Breathing for Mental & Physical Health & Performance | Dr. Jack Feldman

(Music) Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, my guest is Dr. Jack Feldman. Dr. Jack Feldman is a distinguished professor of neurobiology at the University of California Los Angeles. He is known for his pioneering work on the neuroscience of breathing. We are all familiar with breathing and how essential breathing is to life. We require oxygen, and it is only by breathing that we can bring oxygen to all the cells of our brain and body. However, as the work from Dr. Feldman and colleagues tells us, breathing is also fundamental to organ health and function at an enormous number of other levels. In fact, how we breathe, including how often we breathe, the depth of our breathing, and the ratio of inhales to exhales, actually predicts how focused we are, how easily we get into sleep, how easily we can exit from sleep. Dr. Feldman gets credit for the discovery of the two major brain centers that control the different patterns of breathing. Today, you'll learn about those brain centers and the patterns of breathing they control, and how those different patterns of breathing influence all aspects of your mental and physical life. What's especially wonderful about Dr. Feldman and his work is that it not only points to the critical role of respiration in disease, in health, and in daily life, but he's also a practitioner. He understands how to leverage particular aspects of the breathing process in order to bias the brain to be in particular states that can benefit us all. Whether or not you are a person who already practices breath work, or whether or not you're somebody who simply breathes to stay alive, by the end of today's discussion, you're going to understand a tremendous amount about how the breathing system works and how you can leverage that breathing system toward particular goals in your life. Dr. Feldman shares with us his own particular breathing protocols that he uses, and he suggests different avenues for exploring respiration in ways that can allow you, for instance, to be more focused for work, to disengage from work and high-stress endeavors, to calm down quickly. And indeed, he explains not only how to do that, but all the underlying science in ways that will allow you to customize your own protocols for your needs. All the guests that we bring on the Huberman Lab Podcast are considered at the very top of their fields. Today's guest, Dr. Feldman, is not only at the top of his field, he founded the field. Prior to his coming into neuroscience from the field of physics, there really wasn't much information about how the brain controls breathing. There was a little bit of information, but we can really credit Dr. Feldman and his laboratory for identifying the particular brain areas that control different patterns of breathing, and how that information can be leveraged towards health, high performance, and for combating disease. So today's conversation, you're going to learn a tremendous amount from the top researcher in this field. It's a really wonderful and special opportunity to be able to share his knowledge with you, and I know that you're not only going to enjoy it, but you are going to learn a tremendous amount. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Thesis. Thesis is a company that makes nootropics. Now, I've talked before on the podcast and elsewhere about the fact that I don't really like the term nootropics, which means smart drugs, because smart means many different things in many different contexts. You've got creativity, you've got focus, you've got task-switching. So the idea that there would be one pill or one formula that could m- make us smarter and better at all those things at once just doesn't stand up to logic. In fact, different chemicals and different brain systems underlie our ability to be creative or our ability to task-switch or to be focused. And that's the basis of Thesis. Thesis is a company that makes targeted nootropics for specific outcomes. In other words, specific nootropics to get your brain into states that are ideal for what you're trying to accomplish. Thesis uses very high-quality ingredients, many of which I've talked about before on the podcast, such as DHA, ginkgo biloba, and phosphatidylserine. I talked about those in the ADHD podcast. Those are some of the ingredients in their so-called Logic formula. There's a lot of research showing that ginkgo biloba can be very helpful for increasing levels of focus, and even for people with ADHD. However, I can't take it. When I take it, I get really bad headaches, and I know some people who do and some people who don't get headaches when they take ginkgo biloba. This is a great example of why nootropics need to be personalized to the individual. Thesis gives you the ability to try different blends over the course of a month and discover which nootropic formulas work best for your unique brain chemistry and genetics, and which ones are best for particular circumstances. So they have a formulation, for instance, which is Motivation. They have another formulation which is Clarity. They've got another formulation which is Logic. And each of these is formulated specifically to you and formulated to a specific end point or goal state of mind for your particular work. So as a consequence, the formulations that you arrive at will have a very high probability of giving you the results that you want. In addition to that detailed level of personalization, Thesis takes it a step further by offering free consultations with a brain coach to help you optimize your experience and dial in your favorite and best formulas. I've been using Thesis for close to six months now and I can confidently say that their nootropics have been a total game changer for me. My favorite of the formulations is their Motivation formula that they've tailored to me. When I use that formula, I have very clear state of mind, I have even energy, and I use that early in the day until the early afternoon to get the bulk of my most important work done. To get your own personalized nootropic starter kit, you can go online to takethesis.com/huberman, take a three-minute quiz, and Thesis will send you four different formulas to try in your first month. That's takethesis.com/huberman and use the code Huberman at checkout to get 10% off your first order.Today's episode is also brought to us by Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens is an all-in-one vitamin mineral probiotic drink. I've been using Athletic Greens since 2012, and so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast. The reason I started taking Athletic Greens and the reason I still take Athletic Greens is that it covers all of my vitamin, mineral, and probiotic foundational needs. There's now a wealth of data showing that not only do we need vitamins and minerals, but we also need to have a healthy gut microbiome. The gut microbiome is a set of nerve connections that link the microbiota, literally microbacteria that live in our guts and that are healthy for us, with our brain function, and our brain is also talking to our gut in a bidirectional way, and that conversation is vital for metabolism, for the endocrine system, meaning the hormonal system, and for overall mood and cognition. There's just so much data now pointing to the fact that we need a healthy gut microbiome and a healthy brain-gut axis, as it's called. By taking Athletic Greens once or twice a day, I can get the vitamins, the minerals, and the probiotics needed for all those systems to function optimally, and again, it tastes great. It's great for me. In fact, if people ask me, "What's the one supplement that I should take?" and they can only take one supplement, I recommend Athletic Greens for all the reasons I mentioned. If you'd like to try Athletic Greens, you can go to athleticgreens.com/huberman to claim a special offer. They're giving you five free travel packs, which are these little travel packs that make it easy to mix up Athletic Greens while you're on the road or in the car or on the plane, et cetera, and a year's supply of vitamin D3 K2. There is also a wealth of evidence showing that vitamin D3 is vital to our overall health and K2 is important for cardiovascular health and other systems as well. Most of us are not getting enough vitamin D3 or K2 even if we're getting some sunshine. So again, if you go to athleticgreens.com/huberman, you get the five free travel packs, a year's supply of vitamin D3 K2. Athleticgreens.com/huberman is where you go to claim that special offer. Today's episode is also brought to us by Headspace. Headspace is a meditation app that's supported by 25 published studies and benefits from over 600,000 five-star reviews. I've long been a believer in meditating. There is so much data now pointing to the fact that regular meditation leads to reduced stress levels, heightened levels of focus, better task switching and cognitive ability. It just goes on and on. I mean, there are literally thousands of peer-reviewed studies now and quality journals pointing to the benefits of having a regular meditation practice. The problem with meditation is many people, including myself, have struggled with sticking to that practice. With Headspace, it makes it very easy to start and continue a meditation protocol. The reason for that is they have meditations that are of different lengths and different styles so you don't get bored of meditation, and even if you just have five minutes, there are five-minute meditations. If you've got 20 minutes, which would be even better, there are 20-minute meditations. Ever since I started using Headspace, I've been consistent about my meditation. I do meditation anywhere from five to seven times a week in my best weeks, and sometimes that drops to three, and then I find with Headspace I can quickly get back to doing meditation every day because of the huge variety of great meditations that they have. If you want to try Headspace, you can go to headspace.com/specialoffer, and if you do that, you can get a free one-month trial with Headspace's full library of meditations for every situation. That's the best deal offered by Headspace right now. So again, if you're interested, go to headspace.com/specialoffer. One quick mention before we dive into the conversation with Dr. Feldman. During today's episode, we discuss a lot of breathwork practices, and by the end of the episode, all those will be accessible to you. However, I am aware that there are a number of people out there that want to go even further into the science and practical tools of breathwork, and for that reason, I want to mention a resource to you. There is a cost associated with this resource, but it's a terrific platform for learning about breathwork practices and for building a number of different routines that you can do or that you could teach. It's called OurBreathWorkCollective. I'm not associated with the Breathwork Collective, but Dr. Feldman is an advisor to the group, and they offer daily live guided breathing sessions and an on-demand library that you can practice any time, free workshops on breathwork, and these are really developed by experts in the field, including Dr. Feldman. So as I mentioned, I'm not on their advisory board, but I do know them and their work and it is of the utmost quality. So anyone wanting to learn or teach breathwork could really benefit from this course, I believe. If you'd like to learn more, you can click on the link in the show notes or visit ourbreathworkcollective.com/huberman and use the code HUBERMAN at checkout, and if you do that, they'll offer you $10 off the first month. Again, it's ourbreathworkcollective.com/huberman to access the Our Breath Collective. And now for my conversation with Dr. Jack Feldman. Thanks for joining me today.