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. Recently. The huberman allowed podcast hosted a live event at the Great Hall in Brisbane Australia. The event was called the brain-body contract and featured a lecture followed by a question-and-answer session with the audience. We wanted to make the question and answer session available to everyone.
Regardless if you could attend I also would like to thank the sponsors for the event. They are eight sleep and a.g. 18 sleep makes Smart mattress covers with cooling Heating and sleep tracking capacity. I have spoken many times before on this podcast about the fact that sleep is the critical foundation for mental health physical health and performance. Now, one of the key things to getting the best possible night sleep is to control the temperature of your sleeping environment. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep. Your body temperature actually needs to drop by about 1 to 3 degrees and in order to wake up.
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Drink the also contains adaptogens and other critical micronutrients. I've been taking a G1 daily since 2012. So I'm delighted that they decided to sponsor the live event. I started taking a G1 and I still take a G1 once or twice a day because it gives me vitamins and minerals that I might not be getting enough of from Whole Foods that I eat as well as adaptogens and micronutrients those adaptogens in micronutrients are really critical because even though I strive to eat most of my foods from unprocessed or minimally processed Whole Foods. It's often hard to
Uso, especially when I'm traveling and especially when I'm busy so by drinking a packet of a G1 in the morning and oftentimes also again in the afternoon or evening I'm ensuring that I'm getting everything I need I'm covering all of my foundational nutritional needs and I like so many other people that take a G1 regularly just report feeling better and that shouldn't be surprising because it supports gut health and of course got Health supports immune system health and brain health and it's supporting a ton of different cellular and organ processes that all interact with one another so
Certain supplements are really directed towards one specific outcome, like sleeping better or being more alert ag1 really is foundational nutritional support. It's really designed to support all of the systems of your brain and body that relate to mental health and physical health. If you'd like to try a G1 you can go to drink AG one.com huberman to claim a special offer. They'll give you five free travel packs with your order plus a year supply of vitamin D3 k 2 again, that's drink AG one.com hubermann, and now for the
live event at the Great Hall in Brisbane,
Australia
What are my thoughts on nicotine nicotine causes cancer when it's consumed in the form of smoking vaping dipping her stuffing so don't do that. There's a debate now about vaping is it bad as a good it's bad. Is it is is it worse for you than smoking? Probably not. Is it better probably slightly, you know, what's better just not doing it. But if you need to do it and you have to pick, you know, I suppose.
You know, I'm not going to tell you what to do. But I think that vaping has allowed in a good number of people to smoke less. I'll acknowledge that and it's also clear it's not good for you. So if you're going to do something that's bad for you do a bunch of things to offset the thing that's bad for you that's always my advice. But now in terms of nicotine itself nicotine doesn't cause cancer the motive consumption causes cancer that's important nicotine finds just so-called nicotinic acetylcholine receptors. So these exist now,
Naturally in your body and on your muscles there the way that actually your nerves control contraction of your muscles. So the consumption of nicotine let's just say in in I don't know about down here, but in Europe, it's becoming fairly common and in the Middle East also for people to Glow pouches of nicotine can be absorbed, you know, sublingually or through the gum gets into the bloodstream and it is truly a cognitive enhancer as a cognitive enhancer not gonna lie to you it will raise attention focus cognitive performance. This is
Established the problem. Is it also raises blood pressure and causes vasoconstriction. This is well established. So, you know, you have to ask yourself. Is it worth it? Do I do it? Sometimes do I do it often? Do I choose to not do it at all? I don't think the young brain should be consuming nicotine even in these non cancer-causing forms like pouches for a variety of reasons, but mostly because the brain is so plastic at a young age anyway, but I actually
I am familiar with the use of nicotine for offsetting certain neurologic diseases when I was visiting Columbia Medical University in New York City some years ago. I was in the office of a Nobel Prize winner won't tell you who it was necessarily and he proceeded to consume no fewer than six pieces of Nicorette gum in our half hour meeting like whoa at the time he was in his late 70s. He's now in his 80s and I was like Hey, listen, what's the deal with the nicotine? And he said, oh wow.
It offsets Parkinson's and Alzheimer's is it really he said? Yeah, you can increase cognitive function. I used to smoke by I want to cancer so I just chew a lot and allowing their crap. Okay, really and yeah a lot Nicorette, you know, it can increase the amount of acetylcholine activation Through The Binding of these nicotinic acetylcholine receptors might even maintain some dopaminergic neurons, which are the neurons that one tends to lose with age and is rampant and diseases like Parkinson's about whoa.
Okay, so there's something there the fact of the matter is that nicotine can enhance focus alertness and learning but it does have those other issues. So you want to be considerate of those other other issues and not become dependent on it and my experience is that people who taste the nicotine Focus from was in patch are those people who are buying those things pretty regularly? I know somebody that went from ones in patch twice a week to a canister a morning in about
Out a month because the effect will wear off if you keep consuming it every day. You have to consume more and more. So take that into consideration probably best to avoid unless you need really need the Boost and you can afford the increase in blood pressure. I'll be my suggestion. I've never taken nicotine and I don't smoke.
What's the best you can do for managing ADHD if not taking medication? Okay, so we did two episodes of the huberman land podcast on ADHD. The first was on behavioral nutrition and supplement based tools 50% of the comments Mike. Thank you so much. This is very helpful. Can't wait to try some of the stuff the other we're like your evil. You are you're trying to persuade people to not take Pharmaceuticals, which is not true. I am interested in all of it. I just covered that stuff in the first episode and then the second one we do on each ADHD.
Was about things like Vyvanse Adderall Ritalin Etc. Most of which by the way are amphetamines. Are we putting our kids on speed? Yes. Yeah, they're in feta means but I don't think that we should walk away from those things in every case. They do have real clinical value in many cases and their clinical value comes from the fact that one not all but one of the major effects of amphetamines is that it can increase dopamine.
Jake and noradrenergic meaning dopamine and norepinephrine released in the brain which can increase attention and focus which is actually beneficial in some cases for the brain to learn to focus to get neuroplasticity of those very circuits. So it's a you know consideration than 50% of the comments of that second episode were why don't you talk about the behavioral tools the supplements tools and the nutrition tools and and that
everyone else said thank you for talking about the prescription drugs. So the point being several fold one is that certainly a combination of Behavioral nutritional supplement based and prescription tools is viable for most every situation and it's worth thinking about all of those when considering a treatment for ADHD and I think we really need to get out of these silos of thinking the you know, like big Pharma is evil. Listen, there are drugs that can help people. Is it evil? I don't know. Is it going away not
Okay, is there value there? Sometimes is it over prescribed sometimes what about nutritional tools? Well in some cases it can really help in other cases in one still needs prescription drug tools some cases doing behavioral nutritional or supplement based tools can allow one to take lower doses of pharmaceuticals if that's your goal. I think it really needs to be tailored to the individual. What I would like to see is more of a tailoring to the individual.
Than the simple write a script send people off or tell people that it's all bad. If it comes out of a prescription drug label format now, it is very clear that the original dosing schedule for things like Adderall Vyvanse Etc was during the weekdays, but not the weekends that somehow has moved to no weekends off. So there's been a lot of changing in the dosing schedules and the way these drugs are taken. Are we creating a dependency?
In see on these drugs is always a big question and the answer seems to be a sort of very few people for whom these drugs work decide to come off them. There's nothing magical about turning 25 after which you don't need the these enhancements but sometimes people don't need them or need as much of them because the neural circuits can be built up. One thing that I would like to see more of is attention to the behavioral tools for ADHD not the least of which is what's being carried out in many schools and Clinics in China where people are being encouraged children are being
judge to teach themselves how to maintain visual focus on a Target some distance away from them which then allows them to maintain cognitive focus when they move to their work the relationship between visual Focus as we've talked about a bunch of times tonight the case of the Cuttlefish etcetera and cognitive focus is in Intimate 1 such that if you expect yourself to focus, you can't really expect yourself to drop into Focus as an immediate State, you know, so it's not a square wave function as you say you don't just sit down and drop into a
To focus right? We were so attracted to these Notions of focus and we have these Concepts like flow and by the way, I'm not disparaging those Concepts. I know Steven kotler of respect for him and his books about flow but from a Neuropsychiatric neuro psychological standpoint, you know, what we can really say about flow is that backwards spells wolf? We don't really know that much about it. And so I think that if you expect yourself to focus you need to give yourself some warm up time to focus
Don't assume that you have attention issues. If you sit down and it takes five or 10 minutes to drop into a state of focus just like you would expect yourself to go out for a hard run without some sort of warm-up jog before hand. So the behavioral tools such as focusing on a visual Target our underexplored at least in most countries, but in China and elsewhere, they are being explored pretty extensively. So I would encourage our full exploration of all the tools in this case. It says not taking medication then obviously heavier Reliance on the behavioral tools is going to be helpful.
While I'm getting more sleep now, I neglected sleep for many years me too. And at least 15 years of getting just five or so. Am I doomed or can offset this past damage? You can offset the past damage one of the things that's really wonderful about the brain and body is that it can compensate, you know, there's certain things that I get asked a lot. I don't know why I get this question a lot but people say, you know, I smoked meth for years and then I can I get my neurons.
Ons back and I'm like, well, you know, it's neurotoxic. But the fact that you're asking the question is reassuring, you know, so don't start but if you did, you know, I mean you can always do better than you're doing and you certainly can do better than you did in your past or at least that's what they tell me. So really when it comes to sleep deprivation, you know, I spent many all-nighters. I wouldn't talk about sleep so much if I didn't have challenges with sleep. I mean for a long time I slept like a bulldog.
Dog sleep anywhere anytime by the way folks, if you ever walk down the street and you see a bulldog and you stop you'll notice they always stop they always seemed so friendly always stop they always stop and they look up at you and you pet him and he liked that the reason they seem to like you so much is because they love to stop I own one. They're all about the stopping. It's it's not you it's about the stopping.
Anyway, the goal is not necessarily to sleep as much as a bulldog. Actually. It's the only animal so you can't help myself. It's the only animal for which there's a genetically induced apnea their brachycephalic which means they were short snout all those folds, you know, one of the folds are there the Folger there because they have a genetic mutation. They bred out the pain receptors in the face because they used to like have them like they would Bo bait they bite on the face of the bull they kill all the painters the bread out the pain.
L gave him a floppy face shorts now.
English Bulldog, thank you for the specificity of biologists loves the specificity. The Frenchie's are pretty cool. The Frenchies are pretty cool. They have a little more kick in them. Right the Bulldogs will last and Costello was a Bulldog Mastiff. So he was more or less like a sea turtle, you know, just slow movement stopping and he's going forward and you can move aside or in fact Costello was so mellow that when he would lie down on the floor. I had one of those, you know, kind of robot.
Humes things we called a Rumba in our country. It would come up to his face and he would just and it would bounce off his nose, and he wouldn't even take the opportunity to Blink.
The Bulldog is sort of of the essence of economy of effort. And actually if you look at people people resemble different dog breeds. I spent a lot of time thinking about this some dogs and some people have a bit more kind of reverberation in them. They had a higher RPM all the time all the time all the time and then they're the Bulldogs.
Right Rick Rubin right there these people that are just more still and we look at these people that are more still and think well, I'm probably isn't that much going on in there. But now we know from the Rick thing and the Carl thing that they're thinking a lot but in case of Costello, they don't get much done. You know, I may be Costello wanted to get things done. But I eat if he woke up on New Year's Day and said, all right 50 rabbits this year. He never actually achieved that but listen, the point is some of us
if like Bulldogs some of us tend to go to sleep and wake up in the middle of the night.
I'm one of those people go to sleep for hours. Wake up hate it but I figured out that non sleep deep breaths are Yoga Nidra has taught me how to fall back asleep really quickly and I can recover some sleep. I haven't gotten through non sleep deep rest. Some people are waking up in the middle of the night because they don't have their sleep timing. Right? We have a series on sleep coming out soon with the great Matt Walker record a six-episode series with Matt and he talks about something I take no credit for this. This is Matt's acronym QQ.
Artie quality quantity regularity and timing you want to pay attention to the amount of sleep. Some people need six. Some people need eight. If you only got seven four years and you're reading that you need a trellis. You'll get dementia, please don't worry about it. It is simply not the case. Some people need less some people need more of this varies across the lifespan then there's the quality how much of that sleep is continuous.
Did you drink caffeine in the afternoon or alcohol in the evening, which gives the quality will be diminished? The regularity is very interesting going to sleep more or less five nights a week at least going to sleep more or less at the same time every night plus or minus an hour. It's fine on the weekends. Not just saying that so you don't all leave at once or a third of you leave some people do Best by going to bed at 8:00 or 9:00 p.m. And waking up at 3 or 4 in the morning. And that's where you would feel best. In fact, if you're somebody who wakes up at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, you might
be going to sleep too late and you have this intrinsic chronotype as it's called and you can shift your clock a bit later and but most people want to go to bed sometime between 10:00 p.m. And midnight wake up sometime between 6 a.m. And 8 a.m. And there's great variation there too. But you know q q RT so think about the quality the quantity the regularity and the timing once you dial those in everything is much much better so much so that even if you're not getting enough sleep
Things are going to bed at more or less the same time each night. You'll you'll fare better. So if you didn't do any of this stuff for years, like I didn't know when I was in graduate school at cetera. I don't despair don't despair. It's very clear that the brain can recover and I wouldn't waste a single moment thinking about what you didn't do. Also my time machines broken your time machines broken. I realized that doesn't create a lot of comfort, but it's unlikely that you did substantial damage.
Unlikely to substantial damage unless you did that your whole life and we're talking about a conversation that's happening lately in life. But even then more sleep would be better. Do you believe in Burnout? Hmm. If so, what would it be a recommendation protocol relinquish burnout once it's already occurred. This is a very interesting question, you know, we don't quite know what burnout is and it can come from a combination of things and typically burn outcomes not during the stress period
David but several months afterwards, you know the adrenals these two little nuggets above our kidneys in our lower back are capable of driving so much neural energy in us that we can do all sorts of things for a very long time even in the absence of food, as long as we have water and salt, you know that the adrenals because they kick out adrenaline.
And cortisol and by the way are involved in salt appetite. There's a reason for that because you need that the adrenals can keep us going and there is no such thing as true adrenal burnout because the adrenals don't burn out you got enough adrenaline in your adrenals for two lifetimes, but there is an adrenal insufficiency syndrome. So that's a real thing. It's rare, but it exists but burnout seems to be in my mind more related to psychological burnout and I'm not a psychologist, but I'm a
Fan of the poet David White and he has his beautiful poem that is either entitled or somehow includes the word wholehearted this I think that where we recover ourselves as by relating to and engaging with things and people that we wholeheartedly enjoy even if that is simply relaxation or gardening or drawing or maybe just doing nothing for a bit. I think burnout is very real and I think burnout as push
it through the filter of what we've been talking about earlier in the evening as when we are not getting periodic.
experiences if you will of delight or excitement or a sense of meaning and here we're starting to drift into kind of abstract, you know, not everyone gets to do a job that they Delight in certainly there were years where I didn't Delight in the sorts of things I had to do for certain jobs, but finding some areas of life that create those neural energy states that carry forward that Wick out into other aspects of what we're doing and I don't know if I made this point clear enough earlier, but those moments
Of you know really feeling excited about something in a way that really lights you up in particular are not just about that moment and seeking out more of those moments. But in the way that it lifts our nervous system the way it carries us forward and allows us to do the other things that we have to do which frankly sometimes can be not as exciting or even drudgery. So if you've burnt out, I know the feeling I have burnt out before and I encourage a
Nation of rest, but also exploration of things that can evoke that kind of internal excitement or sense of meaning and one has to be a bit of a forager in order to do that try new things and that can be difficult. But burnout is real and I encourage you to take it seriously because unfortunately typically what follows burnout as depression and then things can really unsure what types of food do you try to eat every day and why oh,
I love to eat. I do I love TI even like the mere Act of chewing so much. So just yeah, that's why I buy those Persian cucumbers you just munch on those things all the time. The I tend to eat according to how alert or sleep. I want to be a violates a few kind of popular thoughts about nutrition, but that's what I do generally for me. I like water caffeine and
Early in the day and eat sometime around 11:00 or noon. I'm not really strict about these things. If I'm hungry, I'll have a plate of eggs in the morning or something or a handful of macadamias. By the way the macadamias down Australia are awesome. They're so good in the states. They like Infuse them with all these Palm kernel oil and stuff. And so when I first tasted the ones and they will taste good, but they're I'm not at like going to get into the seed oil debate. I think of better ways to hang myself like with this micro microphone cord. It's less like, you know, I don't I guess I do sort of avoid the seed oils.
You know, I feel best I love them. Oh the macadamias see told you I always find my way back. The macadamias down here taste is if they've been infused with all sorts of stuff, but then you look at the packaging is just like macadamias and salt I don't know. What is so good. The coffee down here is amazing and why it tastes so good. So good the produce. I mean, basically I eat like you guys
Gals, I that's what I do. That's what I do. I basically meat and eggs and fruit and vegetables and I do like rice and oatmeal and like their people on social media tell you like oatmeal's gonna kill you and online if oatmeal we're gonna kill me I'd be dead I ate so much oatmeal, but that's not to say that some people feel better. If they don't eat oatmeal. I kind of find the nutrition debates to be kind of like funny. They're so non-scientific they're funny, but I also know that and here I have a theory
That when you eat most of your foods from unprocessed or minimally processed sources something magical happens. Not only are you
let's say eating healthier foods quote unquote, but we should Define healthier foods that for which there macronutrients proteins fats and carbohydrates also and calories tend to be matched pretty well with high micro nutrient content something that doesn't exist in highly processed foods, right but probably also better for the planet, but which is great not being planets important. We want to keep that around the but the other thing is that Nur Ali when you eat
Foods as their main ingredients there's not say you can't have a super Stu or Salad every once in a while but closer to their original form and I do cook my meat unlike other people on the internet the there's the guy eating chicken raw for like 28 days. I was in the barber shop the other day. They're like, what about the raw chicken guy? And I was like not a good idea like the so when you eat Foods in their kind of basic state,
The brain can associate The Taste with the macronutrient and amino acid content and micro nutrient content and we know that the gut is sensing a lot of that unconsciously so consciously we know this through neural Pathways beautiful work being done by people here in Australia and in the states and elsewhere about the signaling of for the gut is actually tasting the food or it's measuring the amount of amino acids fatty acids Etc. And so when you
eat Foods in their kind of more original form non-processed or minimally processed is clear that the brain starts to develop a more specific Intuition or appetite for what you need you start to know like I need some fat where I need some protein or I'm crave you start to Crave the things according to what's actually in them and highly processed foods and Rich combinations of foods. Don't allow you to do that. So in that hasn't really been explored. There's a little bit of work that's coming out on this by Dana small at Yale and Kevin Hall elsewhere, you know.
It's we're starting to get there. So this is why I believe when people go on these elimination diets where they like, I'm only eating meat like the lion died or whatever like Costello Meet only and like that they many of those people quote unquote feel better. I think because they're starting to form a relationship with the nutrient content of the food the caloric content in The Taste in a way that after that they like see a cracker and they're like, no, you know, they can come reset the neural circuits around appetite in all of this.
Tough for me because I'm an omnivore like a normal person and sorry no disrespect to the carnivores. I just had a kind of like the blood-drinking like liver chomping aren't like come on like the I'm gonna catch a bullet or like a you know, someone's got a bone at me. So I fear them more than I fear the vegans. It'll just be like a bunch of yeah, the vegans will attack you online, but in person they'll just like hit you with a parsley so it's not as yeah the Neon
I'm going to get myself in trouble the I'm an omnivore like most people and the and so for me between 11 a.m. And 8 p.m. Is typically want to eat but sometimes he did nine. I didn't eat before this because I don't like to eat right before I do this sort of thing. So all you do me and before I go to sleep tonight, I'm not super strict about this stuff. I'm not super super strict. But in general it's some sort of intermittent ish fasting thing and it tends to be Meat and Fish and eggs and well parmesan cheese and coffee and oranges and
Cucumbers and lettuce in and and food like food and pasta and and I suppose that having done that for so many years. I do, you know adjust it. Like if I do a hard resistance training workout, I'll eat a few more starchy carbohydrates to replenish glycogen, but but I tend to avoid extremes with all that stuff and I love a great slice of pizza and I sort of lost my taste for sweets, but occasionally, I'll I'll do that and I love vegetables like croissants and things of that sort. So
But you know all kidding aside, you know, I do try and eat pretty healthy every day with a ton of info out there about health and wellness Andrew. I love the way nikhil. What are your top health and fitness style our combination of someone has a busy lifestyle. This is a great question B, and you know, I get accused a lot like use a lot of things but
You know one of them is well, no one can do all this stuff, but we talked about it earlier. We do the best with what we have in the time we have try and get some bright sunlight even through cloud cover especially through cloud cover every day. I try and dim the lights or you know, get under a red light not Red Light Panel necessarily, but just putting like red PartyLite. I've done that this whole trip when you traveled the evening just it's just a red light bulb. There's this not fancy. So the red light bulb
Reasons Lopez will turn that on all the other lights go off and then makes for a nice easy taper into sleep because you know, the the blue the blue and bright fluorescent lights the short wavelength light really is activating for the nervous system. Especially late in the day so light is a big one for me try and get a few walks in I think if you were going to exercise just two days a week. It's very clear that those two days per week should be include some resistance training exercise and then maybe follow up with some easy cardiovascular training or something like that.
Hopefully one could get out and about maybe three days or exercise sometimes not outside one can only exercise in Dorset. Maybe the three days per week. So I don't think it takes a ton of time necessarily but that might even be excessive. So with busy lifestyle, I think it's those little carve-outs of five or ten minute walk when we had Andy Galpin on the podcast and did a series and by the way, and he's for launching his own podcast through our podcast Channel, which is sicom.
Which Robin I started he's got the perform podcast with and yelping. He talked a little bit about these exercise snacks. These are actually pretty cool in the sense that if you just take 60 seconds and do you know like an near all out, you know run up the stairs, but be careful or jumping jacks for a minute as fast as you can that raises heart rate in a way and adjust your physiology in a way that really does carry over to better performance including even things like vo2max in other.
Or so it's probably not the case that that's all you should do, but even small bouts of exercise can be very very valuable. So that's reassuring and then I am a huge fan of non sleep deep breaths. Take a Yoga Nidra, which means yoga sleep, which is just lying there as we talked about before but it's slightly different than what we were talking about for creativity lying there and deliberately inducing using your mind to a deeply relaxed the different muscles of your body. Stay calm long.
Breathing this kind of thing. There's a 10-minute and Str with my voice on YouTube that you can simply find it at zero cost. There are many with other voices female voices Etc. You can find on YouTube as well. And if you don't like those were soon to release on our hero and lab Clips Channel a number of different medications and then sdrs again all zero cost of 10 minutes 20 minutes 30 minute. I would say that for limiting stress improving sleep and restoring mental and physical.
Vigor and SDR is perhaps the best tool out there. And again, I didn't create it. I just simply took Yoga Nidra. I started calling it an SDR. And by the way, I was aware that I was going to upset some people when I did that I was not trying to appropriate anything. I promise the problem was I would talk about Yoga Nidra and studies of Yoga Nidra showing that it replenishes dopamine in the basal ganglia can restore mental and physical Vigor and then people would back away from me slowly like yoga. I don't want to do yoga. No. No, this is Yoga sleep you don't actually move.
They're like wow, that sounds pretty different. And I know it sounds different I could go on and on and then I decide to call it non sleep deep rest and when you call something what it is or what it can accomplish you move away from nomenclature, and I'm very mixed feelings about renaming things, but I figured as long as I don't call it like the huberman protocol, at least I'm distancing myself from it and is a zero cost protocol. So non sleep deep rest is valuable for restoring mental and physical Vigor. It can potentially help offset.
If that you didn't get can help you fall back asleep at night doing the middle of the night. You can help you get better at falling asleep. If you drink do it during the day. I did it for 20 minutes. Just prior to coming out here. I always do that prior to any event that were thing that requires a lot of focus this kind of thing. Otherwise the jokes. I tell are really, you know, just not. Okay. And so I do think it's quite valuable and it's something to explore at what age would you consider testosterone replacement?
Therapy while one of the risks versus benefits of starting at sooner rather than later. We got shouts as well. So one of the major effects of testosterone replacement therapy is a spontaneous shouting out in crowds just kidding, you know, they've been a number of studies of testosterone in males and females by the way females have more testosterone than they do estrogen, you know that right per deciliter of blood higher testosterone and estrogen just on average on average.
Average they tend to have lower testosterone than men per deciliter of blood. So it's important in both males and females. I think you're referring to James to the use of so-called trt in males, but I'll touch on it and females as well because low dose trt therapy. Oops. Sorry. I just did that I get in trouble and in lab if you say like PCR reaction ATM machine. Is there a name for that? Okay T the T at the end of T. RT is therapy testosterone replacement therapy.
Testosterone replacement therapy technically means that someone's levels prior to that therapy fall outside the reference range solo lower than 300 nanograms per deciliter typically or some other array of symptoms and they replace it replacement therapy many many people nowadays in my opinion opinion far too. Many and Too Young take what I call.
Testosterone augmentation therapy where their levels are within normal range and then they take it to get out of range and look there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not going to tell you what to do. I'm not a cop you do what you want to do there a couple things trt or t-80 augmentation and here we're just setting aside high-dose steroids use because that's just a whole other Biz and and frankly the body builders will get upset, but but I'll get away from you because you'll be waddling and I'll be running.
The that's it. Just like a whole other business. So testosterone replacement therapy is widely used nowadays. I think far too young. Basically, it will lower your sperm count dramatically if you're a male. So you'd have if you want children you want to conceive children the you will need to offset that by taking something like human chorionic gonadotropin HCG, which is available synthetically.
Used to sell it in the form of pregnant woman's urine. There was a black market for it. We could really go off into the sticks with this question my in my opinion if you want to explore this, I would say first get your behaviors right sleep exercise nutrition stress control training get that right? Don't try too hard too long get that right. Then there are certain supplements and we've talked about this on the podcast summer debated a little bit more than
others things like zinc Tom golly etcetera that can probably provide a boost Beyond normal without shutting down the gonads. And then and only then if you feel you really want to do this and it's in line with your ethics or you know, I don't know if you're playing a drug test its board Etc then just minimal effective dose. And then if you want to have kids someday, or if you don't know if you want to have kids someday, make sure you're taking the appropriate things to offset that that's basically what I would say and the
Effect of testosterone in men and women is not libido per se and it's not aggression per se it tends to make people more like them. If you're jerking become more of a jerk if you're calm and become more calm your kind you can I don't know if you become Kinder, but they're actually been studies of altruistic behavior and administration of testosterone by nasal spray or other means and frankly people will become more out. They'll become competitively altruistic.
I think the major effect also could be described as it makes effort feel good. So we could go on and on about this. I'll just toss in that nowadays. There's a lot of excitement about peptides I'm going to do an episode about peptides a lot of the young people I run into here and in the state so like what do you what are your thoughts on bpc? 157? What do you think about this peptide or that peptide peptides are simply small protein amino acid chains. So there are lots of things called peptides, but typically these are things that increase growth hormone.
That keep in mind that anything that increases growth hormone will increase the growth of any and all tissues. So if you have a small tumor that you're not aware of that will grow also, so just keep in mind if you're going to tickle these Pathways you're playing some with some serious biology, but there are safe ways to do it. Sorry you said what are the benefits of started sooner rather than later start it later.
What are the physiological and practical differences between breathing techniques akin to Wim Hof and the physiological side relation stress Focus etcetera. Okay, we can make this pretty straightforward. First of all, I know him we go way back to 2015. I went over to the Pyrenees and visited him and hung out and then brought him to the states and went off breathing is to mow breathing but in science speak we call it cyclic hyperventilation just cyclic hyperventilation. So
if you inhale vigorously and long your heart rate goes up if you exhale vigorously and long.
Hurry goes down through a process called respiratory sinus arrhythmia volume of the heart changes. When you breathe in versus breathe out speed at which blood moves through the heart changes as the blood gets bigger or smaller according to inhales exhales. And basically the net effect is inhale heart speeds up a little bit exhale heart slows down a little bit. So if you do with off a K2 Mo breathing and you inhale vigorously and let it fall out of your mouth and then
You're going to increase heart rate increase autonomic activation Etc. If you do a pattern of breathing, like inhale inhale long exhale inhale. Inhale long, exhale cyclic sighing over time. You're going to slow the heart rate down and you're going to calm down. That's just how it works. So when I hear about box breathing or now, you hear about box being you? Okay. It's relatively equal ratios of inhale exhale.
It's a little bit of pause and there that's the Box inhale hold exhale fold. Inhale hold exhale hold of varying durations, depending on your so-called carbon dioxide tolerance, but at the end of the day, you're maintaining kind of even heart rate when you do big cyclic hyperventilation AK Wim Hof to mow breathing, you're increasing heart rate and autonomic arousal release of adrenaline do cyclic sighing a lot of exhales. The opposite is true. Okay, so that should give you a framework.
For thinking about breathing and how to apply different breathing techniques and get us away from some of the naming of things, but I'm not trying to take anything away from so-called Wim Hof Breathing. By the way, if you're going to do with off breathing be very very careful to not do cyclic hyperventilation or Wim Hof breathing and then do breath holds and don't do it. And anywhere don't do that anywhere near water. There have been cases of people drowning dying from combining cyclic hyperventilation and breath holds with water because it
It changes the threshold for shallow water blackout when you exhale a lot when you hyperventilate you remove a lot of carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide is the stimulus to gasp. So what will happen is indeed if you do.
You're blowing off a lot of carbon dioxide and then you go, right? That's a whim exhale.
And then you hold and you go underwater. Yeah, you'll hold your breath longer than you normally would but instead of feeling that impulse to breathe like the gasp reflex and you shoot for the surface. You'll just black done. So it's a serious thing and you want to be really careful to not combine cyclic hyperventilation and breath holds and especially both with
Cold water frankly any water exposure always say don't do with off to mow or cyclic hyperventilation breathing even standing or seated in a puddle. Okay. So in response to stress, it's really if you want to be more alert increase the Vigor and duration of your inhales, if you want to be more calm increase the duration of your exhales.
Would you recommend that children also get morning sunlight? Yes and your pets too unless they're nocturnal pets right for anyone that had the not-so-smart idea of getting a hamster. You realize they're nocturnal right? They're going to run all night long on the wheel. In fact rodents like to run on Wheels so much that hoppy Hofstra at Harvard has shown that if you put a little running wheel like, you know wheels at the mice like to run in the in a field
is will run to the wheel and run in the field.
Tells you everything you need to know about rodents but really children need that but obviously babies have sensitive eyes, you know, we all can potentially hurt ourselves with sunlight and down here at the UV index is very high when the sun is low in the sky so called Low solar angles sunlight in the morning and in the evening the UV index and be mostly because of atmospheric interference, but some other things as well. It does is not as damaging to the eyes. That's why it's easier to watch a sunrise.
Were son closer to the Horizon it is to you know, please don't stare at the sun in any case but an overhead son. So I think it's really important for circadian rhythms. But of course kids need their sleep, so if they're going to sleep in a little bit that's fine. Just get them outside afterwards. It's the staying inside and saying on a phone that's problematic and then leaving that room at noon really shift your circadian rhythm and unhealthy ways and that's true for children. Perhaps especially true for children.
As a father. What can I be doing to give my children the best start in life? What a great question. I hope my parents asked that they abandon me at the pet store. No, I'm kidding. They didn't they didn't abandon me. They didn't abandon me at the pet store. If they did I notice I was among my friends the fishes in the birds. I think this question probably should be I'm going to edit. It's just say what can we all be doing to give our children the best start in life? And what does that mean for those of us that have already started?
Acted in life. So first of all, we have a episode of the human Lab podcast with an absolutely magnificent guest. Dr. Becky Kennedy coming out on Guess would be Tuesday down here. So this coming week all about this and you know, we could talk about things for learning encourage them to play an instrument. I would think that we perhaps should teach kids some tools to modulate their stress in real time.
Physiological sighs I don't see why not. I certainly wish I had tools to regulate my stress when I was younger. They didn't teach us that stuff. They didn't know it or it would the knowledge was there. But as I mentioned earlier, they didn't teach us that stuff to tell us all sorts of stuff in high school health and stuff. I mean they they taught us that you know, drunk driving's bad. They taught us. It just takes one sperm one time. They taught us all sorts of stuff, but they didn't teach us the
this business of physiological size or stress thresholds or about the internment cingulate cortex because a lot of that stuff wasn't known or just wasn't discussed. So I think some tools to control one's inner landscape play music. I certainly am going to encourage the exploration of these energy states that you know, letting kids explore. I mean, they need rules and Regulation and boundaries of course, but there's this concept of impingement that I find very interesting that the classic psychologists used to talk about. You know, when
And when a kid says they like something or don't like things like yes, they need to be doing certain things for their normal life progression, but kids are very good sensors of what works for them. And what doesn't work for them. We don't want to impinge on certainly they're healthy loves and desires things that don't endanger them right things that are really reflect their unique loves and desires Don't force them to places houki violin if they want to play the drums, right let him bang on stuff and let the kids that want to play Suzuki violin do that. Don't make
Them play the drums. So the impingement so actually I think are problematic. They lead to a lot of Confusion And if anything else they you know, they take us away from that unique wiring to be our own unique expression. Becky. Kennedy does describe a few key principles of parenting that I think are really interesting that extend to all kinds of relationships which talks about the main role of parenting and to some extent all relationships.
Is to create boundaries and to make kids feel safe seems pretty good to me the other short list of two things that she describes how to do this in ways that are highly actionable. Is that every child? I found this really interesting every child wants to feel real like they want to feel like they're real like they're seeing they exist and they want to feel safe.
And so that one of the things that really rung in my ears and still does from that episode recording again out this week is that when a kid or an adult says something about how they feel that perhaps one of the best responses we can give them is I believe you like that it doesn't you're not saying that like you don't want to go to school don't go to school right? We're not saying you don't you don't enjoy doing something don't do it or you want like a you know,
Fifth serving of candy like that. You could say like, I believe you, you know, no, you know, and so I think that a lot of it is is, you know, we get confused with terms like validation and listening. I mean what I like so much about what Becky offers and I do hope to do a Child Development Series in the not too distant future what what I like so much about what Becky offers is that you know, it boils down to simple Concepts.
like we want to be
real which I guess is it kind of an analog for scene and we want to feel safe not unlike when we did the podcast series on Mental Health with dr. Paul Conti. He said, you know, it's really about mental health is really about agency and gratitude but there a lot of things that siphon up into those feelings or those moments of or that state of agency and gratitude. So I would say that's perhaps the most important thing is, you know boundaries make it
You'll save and then make them feel real like their feelings and what they're reporting matters. And then of course the impingement thing becomes a little bit complicated because they do need boundaries. So we have to constrain their wishes sometimes in their behavior, but we don't want to do it in a way that takes them away from that unique wiring that makes them who they are so they can become, you know, the characters and people and professionals and creatives and
And scientists and Poets and just you know, good people write everyday good people. So that's the best answer I can provide at this time.
They're not going to give me another question, but I can keep going just briefly if I may by just first of all saying that again, I'm very very grateful for the opportunity to convene with all of you here tonight. I realized it was me speaking and you listening except for the guy and testosterone and and I and I certainly, you know, I can't really express it enough in words what the podcast means
You know, it's it's a bizarre. It's a bizarre thing. It's completely transformed my life. It's made it, you know incredible. I never dreamed of anything like this, but for me, it's really not about hearing my own voice. It's this compulsion that came in at an early age and its really my wish frankly that the tools the protocols the knowledge whatever it inspires you to do or to think, you know, we don't have to agree.
On everything I would hope we don't agree on everything the ways we disagree with me and with each other and with others that that we start maybe thinking about ourselves as through a lens of Science and think about health and and really trying to meet those discussions with with the kind of benevolence and curiosity and you know Vigor, you know, good argument everyone Smiles healthy to that. It really deserves. You know, I think we're in a very interesting and kind of sometimes scary time.
I often feel scared frankly because of what I see and even my own position in this whole landscape of sometimes thing like I feel like a lot of times things are just kind of hanging on by a thread but I actually have a lot of optimism, I think our species is very smart. I think that we've managed to navigate tricky places before and I think that through the learning and teaching of things that work for us that we learn from this these kinds of things and from each other that pretty soon we're going to start to fill in the gaps between
The silos that are the yogic Traditions the chiropractic massage health and fitness traditional medicine non traditional medicine functional medicine. I mean, I really encourage all of you to try and you know stand back from it all and try and identify the common themes that may exist across these things and really try and identify some of the links in points of convergence more than the differences and at the very least to explore things and if you don't like them, you know, that's great. And if you do to pass them,
On to other people, especially the behavioral tools that we all Harbor within us that I think can really enhance our mental health and vigor our physical health and hopefully our longevity to so I could go on and on but I really just want to say thank you so much for coming out tonight. This is our last night in Australia, and I'm certainly going to miss being here and we intend to come back again soon. Thank you so much for paying tuning into the
Podcast paying attention to in tuning in to the podcast and for being willing to learn you're all amazing students, and you're also amazing teachers. I learned from you all in comments and feedback. So if you have that, please keep that coming and last but certainly not least. Thank you for your interest in science.
Actually, I've never done this before but because it's my last night here. I'm not I've always seen people do this and I've never done it but I'm going to do it. Can we get the house lights up? I want to get one of these like I'm going to do this as a video and you don't have to do it your faces will show up, but don't worry. We won't but it will go on the internet, but this is not for me. I just want to
I'm going to send my mother this. Okay. There we go.
Thank you. You made my mother very happy.
