Joe Rogan Experience #1958 - Andrew Huberman

1. 0:00 – 1:21

   Croissants, pizza, and the “dopamine button” of comfort foods

   1. AHAndrew Huberman0:00

      (drum roll) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

   2. NANarrator0:04

      The Joe Rogan Experience. (drum roll)

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music) Every now and then, pizza's good for you, right? What is, what is your, like, when you ... What is your schedule as far as, like, do you allow yourself bad food every now and then?

   4. AHAndrew Huberman0:22

      Uh, my vices in the food department are croissants.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:26

      (laughs)

   6. AHAndrew Huberman0:26

      Thing is, I, you know, that hits the dopamine button and it's all about more. I mean-

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:31

      Mm.

   8. AHAndrew Huberman0:32

      I can, I can sink five of those things.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:34

      Chocolate croissants are my jam.

   10. AHAndrew Huberman0:36

       Oh, really? I don't adulterate my croissants.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:38

       Really?

   12. AHAndrew Huberman0:39

       No. Maybe extra butter. For me it's all the savory stuff. Savory, salty. So it's croissants every once in a while or piz-

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:45

       Have you had a chocolate croissant?

   14. AHAndrew Huberman0:47

       I have.

   15. JRJoe Rogan0:48

       Pretty goddamn good. You like them?

   16. NANarrator0:50

       I'm with him. I'm all butter.

   17. JRJoe Rogan0:51

       Really? Butter's nice. Butter's nice.

   18. AHAndrew Huberman0:54

       Yeah. I think the all butter, for me, justifies having, you know, three or four.

   19. JRJoe Rogan0:57

       When I lived in New York, I used to love buttered bagels.

   20. AHAndrew Huberman1:00

       Hmm.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:00

       Or buttered rolls. They do not have that out here for some strange reason.

   22. AHAndrew Huberman1:04

       Hmm.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:05

       It's like a common thing. If you go to, like, a, like, a deli in New York, they always had buttered rolls. It was like a r- just a roll with a lot of butter on it and people would eat that with coffee.

   24. AHAndrew Huberman1:17

       Yeah. They're-

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:17

       Out here they don't have that for some strange reason.

   26. AHAndrew Huberman1:19

       Huh.

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:19

       Or in L.A. they don't have it either.

2. 1:21 – 4:38

   Straws, plastics, and which countries actually pollute the oceans most

   1. AHAndrew Huberman1:21

      I like how in New York when you get a soda, even at a little, uh, you know, little 7-Eleven type place, they offer you a straw, like-

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:27

      Yeah.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman1:27

      It's one of the last civilized things in life to be offered a straw.

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:31

      You know what I saw? The ... There's a chart. See if you can find this, of you know how we're supposed to be not, uh, using plastic straws anymore because turtles are dying? You know that, you know people give you plast-

   5. AHAndrew Huberman1:44

      Yeah.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:44

      You know they give you paper straws?

   7. AHAndrew Huberman1:45

      I grew up in ... I remember the, the six pack container, those plastic things that you used to see this sea gull with the thing around his-

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:49

      Oh yeah, like the turtle-

   9. AHAndrew Huberman1:50

      And that was, that was kind of, that was the picture.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:50

       Where it, like, constricted his shell. Have you ever seen that one?

   11. AHAndrew Huberman1:53

       Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:54

       Like, it got around a turtle when he was little and as he grew the, the shell became like an hourglass. It was really gross. Um, but there was this chart of the countries in the world that pollute the ocean the most and it's fucking stunning. Um, and if we stop using plastic straws, we're not gonna put a fucking dent in it unless they do. Like, we're not even close to number one. We're not even close to number six. Like, the, the leading countries that pollute the ocean, I think number one was Philippines, I forget which-

   13. AHAndrew Huberman2:27

       I was gonna say SouthEast ... Why would Southeast Asia have that issue?

   14. JRJoe Rogan2:32

       I would imagine that when people are very poor, the last thing they're concerned about is not polluting. I would think that.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman2:39

       I've seen those images of those giant, like, icebergs of plastic junk.

   16. JRJoe Rogan2:45

       Yeah.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman2:45

       And I always hope that's not real.

   18. JRJoe Rogan2:47

       Oh, it's real. Yeah, Boyan Slat is a, a gentleman who's been on the podcast before, has developed this device for, uh, it's like, it sifts the ocean. It's, like, it floats over the top of the ocean and it has this collector that sucks up plastic and then they take that plastic and use it and recycle it and make, like, eyeglasses out of it and all sorts of other different things. Like, who-

   19. NANarrator3:13

       He's Asian, that's-

   20. JRJoe Rogan3:13

       Okay, so number one is China.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman3:15

       By a, by a wide margin.

   22. JRJoe Rogan3:17

       By a wide margin.

   23. AHAndrew Huberman3:18

       Wow.

   24. JRJoe Rogan3:19

       Countries polluting the oceans the most, andro- annual metric tons of mismanaged plastic waste and total amount ending up in global waters. S- this is fucking insane. So China is 8.80 metric tons. Indonesia's number two with 3.2. Philippines is number three with 1.9. You go all the way down, the United States is 0.30.

   25. AHAndrew Huberman3:45

       Well, China's got no excuse because their GDP is way up there. They could actually manage it.

   26. JRJoe Rogan3:49

       Yeah.

   27. AHAndrew Huberman3:49

       But some of these other countries, as you mentioned, are, are definitely lower GDP rel- relative to the United States and China.

   28. JRJoe Rogan3:54

       Right. For sure. Like, yeah, definitely, like, Malaysia, Nigeria, but-

   29. AHAndrew Huberman4:00

       China's got no excuse. That's in- incredible.

   30. JRJoe Rogan4:03

       Yeah.
3. 4:38 – 9:17

   From plastics to pathogens: Twitter rabbit holes and the COVID lab-leak discussion

   1. AHAndrew Huberman4:38

      Get ... I, you know, it, I guess I don't know if we're gonna go there because, uh (laughs) . We might as well, right?

   2. JRJoe Rogan4:44

      Okay.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman4:44

      Well, I, you know, it's interesting for ... Starting 2019 I started posting things on Instagram. That's how I got my stuff out. Then it was going on podcasts. Now we have the podcast, right? But I'd stayed off Twitter largely until this last year when I started putting a lot of stuff there. So you, you put stuff there, you start reading stuff there.

   4. JRJoe Rogan4:59

      Oh no.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman4:59

      And then-

   6. NANarrator5:00

      (laughs)

   7. AHAndrew Huberman5:00

      Well, what's been really interesting to me is I followed this whole lab leak thing.

   8. JRJoe Rogan5:04

      Mm-hmm.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman5:04

      Right? Because early in the pandemic people in my field started chattering about that. I was very ... I love exotic animals. N- not to own them, right? But I'm really interested in animal, um, conservation. And so the pangolin is an amazing animal. They pinned it on the pangolin early on, right?

   10. JRJoe Rogan5:20

       Mm-hmm.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman5:20

       And there were articles published in good journals, several of which I'm on the editorial board for. So early in the pandemic there were papers coming out really fast about, you know, the sequence of the virus in pangolins which were being sold in the Wuhan market, et cetera. And I was pretty disturbed by this mostly because of the, the pictures of the Wuhan market. The exotic animal trade is just ... It's, it's horrible, right?

   12. JRJoe Rogan5:42

       Yeah.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman5:42

       Okay. Con- closed confinement, you know, these are beautiful animals that there's no justification for this stuff. But pangolin meat is sold at, uh, I forget what it is per pound, but it's sold ... It's a delicacy and it's, it's considered very lucrative and, uh, to get pangolin meat of all things. There's actually a female pangolin meat, um-... influencer on YouTube and s-

   14. JRJoe Rogan6:02

       Really? (laughs)

   15. AHAndrew Huberman6:03

       Oh, yeah. No, it's like a, it, it's, it starts to look like pangolin meat ASMR. It's crazy and disgusting.

   16. JRJoe Rogan6:09

       Oh, wow.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman6:09

       So they're mi- they're kind of mixing, you know, sexy women with exotic meats from these rare animals. It's just awful. So I was going deep down this rabbit hole of trying to understand this exotic animal trade, and then, um, and then there was chatter in my field about the fact that one of the members of the laboratory in Wuhan that was working with these, you know, very high, uh, restriction viruses, um, had done her training in the United States, which is true, um, had had, has a master's degree, but was running a laboratory, which is unusual, right? Typically, the head of a laboratory is someone with a PhD, MD, or both. Very rare for a so-called PI, a principal investigator, like, like me or, you know, a, another, a Matt Walker, for instance, principal investigator, to have less than a PhD. The fact that she ran a lab or was important in running this lab as a master's, with only a master's, is unusual. And then there was a lot of chatter in my field about the, the idea that it might have something to do with the fact that her significant other was a member of the Chinese Communist Party. And so, you know, sh- that laboratory had deep ties to government and vice versa. And that's true of all laboratories in China, all laboratories. So the whole notion of the lab leak hypothesis was not foreign to scientists like me, who thought, "Yeah, you know, my laboratory works with rabies viruses, adenoviruses, sin bis viruses." None of these are a- are as biohazardous as something like the coronavirus, but you work with these viruses and you have to use, you know, lab coats, gloves, bleach, sterilization. You're careful, you know? Hoods of pro- you know, you... But human error happens. So I'm not at all convinced one way or the other that it was a deliberate leak, but the idea that it would leak from a laboratory to a scientist like me who has what's called a wet lab, where you, you know, with solutions and beakers and things of that sort, things happen all the time. Not in my laboratory. We're very careful, and everyone's checked up on often. But the idea that human error could cause this is like, it was an "of course" to all scientists early on.

   18. JRJoe Rogan8:09

       Well, they had been-

   19. AHAndrew Huberman8:10

       Yeah.

   20. JRJoe Rogan8:10

       ... cited in 2018 for violating safety protocols.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman8:13

       Yeah. Yeah, I mean, all it takes-

   22. JRJoe Rogan8:14

       Yeah.

   23. AHAndrew Huberman8:14

       ... is, you know, uh, people might not be familiar what pipetting is, but it's basically taking a little, uh, straw that sucks up, you know, press a button, it sucks up some fluid. You move things, you know, between little, little tiny vials. It can be done by robots too, but typically it's done by humans, and that's how m- and they put in a center. If you spin it, take off a little piece of that, or take the pellet out of the bottom that spun down, this kind of thing. All it takes is one loose thumb and it's on a lab coat. All it takes is that lab coat going on a rack. All it takes is somebody leaving work, putting their lab coat on there and touching that lab, and then it's out in the world.

   24. JRJoe Rogan8:44

       Yeah.

   25. AHAndrew Huberman8:44

       Like it's not that complicated.

   26. JRJoe Rogan8:46

       Right.

   27. AHAndrew Huberman8:47

       Um, so it doesn't have to be that somebody had a plan to let this out. It could be. I don't have any knowledge of that. But the idea that it would come from a lab, to me, is far more plausible than the idea that it came from some pangolin sequence in the Wuhan market. So I think we were-

   28. JRJoe Rogan9:01

       This is very...

   29. AHAndrew Huberman9:01

       ... we were going down the wrong path on this for a long time, and I thought, "This is kind of bananas." And now everyone's so shocked and it's like, I think to people who work in biomedical research, like of course this sort of thing could happen. Of course. Because human error is the cause of most of these kinds of things.

4. 9:17 – 11:26

   Evidence claims, raccoon dogs, and why origin narratives become politicized

   1. JRJoe Rogan9:17

      Well, it was very clear that there was a concerted effort to dismiss the idea that it came from a lab, and it wasn't logical and it wasn't scientific. And they ignored, uh, the, the, all the evidence that seemed to point that it originated from that lab, including the people that worked in that lab who got sick. And now there's some new stupid story in the New York Times about a raccoon dog. They're saying it might have come from a raccoon dog.

   2. AHAndrew Huberman9:42

      The s- is the civet, is that the, the, the-

   3. JRJoe Rogan9:44

      No.

   4. AHAndrew Huberman9:45

      ... the c-

   5. JRJoe Rogan9:45

      No. No.

   6. AHAndrew Huberman9:45

      Okay.

   7. JRJoe Rogan9:45

      So it's some sort of a raccoon dog.

   8. AHAndrew Huberman9:47

      Okay.

   9. JRJoe Rogan9:47

      A civet is actually a cat.

   10. AHAndrew Huberman9:49

       It's a, like a ferret type thing, right?

   11. JRJoe Rogan9:50

       A civet is like in the cat family, I believe.

   12. AHAndrew Huberman9:53

       Okay. Right.

   13. JRJoe Rogan9:53

       And it's, uh, that's where you get, uh, kopi luwak coffee from.

   14. AHAndrew Huberman9:56

       Oh, yeah, the, from the poop of the civet.

   15. JRJoe Rogan9:58

       Yeah. Have you ever had it?

   16. AHAndrew Huberman9:59

       Oh, it's the luwak coffee. Yeah.

   17. JRJoe Rogan10:01

       Yeah. It's actually very good.

   18. AHAndrew Huberman10:02

       Yeah. When I was a postdoc there was a, there was interest-

   19. JRJoe Rogan10:04

       So this is it.

   20. AHAndrew Huberman10:05

       That's the raccoon dog?

   21. JRJoe Rogan10:06

       Yeah. So this is-

   22. AHAndrew Huberman10:06

       That one doesn't eat coffee beans.

   23. JRJoe Rogan10:08

       (laughs) I don't think so.

   24. AHAndrew Huberman10:09

       Doesn't look-

   25. JRJoe Rogan10:09

       I mean, maybe it does.

   26. AHAndrew Huberman10:10

       Doesn't look like it.

   27. JRJoe Rogan10:11

       It's a member of the canid family. It's also...

   28. AHAndrew Huberman10:13

       It's a beautiful animal.

   29. JRJoe Rogan10:14

       Let's go with it back to where you were. Um, a group that also includes domestic dogs and the only member that hibernates. Oh, wow. They r- they hibernate. Interesting. But here's the problem. Um, Saagar Enjeti was actually explaining this to me on Saturday night. He was like, "There are, there's direct evidence of people being infected that predates this establishment of this, uh, animal testing positive in that wet market." So I guess people were eating that animal? Is that the idea? But many months before that, people were sick from this. Like this is, what was this in D- I believe it was in December of 2019. Is that what they're saying? November or December of 2019.

   30. AHAndrew Huberman11:00

       And it was March 2020 when, when everything kind of blasted, right?
5. 11:26 – 13:41

   What “gain-of-function” actually means and the ethics of CRISPR in humans

   1. AHAndrew Huberman11:26

      Yeah. There are two. You know, we hear about gain-of-function research, and now everyone associates gain of function with, gain of function of this particular virus. But gain-of-function research happens all the time in essentially every laboratory in the US and abroad that does mouse genetics. You knock out a gene and you ask, "What happens to this animal in the absence of a gene?" And then you knock it in and you see if it replaces that. Because in humans, human genetics is only loss of function. You don't have the option yet, CRISPR will allow this, to put things back in that are missing. And so gain-of-function research is extremely common. I mean, we do it in bio-

   2. JRJoe Rogan12:00

      Yes.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman12:01

      We're no longer working on animals, to be clear. We only do human studies now. But you're...... this is something that you're trained to do as a postdoc. Everyone learns loss of function, gain of function.

   4. JRJoe Rogan12:09

      Mm-hmm.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman12:09

      You need to do both. You know, the- the gain of function, actually there is that one CRISPR experiment, speaking of interesting science out of China. A guy, he actually was a postdoc at Stanford, um, worked for a guy named Steve Quake, and then separately, on his own, without permission or anything from Stanford, went off and started his own laboratory in China, and stood up at a meeting a few years ago and said he had done CRISPR in human babies. This has been done.

   6. JRJoe Rogan12:32

      Yeah. He- he was arrested for this, right?

   7. AHAndrew Huberman12:34

      He mu- yeah, he- he mutated the HIV receptor, which everyone thinks, "Okay, that was designed to prevent these babies from getting HIV." It turns out that that mutation is thought to perhaps enhance memory by sort of parallel mechanisms, and then it was very unclear for a short while whether or not this guy was either gonna get a Nobel Prize or whether or not they were gonna throw him in jail. And so everyone was very tense and waiting in my community, thinking, "Okay..." Because when somebody's kind of up for a big discovery like this, everyone kind of circles maybe wanting that maybe they should be involved in getting the accolades. But as- the moment that the international community, I think rightfully so, said, "This is horrible. You can't do this. There's no ethics committee, you need to think about what you're doing," everyone was just like, "I had nothing to do with this guy, never had any..." And, you know, there was a deep excavation of emails and all sorts, everyone was like, "I got nothing to do with this guy." So, it was pretty interesting. Then China said, "Oh, we're gonna- we're gonna punish him." But I'd be willing to bet both hands that his- his punishment consists of a jail cell that is pretty luxurious with a laboratory. There's no question that CRISPR is going on there. CRISPR is going on in certain regions of, you know-

   8. JRJoe Rogan13:41

      Yeah.

6. 13:41 – 18:13

   Huntington’s disease explained: motor “go/no-go” pathways and degeneration

   1. AHAndrew Huberman13:41

      ... of, you know, uh, other- other locations on the globe where things aren't as regulated. Because think about the potential payoff for being able to rescue a Huntington's mutation, right? A Huntington's chorea mutation that has somebody at some point in their life, you know, but k- un- unable to control their arms, hemiballismus of the arms. If you want-

   2. JRJoe Rogan14:00

      What is it?

   3. AHAndrew Huberman14:01

      Hem- uh, Huntington's disease. It's a deterioration of the parts of the brain that control motor function. The parts of the brain that control motor function have two main pathways. One is a go pathway, like reach for this coffee mug, and the other one is a no-go pathway, resisting movement. And the no-go pathway degenerates substantially, other things too, and people with Huntington's chorea end up with these writhing ballistic movements.

   4. JRJoe Rogan14:22

      Oh, wow.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman14:22

      And it's an inherited disease, so you know what gene. It's the huntingtin gene. And if you can, if you know that your, for instance, parent has it, you can get tested for it. A lot of people don't want to get tested, they don't want the answer, 'cause it's late onset. So you can be normal a certain portion of your life and then get it. It's a tragic disease. But if you test positive for this gene, you know you're going to get Huntington's, in which case with CRISPR you could just put the gene back in and rescue function.

   6. JRJoe Rogan14:46

      What causes someone to eventually succumb to that disease? If it's a late onset disease, if they don't have it when they're young and they develop when they get older, what changes?

   7. AHAndrew Huberman14:55

      Yeah, so it's not just deterioration of those particular neurons, it's- it's deterioration of the neurons that control those neurons, and everything's working in a kind of a top-down suppression all the time. In fact, um, the head neurosurgeon at Neuralink, who's somebody I know quite well named Matthew McDougall, he came up through my laboratory, Elon made a great choice in hiring him, um, told me recently the best way to think about the frontal cortex is that basically its main job besides picking context and strategy for a given situation is to tell certain parts of your brain that really want to do things, "Shh."

   8. JRJoe Rogan15:27

      Hmm.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman15:27

      That's the best description I've ever heard of prefrontal cortex. You know, it's what's keeping Jamie from doing things that he shouldn't right now and me doing things that I shouldn't right now and every time you have a crazy idea like, "Maybe I should jump off this bridge. Oh, w- why would I think that? I'm not..." That's a healthy operation of your brain saying, "I want to 'cause I'm kind of curious, but I don't want to, so I'm not going to."

   10. JRJoe Rogan15:46

       Right.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman15:47

       With Huntington's what happens is there's slow deterioration of those neurons, but there's a lot of deterioration of these neurons that control motor function. And eventually what happens is the deeper neurons that control motor function start shutting down the autonomic functions like breathing, heart rate, and so eventually people just succumb to some basic, um, you know, uh, re- we call them housekeeping functions, you know.

   12. JRJoe Rogan16:10

       Hmm.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman16:10

       So, they'll- they'll have to be on a respirator and they- they have to, um, you know, they have to use a catheter tube and, you know, they have to defecate into a bag and, you know, at some point they just become a- a- a deteriorated, um, mess of neurons. So, what's first to go there, however, is the- the control of motor function, and it goes first in the direction of too much activity because of all these brakes and accelerators that we have in- in the brain. Um, so in any case, CRISPR, gene manipulation of the sort that this guy did in this laboratory in China, again, I think an ethics c- committee needs to tell the world or decide for the world what people should be allowed to do and not do, but you can imagine for something like Huntington's, it would be tremendously advantageous. Like if you had a child who you knew was someday gonna get Huntington's, you'd want to do a CRISPR mutation and put the healthy gene back.

   14. JRJoe Rogan16:58

       Is there anything that's been shown to slow down the progress of Huntington's?

   15. AHAndrew Huberman17:05

       Uh, there I'm not so versed. It's a little bit like MS, let- another neurodegenerative disease, multiple sclerosis, where certain things exacerbate it, like inflammation of any kind.

   16. JRJoe Rogan17:15

       Mm-hmm.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman17:15

       Um, and- and those things can be, uh, almost random i- in- in some ways. Like some people who have, uh, MS will eat, uh, salad dressing with mustard in it, have a huge inflammatory response and have a flare-up, blurry vision and get worse a- and then it returns to-

   18. JRJoe Rogan17:30

       Mustard?

   19. AHAndrew Huberman17:30

       Things like mustard 'cause must-

   20. JRJoe Rogan17:32

       Is mustard inflammatory?

   21. AHAndrew Huberman17:33

       Well, mustard- mustard isn't necessarily whole body inflammatory, but it, if it's spicy mustard, it binds to what's called the substance P receptor or the- or the capsaicin receptor, we have receptors for anything that's kind of hot-

   22. JRJoe Rogan17:43

       Mm-hmm.

   23. AHAndrew Huberman17:43

       ... and spicy, um, and those are the same receptors that respond to hot liquid. Uh, heat and- and spicy, obviously very, very closely linked and pain, all three of those very close. Whereas pain relief, very closely related to menthol and cool, not just the taste, but the actual physical sensation of cool.

   24. JRJoe Rogan18:01

       Mm-hmm.

   25. AHAndrew Huberman18:01

       So heat, pain and inflammation, kind of our cousins in this- in this sense, and cool, menthol and lack of inflammation are also cousins in terms of receptors, neural circuits, this kind of thing.

7. 18:13 – 23:00

   Spice, pain receptors, and inflammation: when stress is adaptive vs harmful

   1. JRJoe Rogan18:13

      So can spicy food cause inflammation?

   2. AHAndrew Huberman18:16

      Sure, yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan18:17

      Really?

   4. AHAndrew Huberman18:17

      Yeah. But I think one of the best ways to think about inflammation, and, and here I, you know, I, definite hat tip to Layne Norton, who we both know, and Andy Alpin, who really, (laughs) both really impressed upon me the fact that if we were to measure somebody's blood pressure, inflammatory markers, heart rate, and cortisol during a hard workout, and you didn't know they were doing a hard workout, I just handed you the data, and you're a medical doctor, you'd say-

   5. JRJoe Rogan18:42

      Right.

   6. AHAndrew Huberman18:42

      ... "This person's dying."

   7. JRJoe Rogan18:43

      Right. Right. Right.

   8. AHAndrew Huberman18:44

      Right? So inflammation is robust during-

   9. JRJoe Rogan18:46

      Right.

   10. AHAndrew Huberman18:46

       ... during hard exercise. But I think what's so incredible about the human body is that the increase in blood pre- pressure, inflammation, et cetera, is what triggers the adaptation so that blood pressure and inflammation, et cetera, are all much lower the other 23 hours of the day.

   11. JRJoe Rogan19:01

       Mm-hmm.

   12. AHAndrew Huberman19:02

       And so there's something special about our system whereby, yeah, maybe if you had really hot peppers, like the most famous of these is the, um, Carolina Reaper.

   13. JRJoe Rogan19:10

       Mm-hmm.

   14. AHAndrew Huberman19:10

       You know about this? The Carolina Reaper-

   15. JRJoe Rogan19:11

       I have some in my hot sauce.

   16. AHAndrew Huberman19:13

       Oh.

   17. JRJoe Rogan19:13

       Yeah.

   18. AHAndrew Huberman19:14

       Someone e-

   19. JRJoe Rogan19:15

       Senor Lechuga made me this, uh, trio of hot sauces.

   20. AHAndrew Huberman19:18

       There's-

   21. JRJoe Rogan19:18

       And there's reapers in there.

   22. AHAndrew Huberman19:20

       Is, is that a person or a brand, Senor Lechuga?

   23. JRJoe Rogan19:22

       It's a brand.

   24. AHAndrew Huberman19:23

       Okay.

   25. JRJoe Rogan19:23

       Yeah.

   26. AHAndrew Huberman19:23

       I thought the awesome-

   27. JRJoe Rogan19:24

       There's three hot sauces that we developed. Um, one of them is, uh, my friends over at Half Face Bi- Blades, they developed this one that I really like, so he added that to my little three collection, and it's like (sighs) I think it's reapers, uh, sun-dried tomatoes, and some other stuff, and, um, oh, and, uh, truffles. It's really good.

   28. AHAndrew Huberman19:48

       Amazing.

   29. JRJoe Rogan19:49

       Yeah. And then he's got two other ones, one of 'em with habanero and, but they're, there it is, those are the three. What happened? Yeah. So, uh, if you like hot shit, I like it hot.

   30. AHAndrew Huberman20:02

       Mm-hmm.
8. 23:00 – 38:52

   Cold plunges, dopamine, and sauna extremes: building stress tolerance protocols

   1. AHAndrew Huberman23:00

      Um, and the other thing is that ingestion of, of spicy peppers resets your calibration for what's spicy. I think we know that too. And in a way that also adjusts people's pain threshold. So if people gain bet- better eating hot peppers, they're better at dealing with all types of pain. And I find this fascinating because I know you and I are both kind of obsessed with ice baths and cold, cold plunges.

   2. JRJoe Rogan23:22

      Yeah.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman23:22

      And I've been going deep into that literature around cold and what's really known about cold thermogenesis and not known, and it seems like the- these acute adrenaline, acute pain pathways, they do exactly what exercise does, which is in the moment if you were to measure somebody's inflammation, et cetera, you'd say, "This person is dying. They're in a terrible state." They might as well be getting, you know, open heart surgery with no anesthesia the way some people react to the ice bath. It's kind of silly, the, to us, but for people that don't like the cold, they're like, "You gotta be kidding me. I'd never go near it." They try and disparage it. They try and poke every hole in the data. They're just scared, right?

   4. JRJoe Rogan23:56

      Yeah.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman23:57

      They're just scared. We know this. But they are actually the people that benefit the most because that really acute adrenaline spike, that pain that you feel creates a l- higher pain threshold later, higher threshold for work output, all the things that most people seek. And so to me it's always interesting that it, you have to look what's happening during, and you have to look at what's happening afterward. And, uh, for some reason as humans we like these creature comforts of massages, which are great, um, you know, the sauna, which is great, although if you crank it up really hot, it's work at some level.

   6. JRJoe Rogan24:28

      It's always work at the end.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman24:30

      ... it- there's that moment-

   8. JRJoe Rogan24:30

      The last five minutes of a 25-minute session at 190-

   9. AHAndrew Huberman24:34

      Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan24:34

       ... degrees, those are, that's work.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman24:35

       Yeah, and there's something about the- the burning in the nose for me.

   12. JRJoe Rogan24:39

       Mm-hmm.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman24:39

       At least my heart rate starts to, like, I wanna get the hell out of there.

   14. JRJoe Rogan24:41

       Burning in the nose. So are you using water on the rocks a lot?

   15. AHAndrew Huberman24:45

       Yeah.

   16. JRJoe Rogan24:45

       So that's what's giving you-

   17. AHAndrew Huberman24:46

       Yeah.

   18. JRJoe Rogan24:46

       ... the burning in the nose?

   19. AHAndrew Huberman24:47

       Yeah. I- I-

   20. JRJoe Rogan24:48

       Yeah.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman24:48

       You know, it's always hard to know how hot it is right at the pl- place where it reaches your body.

   22. JRJoe Rogan24:52

       Mm-hmm.

   23. AHAndrew Huberman24:52

       But I've been cranking it way, way up.

   24. JRJoe Rogan24:54

       Like what temperature?

   25. AHAndrew Huberman24:55

       Like 260.

   26. JRJoe Rogan24:56

       What?

   27. AHAndrew Huberman24:57

       260, but I cover-

   28. JRJoe Rogan24:58

       2-6-0?

   29. AHAndrew Huberman24:58

       But I cover my head.

   30. JRJoe Rogan25:00

       God.
9. 38:52 – 1:10:45

   Core “pillars” of health: light, movement, nutrition, sleep, and social connection

   1. AHAndrew Huberman38:52

      Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that it... You know, I, I think of health and performance, so mental health, physical health, and performance along, you know, k- fundamentals. We talk about these all the time. I think the five c- pillars, if you will, are sunlight, if I may, getting light in your eyes.

   2. JRJoe Rogan39:09

      Yeah.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman39:10

      Avoiding too frequent bright light exposure and your eyes at night, unless you're doing something you really enjoy, okay? So, you're at... doing comedy. You're out past 10:00 PM, right? You're not gonna wear sunglasses or something n- necessarily, but-

   4. JRJoe Rogan39:22

      That would be ridiculous.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman39:23

      It'd be ridiculous, right? It's like, yeah.

   6. JRJoe Rogan39:25

      People would go, "What the fuck is this weirdo doing with sunglasses on?"

   7. AHAndrew Huberman39:27

      (laughs) Right. Well, I've-

   8. JRJoe Rogan39:27

      "It's past 10:00 PM. I have to have my blue blockers on."

   9. AHAndrew Huberman39:30

      I've got friends that wear the red lights at night and dim all the lights, you know, that whole thing.

   10. JRJoe Rogan39:33

       Yeah.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman39:33

       That's a little extreme. I... That's a little extreme. Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan39:35

       Those people are always weird.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman39:37

       Yeah, but sunlight... So, sunlight during the day, morning and day, and trying to limit bright light exposure at night as much as is normally possible. Then I would say movement, so you gotta move, cardiovascular and resistance training.

   14. JRJoe Rogan39:50

       Yeah.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman39:50

       That's one of the beautiful things I think that's happened in the last couple of decades, is that it... You know, resistance training is no longer just considered the thing that football players and bodybuilders do.

   16. JRJoe Rogan39:58

       Right.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman39:58

       Everyone, old, young-

   18. JRJoe Rogan40:00

       Yeah.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman40:00

       ... female, male.

   20. JRJoe Rogan40:00

       Yeah.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman40:00

       Women no longer, I hope, are concerned about getting, quote unquote, "too big" from weightlifting or something or turning into a bodybuilder.

   22. JRJoe Rogan40:06

       I think that's kind of gone away.

   23. AHAndrew Huberman40:07

       I like to think that's gone away.

   24. JRJoe Rogan40:09

       Most women realize that the only reason w- why women do get too big is they take exogenous hormones.

   25. AHAndrew Huberman40:14

       Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan40:14

       They're, they're taking steroids.

   27. AHAndrew Huberman40:15

       Yeah, you throw a bunch of Anavar in there, you get the square jaw and-

   28. JRJoe Rogan40:18

       Yeah.

   29. AHAndrew Huberman40:18

       ... yeah, the tort- tortoise shell abs.

   30. JRJoe Rogan40:19

       That's what they wanna avoid.

Episode duration: 2:46:56