LIVE EVENT Q&A: Dr. Andrew Huberman Question & Answer in Portland, OR

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.240 | where we discuss science and science-based tools

00:00:04.840 | for everyday life.

00:00:05.860 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.120 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:12.960 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.040 | Recently, I had the pleasure of hosting two live events,

00:00:17.680 | one in Seattle, Washington, and one in Portland, Oregon,

00:00:20.280 | both entitled The Brain-Body Contract,

00:00:22.080 | where I discussed science and science-related tools

00:00:24.320 | for mental health, physical health, and performance.

00:00:27.120 | My favorite part of each evening, however,

00:00:28.960 | was the question and answer period that followed the lecture.

00:00:31.960 | I love the question and answer period

00:00:33.120 | because it gives me an opportunity to hear directly

00:00:34.880 | from the audience as to what they want to know most,

00:00:37.700 | and indeed to get into a bit of dialogue,

00:00:39.600 | so we really clarify what are the underlying mechanisms

00:00:42.740 | of particular tools, how best to use the tools

00:00:44.760 | for things like focus and sleep.

00:00:46.260 | We also touch on some things related to mental health

00:00:48.240 | and physical health.

00:00:49.380 | It was a delight for me,

00:00:50.340 | and I like to think that the audience learned a lot.

00:00:52.600 | I know that many of you weren't able to attend those events,

00:00:55.560 | but we wanted to make the information available to you.

00:00:57.760 | Therefore, what follows this is a recording

00:01:00.960 | of the question and answer period

00:01:02.480 | from the lecture in Portland, Oregon.

00:01:05.360 | I hope you'll find it to be both interesting and informative.

00:01:08.520 | I'd also like to thank our sponsors of these live events.

00:01:11.060 | The first is Momentous Supplements,

00:01:12.920 | which is our partner with the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:01:16.000 | providing supplements that are of the very highest quality,

00:01:18.280 | that ship international, and that are arranged in dosages

00:01:22.760 | and single ingredient formulations that make it possible

00:01:25.320 | for you to develop the optimal supplement strategy

00:01:27.600 | for you.

00:01:28.440 | And I'd also like to thank our other sponsor,

00:01:30.560 | which is Inside Tracker,

00:01:31.600 | which provides blood tests and DNA tests,

00:01:33.620 | so you can monitor your immediate

00:01:35.040 | and long-term health progress.

00:01:36.660 | I'd also like to announce

00:01:37.520 | that there are two new live events scheduled.

00:01:40.220 | The first one is going to take place Sunday, October 16th

00:01:43.360 | at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles.

00:01:45.800 | The other live event will take place Wednesday, November 9th

00:01:48.560 | at the Beacon Theater in New York City.

00:01:50.960 | Tickets to both of those events are now available online

00:01:53.920 | at HubermanLab.com/tour.

00:01:56.340 | That's HubermanLab.com/tour.

00:01:59.040 | I do hope that you learn from and enjoy the recording

00:02:00.980 | of the question and answer period that follows this.

00:02:03.520 | And last, but certainly not least,

00:02:05.540 | thank you for your interest in science.

00:02:07.280 | [upbeat music]

00:02:09.860 | What are the current best practices

00:02:18.420 | for post TBIs, traumatic brain injuries,

00:02:20.860 | for those of you that aren't familiar with TBI,

00:02:23.320 | especially long-term multiple, ooh, et cetera.

00:02:25.740 | Thoughts on hyperbaric,

00:02:26.800 | oh, I'm so glad you asked this, Danny.

00:02:29.080 | Morelage and his treatment for TBIs.

00:02:32.000 | Okay, TBI, one thing about TBI and concussion,

00:02:36.160 | everyone thinks football.

00:02:37.880 | Guess what?

00:02:38.720 | Most of the TBI is not football.

00:02:41.220 | There aren't that many football players.

00:02:42.900 | They're just large, so they stand out.

00:02:45.040 | [audience laughing]

00:02:48.920 | There might be a few here this evening.

00:02:51.000 | Of course, football players are a concern

00:02:55.440 | when it comes to TBI.

00:02:56.460 | Most head injuries are going to be construction workers.

00:03:00.640 | Have you ever seen the hard hats they wear?

00:03:03.680 | I don't even know if they are just there for show.

00:03:06.740 | It doesn't make sense.

00:03:07.940 | And we actually have a lab at Stanford

00:03:09.560 | that's focused very hard on trying to solve this problem.

00:03:13.880 | So construction workers, car accident,

00:03:16.300 | bicycle accidents, Portland, amazing city to cycle.

00:03:20.320 | I'm frankly afraid to cycle.

00:03:22.880 | You're a small moving object around these big objects

00:03:25.300 | and people are staring to their little aperture

00:03:27.360 | on their phone while driving.

00:03:28.760 | I mean, whatever happened to that, by the way,

00:03:31.120 | of not texting while driving?

00:03:33.180 | Somehow that just disappeared.

00:03:34.840 | It's like, it really has just disappeared.

00:03:37.240 | There was all this science showing

00:03:38.400 | that it's worse than drunk driving.

00:03:40.000 | TBI.

00:03:43.820 | Well, the basic rules of the don'ts apply.

00:03:48.880 | If you get a head injury, don't get a second head injury.

00:03:52.920 | But that often isn't feasible for people

00:03:55.480 | that need to continue working construction

00:03:59.420 | or that are struggling.

00:04:00.540 | What do we know?

00:04:01.980 | Well, this is a great opportunity for me

00:04:04.380 | to distinguish modulatory foundational tools

00:04:09.000 | from things that directly change your brain

00:04:11.920 | and nervous system the way that you want to.

00:04:13.540 | What do I mean by modulatory?

00:04:15.380 | We hear so much and there's so many studies

00:04:19.540 | showing that great sleep, quality nutrition,

00:04:23.260 | good social interactions, avoiding chronic stress

00:04:27.280 | and on and on and on are important for everything.

00:04:30.580 | They're related to Alzheimer's, they're related to ADHD.

00:04:33.380 | I mean, we could do thousands of podcast episodes

00:04:36.300 | just returning to the same 10 things.

00:04:38.660 | Sleep, don't stress too much or too long,

00:04:42.600 | good social connection, avoid toxic people,

00:04:45.340 | eat good food, not too much processed food.

00:04:48.020 | We could have an argument all night

00:04:49.100 | and I don't want to have one about

00:04:50.300 | whether or not it's mainly plants or this.

00:04:52.060 | I mean, on the inner, this is, you know,

00:04:53.560 | obviously eating high quality food

00:04:55.900 | is something that we should all be doing.

00:04:57.320 | Which foods you select is a topic that is very barbed wire

00:05:00.380 | and I can give only my opinions.

00:05:02.700 | All of that modulates your brain function,

00:05:06.240 | but it doesn't mediate or change anything directly.

00:05:08.700 | It's setting a foundation of what's possible.

00:05:11.120 | So we should all be doing those things

00:05:12.460 | and especially people who have TBI.

00:05:15.020 | Now, this question relates to hyperbaric chamber.

00:05:17.820 | Hyperbaric chamber, there's some very interesting data.

00:05:19.820 | It's essentially a hyperoxygenation of the brain

00:05:21.860 | for very brief periods of time.

00:05:23.780 | I think the data on hyperbaric chamber and TBI

00:05:26.860 | are very encouraging.

00:05:28.100 | The problem is, much in the way that a few years ago,

00:05:31.660 | cryo was only available in a few places

00:05:33.800 | and now people are doing ice baths

00:05:34.980 | and cold showers on their own,

00:05:36.280 | it's hard to find a hyperbaric chamber.

00:05:38.740 | They aren't just laying around

00:05:40.360 | and they don't have them at spas typically

00:05:43.020 | and they are quite expensive.

00:05:44.400 | So yes, there are interesting and important data,

00:05:47.220 | I think, on hyperbaric chamber.

00:05:48.580 | You definitely wanna work with a physician

00:05:51.320 | or somebody who is very skilled,

00:05:53.180 | a practitioner who's very skilled in hyperbaric chamber.

00:05:55.540 | They do seem to improve brain function

00:05:57.020 | by hyperoxygenating the brain for brief periods of time.

00:05:59.700 | Seems to improve a number of things,

00:06:01.640 | but above all, it seems to improve the quality

00:06:05.020 | and duration of sleep,

00:06:06.580 | which indirectly allows the brain to repair itself

00:06:10.840 | because as I mentioned earlier, brain repair occurs

00:06:13.140 | or brain change largely occurs in sleep.

00:06:15.260 | So if you don't have access to hyperbaric chamber

00:06:17.080 | but you do have TBI, what are some of the other data?

00:06:20.520 | What do those point to?

00:06:22.440 | Well, I go on and on

00:06:23.640 | and you don't have to get this from supplements,

00:06:25.120 | you can get it from food,

00:06:26.660 | but this threshold level of these EPA essential fatty acids,

00:06:30.760 | there are now so many data, so much data

00:06:34.560 | on the valuable role of these essential EPA fatty acids,

00:06:39.120 | thresholds being somewhere between one and two grams per day

00:06:41.920 | of the EPA, so much so actually

00:06:45.060 | that there are now prescription forms of EPA

00:06:48.020 | that doctors are starting to prescribe for people with TBI,

00:06:51.640 | although for most people, you can get this through,

00:06:53.980 | you can look up and we've done podcast episodes

00:06:56.060 | about different ways to access this.

00:06:57.740 | Also functions as an antidepressant, equally good,

00:07:00.880 | believe it or not, in clinical trials to SSRIs

00:07:05.220 | once one gets over the one

00:07:07.240 | or basically two grams per day of the EPA.

00:07:10.340 | The resident expert on the internet about this

00:07:12.500 | is pretty extreme about the dosage

00:07:14.180 | and that's Dr. Rhonda Patrick,

00:07:15.860 | who by the way deserves a nod of acknowledgement and support

00:07:20.300 | because turns out that before me or David Sinclair

00:07:24.540 | or Matt Walker or any of these guys were blabbing

00:07:27.500 | to the world about stuff that they had learned

00:07:30.140 | in the archives of science and in their laboratories,

00:07:33.140 | the first person in was this woman named Rhonda Patrick.

00:07:37.300 | As far as I know, the first public facing,

00:07:39.760 | formerly trained scientists to start going

00:07:41.640 | on all these podcasts and risk her reputation

00:07:43.920 | and the kind of stuff that you deal with

00:07:46.520 | when you put your neck out there like that

00:07:48.540 | and Rhonda's, I think, terrific.

00:07:50.700 | We don't agree on everything

00:07:52.040 | and it would be weird if we did,

00:07:54.200 | but I think she's really been the proponent

00:07:56.540 | of these higher doses of EPAs for TBI

00:08:00.340 | and for cognitive function into all ages.

00:08:03.240 | We often hear about ways to increase dopamine,

00:08:06.180 | however, are there effective ways to decrease dopamine

00:08:09.700 | when you get too much of it for certain behaviors

00:08:11.700 | or habits we wanna break?

00:08:12.940 | Katie Ham, I think, is the last name.

00:08:15.460 | Thank you, Katie, for your question.

00:08:17.140 | Yeah, dopamine is a slippery slope

00:08:20.360 | and Dr. Analemki is the expert in this

00:08:24.760 | and we've had a lot of conversations.

00:08:26.180 | She's one of my closer friends on the faculty.

00:08:28.700 | Unfortunately for her, our coffee discussions

00:08:32.060 | often last four hours or more.

00:08:34.640 | Her poor patience and family.

00:08:36.300 | Here's the thing.

00:08:39.120 | When dopamine is higher in your brain and body,

00:08:42.380 | when you've deployed it through excitement

00:08:44.380 | or pharmacology or otherwise,

00:08:46.220 | it tends to narrow your focus and make you seek more of it

00:08:50.200 | in that general theme that you happen to be focused on.

00:08:53.780 | Could be anything.

00:08:55.280 | That's the scary thing about dopamine.

00:08:57.180 | What can you do to control it and to reduce it?

00:09:00.460 | Well, for those of you that are engaging in habits

00:09:04.620 | that are healthy, maybe that doesn't require

00:09:08.360 | reducing dopamine.

00:09:09.540 | How do you define healthy versus unhealthy?

00:09:11.620 | Well, I think the simplest way to define addiction,

00:09:13.620 | at least by my mind,

00:09:15.020 | is that addiction is a progressive narrowing

00:09:17.340 | of the things that bring you pleasure

00:09:18.820 | and a good life is a progressive expansion

00:09:21.480 | of the things that bring you pleasure.

00:09:24.020 | A rather simple definition and yet,

00:09:25.720 | when we think about the biology of dopamine,

00:09:28.540 | dopamine is not unique to one pursuit.

00:09:31.720 | It's not unique to the pursuit of sex

00:09:34.300 | or the pursuit of warmth when you're cold

00:09:35.940 | or cool environments when you're too warm

00:09:38.540 | or food or social media.

00:09:41.200 | It's just a dumb molecule that puts you

00:09:43.180 | into this forward state of mass,

00:09:45.960 | small visual aperture and a kind of obsessive-like nature.

00:09:51.700 | What can you do to counter that?

00:09:53.500 | Well, the best thing to do is to not get

00:09:54.820 | into that state too long, but if you do,

00:09:57.720 | the best thing you can do is to try

00:09:59.860 | and switch off that system, not through pharmacology,

00:10:02.460 | but by not pursuing more dopamine.

00:10:05.320 | The day after a big event,

00:10:07.880 | the so-called postpartum depression,

00:10:09.840 | named, of course, because of true postpartum

00:10:11.900 | after the delivery of a child that's quite common

00:10:14.700 | for people to get very, very depressed,

00:10:17.020 | there's a lot of neurochemical

00:10:18.220 | and hormonal adjustments that are occurring,

00:10:19.860 | but different types of postpartum depression occur

00:10:23.420 | after a big party, the Monday blues, the Sunday blues,

00:10:27.180 | the post-whatever blues, the four-month mark

00:10:31.620 | in a relationship is typically when dopamine starts to drop.

00:10:35.860 | I always tell people, just wait.

00:10:37.540 | I'm telling somebody very close to me right now,

00:10:39.620 | just wait four months, four months, four months,

00:10:43.260 | and also spend as much time with that person as possible.

00:10:45.700 | I don't know what this deal is

00:10:46.760 | about not spending as much time with people.

00:10:48.740 | I think people are afraid that the dopamine wave pool

00:10:50.900 | is just gonna pull them both under.

00:10:53.180 | I think they call that the escalator model of relationship,

00:10:55.500 | where you just sort of find yourself in the relationship

00:10:57.660 | because you went through the stages

00:10:59.040 | without actually deciding on them in any event.

00:11:02.200 | Four months seems to be the stage

00:11:06.460 | in which the dopamine crescendo starts to relax a little bit,

00:11:10.620 | not in a long-distance relationship, however.

00:11:12.900 | We know this, right?

00:11:14.100 | Anticipation is dopamine, that positive anticipation.

00:11:17.300 | And there's a whole beautiful science of this in the,

00:11:20.260 | and I should say psychology of this.

00:11:21.820 | There's a wonderful book, actually.

00:11:24.260 | The name of the book is embarrassing, always.

00:11:26.780 | I don't know why for me to say.

00:11:28.060 | It's by a psychologist called "Ken Love Last,"

00:11:30.440 | which is a psychoanalytic book

00:11:32.280 | about this dopamine serotonin system

00:11:34.520 | and the kind of seesawing back and forth,

00:11:36.500 | and the fact that in relationships,

00:11:38.480 | people often just slam on the dopamine side of things,

00:11:41.640 | and then they hit a wall and wanna break up,

00:11:43.580 | or they go into this like warm, cozy, fuzzy feeling thing,

00:11:46.960 | and they go, well, I guess the exciting part is over,

00:11:50.240 | and this idea that one could actually,

00:11:52.120 | or two people, or however many people were in Portland,

00:11:55.760 | could oscillate this seesaw.

00:12:02.120 | I don't think that you want to use pharmacology

00:12:05.440 | to turn off the dopamine system,

00:12:07.180 | but for people that have a hard time sleeping

00:12:10.480 | and that are really in a state of agitation

00:12:12.820 | and constantly obsessing, the psychiatrist,

00:12:15.180 | one of the oldest and most effective treatments,

00:12:17.640 | is that the psychiatrist,

00:12:19.220 | and this does have to be prescribed,

00:12:20.420 | will use a very, very low dose

00:12:22.820 | of a dopamine receptor blocker like haloperidol,

00:12:26.060 | which is used to treat schizophrenia.

00:12:27.980 | Very low dose to shut down the obsession component.

00:12:32.740 | Smart, well-educated psychiatrists know this

00:12:35.900 | as a useful tool, but this is a one-time thing

00:12:38.180 | with a very low dose,

00:12:39.300 | because having your dopamine block sucks.

00:12:41.920 | It does not feel good, but not being able to sleep

00:12:44.580 | and being in an obsessive mode also sucks.

00:12:47.240 | So it's actually a very potent clinical tool.

00:12:49.180 | So pharmacology is one tool,

00:12:52.200 | but really at the far end of things.

00:12:53.960 | I believe that one should try and modulate their own dopamine

00:12:58.340 | by not rewarding oneself on a regular basis,

00:13:03.340 | but only randomly.

00:13:04.920 | Random intermittent reward

00:13:06.580 | is truly the best schedule of reward,

00:13:09.200 | hence slot machines and so on.

00:13:11.760 | And you should engage random intermittent reward.

00:13:13.920 | And I think this is also the way that we should train kids.

00:13:17.620 | I call it training kids.

00:13:18.840 | You can tell I don't have kids.

00:13:20.460 | (audience laughing)

00:13:22.760 | You don't reward them every time.

00:13:24.680 | I don't believe everyone should get a trophy every time,

00:13:26.880 | nor should you always just reward the winners,

00:13:29.660 | because those winners often, we see cases of this,

00:13:32.060 | high-profile cases of this, they often crash and burn.

00:13:35.020 | I mean, the number of high performers

00:13:36.480 | that crash and burn publicly,

00:13:38.040 | and Lord knows how many do it privately, is remarkable.

00:13:41.520 | It's 'cause their dopamine system is all messed up.

00:13:44.340 | So random intermittent reward is the scheduled reward

00:13:48.100 | that we should impart on ourselves.

00:13:51.480 | If you had 10 minutes a day to improve your brain plasticity,

00:13:53.700 | what would you do and when would you do it?

00:13:56.520 | Richard Conlon, thank you.

00:13:57.980 | Well, I'm gonna say again,

00:14:01.120 | I would absolutely anchor my physiology

00:14:05.040 | with morning sunlight viewing.

00:14:06.900 | I can't help it.

00:14:08.240 | You know what's interesting?

00:14:09.560 | I'll tell you very briefly,

00:14:11.200 | you know what's special about morning sunlight?

00:14:13.680 | This low solar angle sunlight.

00:14:15.800 | I don't think I've talked about this much on social media

00:14:18.080 | or on the podcast.

00:14:19.440 | There's a group at the University of Washington,

00:14:20.980 | a couple, Jay and Maureen Knights.

00:14:22.440 | They run a lab together.

00:14:23.500 | That sounds like a horrible thing,

00:14:25.840 | but they do it and they get along very well.

00:14:27.700 | And they've discovered that the cells in your eye,

00:14:30.680 | the neurons that set your circadian clock

00:14:32.520 | make you alert during the day

00:14:33.780 | and make you sleepy at night and so on.

00:14:36.220 | Those cells respond best to yellow-blue contrast

00:14:42.500 | and orange tones.

00:14:45.280 | Now, this is important because when you go out

00:14:48.620 | in the morning, even if it's not at sunrise,

00:14:51.080 | but it's close to sunrise,

00:14:52.320 | or you look at the sun in the evening,

00:14:54.240 | what you'll see is yellow-blue contrast

00:14:56.440 | or orange, yellow, blue, orange,

00:14:59.120 | that old thing from kindergarten or first grade.

00:15:02.960 | That's not the color of light that you're going to see

00:15:05.200 | when the sun is overhead.

00:15:06.360 | Now, this also is really interesting

00:15:07.900 | because artificial lights, at least to my understanding,

00:15:12.740 | even the daylight simulators have not picked up on this.

00:15:16.360 | It's just about bright light.

00:15:18.600 | Someone ought to design something that can mimic this,

00:15:21.400 | but nature has done this beautifully for us.

00:15:23.720 | And so viewing low solar angle sunlight

00:15:25.720 | in the morning and in the evening is most effective

00:15:28.540 | because of those yellow-blue contrasts.

00:15:30.280 | Now, here's the really wild thing.

00:15:32.400 | Those circuits that set your levels of alertness and sleep,

00:15:37.120 | yes, they respond best to yellow-blue contrast,

00:15:39.860 | but what that tells us is crazy.

00:15:42.660 | What that means is that color vision

00:15:45.880 | was probably not related to color perception first

00:15:48.920 | because all of that is completely subconscious.

00:15:51.740 | The pathways that do this are present in people

00:15:54.280 | who are pattern vision blind.

00:15:56.640 | So what do I mean?

00:15:57.480 | I mean that color vision likely evolved

00:15:59.440 | from a need to synchronize your internal state

00:16:02.480 | with the external world and the best stimulus

00:16:05.520 | in the outside world to do that is yellow-blue contrast.

00:16:08.760 | In other words, our ability to detect color

00:16:11.840 | was first and foremost, and we understand this

00:16:14.240 | based on evolutionary genomics and so forth,

00:16:17.440 | to extract time of day information,

00:16:19.440 | not color of fruit or color of skin or anything like that.

00:16:23.060 | That's all secondary, which is wild and crazy.

00:16:26.280 | And this is yet another example

00:16:28.200 | of the way we think things work is not the way they work.

00:16:32.160 | It's completely 180 degrees opposite,

00:16:34.640 | and I'm just gonna give you a little teaser.

00:16:35.800 | I had a guest on the podcast.

00:16:38.100 | We haven't aired the episode yet.

00:16:39.800 | His name is Eric Jarvis.

00:16:40.760 | He works on speech and language.

00:16:42.360 | He also was admitted into Alvin Ailey Dance Company.

00:16:44.480 | Again, who are these people?

00:16:45.960 | He's a professor at the Rockefeller.

00:16:48.120 | Anyway, I learned from Eric,

00:16:50.780 | and you'll learn when that episode comes out

00:16:52.500 | that you only find elaborate speech and language

00:16:56.120 | in species that also engage in dance and song,

00:16:59.200 | and the genomics point to the fact that song and singing

00:17:02.240 | came first and language came second.

00:17:04.980 | And that led me, during that episode of the podcast,

00:17:09.760 | I wrote down in my notes.

00:17:10.840 | I was listening to him talk, and I wrote down in my notebook.

00:17:13.280 | It just scrawled in big letters.

00:17:14.680 | It says, "I am so happy right now."

00:17:17.880 | I was just blown away.

00:17:19.040 | I couldn't, and it makes so much sense when you hear it

00:17:22.320 | that the colors in the sky were what we,

00:17:24.920 | our system is trying to extract,

00:17:26.660 | not a perception of those colors in the sky,

00:17:28.360 | 'cause they're informing us about time

00:17:30.040 | and orienting us in time.

00:17:32.000 | That song and the communication of emotional states

00:17:34.980 | would be simpler and more foundational

00:17:36.960 | than communication about specific patterns of language.

00:17:40.700 | When you hear it, suddenly it makes sense,

00:17:42.600 | but of course, we're human beings,

00:17:43.940 | and unless you're Eric Jarvis or Ali Krum or Anna Lemke,

00:17:48.480 | you think about all this stuff backwards, as I do.

00:17:52.680 | "How can I navigate my way through taking supplements

00:17:54.840 | "to optimize my health when my career demands

00:17:57.340 | "infantry prevent me from being able

00:17:58.960 | "to establish consistent routines?"

00:18:00.840 | Andrew Yegan, well, thank you for doing what you do, Andrew.

00:18:08.280 | The consistent routine thing is tough.

00:18:11.280 | Here are the, here's what I can say

00:18:13.840 | without going into a long two and a half hour episode

00:18:16.500 | about jet lag and shift work, which we've done.

00:18:18.920 | The most powerful way to anchor your brain and body in time

00:18:21.940 | is indeed viewing light, sunlight,

00:18:24.560 | at consistent times of day.

00:18:26.160 | That's not something I made up.

00:18:27.280 | We know this based on a lot of work

00:18:30.020 | that dates back to the 1930s.

00:18:32.360 | The second most powerful stimulus is going to be movement

00:18:36.980 | and changes in body temperature.

00:18:38.580 | In particular, increases in body temperature

00:18:40.340 | tend to make us alert, and decreases in body temperature

00:18:42.820 | tend to make us sleepy.

00:18:45.340 | Body temperature drops one to three degrees

00:18:47.140 | to get us into sleep.

00:18:48.520 | Why does a cold shower wake you up?

00:18:50.140 | Adrenaline is released, and believe it or not,

00:18:52.040 | your body is heating up internally to combat that cold,

00:18:54.900 | unless you make yourself hypothermic.

00:18:57.260 | So, sauna, hot baths to get sleepy,

00:19:01.700 | cold showers, ice baths, et cetera, to wake up.

00:19:04.680 | Sort of obvious when you hear it, but it's counterintuitive

00:19:07.100 | because you think, oh, heating up the body to wake up

00:19:09.700 | and cooling down the body to go to sleep,

00:19:11.440 | so getting into cold ought to cool me down,

00:19:13.280 | but your body compensates,

00:19:14.800 | just like if you threw a cold towel on a thermostat,

00:19:17.580 | you'd crank up the temperature in the room

00:19:19.220 | and vice versa for heat.

00:19:20.660 | Okay, so what do you do?

00:19:22.580 | You want to try and use as many of these things,

00:19:25.260 | light, temperature, exercise, food,

00:19:27.740 | when you eat is typically associated with waking.

00:19:30.560 | Very few of us are capable of eating in our sleep.

00:19:35.040 | And then the other one is social activity and rhythms.

00:19:38.760 | Now, the discombobulated person is gonna be the person

00:19:41.640 | that has not aligned to these things in a consistent way,

00:19:43.880 | so while schedules vary,

00:19:45.080 | and Andrew, I don't know your exact schedule,

00:19:47.000 | what I can say is, if you suddenly go from daytime behavior

00:19:51.480 | and sleeping at night to the so-called vampire shift,

00:19:53.800 | as it's called in the military,

00:19:55.480 | and suddenly you're up in the middle of the night

00:19:58.380 | and you're sleeping during the day,

00:19:59.360 | then when you come off that shift,

00:20:02.600 | what you want to do is try and combine

00:20:04.600 | as many of those same things at one time.

00:20:06.800 | So it would be get your sunlight,

00:20:08.280 | so go jogging without your sunglasses,

00:20:10.860 | drink your coffee, engage with other people

00:20:13.180 | and communicate, eat a meal afterwards,

00:20:15.780 | or as the case may be before,

00:20:17.700 | try and bring as many of those things together

00:20:19.740 | the same time of day for a few days,

00:20:21.580 | and pretty soon your system will map around that.

00:20:25.020 | So the reason I encourage for those of us

00:20:28.540 | that are not doing shift work

00:20:30.380 | to try and be fairly consistent about sunlight viewing

00:20:32.940 | is it sets in motion everything else that's correct,

00:20:35.520 | but if in terms of timing of eating,

00:20:38.460 | appetite will follow, when your alert will follow,

00:20:40.900 | you'll start to learn your own rhythms.

00:20:42.940 | When you can't control your schedule,

00:20:47.880 | try and combine as many of those cues,

00:20:50.140 | again, light, temperature, exercise, food,

00:20:52.940 | social engagement, into one period of time

00:20:55.540 | and try and lock that into a more or less

00:20:57.580 | a one or two hour period or plus or minus one or two hours

00:21:01.380 | at a particular time of day for at least two or three days,

00:21:05.040 | and your schedule, meaning your internal clocks,

00:21:07.140 | will lock to that.

00:21:08.220 | How is social media changing our brains, Thomas?

00:21:12.340 | Well, you hear all the terrible ways

00:21:15.060 | in which it's changing our brains,

00:21:16.200 | and I think that, again, we go back to this thing,

00:21:19.300 | is it the aperture that we're looking at?

00:21:21.260 | So is it the format that we're engaging in things?

00:21:24.420 | Or is it the content?

00:21:27.180 | Well, the way I like to think about the phone

00:21:29.700 | is the way that we've been engaging with the phone

00:21:31.560 | and the laptop, for that matter,

00:21:33.400 | in staring into the small visual aperture each day

00:21:36.180 | is sort of like walking like this all day long, right?

00:21:40.580 | We have this amazing ability to shuffle our feet

00:21:43.500 | and take small steps or to take big strides to run,

00:21:46.860 | to move, I think that's the sagittal plane for movement.

00:21:49.740 | I know it for the brain, but it always messes.

00:21:51.060 | The PTs are vicious people online, by the way.

00:21:53.740 | The PTs and nutrition people,

00:21:55.300 | I've learned to just not say anything,

00:21:58.820 | that I'm not a PT and I'm not a physical therapist,

00:22:02.280 | and they do incredible work,

00:22:03.580 | but it's a very spirited crowd.

00:22:07.020 | And the nutrition thing is really weird.

00:22:09.700 | I mean, it's just incredible.

00:22:11.420 | People are either throwing liver at you

00:22:13.880 | or they're throwing celery at you

00:22:16.300 | or they're fasting or they're not fasting.

00:22:18.740 | It's nuts.

00:22:22.700 | In any case, the social media

00:22:27.340 | and staring at a small visual aperture

00:22:30.780 | is changing our brains.

00:22:32.020 | Here's one way I know in which it's changing our brains,

00:22:34.460 | and then I'll tell you how to fix it.

00:22:36.860 | If you stare or look at something within two feet of you

00:22:41.160 | for a certain number of hours each day,

00:22:42.580 | your eyeball actually gets longer.

00:22:45.460 | And the visual image then is focused

00:22:47.300 | in front of your neural retina, not onto your neural retina,

00:22:50.540 | and you are becoming myopic, nearsighted.

00:22:52.940 | And if you look at things in the distance enough,

00:22:55.900 | guess what, your eyeball changes shape

00:22:58.020 | and your lens will focus appropriately,

00:23:00.680 | the image onto your retina, take some work.

00:23:03.860 | Kids that look at things up close too much

00:23:06.220 | and adults that look at things up close much

00:23:07.700 | become nearsighted.

00:23:10.180 | And there's a beautiful set of clinical trials now

00:23:13.620 | where mainly in kids, if kids get outside

00:23:17.040 | for two hours a day, getting a lot of this UVB

00:23:19.940 | and blue light that we're told is so terrible for us,

00:23:22.180 | but they get it from sunlight,

00:23:24.020 | they actually can reverse myopia

00:23:25.780 | or reduce the incidence of myopia,

00:23:27.420 | maybe even glaucoma, although that's a big maybe.

00:23:31.420 | So how much staring into a small visual aperture is too much?

00:23:36.420 | I don't know, but what we do know

00:23:39.660 | is that we are literally becoming myopic

00:23:41.600 | in terms of our vision, and we're becoming myopic

00:23:43.660 | in terms of our cognition, and then there's the whole

00:23:46.460 | business of what's actually contained in those tweets

00:23:48.780 | and those social media feeds and those news stories,

00:23:50.980 | which frankly, I feel like you lose either way.

00:23:53.420 | Whether or not you're in one political camp

00:23:55.100 | or another political camp, you're upset

00:23:57.280 | about half of the information out there.

00:23:59.820 | So I feel like it's, and I'm not someone

00:24:03.980 | who knows how to talk about politics without stumbling.

00:24:07.660 | I didn't do well in social studies and this sort of thing.

00:24:11.860 | It just never made sense to me.

00:24:13.660 | It just felt like the prize goes to the person

00:24:16.300 | who can shout the loudest and the most coherently

00:24:18.980 | for a moment, so, but I encourage, of course,

00:24:22.020 | people to be politically active, and I vote,

00:24:25.780 | but the content is tricky to navigate,

00:24:30.380 | and I can't really speak to that,

00:24:31.820 | except that it seems to be bothering everybody

00:24:34.580 | on one side or the other or in the middle,

00:24:37.040 | and the format is something that we really understand,

00:24:40.780 | and again, I don't know of many people

00:24:42.860 | that are talking about this narrow visual window format

00:24:45.700 | thing, it came up more during the lockdowns

00:24:48.220 | when we were all inside a lot

00:24:49.580 | and not looking out at a distance.

00:24:51.660 | The data say really to try and get at least 10 minutes

00:24:55.220 | of long-distance viewing, so longer than 10 feet

00:24:58.500 | away from us for every 30 minutes of close-up viewing,

00:25:01.580 | and not a lot of us are doing that.

00:25:03.040 | If you're walking to your car looking at your phone,

00:25:05.420 | you're definitely losing an opportunity.

00:25:08.280 | What new piece of neurological research

00:25:12.780 | are you most excited about, Matteo Minato?

00:25:14.940 | Um, ooh.

00:25:16.940 | I think the piece of neurological research that I,

00:25:23.580 | all right, the weird stuff, I've got this colleague

00:25:26.340 | at Stanford, Tony Weiss-Cory, and they're really

00:25:28.580 | into literally taking proteins from young blood

00:25:32.380 | and young spinal cord, cerebral spinal fluid,

00:25:36.020 | and putting it into older people and animals,

00:25:39.700 | and they get younger, that stuff's pretty wild.

00:25:43.340 | The fecal transplant stuff is pretty wild, right?

00:25:46.460 | You take the microbiome from one person,

00:25:48.500 | and as it sounds, you transplant it to somebody else,

00:25:51.900 | and they take on the physical characteristics of the donor.

00:25:56.460 | It's crazy.

00:25:57.660 | Until I talk to my, there's some shouts

00:25:59.700 | for fecal transplant, nice.

00:26:01.620 | I have never read the method sections of those papers.

00:26:04.900 | I'm actually afraid to read the method sections.

00:26:07.300 | You know, I would say this is not neurological,

00:26:10.940 | but the work from Chris Gardner and Justin Sonnenberg

00:26:14.100 | also at Stanford, it makes it sound like I just

00:26:16.900 | like Stanford, Stanford State, but these are the people

00:26:18.460 | I'm closest to and surrounded by.

00:26:19.580 | There are excellent places everywhere, of course,

00:26:21.980 | including OHSU, and I'm not just saying that

00:26:25.260 | 'cause I'm here, I actually have close colleagues here

00:26:26.980 | and friends here at OHSU, also amazing,

00:26:29.820 | although that tram thing freaks me out.

00:26:32.260 | It's like, I always just have all these ideas

00:26:34.580 | about what's gonna happen if that thing breaks.

00:26:36.920 | But the microbiome data are really interesting.

00:26:41.920 | I never understood why getting your gut microbiome

00:26:46.640 | was important, and it turns out it's because your gut

00:26:49.320 | actually makes many of the neurotransmitter precursors

00:26:51.880 | that your brain uses, so that's pretty cool.

00:26:54.800 | And I always thought it would be a complicated thing

00:26:57.280 | to get your gut microbiome right,

00:26:58.520 | but it turns out that it's fermented foods

00:27:01.320 | that seem to have the biggest effect.

00:27:02.640 | There was all this argument about fiber,

00:27:04.020 | and yes, fiber is important, and here I am getting nervous

00:27:06.600 | talking about nutrition 'cause the people are gonna

00:27:08.480 | like come at me with fiber, but it's very clear

00:27:13.480 | from Justin and Chris' data that people who are getting

00:27:17.240 | four servings a day of these fermented foods,

00:27:19.660 | whether or not it's kimchi or sauerkraut or kombucha,

00:27:22.560 | that stuff actually seems to encourage

00:27:24.400 | a healthy gut microbiome, and people feel better

00:27:27.800 | and their immune system works better.

00:27:29.080 | And I like this because it actually, it resolves an issue

00:27:32.920 | which is that high-dose probiotics, these very expensive

00:27:37.320 | need-to-be-refrigerated things, those actually can create

00:27:39.600 | brain fog and other issues.

00:27:40.760 | They're for real severe cases of dysbiosis.

00:27:43.380 | So I always like an instance where one can look to foods

00:27:46.880 | which are good 'cause I like to eat

00:27:50.500 | in order to resolve these issues.

00:27:52.820 | In terms of other neurologic issues, I think that frankly,

00:27:56.220 | I think the stuff on dopamine is fundamentally important.

00:28:00.220 | So much addiction, that's a severe case,

00:28:02.180 | but also so much waxing and waning of motivation.

00:28:05.980 | And once you understand the dopamine system and you say,

00:28:08.360 | what activities am I engaging in

00:28:09.980 | or pharmacology am I engaging in?

00:28:11.820 | What am I doing to spike dopamine?

00:28:14.100 | You start to go, oh, I get it.

00:28:15.620 | The waves in this wave pool are too high,

00:28:17.980 | and that's why I can't do this consistently.

00:28:20.040 | And then you do the counterintuitive thing

00:28:22.700 | of approaching things with a little less excitement,

00:28:25.320 | but then you're able to do them more consistently.

00:28:27.400 | It's like, ah, and maybe with some luck,

00:28:29.620 | I'll end up finishing this book that I've been working on

00:28:31.440 | for four and a half years as a consequence

00:28:33.800 | 'cause I can't seem to.

00:28:35.220 | Thinking about the Wim Hof method, do you believe it?

00:28:39.240 | How is it really working?

00:28:40.420 | What process is happening in his brain?

00:28:42.200 | Oh boy.

00:28:43.740 | Madison Cameron, everyone here probably familiar

00:28:45.980 | with Wim Hof whose occupation on Wikipedia

00:28:50.820 | used to be Daredevil.

00:28:52.260 | That was cool.

00:28:53.380 | It's like Evil Knievel had it and Wim had it.

00:28:55.280 | I got a story about Wim, actually in 2016,

00:28:58.340 | I heard about this guy Wim Hof and I got ahold of him,

00:29:02.600 | actually his children, and I had one vacation that year

00:29:07.600 | and I flew to Spain and I spent some time mountaineering

00:29:12.060 | with Wim, which was absolutely terrifying.

00:29:14.860 | I almost lost a leg legitimately.

00:29:19.460 | I tied in wrong on a bridge sling.

00:29:22.160 | He told me it was good for me.

00:29:23.300 | He told me to stare into the lizard's eyes

00:29:26.120 | and I stared into the lizard's eyes.

00:29:29.020 | I jumped backwards off this homemade bridge sling thing

00:29:33.740 | and I had the rope wrapped through my leg in it.

00:29:36.420 | I came back with basically the tendon

00:29:38.780 | on the back of my knee exposed.

00:29:40.540 | And sitting next to me on the plane

00:29:42.660 | was our vice dean of research at Stanford

00:29:44.980 | and I had to explain to him what I was doing and why.

00:29:47.680 | It was very embarrassing.

00:29:49.940 | What did we do on that trip?

00:29:52.680 | Well, a couple of things

00:29:53.600 | that will help me answer your question.

00:29:55.100 | First of all, when I arrived,

00:29:56.740 | I suffer terribly from jet lag,

00:29:59.220 | but the moment I got there, Wim did not say hello.

00:30:02.200 | He literally told me to get into the ice bath

00:30:04.960 | and I did 10 minutes in the ice bath,

00:30:06.660 | not because I'm tough,

00:30:07.800 | but because he held me down in the ice bath.

00:30:11.120 | He is indeed one of the strongest human beings.

00:30:13.460 | He reminds me of the bus driver on "The Simpsons"

00:30:15.920 | or the janitor, excuse me.

00:30:17.320 | No, Otto is the bus driver, right?

00:30:19.360 | The janitor on "The Simpsons" like, oh, that guy.

00:30:22.420 | That's Wim, incredibly physically strong guy.

00:30:25.980 | What do I think is going on with Wim Hof stuff?

00:30:29.900 | Well, Wim Hof, whether or not he understands it or not,

00:30:33.740 | I always think he's sort of the Bob Dylan of breath work.

00:30:36.580 | Like everything he says seems to have some intuitive sense,

00:30:38.580 | but you don't really understand

00:30:39.580 | what in the world he's saying.

00:30:41.080 | He's gonna come after me now.

00:30:44.100 | We've had a good but complicated relationship.

00:30:46.740 | I'll just confess, maybe someday we'll resolve that.

00:30:49.900 | No big scandal or story there,

00:30:52.340 | just we communicate very differently.

00:30:54.220 | Wim has a couple of methods.

00:30:58.600 | One is to deliberately hyperventilate.

00:31:01.660 | There's also called Tummo breathing.

00:31:02.780 | My lab actually studies this.

00:31:04.340 | We have a paper that I'm happy to share with you,

00:31:05.940 | the results, although they're not published yet,

00:31:07.740 | where people do deliberate cyclic hyperventilation,

00:31:10.240 | which as the name suggests,

00:31:11.460 | you just breathe really deeply in

00:31:13.000 | and really deeply out 25 times.

00:31:14.740 | Or if you're Wim, you say in and out, in and out.

00:31:17.460 | I just tell people, here's how it works.

00:31:19.240 | You go, you do that 25 times and you heat up

00:31:22.580 | and you feel really agitated.

00:31:23.980 | And that's because of adrenaline.

00:31:25.580 | If you throw yourself into an ice bath

00:31:29.100 | or a cold shower, adrenaline.

00:31:31.860 | If somebody upsets you

00:31:32.940 | or you got a triggering text, adrenaline.

00:31:35.480 | Adrenaline sounds like a terrible thing,

00:31:38.420 | except when you deliberately induce it.

00:31:40.180 | As my colleague, David Spiegel says,

00:31:42.220 | "There's a big difference between it going into a state

00:31:44.520 | "and you controlling your entry into a state."

00:31:47.480 | So it's not just about the state you're in,

00:31:49.220 | it's about how you got there

00:31:50.420 | and whether or not you had anything to do with it.

00:31:53.680 | States of high adrenaline are very powerful.

00:31:56.020 | When you self-induced adrenaline by cold shower,

00:31:59.260 | cyclic hyperventilation, AKA Wim Hof breathing,

00:32:03.000 | or Tummo breathing, you then have an opportunity

00:32:05.900 | to create a very distinct mind-body relationship.

00:32:09.600 | We all hear that interoception

00:32:11.180 | and the mind-body relationship interoception,

00:32:13.040 | just your ability to sense your heartbeats

00:32:14.820 | and what's going on in your body, powerful, right?

00:32:18.000 | Terrible if how you feel sucks.

00:32:21.380 | So interoception is wonderful,

00:32:24.900 | but when you're anxious,

00:32:26.420 | it actually is more adaptive

00:32:28.540 | to be able to maintain your thinking

00:32:30.380 | and get yourself out of that anxious state.

00:32:32.100 | So if you're trembling and your body's freaking out

00:32:34.140 | and your cheeks are flushing

00:32:35.220 | and your brain is following your bodily state,

00:32:38.620 | well, that's not good.

00:32:40.700 | And if you're somebody, and sadly, this happens a lot,

00:32:43.760 | where you've experienced a lot of trauma,

00:32:45.460 | or typically this is people that have been barded

00:32:47.620 | with extreme criticism or physical abuse

00:32:51.700 | or other kinds of abuse during development,

00:32:53.100 | they actually can seem very calm,

00:32:54.540 | but internally, they're freaking out in their head

00:32:56.580 | and they're just thinking, "Just get me through this,"

00:32:58.180 | and they just go into a state

00:32:59.440 | where no one knows they're upset.

00:33:02.120 | I've known people like this, and it's eerie to me

00:33:04.500 | because I've never had that response to stress,

00:33:08.500 | but it's very common.

00:33:09.620 | And so we should learn and be careful

00:33:11.200 | about deciding that people are in one state or another

00:33:14.380 | based on their bodily or their mental response.

00:33:17.260 | Wim Hof breathing, cold showers, et cetera,

00:33:21.260 | are a great practice, in my opinion,

00:33:24.220 | because they allow you to spike your adrenaline,

00:33:27.220 | and you can do that, for instance,

00:33:29.300 | by making the water colder if you want more adrenaline,

00:33:31.620 | staying in longer if you want more adrenaline,

00:33:33.580 | moving your limbs around in the water

00:33:35.200 | will give you more adrenaline

00:33:36.320 | 'cause it breaks up that thermal layer,

00:33:37.780 | it makes it a lot colder,

00:33:39.440 | or doing 50 deep inhales and exhales.

00:33:43.620 | That is very useful because then you have the opportunity

00:33:46.140 | to use that prefrontal cortex and to stop

00:33:49.820 | and sense all that adrenaline in your body

00:33:52.280 | and yet maintain clarity of mind,

00:33:54.620 | and that's an absolutely powerful tool.

00:33:58.240 | I would even call it a power tool.

00:34:00.100 | And Wim figured this out.

00:34:01.740 | I don't know if you know this,

00:34:02.980 | but the way that Wim discovered all this

00:34:04.900 | was he was in deep grief

00:34:06.180 | about the tragic death of his wife.

00:34:07.940 | She committed suicide, jumped off an eight-story building,

00:34:10.820 | just truly tragic death, and he was in situation.

00:34:14.620 | He had four children at the time.

00:34:16.500 | Now he has five.

00:34:18.260 | And he was in a state of depression

00:34:21.060 | and he ended up going into the canal in Amsterdam,

00:34:25.160 | and it was very cold and it shocked his system.

00:34:28.500 | And in that shock to his system,

00:34:31.120 | which is caused by adrenaline,

00:34:32.500 | he somehow was able to anchor his thinking

00:34:34.580 | and in a kind of genius of sorts,

00:34:38.160 | Wim thought, wow, I can intervene in my physiology

00:34:43.100 | with this strange activity.

00:34:45.300 | And then he realized that breathing would do it as well.

00:34:47.520 | You didn't have to get into cold water.

00:34:49.020 | And then years later, we discovered,

00:34:51.540 | not we meaning my lab, but other labs,

00:34:54.280 | that when you get into cold water,

00:34:56.060 | even just 60-degree water,

00:34:58.060 | that there's a very long-lasting increase in dopamine

00:35:01.040 | that is 2.5 X above baseline,

00:35:04.620 | which is on par with some prescription drugs

00:35:07.380 | for increasing dopamine.

00:35:08.460 | So when people laugh at me, oh, this cold water thing,

00:35:11.220 | I get teased a lot on the internet.

00:35:12.900 | I've heard on the internet that I eat sticks of butter,

00:35:15.540 | which I never said.

00:35:16.580 | I said, I like butter.

00:35:18.780 | I've been told all sorts of things.

00:35:22.220 | I've been told I eat sticks of butter.

00:35:24.780 | I don't know why.

00:35:25.760 | I've been told that I'm dead.

00:35:27.660 | That was an interesting one.

00:35:29.180 | That was one of the cooler ones.

00:35:30.780 | But when I was going out there as a serious scientist

00:35:34.740 | and saying, using deliberate cold exposure,

00:35:36.540 | you can use all sorts of things,

00:35:38.080 | or if you come to my lab, I'll be happy to put you in VR

00:35:41.100 | and expose you to all sorts of scary stuff,

00:35:42.580 | or we can inject you with adrenaline,

00:35:43.940 | or you can inject yourself with adrenaline

00:35:45.700 | and titrate that, adjust the levels of that.

00:35:48.280 | So it's a very powerful tool.

00:35:49.820 | And I think that Wim and others deserve credit

00:35:52.420 | for really tapping into that.

00:35:54.540 | And as a last point, there's a beautiful study

00:35:56.980 | in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

00:35:58.880 | years ago using this deliberate cyclic hyperventilation

00:36:02.820 | thing, 25 breaths, and then another group meditates,

00:36:06.900 | and then they inject them both with E. coli.

00:36:11.380 | And the people injected with E. coli who meditate

00:36:14.020 | get nauseous, vomit, diarrhea, and they get a fever.

00:36:17.100 | And the people who first, far fewer symptoms if any.

00:36:21.440 | Why?

00:36:22.280 | Because adrenaline actually suppresses

00:36:25.500 | a lot of these innate immune responses

00:36:29.060 | in a way that's healthy in the short term.

00:36:30.620 | This is why you can work, work, work, work, work,

00:36:32.620 | or you can study for finals,

00:36:33.740 | or you can take care of a loved one,

00:36:35.180 | and then you finally stop and rest and go on vacation,

00:36:37.360 | and then you get sick.

00:36:39.380 | Stress activates your nervous system,

00:36:42.980 | and in doing so, it activates your immune system.

00:36:45.300 | It makes perfect sense when you think about it.

00:36:47.080 | How would we ever go through famine

00:36:49.060 | if you're just getting flus whenever you're stressed?

00:36:51.420 | We can deal with a lot.

00:36:52.620 | My suggestion is if you're coming off a period

00:36:55.260 | of high stress, to do some sort of adrenaline spiking

00:36:58.920 | behavior as you taper out of that stressful period,

00:37:01.520 | not going strictly to massage, vacation,

00:37:04.940 | and yoga nidra all day long, as I would reflexively do.

00:37:08.700 | Can red light therapy help treat exercise intolerance

00:37:10.840 | and fatigue in mitochondrial disease?

00:37:12.620 | Allison, I'm glad you brought this up.

00:37:14.980 | This is another case where I thought,

00:37:17.220 | oh no, this red light stuff is crazy.

00:37:19.540 | And then I went into the literature,

00:37:21.100 | and it turns out that in 1908,

00:37:23.140 | the Nobel Prize was actually given for phototherapy.

00:37:26.020 | So there we go again, and here,

00:37:28.780 | I have this slide, I chose not to use slides tonight,

00:37:31.040 | but I have this slide that shows Ken Keesian,

00:37:33.620 | the magic boss, and stuff from the 1930s,

00:37:36.820 | and psychedelics, and people getting into cold water,

00:37:39.540 | and then here we are, 2019, 2020,

00:37:41.760 | you've got Wim Hof and Matt Johnson

00:37:44.060 | giving people macrodoses of psilocybin.

00:37:46.400 | We're right back where we were.

00:37:49.120 | And one of my major goals is to really try

00:37:51.700 | and create some scientific discussion around these things.

00:37:56.420 | This stuff is crazy on the face of it,

00:37:58.920 | but there are mechanisms that are real that underlie it.

00:38:01.160 | Red light, because it's long wavelength light,

00:38:05.120 | longer, literally, as opposed to short wavelength light,

00:38:07.500 | can penetrate through things like skin,

00:38:09.980 | and can indeed change mitochondria.

00:38:12.880 | One of the more impressive results on red light

00:38:15.040 | comes from my good friend Glenn Jeffrey's lab

00:38:17.160 | at the University College London.

00:38:19.440 | I've known Glenn for years.

00:38:20.840 | In a few years, he was a basic vision scientist,

00:38:23.420 | and a few years ago, he started using red light.

00:38:25.960 | He'd have people look at red light

00:38:27.820 | at a distance of about two feet in the morning,

00:38:29.700 | so this is long wavelength light,

00:38:31.860 | and sometimes even just take a flashlight,

00:38:33.840 | a torch, as they call it in England,

00:38:36.240 | and cover it with a red film,

00:38:37.680 | and they would look at this stuff

00:38:38.500 | for a few minutes each morning,

00:38:39.840 | and it can reverse some forms of age-related vision loss

00:38:44.400 | and macular degeneration,

00:38:45.640 | how we now know it can prove mitochondrial function

00:38:48.400 | in photoreceptors by reducing

00:38:49.920 | what are called reactive oxygen species.

00:38:52.200 | Here's what's interesting.

00:38:53.040 | It only seems to work in people older than 40,

00:38:57.040 | and it seems to only work

00:38:58.580 | if you do it within the first three hours of waking,

00:39:00.600 | and the incredible thing is you can do this

00:39:02.460 | for one or two minutes a week,

00:39:04.400 | and some of the positive effects

00:39:06.160 | last as long as three weeks,

00:39:08.080 | and it's affecting a very specific form

00:39:09.980 | of visual improvement, which is acuity,

00:39:11.860 | kind of fine detail stuff in my particular wavelength,

00:39:14.640 | so particular colors and objects and things.

00:39:17.120 | Pretty impressive, so yes,

00:39:18.340 | red light can improve mitochondrial function

00:39:20.720 | to the photoreceptors.

00:39:22.000 | If you are gonna try and do this stuff,

00:39:23.400 | don't put it too close.

00:39:24.720 | I don't have any affiliation

00:39:27.040 | to any red light panel companies,

00:39:29.360 | so I can't say anything there.

00:39:30.400 | They are rather expensive.

00:39:32.160 | Nowadays, people are putting red light everywhere,

00:39:34.700 | and I do mean everywhere.

00:39:36.640 | People are putting red light on their stomach

00:39:38.320 | for improving ovarian function.

00:39:40.160 | Whether or not I can penetrate isn't clear to me.

00:39:42.180 | All the way down there, people are trying to do this.

00:39:44.740 | I have a friend, I won't name him.

00:39:47.740 | Recently, he told me he's really into the red light therapy.

00:39:50.280 | He's putting it on his testicles

00:39:51.740 | to try and increase testosterone,

00:39:53.100 | but he told me that after he handed me the red light.

00:39:55.600 | (audience laughing)

00:39:58.460 | True story.

00:39:59.880 | My team knows who this is.

00:40:00.940 | There's no one on my team, thank goodness.

00:40:02.240 | I was like, oh, that's super interesting.

00:40:04.460 | I actually don't think you wanna contact

00:40:09.620 | the red lights directly to your skin.

00:40:11.060 | So, red light is powerful.

00:40:12.700 | I don't think we have, aside from the vision protocol,

00:40:15.460 | I don't think that it's clear which protocols are best.

00:40:17.520 | I will say, if you're into red light infrared sauna,

00:40:20.200 | typically those don't get hot enough.

00:40:22.920 | Typically, if you wanna get the benefits of sauna,

00:40:25.020 | you wanna get between 80 and 100 degrees Celsius,

00:40:28.320 | which is 176 to 210 or 208 Fahrenheit,

00:40:33.320 | and I don't actually do the conversion in my head.

00:40:37.780 | I memorize it.

00:40:39.480 | You mentioned the consequences of blasting your brain

00:40:41.100 | with too much dopamine.

00:40:42.180 | Is it possible to overdo ice baths

00:40:43.540 | while following the same line of thinking,

00:40:45.100 | will you experience extreme low in dopamine

00:40:46.660 | with too many ice baths?

00:40:47.860 | Thank you for the question.

00:40:51.060 | Any behavior that spikes adrenaline,

00:40:53.260 | you will eventually get better at tolerating it.

00:40:55.620 | You will become cold adapted,

00:40:57.100 | and you will become comfortable at high adrenaline states,

00:40:59.520 | and you just have to ask yourself this.

00:41:01.260 | It's just like lifting weights in the gym or running.

00:41:03.880 | You need to leave some space for improvement.

00:41:07.040 | So, if you run, as people do,

00:41:08.980 | and you do your 5K, then your 10K, then your half marathon,

00:41:12.660 | maybe a 10K is a half marathon, I don't know, but anyway,

00:41:16.120 | then you're doing your marathon,

00:41:17.280 | then you're doing ultras that are 50 miles and 100 miles.

00:41:20.480 | I mean, eventually, you're gonna start doing damage, right?

00:41:23.120 | And eventually, you look at every ultra runner,

00:41:25.900 | and typically, these are people

00:41:27.900 | who are very much on the dopamine pursuit system.

00:41:30.520 | I mean, I don't think that he would mind.

00:41:31.900 | My good friend and a podcaster

00:41:33.860 | who I have tremendous respect for, you know, rich role,

00:41:36.820 | amazing human being,

00:41:38.180 | and also has an amazing story about addiction.

00:41:41.700 | He was an alcoholic.

00:41:42.820 | I'm not sharing anything that he hasn't already shared

00:41:45.660 | in this amazing book, "Finding Ultra."

00:41:48.940 | You know, he got really into running,

00:41:50.900 | running, running all the time,

00:41:52.220 | and you know, there's a dopamine history there for him.

00:41:54.980 | Some of us can use ice baths so consistently

00:41:58.360 | and make it so cold and doing them longer and longer

00:42:00.780 | that indeed, you're playing with the dopamine system.

00:42:03.380 | Is it bad?

00:42:04.460 | Well, it depends on what you're trading that in for,

00:42:06.960 | you know, at the expense of what?

00:42:08.000 | Is it giving up cocaine?

00:42:09.420 | Yeah, great, stick with the ice bath.

00:42:11.460 | But you know, you can only make it so cold,

00:42:14.920 | and you can only stay in there so long

00:42:16.280 | before you become Wim Hof, right?

00:42:18.860 | And it worked out for Wim,

00:42:20.860 | but there's really only one Wim Hof.

00:42:24.060 | And in general, that speaks to a larger theme,

00:42:26.240 | which is I love the idea of people using tools

00:42:28.420 | and understanding mechanism.

00:42:29.820 | I mean, of course I love that.

00:42:31.280 | It's what I talk about and think about so much of my life.

00:42:35.160 | But for most of us,

00:42:36.360 | we don't make a living doing those things.

00:42:38.460 | And so I do think that the ideal situation

00:42:41.580 | is to have behaviors and tools

00:42:43.020 | that you intersperse throughout your day

00:42:44.900 | and throughout the week.

00:42:45.900 | For instance, I think three times a week

00:42:48.620 | is fine for the ice bath.

00:42:49.760 | No one said you had to do it every day,

00:42:52.660 | but you should see sunlight every morning, if you can.

00:42:56.160 | Just because if you miss a day, your system will be fine.

00:42:59.400 | Just spend twice as long outside the next day, seriously,

00:43:01.780 | 'cause it's a slow integrating system.

00:43:03.860 | But you know, for most of these high intensity things,

00:43:07.700 | the less often you do them, the more powerful they are.

00:43:10.280 | In fact, if you get into a very hot sauna

00:43:12.580 | for four, excuse me, 30 minute sessions on one day.

00:43:16.140 | So you go 30 minutes, get out for five minutes.

00:43:18.300 | 30 minutes, get out for five minutes.

00:43:19.740 | 30 minutes, get out for five minutes.

00:43:20.700 | Two hours a day in the sauna.

00:43:21.780 | That's a lot of sauna.

00:43:23.020 | But the growth hormone released

00:43:24.340 | from that type of protocol

00:43:28.760 | is a 16x increase in growth hormone.

00:43:32.200 | This has been measured in humans.

00:43:33.620 | Whereas if you do it every day

00:43:35.040 | or three or four times a week,

00:43:36.140 | you get diminishing returns on that.

00:43:38.700 | So I actually am a big fan of doing really intense stuff

00:43:41.660 | only every once in a while.

00:43:43.680 | This is also why I only take one long run per week

00:43:46.180 | or one long hike.

00:43:47.340 | First of all, I don't have time for it.

00:43:49.040 | I'm not an ultra runner.

00:43:50.140 | I got other things to do.

00:43:51.460 | And second of all, it's a strong stimulus.

00:43:54.020 | I'm sore until Tuesday

00:43:55.620 | or I don't wanna run until Tuesday anyway.

00:43:58.120 | I actually think that's fine.

00:43:59.300 | And I actually encourage

00:44:00.860 | kind of more healthy rational schedules

00:44:03.260 | of these kinds of behaviors.

00:44:04.580 | There's no rule that says you have to do something every day

00:44:07.520 | even if you're trying to engage in neuroplasticity.

00:44:10.060 | You can learn French or an instrument

00:44:13.300 | by practicing three times a week

00:44:16.320 | as long as your practice is very focused, right?

00:44:20.340 | Daily perhaps would be better,

00:44:21.740 | but very few of us have the opportunity

00:44:24.440 | to do things every day consistently.

00:44:26.400 | And I really wanna encourage a more balanced approach.

00:44:30.400 | Before working through Thasher, what's the base?

00:44:33.920 | Oh, goodness gracious.

00:44:35.400 | The skateboarders are always in the house.

00:44:37.420 | My first non-biological family

00:44:39.260 | was a skateboarding community

00:44:40.420 | when I have great relationship with my parents now.

00:44:43.060 | But because there was a time

00:44:44.500 | when there was no one to go to soccer games

00:44:46.340 | or do any of that stuff,

00:44:47.180 | the skateboard community took me in

00:44:48.380 | 'cause there were no parents involved.

00:44:49.620 | It was great.

00:44:50.440 | There were no referees or coaches

00:44:52.060 | 'cause I didn't like authority and it was awesome.

00:44:55.300 | And there was no nutritional plan.

00:44:56.580 | You drank your Slurpee and you sat on the curb

00:44:58.940 | and it was fantastic.

00:45:00.980 | I don't do that anymore.

00:45:01.940 | But the skateboarding community

00:45:02.940 | is one that I've remained close with.

00:45:05.140 | I did write for Thrasher under a different name

00:45:07.100 | while I was a postdoc to make some extra cash.

00:45:10.040 | You won't find those articles anywhere, I hope.

00:45:12.920 | They're not very good.

00:45:16.100 | And best skater, I was involved in it enough

00:45:19.460 | that this will only make sense

00:45:20.940 | to like three people in the audience,

00:45:22.340 | but I had decent heel flip.

00:45:24.100 | I could nollie better than I could ollie

00:45:25.620 | and I was never very good.

00:45:27.140 | And I just, oh, there were more skateboarders

00:45:28.640 | in the audience.

00:45:29.540 | What I will say though is you have to be very careful

00:45:31.340 | with skateboarders 'cause I don't wanna claim

00:45:32.960 | that I was any good.

00:45:33.980 | Any success that I had was out of sympathy of others

00:45:37.660 | for letting me hang around.

00:45:39.260 | It's a great community and it gave me great appreciation

00:45:42.020 | for indeed communities of kids

00:45:44.580 | that don't have structure and sports leagues and teams

00:45:49.460 | and all that kind of stuff.

00:45:50.620 | Nowadays, it's actually a much different landscape.

00:45:53.080 | And I have to also say what it's really amazing

00:45:56.400 | to see all the incredible girls and women skateboarders.

00:46:00.120 | Also, there were none.

00:46:01.420 | It's Olympic sport now for women and girls

00:46:04.340 | and it's an Olympic sport for boys and men too.

00:46:07.300 | So it's awesome to see that community.

00:46:10.020 | Okay, what are your favorite brain hacks

00:46:11.820 | for doing hard things ranging from cold exposure

00:46:14.020 | to getting through selection?

00:46:16.180 | Hobie Darling, thanks for the question.

00:46:17.940 | Yeah, hard things.

00:46:21.460 | Well, I'll be honest.

00:46:23.020 | I learned how to hack into my adrenaline system

00:46:25.500 | a long time ago through the worst possible mechanism,

00:46:27.880 | which is that I would set up battles in my mind.

00:46:31.100 | I would get into competition with people imagined or real,

00:46:36.020 | or I would get into states of fearing, shame

00:46:39.740 | and screwing up.

00:46:42.820 | So this is what a lot of people do, I think.

00:46:45.740 | You end up scaring yourself

00:46:46.860 | into trying to do the hard thing and it works.

00:46:49.760 | The problem is it feels rather like a downward spiral

00:46:54.760 | because those negative states of mind

00:46:58.940 | work to liberate adrenaline and get you in

00:47:01.540 | through hard things.

00:47:02.360 | So being as a kind of rebellious kid, resistance was,

00:47:05.180 | if someone told me I couldn't do something,

00:47:06.460 | I was like, yeah, try me, this kind of thing.

00:47:09.240 | And as I mentioned before, I wasn't crazy about authority.

00:47:12.380 | And so that was the method for a long time.

00:47:14.860 | And then I started reading Oliver Sacks' books

00:47:17.900 | and I started learning from people who seem to access things

00:47:21.820 | through this whole love thing.

00:47:23.580 | And I tried that love and kindness meditation thing

00:47:25.580 | and that didn't work.

00:47:26.860 | And what I started doing was I actually,

00:47:30.820 | I'll just tell you, before I came out here tonight

00:47:33.880 | and before I do anything challenging,

00:47:36.340 | I just actually like to imagine the people

00:47:39.300 | that have supported me.

00:47:40.580 | It's a weird tool, I don't think I've ever shared,

00:47:43.100 | I'm actually slightly embarrassed to share this out.

00:47:45.460 | 'Cause there are only two things that make me cry

00:47:47.160 | and that's talking about my bulldog

00:47:49.100 | and talking about my graduate advisor.

00:47:51.340 | And if I talk about it any longer, I'll probably cry.

00:47:53.700 | But I think about them a lot

00:47:55.860 | because they were kind of similar.

00:47:57.500 | (audience laughs)

00:47:59.200 | They were kind of ornery and they were hard on me

00:48:02.020 | and I adored them both.

00:48:03.860 | And so these days I try and think about people

00:48:06.460 | that really, that I love.

00:48:09.060 | And so I have been trying to do this whole like doing things

00:48:11.020 | from a place of love thing.

00:48:12.220 | And so for me, that's animals and people that I love.

00:48:15.780 | Okay, now I am better to move on.

00:48:19.500 | So, oh, thank you.

00:48:20.880 | Okay, they're telling me one more question.

00:48:24.780 | So I'm going to answer one more.

00:48:26.300 | What do I fear?

00:48:27.140 | How do you manage your fear, KB?

00:48:28.700 | Oh gosh, this is gonna turn into a,

00:48:31.660 | no one's gonna be satisfied until I cry.

00:48:33.500 | I get it, I get it.

00:48:36.660 | I do cry, but again, about the things I mentioned before.

00:48:40.340 | I realized something, by the way,

00:48:41.580 | we just recorded an episode on grief.

00:48:43.280 | It hasn't come out yet.

00:48:44.980 | Fascinating topic.

00:48:46.700 | I realized at one point, by the way,

00:48:48.820 | I'll just give this away,

00:48:49.660 | that I thought I was really sad about losing them.

00:48:54.220 | I thought I would tear up really easily

00:48:55.940 | because I was sad about them.

00:48:57.180 | But then I realized that this,

00:48:58.500 | gosh, I can't believe I'm gonna do this.

00:49:00.120 | But I realized that feeling that I was feeling

00:49:02.160 | is the exact same feeling of love

00:49:03.900 | that I had when they were alive.

00:49:05.100 | So grief is love, and when you look at the literature,

00:49:07.460 | it's basically that, but your brain is freaking out

00:49:10.500 | because that map of knowing where people are

00:49:12.940 | in space and time.

00:49:14.120 | Grief is basically a remapping of the space.

00:49:17.280 | Where are they?

00:49:18.300 | Time, when are they?

00:49:19.940 | And then this kind of abstract map representation

00:49:23.120 | that we call closeness.

00:49:24.620 | And grief is this process

00:49:26.340 | of like ripping ourselves off of that.

00:49:28.820 | So in any event, what do I fear?

00:49:30.260 | Talking about things like this.

00:49:31.960 | What do I fear?

00:49:34.700 | Um, quite honestly, my biggest fear,

00:49:39.700 | the thing that would just make me feel just horrible,

00:49:44.220 | is I fear letting down my friends.

00:49:46.460 | I have an amazing, I love my family and they're wonderful,

00:49:50.900 | but I have this incredible relationship to friendship.

00:49:55.120 | And I just, I adore my friends

00:49:57.500 | and I would sooner give up all my limbs

00:49:59.980 | and die before I would deliberately let them down.

00:50:02.940 | So there you go.

00:50:03.980 | That's what I fear most.

00:50:05.140 | (audience applauding)

00:50:08.300 | I also fear I've gone long

00:50:19.960 | and so my team has shut this down.

00:50:21.900 | I just want to just briefly, two things.

00:50:25.940 | First of all, I of course want to thank everyone

00:50:28.780 | for coming here tonight.

00:50:30.300 | I realize it's the middle of the week

00:50:31.660 | and to commit some hours of your life

00:50:33.540 | to thinking about these brain mechanisms.

00:50:36.580 | We got pretty nerdy there for a minute

00:50:38.580 | and hopefully the tools redeemed those

00:50:42.060 | who were only interested or mostly interested

00:50:45.440 | in practical tools, but hopefully some of the insights

00:50:48.420 | about how you work were useful as well.

00:50:50.500 | I do want to just make brief mention

00:50:52.060 | of the sponsors that made this possible

00:50:53.620 | 'cause they did make this possible

00:50:55.300 | and we made every effort to try and keep

00:50:57.260 | the ticket prices manageable for people

00:50:59.180 | and thanks to Inside Tracker and Momentus

00:51:01.500 | for making this possible.

00:51:02.820 | And then, of course, I would be completely remiss

00:51:05.740 | if I didn't say thank you for your interest in science.

00:51:09.060 | (audience applauding)

00:51:11.600 | Thank you.

00:51:12.440 | Thank you.

00:51:16.600 | Oh, wow, thank you.

00:51:18.900 | Thank you.

00:51:20.720 | Thank you.

00:51:21.560 | Thank you.

00:51:26.460 | Thanks so much.

00:51:28.100 | Everyone, be sure to get home safely tonight.

LIVE EVENT Q&A: Dr. Andrew Huberman Question & Answer in Portland, OR

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