I think th- this is a really good example of this phenomenon, right? That the total effect of anything is a combined product of what you're doing and what you think about what you're doing. So this was a study that I ran with Ellen Langer way back, uh, when I was an undergrad actually, we started this study. Ellen Langer's a professor of psychology at Harvard, and she's done a lot of really fascinating work on her flavor of mindfulness, which is distinct from a more, you know, Eastern, um, mind... You know, Buddhist sort of mindfulness based, um, work. And- and she, you know, she actually was the one who said to me originally, you know, I was an athlete at the time. I was a ice hockey player and I was training c- constantly. And- and one day, I'll never forget it, she said, "You know, you know the benefit of exercise is just a placebo, right?" And I was like, "Well, that's outrageous." Ellen's pr- Ellen's- Ellen's known for- for saying very provocative but also very wise things. And that statement really got me thinking about that. So we designed this study together, and that was to look at, you know...How would you study if exercise-- the benefits of exercise were a placebo, how would you even test that? Because, you know, what does it mean to give a placebo exercise? So, we sort of flipped it on its head, and we found a group of people who were getting a lot of exercise but weren't aware of it, that they were, right? So this, we settled on a group of hotel housekeepers, so these were women working in hotels who were on their feet all day long, pushing carts, changing linens, climbing stairs, you know, (laughs) cleaning bathrooms, vacuuming. It was clear that they were getting above and beyond at least the surgeon general's requirements at that time or which were to accumulate 30 minutes of moderate physical activity per day. But what was interesting was when we went in and surveyed them and asked them, "Hey, how much exercise do you think you're getting?" A third of them said, "Zero." Like, "I don't get any exercise." (laughs) And the average response was like a three on a scale of zero to 10. So, it's clear that even though these women were active, they didn't have that mindset, right? They had the mindset that their work was just work, hard, maybe thankless (laughs) work that led them to feel tired and- and, you know, in pain at the end of the day, but not that it was good for them, that it was good exercise. So, what we did was we took these women and we randomized them into two groups, and we told half of them that their work was good exercise. This- (laughs) in this case, it was true, factual information. We oriented them to the surgeon general's guidelines. We oriented them to the benefits that they should be receiving, and then we had measured them previously on their, um, physiological metrics, like weight and body fat and blood pressure, and we came back four weeks later and we tested them again. And what we found was that these women, even though they hadn't changed anything in their behavior, at least that was detectable to us, they didn't work more rooms, they didn't start, uh, you know, doing pull-ups or pushups in between cleaning (laughs) hotel rooms, as far as I'm concerned. They didn't report any changes in their diet, but they had benefits to their health. So, they lost weight, they decreased their systolic blood pressure by about 10 points on average, and, uh, they started feeling better (laughs) about themselves, them- their bodies, and- and their work, not surprisingly.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman32:37

      That's amazing. H- how should we, um, take- conceptualize that result in light of, um, uh, all of our efforts to get more out of exercise, right? Because earlier you mentioned, from the milkshake study and our perceptions about nutrient density that, you know, it's a little bit- the- the right message is actually a little bit counterintuitive.

   6. ACAlia Crum32:57

      Mm-hmm.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman32:57

      That if you think, oh, this is very, uh, low calorie, uh, nutrient sparse, um, then it'd good for me in the context of losing weight, for instance. But it turns out the opposite is true, because as you- as you told us, the- uh, the body responds differently when you think something is nutrient dense and can actually suppress hunger more. So, in- in light of this result, if I were to say, okay, I'm- uh, my current understanding of the- of the literature is that getting somewhere between 150 and 180 minutes per week of cardiovascular exercise is probably a good idea for most people.

   8. ACAlia Crum33:29

      Mm-hmm.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman33:30

      If I tell myself that it's not just a good idea but that it's extremely effective in lowering my blood pressure and maintaining healthy weight, et cetera, et cetera, according to these results, it will have an- an enhanced effect on those metrics. Is that right?

   10. ACAlia Crum33:43

       Definitely. I-

8. 33:44 – 39:30

   Motivational Messaging & Mindset About Fitness

   1. ACAlia Crum33:44

      so this is a really important point, because what this reveals is that we have to be more thoughtful in how we go about motivating people to exercise or teaching people about the benefits. Uh, our current approach is just to basically tell people, writ large, you know, here's what you need to get. Here's what you need to get good for- you know, to get enough benefits to receive the- or enough exercise to receive the health benefit. The problem with that approach is that most people aren't meeting those benefits yet, or aren't meeting those requirements yet.

   2. AHAndrew Huberman34:21

      Mm-hmm.

   3. ACAlia Crum34:21

      And the risk with that is that- well, the intention with that is to motivate them, because, you know, public health officials think, well, if I just tell people, "You need to get more exercise because it's good for you," they'll do it. We know now that that doesn't work, that these mo- these guidelines are not motivational. They don't change our behavior, and what our work adds to that is that not only is it not motivational, it also creates potentially a mindset that k- you know, makes people worse off (laughs) than they were without knowing about the guidelines. So again, it's tricky. I'm not saying that mindset is everything. Certainly exercise is good for us and use- is- is helpful for us. (laughs) It's one of the things we have the best data on. So, I'm not saying, oh, exercise is all a placebo. What I am saying is that we need to be more mindful about, how do we motivate people to exercise? But how do we help people to actually reap the benefits of the exercise they are already doing? Now, uh, Octavia Zart, who is a s- uh, grad student in my lab, ran a number of interesting studies along this- uh, these lines, uh, one in which she looked at three nationally representative datasets, uh, which had this interesting question in them which was, how much exercise do you get relative to others? Do you get about the same, a little more, a lot more? Do you get a little less or a lot less, right? So, you know, the audi- (laughs) your listeners, you could all answer this. And then in these datasets, what she did was she had, you know, pulled from data that tracked death rates over the next 21 years. And a couple interesting things revealed themselves. One was that the correlations between these perceptions of exercise relative to others and people's actual exercise as measured through, um, accelerometer, uh, data, as well as more rigorous sort of what did you do today kind of data, uh, those don't correlate much at all. (laughs)

   4. AHAndrew Huberman36:23

      People lie.

   5. ACAlia Crum36:25

      Well, people lie, but also-

   6. AHAndrew Huberman36:26

      Or misperceive.

   7. ACAlia Crum36:27

      They misperceive, and- or, you know, who's to say it's misperceiving? There's just- everything's relative, right? If you're- I used to do triathlons very seriously, so if you were to ask me now, I feel like I'm totally inactive, right? Because I'm not doing anything near what I used to. And- and if that's my-... focus set (laughs) , right? I feel like I'm not exercising much. But if I think about, you know, compared to other people, given what I know about, you know, nat- na- national representative statistics, then I could feel like, oh, I'm getting a lot, right? So, you can see-

   8. AHAndrew Huberman37:00

      Right.

   9. ACAlia Crum37:00

      ... how these perceptions are dis- uh, decoupled from objective reality. And what we found in, in these studies is that, that one question mattered, in some cases, more than objective activity. But in all cases, controlling for objective activity and predicting death rates. And in some, in one of the samples, it was a 71% higher risk of death rate, uh, you know, if people rated themselves as feeling like they were getting less activity than others.

   10. AHAndrew Huberman37:33

       Wow.

   11. ACAlia Crum37:34

       So, yeah. (laughs)

   12. AHAndrew Huberman37:35

       That's a big- that's a big deal.

   13. ACAlia Crum37:36

       It's a big deal, and a- again, you know, that study is cross-sectional, longitudinal. It was not experimental. Um, but, you know, combined, you know, these really sort of, you know, coalesced to say, "Hey, this is important, too," right? Like, "Let's figure out ways to be active and get people active, but let's also not make people feel horrible about themselves when they're not getting enough." And going back to the, the hotel study, again, I mentioned that I did that at a time when I was a, I was a division one ice hockey player at the time. We were training all the time, and I, I was in a unhealthy mindset about that. I never felt like I was getting enough. I would, you know, come off a two-hour practice into a weightlifting session, and then I would get on the elliptical for 30 minutes 'cause I thought I had to do that, also, you know? (laughs) My- my teammates who were with m- me at the time could attest to that. And so, that study was really helpful for me to realize that I needed to pay attention, not just to what I was doing, but also take care of my mindset about that. And- and- and I think the essence is, how do you get people to feel like they're getting enough? It's a sense of enoughness that really matters.

   14. AHAndrew Huberman38:48

       Yeah, I can see the dilemma because you- you don't want people thinking that, um, that exercise and its positive effects are so potent that they can get away with a three-minute, uh, walk each day and that they're- they're good.

   15. ACAlia Crum39:01

       Right.

   16. AHAndrew Huberman39:02

       Because most likely, they are not. Um, but again, you don't want to- them to be so back on their heels psychologically that they don't even do that or that they, um, never exceed that by- by very much. But it seems like the- the message from the- the milkshake study and what we're talking about now, in terms of exercise, would be to really communicate to the general public that- that food has a potency, even healthy foods have

9. 39:30 – 42:03

   The Power of a ‘Potency & Indulgence’ Mindset

   1. AHAndrew Huberman39:30

      a potency, to give us energy, to fuel our, uh, you know, immune system and endocrine system, et cetera. And that exercise has a- a remarkable potency, and that that potency can be enhanced-

   2. ACAlia Crum39:40

      Yeah.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman39:41

      ... by believing in or understanding that potency.

   4. ACAlia Crum39:45

      Exactly.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman39:45

      Is w- is- is that an accurate way to state it?

   6. ACAlia Crum39:47

      Total, that's exactly right, and that's where I really feel like we need to push. And what I- I try to do in our research is to not just show, oh, mindset matters, isn't that interesting? But it's- it's both matter, right? (laughs)

   7. AHAndrew Huberman40:01

      Mm-hmm.

   8. ACAlia Crum40:01

      Both exercise and what you think about it matter. Both what you eat and how you think about what you eat matter. And so, we really, as individuals and as a society, need to work on, yeah, what is the right way to cultivate both behaviors and mindsets about those behaviors that serve us? And in the food context, this, again, that milkshake study really changed me on a personal level, because I had been somebody who was constantly trying- trying to restrain my eating, right? I, you know, I wanted to maintain or, you know (laughs) , lose weight, look fit, and so, I f- I was like, "Well, I should diet. I should have low calorie, low carb, low this, low that." But what that was doing was putting me into this constant mindset of restraint. And what that study suggested was that that mindset was potentially counteracting any benefit (laughs) , right?

   9. AHAndrew Huberman40:56

      Mm-hmm.

   10. ACAlia Crum40:57

       Or any objective effects of the restrained diet. 'Cause my brain was saying, "Okay, you're restraining." Maybe my body was, you know, responding to that. But the brain was also saying, "Eat more food (laughs) . You know, stay hungry-"

   11. AHAndrew Huberman41:11

       Right.

   12. ACAlia Crum41:11

       "... 'cause you need to survive." And so, the answer isn't, oh, we'll throw everything into the wind and just drink indulgent milkshakes all day long. The answer is, eat healthy foods, right? (laughs) You know, based on the latest science and what we know to be true about nutrients and our body's response to them. But try to do so in a mindset of indulgence, a mindset of satisfaction, a mindset of enjoyment, right? That is really the trick, and that's what I at least try to do in- in my own life.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman41:43

       I love that, and as I get more involved in the public-facing health communications, I- this comes up again and again. You know, how- how should we conceptualize our behavior? How should we think about all these options that are offered to us? And I- I'm excited that the, um, the potency of mindsets are coming through again and again. So, I have a question about this. I don't know if the-

10. 42:03 – 45:00

    Mindsets About Sleep, Tracking Sleep

    1. AHAndrew Huberman42:03

       this study has ever been done, but, uh, a lot of these mindset effects are something that, years ago, I felt I did, um, vis-à-vis sleep.

    2. ACAlia Crum42:11

       Mm-hmm.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman42:12

       Because I was, uh, in graduate school and as a postdoc, and even as an undergraduate, I- I had so much work to do, that I decided I would "sleep when I was dead" in- in quotes.

    4. ACAlia Crum42:20

       (laughs)

    5. AHAndrew Huberman42:20

       Not a good idea, uh, from what we know. However, I found that, uh, a couple nights of minimal sleep or even an all-nighter, and I could do pretty well. Eventually, it would catch up with me. Has there ever been a study exploring whether or not the effects of sleep deprivation, um, can be impacted by these mindset effects? Because, uh, over the years, I keep learning more and more about how much sleep I need, and I've really emphasized sleep, and I do feel much better when I'm getting it.But as new parents know, or, uh, students know, or athletes know, or pe-- anyone that lives a normal life finds sometimes that they don't get a good night's sleep. Would believing that we can tolerate that and push through it and function just fine, and that it's not going to kill us or give us Alzheimer's, um-

    6. ACAlia Crum43:03

       (laughs) .

    7. AHAndrew Huberman43:04

       ... uh, could that help us deal with a, with a poor night's sleep or even two, or chronic sleep deprivation?

    8. ACAlia Crum43:10

       Certainly, I would, I would guess. There's been one study, to my knowledge, that's tested that. Uh, Dragunov and colleagues, and they looked at, they had people come in and they gave them sort of a, I think it was a sham sort of EEG test to sort of figure out the, how, you know... This was done a number of years ago. Now, we actually have (laughs) , you know, devices to test this. But theirs was this sham test, and then they gave people fake feedback about the quality of their sleep, and, you know, how it had been the night before. And they also asked the, the, um, participants how they felt about their sleep, and, um, essentially what they found was that the, the s- sham feedback, if they were told that they had gotten le- lower quality sleep, led to deficits in a variety of cognitive tasks. Um, and that was sort of decoupled from their actual, (laughs) you know, qualities of sleep, at least as self-reported. So, that's one study that attests to this. I think certainly, I mean, I would, you know, I would bet a lot of money, I haven't run these myself, but that your mindsets can push around your, you know, cognitive functioning, physiological effects of sleep. But once again, it's- it's not all or nothing, right?

    9. AHAndrew Huberman44:28

       Right.

    10. ACAlia Crum44:28

        There are real important benefits of sleep, and how far we can push around that through our mindset is an open question.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman44:37

        Now, it- it that- the result that you mentioned is really interesting, 'cause a lot of people use these sleep trackers now. They're using rings or wristbands. In fact, my lab has worked pretty closely with a company that they supplied us data on how well people are sleeping, and you get a score. Uh, people get the score back, and when they see that score, they might think based on these results, "Ugh, my sleep, my recovery score, my sleep score was poor. I'm- I shouldn't expect much for myself today," or,

11. 45:00 – 1:01:50

    Making Stress Work For (or Against) You

    1. AHAndrew Huberman45:00

       "I- it makes sense that my memory would be going." Um, for this reason, and I'll probably lose a few friends for saying this, but hopefully I'll gain a few as well, that's why I like to just do a c- a subjective, um, score for myself. If I wake up in the morning, I just decide, okay, did I sleep well or not? I don't like seeing a number.

    2. ACAlia Crum45:15

       Mm-hmm.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman45:16

       I don't like getting a- a readout from a device. Um, that's me. I know a lot of people like it, and they can be very useful, but, uh, gosh, it seems that these belief effects are weaving in at all levels. Um, I'd love for us to talk about stress, because, um, your lab has worked extensively on this, and if y- if you would, could you tell us, um, at some point about the study that you've done about informing people about the different effects of stress? Um, but also, uh, if there's an opportunity, some takeaways about how we could each conceptualize stress in ways that would make it, um, serve us better-

    4. ACAlia Crum45:52

       Yeah.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman45:52

       ... as opposed to harm us and our mental and physical performance?

    6. ACAlia Crum45:55

       Great. Yeah, so I'd, you know, I'd come off the heels of doing some research in exercise, uh, and diet, and finding these provocative and also counterintuitive effects of s- with respect to, like, how we should try to motivate people, right? (laughs)

    7. AHAndrew Huberman46:12

       Mm-hmm.

    8. ACAlia Crum46:13

       And, you know, as I was thinking about this and this, you know, grouping of going from, you know, medicines is to saving us, to behaviors saving us, and how those behaviors might be influenced by mindsets, the obvious next thing to think about was stress, right? Because it's like, okay, well, you want to be healthier, fix your diet, fix your exercise, and stress less. And, you know, so I started doing some digging into the nature of stress, and a couple things were clear. One was that the public health message was very clear, right? That stress was bad, right? Unmitigated and harm- harmful on our health, our productivity, our relationships, our fertility, our cognition, you name it, right? Uh, the messages that were out there, by and large, oversimplified messages focused on the damaging consequences of stress. But as you know, if you actually dive deeper into the literature on stress and the origins of stress, what you find is that, you know, the literature, like most literatures, is not so clear-cut. And in fact, there's a large amount of evidence to support the fact that the experience of stress, meaning encountering adversity or challenge in one's goal-related efforts, uh, does not have to be debilitating, and in many cases, the body's response was designed to enhance our ability to manage at those moments, right? So, some research showing that stress narrows our focus, increases our attention, speeds up the rate at which we're able to process information. There was some research out there showing this phenomenon of, uh, physiological toughening, the process by which the release of catabolic hormones in the stress response recruit or activate anabolic hormones, which help, as you know, build our muscles, build our, you know, neurons to help us grow and learn. Uh, and there was a whole body of emerging research on, uh, post-traumatic growth or this phenomenon in which even the experience of the most traumatic stressors, the most chronic and enduring stressors, could lead not to destruction, but in fact, to the exact opposite, to an enhanced sense of connection with our values, connection to others, sense of, um, joy and passion for living. And so, you know, I- I found that to be interesting (laughs) , and, you know, my work since then has been not to try to argue that stress is enhancing and not debilitating, but try to point out that the true nature of stress is a paradox. The true nature of stress is manifold and complex, and lots of things can happen.But to question, what's the role of our mindset about stress in shaping our response to stress? So, some work had already been done looking at your perception of the stressor, right? So do you view a stressor like a challenging exam or a health diagnosis as a challenge or a threat? And that had shown pretty convincingly, that when you view stressors more as a challenge, less as a threat, that your brain and b- body responds, uh, more, more adaptively. What our question was, was to take the sort of psychological construal one step higher in abstraction, so not just the stressor, but the nature of stress (laughs) , right? Do you, you know, at th- at that core level, do you view stress as something that's bad, is going to kill us and therefore should be avoided? Or do you view som- uh, stress as, uh, natural and something that's going to enhance us? And so we set out to design a series of studies to test the extent to which these mindsets about stress mattered. Um, we first, this again was with, uh, Peter Salove and Shaun Aker originally, we designed a measure to test people's mindsets about stress, simple questions like, what extent do you believe or agree or disagree with statements like, "Stress enhances my performance and productivity (laughs) ," uh, um, "Stress heightens my vitality and growth," things like that. And we found in a number of correlational studies that that, uh, more enhancing stress mindset was linked to, uh, better health outcomes, uh, better well-being and higher performance. So then we set out to see if we could change people's mindsets. And in our first test of this we decided to do so by creating these multimedia films that showcased research, anecdotes, facts about stress, all true, but oriented towards one mindset or the other (laughs) , right? So you can imagine one set of films showed basically the messages that were out there in the public health context. The other showed, hey, you know, stress is, you know, stress has been linked to these things, but in fact the body's stress response was designed to do this. Did you know it could do that? And we had, um, empowering images like LeBron James making the free throw in the final minute versus missing it, right? (laughs) So all of these things are true, you know, possibilities, but oriented to two different mindsets about stress.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman51:32

       So either people saw a video that basically made it seem like stress will diminish you, crush you, reduce you-

    10. ACAlia Crum51:38

        Yes.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman51:38

        ... or a video very similar, stress will grow you, bring out your best, and maybe even take you to heightened levels of performance that you've never experienced before.

    12. ACAlia Crum51:48

        Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, examples in the sports, we also had like, true leaders emerge in the moments of greatest stress, you know, Churchill and ... So all those examples are out there for both the enhancing nature and the debilitating nature. And our question was, does orienting people to different mindsets change how they respond to stress? So this study was done in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. We worked with, uh, UBS, a company, a financial service, a company that was undergoing pretty massive amounts of layoffs. So these employees were stressed about being laid off, they were taking on more pressure, it was just a tough time. And we randomized them into three conditions. And this was all pre-work before getting a, uh, training on stress. Uh, but the three different conditions, some watched no videos, some watched the stress will crush you videos, and some watched the stress could enhance you videos. And what we found was that just, you know, it was a total of nine minutes of videos over the course of the week, led to changes in their mindsets about stress, which led to changes in their, um, physiological symptoms associated with stress. So people who watched the enhancing films had fewer backaches, muscle tension, insomnia, racing heart and so forth. And they also reported, uh, performing better at work compared to those who watched the debilitating videos. Now interestingly, we didn't make anyone worse with the debilitating videos (laughs) -

    13. AHAndrew Huberman53:20

        Well, that's good.

    14. ACAlia Crum53:20

        ... which is, which was good. We had-

    15. AHAndrew Huberman53:22

        That's good.

    16. ACAlia Crum53:22

        We had told the, uh, the IRB we didn't expect that because that message was already out there. That's what they were already seeing. That wasn't new to them. Uh, it was more this enhancing perspective that w- turned out to be inspiring.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman53:37

        I love that study and I, I know we both have, uh, friends and, and ties in the special operations community through just sort of happenstance and, and we can may- maybe we'll get into that a little later, but a, a good friend from that community, uh, always says, you know, there are only three ways to go through life at any moment, which is either back on your heels, flat-footed or forward center-

    18. ACAlia Crum53:56

        (laughs)

    19. AHAndrew Huberman53:56

        ... of mass. And I said, "Well, well, what's the key to forward center of mass?" And he said, "Stress is what places you in forward center of mass." Meaning leaning forward and into challenge. And I know that you've actually looked at that community and it does really seem like that's a mindset that either they have going in or that they cultivate through the course of their training. Um, but this notion that stress is what puts us in forward motion, um, is true physiologically, right? I mean, adrenaline's-

    20. ACAlia Crum54:22

        Mm-hmm.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman54:22

        ... major role is to place us into a moment of, uh, or bias us towards action. That's why we tremble. It's- it's the body trying to initiate action. But actually, uh, this is probably a good opportunity if it was, if there's anything interesting to extract from the study on, on, um, SEAL teams, what, what was it?

    22. ACAlia Crum54:38

        Yeah, no, I loved working with, with the SEALs. Um, one of the interesting things we found, so at the T- we had, we've studied this, you know, measured this mindset in several different populations. And in every single one that we had tested-So far, the average had been on the debilitating side of the scale. So-

    23. AHAndrew Huberman54:58

        People just saying stress is bad.

    24. ACAlia Crum54:59

        Stress is bad, right.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman55:01

        Yeah.

    26. ACAlia Crum55:01

        And, you know, you know, it's like with measures of, uh, growth and fixed mindsets about intelligence, at 10s, people are in the middle, but oftentimes have a more positive mindsets about intelligence. That was not the case with stress. (laughs) It's still not the case. I'm trying to get the message out there. Except for this group of Navy SEALs. So they were actually, uh, recruits, so people who were going through basic training in order to become Navy SEALs. And we found that they, on average, had, uh, stresses-enhancing mindset, perhaps not surprisingly, right? If you're going in to devote your whole life to (laughs) being a Navy SEAL, you must have some inclination that stress is a source of strength, uh, for you. But what we found with them, we measured this at the beginning of their basic training, of BUD/S training, and then looked at how well they succeeded through that program. So as you know, this is an ex- extremely rigorous program. You know, at the time, it was only like 10 or 20% of-

    27. AHAndrew Huberman56:01

        Still is.

    28. ACAlia Crum56:01

        ... trainees make it through.

    29. AHAndrew Huberman56:02

        The numbers have never shifted-

    30. ACAlia Crum56:04

        Yeah, so-
12. 1:01:50 – 1:04:50

    Mindsets Link Our Conscious & Subconscious

    1. ACAlia Crum1:01:50

       (laughs) -

    2. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:51

       We should do that.

    3. ACAlia Crum1:01:51

       ... we should do that.

    4. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:52

       We should collaborate.

    5. ACAlia Crum1:01:53

       Let's do it.

    6. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:53

       We've got common friends in both departments, so we shou- we should do it. Why not?

    7. ACAlia Crum1:01:55

       But I- but I did want to mention, I, you know, the way- the way I think about mindset, and again, I think we need to, uh, study this. I'm not a neuroscientist, so I haven't looked at this, but this is something we could do. But the way I think about mindset is that it's, mindsets are kind of a portal between conscious and subconscious processes.

    8. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:16

       Mm.

    9. ACAlia Crum1:02:16

       They operate as a default setting of the mind, right? So, if, you know, if sort of programmed in there, you have stress equals bad, right? That is going to, you know, con- that- that's going to be something maybe cos- conscious, right? But it doesn't have to be conscious, right? You don't, people don't have to know their mindsets about stress until they're asked really. It's, that's been programmed in through our upbringing, through public health messages and through media and other things, and it kind of sits there as an assumption in the brain. And the brain is then figuring out how should it respond to this situation. And if the assumption, the default, the programming is, stress is bad, that's going to, through our subconscious, trigger all the things that's like, "Okay, well, I need to like (laughs) , you know, rev up the things that protect me versus rev up the things that help me grow." And so, that's at least how I think about it, and what's cool about it is that, because it operates as a sort of portal, it communicates with more, you know, subconscious physiological processes, but it can also be accessed through our consciousness, right? So, just talking about this, right, for your listeners, they're now invited to bring their stress mindsets up to the consciousness and say, "What is my stress mindset? How am I thinking about stress? Can I reprogram that? Can I start to think about it as more enhancing?" That takes a little bit of a co- conscious work potentially, but then once you do that, it can- that can kind of operate in- in the background, influencing how your body responds and you don't have to say, "Okay, I'm stressed. I better tell my, you know, (laughs) anabolic hormones."

    10. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:05

        Right, right.

    11. ACAlia Crum1:04:06

        To go, that- that doesn't work that way.

    12. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:07

        No.

    13. ACAlia Crum1:04:08

        Um, but these mindsets can help with the translational process.

    14. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:12

        I love the idea that mindsets are at the interface between the conscious and subconscious, and, um, I think there's- there's a lot to unpack there. But, um, it- it clearly is the case, uh, that the mindsets, they sort of act as heuristics, right? And- and- and as we talked about earlier, they can limit what, the number of things to focus on, because one thing that is really stressful is trying to focus on everything all the time. I mean, trying to navigate the public health around anything, the public health information around anything is kind of overwhelming. As you mentioned for stress, you see a lot in the stresses will crush you, and then you can also find evidence that stress will grow you.

    15. ACAlia Crum1:04:47

        Mm-hmm.

    16. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:48

        How should, uh,

13. 1:04:50 – 1:10:40

    3 Best Ways to Leverage Stress

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:50

       we, the listeners, think about stress? I mean, what- what's the most adaptive way to think about stress?

    2. ACAlia Crum1:04:56

       Mm-hmm.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:56

       Uh, and should we talk about our stress? Should we not talk about our stress? Um, is there a- a short list of- of ways that we can cope with stress better?

    4. ACAlia Crum1:05:06

       Yeah.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:07

       Or, uh, may- I should be careful with the word cope. Is there a way that we can-

    6. ACAlia Crum1:05:10

       (laughs)

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:10

       ... leverage stress to our advantage?

    8. ACAlia Crum1:05:12

       Great. Yeah, and that's an important- important nuance in your language, which is, people have by and large come from a place of, how do you manage stress? How do you cope with it? Which implies, how do you fight against it, right?

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:26

       Vacation massages-

    10. ACAlia Crum1:05:27

        Fight against it. (laughs)

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:27

        ... yoga classes-

    12. ACAlia Crum1:05:29

        Yeah.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:29

        ... and yeah.

    14. ACAlia Crum1:05:29

        Or fight against it or-

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:30

        (laughs) Right.

    16. ACAlia Crum1:05:30

        ... check out from it.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:31

        Exactly.

    18. ACAlia Crum1:05:31

        Right?

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:31

        Exactly.

    20. ACAlia Crum1:05:32

        And yeah, the real challenge is, how do we leverage it? How do we utilize it? How do we work with it? And yeah, I have a lot of thoughts on this. The first and more s- most important thing is to clarify our definition of stress. So, I think people often associate... The- the stress mind- negative stress mindset is so insidious that now people define stress with its negative consequences. So, the first step is to decouple that and to realize that stress is a neutral, (laughs) right? Uh, yet to be determined effect of experiencing or anticipating adversity in your goal-related efforts. So, let me unpack that a little more. You can be in the midst of it or you could just be worried about something happening. That's one aspect. Second is adversity or challenge, so something that's working against you. But the third piece is critical and that is in your goal-related efforts. What that means is that, we only stress about things we care about, things that matter to us. So, this is really important, right? Because stress is linked with, it's the other side of the coin of things we care about, right? And so I think that's the first (laughs) thing to realize, right? That as humans, we stress because we care and we don't stress about things we don't care about.So the simplified example I like to use is, you know, if Johnny was failing school, that wouldn't stress you out, unless Johnny was your son, or you were Johnny or you really cared about, uh, the educating the Johnnys of the world, right? It only becomes stressful to the extent that you care about it. So, why are we trying to fight or run away or hide or merely cope with our stress or, you know, overcome it through our massages- (laughs)

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:36

        (laughs)

    22. ACAlia Crum1:07:36

        ... when the stress is connected to the things we care about? So then the question becomes, okay, if that's true, how can I better utilize or leverage or respond to the inevitable stresses that we're going to experience? I'm not saying go out and seek out more stress. What I am saying is that you're going to experience stress if you have any cares or values or passions, and m- most all of us (laughs) do. Um, and so, then what do you do? And we've developed a three-step approach to adopting a stresses enhancing mindset. And briefly it's, the first step is to just acknowledge that you're stressed, to own it, see it, uh, be mindful of it. The second step is to welcome it. Uh, why would you welcome it? You welcome it because inherently in that stress is something you care about, so you're using it as an opportunity to reconnect to, what is it that I care about here? And then the third step is to utilize the stress response to achieve the thing that you care about, not spend your time, money, effort, energy, trying to get rid of the stress. Does that make sense? I can-

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:49

        Makes sense and I-

    24. ACAlia Crum1:08:50

        (laughs)

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:50

        And I love it. As somebody who has laboratory studies the physiological effects of stress, the- the effects that impress me the most are, for instance, the narrowing of visual attention that then, um, drives a capacity to parse time more finely, which then drives the capacity to process information faster. It's- it's almost like a superpower.

    26. ACAlia Crum1:09:10

        Right.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman1:09:11

        Uh, and yes, it can feel uncomfortable often.

    28. ACAlia Crum1:09:15

        Mm-hmm.

    29. AHAndrew Huberman1:09:16

        Um, but I love the idea that, um, acknowledging it, um, embracing it-

    30. ACAlia Crum1:09:21

        Yeah.
14. 1:10:40 – 1:19:40

    4 Things That Shape Mindsets, Influencers & Mindsets

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:10:40

       I'd love for you to, um, tell us just a bit about what you're up to right now and what's most exciting to you now. If you, um, are able or willing to talk about some of the- the work that's on the way. I saw a brief mention of something on your, uh, publications website of a- of a paper about influencers, uh, online influencers in nutrition. Uh, that might not be the main thrust of what you're up to, but if you're able to tell us about it, sort of interesting given that a- a lot of the communication in and around this podcast takes place through social media, and I've kind of launched into this, uh, landscape now where I- I'm constantly bombarded with health information.

    2. ACAlia Crum1:11:16

       Mm.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:16

       And, um, and influencers.

    4. ACAlia Crum1:11:18

       Mm-hmm.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:18

       A- a term I didn't even know until a couple-

    6. ACAlia Crum1:11:21

       (laughs)

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:21

       ... couple months ago.

    8. ACAlia Crum1:11:21

       You are one. (laughs)

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:22

       Well- well, one could argue, uh, one way or the other, but, um, the ... So what i- what is the deal with influencers? Are they doing something good for health information or are they ru- are they ruining the landscape? Uh, and don't- don't try and protect my feelings.

    10. ACAlia Crum1:11:35

        No, you know-

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:36

        Because I now know that stress is- is actually an asset, so.

    12. ACAlia Crum1:11:39

        Yes, well, I ... You know, that work is part of a body of work that we've been sort of venturing into, which is to understand where do these mindsets come from, right? And I mentioned sort of public health entities as one source of, say, our mindsets about stress. But I think that our mindsets are influenced by four different sources. Uh, first is our upbringing, how our parents talked about, you know, things like when we're stressed or food or other things. Uh, second is culture and media, so movies, uh, you know, podcasts, now, and now social media. Uh, third, uh, is influential others, so what doctors say to us or close friends or peers. And fourth is your conscious choice. So, you know, we talked about that a little. You do have, uh, we have, as humans, have the ability to be mindful of and to change our mindsets. Uh, but, you know, the social media and influencer stuff has been in part an attempt to understand where do our mindsets about things like healthy foods come from? And Brad Turnwald, who was a former grad student in my lab, has done a series of really interesting studies on this showing that, you know, if you rate the nutritional quality of the, you know, top grossing f-... uh, movies in the last 20 years, or you look at the Instagram accounts of all the most influential people on, uh, Instagram, what you... and you analyze the nutrition content of what they're eating, uh, what he's shown is that, you know, depending on the study, 70 to 90% of those movies or influencers would fail the legal standards for, uh, advertising in the UK. So, (laughs) they're putting out there nutrition contents that are, you know, maybe not surprisingly, but undeniably unhealthy. And, you know, to me, that's interesting and important, and it shows that where c- where are we getting this mindset that, you know, those unhealthy foods are pleasurable, desirable? What's maybe even more interesting than that is some of the work that he and others in, uh, our lab have done to show that the ways people are talking about the foods they're eating really matter too. So, generally, what we found is that when people talk about unhealthy foods, they use, uh, language that connotes a sense of excitement, fun, sexiness, danger, indulgence, basically anything good and desirable, right?

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:14:22

        This would, this would be like cookies, cakes, high sugar-

    14. ACAlia Crum1:14:25

        Sorry, yeah, sorry.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:14:25

        ... just really unhealthy.

    16. ACAlia Crum1:14:26

        Like truly unhealthy foods.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:14:28

        Yeah. Okay.

    18. ACAlia Crum1:14:28

        Or, uh, yeah, that's actually of the objective (laughs) what health means is challenging, but yeah, high fat, high sugar food.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:14:35

        I think there's pretty good agreement now that excessive sugar-

    20. ACAlia Crum1:14:39

        Yeah.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:14:39

        ... isn't good.

    22. ACAlia Crum1:14:39

        And highly processed.

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:14:41

        Yeah.

    24. ACAlia Crum1:14:41

        Um.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:14:41

        Highly processed, excessive sugar. I think there's general consensus. I'm sure someone will... if you're going to come after anyone, come after me, I'll stand behind that statement.

    26. ACAlia Crum1:14:47

        (laughs) But on the other hand, when people are talking about, if they do, which, you know, healthy foods aren't portrayed in media, they aren't portrayed by influencers rarely ever. And when they are, they're often talked about with language that conveys a sense of deprivation. It's, you know, it's nutritious, but it's, it's sort of boring. It's bland. It's less tasty.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:08

        Recovery from the holidays.

    28. ACAlia Crum1:15:10

        It's, yeah.

    29. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:10

        Sort of the post-holiday reset, right?

    30. ACAlia Crum1:15:12

        Exactly. Mm-hmm. And this is really important because, you know, you're doing all this work try... you know, and others are doing all this work trying to inform people about what actually is good for them, and meanwhile, there's this, you know, hurricane of other fo- you know, f- force that's telling people, that's seeping into our minds that, sure, those might be good for you, but those foods are not fun or sexy or indulgent or desirable in any way, shape or form, right? And it's, it's also, uh, paid advertising for fast foods and sugary beverages and other things. So, it's not surprising that we have this mindset that healthy foods are the less desirable thing to eat because of those cultural and social forces. Uh, what our work has just tried to do is to reveal that, you know, quantify it as a way to say, all right, let's maybe be a little bit more mindful about how we talk about healthy foods, and could... you know, if you're a movie producer, can you be a little bit more mindful to showcase healthy and delicious foods and have the characters talk about them in ways that are more appealing? Uh, there's a lot of, uh, room for people who produce this content to have an impact, not just on, you know, what people do, but what they think about the foods they're eating.
15. 1:19:40 – 1:26:25

    Mindsets About Medicines & Side Effects

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:40

       sounds very interesting. What else are you up to lately that's, uh... I l- my favorite question to ask any scientist or colleague, by the way, is, "What are you most excited about lately?"

    2. ACAlia Crum1:19:48

       (laughs)

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:48

       Um, what, what, what, what are you up late thinking about and getting up early thinking about?

    4. ACAlia Crum1:19:53

       Yeah. So hands down, the thing I'm most exci- well, I guess there's so many things. The thing that I'm most into right now or doing the most work in is l- you know, I started by getting inspired by placebo effects in medicine. I did a long stint in placebo or belief-like effects in behavioral health, and now we're moving back into medicine. Uh, so I'm really interested in looking at how we can work with active drugs and treatments to make them better and make the experience of them better by instilling different mindsets. Uh, so one study we did along those lines, we worked with, uh, kids who were undergoing treatment for food allergies, so allergies to peanuts, for example. This was with Kari Nadeau, who's the head of the Stanford Allergy Center here. She has a great treatment for food allergies. Basically, kids take gradually increasing doses of the thing they're allergic to, like peanuts, and over the course of six or seven months, these kids become, you know, less reactive to peanuts. And the problem with that treatment is it's really, uh, difficult, because they're having all sorts of negative symptoms and side effects. These kids are getting itch- itchy mouths and upset stomach. They're puking, and it's scary, because they're l- literally eating the thing that they've been told might kill them (laughs) , right? And what we did in the study was we attempted to improve the experience and outcomes of that by reframing, uh, mindsets about the symptoms and the side effects. So as it was being conducted before, the kids were told, "Look, these side effects are just an unfortunate byproduct of this treatment, and you have to sort of endure them to get through it." But what we found in our conversation with Kari was that the reality of those side effects was not so negative. In fact, they were, uh, mechanistically linked to the body learning how to tolerate (laughs) peanuts or the allergen. And so what we did was we worked within the trial. They were all getting the treatment, but half of them were, uh, helped to see this more positive mindsets, that symptoms and side effects from this treatment were a positive signal that the treatment was working and their bodies were getting stronger, and what we found was that that mindset led to reductions in anxiety, uh, fewer symptoms when at the highest doses, and most interestingly of all, they had better outcomes. So based on immune markers that were a sign of the allergic tolerance, those who had this mindset throughout had better outcomes to the treatment. So that's just one example. I think, you know, my goal is really to move us beyond the placebo versus drug (laughs) , you know, mindset versus behavior, to get to a place where we can blend them together and maximize the benefit of these treatments. So we're doing a lot of studies like that, you know, how can we improve treatment for cancer with different mindsets. We've done some work recently with the COVID-19 vaccine, um, and symptoms and side effects, so that's what I'm really passionate about right now.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:23:13

       Incredible. Um, I can't wait to read that study. Is that one out or-

    6. ACAlia Crum1:23:18

       Yes.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:23:18

       ... on the way? Okay.

    8. ACAlia Crum1:23:19

       Mm-hmm.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:23:19

       Well, then I will also read and communicate with you and then about that study. Who knows? Maybe you would come on Instagram and do a little Instagram Live, um-

    10. ACAlia Crum1:23:27

        Sure.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:23:27

        ... to make sure that, uh, I don't screw up the delivery-

    12. ACAlia Crum1:23:31

        (laughs)

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:23:31

        ... and that, uh, we can hear it direct from the person who ran the study. I, I find this issue of side effects really interesting. Um, I don't take a lot of prescription drugs, but recently, I was prescribed a few, and the list of side effects is, you know, uh, it's incredible.

Episode duration: 1:41:02