Dr. Andy Galpin: Optimal Nutrition & Supplementation for Fitness | Huberman Lab Guest Series

(Upbeat music) Welcome to the Huberman Lab Guest Series, where I and an expert guest 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's episode marks the sixth and final of the six-episode series on fitness, exercise, and performance. And today's discussion is all about nutrition and supplementation to maximize your fitness, exercise, and performance goals. Dr. Andy Galpin, I'm super excited to discuss today's topic, which is nutrition and supplementation for performance and recovery. And I'm particularly excited about this conversation, because I've been interested in supplementation and nutrition for performance really since my teens. But also because in recent years, we've witnessed a massive transformation in the general public in terms of their view of supplementation and nutrition. First of all, more people are thinking about nutrition, what is good nutrition, what is not. A very barbed wire topic, as you know, but there are some truths in there that we'll discuss. But also supplementation. You know, whereas 10, 15 years ago, I think most people, um, would either be really into supplements, that was a small percentage of people, but the majority of people, uh, were either told or were thinking, "Oh, you know, vitamins, y- you mostly excrete them, they're just expensive urine." Nowadays, it seems that many people, including many of my colleagues and physicians all the way down to s- sports performance experts are taking and making recommendations about certain supplements. And so, the way that I like to think about supplements is that they aren't necessarily just supplements, which makes it sound like they are augmenting what should already be there but you're not quite getting enough of. But indeed, a lot of these things we call supplements are very potent compounds that can transform our ability to perform in the short term, to recover from exercise, and that can really shape brain chemistry, hormone patterns acutely and when taken long term. So I'm very excited about today's topic, and to be able to try and sort through this, let's call it a, a cloud, hopefully not a storm, but this cloud of supplements that are out there. Because indeed, many of them are excellent and can provide us a lot, some of them are terrible, and then some just don't do anything and therefore are terrible because, uh, either they have side effects or because they're very expensive and they don't do anything. And then, of course, within the realm of nutrition, there's an equal amount of, of confusion. But that's why I'm talking to you, because you're gonna put clarity and structure and definition on these incredibly important topics.

You, you absolutely nailed it there. One of the major reasons supplements can work is because you can consume nutrients in extremely high concentrations, such that you would not get in nature through food. Having said that, you really do wanna focus on the basics, sleep, nutrition, hydration. And I'm going to get into very specific detail later with some of those things. That said, there are plenty of situations and circumstances when supplementation can do exactly what you said. Also though, because you are taking them in such high concentrations, they can also be unproductive, they can be destructive, or they can be counterproductive. So in case if you're taking a couple of supplements over here, it may actually be counteracting the benefits of some of the other supplements over there. So in the ideal situation, we would be able to work like snipers here. So we would be able to run full biological testing, so extensive blood work and saliva and urine and stool and have an in-depth analysis of your gut microbiome and your stress patterns and your time of day and your cortisol curve and, like, all the things that we do in our high performance folks. With that then, we can get extremely high precision supplementation, and, and quite honestly, our philosophy is we only give individuals exactly what they need. So even some of the standard, uh, generally safe and effective supplements, we don't really necessarily use them if there's no specific need. Uh, we've talked about the consequences of this with things like antioxidants, but even, uh, simple stuff like stimulants and other tools that are effective for recovery, we don't use them unless we have a reason. That said, that's not the reality for a lot of people. They're not gonna be able to do something like that or work with somebody who can help them in that. So there are a handful of supplements that I would consider to be in my, my 80/20 rule, which is sort of like the 20% of supplements that are gonna give you 80% of the benefit for the lowest cost. And so, what I can actually do is just sort of start there, even though this, like, burns my skin and my soul a little bit. I absolutely hate this. I am the context guy, I'm the, "It depends, it's high precision" guy, but let's be real, um, there are a number of supplements that are fairly effective and fairly cheap for a wide range of outcomes. Uh, so this is for general public, this is for people who wanna do the three buckets, right? You want to look a certain way, so supplements that can enhance muscle growth and fat loss. Um, non-hormonal based supplements, of course. Supplements that can improve energy or physical performance. Again, from everything from, you know, squatting more to feeling better in your yoga class to having more energy throughout the day, to our third major bucket that we've been talking, uh, about throughout this entire series, which are longevity. So, we can cover those first, if you'd like to start there.