The Fastest Way To Calm Anxiety & Recharge Energy In Minutes | Andrew Huberman

1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:00

   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. AHAndrew Huberman0:32

   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. 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 [breathing] . 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 the- 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, uh, 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 in, 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 a hundred and ninety dollars, 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 Chatterjee5:19

   Yeah.

4. AHAndrew Huberman5:19

   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. Uh, the gut microbiome is very important, by the way, uh, 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 Chatterjee6:36

   Yeah.

6. AHAndrew Huberman6:36

   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 Chatterjee6:44

   Yeah

8. AHAndrew Huberman6:45

   ... 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 Chatterjee6:59

   Yeah

10. AHAndrew Huberman6:59

    ... and in, and mentally and physically.

11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee7:02

    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 up-regulate our nervous system to, I guess, perform a certain task. Other times in life, we'll wanna down-regulate 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 down-regulate a lot of them.

12. AHAndrew Huberman7:34

    Right.

13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee7:34

    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 down-regulate our nervous system?

14. AHAndrew Huberman8:03

    Yeah. Well, first of all, I completely agree, and e- even if-- I, I do agree, and even if I didn't, you'd be right 'cause you're the clinician, not me, right? [chuckles] Um, well, really, and, and I should say I have tremendous respect for the clinical fields. I mean, I-- my-- 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... 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 [chuckles] 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, [chuckles] 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, and humans do this. Why do we do that? Well, there are two main, uh, reasons why we breathe. One is to bring oxygen 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, we're, 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.

15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee12:43

    Yeah.

16. AHAndrew Huberman12:43

    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 [sighs] . And then [sighs] when, when we cry or we observe someone crying, watch how they recover their breathing after sobbing, because sobbing is mostly exhaling-

17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee13:34

    Yeah

18. AHAndrew Huberman13:35

    ... the [whimpers] . And then they [sighs] [whimpers] . There's a, like a kind of a, like a reverber- 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.

19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee13:58

    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?

20. AHAndrew Huberman14:12

    Yeah. Think about it as a brake 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 [laughs] so 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.

21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee15:45

    Yeah.

22. AHAndrew Huberman15:45

    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 wellbeing. It's important that we be able to think about this stuff. So the, use the body to control the mind, and place the mind in a, in a better vantage point.

23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee16:09

    Yeah.

24. AHAndrew Huberman16:09

    That's the idea.

25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee16:10

    Yeah. Sorry to interrupt. If you are enjoying this content, there's loads more just like it on my channel, so please do take a moment to press Subscribe, hit the notification bell. And now, back to the conversation. 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.

26. AHAndrew Huberman17:00

    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, uh, 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 'cause I had, I was a bit of a wayward youth, and I was forced to do it at first. Uh, 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 as a kind of a, a... 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 is 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, uh, 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 ta- 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.

27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee20:19

    Yeah.

28. AHAndrew Huberman20:20

    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 ph- physical practices. That 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. That'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-

29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee21:41

    Yeah

30. AHAndrew Huberman21:41

    ... 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-

Episode duration: 23:26