Your Top Health Questions Answered
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AI Summary
English
Overview
Andrew Huberman answers audience questions spanning late-night strength training and sleep, morning light and circadian rhythms, over-optimization, memory and smell training, fertility, perimenopause-related anxiety, wedding timing, surgical recovery, and finding a meaningful career or passion. His central themes are that foundational behaviors matter more than perfect protocols, biological systems adapt over days rather than requiring daily perfection, and health decisions—especially those involving hormones, fertility, supplements, or surgery—should be individualized with qualified clinicians.
Key ideas
- Late-night strength training and sleep: - Moderate-to-high-intensity training appropriately raises cortisol as part of the adaptation signal, even late in the day. The challenge is generating sufficient focus without using stimulants that impair sleep. - Caffeine within roughly 8–10 hours of bedtime can disrupt sleep even when a person can fall asleep normally. - Huberman proposes alpha-GPC as a non-classical “stimulant” that increases acetylcholine, focus, and alertness without the same sympathetic activation caused by caffeine or other catecholamine-enhancing stimulants. He suggests 600–900 mg with water, while noting that alpha-GPC may modestly increase REM sleep or at least appears not to impair REM or slow-wave sleep. - REM sleep supports learning-related plasticity and helps reduce the emotional intensity attached to previous experiences. - Alpha-GPC has an important qualification: increased choline can raise trimethylamine N-oxide, or TMAO. Chronically elevated TMAO may carry cardiovascular risk, and one paper associated long-term, high-dose alpha-GPC—approximately 900 mg several times daily—with increased risk of stroke and other cardiovascular events. - He suggests 600 mg of garlic, which supplies allicin, alongside alpha-GPC or within the following 12–24 hours because garlic may reduce gut-mediated TMAO production. He recommends reserving alpha-GPC for about one to three workouts weekly because frequent use may diminish its effect. - Mental preparation is a major performance tool. Huberman recounts six-time Mr. Olympia Dorian Yates using several minutes on a stationary bike partly to focus the mind before “training,” not merely to warm the body. - After evening training, a hot shower warms the skin and activates temperature-regulating neurons in the hypothalamic medial preoptic area, helping core temperature fall—a prerequisite for sleep. - Three or four deliberate long-exhale breaths, including physiological sighs with a double inhale followed by a long exhale, can reduce autonomic arousal and heart rate through descending vagal pathways. Huberman says roughly 85% of vagal fibers carry sensory information upward, while approximately 10–15% descend from the brain to organs. - Although large meals near bedtime can raise heart rate and glucose, going to bed very hungry after hard training can also disturb sleep. A small post-workout meal may therefore be appropriate even within the final hour before bed. He mentions slower-digesting casein or milk protein, Greek yogurt, oatmeal, and other starches that replenish glycogen. He disputes the idea that this will necessarily eliminate the night’s growth-hormone benefit, especially after exercise has already raised growth hormone substantially.
- Morning daylight and circadian timing: - Ambient outdoor daylight during the first hour after waking is beneficial even if the person cannot face east or see the sun itself. Eastward exposure is preferable, but a west-facing balcony or view still supplies far more photons than indoor or nighttime conditions. - Morning light activates intrinsically photosensitive melanopsin retinal ganglion cells, which signal the suprachiasmatic nucleus, the brain’s central circadian clock. - Early light raises the normal morning cortisol peak and supports daytime dopamine, epinephrine, and norepinephrine, improving alertness, mood, and focus. Raising these arousal signals early helps them decline later, supporting natural melatonin release and sleep. - Remove sunglasses and brimmed hats when safe because they reduce light reaching the eyes; prescription glasses and contact lenses are acceptable. Never stare into any light that is painful, suppress the natural blink reflex, or force the eyelids open. - If waking before sunrise, a 10,000-lux artificial light can help until daylight becomes available. - The circadian system integrates light exposure across roughly the preceding two or three days. Missing one morning is not catastrophic; spending longer outdoors the following day can help. This slow integration explains both the flexibility of normal schedules and the delayed adjustment that produces jet lag. - Exercise, food timing, and social interaction also affect circadian timing, but morning bright light is presented as the strongest “zeitgeber,” or time-setting cue. Evening light should generally be kept low.
- Avoiding health-protocol burnout: - True optimization should adapt to real circumstances—illness in the family, deadlines, travel, a newborn, vacation, or unusually good or poor sleep—instead of requiring life to conform rigidly to protocols. - The priorities are adequate, high-quality sleep; morning daylight; lower evening light; hydration; exercise; sound nutrition; and social connection. Occasional deviations, including staying out late for enjoyable or necessary reasons, are unlikely to ruin health. - Hydration supports mental clarity and physical and mental energy. Urine does not need to be perfectly clear, and the evidence does not support the claim that all non-water drinks, including coffee or yerba mate, are dehydrating. Plain water should still be consumed. - Huberman’s example routine includes resistance training three times weekly and cardio three times weekly. His cardiovascular work includes brief 6–12-minute high-intensity sessions and one longer 45–60-minute hike or jog. This is an example, not a universal prescription. - Consistency must be defined over the relevant phase of life, not assumed to mean a permanent schedule. Huberman exercised only two or three times weekly during graduate school because laboratory work kept him physically active, though inadequate sleep eventually forced him to adjust. - A useful protocol is one whose benefits justify its burden and that can be sustained without resentment. People should change their attitude, modify the plan, or abandon elements that make them chronically resentful. - Nutrition should be workable and enjoyable: mostly unprocessed or minimally processed foods, adequate protein and fiber, and low-sugar fermented foods, adapted for omnivorous, vegetarian, or vegan preferences. - Huberman states that zero alcohol is physiologically preferable to some alcohol, while suggesting that two drinks are probably acceptable for non-alcohol-dependent adults. He emphasizes that this is not a moral condemnation and that guilt or resentment around occasional choices is counterproductive. - His guiding principle is to choose freely while understanding the likely consequences: “do what you want for you,” provided it does not harm others.
- Memory and learning: - New memories are initially encoded through the hippocampi and later represented across neocortical circuits. Memories change over time and can weaken if they are not recalled. - Maintaining memory requires both learning new material and retrieving older material. Occasional difficulty remembering names is not by itself proof of dementia. - New learning requires alertness, focused attention, deliberate effort, and errors. If the nervous system can already perform a task perfectly, it has little reason to change. - Exercise can support learning largely because it raises autonomic arousal and catecholamines, making focused learning easier for approximately one to six hours afterward. Jogging, brisk walking, resistance training, interval cycling, yoga, and tai chi may all help if they increase alertness. Exercise also raises plasticity-related factors such as BDNF and IGF-1, but Huberman presents arousal as the dominant immediate mechanism. - The arousal benefit is useful only when directed toward specific learning; being generally alert without focused practice does not automatically improve a particular memory. - Productive errors must arise while genuinely trying to perform correctly. Intentionally making careless mistakes—for example, deliberately missing tennis serves—does not produce the same learning signal. - Error signals involving the cerebellum help initiate neural changes. Those changes are consolidated during deep rest, especially both slow-wave and REM sleep. Individual sleep needs may range from roughly six to nine hours. - Self-testing is presented as the most overlooked memory protocol. Studies comparing repeated reading, highlighting, note-taking, and other methods generally found retrieval practice more effective for durable memory. - Effective testing means attempting recall until reaching genuine difficulty—the “tip-of-the-tongue” or friction point—rather than immediately rereading the answer. Looking up the answer after an honest retrieval attempt helps reconsolidate it. - Self-testing can involve written questions, mentally retracing an old route, recalling material during a walk, or using an AI system such as ChatGPT to generate increasingly difficult tests.
- Improving smell: - Huberman cites olfaction researcher Noam Sobel and describes evidence that human olfactory ability can approach canine performance under appropriate testing. Dogs retain an advantage partly because they sniff much more frequently, maintain odor circulation through their nostril anatomy, compare information between nostrils, and devote intense attention to scent. - Smell can be trained by repeatedly sampling distinct, safe odors such as lemon, rose, chocolate, or coffee. Use multiple, longer sniffs and focus closely, ideally with eyes closed and distractions minimized. - Olfactory neurons are unusual because they continue turning over throughout life. Their survival and tuning are activity-dependent, so sniffing and attending to odors stimulate the relevant neural activity. - Noxious substances should not be used for training. Their detection relies partly on distinct hardwired pathways, and inhaling potentially harmful molecules is unsafe. - Respiratory illness or head trauma can impair smell. A blow can shear olfactory axons where they cross the sieve-like cribriform plate, causing anosmia. Smell training may aid recovery, particularly when begun soon after injury, although recovery is not guaranteed and depends on the damage.
- Fertility, calories, diet, and supplements: - Both male and female fertility require adequate energy intake without chronic caloric excess. Excess body fat can promote inflammation and impair reproductive health, while excessive leanness or prolonged caloric restriction can suppress reproductive hormones. - Drawing on discussions with physician Kyle Gillett, Huberman says a man above roughly 20% body fat may improve testosterone and fertility-related markers by reducing calories modestly while resistance training to preserve or build muscle. - For a man at approximately 15% body fat or less, eating below maintenance six or seven days weekly for two or more weeks may reduce total and free testosterone and potentially fertility. He advises avoiding severe, extended deficits and gives about 500 calories per day as a probable upper limit when fertility is a priority. - Total testosterone reference ranges are broad—approximately 300–900 ng/dL and sometimes up to 1,200 ng/dL—and must be interpreted alongside free testosterone and the testosterone-to-estrogen balance. Men require estrogen; maximizing testosterone while minimizing estrogen is not an appropriate goal. - Male fertility involves sperm count, motility, morphology, and other quality measures. At-home and clinical semen analyses are now relatively inexpensive and can provide a snapshot before conception or medication use. - Exogenous testosterone, including “microdoses” below about 100 mg weekly, can suppress sperm production through hormonal negative feedback. Human chorionic gonadotropin, sometimes around 500 IU three times weekly, may partly or fully preserve or restore production, but recovery is not guaranteed. - Anyone considering testosterone therapy should discuss current and possible future fertility goals with a knowledgeable doctor and may consider sperm banking before treatment. - Drawing on fertility specialists Natalie Crawford and Thaïs Aliabadi, Huberman says women with substantially excessive body fat may benefit from gradual loss while maintaining a nutrient-dense diet. Becoming too lean can disrupt menstruation and fertility, so body-composition goals should be discussed with an obstetrician-gynecologist. - A broadly anti-inflammatory diet emphasizes minimally processed foods, fruits and vegetables, micronutrients, fiber, lean complete proteins such as fish, chicken, lean beef, shellfish or scallops, moderate starches such as lentils and rice, and primarily unsaturated fats such as olive oil. - A Stanford study by Justin Sonnenburg and Christopher Gardner compared increased low-sugar fermented foods with substantially increased fiber. Fermented foods—gradually increased to about four modest servings daily—reduced multiple inflammatory markers. Increased fiber helped some people but raised inflammatory markers in others, suggesting individual responses to particular fiber sources. - Examples include unsweetened refrigerated sauerkraut, Bulgarian yogurt, kimchi, natto, and low-sugar kombucha. Beer and sweetened pickles do not fit the intended category. Fiber increases should be gradual; fruits, vegetables, and sometimes small amounts of psyllium husk are options. - Fertility specialists commonly recommend L-carnitine and coenzyme Q10 as optional supports for sperm motility and quality and possibly egg quality. Proposed benefits involve mitochondrial function, which is essential to gametes, early embryonic cell division, and development. - Oral L-carnitine doses mentioned are approximately 500–750 mg daily, though oral absorption is limited and some people use injectable forms. CoQ10 recommendations vary. Other interventions, including low-dose melatonin or DHEA, are more disputed among specialists. - Huberman directs readers to Natalie Crawford’s book The Fertility Formula for fuller discussion. He stresses that neither L-carnitine nor CoQ10 is a single decisive fertility treatment; reproductive outcomes are multivariable and influenced by age, genetics, sleep, exercise, inflammation, and medical factors.
- Perimenopause, menopause, and mental health: - Perimenopause and menopause involve large, sometimes gradual and sometimes rapid changes in estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and other hormones. Experiences vary substantially among women. - Anxiety, panic attacks, and panic-like symptoms can plausibly be related to these transitions. Steroid hormones affect gene and protein expression and influence neural circuits, including the hypothalamus and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis that regulates cortisol, sleep, temperature, hunger, and anxiety. - A temporal association between a hormone change and anxiety is worth taking seriously, but it does not prove that one hormone directly caused the symptoms because many interacting biological and life factors are involved. - Earlier large hormone-replacement studies were widely interpreted as showing that treatment was dangerous, ineffective, or only mildly effective. Huberman says a growing consensus holds that some conclusions did not match the data and that treatment was often started too late. - Current reevaluation suggests certain hormone therapies may provide benefits when begun at the appropriate stage and dose, whereas starting too late may carry different risks. The correct mix of estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, or other therapies is individualized. - Women with new anxiety, panic symptoms, sleep disruption, night sweats, or reduced vitality should discuss both hormonal and non-hormonal explanations with a clinician willing to consider a multi-pronged plan. Sleep and an anti-inflammatory diet may help, but hormone therapy may address an underlying contributor in some cases. - Research has historically underrepresented perimenopause, menopause, polycystic ovary syndrome, and other areas of women’s health. New data are emerging, but many questions remain unresolved, including exactly how long psychiatric symptoms typically last.
- Timing an outdoor wedding: - Huberman recommends a sunset rather than sunrise ceremony for most guests. About 20% of people are early chronotypes, while many are night owls and the largest group commonly wakes around 6–8 a.m. and sleeps around 10 p.m.–midnight. - Most people can remain awake several hours later than usual more easily than they can become fully alert earlier than their habitual wake time. A sunset ceremony therefore gives more guests time to prepare, travel, and arrive rested. - Early chronotypes may tire during a late celebration and night owls may prefer it, but all groups are likely to cope. There is no strong evidence that couples must have matched chronotypes; either matched or slightly offset schedules may work.
- Preparing for and recovering from kidney-donation surgery: - Enter surgery as fit and well-rested as reasonably possible without exhausting or injuring yourself through overtraining. Better cardiovascular fitness, strength, metabolic health, and circulation are associated with faster recovery. - A possible preparatory schedule includes one weekly 45–60-minute zone 2–3 endurance session, one or possibly two high-intensity interval sessions, a roughly 30-minute moderate session, and upper- and lower-body strength training two or three times weekly, often on separate days. This must be adapted to medical advice and recovery capacity. - One poor night of sleep from pre-surgical anxiety is common and does not preclude good recovery; the broader goal is adequate rest in the preceding days and weeks. - Preserving normal circadian cues after surgery may improve recovery. Huberman says hospital data associate access to natural window light with better recovery from illness and surgery. - If possible, request a bed near an east-facing or otherwise daylight-exposed window. Use an eye mask and earplugs at night to limit hospital light and noise, while obtaining morning ambient light and outdoor air when medically permitted. - Better circadian alignment may improve sleep and help reduce post-surgical inflammation. Hospitals are often poorly designed for circadian health because of bright lights, overnight checks, equipment noise, and limited daylight. - Temporary muscle and strength loss can often be regained faster than the original gains because previously trained nerve-to-muscle pathways and muscular adaptations are re-established. Rebuilding remains possible with age, though it generally becomes harder. - Huberman expresses strong appreciation for kidney donors, while acknowledging that kidney donation is more invasive than the orthopedic surgeries from which he personally recovered.
- Finding passion and direction: - Passion is not usually found through passive introspection alone. Huberman invokes the Clash and Mescaleros musician Joe Strummer’s “Strummer’s Law”: “no input, no output.” People must engage with work, ideas, art, communities, and the wider world to discover what resonates. - Maintain daily structure even before identifying a calling. Work, study, exercise, sleep, and self-care build transferable discipline and competence. Huberman recalls working in skateboard and shoe shops, a bakery, a toy store assembling wagons, delivering papers, and mowing lawns before becoming a scientist. - Earning one’s own money, saving some of it, and becoming reliable can provide momentum even when the current job is not a vocation. - Curiosity creates unexpected combinations. Huberman describes listening to a modern-art lecture while doing routine work and having ideas connecting visual neuroscience, eye health, and emerging peptide research. - Avoid two traps: meaningless drama, which captures attention without building anything, and numbing behaviors that suppress curiosity. Anger can sometimes reveal a genuine concern that becomes advocacy or public service, but it should be distinguished from empty conflict. - Keep track of people and careers that genuinely resonate, not merely impress. Huberman has maintained such a list since his teens, updating it as his interests evolve. - Career direction is a vector rather than a final destination. A person may have multiple careers, and each experience may lead to another. - After choosing a field, accept its “chop wood, carry water” apprenticeship phase. Learn the fundamentals and progress from unskilled to skilled and eventually toward mastery before insisting on a personal reinvention of the field. - Difficulty does not necessarily mean the path is wrong; it may simply expose an undeveloped skill. Distinguish genuine aversion from the discomfort of learning. - Original contributions emerge when sound fundamentals, mastery, varied interests, and personal experience eventually converge. Huberman’s formula is to remain structured, curious, engaged, and attentive to the internal signals of “yes,” “no,” or indifference without assuming the first path must be permanent. - Huberman also acknowledges PhD candidate Cody Morrison’s question about research careers, notes that he is not currently accepting postdoctoral researchers, and observes that the scientific funding and career landscape has changed since he established his laboratory.
Practical takeaways
- For late evening training: - Avoid caffeine within roughly 8–10 hours of bedtime. - Enter the workout rested and deliberately focus before starting. - If considering alpha-GPC, Huberman’s suggested range is 600–900 mg no more than about one to three times weekly, with awareness of cardiovascular uncertainty and possible TMAO elevation. - Consider 600 mg garlic with alpha-GPC or within 12–24 hours. - After training, take a hot shower, perform three or four long-exhale breaths, and eat a modest protein-and-carbohydrate meal if hunger might wake you.
- For circadian health: - Get outdoor ambient light during the first hour after waking, regardless of direction. - Face east when practical, but do not skip exposure merely because the view is westward or overcast. - Remove sunglasses and brimmed hats when safe, while never staring painfully at the sun. - Treat exposure across several days as the target; compensate gently after a missed day and keep evening light relatively dim.
- For sustainable health habits: - Prioritize sleep, light, hydration, exercise, nutrition, and social connection. - Choose a routine that fits the current phase of life and can be maintained without chronic guilt or resentment. - Allow occasional imperfect days rather than turning health practices into another source of burnout.
- For learning: - Raise alertness, direct it toward focused practice, attempt tasks just beyond present ability, and expect genuine errors. - Sleep afterward to consolidate changes. - Test memory before rereading answers; retrieve until reaching difficulty, then verify and repeat later.
- For smell: - Practice regularly with several distinct, safe odors. - Use repeated, longer sniffs while concentrating closely. - Seek medical evaluation for sudden or trauma-related smell loss rather than assuming training alone is sufficient.
- For fertility: - Avoid both chronic caloric excess and aggressive, prolonged dieting. - Obtain appropriate hormone and semen testing rather than inferring fertility from appearance or testosterone alone. - Discuss testosterone therapy, sperm preservation, supplements, and female body-composition targets with fertility-informed clinicians. - Emphasize a nutrient-dense, minimally processed diet and consider gradually adding low-sugar refrigerated fermented foods. - Treat L-carnitine and CoQ10 as optional adjuncts, not guaranteed fertility treatments.
- For perimenopause: - Track anxiety, panic symptoms, sleep, night sweats, menstrual changes, and relevant laboratory results. - Discuss the timing, formulation, benefits, and risks of hormone therapy with a qualified clinician rather than relying on outdated blanket conclusions.
- For surgery: - Build reasonable cardiovascular and strength fitness beforehand, but arrive rested rather than overtrained. - Afterward, follow the surgical team’s activity limits, protect sleep, and seek morning daylight when medically safe. - Expect some temporary loss of strength or muscle, with the possibility of relatively rapid regain once cleared to train.
- For career direction: - Keep working and learning while exploring widely. - Note what consistently energizes or repels you. - Avoid empty drama and habitual numbing. - Commit long enough to learn a field’s fundamentals before trying to transform it.
Caveats and limits
- These answers are Huberman’s interpretations of the literature and conversations with specialists, not individualized medical prescriptions. - Alpha-GPC’s long-term cardiovascular safety is uncertain. The proposed garlic strategy is based on literature suggesting reduced TMAO production, but it does not establish that garlic eliminates cardiovascular risk. - Supplement doses, including alpha-GPC, garlic, L-carnitine, CoQ10, melatonin, DHEA, HCG, and testosterone, can have contraindications, variable product quality, and medication interactions. - Exogenous testosterone can seriously suppress fertility, and HCG does not guarantee full protection or later recovery. Hormone therapy should be supervised by a well-informed physician. - Body-fat thresholds such as 15% or 20%, caloric-deficit limits, and example training schedules are approximate generalizations rather than diagnostic cutoffs. - Fertility depends on many interacting variables. Improving inflammation or mitochondrial support cannot guarantee conception, embryo development, or a successful pregnancy. - Fiber and fermented-food responses vary between individuals. A finding that some participants’ inflammation increased with added fiber does not mean fiber is generally harmful. - Perimenopausal anxiety has a plausible hormonal basis but may also arise from psychiatric, medical, sleep-related, or situational causes. The transcript does not establish a typical duration for panic symptoms. - Hormone-replacement therapy is not universally beneficial or risk-free; timing, formulation, dose, medical history, and individual risk factors matter. - Sudden anosmia, head injury, persistent smell loss, panic attacks, significant sleep disruption, or surgical complications warrant professional evaluation. - Hospital-window observations and reports from surgeons support circadian care, but recovery also depends on the operation, complications, medications, nutrition, rehabilitation, and adherence to the surgical team’s instructions. - Chronotypes influence preferred timing but do not rigidly determine behavior, relationship success, or event enjoyment. - Memory lapses can be normal, but progressive or functionally significant cognitive decline should not be addressed solely with self-testing or lifestyle protocols. - No protocol needs to be executed perfectly every day. Huberman repeatedly emphasizes flexibility, individual response, and avoiding unsupported certainty or health-related guilt.
中文翻译
概述
安德鲁·休伯曼回答了听众提出的多个问题，涉及深夜力量训练与睡眠、晨间光照与昼夜节律、过度优化、记忆与嗅觉训练、生育力、围绝经期相关焦虑、婚礼时间安排、术后恢复，以及如何找到有意义的职业或热情所在。他的核心观点是：基础行为比完美方案更重要；生物系统会在数日的尺度上进行适应，并不要求每天都做到完美；健康决策——尤其是涉及激素、生育力、补充剂或手术的决策——应与具备相应资质的临床医生共同制定，并根据个人情况调整。
核心观点
- 深夜力量训练与睡眠： - 中高强度训练会适当地提高皮质醇，这是适应信号的一部分，即使在一天较晚的时候训练也是如此。难点在于既要产生足够的专注，又不使用会损害睡眠的兴奋剂。 - 睡前约8–10小时内摄入咖啡因可能扰乱睡眠，即使一个人仍能正常入睡。 - 休伯曼提出，可以将α-GPC作为一种非传统的“兴奋剂”：它能提高乙酰胆碱水平、专注力和警觉性，却不会像咖啡因或其他增强儿茶酚胺的兴奋剂那样引起相同程度的交感神经激活。他建议用水送服600–900毫克，同时指出，α-GPC可能会小幅增加快速眼动睡眠，或者至少看起来不会损害快速眼动睡眠或慢波睡眠。 - 快速眼动睡眠有助于与学习相关的可塑性，并帮助降低以往经历所附带的情绪强度。 - α-GPC有一项重要的限制条件：胆碱增加可能会提高三甲胺-N-氧化物（TMAO）水平。长期升高的TMAO可能带来心血管风险；有一篇论文发现，长期、高剂量使用α-GPC——约900毫克、每日数次——与卒中及其他心血管事件风险增加相关。 - 他建议在使用α-GPC的同时或之后12–24小时内摄入600毫克大蒜，以提供大蒜素，因为大蒜可能减少由肠道介导的TMAO生成。他建议将α-GPC保留用于每周约一至三次训练，因为频繁使用可能使其效果减弱。 - 心理准备是一项重要的表现提升工具。休伯曼讲述了六届“奥林匹亚先生”多里安·耶茨的做法：他会先在固定自行车上骑几分钟，部分目的是在正式“训练”前集中精神，而不只是给身体热身。 - 晚间训练后洗热水澡会使皮肤升温，并激活下丘脑内侧视前区中负责调节体温的神经元，帮助核心体温下降——这是入睡的必要条件之一。 - 有意识地进行三到四次长呼气呼吸，包括先连续吸气两次、再长时间呼气的生理叹息，可以通过下行迷走神经通路降低自主神经唤醒程度和心率。休伯曼表示，大约85%的迷走神经纤维将感觉信息向上传递，而约10%–15%的纤维从大脑向下延伸至各器官。 - 尽管临睡前吃大餐可能提高心率和血糖，但在高强度训练后非常饥饿地上床，也可能扰乱睡眠。因此，即使是在睡前最后一小时内，吃一小份训练后餐也可能是合适的。他提到消化较慢的酪蛋白或乳蛋白、希腊酸奶、燕麦片，以及其他能够补充糖原的淀粉类食物。他不认同这种做法必然会消除当晚生长激素益处的说法，尤其是在运动已经显著提高生长激素水平的情况下。
- 晨间日光与昼夜节律时序： - 醒来后的第一个小时内接触户外环境日光是有益的，即使无法面朝东方或直接看到太阳。朝东接触光线更理想，但朝西的阳台或视野所提供的光子仍远多于室内或夜间环境。 - 晨间光照会激活具有内在光敏性的黑视素视网膜神经节细胞，这些细胞会向视交叉上核——大脑的中央昼夜节律时钟——发送信号。 - 早间光照会提高正常的晨间皮质醇峰值，并支持白天的多巴胺、肾上腺素和去甲肾上腺素水平，从而改善警觉性、情绪和专注力。尽早提高这些唤醒信号，有助于它们在较晚时下降，进而支持褪黑素的自然释放和睡眠。 - 在安全的情况下摘下太阳镜和有帽檐的帽子，因为它们会减少到达眼睛的光线；处方眼镜和隐形眼镜可以佩戴。绝不要凝视任何会引起疼痛的光线，也不要抑制自然眨眼反射或强行睁开眼睑。 - 如果在日出前醒来，可以使用10,000勒克斯的人工光源，直到能够接触日光。 - 昼夜节律系统会综合计算此前约两三天的光照情况。错过一个早晨并非灾难；第二天延长户外活动时间可能有所帮助。这种缓慢整合既解释了正常作息的灵活性，也解释了引发时差反应的延迟适应。 - 运动、进食时间和社交互动也会影响昼夜节律时序，但晨间强光被视为最强的“时间因子”，即设定时间的线索。晚间光线通常应保持较暗。
- 避免健康方案倦怠： - 真正的优化应适应现实情况——家人生病、截止期限、旅行、新生儿、度假，或异常良好或糟糕的睡眠——而不是要求生活严格服从各种方案。 - 优先事项包括充足的高质量睡眠、晨间日光、降低晚间光照、补水、运动、合理营养和社会联结。偶尔偏离常规，包括因愉快或必要的原因在外待到很晚，不太可能毁掉健康。 - 补水有助于头脑清晰以及身体和精神能量。尿液不需要完全透明，证据也不支持所有非水饮料——包括咖啡或马黛茶——都会导致脱水的说法。不过，仍然应当饮用白水。 - 休伯曼的示例日程包括每周三次抗阻训练和三次有氧训练。他的心血管训练包括时长6–12分钟的短时高强度训练，以及一次较长的45–60分钟徒步或慢跑。这只是示例，并非适用于所有人的处方。 - 必须根据相应的人生阶段来定义一致性，而不能假定它意味着永久不变的日程。休伯曼在研究生期间每周只锻炼两三次，因为实验室工作让他保持了较高的身体活动量，不过睡眠不足最终迫使他作出调整。 - 有用的方案应当是其收益足以证明其负担合理，并且可以持续执行而不产生怨恨。对于使人长期心生抵触的部分，人们应改变自己的态度、调整计划，或将其放弃。 - 营养方案应切实可行并令人愉快：以未加工或最低限度加工的食物为主，摄入充足的蛋白质和纤维，以及低糖发酵食品，并根据杂食、素食或纯素偏好进行调整。 - 休伯曼表示，从生理角度看，完全不饮酒优于喝一些酒，同时他认为，对没有酒精依赖的成年人而言，两杯酒可能是可以接受的。他强调，这不是道德谴责，而对偶尔的选择感到内疚或怨恨会适得其反。 - 他的指导原则是：在了解可能后果的前提下自由选择；只要不伤害他人，“为你自己做你想做的事”。
- 记忆与学习： - 新记忆最初通过双侧海马体编码，之后分布表征在新皮层回路中。如果不进行回忆，记忆会随时间变化，也可能减弱。 - 维持记忆既需要学习新材料，也需要提取旧材料。偶尔难以想起姓名，本身并不能证明患有痴呆症。 - 新学习需要警觉性、集中注意、有意识的努力和错误。如果神经系统已经能够完美执行某项任务，它就几乎没有理由发生改变。 - 运动能够支持学习，很大程度上是因为它会提高自主神经唤醒程度和儿茶酚胺水平，使人在运动后的约一至六小时内更容易专注学习。慢跑、快走、抗阻训练、间歇骑行、瑜伽和太极拳都可能有所帮助，前提是它们能提高警觉性。运动也会提高BDNF和IGF-1等与可塑性相关的因子，但休伯曼认为，唤醒是最主要的即时机制。 - 只有将唤醒带来的益处引导至具体学习任务时，它才有用；仅仅处于普遍警觉的状态而不进行专注练习，并不会自动改善某一项特定记忆。 - 有效的错误必须发生在真诚尝试正确执行任务的过程中。故意粗心犯错——例如有意将网球发球打偏——不会产生同样的学习信号。 - 涉及小脑的错误信号有助于启动神经变化。这些变化会在深度休息期间得到巩固，尤其是在慢波睡眠和快速眼动睡眠中。个人的睡眠需求可能约为六至九小时。 - 自我测试被认为是最受忽视的记忆方案。比较反复阅读、标记重点、记笔记和其他方法的研究普遍发现，提取练习对形成持久记忆更有效。 - 有效的测试意味着持续尝试回忆，直到遇到真正的困难——“话到嘴边”或产生阻力的节点——而不是立即重新阅读答案。在诚实地尝试提取后再查找答案，有助于重新巩固记忆。 - 自我测试可以包括书面问题、在脑海中重新走一遍以前走过的路线、散步时回忆材料，或使用ChatGPT等AI系统生成难度逐渐提高的测试。
- 改善嗅觉： - 休伯曼援引嗅觉研究者诺姆·索贝尔的研究，并介绍了一些证据：在适当的测试条件下，人类的嗅觉能力可以接近犬类的表现。犬类仍有优势，部分原因是它们吸气嗅闻的频率高得多，其鼻孔结构能维持气味流通，能够比较两个鼻孔接收到的信息，并会高度专注于气味。 - 可以通过反复闻取不同且安全的气味来训练嗅觉，例如柠檬、玫瑰、巧克力或咖啡。应进行多次、时间较长的嗅闻，并高度集中注意力，最好闭上眼睛并尽量减少干扰。 - 嗅觉神经元不同寻常，因为它们终生持续更新。其存活和调谐依赖于活动，因此，嗅闻并注意气味会刺激相关神经活动。 - 不应使用有害物质进行训练。对这类物质的检测部分依赖于不同的硬连线通路，而且吸入可能有害的分子并不安全。 - 呼吸系统疾病或头部创伤可能损害嗅觉。撞击可能使嗅觉轴突在穿过筛状的筛板处被剪切，从而引起嗅觉丧失。嗅觉训练可能有助于恢复，尤其是在受伤后尽早开始时，但恢复没有保证，而且取决于损伤情况。
- 生育力、热量、饮食与补充剂： - 男性和女性的生育力都需要充足的能量摄入，同时避免长期热量过剩。过多体脂可能促进炎症并损害生殖健康，而过度消瘦或长期限制热量可能抑制生殖激素。 - 根据与医生凯尔·吉列特的讨论，休伯曼表示，体脂率高于约20%的男性可以适度减少热量摄入，同时进行抗阻训练以保持或增加肌肉，这可能改善睾酮及生育力相关指标。 - 对体脂率约为15%或更低的男性而言，如果每周六七天摄入低于维持需要的热量，并持续两周或更久，可能降低总睾酮和游离睾酮，并可能影响生育力。他建议避免严重、长期的热量缺口，并表示，当生育力是优先事项时，每日约500千卡可能是热量缺口的合理上限。 - 总睾酮的参考范围很宽——约为300–900 ng/dL，有时上限可达1,200 ng/dL——而且必须结合游离睾酮和睾酮与雌激素的平衡来解读。男性需要雌激素；将睾酮最大化、同时将雌激素最小化并不是合适的目标。 - 男性生育力涉及精子数量、活力、形态和其他质量指标。如今，居家和临床精液分析都相对便宜，可以在受孕前或用药前提供某一时点的情况。 - 外源性睾酮，包括每周低于约100毫克的“微剂量”，可能通过激素负反馈抑制精子生成。人绒毛膜促性腺激素有时以每周三次、每次约500 IU的剂量使用，可能部分或完全保留或恢复精子生成，但恢复没有保证。 - 任何考虑接受睾酮治疗的人，都应与知识充分的医生讨论当前及未来可能的生育目标，并可考虑在治疗前储存精子。 - 根据生育专家娜塔莉·克劳福德和塔伊丝·阿里亚巴迪的观点，休伯曼表示，体脂显著过多的女性可能会从渐进式减脂中受益，同时应维持营养密度高的饮食。变得过瘦可能扰乱月经和生育力，因此应与妇产科医生讨论身体组成目标。 - 广义上的抗炎饮食强调最低限度加工的食物、水果和蔬菜、微量营养素、纤维、低脂且完整的蛋白质来源，例如鱼、鸡肉、瘦牛肉、贝类或扇贝；适量摄入扁豆和米饭等淀粉类食物；脂肪则主要选择橄榄油等不饱和脂肪。 - 贾斯廷·索南伯格和克里斯托弗·加德纳开展的一项斯坦福研究比较了增加低糖发酵食品与大幅增加纤维摄入的效果。发酵食品——逐渐增加到每天约四份适量分量——降低了多项炎症指标。增加纤维对一些人有所帮助，但使另一些人的炎症指标升高，表明人们对特定纤维来源的反应存在个体差异。 - 示例包括不加糖的冷藏酸菜、保加利亚酸奶、泡菜、纳豆和低糖康普茶。啤酒和加糖腌菜不属于这里所指的类别。应逐渐增加纤维摄入；水果、蔬菜，有时还有少量车前子壳，都是可选来源。 - 生育专家通常会把左旋肉碱和辅酶Q10作为可选的辅助措施，以支持精子活力和质量，并可能改善卵子质量。其推测的益处涉及线粒体功能，而线粒体功能对于配子、早期胚胎细胞分裂和发育至关重要。 - 所提到的口服左旋肉碱剂量约为每日500–750毫克，但其口服吸收有限，有些人会采用注射形式。辅酶Q10的推荐剂量不一。其他干预措施，包括低剂量褪黑素或DHEA，在专家之间更有争议。 - 休伯曼建议读者参阅娜塔莉·克劳福德的著作《生育力公式》（The Fertility Formula），以了解更完整的讨论。他强调，左旋肉碱和辅酶Q10都不是单一的决定性生育治疗；生殖结果由多种变量共同决定，并受到年龄、遗传、睡眠、运动、炎症和医疗因素的影响。
- 围绝经期、绝经与心理健康： - 围绝经期和绝经涉及雌激素、孕酮、睾酮及其他激素的巨大变化，这些变化有时缓慢发生，有时迅速发生。不同女性的体验差异很大。 - 焦虑、惊恐发作和类似惊恐发作的症状，可能与这些转变有关。类固醇激素会影响基因和蛋白质表达，并影响神经回路，包括下丘脑和下丘脑-垂体-肾上腺轴；该轴负责调节皮质醇、睡眠、体温、饥饿和焦虑。 - 激素变化与焦虑在时间上相关，值得认真对待，但这并不能证明某一种激素直接导致了症状，因为其中涉及许多相互作用的生物因素和生活因素。 - 早期的大型激素替代研究曾被广泛解读为治疗危险、无效或只有轻微效果。休伯曼表示，越来越多的共识认为，部分结论与数据并不相符，而且治疗往往开始得太晚。 - 当前的重新评估表明，某些激素治疗如果在适当的阶段、以适当剂量开始，可能带来益处；而开始得太晚可能伴随不同的风险。雌激素、孕酮、睾酮或其他治疗的正确组合需要因人而异。 - 出现新发焦虑、惊恐症状、睡眠中断、盗汗或活力下降的女性，应与愿意考虑多管齐下方案的临床医生讨论激素和非激素方面的解释。睡眠和抗炎饮食可能有帮助，但在某些情况下，激素治疗可能针对的是潜在促成因素。 - 历史上，围绝经期、绝经、多囊卵巢综合征及女性健康的其他领域在研究中代表性不足。新的数据正在出现，但许多问题仍未解决，包括精神症状通常究竟会持续多久。
- 户外婚礼的时间安排： - 对大多数宾客而言，休伯曼推荐日落婚礼，而不是日出婚礼。约20%的人属于早起型时型，许多人属于夜猫子，而人数最多的一组通常在早上6–8点醒来、晚上10点至午夜入睡。 - 对大多数人而言，比平常晚睡几个小时，要比在习惯醒来时间之前完全清醒更容易。因此，日落婚礼能给更多宾客留出准备、出行和休息充分后抵达的时间。 - 早起型的人可能在较晚的庆祝活动中感到疲倦，夜猫子则可能更喜欢这种安排，但所有群体都可能应付得来。没有强有力的证据表明伴侣双方必须拥有一致的时型；作息匹配或略有错开的安排都可能奏效。
- 为肾脏捐献手术做准备及术后恢复： - 在合理范围内，以尽可能健康、休息充分的状态进入手术，而不要因过度训练而使自己筋疲力尽或受伤。更好的心血管适能、力量、代谢健康和循环状况与更快的恢复相关。 - 一种可能的术前日程包括：每周一次45–60分钟的第2–3区耐力训练，一次或可能两次高强度间歇训练，一次约30分钟的中等强度训练，以及每周两三次上肢和下肢力量训练，通常安排在不同日期。必须根据医疗建议和恢复能力进行调整。 - 因术前焦虑而有一晚睡眠不佳很常见，并不会妨碍良好恢复；更广泛的目标是在此前数天和数周内获得充分休息。 - 术后保留正常的昼夜节律线索可能改善恢复。休伯曼表示，医院数据发现，能够接触自然窗户光线与疾病及手术后的更好恢复相关。 - 如果可能，请求安排靠近朝东或以其他方式能够接触日光的窗户的床位。夜间使用眼罩和耳塞，以限制医院的光线和噪声；在医疗条件允许时，则应获得晨间环境光照和户外空气。 - 更好的昼夜节律同步可能改善睡眠，并帮助减少术后炎症。由于明亮灯光、夜间检查、设备噪声和日光有限，医院在昼夜节律健康方面的设计通常并不理想。 - 暂时性的肌肉和力量损失通常能够比最初获得这些成果时恢复得更快，因为先前训练形成的神经至肌肉通路和肌肉适应会被重新建立。随着年龄增长，重建仍然是可能的，不过通常会变得更困难。 - 休伯曼对肾脏捐献者表达了强烈的敬意，同时也承认，肾脏捐献比他本人曾经康复过来的骨科手术更具侵入性。
- 寻找热情与方向： - 热情通常无法只通过被动内省找到。休伯曼援引The Clash和Mescaleros乐队音乐人乔·斯特拉默的“斯特拉默定律”：“没有输入，就没有输出。”人们必须接触工作、思想、艺术、社群和更广阔的世界，才能发现什么会引起自己的共鸣。 - 即使尚未找到使命，也应维持日常结构。工作、学习、运动、睡眠和自我照顾能够培养可迁移的纪律和能力。休伯曼回忆，在成为科学家之前，他曾在滑板店和鞋店、面包店、组装手推车的玩具店工作，还送过报纸、修剪过草坪。 - 自己赚钱、存下一部分钱并成为可靠的人，即使当前工作并非自己的志业，也能够带来前进的动力。 - 好奇心会创造意想不到的组合。休伯曼描述了自己在从事日常工作时听一场现代艺术讲座，并产生了将视觉神经科学、眼部健康和新兴肽类研究联系起来的想法。 - 避免两个陷阱：一是毫无意义的戏剧性冲突，它会占据注意力，却不会创造任何成果；二是压抑好奇心的麻木行为。愤怒有时能够揭示一个真正关切的问题，进而转化为倡议行动或公共服务，但应将其与空洞冲突区分开来。 - 记录那些真正能引起共鸣的人和职业，而不只是让自己觉得了不起的对象。休伯曼从青少年时期起就一直维护这样一份清单，并随着兴趣演变不断更新。 - 职业方向是一个向量，而不是最终目的地。一个人可能拥有多个职业，而每段经历都可能通向下一段。 - 选择一个领域后，应接受其中“劈柴、挑水”式的学徒阶段。学习基本功，从不熟练进步到熟练，并最终趋近精通，然后再坚持对该领域进行个人化重塑。 - 困难并不一定意味着道路错误；它可能只是暴露出一项尚未发展成熟的技能。应区分真正的厌恶与学习所带来的不适。 - 当扎实的基本功、精通程度、多样化兴趣和个人经历最终汇合时，原创贡献便会出现。休伯曼的公式是：保持有条理、好奇、积极参与，并留意内心“是”“否”或无所谓的信号，同时不要假设第一条道路必须永远持续下去。 - 休伯曼还回应了博士候选人科迪·莫里森关于科研职业的问题，指出自己目前不招收博士后研究人员，并表示，自从他建立实验室以来，科研经费和职业环境已经发生变化。
实践要点
- 对于深夜训练： - 睡前约8–10小时内避免摄入咖啡因。 - 以休息充分的状态开始训练，并在开始前有意识地集中注意力。 - 如果考虑使用α-GPC，休伯曼建议的范围是600–900毫克，每周不超过约一至三次，同时要了解心血管安全性方面的不确定性以及TMAO可能升高的问题。 - 考虑与α-GPC同时或在之后12–24小时内摄入600毫克大蒜。 - 训练后洗热水澡，进行三到四次长呼气呼吸；如果饥饿可能使你醒来，可吃一份适量的蛋白质加碳水化合物餐。
- 对于昼夜节律健康： - 无论方向如何，都应在醒来后的第一个小时内接触户外环境光。 - 方便时面朝东方，但不要仅仅因为视野朝西或天气多云就完全跳过光照。 - 在安全的情况下摘下太阳镜和有帽檐的帽子，但绝不要以会引起疼痛的方式凝视太阳。 - 将数日累计的光照作为目标；错过一天后温和补偿，并让晚间光线保持相对昏暗。
- 对于可持续的健康习惯： - 优先考虑睡眠、光照、补水、运动、营养和社会联结。 - 选择适合当前人生阶段、并且可以在不产生长期内疚或怨恨的情况下维持的日程。 - 允许偶尔出现不完美的一天，而不要让健康实践变成另一个导致倦怠的来源。
- 对于学习： - 提高警觉性，将其引导至专注练习，尝试略微超出当前能力的任务，并预期会出现真正的错误。 - 之后通过睡眠巩固变化。 - 在重新阅读答案前测试记忆；持续提取，直到遇到困难，然后核实答案，并在稍后重复。
- 对于嗅觉： - 定期使用多种不同且安全的气味进行练习。 - 在高度集中注意力的同时，反复进行时间较长的嗅闻。 - 如果嗅觉突然丧失或因创伤而丧失，应寻求医学评估，而不要假定仅靠训练就足够。
- 对于生育力： - 既要避免长期热量过剩，也要避免激进、持久的节食。 - 接受适当的激素和精液检测，而不要仅凭外表或睾酮水平推断生育力。 - 与了解生育问题的临床医生讨论睾酮治疗、精子保存、补充剂和女性身体组成目标。 - 重视营养密度高、最低限度加工的饮食，并考虑逐渐加入低糖冷藏发酵食品。 - 将左旋肉碱和辅酶Q10视为可选的辅助措施，而不是有保证的生育治疗。
- 对于围绝经期： - 记录焦虑、惊恐症状、睡眠、盗汗、月经变化和相关实验室检查结果。 - 与具备相应资质的临床医生讨论激素治疗的时机、配方、益处和风险，而不要依赖过时的一概而论。
- 对于手术： - 术前建立合理的心血管适能和力量基础，但进入手术时应休息充分，而非训练过度。 - 术后遵守手术团队的活动限制，保护睡眠，并在医疗条件安全时接触晨间日光。 - 预期可能会暂时失去一些力量或肌肉；一旦获准恢复训练，可能会相对迅速地重新获得这些能力。
- 对于职业方向： - 在广泛探索的同时继续工作和学习。 - 留意哪些事情持续使你充满活力，或持续令你排斥。 - 避免空洞的戏剧性冲突和习惯性的麻木行为。 - 坚持足够长的时间，学会一个领域的基本功，然后再尝试改变它。
注意事项与局限
- 这些回答是休伯曼对文献及其与专家对话的解读，并非个体化医疗处方。 - α-GPC的长期心血管安全性尚不确定。所提出的大蒜策略基于大蒜可能减少TMAO生成的文献，但这并不能证明大蒜能够消除心血管风险。 - 补充剂和药物剂量，包括α-GPC、大蒜、左旋肉碱、辅酶Q10、褪黑素、DHEA、HCG和睾酮，可能存在禁忌证、产品质量差异和药物相互作用。 - 外源性睾酮可能严重抑制生育力，而HCG不能保证完全保护生育力或保证之后恢复。激素治疗应由知识充分的医生监督。 - 15%或20%等体脂阈值、热量缺口上限和示例训练日程，都是近似概括，而不是诊断界值。 - 生育力取决于许多相互作用的变量。改善炎症或提供线粒体支持，并不能保证受孕、胚胎发育或成功妊娠。 - 不同个体对纤维和发酵食品的反应各异。一些参与者增加纤维后炎症升高，并不意味着纤维通常有害。 - 围绝经期焦虑具有合理的激素基础，但也可能源于精神、医学、睡眠相关或情境因素。这份文字记录并未确定惊恐症状通常会持续多久。 - 激素替代治疗并非对所有人都有益，也并非毫无风险；时机、配方、剂量、病史和个人风险因素都很重要。 - 突发嗅觉丧失、头部受伤、持续嗅觉丧失、惊恐发作、严重睡眠中断或手术并发症，都需要专业评估。 - 医院窗户相关观察及外科医生的报告支持昼夜节律护理，但恢复还取决于手术类型、并发症、药物、营养、康复以及是否遵守手术团队的指示。 - 时型会影响人们偏好的时间安排，但不会严格决定行为、关系成功与否或对活动的享受程度。 - 记忆偶尔失误可能是正常现象，但对于进行性或严重影响日常功能的认知衰退，不应仅依靠自我测试或生活方式方案来处理。 - 没有任何方案需要每天都完美执行。休伯曼反复强调灵活性、个体反应，以及避免缺乏依据的确定性或与健康相关的内疚感。
Full transcript
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today's episode is a solo episode of the podcast, meaning no guest.
However, there will be a large number of outside voices heard on today's episode, and that's because I solicited for your questions on social media. That is, people had the opportunity to call in and literally record their questions about anything related to science and health. Well, really anything, but today we're going to focus on science and health and I would
answer them in real time, meaning I'm hearing them for the first time today as you hear them for the first time today. And we're going to cover, I'm told, because I haven't heard the questions yet, a large number of topics related to science and health that are relevant to women, to men, to people of all ages and covering everything from health and fitness to mental health, supplementation
and on and on. I should mention that if you called in with a question for today's episode and you don't hear it on today's episode, that does not necessarily mean that it won't be included in a future Q&A episode. Again, we got many, many more questions than we could possibly include in a single episode. And I also want to say to everyone who called in with a question, thank you. We really appreciate the feedback. Even if your question isn't
included, it does cue us to what people are interested in and absolutely will shape the future of guest episodes, solo episodes, and again, perhaps a future Q&A of this sort. So without further ado, let's get to your questions. Okay, so just to remind you, you're going to hear the question from the audience member played in real time. And again, this is the first time that I'm hearing these questions. Hello,
my name is Anthony Richards, and I just want to thank you so much for all the content that you put out. It's helped me profoundly in so many aspects of my life. my specific question right now is on pre-workouts I work out late at night because of work and I generally go to bed an hour and a half or so after I complete my workout I'm curious as to what's the most effective pre-workout I
could take to maximize my strength training without impairing my sleep thank you well first off Anthony thank you for the kind words I love to learn I love to teach and I especially love to teach information that I hope can be be of use to people in their health journey. So in keeping with that, you asked
what is the best pre-workout for someone who's working out late in the day and in your case, going to sleep about an hour and a half after finishing your workout and your workouts as you mentioned are going to be for strength
and presumably for some muscle size as well which suggests that they're going to be of moderate to high intensity which means that they're going to pretty impressively increase cortisol over its baseline late in the day.
And everyone hears that and they go, oh my gosh, cortisol stress hormone. We don't want to do that. Yes and no. It is true that we want our cortisol high in the morning.
You all know the ways to do that. You get your morning sunlight, you hydrate, you exercise, you maybe drink some caffeine. If you like to drink caffeine, get into your day, maybe even some stress, that's okay.
But if you can't work out early in the day, what do you do? So your question about pre-workout is really a question of how do I get energized enough, enough autonomic arousal, enough alertness that I can generate the kind of intensity
that's going to stimulate that cortisol peak, right? We don't want to avoid that high cortisol level during these workouts. That's part of the stimulus that's going to induce the adaptations that we want.
How do we do that? Well, you've all heard me say that drinking caffeine in the eight to 10 hours before sleep is going to disrupt your sleep, even if you can fall asleep after caffeine.
So to be quite direct, one thing, And perhaps the only thing that I'm aware of that can give you an increase in alertness and that will allow you more focus and intensity for your workout, but that can also help your sleep
is something that increases levels of acetylcholine. And the most direct way to do that over the counter and the safest way that I'm aware of to do that is to use the supplement alpha GPC, 600 milligrams to 900 milligrams of alpha GPC
taken simply with water, will give you a increase in focus and alertness that you can devote to that high intensity or moderate to high intensity workout. AlphaGPC is also one of the few supplements
that I'm aware of that can increase the amount of rapid eye movement sleep that you get, REM sleep. Then that REM sleep is critical for a number of things, for inducing neuroplasticity. So any learning that you did in the preceding day or days
is going to be consolidated during REM sleep. And importantly, REM sleep is critical for removing the emotional load of previous days, not just one day, but days memories. And if we don't get enough REM sleep,
we tend to feel more emotional. We tend to feel like the emotional load of stressful things in our prior days are not coming off those memories, okay? So, alpha GPC has been shown to modestly increase REM sleep,
but the great news here is even if alpha GPC doesn't increase the amount of REM sleep that you're getting. Alpha GPC is not going to hinder the amount of REM sleep or slow wave deep sleep that you get. So it makes it a unique sort of quote unquote stimulant.
I'm reluctant to call it a stimulant because it's not really stimulant in the classic sympathomimetic sense, right? Things like caffeine, other forms of stimulants that increase dopamine, epinephrine and norepinephrine,
the so-called catecholamines are called sympathomimetics because they actually increase the activity, the sympathetic arm of the autonomic nervous system, which is just nerdy speak for increased alertness. AlphaGPC is a unique tool in its ability
to increase focus and alertness by virtue of increasing the output of the acetylcholine pathway, which is involved in focus and to some extent energy, but it's not a classic sympathomimetic
and it either doesn't seem to hinder REM sleep or it can slightly, again, slightly increase the fraction of REM sleep that you get. So that makes it a great tool. Now, it's not a perfect tool, and I'll tell you why.
Increasing the amount of choline in your system can, after a few biochemical steps, increase the amount of TMAO that is circulating in your body. Now, TMAO can be increased by any number of things,
fish, meat, et cetera. Anything that increases choline levels can do this, but AlphaGPC does it pretty potently. And so the key thing here is you don't want too much TMAO consistently over time
because it does carry some cardiovascular risk. And there was one paper a few years back that suggested that perhaps people who use alpha GPC regularly at high dosages, so 900 milligrams multiple times throughout the day
over long periods of time, may have increased risk of stroke and other cardiovascular insults. And so that's something to pay attention to. There is some literature that suggests
that taking 600 milligrams of garlic, pretty much any time in the 24 hour period that you take alpha GPC, but probably best to just take them together. Garlic has something called allicin in it,
which can inhibit some of the production of TMAO. We don't have time to get into the whole TMAO production pathway, but this has to do with your gut. And a lot of these conversions are done in the gut and garlic can inhibit that.
It's probably a good idea to be ingesting some garlic regularly anyway. These garlic capsules aren't stinky like garlic. Some people like the smell of garlic, others don't, but it's not going to give you garlicky breath.
It's very inexpensive. So my suggestion would be just to be on the safe side. If you're going to take alpha GPC pretty regularly and you didn't mention how often you're doing these workouts late in the day, I don't know if this is five days a week
or if this is three days a week, I would say anytime you're gonna take alpha GPC, you should take 600 milligrams of garlic along with it. Or if you can't do it along with it, take it at some point in the next 12 to 24 hours
to try and offset this TMAO. I think you'll notice also that if you take alpha GPC very regularly, like every day, or any more than like three, four times a week, it's going to have a diminished effect.
So I would reserve taking the alpha GPC to just maybe once or twice a week, maybe three times maximum. And hopefully you'll be able to generate the kind of intensity that's required for your workouts
to stimulate those adaptations that you're seeking in strength, et cetera, without taking it every single workout. How do you do that? Well, you go into the workout relatively rested, okay?
So this means getting the proper amount of sleep the night before. I think we vastly underestimate the extent to which just getting your mind in the right frame can help you generate the kind of intensity
that you need to get a really terrific workout in. And that doesn't require taking anything. And if you happen to take alpha GPC too, now you're doubling up these tools, right? So when I say we vastly underestimate,
most people just kind of go into the gym, they're looking at their phone. So if you can afford to, if your life is arranged this way, Anthony and others, I recommend make your workouts for you,
pour everything you can into them mentally and physically, Maybe use alpha GPC once, maybe twice, maybe three times a week, offset that TMAO effect. And then there's another piece to this, which is how can you ensure
that you get the best possible sleep coming off a workout regardless of what you took? Okay, maybe you drank some caffeine too late in the day. Maybe you didn't. I can understand where there's kind of a push pull
of things here. Here's what I suggest. After you finish your workout, it doesn't have to be immediately, but take a hot shower. Believe it or not, taking a hot shower by virtue
of the fact that you warm up the surface of your body will trigger neurons in the medial pre-optic area of your hypothalamus, which act as sort of a thermostat on your core body temperature
and will actually help drive core body temperature down, which is a prerequisite for getting to sleep. So in other words, for many different reasons, right? Removing bacteria, et cetera, take a nice hot shower after your nighttime workout.
And while you do that, or perhaps while getting in or out of the shower, do some long exhale breathing. I've talked a lot about physiological sigh. It's called physiological sigh,
not just sighing because it involves this double inhale, long exhale, which is involved in reducing the amount of so-called sympathetic autonomic arousal, again, just alertness. When we do a deliberate exhale, okay,
so not just passively exhaling, but when we draw out our exhale, like so, you activate a descending portion of the vagus nerve. Everyone thinks about the vagus nerve, like sensory information coming up from the body.
That's 85% of the vagus pathway. The other 10 to 15%, no one knows the exact numbers, comes from the brain down to the organs of the body. And one of the main pathways there is to your heart. And when you exhale, you slow your heart rate down.
I've talked a lot about this on previous podcasts. So just doing that three or four times, like so, after your workout, could be through your mouth, could be through your nose, maybe while you shower, getting out of the shower,
you're trying to bring your level of autonomic activation down, down, down, and your cortisol levels will follow. So even though you spiked your cortisol levels, triple or quadruple from a really effective workout, You can bring them down deliberately
using long exhale breathing, nice hot shower to, which is warm and relaxing, right? It's not like a cold shower, which is stimulating. It's going to help bring your levels of arousal down. And then is the food thing.
Everyone has heard, me included, don't eat two or three hours before sleep because it will increase your heart rate and it'll increase your nighttime and morning glucose. It'll impede your sleep.
Well, yes and no. Being super hungry and waking up in the middle of the night because you're hungry from a really hard workout, that also will mess up your sleep. And I've had that happen where I fall asleep
after a shower, I worked out later in the day, and then I'm awake at like three in the morning and I'm eating a bowl of oatmeal or something. And it's not convenient, okay? Usually I can fall back asleep,
but it's just not a good way to arrange things. My suggestion would be after you workout, especially if it's a moderate to high intensity workout, that you should eat something. There's some literature out there
that suggests that the slower digesting proteins, such as milk proteins, casein, You could have some Greek yogurt. You could get some, you know, casein protein powder if you want it.
It's easily available out there. Any number of different, you know, quality brands will work. Maybe a bowl of oatmeal, some starch after you work out to replenish glycogen stores.
These are all good things to do, even in that final hour before sleep. And no, it's not going to completely nuke your growth hormone levels during sleep. You just spiked them tremendously
during that workout anyway. Well, now if you're not working out late in the day, folks, then probably good to put a little bit of a buffer between your final meal, certainly full meal and your sleep, if you can.
But if you don't do that every day, it's not the end of the world. But for you, Anthony, and others who are working out late in the day, if you do these things, right?
Sometimes alpha GPCs, sometimes no. Get your head straight before you go in the gym so you can really focus. That's the main one, I have to say. I was recently down in Spain
working out with six time Mr. Olympia, Dorian Yates. And before the workout, you know, you said, you know, you're gonna go in the corner, you're gonna ride that stationary bike for three, four minutes.
And it's as much about warming up your mind and really focusing on what we're going to do today, then the warming up of your core body temperature. Yes, that too, but you have to get into the right frames that you're training.
You're not just working out. I actually prefer to call it training because you're practicing every single time trying to get better, bringing more focus. Don't underestimate the value of that.
And it doesn't require taking anything at all. And then if you do the other things I described and afterwards you take a nice hot shower and you're feeling really jazzed up to a bit more long exhale breathing.
And then as a final, final point, no one does all these things perfectly every single week, week in and week out, year in and year out. Do some of these things, you'll notice a significant difference.
I do believe that. These are the things that I know to be most potent for addressing the question that you're asking. If you do all of them, great. And if you can't do all of them,
you're still going to derive some benefits. So good luck with your later evening workouts, transitioning into sleep. I'm sure it's going to go great. And if you have additional questions,
Call us back the next time we solicit for them. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, 8Sleep. 8Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating and sleep tracking capacity.
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go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman. All right, let's hear the next question. I have been making a concentrated effort
to get outside first thing in the morning to help reset my circadian rhythm. Is it okay to just be outside even though all I really see is the sky above me and the Western sky? Or do I really need to walk 20 minutes
so I can see the Eastern horizon? Okay, this is a great question. The person remained anonymous, which is also terrific. But thank you for your question, whoever you are. I get asked this question all the time.
Here's the deal. Any amount of ambient daylight that you can get in the first hour after waking will greatly benefit you. It'll increase your morning cortisol peak, which by the way is a great thing.
No, it's not going to give you Cushing syndrome. No, it's not going to make you gain weight. Quite the opposite in fact, it's going to kickstart so many beneficial mechanisms. It's also going to increase your mood focus
and alertness all day long as a consequence of that early morning cortisol peak. So get ambient daylight in your eyes in the first hour after waking. Of course, if you wake up before the sun comes out,
you're going to have to wait. A 10,000 lux artificial light can be beneficial in those circumstances. I don't have any relationship to any company that sells them,
but they're out there on the internet. They're all basically equally effective. If you get outside and you can walk eastward, sunglasses off, brimmed hats off, because the light's coming from above
and you don't want to occlude that with a brimmed hat or sunglasses, eyeglasses and contacts are fine. If you can do that, great. Many people can't. Many people only have the opportunity
to step out onto their balcony of their apartment and it's west facing. Okay, you're still going to benefit from all those photons, all that ambient light. And the reason I say daylight and not sunlight
is that for some reason it's semantic, but it's semantic and it leads to a lot of confusion. When people hear you got to get sunlight in your eyes early in the morning, they think, oh, I have to see the sun as an object.
No, compare how bright it is at say 9 a.m. in the depths of winter on an overcast day facing westward in the morning compared to midnight the night before. It's so much brighter.
There's just so many photons. And that's what are going to trigger these special cells in your eye, the intrinsically photosensitive melanopsin retinal ganglion cells that literally send a direct connection
to your circadian clock, set your circadian rhythm. So any amount of ambient daylight that you can get into your eyes, westward, eastward, eastward being better, but westward still being great. Clear day, better than overcast,
but you can't control the weather and neither can I. all are going to help increase that morning cortisol peak, lead to larger increases in the catecholamines, dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, which translates to more daytime energy,
improved mood, improved focus. And here's the real key that most people miss by spiking all these pro-arousal chemicals early in the day, in particular in the first hours of our day,
ideally the first hour itself. You're setting up the whole system to have low levels of these pro-arousal chemicals circulating come nighttime, come evening and makes it so much easier to fall asleep
and cortisol and all these other stimulatory chemicals that you make, they are in opposite phase to melatonin. So by getting them high in the morning and low in the evening and at night with this daylight viewing
and that is the most potent stimulus to do that, you're setting yourself up for increased melatonin. your own natural melatonin release at night and better sleep, more ease in falling asleep, more ease in staying asleep
and more restful sleep and on and on. So the short answer, totally fine to face westward. The other short answer, please remove your sunglasses. Please remove a brimmed hat while you do it. You'll get more ambient light in your eyes that way.
If you can rotate eastward and still get some daylight, even better. If you can walk eastward into the rising sun, even better. Never look at any light, sunlight, or otherwise that's so bright that it's painful to look at
without blinking to protect your eyes. You have a natural blink reflex to protect your neural retinas, right? You don't want blasting your eyes. You don't want to force yourself to hold your eyelids open.
But I promise you, promise you, promise you, if you do these things regularly, you're going to benefit tremendously. There's just so much literature on that in humans and all these different populations, ages, et cetera.
And as a final point, you mentioned that you're benefiting from this to set your circadian rhythm. And that's wonderful. Just as a favor to everybody,
I want to take this as an opportunity to tell you that your circadian rhythm, when you feel alert and when you feel sleepy, is dictated by these mechanisms, okay? But these mechanisms are slow integration mechanisms,
meaning that your suprachiasmatic nucleus, your brain's central circadian master clock that organizes all of this, is literally integrating the number of photons that you saw, light energy,
in the previous two or three days. So if one morning you have to just jump in the car and rush off with your sunglasses on and get to work and you can't do this, fine. Try and get outside for a little bit longer
the next morning, okay? If you get a ton of sunlight in your eyes one morning, because it's nice and clear and the next day it's overcast and dreary, okay? Or God forbid you stay in bed and scroll your phone,
which I don't recommend. But if you do that, your suprachiasmatic nucleus is making its physiological decisions as to when your cortisol should increase in your melatonin and so on.
according to your previous two or three days, early day light exposure. Yes, late in the day light exposure matters. It really does. And you want to keep your lights low late in the evening.
I talked about that just a few minutes ago, previous question. But that morning bright light is really the thing that sets the whole thing in motion. And it's your last two or three days
of post-waking bright light exposure that really dictates your circadian rhythm. There are other things too, exercise, eating, social interactions, et cetera. but that's the biggie.
That's the big, what they call a zeitgeber. That's the classic language in the circadian literature. The classic timekeeper, it means timekeeper. So if you miss a day, double up on the amount you get outside the next day.
This, by the way, is also why when you travel someplace, your circadian clock doesn't shift right away. It's still on your previous city's schedule. It takes a few days for things to adjust. That's a bad thing when you travel, it's called jet lag.
It's a great thing when you're at home because it gives you some flexibility. So you don't have to optimize everything to the point where you're like 20 minutes every day, 10 minutes every day, get 20 minutes one day,
get five the next, perhaps, get 15 the next. Do what you can, more photons better as long as you blink to protect your eyes. But if you're getting fewer photons, make it a little bit longer and give yourself some ease,
give yourself some grace. These mechanisms will take really good care of you all on their own. And next question, please. Hello, Dr. Hugh Brumman.
My name is Dr. Dato Gele Schulie, MD. I have a simple question about longevity and optimization culture. I've seen people be strict and diligent with their optimal protocols.
However, sometimes it becomes a source of stress. When would you say longevity protocols do more bad than good if people worry about them? Oh, thank you so much, doctor. I'm just going to refer to you as doctor
because forgive me, I couldn't make out the pronunciation of your name and if I were to attempt it, I would probably not get it right. So forgive me, I'm just going to refer to you as doctor, but I'm also going to extend my gratitude
for your question again because I know a lot of people or thinking about this over-optimization question issue these days, and it's a very important one. I've spent the last six years or so talking about protocols for health,
for all sorts of things on the Huberman Lab podcast and others have as well, of course. And the real issue I think that everyone's dealing with right now is kind of protocol overwhelm. Like, what am I supposed to do?
I barely have time to do the basics. And now we're getting right down into the details of particular mechanisms at particular times of day, like what am I supposed to do? Here's the big picture, at least in my opinion.
Optimization in its truest form is about addressing each day of your life as an independent unit and asking yourself, okay, what can I do today to set myself up for the best possible day, given the constraints upon me?
Maybe you're dealing with a sick family member. Maybe you're dealing with jet lag. Maybe you're dealing with a deadline, you know? I've dealt with all these things, some of them recently. Maybe you're dealing with being extremely well rested
and you're on vacation and you wonder if you should just kind of take the day off and relax. These are real life issues and optimization has to meet those real life issues, not the other way around.
So optimization is about stepping back and saying, okay, what are the things I really enjoy doing and that clearly give me energy, clearly make me feel better. These are the ones that are easy to do.
For me, that's getting morning sunlight. It's hydrating in the morning. It's exercise. I happen to like exercise, okay? Some days more, some days less,
but I happen to like it. Some people loathe it, okay? If you like a particular protocol, you're more likely to do it. That just stands to reason.
But then we also have to ask ourselves, what are the most important protocols to do consistently over time? And those are very straightforward. Everyone knows what those are.
You want to do what you can to get the best possible sleep. Enough of it and high quality sleep. but we're all human. And it's also great to stay out late
doing fun things every once in a while. Perfectly fine. I do that. All of you should give yourself permission to do that in my opinion.
You will be just fine in the short and in the longterm. Okay. I do believe that getting bright light in our eyes, ideally from sunlight in the first hours of the day is one of the things to really strive for
because it's so brief, it costs nothing. And it is so well supported by human data to create, excuse me, outsized positive effects on your mental and physical health. It sets everything into its right place.
But as I just talked about a few minutes ago to the previous question, if you miss it one day, no big deal, the next day, just make up for it. I do think that a neurotic approach to trying to get everything exactly right
is going to harm our mental health, maybe not severely in the short term, but in the long run, it's just going to lead to a different kind of burnout, kind of health optimization burnout,
which again is not about true optimization anyway. So we say morning sunlight, great. Dimming the lights at night, these are all zero cost very effective ways to improve our health and wellbeing.
If you're under the bright lights at an event or doing something fun or God forbid, you have to be at the hospital for a loved one or you yourself in the hospital and the lights are bright, you'll be okay.
You want to try and mitigate that if you're confronted with it day after day after day, maybe get an eye mask, et cetera. But every once in a while, no big deal. We know that hydration is critical
and is very overlooked as a tool for increasing energy and wellbeing. This is just true, right? Most people don't think of hydration as, you know, as exciting or interesting,
but it's very, very important for mental clarity, physical and mental energy. So do that, right? People argue how much you need to drink, whether or not your urine needs to be clear or not.
It doesn't by the way, but making sure that you're getting enough fluids. And by the way, the idea that all fluids that aren't water are dehydrating you, including coffee and caffeine,
the literature just doesn't support that. I do think you should drink some just good old water every once in a while, but if you're getting a lot of your liquids from, you know, I drink a lot of Yerba Monte or coffee,
you're getting hydrated, okay? Also drink some water if you can. And then we know that exercise, nutrition, and social connection are also vital. These are the core pillars.
Now, it's highly individual as to whether or not somebody needs these every single day, right? Eye resistance strain three times a week, I do cardio three times a week, So that's six days a week of exercise,
but some of those sessions, in particular the high intensity interval training, it's very brief, six to 12 minutes to get a sort of quote unquote max heart rate, VO2 max type workout and very brief.
One of the cardiovascular exercise training sessions is longer, it's an hour long hike or jog once a week. You have to figure out what you can do consistently over time, this is the other critical feature. Over-optimization is going to come from feeling
that you have to do everything all the time, right? which undoubtedly will lead to mental or some other form of burnout or resentment of this whole protocols, health optimization thing. It's what you can do consistently over time.
And when I say over time, I don't mean your whole life. When I was in graduate school, I literally only exercised two to three days a week because I was in lab all the time, but I was going back and forth to the,
I had to go to the vivarium, I go back and forth and back. I was doing so much physical activity. So two or three times a week, I wasn't happy about that, but I was in heaven doing experiments and I love doing science.
So I was full and I was young too. So I probably offset some of the, whatever health detriment would have been there. And I didn't take very good care of my sleep. It eventually caught up with me.
I made adjustments to my sleep. So what I'm trying to say here is that true optimization is about taking a rational look at your life over the next six months or year, or if you're confronting a deadline
over the next month or two, or if you have a newborn child over the next, you know, six to 12 months and you're, you know, as anyone who's had a kid will tell you, You know, you have to constantly update what you can do
and what you can't do at particular times of day because your job is to make sure that they are taken care of first and then that you're taken care of, right? This is obvious.
But optimization is not going to be about being rigid. It's going to be about being adaptive. So there's no simple prescriptive, like when you travel, cut back on exercise. In fact, when I travel,
I try to exercise as much or more than when I'm at home because I tend to do better on travel, less jet lag, et cetera. I actually try to eat better when I'm traveling. That means mostly unprocessed or minimally processed foods.
And I enjoy doing that. For some people going on vacation, for them is really just an opportunity and just like, I just want to be a complete, you know, a lazy lump and enjoy myself.
Okay, if that's your thing, that's your thing. You are in charge. I think this is the key point. You are in charge of which health, quote unquote optimization protocols you use.
You're in charge of which ones you don't use. I think the burnout and the stress that people are experiencing, and I do think your point is a good one, that it can be detrimental.
If we internalize the stress, I have to, I have to, I have to, can only be addressed one of three ways. The first one is to change your attitude about it. Okay, well, do I like this?
Do I like the effects? All right, well, if I don't like it, but I like the effects and they're big enough for me, cool, I'll do it anyway. Ideally, you like it and you like the effects, right?
That's ideal. You're more likely to do those things. The next one is you have to ask yourself, can I be consistent about this? Can I be consistent with six workouts a week,
even though some are very short? Maybe I just needed to work out longer three times a week, or maybe you just get two times a week to work out. Can you eat clean? Mostly unprocessed, manually processed foods,
plenty of fiber, plenty of low sugar fermented foods, get enough protein, et cetera, whatever that means to you if you're a vegan vegetarian or you eat meat. Everyone has their different kind of regimens, but you need to be able to do that in a way that you enjoy.
I like eating healthy food, okay? I don't really feel good after eating garbage food. So I don't like garbage food. I'm not drawn to garbage food, but some people really like their treats.
They like their quote unquote bad food. You're going to have to allow yourself a little bit of that if you're going to remain a happy person. And certainly if you're going to resent all of the process, that's the third category.
If you're going to resent something, you're going to resent yourself or whoever you think told you to do it. Look, I don't tell anyone what to do. I make suggestions that you can take or leave.
And that's what other people in the public health communication space are doing too. So, you know, and this is true for alcohol too as well. You know, I've talked a lot about alcohol. Zero is better than any.
Two is probably fine for non-alcoholic adults, et cetera, et cetera. But that doesn't mean that I condemn people that drink. I personally don't like drinking. I feel better when I don't.
But I have many people in my life that enjoy having a drink every once in a while. And I've insisted that they not apologize to me when they order a glass of wine. I don't want that.
You know, that can only lead to resent, okay? So the big one is to ask yourself what you can do consistently over time and then really understand what that time word means for you this week, this month, this period of your life
and just be willing to be flexible, update and then check yourself for resentments, right? Do you resent me? Do you resent the world that's telling you to do this? Or are you like, oh, this is cool.
Like I can take it or leave it. You know, you're your own person. I'm telling you this to everyone, not just you doctor of course, I'm telling you this to everyone. You're your own person.
You are in charge of you. Self-care for you is gonna mean something different than it does to me or somebody else. And by no means should you feel guilty for coming off the gas a little bit, as we say,
and like easing up a little bit. And I will make this point, by no means should any of you feel guilty for doing every little thing perfectly as you see perfect to be, because you enjoy that
and because you think it makes you feel better. Do not apologize for being you. That's the most important point. And I think that's what real optimization is about. You know, the saying that I've put out on social media
a few times over the years, but perhaps I haven't put out enough, is do what you want for you, provided you're not hurting anyone else, but know what you're doing.
This podcast is about trying to educate people about what they're doing when they do A or B, what you might benefit from if you do A or B, but you have to be your own laboratory. And most importantly, like I just said, be you.
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. I'm excited to share that AG1 has just launched their newest formulation, AG1 Pro. AG1 Pro takes the clinically backed AG1 formula,
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Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to get a free bottle of Omega-3 Coenzyme Q10 with your first AG1 subscription. Okay, these are great questions, so let's get another. Hello, Dr. Huberman, my name is Sarah
and I come from the south of England in the UK. And I would love to know what your top health hacks from a neuroscience perspective where for improving your memory and also improving your sense of smell, those two things I would really like to work on. And I was wondering if you could tell me what the best things to try would be. Great. Well, thank you, Sarah, from south of
England. Just came back from London recently. Used to get over there a lot more to the UK. It's a lovely place. I won't attempt my British accent, but I'm envious of the British accent. It's delightful. Okay. Neuroscience supported tools for improving memory. There is a vast neuroscience literature on memory, in particular, that memories are encoded, right? They're first made in the structure that we call the hippocampus. You actually have two of them. Hippocampi, one on
each side of your brain. And then memories, once they're formed, are kind of pushed out. They're not really pushed out, but they're sent to different circuits in the neocortex, which is the outer part of the brain, the bumpy part of the brain that appears wrinkly when the skull is removed. And what we know about that process is that memories change from when we first make them
to when they're first stored to many years later, depending on whether we rehearse or we have to recall in some instances, what those memories were, meaning a memory that you formed in the fifth grade that might've been very relevant to your life then,
remembering that the intersection where a good friend, not your best friend, but a good friend lived and how to navigate there, important perhaps when you were friends with that person in the fifth grade, not later, right?
So the memory was made, it was put into your neocortex and elsewhere, presumably, And eventually it just sort of dissipates, but it's still there. And the reason I'm giving you this brief neuroscience lesson
and it's only a tiny, tiny fraction of what we know about the formation and storage of memories is because when you're thinking about neuroscience supported ways to increase your memory, there's really two approaches to that.
One is about recall of things that you very likely will lose if you don't continue to practice them. The other is about learning new things, okay? And these operate differently in terms of how your brain is able to remember
additional things going forward. In other words, you need to practice both forms of memory, that is recalling previous memories to keep them available to you, as well as learning new things
in order to keep the whole memory system vital and able to continue to both remember things like names, which people often are upset that they start forgetting as they get older, that they see that as a warning sign
that they might be developing dementia or something of that sort, which it isn't necessarily, I should point out, and their ability to continue to learn new things. So we can break this down
into either a four hour podcast or a brief answer. And I'm going to try and provide a brief, but sufficient for now answer for you and anyone else interested in this issue. If you are interested in forming new memories,
the most important pieces of the formula are the following. And this is very well supported in the neuroscience literature. You must be focused at the time of encoding, at the time when you're trying to learn the thing, okay?
That means you also have to be alert. There's no focus without alertness. That also means getting good sleep. That also means exercise. And this is a point about exercise and brain longevity
that most people miss, which is that many, not all, but many of the benefits of exercise on brain health and memory are because of the pro-arousal effects of exercise, meaning if you do a 30 minute jog or brisk walk even,
or you do a moderate to high intensity resistance training session, or you hop on a like one of those air dine bikes with the fan, which you'll quickly learn is not designed to cool you off,
but rather to provide resistance and you warm up for a minute and then you sprint hard for a minute or half a minute and then pedal easy for a minute and then go 30 seconds again,
that sort of thing will get your heart rate up, up, up. There is now a vast literature showing that all those forms of exercise and others as well, even things as mellow as Tai Chi, which turns out to be pretty difficult.
I tried it recently, it's not that easy to do correctly. Tai Chi, a yoga class, all forms of exercise because they raise your levels of autonomic arousal and alertness and they get these, again, the catecholamines is a repeating theme,
the dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, circulating. Yes, they increase things like brain-derived in a trophic factor, et cetera. They set you up to learn better, in part because of the chemicals
and their ability to make your brain connections more plastic. But the biggest effect of exercise is the pro arousal effect. Put differently, it increases alertness,
which allows you to focus better, which is the first real step in triggering learning and neuroplasticity. So this is a very important point for people to understand because people want to hear,
ah, you know, it's this form of exercise or that form of exercise. It's the form of exercise that gives you a boost in alertness. Sure, BDNF and there are other things too, IGF-1.
I mean, I could make a list of 50 chemicals that exercise increases that facilitate neuroplasticity. But the most potent effects are by virtue of the fact that exercise increases arousal, which then allows you to focus better
in the following one to six hours. what do you do in those one to six hours is really the key to actually learning something that benefits your memory. Just being more alert,
but not focused on anything specific is not going to help your memory specifically, okay? It might facilitate brain health. So the exercise thing is the first domino that needs to fall.
But if you can be alert and really focused on any kind of learning without doing exercise first, yes, you should still exercise for other reasons, but there's nothing special about exercise in terms of neuroplasticity of learning other things
except this arousal effect. Okay, alertness allows you to be focused. When you're focused, the neuroscience tells us that you have to make errors. You have to make errors,
whether or not you're trying to learn dance, you're trying to learn, do a crossword puzzle, you're trying to get better at chess, you're trying to learn how to code, you're trying to learn how to be different
in certain social interactions, whatever it is you're trying to learn or a physical skill, you have to push yourself past the limits of your abilities. Why? Well, put simply, if your nervous system
can carry out something that you're trying to do, there's absolutely no reason for it to change. Period, end of story. You have to make errors through deliberate effort to do things correctly, right?
You can't just do throwaway errors. Like you can't just, this is obvious, but just for sake of example, you can't go out to the tennis court and intentionally miss a bunch of serves
and get better at serving. That's obvious, right? What you have to do is serve to the best of your ability, serve to the best of your ability and when you fail, when you screw up, that sends a signal
through a very interesting set of circuits that's relayed through your mini brain, as they call your cerebellum in the back, that then carries the air signal forward and then the rest of your brain has to reshape itself.
And here's a critical point. The reshaping occurs during deep rest in particular sleep, both slow wave deep sleep and rapid eye movement sleep, which we talked about earlier in this episode. Both are crucial.
Some people need six hours of sleep at night, some seven, some eight, some nine, okay? Do your best to get what you need consistently. So you need that sleep. And then ideally the night after you try and learn something
or every night, please see previous question about the problems with over-optimization. I don't want anyone to take these things as rule of law. If you don't sleep well for a night or two, it's not like your learning is completely new,
but you don't want to do that consistently. The deep rest piece is critical, but then there's another one. There's a really impressive literature that shows, and this is backed by neuroscience, okay?
So brain imaging, it's backed by performance, which is perhaps the most important thing, people's ability to learn new information and remember the other important aspect of memory, to call back memories of things from the past
and it's self-testing. This is the most overlooked, powerful protocol for neuroplasticity. In fact, I covered a bunch of studies on this in the how to study and learn episode of the podcast.
I'm guessing a bunch of students watch that podcast, very popular episode, and I'm guessing a lot of non-students probably didn't because the word study probably sounded like If you're not in school, this wouldn't be relevant,
but it's highly relevant. And here are the key takeaways. People were given a passage of information to read and they could either do it once, twice, three times or four times.
This has been done with multiple iterations in different studies. Some studies included taking notes. Some studies included highlighting, you know, all the different ways that people study information
to try and learn. By far, the most impactful thing for forming stable memories over time or calling back old memories to keep this memory system thriving was self-testing.
That self-testing can take the form of just, hmm, can I do a mental walk back to my friend's house from the fifth grade? Now, you have to ask yourself, is this relevant information for your life now?
Well, perhaps not, but maybe you're just testing your memory system, right? And here's the key, errors should be expected and embraced. Whether you're trying to learn some new information from two days ago,
whether you're trying to remember information from three years ago or 30 years ago. When you can't remember, that's your nervous systems cue that it's going to need to draw it out of those circuits, which are now in your neocortex.
It's deep within your memory, although it's a bit of a misnomer because your hippocampus sits deeper to your cortex. But anyway, that's a nerdy side point. It's distributed out there and you need to call it back.
And the only way to really call back those memories in a way that they're going to stay with you going forward to keep your memory and keep these circuits going that allow you to continue to form new memories, keep this whole system robust,
is to make errors where you go, oh, I can't remember what came after point three in, well, question one of the Huberman Lab Podcast Q&A, like right now, what was that third thing? So you have to test yourself.
Now, if you go right back and just get the information, that's not gonna help you much. That's just like reading it again or hearing it again or highlighting it. It's not gonna help you that much.
You have to remember what you can remember And then you have to hit the point of, I can't remember that, darn it. That friction point, that tip of the tongue phenomenon, or I can't remember that person's name, great.
Those memories are now resurfacing. If you wait some period of time, typically they come back. If you have to go look them up later, great. You won't forget them as readily as if, of course, you didn't go look them up.
The point here is that all of learning is anti-forgetting. It almost sounds like a giant duh when you hear it, but all of learning and memory is anti-forgetting. and we need to push both the learning, right? Alertness, focus, trigger that plasticity,
deep rest and sleep, allow the plasticity to actually occur, the physical reshaping of circuitry that's going to carry those memories. But then we have to consolidate that over time. We have to recall it, okay?
And self-testing with errors, pushing ourselves to the point where we can't remember something and then looking it up and reconsolidating it, that's the key. That's what the neuroscience literature says.
That's what the psychological literature says. And there's just so much data to support this. So Sarah, my suggestion would be test yourself on things that you're interested in learning, regardless of whether the learning occurred recently
or it's from the past, both forms of testing yourself. And again, this can just be done mentally on a walk. You could write down questions for yourself. Most people won't do that. These days I'll use chat GPT to test myself on material,
either from a podcast or even some material that I learned long ago and I'll sort of say, design a basic test at the level of kind of second year graduate school at, I don't know, for me it was graduate school neuroscience
and in synaptic transmission, I of course remember that stuff, but there are little details that over time, if you don't practice, can wane. And of course I'm learning new things all the time.
And in order to put those to memory, to really consolidate those, I'll use chat GPT to generate a test for myself. And it is really good because I can say, you know what, that was too easy, make it harder.
Okay, so there's a lot more to say about that. I suggest listening to the how to study and learn episode if you'd like to go deeper into that. We've done a number of episodes on memory, including working memory elsewhere,
but the general themes here are consistent across all forms of memory, all ages, and all forms of learning. Your second question, Sarah, was about how to improve sense of smell.
The one very well-supported way is to test yourself on smells, to actually take a lemon. You will probably also want a quite different smell, maybe a rose, maybe some chocolate. It's gonna be a fun one to do.
Any number of different smells. Let's avoid noxious smells. And I'll tell you why you can avoid noxious smells in this because there's a hardwired pathway for that. You never, you actually never lose your core ability
to detect noxious smells unless you've had some damage to the olfactory system. It's a different pathway. But all these other smells, coffee, you can lay those out and you simply want to take some time
to do more sniffs than you think you need to do. We had a very popular episode of the podcast with Noam Sobel, who's one of the world experts in olfaction and our ability to detect smells. And he taught there and I followed up on what he taught
and it's a beautiful literature showing that our sense of smell is actually on par with that of canines. I know dogs and you might say that's impossible. Well, it turns out that if you look at the sheer number of olfactory neurons, we don't have quite as many
but we're headed in that direction. our ability to smell at a given level and their ability to smell at a remarkably higher level has much more to do with the amount of sniffing that they do per unit time
than the olfactory system itself. And it turns out that some people can get really, really good at detecting smells. The olfactory neurons, the ones that are critically involved in our sense of smell,
not only do they turn over throughout the lifespan, so this is very different than other central nervous system neurons, which you basically get one set for life. There are a few others that turnover,
but the olfactory neurons are really the world heavyweight champions of turnover throughout the lifespan. You're constantly turning them over. That turnover and their tuning to particular smells,
which translates to your ability to smell is activity dependent. It requires the electrical activity of those neurons. How do you generate the electrical activity of those neurons?
You sniff. Sniffing is what does it and smelling particular odors is what does it as well. You need those two things in combination, obviously. So, and really paying attention.
So close your eyes, try and make it a quiet environment. There's some background noise, no big deal. If this is in a crowded restaurant or something, give a really good set of sniffs, a really good, deep, long inhale.
Why am I telling you this? Well, the more times that you sniff, the longer those inhales, the more those cells fire in the presence of that odor. And by the way,
the actual molecules of that thing entering your nose, which is why we're not talking about noxious things as well. It's clear now why. This is such a beautiful system. I could talk about it for hours,
but I'm going to keep this brief going forward. I promise just a few more minutes. Dogs, when they sniff, they're actually getting many more sniffs through one inhale. How can that be?
Well, if you've ever seen that sort of J-shaped nostril on the dog's nose, it's kind of like little notches on the sides. It creates a physical environment where every inhale keeps the odor in
and keeps it circulating. So they're spending a lot of time with each odor. Even if they smelled something a few seconds or even minutes ago, they're integrating odors across space.
They actually have stereo, which simply means they're comparing the odors coming in through one nostril versus another, unconsciously, presumably, paying attention to odor plumes,
what direction they're coming from. They are so spectacular in particular, the scent hounds. Other animals do this too, of course, but dogs are a great example. And so when they sniff, what's there?
They're getting a rich amount of information in part because they have a lot of neurons to detect it, but also because they're paying total attention. Watch a dog when it's really fixated on a smell. They're almost, you know,
it almost seems as if they're deaf to anything you're, you're saying and blind to anything that's around. They're really focused. They're cutting out all other sensory cues and they're spending a lot of time with that odor
by virtue of the physical structure of their nose. There's a beautiful literature on this, by the way. So to build up your sense of smell, spend some time with some smells, inhale longer, pay attention, focus on it.
This might sound like kind of just kind of trivial, you know, nuts and bolts type stuff, like, oh yeah, well, of course, right? You know, how else would I build up my sense of smell? But this is really the way that the activity dependent
rewiring and reestablishment of this ongoing turnover of this population of neurons occurs. Now, if you have a respiratory illness or God forbid, someone takes a head hit, the cribriform plate, which is a kind of, it's like a Swiss cheese shaped bone
at the back of the nose, where the olfactory neuron axons go through, they can often get sheared off and people can become so-called anosmic, anosmic. So they can't smell for some period of time.
And a lot of people think they'll never get their smell back, but these sorts of things have been shown to help, especially immediately after the injury, although there is some evidence that you can get enhanced smell over time.
And if you haven't had such an injury, you can really build up your sense of smell. So improving our sense of smell is vital enough that when it's reduced or removed, it can be really rough on people in a serious way.
Okay, it can really inhibit their quality of life. But if you're going to put in major effort to get your sense of smell back, well, then I can just say if it were me, I would do the kind of smell training,
or I should say the multiple sniff training. All right, let's hear your next question. Hi, this is Van Spina. There's a lot of advice on the internet around eating specific foods for fertility.
What do you see in the literature around any specific foods that boost either male or female fertility beyond just eating a healthy balanced diet? Thank you, Van, for your question.
This is a very interesting question, and I've hosted a number of guests on the Huberman Lab podcast, including some female fertility experts. I had a discussion about male hormone health and fertility
with Dr. Kyle Gillette, who's a medical doctor. And there are a couple of basic principles that apply to both men and to women. So I'll cover those first. And those, at least in the context of nutrition,
can be summarized the following way. You need adequate calories to ensure fertility, but you don't want an excess of calories. Now that might seem obvious, but when you think about it a little bit more deeply,
it has some important implications, not just about caloric load, but food choices as well. So I was in a discussion with Dr. Kyle Gillette, MD, who is truly an expert in male hormone health and fertility. And we were talking on the podcast a while ago,
and I've had some offline conversations with him as well, about should men be wary of cutting calories too much if they want to have their testosterone and their fertility in the ideal range? Okay, what are we talking about when we talk about ideal?
Yes, there's a reference range, the so-called 300 nanograms per deciliter up to typically 900 or in some countries, 1200 nanograms per deciliter, that's a huge reference range.
But keep in mind that that's just one indication of hormone health and testosterone health. There's also your free testosterone, which is critical. There's also the testosterone to estrogen ratio and contrary to what many people believe,
men do not ideally want their testosterone really high and their estrogen really, really low because estrogen is actually very important. So we were having this general discussion and Dr. Gillette explained it very simply.
If a man is carrying excess body weight, if he's starting to carry more than say 20% body fat, then he would be wise to cut calories to a sub maintenance level and lose some of that body fat, ideally while doing resistance training
in order to preserve or even build muscle and bring that body fat percentage down. and that's going to improve his testosterone, free testosterone and other hormone markers of virility, vitality, and fertility.
However, he pointed out that if a male is 15% body fat or less, if he cuts calories below maintenance level for too long, so I'm not talking about one or two days per week, I'm talking about consistently across the week, six or seven days per week, perhaps,
and doing that for two or three or more weeks in order to lower body fat percentage, that's very likely to reduce his testosterone and free testosterone levels. And in the context of fertility that could,
could potentially have a negative impact on his fertility. Now, fertility in males has a number of different metrics. Okay, it's not assessed by just one thing. It's not just sperm count. It's also sperm quality,
which has a number of different measures itself. Fortunately, the measures of male fertility in the context of a sperm sample are very inexpensive to obtain nowadays. There's some male home kits that men can use
if they'd like to do that at home. There are clinics that can do this and it's very inexpensive and easy to assess. So if you're a male and you're interested in conceiving or you're just generally thinking about your fertility,
given some other things you might be doing or your medical history, you might want to get a sperm analysis. Easy to do, it's inexpensive. All of that is fairly straightforward to do nowadays
and you can get a snapshot into your fertility at basically any age and in the context of other medications and things that you might be taking. Okay, so that's the caloric either excess, okay? So men who are carrying excess body fat
should try and get that body fat level down. Men who are in a healthier range of body fat percentage would be wise to not go into at least a severe caloric deficit, okay? Probably no more than 500 calories per day caloric deficit
for extended periods of time if you're thinking about conceiving or you want to maintain fertility. And then I should just put this out there and this wasn't part of the question,
but I know there's a lot of interest nowadays in testosterone replacement therapy. Be aware, this is the critical point. If you take exhaustion is testosterone, even a little bit, even if you're quote unquote microdosing it,
so less than a hundred milligrams per week or so, it will negatively impact your sperm count. It will negatively impact your sperm count. It can be partially to completely offset by taking HCG, which is typically taken, you know,
something like 500 IUs, three times a week. Some people do higher doses, et cetera, alongside the testosterone therapy. But if you don't take HCG and you're taking any kind of exogenous testosterone
because of the negative feedback loop by which testosterone is made in the male body, it will deplete your sperm count, okay? And whether you can bring that sperm count back up with HCG and other therapies later on.
Usually the answer is yes, but sometimes the answer is no. So you want to be very careful, very, very careful about using exogenous testosterone. Do it in the context of a well-informed doctor,
let them know your fertility goals and let them also tell you that your fertility goals may change over time. So if you're like, I don't want kids, maybe someday you will and need you to think about that.
Maybe even just freeze a sperm sample. Okay, for women who on average carry higher percentage percentages of body fat than do men, right? The same general principle applies. And this is based on conversations that I've had
with Dr. Natalie Crawford, who's a fertility expert. And I've had other fertility experts on the podcast, Dr. Taiz Ali Abadi. And they agree on several things related to female fertility generally in this context
of nutrition and calories and so forth, which is if a woman is carrying a much higher than is healthy percentage of body fat. There's a higher degree of inflammation in the body and it would be wise to try and bring that percentage
of body fat down somewhat or even considerably if the goal is to get pregnant. The general principle of if you're carrying excess body fat then trying to reduce that by virtue of eating a sub maintenance, not by a ridiculous amount
but a sub maintenance caloric intake for some period of time in a healthy way still eating a nutrient dense diet and so forth, getting enough protein, getting enough fiber, getting enough fruits and vegetables and micronutrients.
But bringing that body fat percentage down, down, excuse me, often can help. But as most everybody knows, if a woman's body fat percentage comes down too far, she may stop menstruating entirely
or it could adversely impact fertility in other ways. So that's really a discussion that you have to have with your OBGYN. The point being, you don't want to be too lean, nor do you want to be carrying too much excess body fat.
What all the physicians who work on either male and or female fertility agree on is that you want to consume a low inflammation diet. Okay, what's a low inflammation diet? Well, immediately people jump to,
okay, lots of fruits and vegetables and lots of fiber and Mediterranean diet. Yes, yes, and we need to add a bit more information here. High in micronutrient diet is something that's often overlooked.
And in terms of reducing inflammation in the body, I'm aware of one study that talks about specifically what to do in addition to what not to do. Because I think we all now know too much hyper processed food,
you know, too much packaged food, any food that can survive for long periods of time on the shelf in its near to ready eat form is considered highly processed, right? You know, when I talk about,
you know, rice can sit for a long time on the shelf, but it has to be prepared, right? So you're not really processing it, you're preparing it. But yes, fresh fruits and vegetables. Yes, lean proteins like chicken and fish,
probably some lean red meat like beef if that's within your diet as well. Eating monounsaturated fats like olive oil, I think we all know this stuff by now, lentils, rice, starches, but not too many.
So the whole idea behind this low inflammation diet is really also thinking about micronutrients that are going to be rich in fruits and vegetables, eating quality proteins. When I say quality proteins,
it's about high quality protein to calorie ratio. Meaning look at foods like lean beef, chicken, fish. If you like shellfish, scallops, this sort of thing. Think of those as quality protein with all the essential amino acids
without a high caloric load. The fruits, the vegetables, and some of the starches without excess fats. And if you're going to eat fats, mostly unsaturated fats, maybe a little bit of saturated fat
from the animal proteins. That's basically the low inflammation diet. And I mentioned there's one thing specifically that has been shown in the human literature to reduce inflammation,
and that's low sugar fermented foods. Highly overlooked, highly beneficial. This has been shown in a beautiful study from my colleagues, Justin Sonnenberg and Christopher Gardner
at Stanford University School of Medicine. People were given either a low sugar fermented food, sort of call to action to eat more of those each day or increase their fiber intake pretty markedly. They did a ramp up because they need to,
you need to do that kind of slowly for a few weeks in order to get your system acclimated to it. You don't want to go from like, no low sugar fermented foods to tons of them, but slowly adding, you know, a few servings a day,
one serving, two servings, you know, up to about four servings a day, which isn't very much by the way, you know, a few spoonfuls here, some, you know, Bulgarian yogurt there, you know, maybe some low sugar kombucha there
and you're getting essentially what they quote unquote prescribed in this diet for the subjects. What they saw is that many inflammatory markers were significantly reduced in the low sugar fermented food group.
Whereas in the fiber addition group, they found something interesting. Some people who significantly increased their fiber intake experienced a reduction in inflammatory markers. Others had an increase in inflammatory markers.
Does that mean fiber is bad? No, it means that certain types of high fiber foods might cause some inflammation in some people, not others. And that's an important discussion going forward. Personally, I have family members
who will take some seleum husk, like a small amount of seleum husk. It's very inexpensive to increase fiber. So you could do that route, but ideally eating fruits and vegetables,
plus maybe a little bit of that for increasing fiber is going to benefit most people in terms of colon health and reducing inflammation. But the low sugar fermented foods is a recommendation that I've certainly adopted into my own life.
I eat Bulgarian yogurt. I eat sauerkraut, you have to eat the type that needs to be refrigerated and the low sugar part is important. So no, we're not talking about beer.
We're not talking about sweetened pickles. We're not talking about that sort of thing. We're talking about the stuff that has to be in the refrigerator, natto, kimchi, and so on,
and really striving for the low sugar variety. So low inflammation diet. Okay, that's enough about diet. I touched a little bit on TRT. In discussions with the other people I mentioned earlier
in this answer, as well as in the episode that I did about male and female fertility, which admittedly is a very long episode. In that episode, I did touch on some of the things that have some, I wanna be really careful,
have shown some positive impact on egg quality, which is an important metric when trying to conceive, as well as sperm quality. I talked about some of those metrics as well. And those include things like L-carnitine, coenzyme Q10.
Why would those be potentially useful? And I should mention, when having discussions with now three different fertility doctors, okay, about male and female fertility, okay, so we're talking sperm and egg health and quality,
all three of them say, yeah, I recommend to my patients, coenzyme Q10, I recommend to my patients some L-carnitine, some fertility experts will also recommend other things. And for that, I'll just cue you to Natalie Crawford's excellent book on the,
titled The Fertility Formula, as well as her podcast episode that she did with us, where she gets into some details of some other things that can be beneficial, because some experts will recommend things like
low dose melatonin at night, presumably to improve sleep, perhaps other things as well, some don't. Some will recommend DHEA, others not. So here I'm just going to focus on the overlap
in the Venn diagram, as they say, where everyone says, yep, I recommend that to my patients. I don't think it's necessary for my patients, but as long as they're trying to increase their fertility, their egg quality or their sperm quality,
I suggest they do it if they can afford it. And that's L-carnitine and coenzyme Q10, both of which have been shown to, well, in the case of males to improve sperm motility, not so much count, but motility and quote unquote quality,
because that's a multi-metric label, quality, as well as egg quality. And L-carnitine can be taken orally as capsules. Typically those are higher dosages. So those can be as high as 500 milligrams
or 750 milligrams a day. You don't absorb as much of it when you take it orally. Some people will actually do the injectable form of L-carnitine. And then with Coenzyme Q10,
the dosage recommendations vary. I'll point you to Natalie's podcast with me. We'll put a link to that particular segment in the show note caption. But these are the things that seem to help
with egg quality and sperm quality. Why? Because they seem to indirectly, perhaps directly, but indirectly support mitochondrial health. And so much of what's happening in conception
and the formation of the early embryo is about taking that fertilized egg and creating more cells from it. And that's highly dependent on a number of different factors that mitochondria are critical for.
And mitochondrial health within the early embryo, within the egg and the sperm, but within the early embryo is crucial for the normal development to lead to a successful pregnancy. So I want to be really clear.
I'm not saying that the linchpin factor in fertility is coenzyme Q10 or it's L-carnitine. It's going to be multivariate. I think the most important thing is to set a context for overall reproductive health.
So that's going to be body-wide, keeping inflammation relatively low through the low inflammation diet, exercise being critical. So yes, nutrition, sleep being a critical one
to keep inflammation low, you know, and so on and so on and so on. A lot of it's age dependent. There probably is some genetic variation, but if somebody is struggling to achieve
or maintain fertility or somebody is at the kind of age threshold where they're more and more concerned about these things, then it just stands to reason to do more to try and support fertility. So if you're trying to get your fertility
in the right direction for you, well, these things have been shown to help. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink
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you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free Element sample pack with any purchase. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. Okay, next question, please.
Hello, Dr. Huberman. This is Josimara from Brazil. My question is, as women enter perimenopause, what is the actual impact on mental health during this stage?
Is it common for women to experience more panic attacks or panic disorder symptoms, or are these not related to perimenopause? If they are related, how long do these symptoms typically last?
Thank you so much. Thank you, Josemata. I think that is the pronunciation of your name and forgive me if it's not. Thank you, Josemata, for your question.
We received a lot of questions about perimenopause and menopause, suggested treatments, what's new in the literature and so on. And so I just want to start off by saying that this topic and set of questions deserves
an entire episode of the Huberman Lab podcast or indeed several. And I've been looking for guests to have this discussion with in more depth. So I want to be very clear about that.
We have also done a few episodes that cover perimenopause and menopause from different perspectives. So we'll put a link to some of those in the show note caption. Just to take a step back from all of this,
as most people know, perimenopause, menopause reflects massive changes in hormones, in particular, estrogen, progesterone and testosterone in women at a particular stage of their life. And it can be fairly gradual or it can be more accelerated
over a shorter time period. That means that the range of symptoms that women experience is highly variable from one to the next. And I think this has been part of the challenge
in the literature. The other big challenge in the literature is that indeed, there were far too few studies of perimenopause and menopause and possible treatments in the previous decades.
We're now entering what hopefully is a new era where there's more studies devoted to women's health, perimenopause and menopause, but also PCOS. And indeed all the things that potentially differ between women and men as it relates to cancer,
cancer treatments, nutrition, et cetera. There are a huge number of unanswered questions in the women's health space that hopefully will be resolved in the upcoming years. Also, and many people are now aware of this,
one of the largest scale studies about hormone replacement therapy for menopause, to some extent perimenopause, but it was mainly focused on menopause from some years back. It's largely general consensus now.
There might be a few holdouts, but many, many people now conclude that the early conclusions of those studies were wrong. Meaning the early studies concluded that hormone replacement therapy was either dangerous
or ineffective or only mildly effective. And I think a large number of people, and this is independent of politics. This is independent of whether or not people are pro-hormone therapy or anti-hormone therapy.
They will conclude that there does appear to be a beneficial effect of certain hormone replacement therapies for perimenopause and menopause if the therapies are started early enough. Meaning if the therapies were started too late,
there was some evidence of some detrimental effects perhaps, but if the therapies were started early enough, either in menopause or perimenopause, then there were some beneficial effects observed that weren't advertised, weren't popularized enough
on the basis of the actual data. So that's created a landscape now where fortunately people are reevaluating those data, doing new studies, right? We always need more,
but doing new studies to evaluate the best timing for hormone therapies. And when I say hormones, I'm deliberately being broad about that because we know that estrogen, testosterone,
and progesterone and other hormones all change during perimenopause and menopause. And there are now different forms of hormone replacement therapy. To be very direct in answering this specific question,
which was, is there a relationship between perimenopause and menopause? The changes in hormones, because it's not always reduction. Sometimes it's increases in certain hormones,
because all these hormones have intense interplay in terms of how they regulate themselves and each other. Is there a relationship between that and things like anxiety? Now, the short answer is absolutely yes. In perimenopause and menopause,
when steroid hormones like testosterone and estrogen are changing and hormone, other hormones as well, of course, like progesterone and on and on. So many hormones change during perimenopause, menopause. Many cells are not just changing the way
that they're quote unquote behaving. They're not their short-term physiologies, but some cells are turning off the expression of certain genes and proteins and other cells are turning them on.
And so we know that many hormones have a strong effect on neurons, nerve cells in the circuits of the brain, including the hypothalamus, which regulates all sorts of things, hunger, sleep, body temperature.
And yes, it's also involved in anxiety. You have the so-called hypothalamic, pituitary adrenal axis, which is involved in the production of cortisol. So the short answer is yes, yes, and yes.
When hormones change, neural circuit activities change in the short term, but the propensity for those circuits to be active or hyperactive or hypoactive, not active enough, is going to be strongly regulated
by steroid hormones as well. Hormones in particular, they're impacting hundreds if not thousands of systems. So I don't throw all this out there to confuse any of you. It's simply to say that you should trust your experience,
right, you have to trust your experience. If you're seeing a reduction in a particular hormone on a blood test in perimenopause or menopause, or frankly, at any stage of life, that is correlated in your experience
with an increase in anxiety, right? Can you really tack your change in anxiety to that hormone directly? In some cases, yes, in many cases, no, because there are just so many little tributaries
of mechanistic overlap here. I think the key takeaway is this, the early studies that concluded that hormone replacement therapy was either not beneficial or it could be detrimental
were apparently flawed either by virtue of the conclusion, meaning the conclusion didn't match the data or those studies weren't done correctly. The therapies in many cases were started too late, right? And it does seem that starting the therapies
at the right, these hormone therapies at the right time and at the right dosages, not surprisingly, is very important. So that almost forces the conclusion that if you're experiencing anxiety
in perimenopause, menopause, well, it may not be directly related or even indirectly related to a change in hormones. There is a mechanistic basis to suspect that it could be. And therefore you should absolutely talk to your doctor.
Any doctor that truly cares about your health should be willing to have a conversation about whether or not your levels of estrogen, perhaps even testosterone, progesterone, need adjusting through any number of existing therapies,
many of which are very inexpensive nowadays, by the way, in order to bring things back to a place where you're feeling less anxious, more vital. Whatever symptoms you may be struggling with, those could be overcome.
But of course, there are other ways to approach this as well. I will mention that on previous episodes of the podcast where I had experts in perimenopause and menopause on to discuss these specific issues.
There was also a lot of discussion about the importance of eating a low inflammatory diet to making sure that you get adequate sleep. And many people often say that in perimenopause and menopause, their sleep suffers.
So whether or not that needs to be approached from the symptom level, like going after sleep specifically, like, okay, you're going to make certain lifestyle changes to try and make it easier to get to sleep. But if there's middle of the night wakings,
night sweats, these kinds of things, Perhaps hormone therapies are going to get more at the foundation of those issues. And any doctor that cares about you will be willing to have this multi-pronged conversation.
Again, this is a absolutely critical area of women's health and therefore human health. We received so many questions about it. I will apologize again for not getting into more depth about this,
but that really deserves having an expert guest on the podcast to go into what's latest in this area in terms of the research and the clinical trials. It's not happening fast enough, but there are new data. So stand by, we'll talk about it more soon.
Okay, next question. Hello, Huberman Lab team and Andrew. My name is Nick Ferrendo. I live in North Carolina, United States. Me and my fiance are getting married this October.
And when planning our outdoor wedding ceremony, we got to thinking about whether doing the ceremony during the sunrise hours of the day or sunset hours of the day, would have a different mental effect on our guests because of the sunlight being received during those two times and didn't know if it was different or the same and would love your input.
Thank you very much. Later. Well, I never predicted that I'd be giving marriage advice on the Huberman Lab podcast, but here we go. Nick and to your fiance, congratulations.
Super happy for you guys. And the fact that you're thinking about sunlight and its effect on your guests just shows not only a compassion for your guests, but that you're fully integrating your wedding and presumably your life together going forward
in this incredible thing that is our circadian rhythm. In any event, the answer here can be pretty direct and brief, which is I would go for the sunset wedding. And I'll tell you why. Otherwise, you're going to be getting ready
very, very early in the morning. And typically people like some time to get ready for weddings. While I would say about 20% of people fall into this category that we call early birds
by virtue of chronotype, meaning they are genetically hardwired to prefer to get up very early. and to go to sleep very early, most people are either night owls,
they like to get up later, you know, after 9 a.m. and stay up late, or the majority of people prefer to get up between 6 and 8 a.m. and go to sleep somewhere between 10 p.m. and midnight.
That's just the majority of people in the world. And people are going to want to have time to prepare for the wedding ceremony. They're going to want to get up, hopefully get some sunlight, you know,
get dressed and do all those things, and it's going to be tough for people to push early into the day for an early ceremony, but of course they're there to honor you guys and they can do it.
And I'm saying all of this because it illustrates a really important larger point, which is that although our circadian rhythm is a really powerful force in our energy levels and when we like to go to sleep,
most everybody has the ability to stay up later than we would prefer to, meaning we can push a couple more hours past our normal to bedtime and stay up later.
But it's very hard for people to get into gear and be wide awake and alert earlier than their normal wake up time. So you're being kind to all your guests by putting the event in the afternoon.
I suppose the night owls will be happiest because to them that's sort of their, it's not still their morning but it's kind of their early afternoon to the people that tend to be
on a more normal chronotype schedule, waking up between six and 8 a.m. and going to bed between 10 and midnight. Hopefully they'll stay for the entire party. I imagine you'll have a celebration of some sort
and they'll be able to do that just fine. They might get to bed a little bit later than they normally do. They'll be just fine. And the early risers might struggle with the party,
but they'll be fine as well. It just so happens that by time the ceremony rolls around at sunset and I don't know what time of year, if it's going to be in the Carolinas or elsewhere.
So I don't know exactly when the sun is setting. Now we could get into details as to whether or not the ceremony is going to be East facing or West facing, but I don't think we need to do that. That's two down in the weeds.
Very simply, if you want to have the most number of people alert and rested and prepared and felt like they had enough time to get there, the few stragglers who are going to be late and all of that, make sure everyone's in attendance,
I would go for the evening wedding. And as a more general point, going forward, I again wish you congratulations and definitely get that morning sunlight as a couple. if you can, if one of you sleeps in a little bit later,
honor that too, all right? Chronotypes are a real thing. Some people will argue that having aligned chronotypes and schedules is critical for a relationship. Some people would argue that it's good to have
slightly asynchronous ones. Look, there are no real studies on that. And were they to do the experiments, and I doubt they ever will, I think what you find is that either can work.
Watching a sunrise together is great, watching sunsets together is great, and watching both is even better. Hello, my name's Kelly and I had a question about recovering from a kidney donation surgery
and what you can do following the surgery to retain as much muscle mass as possible during that recovery time. Also, if there's anything you would do beforehand to increase the odds of less loss
in that post-surgical time period. Thank you very much. Well, thank you for your question, Kelly. And really thank you for the incredible act that you're asking about, a kidney donation.
I mean, these things save lives. Gosh, there aren't even words for it. I mean, to give a kidney, to save somebody's life, what a wonderful and remarkable thing. So thank you so much for that.
What a beautiful example of humans helping humans. how to best go into and recover from any surgery and in particular this one. The short answer is going to it as fit and rested as you possibly can.
Now, life constraints will determine what that means for you, but it's very clear. And in particular, if you're thinking about maintaining muscle and maintaining general fitness and speed of recovery, that having your strength
and your cardiovascular health, as good as it can be heading into the procedure. And that also means not exhausting yourself or injuring yourself by over-training is going to be immensely beneficial.
And I can say this because I have several friends who are surgeons that will say to me always, you know, that the athletes that come in, even if they're dealing with major surgeries, even if they're not pro athletes,
they're just sort of, you know, recreational athletes, always recover faster. Why? Well, their metabolic health is better. their circulation is better.
And yes, they probably also are used to pushing into challenge and coming out of surgery can be challenging. I've had surgeries before and I can tell you that it's always striking to me how absolutely dreadful
I would feel coming out of it, you know, two, three days. I was like, oh my God, I don't know how I'm ever. And then five days later, like, wow, I can't believe how quickly I've healed. And I don't consider myself, you know,
any kind of serious athlete. I mean, I'm athletic. by exercise and so forth. Those surgeries were when I was younger from broken bones and things like that.
So they weren't nearly as intense and invasive as what you're asking about here. But have your cardiovascular fitness in place if you have time before the surgery. So great time to do.
And I imagine you might be doing any number of things that I'm about to describe, but perhaps more as well. But as we talked about earlier, at least one long, slow distanced of about 45 minutes to an hour, zone two, three-ish cardio per week,
some high intensity interval training at least once per week, maybe twice and something more moderate in the middle, kind of moderate intensity of about 30 minutes or so, and some strength training for both the lower body and the upper body, most probably on days
other than the cardiovascular training, two to three days per week. And again, not over-training, right? Not pushing yourself to try and get so fit that you're exhausted because you don't want to go
into a surgery exhausted. But you do want to go in getting adequate sleep. It's normal the night before a big surgery to perhaps not get as great sleep as you normally do. That's normal.
I think most surgeons will attest to the fact that while not ideal, that doesn't prohibit a really great recovery either. It's just normal kind of pre-surgery anxiety is common. But in the days and weeks before the surgery
being as rested as possible. And here's the big one, both going into and out of surgery. And I know some of you are going to go, oh, here he is again with the sunlight thing. I will tell you, based on a lot of experience
visiting people in the hospital, which was just adjacent to my lab at Stanford, these are people who are dealing with everything from cancer to surgery, patients of different ages. I actually was, I sat in on, I didn't participate,
of course, I'm not a surgeon, on a brain surgery recently up at UCSF. And I'll tell you in talking with the brain surgeons that when patients get and stay on a, as normal as possible circadian rhythm
coming out of surgery, it helps immensely. There are even data showing that recovery from surgery and other illness in the hospital is significantly improved if the patient is next to a window where they get some natural light.
If you can't do that, really think about eye mask at night so that you can get it as dark as possible. It's really hard in some hospitals to get it really dark because there's, and quiet because there's a lot of noise from the equipment and people are coming in
for the checks all night. And you know, you have the night staff, great eye mask for sleeping at night, great earplugs to keep it as quiet as possible so you can sleep on as normal as is possible
for you schedule. If you can be positioned next to a window, I think if you're giving a kidney, they should put you next to a window and they should put you next to an east facing window.
I don't know what hospital you're at. This person is giving a kidney. They deserve to be near a east facing window, darn it, for their recovery. And that will allow you to get on
and stay on a normal circadian schedule. Or even West facing, as we talked about earlier, get some ambient light in the early part of the day and get that outdoor time, some fresh air. This is going to massively help your overall state.
It's going to tremendously help your sleep, which is going to tremendously help reduce the inflammation post surgically, it's going to accelerate your healing and on and on. This circadian rhythm stuff, folks, is real.
It is absolutely real and it is foundational to our health. Then in terms of what you can do to just get back the muscle that you had or maintain it through this period, if you have been exercising and doing strength training and perhaps hypertrophy and strength training
for some period of time going into this, you will be amazed at how quickly an atrophied limb or an overall reduction in muscle and strength comes back. A lot of the quote-unquote muscle memory that we talk about is skill-based muscle memory.
I haven't ridden a bike in years, but I can still do it, muscle memory. But there's the other kind of muscle memory, which is the nerve to muscle, the motor neuron to muscle,
which controls muscular contractions, quote-unquote memory, which is the re-establishment of strength, the re-establishment of hypertrophy when you had it prior. So regaining strength and muscle size is far easier
than gaining it for the first time. The one exception being that when you're young, if like you're in your late teens, early twenties, it's pretty easy to gain muscle fast when you first start exercising,
but that tapers off pretty quickly after about a year or so. And then you have to fight for every bit of it. And as you get older, it's harder to get stronger and to build muscle, but you can do it.
Now that's the conventional stuff. And even that doesn't sound that conventional. I'm guessing that a lot of doctors probably are not talking about this, but that's not because they don't talk about it.
It's just, it's hard to prescribe to a lot of patients. And in particular, and here I'm calling out the hospitals, not Stanford hospital, but other hospitals, they treat people, they want them to heal, they want to free up beds, they want to send them home,
but the environment in the hospital is not circadian friendly to the patients or the staff. It's just not, it's not the nature of how hospitals work. And I'm not just talking about the emergency rooms. It's just not, you know, the bright lights,
the noises in the middle of the night and the lack of, you know, natural daylight coming through. And it has a negative impact. It really does at multiple levels. So you have to kind of push back on the system
in order to try and get the best possible circadian environment, if you will. Once again, Kelly, thank you ever so much. You're a godsend for somebody out there and we need more people like you.
Okay, before our last question, I just want to put a note out to Cody Morrison who asked a great question about careers in science. First of all, Cody, good luck on your PhD defense. Let me know how it goes.
Second, I'm happy to talk about postdocs with you. I don't know if you're in neuroscience or another field. I'm not currently taking postdocs in my lab, but I've had several, including several who have laboratories of their own now
and graduate students who now have laboratories of their own as professors. So even though the landscape has changed, the funding and other landscapes have changed since I started my research lab.
I have some things that perhaps will be of interest to you that we can discuss. So I'll be reaching out directly to you. And the only reason I didn't take your question publicly is because I think that most people listening
are probably not in the research science track, but also because I'd like to give all your questions adequate time. And obviously I have a soft spot for anyone who's seriously considering going into research science
and would love to be of help in any way that I can. All right, final question for today. We'll do more in the future. Hello, Mr. Andrew Hebermann. My name is Kevin and my question is,
how does one find what they are truly passionate about? Because anyone that follows you and what you do can safely assume that you're passionate about health, science and teaching the community about those things. And as someone who just graduated from college and is finding themselves in the world, and
I'm sure I can speak for millions of other people, I was wondering if there was any science-backed evidence of being able to find what someone is really, truly passionate about. Kevin, thank you so much for your question. This is a vital question in our lives, regardless of age. Oh, and congratulations on graduating college.
That's no small feat. I know people have mixed feelings nowadays about the value of degrees, et cetera. I, you know, and here I'm heavily biased. I'm a university professor and I'm, you know,
super enthusiastic about learning and teaching and all the rest, but I still think for many, not all, it's a wonderful choice and it's no small thing to finish a degree. So congratulations to you and to your family.
Finding your passion, that's a big question. It's actually one that I touch on in the final chapter of my book, among other things in that chapter, and that's not a plug for the book.
It's just simply to say that I go into this in some detail beyond what I'm going to offer here just for sake of time. I'll do my best to give you and anyone else listening to this what I think are the key things, regardless of age. First of all, if you don't know what your passion is
and even if you think you might, even if you are absolutely sure you do, it is absolutely critical that if you want to be successful that you continue to be structured about your daily life. Now, I don't mean over-optimization,
doing every single health protocol. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is you need to have a purpose each day in waking up, even if it's not the thing, it doesn't feel like the thing.
So I think it's very important if you're a student to focus on your studies, if you're able to do that and not work, more power to you. Many people have to do that and work. If you're working a job, no matter how far
from where you would like to be eventually, internally, you know, if it's the completely wrong career for you, until you start to feel something pulling you or even just tilting you in a slightly different direction, It is vitally important to continue to take care
of yourself, to try and get the sleep that you can, to get your morning sunlight, to get some exercise. Do those things. Doesn't matter if you're a store clerk, you're selling shoes.
I mean, long before I became a scientist, I mean, I worked in skateboard shops. I sold shoes. I assembled a radio flyer wagons and toys at a toy store. I mean, I worked in a bakery.
I had a paper route. I mowed lawns. I did all those things. I can't say that I loved all those jobs. Some of them I liked more than others.
Some of them paid barely anything. Some of them paid a little better, but it's just so important to stay busy and to continue to work and work on yourself. And this isn't just theory, right?
You're cultivating the skills that in some way you're going to apply to your passion once you find it. Now, how do you find the passion? The way you find the passion can be best summarized not to sound a mystical here.
It sounds a little bit like a riddle, but you know, the great Joe Strummer from the Clash, who in my opinion started the better band, the Mescaleros later, which wasn't punk rock. It's not, I don't even know if it's rock and roll.
It's just music, amazing. He created three masterpieces later in his life. You know, he had this saying, which was, it was literally called Strummer's Law, which is no input, no output.
You need to be interfacing with the world in order to have ideas and to discover what your passion is. You know, the other day, because I had a bunch of, just kind of wrote things to do, I had to handle a bunch of stuff
that could be done kind of mindlessly, but it had to be done. I was listening to a lecture on modern art history. I just decided to put that in. Modern art history documentary into YouTube, just saw what came up.
And I discovered two artists that just completely blew my mind. And I love art, I love modern art. I hadn't really gone down this rabbit hole of these two particular artists.
And it doesn't really matter who they are or what they did, but in that listening, I had a couple of ideas about things related to the visual system that I worked on years ago, and some interest that I have in eye health
as it relates to some of this emerging peptide science field, okay? That's the way the brain works. It's taking different nodes of interest and combining them, and that's what your original contribution to the world,
whatever it happens to be in, whether it's an exercise science or finance, or you're a high school teacher, those things are going to converge in the unique version that is you.
Now, the only way that you can find your passion is to keep an active interest in the world. That also means not getting pulled into other people's rabbit holes. You need to avoid two things critically.
These are the don'ts. Avoid drama, especially getting pulled into it, and avoid numbing out. Anything that activates you gets you angry. Okay, that might be something that could turn into
a sense of justice and advocacy. Great, if that's your path, okay. Maybe you go into public policy or something of that sort, or into advocacy for animals or the world or certain group of people, great.
But you have to be very careful that you're not getting pulled into meaningless dramas, that you're not also numbing out because a lot of what's out there in the world is designed to do one or two of those things.
So stay structured in your life, do some job, work. This is critical. I also think at a certain age, for some people earlier than others, because they have to,
earning your own money just feels good, even if it's not a lot. Just earning your own money, putting in savings, maybe spending some of it, putting into investment account, that kind of thing,
feels really good, you're building something. That algorithm, that underlying operation of doing something, showing up, trying to be good at it, maybe even grade at it,
even though it's not your calling, sets the stage, it prepares you for when you get kind of pulled towards something, oh, I'm really interested also in this aspect of fitness or this aspect of filmmaking.
And eventually you'll pick your trajectory. And the key thing is to remember that's not your final trajectory. You're heading off in a vector that will take you someplace
that will take you someplace else, someplace else. You may have one career, you may have several in your lifetime, but no input, no output. Remain curious and become good and ideally great
at listening to your own inner compass. Or I like to think about it antennae. Occasionally I see something, I'm just like, wow, this is, I don't know why it's interesting and I don't care. You're inspired by it.
Some element of it gets into your consciousness and you move forward with that. I actually have a notebook. This is something I've done since my teens. Early in my academic career, I had a list.
I update that list and I have names of different people. Some were from the world of science, some from health and fitness, some from art, some from music, I'm not a musician, I have zero minus infinity musical talent,
but I love music as a consumer. I just really enjoy being a consumer of it. These are people whose kind of careers or what they did really impressed me, they resonated with me. That's the thing because I mean,
a lot of people impressed me, but it resonated with me. And over the years, I'll cross them out and add some in. And in many ways, the career arc that I've taken, the passion arc or passions plural arc that I've taken is a reflection of all of that plus my own unique experience.
By the way, this was long before podcasts or even heard about personal development or any of that. Get in touch with what moves you, what wakes you up, what kind of gives you a charge in your body that's not meaningless drama and also avoid numbing out.
And here's the other piece. If you're going to go down a particular path, this is so critical. If you're going to go down a certain path, don't try and bring your unique spin into it too early.
Every career path, whether it's biological sciences or psychology or exercise physiology or finance, there's a chop wood carry water phase of that where you have to develop the competency and go from unskilled to skilled
and hopefully from skilled to mastery in that thing. And first of all, No one wants to work with a person that's trying to bring their own unique spin to the thing that they barely understand too early, okay?
You have to get your chops in something. So you have to apprentice yourself to something. And that can be very difficult for people who have a sense of self that they're a little different. They don't want to do things the way everyone else does.
They need to see themselves, their unique gift in the thing. And I'll tell you what, you will be able to do that and you can transform an entire field. you will literally change the game of what you do,
but you got to get the core mechanics and the basics first. You don't get to come in there and be like, I'm me and I'm going to change the game. No, it's chop wood, carry water. So that's like, you know, dribble, shoot, guard, pass,
like, you know, basketball, whatever, whatever your, at that time, vocation turns out to be, you have to work through the core mechanics of that. You have to see the things you're proficient at, the things that come naturally,
and then of course there are going to be things that are much harder for you and you're going to have to overcome those to be in that field. And this can be a tough pill for a lot of people to swallow,
but if you can accept that, you're going to apprentice yourself to this thing for a short while, knowing that it's not, or a long while, knowing that it's not your final destination
and that you'll eventually be able to bring in some, probably not all, but some of your unique gifts to that craft. And that's where your unique contribution is going to come through.
So what I'm describing here are a number of different tributaries that all start with you that eventually converge in your unique gift to your passion, but in the meantime, stay structured, take care of yourself,
avoid meaningless drama, don't numb out, try different things, develop a sense of taste, what moves you toward or away from things. Learn yum, yuck, meh. Like if you see something or like something
in a given area of whatever, any vocation, like, yes, I love that, or no, I definitely don't like that. Or meh, there can be some mehs and some yums, but the, ugh, no, that's not going to work.
But with that said, once you take on something, you decide to do it, there are going to be some things that are hard. Don't confuse that for yuck. It just means you haven't developed the skillset yet.
And you're going to have to embrace and tackle certain things that are hard for you. You have to chop wood, carry water for a while. But once you go from unskilled to skilled and you're starting to transition from skilled to mastery,
And certainly once you've developed mastery in an area, then you can bring together or include some of your unique experience and do something truly unique, truly exciting and transform your field, likely transform the world
because in some small or large way you're going to transform the world. So that's the recipe for finding your passion. It's really about being you, but plugging yourself into some sort of system
long enough to get really good at something so that then you can put your stamp on it. Work for me. All right, everyone, that closes out our Huberman Lab Podcast Q&A session.
I really appreciate all of you joining. Extra special thanks to those of you that called in with questions. And again, if your question wasn't selected for today, there's still a chance it will be selected
for a future Q&A session of the Huberman Lab Podcast. And of course, to all of you, the question-askers and all of you listening, thank you for your interest in science.