The Keys to Healthy Living — with Andrew Huberman

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0:01:19 Episode 313,
0:01:20 through and through is Iarico,
0:01:22 covering Detroit, Michigan in 1913,
0:01:24 the first travel gas station opened
0:01:28 and the U.S. Post Office began parcel post deliveries.
0:01:28 True to it.
0:01:30 I like to be supportive of the post office
0:01:33 and I’m constantly paying mail escorts.
0:01:36 That’s good.
0:01:39 Go, go, go!
0:01:49 Welcome to the 313th episode of the PropG pod.
0:01:52 We are still on holiday as it’s August.
0:01:53 I’m going very European.
0:01:55 As a matter of fact, my other podcast, PIVITCH,
0:01:57 I had to just slip in a PIVITCH yesterday
0:01:59 and I was still August and I’m like,
0:02:02 what’s the point of Scott Free August if you have Scott?
0:02:03 It’s kind of the key to a luxury brand,
0:02:06 which I am not, but is scarcity.
0:02:08 And also the key to living past,
0:02:10 whatever middle of the past today,
0:02:13 is taking a lot of vacation.
0:02:14 Let’s bring this to me.
0:02:15 Let’s bring this to me.
0:02:19 I have basically from the age of 27 to 47,
0:02:22 pretty much didn’t do anything but work.
0:02:24 Cost me my hair, cost me my marriage.
0:02:25 And it was worth it.
0:02:26 It was worth it.
0:02:28 Okay, anyways, still on holiday.
0:02:30 So in place of our regular scheduled program,
0:02:33 we have a real treat for you.
0:02:35 One of the top podcasters in the world
0:02:39 and sort of talk about having a moment.
0:02:42 Here with us today in the podcast studio is Andrew Huberman.
0:02:45 We discuss with Andrew common misconceptions
0:02:47 surrounding health, nutrition and exercise.
0:02:49 And also ask a lot of questions
0:02:52 about testosterone replacement therapy.
0:02:53 Asking for a friend.
0:02:55 So with that, we hope you enjoy our conversation
0:02:59 with the founder and host of the Huberman Lab,
0:03:00 Andrew Huberman.
0:03:04 – Professor Huberman, what does this podcast find you?
0:03:06 – I am currently in Los Angeles.
0:03:07 Where are you?
0:03:11 – I’m in London, but I was telling the team here.
0:03:13 I was asked if there was anyone in the world
0:03:17 I wanted to have on this podcast, who would it be?
0:03:21 And of course I said Barack Obama, but you were number two.
0:03:23 You literally, we’ve been trying to figure this out
0:03:24 for six months.
0:03:26 So we really are excited to have you here.
0:03:28 Let’s bust right into it.
0:03:30 We’d love it if you could start us off with
0:03:33 two or three insights regarding
0:03:35 sort of slang conventional thinking
0:03:36 about our physiological health.
0:03:39 What are some things that we think we know
0:03:43 that we don’t about our health, our nutrition, exercise?
0:03:45 Go wherever you want.
0:03:46 – Sure.
0:03:49 Well, the first one I think will be surprising
0:03:52 only to some, but I think nonetheless
0:03:55 is really important to start off with, which is it?
0:04:00 There is so much evidence, both real world experience,
0:04:03 as well as now just fantastic science
0:04:06 to support the fact that sleep is the foundation
0:04:08 of our mental health and physical health.
0:04:11 And of course, by extension, performance in any endeavor.
0:04:16 Academic, cognitive, musical, mathematical, sports, et cetera.
0:04:17 Why do I say this?
0:04:20 Well, let’s just take the mental health piece.
0:04:24 There’s a beautiful study published not long ago
0:04:26 looking at over 80,000 subjects
0:04:30 where they essentially looked at these people’s relationship
0:04:34 to light during the daytime exposure to sunlight,
0:04:36 exposure to artificial light,
0:04:38 as well as exposure to light at night.
0:04:40 Something that we know disrupts things
0:04:43 like melatonin production, melatonin being important
0:04:46 for making us sleepy, and a bunch of other things too.
0:04:48 And essentially what they found
0:04:52 was that there are two separable components to light,
0:04:54 our sleep patterns and our mental health.
0:04:56 And the basic takeaway is the following.
0:05:00 People who strive to get ample amounts of light,
0:05:03 especially sunlight in their eyes early in the day,
0:05:05 as well as people who just have bright lights on
0:05:08 and get outside for a walk every once in a while,
0:05:09 look outside a window,
0:05:11 step onto a balcony during the day,
0:05:15 have far superior mental health than people that don’t.
0:05:17 In addition, people that suffer from,
0:05:18 and they looked at a huge number
0:05:21 of different mental health conditions,
0:05:26 depression, anxiety, PTSD, manic bipolar disorder,
0:05:28 those people experience diminished symptoms
0:05:30 of all those conditions.
0:05:32 Okay, so that itself is very important.
0:05:33 And it’s also important to point out
0:05:36 that screen light rarely is bright enough.
0:05:38 And indoor lights rarely are bright enough.
0:05:39 If you’re lucky enough to work in an environment
0:05:42 with a lot of big windows, floor to ceiling windows,
0:05:45 and get a few walks during the day, you’re doing great.
0:05:48 But most people are in relatively dark environments
0:05:51 during the day as it relates to this mental health thing.
0:05:53 The second thing that’s really important
0:05:57 is that darkness at night is a separable,
0:05:59 but also important component.
0:06:01 And I don’t think it gets as much attention
0:06:03 and that it really deserves attention.
0:06:04 For instance, in this study,
0:06:08 they showed that people that get nighttime light exposure
0:06:11 suffer far worse symptoms of all mental health conditions
0:06:12 than people that don’t.
0:06:13 And this is separate and different
0:06:15 from daytime light exposure.
0:06:17 This is what’s important to understand.
0:06:19 In addition, people that really strive
0:06:21 to darken their nighttime environment,
0:06:22 dim the lights towards sleep,
0:06:25 keep the sleep environment dark,
0:06:28 enjoying many, many physical and mental health benefits.
0:06:30 In fact, there was a study published
0:06:31 in the Persings and the National Academy of Sciences
0:06:34 not long ago that showed that even a fairly
0:06:37 lower intensity light in the room,
0:06:40 as one sleeps with eyes closed, presumably,
0:06:41 unless they have an eye mask on,
0:06:44 will disrupt morning glucose levels.
0:06:45 It’s a dramatic effect.
0:06:46 And so what is this telling us?
0:06:49 Does this mean we have to be in pitch black at night
0:06:52 and we have to be in bright sunlight all day long?
0:06:55 No, what this means is that we should all strive
0:06:58 to get some sunlight in our eyes early in the day
0:07:00 to brighten our work environment,
0:07:04 maybe include if you suffer from lack of energy
0:07:07 or diminished mood, whatever time of year,
0:07:09 not just in Scandinavia and the depths of winter,
0:07:12 but maybe invest a small amount of money,
0:07:14 and by the way, I don’t have any relationship
0:07:16 to these companies, a small amount of money
0:07:18 into a 10,000 lux LED.
0:07:20 These run $100 or less.
0:07:23 You can even use a ring light that’s designed for selfies.
0:07:25 You’re getting more photons, more light energy.
0:07:27 We know that this improves mental health
0:07:29 and physical health focus and energy
0:07:31 in dramatic ways, sunlight being the best.
0:07:33 And if people are concerned about excessive sunlight
0:07:35 because of sunburn, we can just quickly say
0:07:37 that when the sun is low in the sky,
0:07:39 low solar angle sunlight, as it’s called,
0:07:41 the UV index is very low.
0:07:42 So getting outside and getting some sunlight
0:07:44 in your eyes early in the day
0:07:47 is a absolutely important thing to do
0:07:48 for our mental health and physical health.
0:07:51 And then at night, making some attempt to dim the lights,
0:07:53 if you have to be on a screen, dim the screen,
0:07:54 there are other things one could do,
0:07:56 but dimming the lights and trying to make
0:07:58 that sleep environment dark,
0:07:59 the most inexpensive way to do that
0:08:03 is with a comfortable eye mask or something of that sort.
0:08:04 This seemed like simple things,
0:08:05 but what we’re really talking about here
0:08:09 is a primordial mechanism that is in all of us,
0:08:13 whereby photons, light energy, arriving at the eye
0:08:15 and then passing through the lens of the eye to the retina,
0:08:17 which is the essentially a piece of your brain,
0:08:19 believe it or not, you have two pieces of brain
0:08:21 lining the back of your eyes like pie crust,
0:08:23 activates a specialized set of neurons,
0:08:26 they’re called intrinsically photosensitive melanopsin
0:08:27 ganglion cells, but the name doesn’t matter.
0:08:30 And then they transmit an electrical signal
0:08:32 to an area of your brain that sits right above the roof
0:08:35 of your mouth called the suprachiasmatic nucleus
0:08:37 that sets in motion an enormous number
0:08:40 of things within your brain and body,
0:08:41 the release of certain hormones,
0:08:44 the release of certain neurotransmitters,
0:08:47 things like dopamine, serotonin, certain peptides,
0:08:49 that essentially if you do that in the early part of the day
0:08:52 and a few times throughout the day, that light exposure,
0:08:57 you’re going to be more awake, feel better,
0:08:58 physically and mentally throughout the day,
0:09:02 and you will have an easier time falling asleep at night.
0:09:05 Now, the tricky thing is that light exposure
0:09:07 in the evening and at night,
0:09:10 it doesn’t take very much in order to disrupt,
0:09:12 for instance, your melatonin activity.
0:09:13 There’s a wonderful laboratory
0:09:16 at Harvard Medical School, Charles Eisler’s lab,
0:09:18 that has shown that even 12 seconds
0:09:20 of very bright light in the middle of the night
0:09:21 will quash your melatonin levels.
0:09:24 Now, if that happens every once in a while, no big deal.
0:09:26 But if you’re somebody who is in a bright light environment
0:09:29 at 10 p.m. and having trouble staying asleep,
0:09:31 you know, you go to sleep at midnight, 12 30,
0:09:33 and then you are waking up at three in the morning.
0:09:36 Chances are your evening and nighttime light exposure
0:09:37 has something to do with that.
0:09:38 There could be other things too, right?
0:09:40 Too much caffeine late in the day, et cetera.
0:09:43 And this is a big part of what I believe is related
0:09:45 to the mental health crisis that we’re seeing
0:09:49 not just in young people, but in adults as well,
0:09:50 where people are waking up at the middle of the night,
0:09:51 they’re looking at their phone, you know,
0:09:54 then in the morning, they’re not feeling rested,
0:09:56 then they’re overindulging in caffeine.
0:09:57 And by the way, I love caffeine.
0:10:00 I’m a heavy user of caffeine, I’ll admit that.
0:10:02 Overindulging in caffeine, but they’re staying indoors
0:10:04 and putting on sunglasses, driving to work.
0:10:06 They’re in an environment that’s well lit enough
0:10:08 for them to, you know, carry out their duties,
0:10:11 but they’re never getting this strong circadian signal.
0:10:13 And we know that basically every mental health condition
0:10:15 is made worse by this type of behavior.
0:10:17 And that every mental health condition
0:10:18 that we are aware of is made better
0:10:21 through these simple zero cost adjustments
0:10:24 to our interactions with light.
0:10:26 – So Andrew, now do exercise,
0:10:27 and then I’m gonna ask you
0:10:29 to do the same thing for nutrition.
0:10:32 So with respect to exercise, it’s very clear,
0:10:36 moving our body, okay, exercise is essential
0:10:38 for immediate and long-term health.
0:10:39 And I don’t have to list off the reasons.
0:10:41 Cardiovascular health, which of course relates
0:10:42 to brain health.
0:10:44 As a neuroscientist, people ask me,
0:10:47 what’s the best thing I can do for my brain?
0:10:48 Keep my memory, et cetera, as I age
0:10:51 and be healthier mentally.
0:10:53 And it’s simple, get great sleep every night.
0:10:56 And then I explain one of the ways to do that.
0:10:58 And if you don’t get great sleep for a night,
0:11:00 have some things in place that we can talk about
0:11:01 to adjust for that.
0:11:03 So sleep is the foundation of that.
0:11:05 But then it’s exercise.
0:11:06 We need to move.
0:11:07 What does the literature tell us?
0:11:11 The literature tells us that we should all walk a lot.
0:11:12 Why?
0:11:14 Well, walking is, if you’re doing it briskly,
0:11:16 is that, you know, comes zone two cardio
0:11:18 that we hear a lot about these days.
0:11:22 That’s great for everything for metabolic health.
0:11:24 So managing glucose insulin and mitochondrial health,
0:11:25 et cetera, et cetera.
0:11:28 But we can break things down into a simple formula.
0:11:30 That I’ve been fortunate enough to have followed
0:11:32 for the last 30 plus years.
0:11:36 So I got into this when I was about 16, 48 now.
0:11:37 And it’s the following.
0:11:40 If you do three sessions of cardiovascular exercise
0:11:43 per week, in any format, I would say that you can do
0:11:45 without injuring yourself.
0:11:47 So for me, I like to run.
0:11:50 But actually, if I cycle, I end up with some back stuff.
0:11:51 And so I run.
0:11:53 I like to run or swim.
0:11:55 It’s a little hard to get access to a pool sometimes,
0:11:56 so I mainly run.
0:12:00 If you do three sessions per week, one longer session,
0:12:03 you know, say 45 to 60 minutes long, slow distance,
0:12:04 kind of just, you know,
0:12:06 just barely able to have a conversation,
0:12:08 maybe a little bit faster.
0:12:09 One session that’s a little bit quicker,
0:12:12 maybe 30 minutes where you’re pushing a bit harder,
0:12:14 you know, where it’s hard to hold a conversation,
0:12:16 but you’re not sprinting all out.
0:12:18 And then one session that is very brief,
0:12:21 maybe just 10, 15 minutes where, you know,
0:12:24 you do some sort of sprinting, not all out,
0:12:26 but, you know, 10, 15, maybe 20 seconds,
0:12:28 then rest 30 seconds to a minute,
0:12:32 and then repeat anywhere from five to eight times.
0:12:33 We know that if you do that,
0:12:36 you’re hitting a number of important metrics for health.
0:12:39 First of all, you’re creating that kind of base
0:12:40 of aerobic activity.
0:12:42 You know, this is not gonna prepare you
0:12:43 to be a marathoner, of course,
0:12:46 but you’re getting that zone-to-ish cardio
0:12:48 that’s good for so many things.
0:12:52 The faster clip exercise, which is slightly aerobic,
0:12:53 it was slightly anaerobic, excuse me,
0:12:56 but still mostly aerobic, where you get your heart rate up.
0:12:57 That’s gonna do a number of different things
0:13:00 in terms of your conditioning and your ability
0:13:01 to tolerate these, you know,
0:13:04 kind of more stressful cardiovascular sessions,
0:13:05 not just in these sessions, but in life.
0:13:06 And I’ll talk about that.
0:13:10 And then the shorter bout of exercise,
0:13:14 one day per week, is essentially giving you access
0:13:15 to your VO2 max, right?
0:13:17 It’s improving your VO2 max,
0:13:19 which is your ability to bring more oxygen
0:13:21 into your system overall for any number of reasons.
0:13:22 This is great.
0:13:25 Okay, let’s just translate why all that is great.
0:13:26 Well, first of all,
0:13:28 life involves sometimes taking a long walk,
0:13:30 hopefully with loved ones or a hike,
0:13:32 or you maybe carry a kid or a backpack
0:13:35 or a picnic basket some distance.
0:13:38 It sometimes involves sprinting for the flight
0:13:39 that’s gonna take off.
0:13:41 It sometimes involves doing some, you know,
0:13:43 hard work in the yard or moving stuff
0:13:46 or helping people with suitcases or helping a friend move.
0:13:49 These are like, these transfer to real-life conditions.
0:13:54 And I think the best exercise regimen has this translation
0:13:55 into real-world activities.
0:13:59 Now it’s also vital, and we know this for men and for women,
0:14:02 that we do some sort of resistance training.
0:14:03 That resistance training can be done
0:14:05 probably two or three days per week
0:14:08 and can be very effective done as whole body workouts,
0:14:11 keeping up, you know, three sets per major muscle group,
0:14:13 you know, three sets for quadriceps,
0:14:14 three sets for hamstrings,
0:14:17 three sets for biceps, triceps, back, chest shows,
0:14:18 you know, three times per week,
0:14:19 maybe two times per week
0:14:21 if somebody doesn’t have more time than that,
0:14:24 totally in a session of about an hour,
0:14:26 or you could split things up,
0:14:27 which is I’ve opted to do one day a week.
0:14:30 I, you know, train my legs ’cause that’s very important.
0:14:32 These are large muscle groups to keep strengthening the legs.
0:14:35 One day a week I train the torso,
0:14:36 you know, some pushing and some pulling,
0:14:39 you know, some dips, one to do push-ups.
0:14:40 This is also important that resistance training
0:14:42 doesn’t necessarily mean going to a gym.
0:14:43 You could have stuff at home
0:14:45 or you could just use body weight can be very effective
0:14:47 if you’re doing it correctly.
0:14:49 And then one day a week,
0:14:50 you know, your sort of biceps, triceps, calves,
0:14:53 maybe some additional abdominal work.
0:14:55 Some people like me are fans of training the neck
0:14:57 just for stability and postural purposes.
0:14:58 It’s not about having a big neck.
0:15:01 In fact, you know, I don’t think I’m particularly big neck
0:15:02 relative to my head size.
0:15:04 You know, it’s just, it’s about posture,
0:15:05 which is so important,
0:15:06 especially nowadays with all the texting.
0:15:09 Three days per week takes about an hour per session.
0:15:12 Of course there are, and most people focus
0:15:15 on the aesthetic consequences of this, right?
0:15:17 Because training with resistance
0:15:19 is one of these rare instances in life
0:15:21 where you actually get a window
0:15:22 into what the results will look like.
0:15:24 People, I should just say,
0:15:26 people who are concerned about getting too big,
0:15:27 keep this in mind.
0:15:29 You will never get any bigger
0:15:32 than you appear at any moment in the gym from a workout.
0:15:34 So that, but resistance training is peculiar
0:15:37 in the sense that, you know, like if you do a set of curls,
0:15:39 the biceps get bigger, but that’s transient,
0:15:40 but you’re getting a visual window
0:15:43 and a, you know, a sensory window
0:15:44 into what it’s going to look and feel like.
0:15:47 Should you give it proper rest and nutrition to recover?
0:15:48 That said, I should caution,
0:15:52 I think that the male audience mainly oftentimes
0:15:54 will get very excited about getting stronger
0:15:56 and will throw their bodies out of proportion
0:15:58 and will also make themselves subject to injury.
0:16:00 This is the guy with the big upper body, no legs,
0:16:03 or who is always complaining
0:16:05 because they insist on squatting heavy every time
0:16:06 or benching heavy or whatever.
0:16:09 So, but the point here is that resistance training
0:16:11 is not just about aesthetic changes.
0:16:14 It’s about keeping your muscle healthy as an organ,
0:16:15 which is vital for longevity.
0:16:18 It’s about the nerve to muscle communication
0:16:21 remaining healthy, which is vital to brain health.
0:16:24 In fact, many of the tests for things like Alzheimer’s
0:16:27 and other forms of dementia involve looking, for instance,
0:16:29 at changes in distal muscle size.
0:16:32 So, you know, atrophy of the calves as people age
0:16:34 is associated with age-related cognitive decline.
0:16:36 Now, these things are correlated, not causal,
0:16:38 but we know that people that resistance train in a way
0:16:41 that includes the distal portions of the limbs,
0:16:43 so that the calves, the legs, et cetera,
0:16:45 not just doing some, you know, pressing while seated,
0:16:47 you know, kind of simple stuff,
0:16:49 but more elaborate compound exercises,
0:16:51 being able to jump down off a block,
0:16:52 even if it’s a small block,
0:16:55 maintain cognitive function far, you know,
0:16:57 further into life than people who don’t.
0:16:58 And that has to do with the fact that, you know,
0:17:01 nerve transmission from what we call the upper motor neurons,
0:17:03 the neurons in the brain that control the lower motor neurons
0:17:06 and the spinal cord that then control the muscles,
0:17:09 that whole pathway is vital for essentially, you know,
0:17:11 brain-to-body communication.
0:17:13 And there’s feedback in a way that, you know,
0:17:15 it’s not going to reverse Alzheimer’s,
0:17:17 but it can certainly adjust the slope
0:17:18 of age-related cognitive decline,
0:17:20 which everyone experiences, you know,
0:17:23 in the correct direction, the direction you want.
0:17:24 So there’s that reason.
0:17:26 The other reason is when you have muscle
0:17:27 and you’re exercising your muscles,
0:17:29 even if you don’t have a lot of muscle,
0:17:31 you are improving your metabolic health.
0:17:33 You can eat more comfortably and know that,
0:17:36 especially protein foods are gonna be metabolized
0:17:38 and not converted into body fat stores.
0:17:41 You’re staving off different kinds of insulin resistance.
0:17:42 So what we’re basically talking about
0:17:43 is three days a week of cardiovascular training.
0:17:46 It might sound like a lot, but it’s one one hour session,
0:17:48 a 30-minute session and a 15-minute session.
0:17:51 And then we’re talking about two or three hours
0:17:53 per week of resistance training.
0:17:54 And that might sound like a lot,
0:17:56 but it goes by pretty quickly.
0:17:58 And, you know, there are a lot of different routines
0:17:59 for this out there.
0:18:00 You don’t need to purchase one.
0:18:02 Actually, at our podcast website,
0:18:04 we put a foundational fitness program
0:18:06 that’s zero cost to access.
0:18:07 You don’t even need to sign up.
0:18:08 If you want to sign up for a newsletter, you can,
0:18:10 but you just go to huberunlab.com,
0:18:13 go to newsletter, and just see the foundational fitness
0:18:15 protocol sets and wraps alternatives
0:18:18 for different exercise choice.
0:18:21 It is very important, and this is among the more important
0:18:23 points about exercise that I don’t hear often enough,
0:18:26 one of the best ways to get and stay in excellent shape
0:18:29 is to make sure that you do not get injured.
0:18:31 And this is super important.
0:18:33 It means easing all of this slowly over the course
0:18:36 of a month or two, if you’re not trained up.
0:18:38 Pick exercises, both for cardiovascular training
0:18:42 and for physical training that you can do consistently
0:18:43 without hurting yourself.
0:18:45 And I think people get a little too obsessed
0:18:46 with exercise variety.
0:18:50 Do the same things and use progressive overload
0:18:52 or slow the cadence or really focus more
0:18:54 on the muscle contractions.
0:18:56 Obviously, try and keep boredom at bay,
0:19:00 but one of the major ways that people get hurt,
0:19:01 and I hear this over and over again,
0:19:04 is a friend invites you to try a workout.
0:19:06 And even if you’re not a competitive person,
0:19:08 someone’s like, let’s go try this thing
0:19:10 and you take a class, taking a new class.
0:19:12 There’s always this new class, new workout,
0:19:13 or a friend invited me to do something.
0:19:15 And then you hear about it.
0:19:17 My back thing is out or my shoulder.
0:19:21 You can really throw off your entire health program
0:19:23 with a nagging injury.
0:19:25 So avoid those injuries as much as possible.
0:19:27 And this is true for the young folks and the older folks.
0:19:31 You really, really want to guard your physical health.
0:19:33 Unless you’re a competitive athlete,
0:19:36 your goal is to train five to six times per week
0:19:38 and get a full day of rest once per week.
0:19:40 Your whole life, I hate to say it.
0:19:41 You can take a week off every once in a while.
0:19:43 If you get, usually for me, that’s if I get you,
0:19:46 you know, a cold or a flu or travel or something,
0:19:48 or you’re not sleeping well because of life stress,
0:19:51 but not getting hurt is so key.
0:19:55 So pick exercises that allow you to train hard enough
0:19:56 and not get hurt.
0:19:58 And then the last point about this is I think
0:20:01 about 85 to 90% of workouts
0:20:05 should be at about 85 to 90% of what you could do.
0:20:10 So for instance, not every set to failure,
0:20:14 not every run needs to end with a sprint.
0:20:16 You know, if that sprint is something in you
0:20:18 and you want to do it, don’t go all out.
0:20:20 And then I would say the remaining workouts
0:20:22 could be at a slightly higher intensity.
0:20:25 But don’t worry about keeping some gas in the tank.
0:20:27 Also for people that aren’t athletes,
0:20:30 keep in mind if you do a hard resistance training workout
0:20:32 in the morning, you’ll have more energy,
0:20:33 but in the afternoon, you’ll tend to be tired.
0:20:35 And that has to do with oxygen uptake.
0:20:37 You can get a divert away from the brain.
0:20:39 So there’s exercise, I think in a nutshell.
0:20:41 – And nutrition?
0:20:44 – Yeah, so this is a fun one because never
0:20:47 in any scientific or health community
0:20:50 have I seen more fighting about anything.
0:20:54 It’s almost amusing how much fighting occurs around this.
0:20:56 And I think at the same time,
0:20:59 there’s a key principle that emerges from all of it
0:21:01 that everyone seems to agree on,
0:21:04 which is that it is going to be best to get the majority,
0:21:06 meaning 75 to 100 if you’re really strict,
0:21:11 but 75% or more of your food intake from non-processed
0:21:13 or minimally processed foods.
0:21:16 Now, is it the case that processed foods are terrible?
0:21:20 Well, they can be, but the reason getting the majority
0:21:22 of one’s food intake from non-processed
0:21:23 or minimally processed foods.
0:21:26 So this would be, if it’s in your nutrition plan,
0:21:28 you know, things like meat, fish, eggs,
0:21:33 chicken, fruits, vegetables, rice, oatmeal, pastas,
0:21:38 things like that, is that it sets you up to eat foods
0:21:41 that have macronutrients, of course,
0:21:42 protein, fat, and carbohydrates,
0:21:45 but also micronutrients that you need
0:21:48 and that generally tend to be pretty filling
0:21:50 compared to more processed versions of those things,
0:21:51 packaged version.
0:21:53 Now, does that mean that rice is a,
0:21:56 because it comes in a package, is a processed food?
0:21:58 Well, sort of, that’s, I didn’t say minimally,
0:22:00 but when you produce a sort of single ingredient food,
0:22:03 of course you can put other things in it, right?
0:22:06 Butter, olive oil, nuts in low quantity
0:22:07 seem to be healthy for us.
0:22:11 Nuts and seeds in low quantity, they’re very calorie dense.
0:22:14 And then of course, it’s up to you, or all of us,
0:22:17 to decide you want to be a vegan, a vegetarian,
0:22:18 and omnivore, which I happen to be,
0:22:21 or there are these carnivore folks.
0:22:23 So we, you could be in any one of those categories,
0:22:25 and the first thing I said would still be true.
0:22:28 The other thing that we know is immensely important
0:22:30 is to support the gut microbiome,
0:22:32 because it has relationship to brain health,
0:22:34 immune system health, cognitive function,
0:22:36 and of course we have microbiomes in our nose,
0:22:38 in our urethral, our eyes, you know.
0:22:41 But the gut microbiome is so vital.
0:22:43 And the best way to support the gut microbiome
0:22:46 is to consume one to four servings
0:22:48 of low sugar fermented food per day.
0:22:49 These exist in all cultures.
0:22:54 So things like kimchi, sauerkraut, kefir, Greek yogurt,
0:22:58 again, low sugar versions of these, low sugar kombucha,
0:23:02 you know, it is not necessary to take pill form probiotics.
0:23:03 It’s not, if you’re doing this.
0:23:05 It’s also important to get enough prebiotic
0:23:07 and probiotic fiber, which you’ll get
0:23:08 if you’re consuming fruits and vegetables.
0:23:11 And we all know dark leafy vegetables,
0:23:13 fruit with colorations of berries,
0:23:14 although berries can be kind of expensive,
0:23:17 but if you can afford them some berries,
0:23:20 you know, oranges, you know, the kind of rainbow of fruits,
0:23:24 they, those also include, of course, fiber.
0:23:26 And of course we know that excess sugar isn’t good.
0:23:28 Now people who really understand nutrition
0:23:31 will say, well, it’s calories in, calories out.
0:23:32 It’s the laws of thermodynamics.
0:23:34 So yes, you can lose weight on a, you know,
0:23:36 on a hamburger and milkshake diet
0:23:40 if it’s, you know, less calories than you burn each day.
0:23:41 But you’re going to lack micronutrients.
0:23:42 You’re not going to get enough fiber.
0:23:44 Your gut microbiome will suffer.
0:23:47 And so by eating mostly whole foods
0:23:48 and minimally processed foods
0:23:50 and thinking a bit about the gut microbiome
0:23:53 with respect to fiber, prebiotic and probiotic fiber,
0:23:56 so fruits and vegetables, as well as ingesting
0:23:58 some low sugar fermented food each day,
0:24:01 you’re going to feel significantly better.
0:24:03 Your weight management, if that’s your thing,
0:24:05 is going to be far easier.
0:24:08 There’s also something that is starting to emerge
0:24:09 in the literature.
0:24:11 And Kevin Hall at NIH is doing work in this area,
0:24:13 but people in this general space are starting to talk about,
0:24:17 which is when you eat foods close to their whole
0:24:20 or minimally processed state,
0:24:23 the brain can make the correlation.
0:24:28 It’s a subconscious correlation between kind of food taste,
0:24:32 volume, macronutrient content.
0:24:33 So like if you eat, for instance, a steak,
0:24:37 or let’s say an orange, in either case, you’re tasting that.
0:24:40 There are also amino acids from the steak going to your gut.
0:24:42 Your gut is actually signaling your brain unconsciously
0:24:45 about how much more to eat and signal satiety centers.
0:24:47 And there’s this whole learning.
0:24:51 It’s a system, a neural system, and a hormonal system
0:24:52 that’s very prone to learning,
0:24:54 so that you start to associate your appetite
0:24:56 with how much you need to eat
0:24:58 in order to get the proper amount of amino acids,
0:25:01 which is largely why we eat, I’m going to talk about this,
0:25:05 the amino acid foraging idea, plus essential fatty acids.
0:25:08 And we tend to get better at not overeating
0:25:10 for what we need, right?
0:25:12 We tend to get enough of what we need, but not eat too much.
0:25:15 Now, when you eat foods in combination like a sandwich,
0:25:16 that’s not a bad thing.
0:25:18 I love a really good sandwich,
0:25:21 but it’s harder to ascertain
0:25:24 what you’re getting from each component.
0:25:27 And people often will overeat foods in combination.
0:25:30 So it doesn’t mean you have to eat every ingredient separately,
0:25:32 but there’s a lot of learning that takes place
0:25:33 when one moves more towards whole foods
0:25:35 or minimally processed foods.
0:25:38 And this is, I believe, and this is just hypothesis.
0:25:39 This is one of the reasons why
0:25:41 when people go on an elimination diet,
0:25:44 like they decide to just eat meat or become vegan
0:25:47 and really focus on healthy fruits and vegetables,
0:25:48 that they feel so much better
0:25:51 and often lose a lot of weight.
0:25:54 They must still be obeying the calories in and calories out,
0:25:56 laws of thermodynamics in order to lose weight,
0:25:58 burning more than they consume, that is.
0:26:02 But there’s a learning there at the level of the brain
0:26:04 and the body of, oh, when I eat this,
0:26:06 it’s very satisfying, feels nutritious.
0:26:09 When we’re eating highly processed foods,
0:26:11 there’s a tendency to bring, and we know this
0:26:14 by beautiful paper published a few years ago,
0:26:17 people tend to over consume food.
0:26:20 They don’t register their satiety as well.
0:26:22 So this would be like macaroni and cheese and muffins
0:26:25 and things like that, things that could survive
0:26:27 on the shelf a very long time,
0:26:29 even in their final ready-to-eat form.
0:26:32 And when people eat those foods,
0:26:36 I don’t think it’s just a disruption of metabolic health,
0:26:37 which we know occurs over time,
0:26:40 but also a disruption of the brain-to-body communication
0:26:44 around what we need, what’s satisfying, and what’s enough.
0:26:47 So this business of how the brain and body learn
0:26:49 to associate experience with nutrition,
0:26:51 with what’s healthy for us and what’s unhealthy for us
0:26:55 is both cognitive and conscious, as well as unconscious.
0:26:58 And it relates to the fact that we are largely
0:27:00 amino acid foraging and fatty acid foraging.
0:27:01 It is true, there’s no such thing
0:27:03 as an essential carbohydrate,
0:27:05 but most people, including myself, enjoy carbohydrates,
0:27:08 and they do provide fuel for certain forms of exercise.
0:27:10 And in my experience, I can think better
0:27:12 when I have eaten some carbohydrates,
0:27:14 at least in the previous few days.
0:27:16 We’ll be right back.
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0:30:31 So I’m trying, I’m 59.
0:30:34 I look at my health holistically, good on sleep,
0:30:38 okay on nutrition, what kills me is travel and alcohol.
0:30:40 And I wanna break this down.
0:30:41 I’m trying to reduce,
0:30:43 I just drink a shit ton of alcohol.
0:30:45 I believe what Winston Churchill said,
0:30:47 I’ve got more out of alcohol than it’s gotten out of me.
0:30:50 I’m good at it, not an addictive personality.
0:30:51 I’d really enjoy it.
0:30:54 But as I get older, I realize my 59-year-old liver
0:30:55 just can’t process things
0:30:57 the way a 29-year-old liver can process.
0:31:00 So I’m purposely trying to wind it down.
0:31:02 At the same time, just being very transparent,
0:31:04 I love to be high.
0:31:06 And I love the feeling of being
0:31:07 under the influence of substances.
0:31:08 And so I have-
0:31:10 Which substances are your-
0:31:12 Well, I don’t really do a lot of stuff.
0:31:16 What I’ve done is I’ve tried to dial back alcohol
0:31:18 and I’m doing edibles now.
0:31:20 And I do edibles two, three times a week.
0:31:22 They help me sleep, I enjoy them.
0:31:24 I realize there’s no free lunch here.
0:31:26 But if it’s realistically,
0:31:28 if a lot of people you speak to
0:31:30 who are like to think of themselves as high-performing people
0:31:34 but also enjoy the right term is.
0:31:35 I need a more optimistic term
0:31:37 than getting fucked up or partying or whatever.
0:31:40 But recognize they need to reduce their alcohol intake.
0:31:43 One, is there a type of alcohol that’s less punishing?
0:31:47 And two, if you are going to do THC or something else,
0:31:50 is there something that on a risk-adjusted basis
0:31:53 has the highest ROI in terms of feeling good
0:31:55 to minimum damage on your body?
0:31:58 Let’s assume I am never going to be Andrew Huberman.
0:32:01 I’m just not going to be fully optimized.
0:32:04 I want to run at 80 to 90%,
0:32:06 but also quite frankly,
0:32:09 give into a lot of the guilty pleasures around substances.
0:32:13 What is the old Navy of substance abuse
0:32:16 where I get 80% of the high for 50% of the damage?
0:32:19 – Great questions.
0:32:24 And I should say, optimization is something
0:32:27 that we have to think about on a day-to-day basis.
0:32:28 So it is true.
0:32:30 I did rounds of sauna and cold this morning.
0:32:32 I did, I did.
0:32:34 I got up really early, a friend came over.
0:32:35 I haven’t seen him a while ago.
0:32:38 Earlier than I would have liked and did sauna and cold.
0:32:40 And I did train yesterday, but there are days,
0:32:45 I miss days and it happens and life.
0:32:46 So I don’t want to give the impression
0:32:51 that my entire life is geared around protocols
0:32:52 to the point where I don’t do other things.
0:32:54 I went out to dinner with friends last night.
0:32:55 I experienced stress in life.
0:32:57 We could talk about that, like anyone else.
0:33:02 So I would say this, figure out the minimum amount
0:33:05 of alcohol that you’re happy to drink
0:33:08 that makes you feel like you’re living life.
0:33:10 So maybe that’s a drink a night.
0:33:11 Maybe that’s two a week.
0:33:14 Maybe that’s stacking a few more toward the weekend,
0:33:16 whatever’s gonna work there.
0:33:18 And provided that your sleep is good,
0:33:20 meaning we know it’s gonna disrupt
0:33:21 your sleep architecture somewhat,
0:33:23 but provided that you don’t have
0:33:25 excessive daytime sleepiness,
0:33:27 provided that you are not getting
0:33:29 an increased frequency of colds and flus,
0:33:30 you’re accomplishing your work,
0:33:32 I would say you’re doing great.
0:33:35 Especially since you’re visibly fit.
0:33:39 If you can do the three cardio vascular training sessions
0:33:41 and the two, this is the training sessions
0:33:44 that I just described without dissolving
0:33:47 into a pile of cells on the floor afterwards,
0:33:50 even when you’re doing a 85% of intensity
0:33:53 or let’s say 85% intensity of what you could do,
0:33:55 you’re doing great, you’re doing great.
0:33:59 Now, with respect to alcohol,
0:34:01 the stress lowering properties
0:34:05 and the fact that it is often associated
0:34:07 with social events and the fact that
0:34:09 this is related to stress somewhat,
0:34:11 but it also takes our mind off of things
0:34:13 we probably don’t wanna think about.
0:34:15 It marks a transition point
0:34:17 for a lot of people at the end of the day.
0:34:19 It’s hard to dump thoughts.
0:34:21 So like, okay, they have a drink
0:34:22 and then they’re like into the evening
0:34:24 and then next morning they’re up and at it again.
0:34:27 That’s a perfectly healthy and understandable thing.
0:34:28 Now, with respect to cannabis,
0:34:30 so this is interesting,
0:34:32 I just did a four hour interview,
0:34:35 it hasn’t been released yet with a researcher
0:34:36 who works on cannabis.
0:34:38 I’ve done a solo episode about cannabis
0:34:40 and this interview was actually sparked
0:34:43 by a clip that we had put on Twitter on X
0:34:46 and then he jumped at it.
0:34:48 He insisted certain things in it were wrong
0:34:49 and then he came in and we had a discussion
0:34:51 and turns out we’ve realized far more things
0:34:52 than we disagree about.
0:34:54 Let’s put it this way.
0:34:56 There is some evidence, some,
0:35:00 that high potency, meaning high THC cannabis use
0:35:03 may exacerbate or be correlated
0:35:06 with serious mental health issues,
0:35:08 psychosis in some people.
0:35:10 But obviously that’s not happening for you.
0:35:11 Here’s what I learned from him,
0:35:12 which is very interesting.
0:35:15 We hear so much about how today’s cannabis
0:35:17 isn’t yesterday’s cannabis.
0:35:21 You know that weed in the 70s was so much milder
0:35:22 than weed today.
0:35:23 And indeed that’s true.
0:35:26 It’s being engineered, grown,
0:35:28 to have much higher concentrations of THC
0:35:30 or varying levels of THC,
0:35:32 so one can select what they like.
0:35:35 In smoked form or vaped form,
0:35:37 this is what I learned.
0:35:41 People are remarkably good at adjusting their,
0:35:44 let’s just call it like the depth and number of toks
0:35:49 in order to achieve a fairly consistent blood level of THC.
0:35:54 So if they happen to have higher concentration cannabis,
0:35:55 and by the way, I also learned,
0:35:56 and I’ll just pass this along for folks,
0:35:59 ’cause as I learned, I like to pass things along,
0:36:00 there are reasons why it’s,
0:36:02 you’re not supposed to call it marijuana anymore.
0:36:06 There’s a whole story there that’s laid to cultural issues
0:36:09 and some issues potentially related to racism.
0:36:13 It’s very, so just as they say, look it up,
0:36:15 you know, or look it anywhere, right?
0:36:18 It’s interesting, so that’s why I’m calling it cannabis, okay?
0:36:20 Cannabis or weed, so in smoked form,
0:36:22 people seem to be very good at regulating their intake
0:36:27 to achieve a kind of a fairly consistent level
0:36:32 of THC in the blood from one intake session to the next.
0:36:36 Edibles, however, it’s far more difficult
0:36:38 to regulate the blood level
0:36:41 because one can eat a whole cookie or eat an edible
0:36:42 or eat half a cookie,
0:36:44 and so unless you’re using the same source,
0:36:46 this is where people sometimes find themselves
0:36:49 in a very different mental state than they intended.
0:36:51 Now, is there tolerance, is it addictive?
0:36:53 These things are still heavily debated.
0:36:55 I would argue, and this is not based
0:36:56 on randomized controlled trial,
0:37:00 that people who are heavy cannabis users,
0:37:01 when they don’t have their cannabis,
0:37:03 they get pretty cranky
0:37:05 because a lot of people use it to manage anxiety,
0:37:07 and there’s some interesting studies taking place
0:37:09 about looking at genetic polymorphisms
0:37:11 and tendency for anxiety in people
0:37:14 who really prefer cannabis to other drugs
0:37:17 because it does seem to be, for them,
0:37:18 a way to adjust their anxiety.
0:37:21 I will say that taking cannabis before sleep
0:37:22 may help you fall asleep.
0:37:26 It is definitely, Dr. Matt Walker talks about this,
0:37:27 the world expert on sleep, really.
0:37:29 It’s dramatically reducing the amount
0:37:31 of rapid eye movement sleep that you’re getting.
0:37:34 So if you are in a stage, or a phase of life
0:37:35 where things are particularly stressful,
0:37:37 keep in mind that rapid eye movement sleep
0:37:39 is when neuroplasticity and learning occur,
0:37:41 but also where we learn to uncouple
0:37:43 the emotional load of daily experiences,
0:37:46 largely through the experience of vivid dreams.
0:37:48 And this is why when people come off of cannabis,
0:37:51 they oftentimes get very, very intense dreams
0:37:53 because there’s a REM rebound.
0:37:54 So just keep that in mind,
0:37:56 but if your life is in order
0:37:57 and you’re not experiencing excessive stress,
0:38:00 and like you, you don’t have an addictive personality
0:38:03 and you like an edible every now and again,
0:38:04 you know, I never tell people what to do
0:38:06 as long as you know what you’re doing.
0:38:07 I don’t think there’s any evidence
0:38:11 that it’s bad for other aspects of health.
0:38:15 Is it going to make you better remembering things?
0:38:16 Probably not.
0:38:19 If you’re high while you’re trying to learn things,
0:38:20 and there’s a whole literature there
0:38:23 that people often misunderstand where they hear,
0:38:25 well, if you’re gonna learn on under the influence
0:38:28 of a given drug that you should then get tested
0:38:29 while under the influence of a given drug.
0:38:30 And that’s not true.
0:38:33 It just turns out that people who use a drug like alcohol
0:38:37 or cannabis consistently while studying for their bar exam,
0:38:40 just get better at cognitively performing
0:38:42 while under the influence.
0:38:44 But that’s not a reason to do more of it.
0:38:47 So I would say it sounds like you’re in a really healthy range.
0:38:49 And like I said, you’re visibly fit.
0:38:52 Your life, presumably, is more or less how you want it.
0:38:57 And so, edible a couple days a week at the appropriate dose
0:39:00 where you know you’re not gonna get past that threshold.
0:39:02 So don’t let someone give you an edible and say,
0:39:05 hey, this is great and go cookie for cookie
0:39:07 with what you normally take.
0:39:10 That’s a cautionary note.
0:39:12 – I went to this event called Summit.
0:39:14 And it’s sort of the way I describe it as learning man.
0:39:17 It’s a cross between Ted and Burning Man.
0:39:20 I actually can totally see you there speaking.
0:39:21 I’m sure they’ve asked you to speak there.
0:39:23 And I really enjoyed it.
0:39:27 It was on a cruise ship on this Virgin Cruises ship.
0:39:29 And I went up to grab a drink at the bar
0:39:30 and he said, oh my God, someone ordering alcohol.
0:39:32 And I said, what do you mean by that?
0:39:33 And he said, none of these kids,
0:39:35 you know, they’re all in their 30s high performing,
0:39:39 very successful people in the tech industry.
0:39:41 And within about 30 minutes, someone came up to me
0:39:43 and offered me mushroom chocolates.
0:39:46 And what I figured out is there’s this movement
0:39:50 among aspirational, high achieving young people
0:39:53 to substantially reduce their alcohol intake,
0:39:55 but they still wanna be high.
0:39:56 And they’re doing mushroom chocolates
0:39:58 and a mix of all kinds of other shit
0:39:59 that I couldn’t even figure out
0:40:03 or remember all the acronyms.
0:40:05 But they’re basically have decided,
0:40:06 and I think in general,
0:40:07 wealthy people wanna believe
0:40:09 they always have a better mousetrap,
0:40:12 but they had decided I’m gonna nurse one drink
0:40:14 and then I’m gonna do my mushroom chocolates
0:40:15 or something else.
0:40:18 Can you give me a sense or A, that trend
0:40:21 and B, what you think, is there an upside to it
0:40:23 or is this again, wealthy people liking to think
0:40:25 that they’ve found something better?
0:40:26 – But I don’t think it’s just wealthy people.
0:40:30 I think we’re seeing this trend away from alcohol.
0:40:31 Although there’s still a lot of this country
0:40:32 in the rest of the world
0:40:33 to now call it a regular basis.
0:40:35 And in some sense, in a healthy way, right?
0:40:39 Like shot of liquor, you know.
0:40:40 I mean, I love Russian Banyas.
0:40:42 I go to, ’cause I love sauna and cold.
0:40:45 And so if you go to a proper Russian Banya,
0:40:48 there’s not just gonna be sauna and cold.
0:40:51 The Russians there are gonna have a couple shots
0:40:53 of alcohol also.
0:40:56 So they know how to do it for them.
0:40:59 So here’s what I feel obligated to say.
0:41:02 First of all, the clinical trial data
0:41:04 on psilocybin mushrooms for the treatment
0:41:07 of major depression is very impressive,
0:41:09 but it’s still illegal.
0:41:11 And those are high dose sessions.
0:41:15 So those are people ingesting anywhere from two and a half
0:41:17 to in some cases, what’s called a heroic dose,
0:41:20 you know, five grams of psilocybin mushroom,
0:41:21 you know, five grams of psilocybin.
0:41:23 You’re what a colleague of mine who works
0:41:25 on this calls behind the circuit board.
0:41:29 You’re not like doing, I mean, it’s a very,
0:41:30 it’s an experience.
0:41:32 Not necessarily what I recommend.
0:41:34 People can get very scared in there, you know,
0:41:38 you have to work or the clinician, still illegal,
0:41:39 but there are trials.
0:41:42 The studies of higher doses have shown some very interesting
0:41:44 clinical efficacy, but it has not yet passed
0:41:47 into past FDA approval.
0:41:51 Likewise with MDMA ecstasy treatment for PTSD.
0:41:53 Right now that’s a big issue because the FDA is soon
0:41:55 going to decide, but the early recommendation
0:41:57 to them was to not approve.
0:41:59 We could talk a lot about that.
0:42:02 But micro dosing, taking lower dosages
0:42:05 of psilocybin mushroom, which by the way,
0:42:08 just activates a serotonin receptor that seems
0:42:13 to lead to more communication, let’s broadly speaking,
0:42:16 more communication at sort of like resting
0:42:18 network activity is broader.
0:42:20 The brain areas that normally we’re talking
0:42:21 to each other very little, we’re talking to each other
0:42:25 more in that kind of in the default mode.
0:42:27 That’s what some of Robin Cardard Harris’s work
0:42:29 at UCSF and others have shown.
0:42:33 And it very likely enhances the capacity
0:42:36 for neural plasticity for rewiring of neurons.
0:42:38 Now, a lot of people confuse this and think,
0:42:40 oh, well, if they just take psilocybin,
0:42:42 they’ll quote unquote get plasticity.
0:42:45 But we have to remember that plasticity is designed
0:42:46 to be a directed process.
0:42:49 You touch a hot stove, you get one trial learning
0:42:54 by way of neural plasticity that hot stoves are bad to touch.
0:42:56 Okay, that’s directed plasticity.
0:42:57 It’s adaptive.
0:43:00 When you learn a new language, it’s you sit there
0:43:03 and you have to absorb the information, make errors,
0:43:07 adjust for those errors and you get plasticity over time.
0:43:09 When you quote unquote just take a drug
0:43:12 that opens up plasticity and air quotes,
0:43:14 that’s not necessarily a good thing
0:43:16 because you’re making the brain vulnerable
0:43:19 to rewiring in a very non-specific way.
0:43:23 So this is why traditional forms and these modern forms
0:43:25 of clinical trials using psychedelics of any kind,
0:43:28 MDMA, which is more or less a psychedelic,
0:43:29 they were considered one nowadays,
0:43:32 as well as psilocybin, LSD, et cetera.
0:43:35 They’re talking to the person, they do rounds of therapy
0:43:38 with that person off the drug before and after,
0:43:41 the person’s working through something or things.
0:43:42 So it’s directed.
0:43:45 Whereas when you just take something and go experience life,
0:43:50 it’s non-specific opportunity for non-specific rewiring.
0:43:52 Now, there is zero evidence to my knowledge,
0:43:56 there’s zero evidence that microdosing can improve
0:43:59 mental state as it relates to depression or mood,
0:44:01 but people report this quite a lot.
0:44:02 And that makes a little bit of sense
0:44:06 because it augments serotonin pathways in the brain
0:44:08 through one receptor in particular.
0:44:09 But, and if you think about the major treatments
0:44:12 for depression, and these are very controversial now,
0:44:15 but the SSRI, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors,
0:44:17 the net effect is to increase the amount of serotonin
0:44:19 at the synapse, the availability of serotonin.
0:44:22 And we know that other antidepressants,
0:44:25 which rely more on dopamine or epinephrine, et cetera,
0:44:28 that relief from depression,
0:44:29 whether or not it’s through cognitive behavioral therapy
0:44:31 alone or drug therapy or combination,
0:44:35 is a neuroplasticity phenomena.
0:44:38 It’s about reorienting the person’s thinking
0:44:40 about who they are, about what’s possible in the world,
0:44:42 about what happened or what’s likely to happen.
0:44:44 It’s about creating more optimism.
0:44:47 So it’s less about serotonin per se
0:44:50 than the opportunity to rewire the brain
0:44:53 and one’s cognitive and emotional status.
0:44:54 So when these people are saying,
0:44:56 okay, I’m gonna not drink alcohol,
0:44:59 and then instead I’m gonna take some psilocybin,
0:45:01 they’re boosting their serotonin a bit.
0:45:02 Presumably they’re also doing this
0:45:07 because the day after drinking is always a bit of a withdrawal.
0:45:10 There’s the anxiety some people refer to,
0:45:12 there’s the puffiness, a lot of it,
0:45:14 might be for aesthetic reasons.
0:45:15 You can’t sleep very well often,
0:45:17 and the sleep isn’t of high quality.
0:45:22 Let’s also face it, a lot of people make mistakes on alcohol.
0:45:24 And whether or not they make mistakes on psilocybin,
0:45:27 I don’t know, I’m sure there’s an opportunity for that.
0:45:29 Jumping off the ship would be a bad idea.
0:45:31 People have done stupid things on psychedelics,
0:45:33 but if you look at the lethal dose
0:45:34 of something like psilocybin,
0:45:38 it’s unbelievably high relative to the lethal dose of alcohol.
0:45:42 If you look at deaths and problems created by alcohol,
0:45:44 including bad decision making,
0:45:49 I mean, these are astronomical rates of bad errors
0:45:53 at every level, professional, interpersonal,
0:45:55 life damaging, life ending, et cetera.
0:45:57 So it kind of makes sense to me
0:45:59 why people would be orienting towards things
0:46:02 that have less of the danger and more, still some,
0:46:05 but more of the kind of state shifting,
0:46:07 being able to relate to people differently
0:46:08 in that elevated serotonin state,
0:46:10 they’re very likely to at least think
0:46:13 or experience a kind of more empathic engagement.
0:46:14 And we’re seeing a lot of this,
0:46:18 the episode that we did about alcohol
0:46:21 in the Huberman Lab podcast, “Humility Aside,”
0:46:23 that was the most listened to podcast episode
0:46:26 for like two years running out of all podcasts,
0:46:27 like all podcasts.
0:46:29 And I was surprised ’cause there’s somebody
0:46:31 who doesn’t really indulge in alcohol much.
0:46:33 I thought, well, we should probably just do an episode
0:46:34 about alcohol, enough people drink
0:46:36 and let people know what they’re doing,
0:46:38 but I’m not anti-alcohol.
0:46:41 And I noticed it unveiled three things.
0:46:43 One, the people who really love alcohol
0:46:45 were pissed off that they had that knowledge.
0:46:48 They’re like, “Ugh, now I know how bad it is for me.”
0:46:50 – I know, I’ve tried to ignore it.
0:46:53 There’s no ignoring the two of you, your answer.
0:46:56 – The second is that people who didn’t like drinking,
0:46:58 maybe if they have less alcohol dehydrogenase,
0:47:00 genetically, maybe they just didn’t like it,
0:47:03 they finally felt validated to say,
0:47:05 “Hey, I don’t wanna drink it terrible for me.”
0:47:07 And then, and that was a big category of people.
0:47:10 And then I think the third category is the larger group,
0:47:13 which is the people who like alcohol,
0:47:16 but they also wanna take care of their health
0:47:17 and they wanna be able to live life,
0:47:18 including maybe have a drink
0:47:21 for a very large number of years.
0:47:23 And they realized that throttling back a little bit
0:47:26 and savoring it, maybe, this is Peter’s thing,
0:47:28 maybe focusing on a higher quality alcohol,
0:47:31 or you asked what alcohols are going to be best or worse,
0:47:33 low sugar alcohols in general,
0:47:34 not because of the sugar per se,
0:47:35 but because of the hangover.
0:47:38 So like brandies and things like that,
0:47:41 cognacs are generally not as good for you
0:47:46 in terms of the hangover component as a clear vodka.
0:47:50 If I drink, I like a white tequila soda and wine.
0:47:52 That’s it, that’s like my thing.
0:47:54 Especially with Mexican food on a hot day,
0:47:55 that’s like nothing better.
0:48:00 – Coming up after the break.
0:48:03 – In my mind, there’s no reason to do TRT.
0:48:07 And a lot of kids, because of social media,
0:48:10 they see the muscles, they see the vasculature,
0:48:12 and they also, if they try it,
0:48:15 they realize that it makes effort feel good,
0:48:17 and it does increase libido vigor, et cetera,
0:48:19 but it will shut down your sperm production,
0:48:20 and it has effects on the brain.
0:48:23 – Stay with us.
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0:51:29 – What are your thoughts on testosterone replacement therapy?
0:51:30 – Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts about this.
0:51:33 So I’m 48 years old, I’m very open about this.
0:51:34 I always have been.
0:51:38 I did not touch any hormone augmentation of any kind,
0:51:40 but then at 45, I decided to run an experiment
0:51:44 taking a very low dose of testosterone sippinate,
0:51:46 but also something called HCG,
0:51:48 human chorionic gonadotropin,
0:51:50 which allows you to maintain sperm production
0:51:52 because, well, I intend to have children
0:51:54 and I don’t want to kill my sperm.
0:51:57 And basically, when you take testosterone exogenously,
0:51:58 you shut down your sperm production,
0:52:01 maybe not entirely, but it can be problematic.
0:52:03 So first things first,
0:52:04 and I’m assuming we’re talking about men here
0:52:08 because women are now doing testosterone replacement therapy
0:52:10 and low doses for libido and for vigor and other things,
0:52:12 and women make testosterone too,
0:52:15 but as long as we’re talking about men,
0:52:17 I can’t emphasize this enough.
0:52:20 Young guys, meaning if you’re younger,
0:52:21 I just don’t see how,
0:52:25 unless somebody has a hypogeladol condition,
0:52:27 which you can be tested for,
0:52:32 why males younger than 35 and probably 40,
0:52:34 if you’re doing things to take care of yourself
0:52:38 with sleep, with exercise, nutrition, managing your stress,
0:52:40 keeping your body composition,
0:52:41 you don’t have to be 5% body fat,
0:52:44 in fact, that’s probably bad for testosterone
0:52:46 for most people unless you’re naturally like that,
0:52:48 but keeping your body fat percentage somewhere
0:52:51 between 10 and 15% or something,
0:52:55 in my mind, there’s no reason to do TRT,
0:52:59 and a lot of kids, because of social media,
0:53:02 they see the muscles, they see the vasculature,
0:53:04 and they also, if they try it,
0:53:07 they realize that it makes effort feel good
0:53:09 and it does increase libido, vigor, et cetera,
0:53:11 but it will shut down your sperm production
0:53:12 and it has effects on the brain.
0:53:14 So here’s my stance on this,
0:53:16 and I’ll just again be very open about what I do.
0:53:20 I personally find that the recommended dose
0:53:23 for most people that’s kind of just out the gate
0:53:26 that these clinics do is they’ll say 200 milligrams,
0:53:27 typically of testosterone, sippianate per week,
0:53:30 so that’s one CC, one ML.
0:53:34 That for me would be like catastrophically too high.
0:53:36 I’m very sensitive to this stuff.
0:53:37 So what I highly recommend is people go
0:53:41 and get their testosterone checked and free testosterone.
0:53:44 So the range, the reference range in the US
0:53:46 is somewhere between 300 and 900 in other countries,
0:53:48 I think it goes up to 1200,
0:53:50 but keep in mind there are some people
0:53:55 who have testosterone levels of 500 or 350 or 400
0:53:58 who feel great, their libido is strong,
0:54:01 their recovery from exercise is strong, they feel great.
0:54:04 There are a number of other hormones that impact this.
0:54:06 Don’t look strictly at the number.
0:54:08 So if you’re a young person and you’re interested
0:54:11 or you’re curious about testosterone therapy,
0:54:12 please go get your blood levels checked.
0:54:14 And it is true that unless you are
0:54:17 below 300 nanograms per deciliter,
0:54:19 technically you don’t need replacement.
0:54:23 Now, if you happen to be 500 and you feel like garbage,
0:54:26 please also get your free testosterone checked, okay?
0:54:27 Because if that’s too low,
0:54:29 that means the testosterone you’re making isn’t available.
0:54:32 And if your estrogen is too high or too low,
0:54:34 this is important, well then that could be an issue,
0:54:36 meaning this is a complex scenario.
0:54:38 But what’s happening is people are just going
0:54:40 and getting on TRT and saying, oh, 900 is best.
0:54:43 Now, if someone does decide to explore
0:54:44 testosterone replacement therapy,
0:54:46 there are a couple of things to know.
0:54:49 First of all, get your blood levels checked before, during,
0:54:51 and should you decide to come off after.
0:54:52 Very open about this.
0:54:55 I was sitting, I was doing all the behaviors right,
0:54:56 as best I could.
0:54:58 Also taking a few supplements that we know
0:55:00 can slightly improve testosterone, not in a major way.
0:55:02 Things like Tonga, Dolly, Fidoja.
0:55:05 For me, increase my testosterone significantly.
0:55:07 I was sitting around 750,
0:55:09 but I was feeling some afternoon fatigue
0:55:11 that felt unusual for me.
0:55:13 And decided to run an experiment
0:55:17 of taking basically three 30 milligram dosages
0:55:20 of injectable testosterone sippinate per week.
0:55:24 And I eventually converged on something a little bit
0:55:26 similar to that, spacing it out a bit more,
0:55:28 but essentially 100 milligrams per week.
0:55:28 I feel fantastic.
0:55:33 It definitely makes effort feel great, okay?
0:55:36 Now, the problem is that’s a consequence
0:55:38 of a bit more what we call sympathetic drive,
0:55:41 which has nothing to do with sympathy, emotional sympathy.
0:55:44 It makes you kind of more forward center of mass in general.
0:55:46 It’s a higher level of stress.
0:55:47 You have to be careful you’re still managing
0:55:48 to get great sleep.
0:55:50 I also, as I mentioned, take HCG.
0:55:54 And if people want children at any point in the future,
0:55:58 and you’re gonna take testosterone at any exogenously,
0:56:01 at any level, you have to offset that with HCG,
0:56:03 which is more or less like luteinizing hormone
0:56:04 which stimulates the testes
0:56:07 to continue making their own testosterone
0:56:09 and therefore spare sperm production.
0:56:12 And or you could go bank sperm,
0:56:14 although I would strongly recommend
0:56:15 maintaining your sperm production.
0:56:18 And they’re now at home kits that allow you to discern
0:56:21 if you’re still maintaining sperm production.
0:56:22 Here’s how I feel about this.
0:56:25 Get the behaviors right, sleep, exercise, nutrition,
0:56:29 stress management, explore healthy supplementation.
0:56:30 And I would say the things for supplementation
0:56:32 that makes sense for most people who can afford it
0:56:36 are a quality fish oil, so quality omega-3s,
0:56:39 get above a gram per day of the EPA form,
0:56:42 maybe two grams for a variety of reasons.
0:56:44 Get some form of probiotic, prebiotic.
0:56:46 You could supplement this like, you know,
0:56:48 people know and often associate with AG1,
0:56:50 you can do it that way or you could eat more fruits
0:56:52 and vegetables, you know, I mean,
0:56:56 there are a number of things in addition to AG1
0:56:58 that is why I think it’s good for me.
0:57:00 But again, this is not a sales pitch for AG1.
0:57:03 This is to say, make sure your foundational nutrition
0:57:04 is gonna take a multivitamin.
0:57:07 This is basically what I’m saying if you can’t afford that.
0:57:10 And then I do think that many people can get
0:57:13 what they want without going on TRT
0:57:15 by making sure that you’re training hard,
0:57:18 but not more than an hour per session.
0:57:22 You know, if you’re gonna do TRT, yes, it’s true.
0:57:24 You can probably get a bit less sleep and still recover.
0:57:27 Because normally sleep deprivation over time
0:57:28 would diminish your testosterone levels.
0:57:30 When you’re taking it, it’s always tapped off.
0:57:32 But that’s not good either because you’re challenging
0:57:35 the heart in ways that normally wouldn’t be challenged.
0:57:37 So this could be a whole discussion,
0:57:39 but I really think that people need to pay attention
0:57:41 to the fertility piece.
0:57:43 And then to really take the minimal effect,
0:57:45 if they decide that TRT is right for them
0:57:47 to take the minimal effective dose,
0:57:49 many people think testosterone, good,
0:57:50 estrogen, bad if you’re male.
0:57:53 That is heavenly false.
0:57:56 If you crush your estrogen levels taking,
0:57:59 unless you need to reduce your estrogen levels,
0:58:01 you will have poor memory.
0:58:03 Your cardiovascular health will suffer
0:58:05 because you’re gonna have less sort of pliability
0:58:07 of the capillaries and vessels
0:58:09 that innervate your brain and body.
0:58:10 And in addition to that,
0:58:12 estrogen is critical for libido.
0:58:16 And so a lot of people who take testosterone,
0:58:18 get high levels of testosterone,
0:58:20 then crush their cortisol and/or estrogen levels
0:58:23 using pharmacology, high doses of anastrasol.
0:58:26 They might be better off taking low doses of anastrasol
0:58:28 or, which is a aromatase inhibitor,
0:58:30 you know, aromatase that converts
0:58:32 testosterone to estrogen or not at all,
0:58:36 and letting their estrogen, you know, float up a bit,
0:58:37 but be in the proper ratio
0:58:39 with that now elevated testosterone.
0:58:41 And this is so critical.
0:58:43 You know, maybe it’s because I’m male,
0:58:45 presumably I hear a lot from young guys
0:58:46 who are like, “Hey, should I get on TRT?”
0:58:48 I think that’s a big no.
0:58:51 Don’t do it until you’re doing everything else right.
0:58:53 And I’ll also say, I’ve gone off.
0:58:55 Didn’t experiment when I went off it
0:58:56 and continued to do things right.
0:58:59 And you do feel kind of achier after exercise
0:59:00 and a little bit lousy,
0:59:02 but you can come off these things.
0:59:03 You need to continue to take HCG
0:59:07 to make sure that you continue to make your own testosterone.
0:59:09 You can, you know, reactivate things.
0:59:12 But I think it was the right decision for me at 45.
0:59:15 All my other health metrics, LDLs and suffering in place.
0:59:17 And I will say this,
0:59:20 that it can provide the opportunity to do more work,
0:59:22 both cognitive and physical work.
0:59:26 And I’ll also say that it did not create a big change
0:59:27 in my body composition
0:59:28 because I had always been eating well,
0:59:29 sleeping well to begin with.
0:59:32 And I didn’t change the way that I trained that much.
0:59:34 And I’ve gone off and just kind of maintained.
0:59:37 And so I think it is definitely something
0:59:40 people are paying more attention to and trying,
0:59:42 but they need to be extremely thoughtful.
0:59:43 – What do you think of creatine?
0:59:44 – Creatine is great.
0:59:47 Creatine has a ton of literature for creatine,
0:59:50 mostly for sake of cognitive enhancement.
0:59:52 That the conditions of cognitive enhancement
0:59:54 are sort of unique in those studies,
0:59:56 often like cognitive enhancement, wallet altitude,
0:59:58 or cognitive enhancement after sleep deprivation,
0:59:59 these kinds of things.
1:00:00 But five to 10 grams,
1:00:03 and I say that because people are of different body size,
1:00:04 but it’s 100 kilograms.
1:00:07 So I take 10 grams of creatine per day.
1:00:10 I’ve been doing that since I was 16 or 18.
1:00:11 I’ll take breaks every once in a while.
1:00:15 You’ll gain five to 10 pounds of water weight
1:00:16 within your muscles,
1:00:17 mostly within the muscles when you take creatine.
1:00:20 And then you’ll urinate that out if you come off it.
1:00:21 I mentioned that because a lot of women
1:00:23 don’t want to take creatine
1:00:24 because they don’t want that extra weight,
1:00:25 but it’s mostly muscle weight.
1:00:27 And a lot of women can really benefit
1:00:29 from more muscle and strength.
1:00:31 For all the reasons we talked about before.
1:00:33 But there’s excellent data for creatine.
1:00:34 Keep in mind on a blood test,
1:00:36 your blood creatinine levels will be increased
1:00:37 if you’re supplementing creatine.
1:00:39 So don’t be alarmed.
1:00:41 But it’s very hard to get that five to 10 grams per day
1:00:44 from food sources because a big steak,
1:00:46 a big rib eye steak probably only has a couple of grams,
1:00:48 or three grams of creatine.
1:00:49 How many of those are you really gonna eat
1:00:51 without causing other issues?
1:00:53 What are your thoughts on TRT?
1:00:54 – I started doing it two or three years ago.
1:00:56 I do 80 milliliters.
1:00:57 Is it a week, injection-
1:01:01 – Wait, just ’cause people will get 80 milligrams,
1:01:03 I guess, which is a very low dose.
1:01:05 – Yeah, and the way I would describe it is,
1:01:06 I started doing it three or four years ago,
1:01:09 lost the strength of the gym, lost the muscle mass,
1:01:12 not the same virility or whatever you would call it.
1:01:16 And I just thought, and my trainer said,
1:01:20 “You’re fine, you have what you should have at 56,
1:01:23 “but why wouldn’t you take it back to 45?”
1:01:26 And I took it, and the way I would describe it,
1:01:28 Andrew is, I would say it kinda makes it
1:01:29 three to five years younger.
1:01:30 I just, weird things,
1:01:33 like I felt like my skin was a little bit different,
1:01:34 just a little stronger than the gym.
1:01:37 – Well, I feel better at 48 than I did at 25,
1:01:40 and I think that’s because I take better care of myself
1:01:41 with respect to sleep.
1:01:43 I used to work 100 hours a week.
1:01:46 I would literally, my ex-girlfriend Keegan
1:01:48 was still jokes about this from time to time,
1:01:50 like we went on so many vacations
1:01:53 where I would collapse into the laptop, meant the end.
1:01:54 Like I was working on grants,
1:01:57 where I was working as a junior professor,
1:01:58 before I got 10 years away.
1:01:59 I mean, you’re familiar with this.
1:02:01 I would literally work until I would collapse.
1:02:05 And that’s not healthy, and in my 30s too.
1:02:07 And I had a lot of vigor, but I would say,
1:02:10 TRT can definitely bring that forward.
1:02:12 I think based on conversations
1:02:14 with my colleague, Robert Sapolsky,
1:02:17 it’s clear that it makes you more like yourself.
1:02:19 So if you’re a slightly obsessive person,
1:02:20 it’s gonna make you more obsessive.
1:02:22 If you’re a very competitive person,
1:02:23 it’ll make you more competitive.
1:02:26 If you’re more altruistic and empathically tuned,
1:02:27 it will likely exacerbate that.
1:02:31 It sort of, I think it raises the tide kind of on everything.
1:02:33 It makes you what I call forward center of mass.
1:02:34 So I figure on anything,
1:02:36 we can either be back on our heels,
1:02:38 flat footed or forward center of mass.
1:02:40 And so if it’s work, you’re forward center of mass.
1:02:42 If it’s kindness, you’re forward center of mass.
1:02:44 You feel like you have more to give.
1:02:46 And that’s that elevated sympathetic drive
1:02:47 that we talked about earlier.
1:02:50 – That’s literally the best out I’ve ever heard
1:02:51 for testosterone.
1:02:52 So two quick questions.
1:02:54 You’ve been very generous with your time.
1:02:55 The first is around exercise.
1:02:57 The second one’s a professional question.
1:02:59 My dad, this is one of the nicer moments for my father.
1:03:01 My father was in the Royal Navy
1:03:03 and he had this thing called the Royal Navy Fitness Handbook.
1:03:06 And it was burpees, pull-ups, push-ups, sit-ups.
1:03:08 And we used to do that together from a very young age.
1:03:09 And it really stuck with me.
1:03:11 And I’ve been like you, I’ve been working out my whole life.
1:03:14 And I started doing it with my boys, 13 and 16.
1:03:17 I call my boy on FaceTime, who’s a boarding school.
1:03:19 And I put him through like a eight to 12 minute
1:03:21 kind of multi-dimensional, you know,
1:03:23 push-ups, some Arnold presses with the weights,
1:03:27 assisted pull-ups, cash out with some burpees.
1:03:30 Do you have any thoughts on or advice for dads
1:03:33 who are trying to get their teenage boys into working out
1:03:36 in terms of kind of the right way
1:03:38 to work out your teenage sons?
1:03:41 – Yeah, well, just to make sure I close the hatch
1:03:42 on that TRT conversation,
1:03:44 ’cause he says that an advertisement for it,
1:03:47 there are some health risks of blood pressure,
1:03:50 blood profiles and people need to think about that
1:03:52 and work with a really qualified physician.
1:03:54 – And some cancers, right?
1:03:57 Like prostate cancer, if you don’t monitor it, is that right?
1:04:00 – There’s the belief among urologists
1:04:02 is that it does not cause prostate cancer.
1:04:04 If you have a pre-existing prostate cancer,
1:04:05 it might exacerbate it.
1:04:06 When people have prostate cancers,
1:04:08 they often put them on and endrogens.
1:04:10 – But it’s also hard and brain protective, isn’t it?
1:04:12 What I’ve read, is that true?
1:04:15 – I think if you’re doing TRT properly,
1:04:18 proper dosages for you, it’s gonna be highly individualized,
1:04:20 that you’re taking care of the other hormones
1:04:22 in those pathways properly,
1:04:24 not caution them nor letting them get out of hand.
1:04:28 That you’re taking the fertility thing into consideration.
1:04:30 I think that it can be very beneficial
1:04:33 because it allows you to do the work you need to do,
1:04:35 cognitive work, the cardiovascular work.
1:04:37 I mean, if you’re running more as a consequence
1:04:40 of taking TRT and also able to do all the other things
1:04:43 in your life, then you’re net better off, right?
1:04:46 But people who take it and then get lazy about things,
1:04:48 you are net worse off.
1:04:49 Okay, now in terms of exercise,
1:04:52 I mean, I was fortunate that when I turned,
1:04:55 I was always very physical, soccer, skateboarding,
1:04:56 swimming, et cetera.
1:04:59 I was never particularly excellent at any of those sports,
1:05:02 just good enough to kind of hang in there.
1:05:04 You know, I got a girlfriend when I was 16.
1:05:06 She was a year older than I was.
1:05:08 And I heard their former boyfriend was like a football player
1:05:09 or something.
1:05:11 And I was like this skinny skateboard kid.
1:05:12 So I started doing my pushups and my pullups.
1:05:16 And I will say that, so it was the first girlfriend effect.
1:05:20 And then I found like, whoa, I really like exercise.
1:05:22 I feel like there’s a kind of direct relationship
1:05:23 between effort and outcome.
1:05:25 And I always ran also.
1:05:27 I loved, and I still love running.
1:05:29 So I would say that for young people
1:05:31 and encouraging young people to exercise,
1:05:33 find out what physical activities they really enjoy.
1:05:37 For me, it was running and I did like weightlifting.
1:05:39 So encourage them to play sports
1:05:41 because of the social dynamics
1:05:44 and to be physical with respect to, you know,
1:05:47 just fitness and thinking about fitness.
1:05:49 I think what you described as excellent, you know,
1:05:54 10 to 15 minutes daily even because they’re young, right?
1:05:56 They can recover of body weight type stuff.
1:05:58 So dips, pullups, et cetera.
1:06:02 One of the best pieces of advice I heard recently
1:06:06 and mindset advice, if he comes from a physician
1:06:09 by the name of Gabrielle Lyon, L-Y-O-N,
1:06:12 who’s a medical doctor and she knows a ton
1:06:15 about nutrition and training for men and women.
1:06:17 And her husband happens to be in the SEAL teams.
1:06:19 I have a number of friends in the community.
1:06:20 And she said, you know,
1:06:24 goals aren’t really the way to think about things.
1:06:26 Standards are the way to think about things.
1:06:29 This is very much borrowed from the military community
1:06:32 to think, as you mentioned, Navy a few minutes ago.
1:06:33 When you have a standard for yourself
1:06:36 that you should be able to do five sets of five pullups,
1:06:39 for instance, on your birthday every year, no matter what.
1:06:43 Or that you should be able to do three sets of 25 full pushups.
1:06:45 – I remember the presidential fitness awards.
1:06:46 It was like I used to train for one year,
1:06:48 I had a growth spurt, I couldn’t do the seven pullups.
1:06:49 I didn’t get the number four.
1:06:51 And I like, I’ve spent the whole year
1:06:54 trying to figure out how to get back to seven pullups.
1:06:56 – Right. And so when you have goals,
1:06:59 it’s very easy to reach a goal and then lapse, you know?
1:07:00 But when you have a standard,
1:07:01 you’re always staying above that line
1:07:04 and you have the opportunity to exceed that standard by a lot.
1:07:06 But you never let yourself drop below that standard.
1:07:09 It sets kind of an alarm on the low end
1:07:10 that’s also very high.
1:07:13 And I love this concept because it’s like,
1:07:14 you have a standard for yourself.
1:07:15 You have a standard of behavior,
1:07:18 you have a standard of fitness
1:07:21 that translates to certain activities
1:07:25 so that you never are unable to meet that standard.
1:07:25 And if you’re standard,
1:07:27 and this is a very jockel-willing-ish,
1:07:29 but if you’re standard is,
1:07:32 you’re gonna train every morning at 4.30, no matter what,
1:07:34 except those rare occasions where travel
1:07:35 or something inhibits it.
1:07:37 Well, then you’re doing it no matter what.
1:07:40 Whereas if your goal is to get up at 4.30 and train,
1:07:42 it only sets this high bar.
1:07:45 I’m sure there’s a natural psychology to this, right?
1:07:49 You know, that you need to achieve that thing
1:07:50 and then you check that box.
1:07:55 Whereas the standard means a low end critical threshold
1:07:57 that you stay above,
1:08:00 but there’s really no upper end either.
1:08:02 And I think the best situation is,
1:08:03 well, kind of like the one that sounds like happened for you
1:08:04 and certainly happened for me
1:08:06 where I discovered I love to run.
1:08:08 I mean, the only thing I’m upset about
1:08:09 about training my legs yesterday
1:08:11 is that I generally take a day off
1:08:13 after training legs to recover
1:08:15 and I wanna train again today
1:08:17 and that just feels great, right?
1:08:19 So I would suggest that they do
1:08:21 mainly body weight resistance training.
1:08:23 I know that there’s a shift now
1:08:26 toward allowing kids to do resistance training,
1:08:29 but here’s my feeling about being a young person,
1:08:30 which I was once,
1:08:33 which is that the more variety of movement
1:08:34 and sports that you do,
1:08:37 the better off you are in life and fitness.
1:08:38 All the people I know
1:08:40 who are hyper-specialized in some sport
1:08:44 don’t seem to stay with that sport a long time.
1:08:46 They get injured, they’re not fit.
1:08:48 I mean, the gymnasts are the exception
1:08:48 because they seem to do
1:08:50 all the different dynamic movements.
1:08:53 They’re strong and they have speed and they have agility.
1:08:54 But I think it’s great fun
1:08:55 to try a bunch of different sports.
1:08:57 And then if you’re an athlete,
1:08:58 sure, focus on one,
1:09:00 but with respect to fitness,
1:09:03 I’m not a huge fan of really young people’s,
1:09:05 you know, lifting heavy weights in the gym.
1:09:07 And I’m gonna get a lot of flack for this
1:09:10 because Olympic lifting is sport in its own right,
1:09:13 but I didn’t really start lifting heavy
1:09:14 until I was in my 20s.
1:09:16 And that for me was like,
1:09:19 I’ve never gone below three repetitions of anything.
1:09:21 So I’ve never done a single rep max of anything.
1:09:22 And people always go, there’s no way that’s true.
1:09:24 And it’s absolutely true.
1:09:25 I’m interested in using it as a tool
1:09:27 to accomplish something,
1:09:29 strengthen in some cases hypertrophy
1:09:32 and staying healthy is my main focus now.
1:09:34 And I will say this,
1:09:36 I got laughed at, teased in college
1:09:39 because I’d be out for a run on mornings
1:09:40 where everyone else was doing their kind of Sunday,
1:09:42 fun day drinking.
1:09:44 I got teased for studying
1:09:46 when other people were kicking back.
1:09:49 When I was a professor and I would go to meetings,
1:09:51 I would sneak off to the gym at lunch hour
1:09:54 ’cause I couldn’t sit all day without losing my mind.
1:09:57 And one day I was in the gym at Cold Spring Harbor laboratories
1:09:59 in New York, this is where people go for meetings.
1:10:01 And it’s kind of a science summer camp.
1:10:05 And one of the most successful biologists in the world
1:10:07 still came into the gym and I was like,
1:10:08 oh, and I was sort of embarrassed.
1:10:09 Like I’d been caught doing something.
1:10:12 And I said, wait a second, this is your meeting.
1:10:13 And he said, yeah, you know,
1:10:15 I can’t be in these meetings all day.
1:10:16 It drives me crazy.
1:10:17 And I looked at him and I’m like, okay,
1:10:18 this guy has great posture.
1:10:19 He’s fit.
1:10:21 He was in his mid sixties then.
1:10:22 He’s still that way now.
1:10:25 I thought to myself, okay, here I’ve been like
1:10:27 guiltfully running off to exercise to take care of myself.
1:10:29 The culture has changed a little bit now.
1:10:33 But if you’re in whatever dominant culture is around you,
1:10:34 beware, that’s what I always say.
1:10:37 Even if you’re hanging out with rebels, beware, right?
1:10:40 You know, it’s good sometimes to rebel against the rebels,
1:10:41 right?
1:10:42 Just keep it.
1:10:44 It’s not just about independence of thought.
1:10:46 It’s that develop habits that you know are good for you.
1:10:49 And when the dominant culture is, you know,
1:10:51 dude, why are you working out or why are you studying?
1:10:54 Like, trust me, and you can tell your sons this.
1:10:56 I know you know this for yourself in five, 10 years.
1:10:58 People are gonna be coming to you for advice
1:11:00 because they’re the ones carrying 40 pounds of extra weight
1:11:03 or 20 pounds of extra weight or their libido is shot
1:11:05 or they’re wondering why they hate their job
1:11:06 or their relationship.
1:11:08 And I’m not saying that I had all the answers,
1:11:10 but I’ve noticed that the people who are willing
1:11:12 to take really good care of themselves
1:11:13 and not in a vain way.
1:11:14 This isn’t about vanity.
1:11:17 It’s taking care of yourself so that you can do more
1:11:21 in the world for other people, especially,
1:11:21 but also for yourself.
1:11:24 Like be the strong one who can help other people.
1:11:27 And once your sons, I think, realize that they’re gonna be
1:11:30 the best version of themselves for themselves,
1:11:32 but also they’re gonna be the go-to person
1:11:35 that can help everybody in whatever domain
1:11:36 they happen to be in.
1:11:38 I think that feedback loop is so powerful
1:11:42 because you feel like, wow, I understand what self-care is.
1:11:45 I can refill the gas tank just through these behaviors.
1:11:49 – Last question, at the end of in the ’40s,
1:11:52 after World War II, physicists became celebrities,
1:11:54 Einstein, Teller, Oppenheimer.
1:11:56 I feel like we’re having a little bit of that moment
1:11:58 where neuroscientists, I think of you and Sam Harris,
1:12:01 are becoming famous.
1:12:03 And Sam, more on the philosophical side,
1:12:06 you more on the optimization of almost like
1:12:08 how to live a better life through fitness
1:12:11 or just optimizing, I mean, thoughtful about your nutrition,
1:12:13 your sleep, your fitness.
1:12:14 I get, I don’t know if you get these calls.
1:12:16 I get these calls from other faculty at other universities
1:12:18 and they, in as polite a way as possible,
1:12:22 try to say to me, my research and domain expertise
1:12:24 has so much more heft and depth than yours,
1:12:27 yet you’re so much more successful than me.
1:12:30 Can you advise me on what I need to do?
1:12:32 You’ve got to be one of the most famous
1:12:34 and successful, most influential,
1:12:39 creating great economic security for you and your family.
1:12:42 Can you give any advice around what were some,
1:12:44 if there are any hacks or best practices?
1:12:46 We’ve talked a lot about optimizing for fitness.
1:12:50 Talk about now optimizing for someone who is credentialed,
1:12:54 who has expertise, but wants to be Andrew Huberman.
1:12:57 What are the two or three hacks, platforms,
1:13:00 best practices that took you from a neuroscientist
1:13:04 to someone who’s had a really remarkable influence?
1:13:05 – Thanks for the question.
1:13:08 So my dad’s a physicist and so I grew up hearing
1:13:10 about the golden age of physics and, you know,
1:13:13 Feynman and like Gelman and all that.
1:13:15 And I think the interest in physics is,
1:13:17 you know, physics is everywhere, right?
1:13:21 And so it’s universal and explained correctly
1:13:24 is really enchanting.
1:13:26 The brain and neuroscience is everything, right?
1:13:29 It’s sadness, it’s grief, it’s happiness, it’s depression,
1:13:33 it’s addiction, it’s fitness, it’s all of that.
1:13:34 And so it’s universal.
1:13:36 And I would say that we’re now also entering the age
1:13:41 of where math and AI are gonna become really important
1:13:42 for public discourse.
1:13:45 So I would say the following.
1:13:48 And as a fellow academic, you know that, you know,
1:13:50 when one sticks their neck out there publicly,
1:13:52 like I understand there are gonna be people
1:13:55 in the academic community who are happy about that
1:13:57 and Stanford has been immensely supportive,
1:13:58 immensely supportive.
1:14:00 And I’m very grateful for that.
1:14:01 There will be people who are critical
1:14:03 around specific points or the general idea
1:14:06 of somebody doing what I do or what you do.
1:14:08 There will be people who feel that way
1:14:10 because of jealousy, there will be people who feel that way
1:14:12 because they genuinely feel like it’s not being packaged
1:14:14 or delivered in the way that they would prefer.
1:14:16 And that’s all fine and good.
1:14:17 I would say point number one is
1:14:19 if you’re going to be public facing,
1:14:22 as you know, you’re not gonna satisfy all those people.
1:14:23 You’re just not.
1:14:26 At the same time, I think people can feel intention.
1:14:29 You know, I think people sometimes focus,
1:14:31 there’s kind of a gravitational pull around
1:14:35 like cold plunges and supplements and weight lifting
1:14:38 that I think sometimes interesting topics
1:14:39 that I really enjoy.
1:14:41 And then each one has an interesting science
1:14:44 and then discussion around it, which I thoroughly enjoy.
1:14:46 But I think sometimes they overlook the fact
1:14:49 that like 90% of what I talked about on the podcast
1:14:52 is about neural mechanisms, endocrine mechanisms.
1:14:54 I’ve worked on cold physiology
1:14:57 and to try and teach biology and the package
1:15:00 in sort of protocols for health
1:15:02 and then teach protocols for health
1:15:04 in a way to people who are interested in that.
1:15:06 And then also, you know, get them in a bit enchanted,
1:15:08 hopefully about biology.
1:15:10 But the number one takeaway for people
1:15:12 that want to do some public facing work
1:15:17 or to allow people to appreciate what they do
1:15:20 is they, I can’t emphasize this enough
1:15:22 if I could like put this on a billboard in Times Square,
1:15:25 I would accept no one who looks at billboards anymore.
1:15:29 You have to be the pure version of yourself.
1:15:32 And this is why not everyone does this.
1:15:34 So I have, I’m gonna sound like a name dropper
1:15:35 but I’m very fortunate to be close friends,
1:15:36 very close friends.
1:15:38 We communicate daily with Rick Rubin,
1:15:41 like the Rick Rubin from NYU, right?
1:15:42 For the start of record label,
1:15:44 it worked out well at NYU.
1:15:45 And Rick understands this,
1:15:48 that there’s a certain energy that people have
1:15:51 when they’re really engaging in things in its pure form.
1:15:53 They’re not thinking, are people gonna like this song?
1:15:57 Is it gonna be top chart song like the last one?
1:15:58 Are people gonna like this podcast?
1:16:01 It’s just like, I’m a very curious person
1:16:03 and I’ve lived a life of adventure.
1:16:05 One of my heroes, I have several,
1:16:08 Joe Strummer being one of them
1:16:10 and the great Oliver Sacks being another, right?
1:16:13 A neurologist, public facing author
1:16:14 who was also ridiculed by the way
1:16:17 for doing what he did until he became famous enough
1:16:19 that then he got appointments at multiple universities.
1:16:20 They kind of came back for it.
1:16:22 Very interesting story.
1:16:24 And Oliver was a very curious person.
1:16:26 They once said, it’s in his book.
1:16:28 It says, you know, Oliver will go far
1:16:30 provided he doesn’t go too far.
1:16:31 He was a methamphetamine addict.
1:16:32 He was interested in bodybuilding.
1:16:34 He was also a closet homosexual
1:16:36 and that came out at the end when he, you know,
1:16:39 and he had a bunch of things about his personal life
1:16:43 that explained sort of, you know, not just that
1:16:44 but explained who he was in a big way
1:16:47 but up until then he was just Oliver being Oliver.
1:16:48 He loved sea creatures.
1:16:51 He was always talking about the things he loves.
1:16:54 I’m a very curious person and I love adventure.
1:16:56 And I grew up basically
1:16:58 because of my family structure changing
1:17:01 in a big pack of guys, some female friends as well.
1:17:02 That’s kind of driven my life.
1:17:05 I’ve interacted with people at the kind of extremes
1:17:07 of adventure and extremes of career
1:17:09 in fitness and health and science.
1:17:12 And so what I bring forward is my,
1:17:16 it feels innate desire to learn, organize
1:17:20 and disperse information that I find very useful
1:17:22 for mental health, physical health and performance
1:17:25 along those adventures that are just simply my life.
1:17:28 So I’m just being Andrew Huberman.
1:17:30 And I’ll come right out and say, you know,
1:17:31 people say all sorts of things.
1:17:32 They’ve said all sorts of things about me,
1:17:35 good and bad and everything in between.
1:17:37 But what I just said, it like really describes
1:17:39 who I am at my essence.
1:17:43 And if somebody is like an entomologist
1:17:48 or works on, I don’t know, like a lipid signaling
1:17:51 in the gut or whatever people study,
1:17:55 if they can tap into like the essence of why they do that
1:17:58 and then teach it from that pure place,
1:18:01 they will be potentially the biggest podcast in the world,
1:18:03 the best selling book in the world.
1:18:05 So it’s not so much the subject matter
1:18:07 as the energy that one brings to it,
1:18:10 but that energy as Rick has pointed out over and over again,
1:18:11 and this is why he’s so successful,
1:18:13 cannot be manufactured.
1:18:15 Whatever it is that makes you,
1:18:18 you, your relationship with your father,
1:18:21 your interest in fitness, your appreciation
1:18:23 for what young people are now going through
1:18:25 and the challenges they face, the desire to like,
1:18:28 you’re just being Scott in the world.
1:18:30 And that’s why people orient toward you.
1:18:31 And so these colleagues that are like,
1:18:35 wait, why is it that Huberman and Galloway and Harris
1:18:37 are like, well, ’cause Sam’s just being Sam.
1:18:39 So I think you just,
1:18:42 it’s the enthusiasm and the energy that one brings to it.
1:18:45 And if there’s a universal quality to that,
1:18:48 then sure, it will have bigger reach.
1:18:51 But ultimately, like this is kind of how all public facing
1:18:54 intellectuals, scientists, health, you know,
1:18:55 they call us influencers,
1:18:57 but that’s kind of like unfair at some level
1:18:59 because it’s really about like the passion
1:19:01 and energy that you bring to it.
1:19:02 This is a long-winded question.
1:19:03 You asked for a half,
1:19:05 but I would say these people need to be them
1:19:06 and if being them is sitting in their office
1:19:08 and kind of like grinding away
1:19:10 on why someone else has something and they don’t,
1:19:11 well, then guess what?
1:19:12 They’re exactly where they belong.
1:19:14 – Andrew Huberman is a neuroscientist
1:19:17 and tenured professor in the Department of Neurobiology
1:19:20 and by courtesy, psychiatry and behavioral sciences
1:19:22 at Stanford School of Medicine.
1:19:24 His laboratory’s most recent work focuses
1:19:27 on the influence of vision and respiration on brain states,
1:19:29 such as fear and high attention focus
1:19:31 and developing rapid and effective tools
1:19:34 for mitigating stress, improving sleep
1:19:36 and other physiological metrics.
1:19:39 Andrew’s popular podcast, The Huberman Lab Podcast,
1:19:42 is often ranked in the global top 10
1:19:44 and frequently listed as the number one show
1:19:47 in science, education and health and fitness.
1:19:50 He joins us from Los Angeles.
1:19:52 Andrew, like there’s a lot of big podcasts
1:19:54 that are having a lot of influence.
1:19:58 I think having an impact around people’s physical fitness
1:20:00 and feeling good about themselves
1:20:03 and feeling strong and feeling attractive
1:20:04 and feeling healthy.
1:20:06 I really think what you’re doing is profound.
1:20:10 So it’s just great to see your ascent and the influence.
1:20:14 I think you’re doing really good work
1:20:18 and it feels like you are exactly what you said.
1:20:20 It’s so rewarding to see someone doing exactly
1:20:22 what they should be doing and I think you’re doing that.
1:20:24 So really appreciate your time.
1:20:25 – Oh, thank you.
1:20:28 I’ve really enjoyed that conversation.
1:20:31 I hope we can further it on or off, Mike, in the future.
1:20:35 And I think of you as somebody who’s posing those conversations
1:20:36 in a way that has an optimism to it.
1:20:39 Like there are solutions and I’m an optimist too.
1:20:40 So that resonates.
1:20:41 So thanks so much for hosting me.
1:20:42 I really enjoyed it.
1:20:43 – It’s our pleasure, Andrew.
1:20:44 Thanks, brother.
1:20:50 – This episode was produced by Caroline Shagren.
1:20:52 Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer
1:20:54 and Drew Burroughs is our technical director.
1:20:55 Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pub
1:20:57 from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
1:20:59 We will catch you on Saturday
1:21:01 for No Mercy, No Malice as read by George Hahn.
1:21:04 And please follow our Prop G Markets pod
1:21:06 wherever you get your pods for new episodes
1:21:08 every Monday and Thursday.