If You Always Feel TIRED & LAZY, Do This Everyday To CHANGE YOUR LIFE! | Andrew Huberman

1. 0:00 – 5:59

   Visual Focus Training for Attention

   1. AHDr. Andrew Huberman0:00

      Everybody has to learn how to do this. Your whole life gets better. Learning to control your nervous system will change everything

   2. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:06

      If you get good at doing five minutes every day, that's where the magic happens. That's when things start to change

   3. LGLinda Geddes0:12

      It'll certainly make a difference to your alertness during the daytime, but you're also strengthening those circadian rhythms, which are so important for our health [upbeat music]

   4. AHDr. Andrew Huberman0:25

      One very effective tool, and this is actually in use in China pretty widespread now, is if people have a hard time focusing, remember that vis- that cognitive or mental focus follows visual focus. So if you're gonna sit down and do some work and you find, "Oh, like I can't concentrate. I'm not, I'm not, like, getting it. I can't get into the writing," or, "I can't do what I'm doing," very simple practice, it's been tested. You can take a piece of paper, um, put a little crosshatch on it, put it at the distance of your computer, and force yourself to bring your vision, what we call a vergence eye movement, to that location and try and hold that, blinking as seldom as possible as you can for about 60 seconds. You've now adjusted the aperture of your visual field, but you've also changed the aperture of your thinking, right, in doing that. And this is very different than if you were just to concentrate on, like, the feeling of touch on the tips of your fingers because as you do work, most all work requires vision, and then the work that you do you'll find exists in this kind of narrow tunnel, and you're able to rule out distractions quite a bit better. That's one of the reasons why this device is so terrible. I mean, and I fall victim to this, too, but if you have your phone, every two seconds you're looking at your phone, your visual attention is darting all over the place. So there's a lot of, of c- clinically legitimate, if you will, ADHD that we've brought upon, on ourselves. Um, and so you can use visual focus as a, as a training tool.

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:48

      Yeah.

   6. AHDr. Andrew Huberman1:48

      Um, I, I have a simple meditation I do in the morning. I call it a meditation, but it's really just visual training. I can explain it now, I don't think I've described this anywhere, that anchors several of these practices. I actually will close my eyes and just concentrate on my internal state, something c- we call interoception, and I'll just breathe three times. Then I'll open my eyes, I'll stare at my hand or something at about a distance of, of arm's length, and I'll focus my visual attention there and breathe three times just for, um, sake of timekeeping. Then I'll look at foot in the distance and I'll do the same, and then I try and go into panoramic vision even if I'm indoors, and I'll breathe three times. And then I bring myself right back into my internal landscape. I'll focus on a little crosshatch, and usually then I get to work. And so what am I doing? What is this wacky practice? Well, this wacky [laughs] uh, practice I just described is stepping through each, as we call, it sounds, uh, abstract, but space-time bin of the visual system. The visual system can orient to now, it can orient to the future, it can orient to the past. Mostly to the present and future. And so this stepping through of visual attention systematically, what I'm doing is I'm training my system to adjust to these shifts because throughout the day, life is a series of shifts between one thing and the next and the next. And the, the ability to transition between these and then lock into them and then transition into the next is what makes us effective. And, uh, this might seem a little abstract, but if you try it, what you'll find is that transitions between, say, work and a conversation or, um, dropping into work very deeply become much easier, and there's a, there's reason- there's neurobiological underpinnings to this. Um, it's, this is a forced practice. It kind of mimics what we ought to be doing all day long. The problem is, is that the interference of, of mostly of smartphone communications is that we're constantly being bombarded with cont- new context after new context. That's what's really... I don't think there's a- as much problem with the content on social media, although that's a debate, you know, there's, uh, there, too. Obviously you wanna protect kids and so forth. Except that when you're on social media, it's the equivalent of watching 50 movies in two minutes because you're scrolling through and context switch, context switch, context switch. [laughs] The, the human brain has never been confronted with this. Even if you have 200 channels on the television, it's very rare to s- just go channel, channel, channel.

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:06

      Yeah.

   8. AHDr. Andrew Huberman4:06

      The whole idea of social media, and by the way I pr- I, obviously I t- participate. I teach on social media and I consume social media, but you're just, you're context switching, context switching, context switching in a, in a very passive way. And so what I've tried to do is create practices that are grounded in the neurobiology of vision and how vision anchors attention and c- and can induce calm. And that, the practice, that simple, uh, practice I described, what it does is it, it gives you the power and control to shift your visual attention to different things as opposed to some external stimulus shifting your visual attention for you. And it, um, and I find it, I've been doing this for about eight years now. I do it every morning, and sometimes in the afternoon. And what I find is that it's allowed me to be far more effective in the activities that I'm engaged in and transitioning between those activities. And my lab's looking at this as, uh, uh, from the, you know, experimental, um, perspective, but I just thought I'd put the tool out there 'cause again, it's zero cost. There's-

   9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:06

      Yeah

   10. AHDr. Andrew Huberman5:06

       ... by all means be safe, et cetera.

   11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:08

       I, I love it. It, it, it kinda sounds like training a muscle in the gym is gonna allow us to, well, do many things, but lift heavier things, be more strong and robust in our life, uh, for whatever we're trying to do. And it sounds like this kind of four-part process of, you know, focusing on, you know, things at different distances, it, it, it kinda feels to me as though this is a process that's helping adapt our visual systems to the way the modern world is now because the modern world ain't changing any time soon. So it, it, it sort of feels like this m- this might have been a practice that maybe wasn't necessary 100 years ago, 50 years ago, but it is now highly necessary because of the environments in which we, we find ourselves in.

2. 5:59 – 10:22

   Neuroplasticity and Zero-Cost Daily Practices

   1. AHDr. Andrew Huberman5:59

      That's right. Uh, uh, uh, very well put. And, you know, the The smartphones and internet are delivering experience in, at rapid speed in ways that the human brain, um, just simply didn't evolve to contend with. Now, the, the human brain is great at dealing with new technologies, creating new technologies. Uh, what I'm describing are, are very basic practices that are designed to offset some of the damage, but also, you know, it, it's not just about avoiding problems, it's also about being functional. You know? I, I think that everybody wants to be mentally healthy, physically healthy, and perform well in their various activities. Um, and we do that by engaging the attentional systems and then disengaging the attentional systems. Everything in terms of learning, whether or not you're a child or ad- an adult, is a function of being able to lean in with intense focus and then lean out and access rest of different kinds. In fact, this, I know we were talking about, uh, respiration, but neuroplasticity, the nervous system's ability to change in response to experience, is what r- aside from the fact that the nervous system anchors and coordinates all those actions of the body, the nervous system is so unique in that it can change itself, but unless you deliberately force specific changes onto your nervous system, the passive consequence of living in a particular way will also change your nervous system, and not necessarily for the better. So, excessive light viewing at night, not getting enough sunlight, not getting enough movement. Uh, I mean, the nervous system will atrophy or change in response to whatever you give it. That's the beauty of it, for better or for worse. And so what we're talking about here is, is leveraging the, this incredible capacity of the nervous system to change, and saying, well, what are the simple, zero cost, low ti- very low time investment tools that are going to allow me to, um, be very effective as I transition from one stage of life to the next? And you know, I, I'm a big fan of a lot of the work that's happening now in the clinical setting, I should say, around, you know, ph- you know, various compounds to improve plasticity or to open plasticity, or some of the... I, I know that the pharmaceutical industry gets a tough, um, rap, and I agree that, that, uh, w- there tends to be this kind of default to pills mentality is not one that I subscribe to. Um, I think lifestyle factors are extremely important. I should mention that, uh, I do think that for a number of people, they are so depressed-

   2. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee8:29

      Yeah

   3. AHDr. Andrew Huberman8:29

      ... or s- their ADHD is so severe that the idea of doing the sorts of practices that we're talking about is kind of overwhelming. And, and that's something that unless someone has really been in those states, it's really hard to, um, empathize with. But so we should keep that in mind. But for most people, I would say 90% of people out there, these are practices that we can simply do, and we get an immediate benefit, but in addition to that, we get a cumulative benefit because I, as I mentioned before, these are slow integrative processes, so the, the, it, day to day and across the year, it accumulates. And then there's a third benefit, which is neuroplasticity, which is that your nervous system becomes very good at doing the things that are best for it.

   4. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee9:09

      Yeah.

   5. AHDr. Andrew Huberman9:09

      So this, the, the systems of the brain that are responsible for being able to rest or being able to, uh, de-stress or to focus, um, those systems actually get stronger so that your default is to be able to rest more easily when you need to rest, to be able to focus more easily when you need to focus, and so on. And so that's unique. It's not just about putting pennies in the jar. You know, putting small, small coins into a jar, you, you could say, well, eventually you accumulate a lot, but it's more than that. Those small coins are actually in the, in the neuroplasticity model, are actually being converted into a much more valuable currency by way of that action. And so then what you find is after six months or so of doing some of these things, you feel much better all the time, and if you miss a day or two, it's no big deal.

   6. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee9:58

      Yeah.

   7. AHDr. Andrew Huberman9:58

      That's the, that's the idea.

   8. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee10:01

      No, I love that. I, I think that's just a great way to put it. Um, and I, and I guess that there's that wider point that the, the environment around us is affecting our nervous system. It is changing our nervous system whether we want it to or not, so why not be intentional about some practices that are gonna help strengthen it or, or improve its functionality in a way that we want? Um,

3. 10:22 – 17:29

   Stress, Adrenaline, and Controlling the Nervous System

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee10:22

      before we get to respiration and breathing, you know, one of the, one of the things that I've heard you talk about before, Andrew, which has always, um, struck in my mind, probably because I subscribe to this view as well, is you've said this, "Almost all of the unfortunate things that happen to us in life is down to a poorly regulated nervous system." I wonder if you could speak to that initially, um, because I think that really helps set some context for why vision or breathing or whatever it might be, why it's so beneficial.

   2. AHDr. Andrew Huberman10:59

      Yeah. So the, um, like let's take stress for instance. We hear a lot of times that stress destroys our immune system, and nothing could be [laughs] further from the truth. I mean, stress is actually the way that your immune system knows that it should turn on. Let's just think about the ways that our species, um, got to where we are. There were long periods of time with bad weather, cold, babies that were undernourished, et cetera. Many of us are familiar with working very hard in school or just generally, um, working hard or taking care of a loved one, and then you stop doing that. You finally get rest, and all of a sudden you get sick. Well, why is that? Well, because we have this incredible system whereby mental stress and physical stress causes the release of adrenaline, epinephrine, depending on where you live in the world, from the adrenals that live right above, which reside right above our kidneys, and adrenaline is the signal by which the immune system decides to employ killer cells, um, uh, anti-inflammatory cytokines or, and also inflammatory cytokines, which can be beneficial for wound healing and things of that sort. So the activation of the stress system in the short term is actually very good at keeping us healthy. I'll just point to a practice that, um, many people now do, which are cold showers, um, deliberate cold showers for three minutes a day, you know, three minutes every, uh, two or three days, taking a three-minute cold shower, and then it's fine to get into the hot shower, or, um, doing what we call cyclic hyperventilation, which is just [inhales and exhales] . Okay, both those practices, you might say, okay, what is powerful about a cold shower or cyclic hyperventilation? Well, there's nothing actually powerful about them, them directly. Hate to tell people this. It's that they cause the release of adrenaline, and in excellent studies, peer-reviewed studies, it's been shown that breathing of that sort, and I... We can describe it in more detail, or the cold water exposure, the cold exposure, creates this adrenaline release, which then creates an ability to resist infection of different bacteria, viruses, and, and even, um, fungal infections. A dramatic result. But it shouldn't surprise us because we have a system that we are still the... We are here, and we are the curators of the planet, not the house cats or some other species, because we have the capacity to lean into challenge and resist infection, heal wounds, and that is all mediated by adrenaline, and the release of adrenaline is mediated by the nervous system. Now, when things go bad, for instance, people with chronically elevated adrenals, they're drinking coffee all the time and working like crazy, not getting enough sleep, psychological stress. They're not shutting off that system. Then you start getting into chronic health issues, right? Because the stress system can't be, um, chronically activated for too long, or else you run into issues. But the nervous system coordinates that. Likewise, for people that have anxiety, we have to say, well, what is anxiety? Well, at a biological level, anxiety, stress, trauma, fear, and PTSD are all the same thing. It's ruminating on thoughts, but it's the release of adrenaline in a very unregulated way, and adrenaline has a primary effect, which is to make us want to move or speak. It biases us towards action. It's the quaking of the hands. It's the quaking of the voice. It's the quickening of the breath. It's the, um, dilation of the pupils of, of the eyes, which, um, sort of counterintuitively creates a constricting of our visual field. It takes us out of the past and future and puts us into the moment so that we can, you know, identify what's going on. So the, the idea is to take basic practices, i-in, in the case of this discussion, practices that mainly anchor to vision and respiration, and learn to control adrenaline release and the timing of that release. Learn to control it is a three, uh, essentially has three components. One is you can increase adrenaline release, and there are times where that is beneficial, and we can talk about that. Then you can come off the accelerator of adrenaline release, and then there's a third component, which is to slam on the brake and shut down the adrenaline system. And the ways to do that are, uh, you could-- people try to do it pharmacologically. They drink alcohol. They drink coffee. Has opposite effects on the adrenaline system, obviously. They use, uh, sedatives and opioid compounds. Um, but they also do things like take vacations or do meditation or, um, get massages, which are all wonderful. Uh, uh, the meditations, massages, and, um, vacations are great. However, those all require that you step out of life. You know, I love getting a professional massage, but a professional massage is like $190, which frankly, even at my stage of life, I always feel like it's great, but, you know, it's a considerable investment. I'm not gonna do it every day. I don't have a masseuse in my home, and to be honest, it requires that I not do something else.

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee15:46

      Yeah.

   4. AHDr. Andrew Huberman15:46

      Being a functional human and a functional human on any kind of budget means that you need to be able to turn on and off focus and relaxation and stress and so forth in a way that you are in control of that. And so when you start learning how to control your nervous system, it's tremendously empowering, and I don't think that people should not take vacations, um, or not get massages or whatever it is. But the ability to control your nervous system in a dynamic way in short timescales, on the timescale of seconds, on the timescale of days, on the timescale of weeks, that's what leads to really terrific work and school and relationship and sleep and exercise practices. I just simply can't think of any other route to it. For instance, there's no liver detox that's gonna do that. There's no gut microbiome fix. The gut microbiome is very important, by the way, uh, for reasons we could discuss, and as you know and know more, far more about than I do. But there's no one tool or pill or potion or practice that's going to allow the whole system that is you to fall into place, whereas if you learn to control your nervous system from the standpoint of attention, focus, relaxation, and sleep, and you use the appropriate tools to access those, then you find that everything else works better.

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee17:03

      Yeah.

   6. AHDr. Andrew Huberman17:03

      And that those additional tools of... I am a believer in certain supplements. I also think, you know, people should eat fermented foods to improve their gut-

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee17:11

      Yeah

   8. AHDr. Andrew Huberman17:11

      ... and reduce the, activate the inflammatome. There's great science to that. But that one practice isn't going to change everything. It's going to help, but controlling, learning to control your nervous system will indeed change everything. Your whole life gets better-

   9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee17:26

      Yeah

   10. AHDr. Andrew Huberman17:26

       ... and in, and mentally and physically.

4. 17:29 – 27:15

   The Physiological Sigh

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee17:29

      The idea of learning to control your nervous system, I th- I think is one that we should just pause on because, you know, sometimes in life we'll want to upregulate our nervous system to, I guess, perform a certain task. Other times in life, we'll want to downregulate it. In my experience, and I'm sort of-- my bias is as a clinician, what I have seen is that n- at least the people who come in to see me are usually struggling to downregulate a lot of them.

   2. AHDr. Andrew Huberman18:01

      Right.

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee18:01

      They, they've taken on too much. We, we know this is a big problem, you know. Chronic unmanaged stress, burnout, taking on too many things, not actively prioritizing relaxation. That's a big problem, so, you know, maybe we can talk about some of the things that... Well, first of all, would you agree that actually that's a key skill and one that actually is potentially not as hard as we think to teach people? And then what are some of those practical tools that we can use to downregulate our nervous system?

   4. AHDr. Andrew Huberman18:30

      Yeah. Well, first of all, I completely agree and, uh, even if... Uh, I do agree, and even if I didn't, you'd be right 'cause you're the clinician, not me, right? Um, well, really... And, and I should say I have tremendous respect for the clinical fields. I mean, I, like, I'm on the school of medicine side at Stanford. I don't teach undergraduates. I used to be at a undergraduate university, but... So I'm in the medicine side and, um, and I think that, uh, chronic stress is, is a major issue. Um, and stress, stress makes every neurologic... Well, I know we said this earlier, but it's worth paying attention. It makes every- everything worse when it's chronic. And stress, when you can take advantage of the mechanisms of stress and leverage them, it's tremendously empowering. I mean, I will even say that, I mean, clearly you're not an example of this, but there are a lot of physicians who are very unhealthy. I mean [laughs] I... This idea that scientists and, and, and doctors are healthy, I mean, just look at most of them, right? No, they're not taking good care. Um, and so th- that is not... I'm not poking at them. What I'm saying is that everybody has to learn how to do this. Um, there's a, there's a truth, which is that we are generally compensated in life for the degree to which we can lean into hard work and effort, but a lot of people learn how to hit the accelerator and, as you said, they never learn how to decompress. So a big part of my lab's work has been to develop zero-cost tools that people can use in real time to adjust their levels of stress and calm down quickly. So we can talk about those tools. And then we've also been developing tools that people can do as short practices separate from, uh, real life, [laughs] meaning, uh, like a five-minute-a-day practice that will w- what we call raise their stress threshold so that their trigger point to become stressed is further away. And the, the first practice, which, um, is based on work that goes back to the 1930s actually, it's what's called the physiological sigh. Physiological sighs, um, are something that we all actually do about once every five minutes. So in sleep or in wakefulness, every five minutes or so, we take a d- big deep breath. [inhales] And we don't realize it, but we do this. And dogs will do this right before they go down to sleep. Um, humans do this. Why do we do that? Well, there are two main, uh, reasons why we breathe. One is to bring oxygen i- into our system, and then that oxygen, it's a beautiful system. It actually... You know, it fills the lungs and then, as we know, it, it moves from the lungs into the bloodstream, and our cells require oxygen. And then exhales, we discard carbon dioxide. And we need car- oxygen and carbon dioxide, of course, for our health. Um, every cell relies on this. Uh, you, you wouldn't want to get rid of one or the other entirely. The, the stimulus to breathe, meaning the impulse to breathe, is because if you have a small set of neurons in your brain stem that detect the buildup of carbon dioxide in the bloodstream. So when that level gets too high, you take a big deep breath [inhales] and then [exhales] you offload the carbon dioxide. That's actually why you do the physiological sighs, to discard car- carbon dioxide. As a consequence, you bring in more oxygen. Now, here's what's interesting, the, the lungs are not just two big bags of air. They have millions, actually hundreds of millions, of little alveoli, little sacs. And when we under-breathe or when we are stressed and when we over-breathe, so either way, um, those little sacs actually deflate. And because they have fluid inside them, because of surface tension, they are, they are not, um, easily reinflated, and so we're actually asphyxiating ourselves. We don't have oxygen, and we're not able to offload carbon dioxide. Bad situation. The physiological sigh that I recommend that people do when they're feeling stressed anytime or anyplace, I suppose, unless you're underwater, is to do two inhales through the nose back to back. The first one is a big, long inhale, and then the second inhale, you're only gonna be able to sneak in a tiny bit of air, and then a long, complete exhale through the mouth. So it's [inhales] [exhales] So it's a very sharp little second inhale after the first one. You almost feel like you couldn't get any more air in, but when you do that second inhale, you reinflate the alveoli of the lungs. You snap open all of those. They don't break. And then when you exhale, you offload the carbon dioxide. Doing that just once, sometimes two or three times, but just once, w- we know from data in our laboratory and other laboratories, will immediately reduce your levels of stress and anxiety. Immediately. It's the fastest approach that I'm aware of to de-stress. Far faster than trying to tell yourself not to worry. Certainly far faster than telling you or somebody else to take a deep breath.

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee23:09

      Yeah.

   6. AHDr. Andrew Huberman23:10

      It's this, this double inhale through the nose, exhale through the mouth, is a very efficient way to bring in oxygen, dump carbon dioxide, and reinflate the alveoli of the lungs so that in the immediate moments afterward, you're breathing more naturally and more calmly. So it's a... You know, I, I don't like to use the phrase of, like, power tools and this kind of thing 'cause that's not the business I come from. But I think if there were one tool, um, that I would like everyone to do, it would be the morning light viewing. But the other tool I'd love for people to have in their kit is this physiological sigh. And as I mentioned, you do this spontaneously in lo- claustrophobic environments. People do it during sleep when, um, they are developing apnea. Um, they'll [inhales] and then [exhales] When, when we cry or we observe someone crying, watch how they recover their breathing after sobbing because sobbing is mostly exhaling-

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee24:00

      Yeah

   8. AHDr. Andrew Huberman24:01

      ... the [whimpers] and then the [inhales] [whimpers] There's a, like a, kind of a, like a reverbera- reverberating, um, inhale. So big inhale, second inhale through the nose, just squeeze in a little bit more, and then long exhale through the mouth. And that one has saved, uh, me and I... From the feedback I've gotten, it's saved many, many people many, many times, and it, it can be done essentially anywhere.

   9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee24:24

      It's, it's, um, in some ways a reset for your nervous system. Things are getting out of control, tension, pressure's building up, and you instantaneously can sort of, what, reset it back to baseline? Is that a way that we can think about it?

   10. AHDr. Andrew Huberman24:39

       Yeah. Think about it as a break on the adrenaline system. Think about it as, um... Because when there's elevated carbon dioxide in the bloodstream, the brain registers that and sends a signal to your adrenals, "Uh-oh, we're running out of air. You need to move. You need to get to some place else in order to not asphyxiate." And so [laughs] this is why the, the signal is so powerful. Now, I think that there's, uh, there's another aspect to this, which is that when our minds are racing out of control, it's very hard to stabilize our thinking with thinking. I always say, you know, trying to control your thoughts with thoughts is like trying to grab fog. It's very, very difficult. So when your brain and your mind and your thinking aren't where you want them to be, you need to look to your body to, to recalibrate your state of mind, so that then you get a new vantage point to view whatever it is that you happen to be contending with mentally. I actually had this happen the other day. I've been dealing with a, with a set of issues that are kind of chronic and ongoing, and it's a slow grind, and it's, it's working out. The details aren't important or relevant here. But, um, it's something I have to think about a lot each day, what I'm gonna do, how I'm gonna handle the situation, and I noticed I was on the plane and I was feeling pretty stressed about this. And you do a couple of these physiological sighs, and then what happens is you're able to still parse those thoughts, but from a, a different perspective. It's much easier to look to the body, readjust your state of mind to a calmer place, and then be able to analyze something, um, cognitively than it is to try and prevent yourself from thinking about something, which is very hard.

   11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee26:11

       Yeah.

   12. AHDr. Andrew Huberman26:12

       And in many cases, we need- we do need to think about what's stressful. I mean, this is something we don't often acknowledge. People think, "Okay, we're gonna go meditate, or we're gonna take a vacation. We're just gonna step away. We're just gonna take a deep breath." All sounds wonderful, right? But many times the thing that we're stressing about is, is critical to our well-being. It's important that we be able to think about this stuff. So use the body to control the mind and place the mind in a, in a better vantage point.

   13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee26:36

       Yeah.

   14. AHDr. Andrew Huberman26:36

       That's the idea.

   15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee26:38

       Yeah. I re- I really like that. I think it's so powerful for people, and I think so many people will hear that, Andrew, and go, "Yeah, you know, when I feel anxious and I do some yoga or I go for a walk around the block, you know, I just don't feel the same when I come back." You know, you, you are literally changing the way you experience life through that action. And I, I wanted to talk to you about something that, again, I've heard you speak about many times, which is the idea that, um, you know, grounded in neuroscience, that it is actions and behavior first, thoughts and feelings second.

5. 27:15 – 34:03

   Actions First, the Autonomic Seesaw, and Mental Health

   1. AHDr. Andrew Huberman27:15

      Yeah. Um, I definitely believe that we should put our actions first when it comes to taking control of our mental and physical health and performance. I wanna be clear that I don't relegate feelings, emotions, and thinking. Um, I'm- I've been open about this before, but I'll be open about it again. I've, I've, through a, a lot of effort of my own and through great expense and challenge, I've, I've, I've been doing analysis for many decades. I, uh, got into this because I had a... I was a bit of a wayward youth, and I was forced to do it at first. So I just wanna point out that I, I wholeheartedly believe in the value of therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, exposure therapies, talk therapies. I think we are a social verbal species, and there's tremendous value to journaling, tremendous value to thinking, and to feeling our feelings. However, feelings are complicated, and they can become their own trap. Um, being able to parse a hard emotional problem or being able to think about life in a way that's, um, from a good stance is a kind of a... I, I like to think about the stance of the nervous system more than the state because a stance allows you to move in different directions, whereas a state implies that there's one ideal state to be in all the time, which of course not. I mean, there's a time to be stressed, angry, sad, in awe, devastated. I mean, that's life. That's actually what makes for a rich life. But w- the ability to be in a good stance around all that means that w- when we are in a state of deep sadness or deep confusion or great happiness, that we know that we will eventually transition out of that state, and that, and that's a manageable, um, idea, that we're gonna transition in and out of these states. One of the hallmarks of m- mental illness of different kinds is that people have horrible feelings, and they feel like those horrible feelings are gonna go on forever. That's one of the things that leads to suicidal depression and, um, or chronic anxiety, as people are, you know, told... We're always told, you know, "Don't, don't think about the future. Don't think about the past. Just be present." Well, what if your present really is awful? That, that doesn't help much. So the reason that I'm a fan of, of physical tools is the following. Orienting towards action first and physical tools is the following. First of all, there is no fossil record whatsoever of the things that we feel or think. None. Your feelings and your thoughts actually are pretty meaningless in the long run, but what you do and what you say has a profound impact on you and other people. Second, using physical practices allows us to communicate with one another about tools. Thinking is tricky. I don't know what I'm thinking, uh, excuse me, feeling half the time. How do I know what anyone else is feeling? You know, I have a colleague in psychiatry who says this. Most of the time, we don't even know what we feel exactly, much less how someone else feels. And so if we were to enter a dialogue around how we're supposed to feel and control our feelings, well, now we're really moving into the realm of wishy-washy nothingness because I can't tell you what to do or how to think about something. But when we're talking about physical tools and using the body to influence the state of mind or the stance of the mind, then we are... We can talk. We know if we're doing the same thing. Two inhales followed by an exhale, panoramic vision, light viewing. These are tools that everybody can access.

   2. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee30:34

      Yeah.

   3. AHDr. Andrew Huberman30:35

      And so it, it creates a whole different conversation. I also believe, and I've had a lot of experience with the fact that there are times when things can feel so overwhelming- And we are so back on our heels that we have to get outside of our head, and the best way to do that is to get into p- physical practices. The, the, the, um, imagery I like to use is that any moment we are either flat-footed, forward center of mass, which is kind of leaning into life and feeling strong, or we're back on our heels. Many people wake up back on their heels. Many people feel back on their heels a lot of the time. So the question is, how do you go from mentally and physically back on your heels to flat-footed stance and someti- and maintain the ability to go into forward center of mass? How do you do that? Well, you do that by controlling the, this basic system in the body that we call the autonomic nervous system. It's a bit of a misnomer because autonomic means automatic, but you can think of it like a seesaw, that on one end is our ability to get into states of alertness and focus, and on the other end is the ability to relax and get into states of calm or sleep or, um, deep rest or focused but relaxed. Maybe the even seesaw would be focused but relaxed. And so much of beco- of being functional is the ability to move from-

   4. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee31:56

      Yeah

   5. AHDr. Andrew Huberman31:56

      ... alert to asleep, because sleep is so key for our health, of course. Or from sleep to getting up and getting outside and exercising. But a lot of people get trapped at one end of the seesaw or the other, chronically activated or chronically exhausted. And the notion of a seesaw, um, is important here because it's not so much about your ability to be on either end, it's about the tightness of the hinge of that seesaw. What I'm talking about are tools that allow the seesaw to be calibrated so that it's very easy to go from sleep to alert, from alert-

   6. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee32:28

      Yeah

   7. AHDr. Andrew Huberman32:28

      ... to relaxed-

   8. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee32:28

      Yeah

   9. AHDr. Andrew Huberman32:28

      ... from relaxed back to work, as opposed to getting locked in one position. That's really the key. And so I, I realize this is all, um, I'm talking all in analogy now, but I think it-- I'm hoping it's worthwhile because we've heard so much about mindfulness, which is a wonderful concept. We hear about mental health, we hear about physical health, but w- it's never actually been defined what is a mentally healthy person, right? Usually, when we're talking about mental health, we're talking about mental illness. So to me, a mentally healthy person and a physically healthy person is somebody that can be in action when they need to be in action, can relax when they need to relax, can focus when they need to focus, and can sleep when they need to sleep.

   10. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee33:08

       Yeah.

   11. AHDr. Andrew Huberman33:08

       That's a pretty darn good life, and you can go-- you can get a lot done, and you can have very effective relationship to yourself and others with that kind of ability, and that ability is anchored in the nervous system.

   12. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee33:20

       It's, it's kind of nervous system flexibility, isn't it? It's that ability to adapt and utilize your nervous system in an optimal way depending on what you need at any given moment. I think that hinge analogy is great. And, and sort of-- Just to, just to sort of follow up on that, Andrew, I totally agree. You know, if someone is stuck in a negative loop or, you know, in a, in a way that they're feeling, there's, there's n- there's nothing better than a physical practice to actually, you know, move them. You know, [chuckles] movement is by definition becoming unstuck, right? It's gonna move thoughts, feelings. It's gonna sort of mix them all up together. So I completely agree.

6. 34:03 – 42:08

   Changing Thought Patterns and Dysregulated People

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee34:03

      I guess where I was going with it, and I'm really interested in, in your thoughts on this, is I have, like you, for many years been trying to promote healthy, low-cost lifestyle practices. You know, I've written four-- My first four books have all been about this, how you can inspire people to take on these things. But one thing I've noticed, um, including with myself, is that some of my patients would do all the, the best lifestyle behaviors, whether it's diets, good sleep practices, you know, breathing techniques, you know, but there's still a subsection who were struggling because they would allow the thoughts or the actions of other people to negatively influence them. And so for the last year or so, I've been writing my next book, which is really about trying to address this point of, you know, the way we think, we, we can change the way we think. It's harder. It takes time, but we can train ourselves to think differently. And so s- a concrete example, let's say you were doing loads of great lifestyle practices. You know what to do when you feel stressed and anxious. You know you can use the physiological sigh when you need to, and y- you're in a good place. And then, um, your boss sends you an email that really upset you and wound you up, so you want to comfort eat. You want to have a glass of wine to de-stress. Yes, you can use the physiological sigh to calm yourself down and hopefully make better decisions because of that. But I'm also sort of thinking about, well, what if you could also not get triggered in the first place by that email? What if you could work on your mindset and change the way that you think so that actually you don't-- you're needing these practices to deregulate, to downregulate less and less.

   2. AHDr. Andrew Huberman35:57

      And there are a couple things that come to mind and, you know, I, I am a big believer in, uh, the fact that-- well, what I consider the fact that subconscious processes mainly, um, brought on by our developmental models of attachment really act as a filter by which we engage in the world. Meaning, um, if you grew up with a narcissistic parent or an, or an, or an avoidant parent or somebody that had a quick temper, I mean, you would think the rational approach would be, okay, you're gonna do-- you're not gonna be like that, or you won't seek out people like that. But as we know, that is not how it works. Uh, Freud was probably right about the repetition compulsion, which is that we tend to engage in those types of dynamics over and over again. His theory, which I rather like, is that we do that in order to offer ourselves new-- many opportunities to respond differently. It's kind of an interesting concept. Um- I, I think that there... I once, I have a friend who's an analyst, um, who I respect a lot, who said that basically all of, um, Freudian psychoanalysis can be summarized in a three-box diagram with two arrows, and the, the first box says wish, and then there's an, then there's a little arrow, and then there's another box that says anxiety, and then there's another arrowed, uh, to the right, and then there's a third box which says defense. And basically we have a wish, we want something, then we feel some anxiety around that wish, and then we have some defensive reaction. Unless, of course, we identify what those arrows are and we understand the subconscious processes, in which case we can intervene in our own thinking. So this is completely separate from the kind of conversation we were having earlier where it's like do a physiological sigh. The whole idea is to make the unconscious conscious. And so the email from the boss that shows up, you know, we can think, "Okay, why do I get so triggered?" You know, I mean, oftentimes an email from a boss is pretty important, uh, and it makes sense to get triggered. But can we maintain the kind of perspective of, you know, are we a pleaser? Are we a rebel? Are we a person that, um... Like, I, for instance, I, I went into the profession I'm in because I don't like to be told what to do, frankly. I was a... You know, my, my own mother had a hard time controlling me when I was a kid, and so I don't like to be told [laughs] what to do. I'm not a people pleaser. But the, um, there, there are people pleasers. And so, you know, how can we start to intervene with our own tendencies and see... I think it's worthwhile. I will say this. Um, it, and now it's just my beliefs. I don't have any laboratory data to support this. But most people, I would say 95% of the world, does not do any hard ongoing psychological work to try and better them- themselves and adjust their thinking. Sadly, it is a matter of resource, but it's resources and lack of resources. But, but most people don't. So that means that 95% of the, the misbehavior that we see in the world is coming from kind of untrained nervous systems and people who are not super reflective. I'm not, I'm not being disparaging of them, but I think that's the reality. We also have to remember that... And this is actually very useful for online interactions where people get crazy comments and things. Just r- when I first started teaching in university, a colleague of mine who's a psychiatrist came to me and said, "Just remember 1% of the world is schizophrenic, has schizophrenia, right? Um, about 4 to 8% are dealing with a bipolar disorder of some sort. About 10 to 20% are dealing with anxiety disorders, OCD." He starts listing all of them off and then he says, "So when things happen and you're, and you hear or see things that are, that are concerning, just remember to filter them through the reality of mental challenge." And so you start-- When I get comments online and there's someone's being very aggressive, I think to myself, I'm like, "Wow, like, they must be, um, struggling in some very intense way." I think that... And I say this a lit- I, I... You know, I'm smiling as I say it, but it, but it's, it brings me both a, a lot of relief for myself, but also I think we need to acknowledge the sadness around this, is that our species is, is very flawed. We're an amazing species, but we're very flawed-

   3. SKSteven Kotler40:11

      Yeah

   4. AHDr. Andrew Huberman40:12

      ... in that unless we intervene in our own internal w- processes, uh, we're apt to just shed our, our inherited and our, um, learned and our innate dysfunction onto one another.

   5. SKSteven Kotler40:22

      Yeah.

   6. AHDr. Andrew Huberman40:22

      So I think a lot of learning to adjust one's thinking is about the acknowledgement that most people are dealing with, um, a, a challenged nervous system to begin with, and that it's a lot of w- work, but well worthwhile to, uh, to be one of, to try and make oneself one of the healthy ones. When you look at a lot of the dysfunction and the despair in the world and a lot, a lot of it is the consequence of people who just are not very self-aware and are not taking care of themselves or other people. So, uh, when that email comes in from your boss, I wouldn't recommend, you know, sending them a, a recommendation for a, you know, a, a clinical seminar to help them get some relief. But I often look at it and think, "Wow, it's incredible how, um, how angry somebody seems about something that, y- you know, is kind of easy to deal with or is kind of trivial. Um, they must be pretty dysregulated."

   7. SKSteven Kotler41:14

      Yeah.

   8. AHDr. Andrew Huberman41:14

      Um, they, they must have a really hard time regulating. And, uh, and again, I don't say it from a stance of, of, of better than or disparaging. I just think that w- we are not very good at taking care of ourselves, and it takes a lot of work. And that's why I orient to the physical practices first.

   9. SKSteven Kotler41:31

      Yeah.

   10. AHDr. Andrew Huberman41:31

       It's like let's talk about concrete things to get into the stance so that one can then do the deeper work, because the deep work is hard and it takes years.

   11. SKSteven Kotler41:39

       Yeah.

   12. AHDr. Andrew Huberman41:39

       Even cognitive behavioral therapy takes a long time. And so that's why I've oriented my public facing work more towards the things that everyone, I believe, can and should do. I- it's about adjusting the stance that we're in to be able to access the deeper work. But I love that you're writing this book. As you can tell, um, I'd love to share a meal with you sometime or a long walk, um, and chat about the psychological aspects and the, the, it, of this and thinking because, I mean, that's at the heart of, of how we experience life.

7. 42:08 – 54:01

   Steven Kotler on Burnout and Active Recovery

   1. SKSteven Kotler42:08

      Burnout we've discovered, uh, which is really common to executives today, you know, to everybody today, I think, um, especially post-COVID. Um, we found that if you have sort of a rather active recovery protocol in place, meaning like you don't finish work and drink a beer and watch television, you finish work and do, go for a long walk in nature or take an Epsom salt bath or, uh, restorative yoga or, uh, infrared sauna or get a massage or, you know, s- be smart about it so there's a recovery, and regular access to flow. Those two things, um, and you're getting seven to eight hours of sleep a night, we f- have discovered it's very hard to burn out. It's almost impossible to burn out with those things.

   2. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee42:49

      What you said about burnout there really struck me. Burnout is super common, yes, in the executive population, but I think it's, I think it's common in, in, in all grades and whatever your-

   3. SKSteven Kotler43:00

      Any job

   4. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee43:00

      ... whatever your job status is I, I think we're seeing it... I'm certainly coming across it more and more in my work. Uh, and when I sort of talk for companies, I'm seeing it everywhere. And so what you said there was, if I've got it right, is, uh, regular active recovery, uh, regular access to flow state, and seven to eight hours of sleep a night makes it almost impossible to burn out. So let's just break that down. When you say active recovery as opposed to passive recovery, you did give some examples, but can you just explain what the difference is? Because I think at the moment what I see in my patient population is many people will come back or they've finished a, a long day on Zooms at work if they're working from home, and relaxation is the glass of wine and the television. Why is a more active form of recovery better? What, what does it do to our biology?

   5. SKSteven Kotler43:53

      Okay. So, um, I am not, not a fan of booze or TV, right? I'm not saying booze or TV are bad and you shouldn't do them. But what I will say is if you're interested in significant peak performance ongoing, so when you finish the day and you wanna relax, problem with booze is once you have really more than, like, one glass or whatever, it starts messing with your sleep cycles. So you cannot s- get seven, eight hours of sleep a night. You're gonna start running at a detriment, you know, pretty much instantly. It's hard to make that up, which is the problem with... one of the big problems with booze. There are a couple others, but that's, that's one of the, the, the bigger ones. And then if you're drinking, you know, more than two or three, um, you're hungover, right? And, and now you're, now you're... Like, now forget peak performance.

   6. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee44:51

      [laughs] Sure.

   7. SKSteven Kotler44:51

      Like, you're hungover, right? Like, so okay, so that's the problem with booze, which is not... Like, I like to tell people, like, from a s- shake the snow globe and go on vacation every now and again from your brain, I'm fine with booze and drugs. I really am. Like, I got, I've got no judgment. I find they're very effective tools sometimes when you can't take a vacation, you can't whatever, but you just wanna shut it off. But there's a huge physical penalty on the other side of that, and y- you'd better spend sleeping the entire next day, you know, than trying to go to work, blah, blah, blah. Okay, so enough of that. TV, here's the problem. So when, for real recovery, you have to spend a bunch of time, you have to change your brainwaves. So brainwaves normally are when we're awake and we're alert and paying attention to the world, they're in beta. It's a fast-moving wave, right? Right now you and I are having a conversation. We're both in beta, right? If I crank beta up, give you a high beta wave, that's anxiety, right? Underneath beta is alpha. Alpha is daydream mode. It's where you're sort of going from thought to thought without a lot of kind of resistance. Underneath that is theta. Theta is REM sleep. It's where you're going from thing to thing with no internal resistance, right? In REM sleep, you know. In, in alpha you may think of a green sweater and it might remind you of a green turtle, right? Like that you might... But in theta, the green sweater becomes the green turtle, becomes the green planet, becomes the green universe, becomes The Incredible Hulk who's... Right? It's just one athlete to the next, to the next kind of thing. Flow, by the way, takes place on the borderline between alpha and theta. Television. You need what are all the techniques that you and I were talking about, restorative yoga, a long walk in nature, um, Epsom salt baths. What it... Like, what all those do, as a general rule, they help flush cortisol and some of the stress hormones out of our system, and they help kick the brain towards alpha. Alpha seems to be... Some time in alpha seems to be what we need to recover. Here's the problem with TV. TV makes us feel passively like we're in alpha. It makes you feel like you're relaxing. TV, even if you're dealing with, like, Acorn TV, slow British dramas, right? Even then, anytime there's a quick cut between things, you have a, what's known as a salience network, right? This is a, a novelty detector, and it's scouring the world at all times for anything new and novel. And it's doing this because, one, anything new and novel could be a danger, could be a threat, might wanna run away from it, or could be an opportunity, could be something to eat, could be something to mate with, right? So we have a salience network, it's hyper-tuned, and as soon as there's a quick cut, that's a novel, perspective change. Oh my God, novelty. So even though you feel like you're chilling out, your brain is going from alpha, jumping up to beta every time. And if there's any violence in what you're watching or anything else like that, it's going to high beta. And even though it feels like you're relaxing, you're not. So your brain is not recovering. And if you couple the not-recovery of television to booze, and you do this consistently as your way of unwinding night after night after night, you're not recovering at all. Regular access to your primary flow activity is sort of, um, part of that as well. And I mean, more than anything else, um, to put it colloquially, flow is when we feel most alive and... right? It's really hard to get through hard days, hard times without that feeling. Now, if people are working from home and for Zoom, there's other things we can layer into this that are sort of how do you, you know, survive in a crisis. I can, we can add onto that, whatever. But for burnout, regular access to what we call your primary flow activity. Primary flow activity is that thing that you've done all your life. It could be skiing, surfing, snowboarding, rock climbing, dancing to hip-hop, dancing salsa, playing chess, walking your dog, whatever it is. Everybody's got a primary flow activity. And you want to double down on that, um, in times of stress for sure, but you definitely want to, um, you definitely want regular access to that. And this is key to- t- we're talking about two things that busy executives or busy... Let's not even say executives. Busy 21st century citizens don't like to do, right? They don't like to play, because we're adults now and we're gonna put down childish things, and I'm not going surfing and I'm not going skiing, and I don't get to go out and dance to hip hop anymore, 'cause I've got a, an adult and I have responsibility, right? I've got kids and I've got family and I've got, you know, I gotta put away childish things. And it's just a disaster, and it's a recipe for burnout.

   8. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee49:56

      Primary flow, so you gave some great examples. Could this be, for someone, a 30-minute walk in nature?

   9. SKSteven Kotler50:02

      Oh, yeah.

   10. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee50:03

       Um, you know-

   11. SKSteven Kotler50:04

       Oh, yeah. By the way, the most common flow states on Earth are reading. You always know reading flow is... So it doesn't happen, usually happens when you're reading something that's a little bit intellectually challenging and makes you think. So when your brain starts pinballing from idea to idea to idea, like you're totally engrossed, and then suddenly you have that insight and it leads, right? Then, that's reading flow. Very common. So yeah, this could be whatever works for you. Um, and it could vary from week to week or season to season or month. You know what I mean? Some months it could be you're learning to cook, and being in the kitchen is the most flowy thing you could possibly do. And some months it's playing with your kids. And so, you know what I... Like, there's lots of activities here that, that work, but you have to double down on it. And the reason is this. Three things are really key. One, um, especially if you're fighting burnout or if you're just fighting crisis like COVID, 21st century life right now. Um, one, as we move into flow, stress hormones are flushed out of our system. There's a global release of nitric oxide. It's a gas. It's a signaling molecule. It's everywhere in the body. It pushes stress hormones out of our system. So you're resetting, you're automatically resetting the nervous system. This is another reason that primary flow activities are so important, A, to combating crisis, and B, to pausing burnout. 'Cause they flush the stress hormones from your system, they reset the nervous system. Secondly, the same neural chemicals that show up in flow, besides performance enhancement and pleasure, they boost the immune system. So you're getting an immune system boost. You're resetting the nervous system, you're getting an immune system boost, um, which is important for staving off burnout or coping with crisis as well. Here's the coolest part. The increase in motivation, possibly, definitely increase in creativity. We know this from work that was done at Harvard. These are massive increases, by the way. Uh, depending on whose numbers you're going for, flow will amplify creative problem-solving, uh, 400 to 700%. It's a huge amplification in creative problem-solving. And that heightened creativity, and this is Teresa Amabile's work at Harvard, outlasts the flow state by a day, maybe two. So one of the reasons this matters in crisis situations or burnout situations, you want that creativity 'cause it's how you get out of the bad situation you're in. You need it, right? So you've got one state, primary flow activity, that's gonna reset your nervous system, boost your immune system, heighten creativity, and heighten motivation, and generally increase overall wellbeing and life satisfaction. That is... So when, when we work at the Flow Research Collective, we work with, we work with everybody. We train about 1,000 people a month. But on average, they're peak performers. Now, we could be doing... These could be, you know, insurance brokers from Delhi or, you know, stockbrokers from Munich or soccer moms from Indiana. Like, it doesn't matter, but they're just interested in peak performance. Or it's US Navy Seals or CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. And, um, here's what's interesting. When I teach active recovery, for example, or primary flow activity, these are grit skills to peak performers. They require grit. That's why in, in The Art of Impossible, I have active recovery as a grit skill. Peak performers don't like to shut it down. You don't want to stop. You want to always go, go, go. But the lesson here, there's two really big lessons in peak performance. The first is your emotions don't mean what you think they mean. The second is a lot of times you gotta go slow to go fast. This is one of those times you have to go slow to go fast. Burnout is so costly. Any kind of, kind of stress and anxiety is costly, but burnout is so exceptionally costly to performance. It'll set you back so far, um, that you just, you have to stay ahead of that curve. So you gotta go slow to go fast.

   12. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee54:00

       Yeah.

8. 54:01 – 1:02:23

   How to Create a Flow Walk

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee54:01

      Primary flow, um, activities, how often do you recommend people access them?

   2. SKSteven Kotler54:08

      Mm.

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee54:08

      Because obviously it depends. If it's skiing and you don't live near a mountain, well, you're gonna struggle. Um, like whereas a 30-minute walk in nature, if you can get into flow doing that... And I, and I wonder where that comes into flow, because if we have to hit that challenge, um, sweet spot where it's hard enough, you know, w- w-

   4. SKSteven Kotler54:26

      I can tell you how to do it. I can break that down for you. But yeah, I mean, get into flow any way you possibly can, more important than your primary flow activity. What we have found, and I think it's... First of all, you gotta start by starting, right? Like, if you've got 10 minutes a week, then you've got 10 minutes a week. That's what you're doing. If you've got 20, great. What the research seems to show, and I think we need way more research on this particular thing, um, but what research seems to show that about an afternoon a week is, is sort of the minimal requirement. Now, you can split that... And by afternoon I mean like three to four hours, right? Now, you could split that up, half an hour, half an hour, half an hour, right? 20 minutes, 20 minutes, two hours. However you want to do it. That seems to be- ... uh, what works best, but I think there's gonna be a lot of individual variation. I think it's gonna change over time. I think it's gonna change with age. It may be different men to women. I, I, that... So run the experiment for yourself, but three to four hours is, is, is sort of what we see. Um, so for a primary flow activity, how do you walk yourself into flow? I do this all the time. Um, I do this every day, in fact. Um, though, uh, I, so I start my day with a four-hour writing session. I write every morning from 4:00 AM to about 8:00 AM. Um, and then I take my dogs for a hike in the backcountry. I live in the mountains, and I just walk out the door and go up the mountain. And, um, sometimes this is just a, an active recovery process. I'm just going for a walk, or sometimes, especially if the writing was a real struggle, right? And it didn't put me into flow, right? Usually, writing will thr- drop me into flow. Um, but if it didn't, and I'm really frustrated, then I will do a flow walk. So what's a flow walk? We have something called exercise-induced transient hypofrontality, the temporary deactivation of the prefrontal cortex in the part of your brain that's right back here. This is why all those strange things happen in flow. For example, why does time pass so strangely in flow? When you go out and for a walk in nature and you walk, depending on your fitness level, about 20 to 40 minutes, it gets quiet upstairs, right? It gets... That shuts off. Now, that's not flow, but it's the edge of flow, and you've now produced one of the conditions, one of the major conditions that has to happen in flow. If you now want to... So this can... Just go out for a walk, 20 to 40 minutes. Now, and you may wanna time this ahead of time, meaning, 'cause you, there's a location thing that's gonna matter here, so you're not probably gonna get this right the first time out. But at the point that you tend to... For me, it's about, I'd say, 30 minutes of hiking uphill, you know, slowly with my dogs in the morning. It'll quiet, things quiet down. Once that happens, you want to introduce some dopamine into the system. Um, usually, the easiest way to do this, I do it with risk. I hike up a hill, and then I run down the hill. If you don't wanna do it with risk, or you want a lesser version, hike into the forest, and then just jog through a forest. Just wa- weaving in and out of the trees is gonna be enough. It's novelty. It'll be enough new visual stimulation. Novelty also gives you dopamine. So you don't need risk. You can just have novelty. Um, unpredictability will also give you that dopamine. So take a walk into a part of the city that you don't, you've never been to before, where there's lots of novel things to look at. That will do the same sort of thing. And then I like to, like... Or if that, once you've got a little bit of dopamine into your system, if you really want flow at that point, um, I try to exhaust myself. I basically, like what I'll do is I'll hike for 20 minutes, go uphill really hard for five minutes, and then run downhill for five minutes, and then you're essentially in a low-grade flow state. So 20-minute walk. I would make things more vigorous for, like, five minutes. That's just to get a, a little bit of endorphins and anandamide, the painkiller, right? And then you wanna introduce some dopamine. So walk until it's quiet upstairs. Make it hard, um, but just for a brief... You don't need a, you don't need a lot of hard. You just need, like, 30 seconds to a couple minutes just to get a little bit of painkill- natural painkiller flowing, and then you want some dopamine, and that is either, um, novelty or risk.

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee59:01

      Yeah.

   6. SKSteven Kotler59:01

      And anybody can do that pretty much anywhere.

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee59:05

      Yeah, I, I love that, and it's, I mean, the benefits, I can, I can just see are profound, you know, whether it's you're trying to deal with burnout, just generalized stress, whether you're trying to solve a problem in your work that you can't solve and, you know, maybe when you're out there, you're gonna fire up the default mode network, so actually... You know, you know, there's, there's all kinds of things-

   8. SKSteven Kotler59:23

      Well, you're also, as you, have you written about the, um, impact of nature on our neurobiology also, right?

   9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee59:28

      Yeah.

   10. SKSteven Kotler59:29

       Um, so, um, if you walk in nature, right, you're also getting, you know, additional benefits, and if you walk in nature someplace where you can find really wide vistas to look at, that's even additional benefits. I could talk about the neurobiology under why wide vistas and whatever if you care, but, like, walking in nature where you can see far and wide, it's really fricking good for you, and it's gonna outperform pretty much any antidepressant on the market. And then if you add in a flow hike to boot, you're doing, you, you're doing some good stuff for yourself.

   11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:00:03

       Does it matter if you are listening to music and/or podcasts when you walk? A- and the reason I ask this is because clearly it's very, very popular these days. I do it myself sometimes, but I've also noticed sometimes if I'm really busy in my head, if there's been lots of... I'm trying to process a lot of stuff, let's say, for writing and all these different ideas, and I sometimes start walking with a podcast on. I say, "No, no, I, I don't want all this noise. I, I just want peace. I want calm." And, and I'll either move to relaxing music or I'll take my earphones off and just listen to the wind and the birds or whatever. So I think this is a really interesting-

   12. SKSteven Kotler1:00:42

       Yeah, it's a great question. So I think podcasts are... You don't want... You, you want your brain, um, turning off, right? You need it to go from beta, awake and alert, down to the alpha-theta borderline to get into flow. You can only do that if you're not, you're really using too much brain power, or if you're reading. You can get into reading flow. You can concent- like one thing, but hiking, walking, that's gonna be taking your energy, and I think you, it's a limited thing. Flow is a high-energy state.

   13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:01:16

       As it gives you energy, or it takes your energy?

   14. SKSteven Kotler1:01:18

       Well, both. Both. It gives you a lot of energy, but it takes a lot of energy. So if you wanna be in flow on a regular basis- You gotta, you know, you have to... hydration, nutrition, seven, eight hours of sleep a night. These things matter because these are high energy states, right? Um, so that, that, that's part of it, uh, as well.

   15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:01:37

       Yeah. Wow. There's just so much, so much to think about wi- with respect to these things. Uh, I wanted to move on to emotional intelligence. There was a really interesting section in the book on emotional intelligence, and w- what's the relationship between emotional intelligence and peak performance? But then also what really struck me in that section was that you wrote about empathy, and you said that empathy is an easily trainable skill. Now, I don't think most people think it is. I think many people think you're either born with it, you either... you know, you've, you intuitively can be, can, can practice empathy with other people or you can't. So that really just made me stop and pause and reflect a little bit. So I wonder if you could explain a little bit around those, those areas.

   16. SKSteven Kotler1:02:23

       Um,

9. 1:02:23 – 1:06:33

   Emotional Intelligence and Empathy for Peak Performance

   1. SKSteven Kotler1:02:23

      emotional intelligence and empathy. So, uh, let's start with emotional intelligence, and, um, I like to be pretty ruthless about this. Now, I'm an introvert. I'm not terribly fond of most people. I like animals better than people as a general rule. Um, so grain of salt with what I'm about to say, but if you're interested in peak performance, two things matter. One... [sighs] So I like to say that positive psychology has spent 30 years sort of outlining what are the peak performance basics. There are cognitive basics and there are physical basics. On the physical side, we've been talking about, uh, you need hydration and nutrition to maintain proper energy levels. You need seven, eight hours of sleep a night. You need a third thing on the physical side that people often don't talk about on the physical side, which is social support. When you do not have a, a robust social support network, and I don't mean you know lots of people. I mean, you may know only a handful of people, but they love you and you love them, there's a deep relationship there, and you regularly check in. Why does this matter? Whenever you encounter a challenge, right, your brain says, "Oh, here's a problem. Is this a challenge or is it a threat?" Now, this is all day, every day for all of us, right? You're always encountering stuff and you're like, challenge or threat, challenge or threat. And when your brain makes that determination, one of the things it asks is, "Hey, do you got posse? Because if you're solo, man, solving that challenge, it's a threat, and I gotta sound the alarm bell. Here's some anxiety, here's some stress." But if you've got posse, you've got people around who love you, help you, will pick you up if you fall down or et cetera, et cetera, now, oh, wait, maybe it's just a challenge, and you can rise to the occasion. So on a fundamental level, social support, emotional intelligence matters because you have to maintain ro- mo- ro- robust social networks just to sort of be able to perform at your best. More importantly, at a really kind of mercenary statement, between you and your dreams, other people lie. Like, the... it's just there's no way around it. There are other people standing between you and your dreams. Maybe these people are going to be in your way and you're going to have to find ways to move around them. Um, there are obstacles. And maybe they're there to help you out, and you can find way... and if you can get along with them, um, you can really get farther faster. But either way, if you want to navigate that situation quickly and you really want to get where you're going, emotional intelligence matters. And to put it another way, peak performance is hard. Life in general is difficult. And if you're going after high hard goals, right, which is what peak performance is really about, well, it's going to be even harder. Why would you not train emotional intelligence? It's, I mean, it just doesn't make any sense, right? It gives you better energy levels at a foundational level. We know, by the way, that, you know, Chris Peterson has, uh, the positive psychologist who's at, at the University of Michigan, um, has said that you can summarize 30 years of positive psychology in a single phrase, which is, other people matter, right? Like, that's what he's talking about. We need other people. We're social creatures. We need other people, and they're going to be between you and wherever you're going anyways. What I say when it comes to emotional intelligence is, first of all, it's readily trainable, right? Like, I tell people to take an 80/20 approach to it, right? We tend to get 80% of our results from 20% of our effort. So what really matters the most when it comes to emotional intelligence? Where are the things that... where do you get the most mileage? Active listening, right? That means that when I'm in a conversation with you, I'm not thinking about the cool, witty thing I'm going to say next or that sarcastic thing you might have just maybe said. So I'm just paying attention to you. I'm listening to you. I'm not judging you. I'm not thinking about what I'm going to say next. I'm paying attention to you and listening to you. And when it's my turn to speak, then I speak.

10. 1:06:33 – 1:27:10

    James Collins on Fueling for Energy

    1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:06:33

       You're very passionate, aren't you, that if you fuel your body in the right way with the right foods, that can make a big difference to energy?

    2. JCJames Collins1:06:40

       Yeah, that's absolutely the case, Rangan, yeah. And, and, and it all starts from the food we're eating and, and obviously the output is energy. And we're in January now, right? We're sitting here, we're a couple of weeks into January, and now is the prime time where we see a couple of things happening. We see people embarking on new fitness pursuits, so they're training a lot more than they, they ever have done, and n- normally also they're going on diets. And one of the things that we see at this time of year is we, uh, see people who are energy deficient, who are walking around. And this is a topic that's c- covered quite a lot in the sports medicine press over the last few years, called relative energy deficiency in sports. And it's something where you're expending huge amounts of energy, but not taking in enough and eating enough. And this manifests itself in lots of symptoms. Decreased concentration, coordination, irritability, muscle strength, and it can have more serious, uh, side effects too. But I can definitely see in my practice at this time of year And all the conversations, people are jumping straight into new, a new approach to either lose weight or look better, as opposed to setting up a sustainable approach to fuel their body to then train harder perhaps and improve their fitness. It, it's the wrong way around.

    3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:07:49

       Yeah. No, I like that. Do you think some of us are... Do you think we are training, well, not training too much, but we, we're changing so suddenly that we maybe go from nothing to two or three spinning classes a week because we wanna get fit and lose weight, but we're not proportionately increasing the amount of food that we eat because, you know, we're trying to lose weight, so I'm gonna eat less, I'm gonna work out more.

    4. JCJames Collins1:08:16

       Mm-hmm.

    5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:08:17

       Um, but if that's not done right, y- you're actually gonna really suffer from low energy. Is this something you're seeing quite a lot?

    6. JCJames Collins1:08:22

       Absolutely. Yeah, 100%, Rangan.

    7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:08:24

       Yeah.

    8. JCJames Collins1:08:24

       It's, it's something that I think people view the two sometimes in isolation, and in, and ultimately the two go absolutely hand-in-hand and in synergy. And it's just about gaining an understanding of obviously training in the right amount, but fueling your, your body in the right way. And part of the rationale really for, for the book and getting the message across with energy actually came from sport a long time ago, and it came from working with combat sports athletes, and this is, includes people like boxers, judo players, and jockeys, because they have to hit a, a certain weight to get on the scales. So typically what we would see is a few weeks out from competition, suddenly they've really reduced their weight, so they have to hit that to get on the scales to compete. The problem that we'd see is, yep, they can actually compete, but when it would come to perform, they had no energy.

    9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:09:12

       Wow.

    10. JCJames Collins1:09:12

        So the one sort of key, key aspect of this really for me is that, look, it's, it's no good looking great if you don't have the energy to d- deliver a performance. And I speak to people every day in and around London, in and around the UK that s- you know, say similar things. That you, the focus is so much on looking good, it's almost seen as we have to go through this period of hurting, this period of feeling hungry. It's almost a rite of passage. It shouldn't be.

    11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:09:38

        This deprivation.

    12. JCJames Collins1:09:39

        You have to do it. You shouldn't have to do it.

    13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:09:40

        Yeah.

    14. JCJames Collins1:09:40

        It's not a trade-off. You can fuel your body in the right way with the right foods and still maintain the aesthetic you want. It shouldn't be a trade-off, and we've almost been taught it is a trade-off, I think.

    15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:09:52

        For those people listening who may feel, "Well, you know what, James, you, you've worked with these high-level sportsmen who are performing on the world stage. You, you've, you know, dealt with CEOs and top businessmen who are looking for high performance." A lot of people may, may be thinking, "Actually, that doesn't apply to me," but I guess I would really disagree with that in the sense that we are all looking for high performance in our everyday lives, whether it's to perform well, um, on the school run, uh, whether it's to p- perform well in your relationships, whether it's to perform well when your kids are back home from school and you wanna play with them and you wanna do homework with them and you want to actually mentally engage with them. We need, we all want high performance. Uh, and I think sometimes the word high performance is associated with CEOs and sportsmen, but I think we all need to be thinking about high performance.

    16. JCJames Collins1:10:41

        We, we do. It's, uh, it was wonderfully put, and almost performance is a bit of a hard, scary word sometimes, and that's definitely an approach I've had I think early on transferring to, you know, to clients I would see on the street. They, you know, they would say the same thing about how does this transfer, and performance can be a hard word, but ultimately that's what we want. We, a lot of us, uh, most of the listeners and most of the people we see each day in our practices, they want to perform better in their jobs. We're now working longer hours in the UK. We have to perform better. We have to be fueled to cope with these increased demands. And, you know, it's the same with our family life as well. And all we're trying to do really is to use nutrition to give our bodies the best opportunity to achieve what we can, our own personal best.

    17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:11:24

        So how do we do that? So, you know, let's say someone's listening to this. They're, they're interested in improving their nutrition, but they don't know where to start, and they've read, um, conflicting blog after conflicting blog, and they've seen one person do really well on a low-fat vegan diet. They've seen somebody else do really well on, um, let's say a, a diet low in refined and processed carbs.

    18. JCJames Collins1:11:48

        Mm-hmm.

    19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:11:48

        And they think, "Well, I g- I don't know what to do. I'm confused." Are there some basics that everybody listening to this can apply?

    20. JCJames Collins1:11:55

        Yeah, I think there are. I think there, there are definitely some rules. I think we really have to knock a few, uh, myths on the head straight away, Rangan, in that we shouldn't be following an approach that gets rid of any nutrient or food group. That isn't something that's sustainable. That isn't something we do with our elite athletes. So the highest performers on the planet don't use that approach. What we do is we use different fuels at different times, and we make this approach sus- uh, sustainable. And, you know, I think firstly if we're diving into the science a little bit more that you're right, there's been this almost debate in the media over the last, let's say last five years it's really heated up in that what's the best fuel for the body? Should we be all high fat? Should we be high carb? And we're constantly wrestling, and actually our physiology hasn't changed much over the last 20 years. We use both of those energy sources as a fuel.

    21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:12:43

        Yeah.

    22. JCJames Collins1:12:44

        And actually, our body at different times prefers to use different fuel sources. When we're doing lower intensity work, walking around, our body prefers to use fat as its primary fuel. As soon as we're really increasing the intensity, maybe doing a HIIT class or doing high-intensity running, we tend to see more of a shift towards using carbohydrate as more of a fuel, but it uses both, and if we feed it both, that means we have a healthy metabolism.

    23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:13:09

        So should you feed your body certain fuel sources at different times depending on what you're doing? For example, if, you know, if you've had a busy day at work and you're gonna go and do, let's say, this spinning class or a, a circuits class, uh, you know, in the evening on your way home from work, is there something that you should be doing to make sure that you can perform well in that class?

    24. JCJames Collins1:13:33

        Yeah, absolutely, and I, I really like the approach with that, Rangan, as well 'cause we're almost going backwards from what we're fueling for, which is abs- absolutely the right approach.

    25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:13:41

        So we all need to think about when we're eating, it's not just eating, you know, i- in a sort of habitual way.

    26. JCJames Collins1:13:47

        Mm.

    27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:13:47

        It's thinking about, "Okay, what have I got going on today? Um, what do I need to- Put into my mouth to ensure that I can sustain what I need to do today. And the reason I'm asking that actually is particular because the last few months, my wife has started to work out more, and she's started to do strength training, which is not something she's, she's really focused on before. Um, and I won't say too much more. [laughs]

    28. JCJames Collins1:14:13

        Get yourself into trouble.

    29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:14:14

        I'll get myself into trouble. But essentially, she's really, uh, getting into strength training now a couple of times a week. But often she hasn't changed what her nutrition is for the rest of the day. Now, sometimes she won't eat before she works out, sometimes straight afterwards she won't eat, and a few hours later, she can really feel tired, can't concentrate, feel a little bit irritable. And I see that in my patients as well, because I guess in some way, they've not thought about what do I need fuel for today.

    30. JCJames Collins1:14:46

        That- that's, it's really well put, and we need to look at how we fuel our body over the 24 hours. And there's a couple of really important reasons for that, and just using your example with your wife and the strength training. We know that if we're doing a resistance training or strength training session, your muscles are still adapting over 24 hours later to what the workload that you've put through them, which I think is quite amazing when we talk about it.
11. 1:27:10 – 1:38:48

    Meal Timing, Habits and Why Sugar Cravings Persist

    1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:27:10

       I'll tell you one thing, you know, just before we got recording today, I was telling you that, um, I'm in London at the moment, uh, on a, on a sort of book tour.

    2. JCJames Collins1:27:18

       Right.

    3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:27:18

       And every night this week, I've got events in the evening, so speaking about my book, The Stress Solution, and then I am, you know, doing a book signing afterwards. And last year when my first book came out, I didn't have quite as many events.

    4. JCJames Collins1:27:33

       Right.

    5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:27:33

       And you know what? I'd be busy. I'd be quite excited about the event in the evening, you know, 'cause I love speaking to people, love meeting people. And I found last year what I would often do is I wouldn't get time to eat before the event because I was doing too many other things.

    6. JCJames Collins1:27:46

       Right.

    7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:27:47

       Too many interviews, and I, I realized that actually what I would do at the e- I'd be okay doing the events and doing the book signing, but then I'd come back to my hotel, and I'd be starving.

    8. JCJames Collins1:27:57

       Mm.

    9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:27:58

       So then I would eat late.

    10. JCJames Collins1:28:00

        Yeah.

    11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:28:00

        And I wouldn't sleep very well, and so I'd be exhausted the next day. And, you know, just a, just a simple thing that I've learned f- between last year and this year is now I sort of blocked out in my diary before each event a 90-minute slot where I will eat before I go.

    12. JCJames Collins1:28:16

        Great.

    13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:28:16

        And it's a simple thing, right? It, it doesn't, it sounds, like, so intuitive, but, and I, you know, I, I'm sort of pretty obsessed with nutrition.

    14. JCJames Collins1:28:24

        Yeah, right.

    15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:28:24

        Um, but I didn't really think about it, and having gone through that experience now, I'm now eating before all of these events. It, I think I'm performing better at the events because I've got a really nice, uh, you know, source of energy throughout the whole evening. And also I'm finding that I'm sleeping better because I'm not eating so late. So that's just one example of how I've tweaked things from, from last year.

    16. JCJames Collins1:28:46

        And w- and was it, did you notice that quite quickly, Rangan, when you made that change, and you said, "Right. Look, I'm gonna really focus on my nutrition before," was the difference quite quick? Did you notice?

    17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:28:56

        It was actually, if I'm honest.

    18. JCJames Collins1:28:57

        Mm.

    19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:28:57

        It was, I've been doing that maybe, well, I've done three events so far, and I've got 14 to do, so I've still got a lot to do, and I've been trying before each of these, uh, new events this year. It's actually about a month ago, I sat down, and I thought, "Actually, it's a grueling schedule in January."

    20. JCJames Collins1:29:13

        Right.

    21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:29:13

        Um, I'm really passionate about spreading the word about what I do and trying to get round the country and talk to lots of people. But at the same time, if I don't look after myself, I'm gonna struggle, and I'm gonna start burning out.

    22. JCJames Collins1:29:25

        Mm-hmm.

    23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:29:25

        And, uh, I reflected on what I did last year. I've also noticed, if I'm honest, James, is that I don't know if, if, and I'd love to talk a bit about food timing.

    24. JCJames Collins1:29:33

        Yeah.

    25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:29:34

        I know for me, I know for many of my patients, if we eat late, it can often have a knock-on consequence in terms of our, our sleep, so therefore our recovery.

    26. JCJames Collins1:29:43

        Mm-hmm.

    27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:29:44

        Um, I'm a big fan of, um, Professor Satchin Panda's research from the Salk Institute in San Diego. He talks a lot about time-restricted eating and how we've got natural circadian rhythms, and actually eating in harmony with those can be really beneficial. Uh, why do you ask, did I notice the effect quite quickly?

    28. JCJames Collins1:30:02

        Well, 'cause, uh, typically I'd expect you to say yes, really, and I, I think often there's the misconception with nutrition that you have to turn your, your diet upside down or your nutrition upside down to see an effect on your performance. But actually, just changing one meal and seeing how that's gone can have a, a massive, massive difference. We had, um, we had an event a few weeks ago. This was over at the Barbican with, uh, a society of musicians, and I think within the music industry, nutrition's still in its infancy. And they were saying, "Look, what, what's the one thing that I can change to have an impact on what we do in the evening when we're performing all around the world?" And it's getting your pre-performance routine nailed. And I said, I said, "Okay, everyone, put your hand up if you know what you eat or what you prefer to eat before you go on stage and what time it is. How many people give that some thought?" 30%.

    29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:30:52

        Wow.

    30. JCJames Collins1:30:53

        You know? So just with one, one small intervention around what you're eating before and maybe what you're drinking if you're having caffeine, anything like that, you know, you can have a huge impact on the most important part of your week, that performance on stage, and it's just a small tweak.
12. 1:38:48 – 2:01:24

    The Five-Minute Approach: Mind, Body and Heart

    1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:38:48

       And I'll give you a couple of, um, stories of where that came from. In fact, I'll tell you, I'll tell you now, actually. Um, it's, it's a funny dynamic actually chatting to you on this show-

    2. SPSpeaker1:38:57

       Yeah [laughs]

    3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:38:57

       ... because you are one of my best mates.

    4. SPSpeaker1:38:59

       Yeah [laughs] .

    5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:38:59

       And it's, um, it's-

    6. SPSpeaker1:39:01

       It's great

    7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:39:01

       ... it's hard to get out of, uh, I should be interviewing you.

    8. SPSpeaker1:39:04

       Yeah.

    9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:39:04

       You've kind of... I guess we are just having a chat, aren't we?

    10. SPSpeaker1:39:06

        Absolutely.

    11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:39:06

        And catching up.

    12. SPSpeaker1:39:07

        Yeah, yeah.

    13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:39:08

        But the five minutes, right? It's, it's come from a lot of experience, but also research.

    14. SPSpeaker1:39:13

        Mm.

    15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:39:13

        So the experiences, and there's many patients I could bring up here, but there's one in particular I always remember. Um, a 42-year-old chap who came in to see me, I don't know, seven years ago maybe now. Can't quite remember exactly when it was.

    16. SPSpeaker1:39:28

        Mm.

    17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:39:29

        But he was a little bit overweight.

    18. SPSpeaker1:39:31

        Mm.

    19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:39:31

        Struggling with energy and struggling with his mood. You know, a very typical patient that you might see in general practice.

    20. SPSpeaker1:39:38

        Yeah.

    21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:39:38

        I chatted to him for a while, and I felt that, um, his lifestyle was probably contributing in huge parts to the way he was feeling. But I don't think he was quite aware of what he was doing that was contributing, and also what he could do about it. So we went through a variety of different things. And at the end of it, he really seemed to enjoy and resonate with what I said about strength training.

    22. SPSpeaker1:39:59

        Mm.

    23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:40:00

        He said, um, "Yeah, I- I'm in, doc. Strength training, I'm gonna do it. I can see all the benefits for it. And what would you like me to do? 40 minutes, three times a week at the gym?" And I said, "Hey, look, that would be absolutely amazing if you can do that." And he goes, "Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna do it." And he, and he walks out of the surgery. You know, he's feeling good, he's got a smile on his face, and he's full of motivation.

    24. SPSpeaker1:40:21

        Mm.

    25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:40:21

        Right? He comes back a month later at the follow-up, and he walks in and I said, "Hey, look, so, um, how are you getting on?" And his body language changes. He's... He becomes a bit sunken, his shoulders roll in, and he's, he looks a bit sheepish and he says, "Hey, doc, um, I've not actually managed to go yet because, you know, work's been really busy. The gym's quite far away from work and my house. It's quite expensive, um, so I've just not done it yet." And you know, I remember thinking, I didn't think, why is he not doing what I've asked him to do? I thought, Rangan, you've clearly not given him advice that he feels is relevant in the context of his own life.

    26. SPSpeaker1:41:06

        Mm.

    27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:41:07

        And, you know, I took my jacket off and I said, "Right, I'm gonna teach you a strength workout right now where you don't need to join the gym, you don't need to buy any equipment-

    28. SPSpeaker1:41:18

        Mm

    29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:41:18

        ... and you don't even need to get changed." And he's like, "Okay." So I went through it with him.

    30. SPSpeaker1:41:23

        Mm.
13. 2:01:24 – 2:08:58

    Behavior Change Science and Making It Stick

    1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:01:24

       But when you've picked, stick to the same ones every day.

    2. SPSpeaker2:01:29

       Mm-hmm.

    3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:01:30

       And why is that? That's to do with how you create a new habit, right? So I use an analogy in the book of toothbrushing.

    4. SPSpeaker2:01:37

       Mm-hmm.

    5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:01:38

       Right? So most of us, I think, brush our teeth for two minutes in the morning and two minutes in the evening, so four minutes a day. Now, we're not doing that anymore because our parents told us to do it. Um, we're doing it as a habit. It's a routine.

    6. SPSpeaker2:01:55

       It's become ingrained.

    7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:01:55

       It's just ingrained.

    8. SPSpeaker2:01:56

       Yeah.

    9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:01:56

       It's just what you do. And I know that these five-minute health snacks can also become ingrained in exactly the same way if you follow the rules of behavior change.

    10. SPSpeaker2:02:05

        Mm-hmm.

    11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:02:05

        Right? But unfortunately, we don't follow the rules of behavior change. Unfortunately... Look, here's the reality. You could buy, at this time of year, any health book off the shelf, right? Any one, and if you follow it for two weeks, you'll feel better. You will. It doesn't matter what the diet plan is-

    12. SPSpeaker2:02:26

        Mm-hmm

    13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:02:26

        ... if I'm honest, right?

    14. SPSpeaker2:02:27

        Yeah.

    15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:02:27

        If you follow it or the movement plan or whatever, if you manage to stick to it, most of them are going to work-

    16. SPSpeaker2:02:33

        Mm-hmm

    17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:02:34

        ... in the short-

    18. SPSpeaker2:02:35

        You, you talk about making it stick, don't you? That's what you're talking about there.

    19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:02:37

        Exactly.

    20. SPSpeaker2:02:38

        Yeah. Mm-hmm.

    21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:02:38

        Exactly what I'm talking about. And there's all, there's every few parag- every few chapters I've got this theme throughout the book called making it stick.

    22. SPSpeaker2:02:44

        Mm-hmm.

    23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:02:44

        And they're these one pages-

    24. SPSpeaker2:02:46

        Mm-hmm

    25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:02:46

        ... where I teach people: how do you make this new health snack that you may like, how do you make it stick in your life?

    26. SPSpeaker2:02:52

        Yeah.

    27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:02:52

        And I give them, you know, make it very actionable, but it all comes from behavior change science.

    28. SPSpeaker2:02:56

        Mm-hmm.

    29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:02:56

        And one of the ways you do it, I've already mentioned about making it easy-

    30. SPSpeaker2:03:01

        Yeah
14. 2:08:58 – 2:28:59

    Light, Circadian Rhythms and Sleep with Linda Geddes

    1. LGLinda Geddes2:08:58

       Our biology is kind of set up to work with this 24-hour cycle of light and darkness, and if you, if you mess with that Things start to happen to, first of all, to these circadian rhythms, so these 24-hour fluctuations in our biology. So if you're exposed to light at night, one thing that does is it pushes your circadian rhythms later. That's not necessarily a bad thing unless you have to wake up to go to work or school the next morning. And if you're kind of seeing light late at night and your, your circadian rhythms are being pushed later, that means the time when you feel sleepy and want to go to sleep is pushed late- later. So you potentially get less sleep, and if you get less sleep, that's gonna have an impact on your alertness, on your mental functioning, on your mood. But it's more than that because bright light is also a kind of brain stimulant. It, it boosts your alertness. So if you see light late at night, you're going to feel more awake. But also, if you don't see light in the daytime, you're going to feel more sluggish and, and less alert. And there are increasingly studies showing that bright light actually, it literally wakes us up. So, you know, we now spend 90% of our daytimes indoors, where the light levels are, like, an order of magnitude lower than they out- are outdoors. Today is kind of gray and rainy and gloomy. Illuminance or, or brightness is measured in this unit called lux, and on a day like today, it's about 5,000 lux outside. On a bright, sunny day in the middle of summer, it could be as high as 100,000 lux outside. But indoors, in the kind of standard office, it might be 2 to 300 lux. So it's, you know, it's hugely dimmer inside than it is outside.

    2. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:10:38

       So even, even on a cloudy day-

    3. LGLinda Geddes2:10:40

       Even on a cloudy day

    4. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:10:40

       ... we have evolved to actually have at least 5, 10,000 lux of light exposure to our, you know, through our eyes into our body, yet, you know, for many of us living our, these 90% indoor lifestyles now, we might be getting only 2, 300 lux. So what is the implication of that? What does that mean for us?

    5. LGLinda Geddes2:11:00

       Well, okay, so, so light can influence the timing of those circadian rhythms. Um, it can also influence the amplitude of how, of, of those rhythms, so how kind of high the peaks are and low the troughs are. So what you see in people who don't get outside much, and particularly this has been studied in hospital patients and, and people as they, as they age, so elderly pa- patients in care homes, their circadian rhythms kind of flatten. So there's less difference between nighttime and daytime in their biology, and that is linked to, um, poorer health. So things like depression, increased risk of dementia, that sort of thing.

    6. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:11:37

       It's incredible to think about this because, you know, I think about, you know, from what you just said, I think about my mother, and Mum lives by herself now, and she's, you know, she's become a lot more immobile, so she'll spend a lot of time inside most of the day. And, you know, she also loves this iPad that I got her a few years ago. And so not only is she not exposing herself to this bright, natural light in the day, often in the evening, she's exposing herself to bright artificial light, which, again, in many ways is sort of doing the Las Vegas thing on herself, right?

    7. LGLinda Geddes2:12:11

       Mm-hmm.

    8. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:12:11

       So it's almost flipping what we should be doing. And the thing I've, I've spent a lot of time thinking about over the last few years, and it was really magnified when I was reading your book, is when we talk about health, you know, the, the, the popular media narrative around health always revolves around, uh, food and movement. And I've been quite keen to sort of expand that out to include sleep and stress as well, but I think there's a really strong case that actually light and our light exposure is another core pillar of health that maybe we have not been thinking enough about.

    9. LGLinda Geddes2:12:49

       Yes, I think it is. And, and our light exposure also plays into those things, especially the kind of movement side of things, and stress, actually. Because, you know, if you... In my book, I, I kind of strongly advocate for very small changes to your life, but basically it m- involves kind of brightening your daytime and darkening your evenings and nighttimes. But one way, one brilliant way to brighten your daytime is just to get outside. Do, do a little bit of exercise. Get up from your desk. You know, if you start cycling to work or walking to work, even getting off the bus or train a stop early and just doing that, like, last 10 minutes walking, you know, you're getting exercise. You're also out in nature, hopefully, um, and that's a kind of stress buster. And, you know, there's increasing evidence that spending all day just sitting down, just not getting up and down, again, is, is really harmful to our health. And again, if you're just making little efforts to just get up, just go for a walk around the block at lunchtime or, you know, on your, on your breaks, um, I think that can make a difference. It'll certainly make a difference to your alertness during the daytime, but you're also strengthening those circadian rhythms, which are so important for our health.

    10. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:13:54

        Absolutely. I mean, you say you would, you would imagine, but I use this as one of the tips I give my patients in practice, and it's something I wrote about in my first book, and, and there was a chapter called Embrace Morning Light, and it was in the sleep section. And the whole point was to say, when we talk about sleep, we're often thinking about what we do in that hour, hour and a half before bed, and of course, that can be incredibly important, but we forget about what we do in the morning. And I remember when, I've heard this from patients, but I also have got quite a few messages on Twitter from people after, um, they read Embrace Morning Light in The 4 Pillar Plan. They said, "I've not been sleeping for, for years very well, and I now go for a 20-minute walk outside in the morning, and my sleep's got better." So although there are other things that could be playing a role, it really is that powerful. Getting outside in the morning is, is really, really powerful, isn't it, for setting that circadian rhythm? And I think you had some, let me see if I've got it here, in your book. Um, I- I've, I've actually scribbled all over your book. I hope you don't mind. It's, it's because there were so many great-

    11. LGLinda Geddes2:14:57

        [laughs]

    12. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:14:58

        ... great things to talk about.

    13. LGLinda Geddes2:14:59

        That's fine. I do lots of book scribbling.

    14. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:15:00

        Um, and y- you talked about this German study that suggested that exposure to bright light in the morning boosted people's reaction speeds and maintained them at a higher level throughout the day, even after that bright light was switched off.

    15. LGLinda Geddes2:15:12

        Yeah.

    16. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:15:13

        And you also mentioned another study, when exposure to- Bright morning lights, um, basically those who are exposed to it between 8 a- 8:00 AM and noon, it took them an average of 18 minutes to fall asleep at night compared to 45 minutes in the low light exposure group. So this is not just, hey, a bit of light in the day. This is actually changing our biology.

    17. LGLinda Geddes2:15:36

        There's actually another study that I cite in the book. It's a lab-based study, and it showed that if you expose people to bright lights during the daytime, they sleep better the following night. They get more deep sleep, and they get less fragmented sleep. And if they do wake up in the night, they feel less tired the next morning, even though they've been waking up at night. So I think it improves the quality of your sleep, but then there's the mood s- there's the mood side of things as well. We know that larks, so people who tend to be early birds, wake up early, want to go to sleep earlier at night, tend to be less prone to depression and mental illness, and actually lots of, there's lots of other advantages, health advantages to being a lark. Um, but possibly some of this is because they're, you know, if you're exposed to bright morning light, it push- it pulls your circadian rhythms earlier. So even if you're a night owl, if you see lots of bright early morning light, your, your circadian rhythms are shifted earlier. And I think why that's important for mood is that mood has a 24-hour rhythm, like, um, like sleep and like all these other things, and your, like, lowest point of mood tends to be around 4:00 AM, 4:30, 5:00 AM, um, you know, before you wake up usually, and then you're kind of like going up this slope and getting happier and happier during the daytime. If you shift your circadian rhythms earlier and then you wake up at, say, like, 6:00 AM, 7:00 AM, you're already quite a long way up that slope towards a happier mood. But if you're kind of shifted later, if you're kind of like a night owl, or you're, you're making yourself a night owl by your light exposure, when you wake up, you're going to be closer towards that trou- trough of, of low mood.

    18. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:17:21

        It, it's interesting, isn't it? And I think let's explore chronotypes, 'cause I think that's super fascinating for people, this idea of morning larks and night owls.

    19. LGLinda Geddes2:17:28

        Mm.

    20. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:17:29

        Um, as you were, as you were describing that, I sort of wondered to myself, is it that, uh, you know, night owls are more prone to low mood because of their biology, or is it because modern society is set up in a way that, you know, that basically is preferential to be a lark, right? I am a lark. I'm a, I'm an early bird. Uh, I like getting up early. I'm a, I'm a total morning person, so, you know, I can get up and sort of, you know, get a hold of the day, and by lunchtime I've done loads and loads of work and I feel great. Um, whereas I've got friends and, and, and family who, who w- who don't really operate like that. And, you know, do you feel that if you don't have that chronotype, you are at a disadvantage in the way the world is set up?

    21. LGLinda Geddes2:18:17

        Yes, I absolutely do. And teenagers are a really classic example of that, because teenagers naturally shift their circadian rhythms later. They can't help it. This is just something that happens at adolescence. So asking a teenager to get up at 7:00 AM to get ready for school is like asking you or I to get up at 5:00 AM, and there's no one, no reason ... It's no surprise they feel kind of groggy and, and cross when they get up in the morning.

    22. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:18:41

        It's, it's funny you say that actually, 'cause it's, it's ... What, we're recording this at the start of September, so schools have just gone back, and my nephew actually has just moved to secondary school. And after I dropped the kids off at school this morning, I saw him at his new bus stop, 'cause he's gotta get, like, a 30-minute bus to his secondary school, and he was half asleep and he was yawning. Now, he's only 11 or 12 years old, so he's not quite a teenager. But I thought, if this was to continue for a few years, I mean, is that the best way to start off a teenager in their school day? You know, I mean, are schools adapting to this research? Are they evolving to this? Do you, do-

    23. LGLinda Geddes2:19:19

        Very, very slowly. Um, so in the UK we're, we're relatively lucky actually on international terms, or our teenagers are relatively lucky. 'Cause in, in the US, on the Continent, schools typically start a lot earlier. You know, some schools in the US, at least they used to, start at sort of 8:00 AM, 7:30 AM, some of them. Um, and there have been a number of studies now in the US looking at what happens if you shift the school starting time a bit later, more like 8:30 or 9:00 AM, which is what happens in the UK, and it has a really big impact on their-

    24. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:19:49

        Wow

    25. LGLinda Geddes2:19:50

        ... on their, um, absenteeism, and on their, on their grades as well actually. There's been less research on this in the UK because schools here start more like 8:30 or 9:00 AM, but certainly there are some schools that are starting to take this seriously. There's a sc- there's a private school in London which is allowing its sixth formers to start at, I think, 1:00 PM or 2:00 PM and do, you know, do all their learning in the afternoons and early evenings. Um, but there was a study of a secondary school in the UK which changed its start time to 10:00 AM, and again, you saw this, you saw this drop in absenteeism. So kids were less likely to be kind of coming in or not going to school 'cause they were sick. Um, but also their GCSE grades increased following this change. They've now changed back. I, I'm not sure why they changed back, but they, they changed back and then they saw a, a dip again.

    26. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:20:40

        It, it's fascinating, that, because on one level society would probably deem late starters a bit lazy, a bit, um-

    27. LGLinda Geddes2:20:48

        Yes

    28. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:20:48

        ... you know.

    29. LGLinda Geddes2:20:48

        And actually, but there has been a study that has shown-

    30. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:20:50

        Really?
15. 2:28:59 – 2:45:05

    Geddes' Candlelight Experiment

    1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:28:59

       So why don't, you know, you've, you've tantalizingly, um, told the listeners and the viewers about this experiment that you did. So first of all-

    2. LGLinda Geddes2:29:07

       Yeah

    3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:29:07

       ... tell me what was the

Episode duration: 2:58:40