LIVE EVENT Q&A: Dr. Andrew Huberman Question & Answer in Chicago, IL

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

00:00:02.280 | where we discuss science and science-based tools

00:00:04.880 | for everyday life.

00:00:05.900 | Recently, the Huberman Lab hosted a live event

00:00:11.180 | at the Chicago Theater in Chicago, Illinois.

00:00:13.900 | The event consisted of a lecture entitled

00:00:15.540 | The Brain-Body Contract,

00:00:16.800 | followed by a question and answer session.

00:00:19.120 | We wanted to make sure that the question and answer session

00:00:21.380 | was available to everybody,

00:00:22.780 | regardless of who could attend in person.

00:00:25.060 | I also want to make sure to thank the sponsors

00:00:27.020 | at that event, which were AG1 and 8Sleep.

00:00:30.440 | 8Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating,

00:00:33.000 | and sleep tracking capacity.

00:00:34.720 | One of the key things to getting a great night's sleep

00:00:36.880 | is to make sure that the temperature

00:00:38.240 | of your sleeping environment is correct.

00:00:39.980 | And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep,

00:00:42.560 | your body temperature actually has to drop

00:00:44.240 | by about one to three degrees.

00:00:45.920 | And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized,

00:00:49.060 | your body temperature actually has to increase

00:00:51.000 | by about one to three degrees.

00:00:52.700 | With 8Sleep, you can program the temperature

00:00:54.400 | of your sleeping environment in the beginning, middle,

00:00:56.680 | and end of your night.

00:00:57.960 | It has a number of other features,

00:00:59.120 | like tracking the amount of rapid eye movement

00:01:00.980 | and slow wave sleep that you get,

00:01:02.380 | things that are essential to really dialing in

00:01:04.600 | the perfect night's sleep for you.

00:01:06.160 | I've been sleeping on an 8Sleep mattress cover

00:01:07.760 | for well over two years now,

00:01:09.440 | and it has greatly improved my sleep.

00:01:11.340 | I fall asleep far more quickly.

00:01:13.120 | I wake up far less often in the middle of the night,

00:01:15.320 | and I wake up feeling far more refreshed than I ever did

00:01:18.160 | prior to using an 8Sleep mattress cover.

00:01:20.760 | If you'd like to try 8Sleep,

00:01:22.040 | you can go to 8sleep.com/huberman

00:01:24.680 | to save $150 off their pod three cover.

00:01:27.560 | 8Sleep currently ships to the USA, Canada, UK,

00:01:30.380 | select countries in the EU, and Australia.

00:01:32.460 | Again, that's 8sleep.com/huberman.

00:01:35.320 | AG1 is an all-in-one vitamin mineral probiotic drink.

00:01:39.060 | I've been taking AG1 since 2012,

00:01:41.700 | so I'm delighted that they sponsored the live event.

00:01:44.520 | The reason I started taking AG1

00:01:46.240 | and the reason I still drink AG1 once or twice a day

00:01:49.540 | is that it provides all of my foundational nutritional needs.

00:01:52.320 | That is, it provides insurance that I get the proper amounts

00:01:55.880 | of those vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and fiber

00:01:58.700 | to ensure optimal mental health,

00:02:00.760 | physical health, and performance.

00:02:02.920 | If you'd like to try AG1,

00:02:04.320 | you can go to drinkag1.com/huberman

00:02:07.600 | to claim a special offer.

00:02:09.140 | They're giving away five free travel packs

00:02:10.920 | plus a year supply of vitamin D3K2.

00:02:13.700 | Again, that's drinkag1.com/huberman

00:02:17.080 | to claim that special offer.

00:02:18.880 | And now without further ado,

00:02:20.680 | the question and answer session from our live event

00:02:23.160 | at the Chicago Theater in Chicago, Illinois.

00:02:25.960 | (upbeat music)

00:02:28.540 | I turned 70 soon.

00:02:42.900 | What is your best advice to keep my brain healthy

00:02:44.640 | in old age?

00:02:45.480 | Terrific question.

00:02:46.940 | The advice I would give to you

00:02:48.240 | as somebody about to reach 70 is the same advice

00:02:51.060 | I give to anybody,

00:02:53.080 | which is that essentially all of the things

00:02:55.760 | that improve cardiovascular health

00:02:58.120 | and perfusion of your bodily tissues

00:03:00.840 | are going to improve functionality of the brain.

00:03:05.540 | Because of course, the brain as a rich consumer of fuel

00:03:10.540 | requires very good portals to deliver those fuels

00:03:15.760 | and that capillaries, microcapillaries and arteries

00:03:18.540 | and so forth need to be clean and clear.

00:03:20.280 | That's the big one.

00:03:21.120 | This is why I think the prescription now

00:03:23.800 | is generally accepted.

00:03:25.780 | And here I'm borrowing from my friend Peter Attia,

00:03:27.720 | but about 150 or maybe as much as 200 minutes

00:03:31.000 | of so-called zone two cardio per week movement

00:03:34.040 | that you can just barely carry out a conversation

00:03:36.440 | is going to be very useful.

00:03:38.960 | One thing that's often not discussed

00:03:40.280 | is that load bearing exercise of some sort

00:03:42.360 | is going to be better provided your body can tolerate it,

00:03:44.640 | but you should do something that you can do consistently

00:03:47.520 | over those long durations without injuring yourself.

00:03:51.620 | But there's a very interesting literature

00:03:53.360 | about how load bearing movements

00:03:56.580 | actually generate the release of hormones,

00:03:58.480 | yes, hormones from bone

00:04:00.200 | that actually cross the blood brain barrier

00:04:02.100 | and may influence health of neurons in brain areas

00:04:06.100 | such as the hippocampus.

00:04:07.200 | And there I'm extending from preclinical data

00:04:09.720 | in animals to humans,

00:04:10.980 | but there's some human data starting to emerge

00:04:13.680 | that that's true.

00:04:14.520 | Also true, and there's a wonderful paper out

00:04:16.880 | just today or yesterday from Dr. Andy Galpin's lab

00:04:21.120 | and collaborators talking about how

00:04:23.980 | if you look at cognitive health,

00:04:25.460 | it's highly correlated with things that relate to strength.

00:04:29.240 | And that is not to say that you should just do

00:04:30.900 | strength training exercise,

00:04:32.080 | but we know that all people, truly all people

00:04:35.520 | should be doing some sort of resistance training

00:04:37.380 | two or three times per week.

00:04:39.080 | And we know that grip strength

00:04:40.560 | and increasing asymmetry in grip strength

00:04:43.160 | between the two hands is one of the indicators

00:04:46.440 | of deficits in control from the brain out to the periphery

00:04:50.420 | and it's correlated with cognitive decline.

00:04:52.320 | There's also some interesting data

00:04:54.360 | about how when the feet become floppy and kind of flaccid

00:04:58.360 | or the lack of ability to extend one's toes.

00:05:01.400 | I'm still working, I've been wearing this toe spreader thing.

00:05:03.720 | Has anyone tried those?

00:05:04.560 | Those hurt, those hurt.

00:05:06.240 | I broke this foot a bunch of times,

00:05:07.560 | but I'll tell you, when you get better

00:05:08.840 | at spreading your toes, it's really exciting.

00:05:10.920 | And it's really exciting for several reasons.

00:05:13.680 | It's really exciting 'cause there's more stability

00:05:15.240 | in your feet, you can run and move

00:05:16.600 | and do things better without pain.

00:05:18.320 | But in addition to that, believe it or not,

00:05:20.520 | just as one of the first things that they're gonna do

00:05:22.160 | when you come into this world

00:05:23.040 | is scrape the bottom of your foot

00:05:24.240 | and look for the Babinski reflex,

00:05:25.640 | which is a neural transmission reflex, as all reflexes are.

00:05:30.500 | But it's testing essentially the health

00:05:34.080 | of the nervous system that over time,

00:05:37.600 | again, there are many correlates of dementia,

00:05:39.280 | many, many correlates of dementia,

00:05:40.680 | but an inability to finally control the extremities

00:05:44.040 | is certainly one of them.

00:05:45.120 | So strength training, cardiovascular training,

00:05:47.800 | these are kind of stereotyped answers for your question,

00:05:52.280 | and yet those are really the prime movers

00:05:54.680 | against cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease.

00:05:57.880 | And then of course, there's, you know,

00:06:00.180 | I'd be remiss if I didn't throw in something

00:06:01.860 | that was a little bit more edgy 'cause that's what I do.

00:06:04.660 | You know, there are interesting data about the use of drugs

00:06:09.840 | to increase acetylcholine transmission, right?

00:06:12.120 | I mean, I was visiting a Nobel Prize winner at Columbia

00:06:16.320 | to learn about his incredible work some years ago

00:06:19.060 | and saw that he chewed no fewer

00:06:20.660 | than five pieces of Nicorette gum,

00:06:22.120 | something I don't recommend, during this short meeting.

00:06:25.560 | And I said, "What is this all about?"

00:06:27.520 | He said, "Well, you know, I don't smoke anymore

00:06:29.140 | "because I don't want lung cancer."

00:06:30.360 | But, you know, he said, "Nicotine is protective

00:06:34.100 | "against Parkinson's and Alzheimer's."

00:06:35.880 | I was like, "How can that be?"

00:06:36.940 | And he said, "Well, you know, it decreases neuromodulation.

00:06:40.380 | "Dopamine and acetylcholine correlated

00:06:42.020 | "with cognitive decline, keeping your brain sharp,"

00:06:44.060 | and so on and so forth.

00:06:45.260 | So I'm not encouraging people to take nicotine.

00:06:47.740 | It increases blood pressure, vasoconstriction.

00:06:51.000 | But it's an interesting consideration.

00:06:53.060 | You know, some of the emerging cholinergic

00:06:55.100 | and dopaminergic drugs, the ways to increase

00:06:58.780 | acetylcholine and dopamine are certainly intriguing.

00:07:01.500 | And I won't tell you who that person is,

00:07:03.020 | but his name is Richard Axel.

00:07:04.540 | Next question, yeah.

00:07:06.880 | "How can I optimize sleep while working

00:07:08.660 | "24-hour shifts as a firefighter?

00:07:10.880 | "24 hours on, 48 hours off."

00:07:13.260 | Okay, and this probably also pertains to new parents,

00:07:17.440 | and it probably also pertains to anyone

00:07:19.560 | that's going through a particularly stressful time

00:07:22.280 | where you're micro-awaking throughout the night,

00:07:24.240 | so not just firefighters.

00:07:25.640 | So what do we know?

00:07:26.480 | We know, based on really good data,

00:07:29.920 | that shift work is bad for us.

00:07:31.600 | It's just bad.

00:07:32.840 | We're a diurnal species.

00:07:34.400 | We're not nocturnal, but thank you, thank you,

00:07:37.520 | thank you, shift workers, because you essentially

00:07:40.200 | keep us all safe and make the world go round.

00:07:42.120 | And so we need you, and we want you healthy.

00:07:45.840 | So one of the main things is that you can

00:07:48.900 | make sure that you stay on the same sleep-wake schedule,

00:07:52.560 | excuse me, for at least two weeks.

00:07:55.000 | It's the swing shift that's really the worst.

00:07:59.540 | You can tell your boss I said that.

00:08:02.600 | And if they won't agree, and you're doing this

00:08:05.080 | 24 hour on, 24 hour off, there are a couple of things

00:08:07.640 | that are really important.

00:08:08.720 | First of all, the main way to wake up your nervous system,

00:08:11.860 | even though it might not feel like a triple espresso,

00:08:15.300 | is going to be that light exposure to the eyes.

00:08:19.100 | And if you can't get it from sunlight,

00:08:20.440 | it's going to be from any bright artificial light.

00:08:23.840 | I'm not a huge proponent of the daylight simulators.

00:08:27.040 | They're very expensive.

00:08:28.000 | You can simply buy a 900 lux LED far more inexpensively.

00:08:32.120 | I don't have any relationship to any company

00:08:33.680 | that sells these, but you can find them on Amazon

00:08:36.280 | or wherever you happen to prefer to purchase things.

00:08:38.880 | Or you can just get really close to a bright light

00:08:42.880 | anytime you're trying to wake up,

00:08:44.280 | even if you don't feel that it helps you wake up very much,

00:08:47.080 | mostly for the melatonin suppression,

00:08:49.120 | 'cause bright light will very acutely suppress melatonin.

00:08:51.960 | And then the real question from shift workers

00:08:54.200 | always seems to be, should I catch up on sleep,

00:08:57.080 | or is that going to be problematic?

00:08:58.760 | Should I just stay up into the next cycle?

00:09:00.840 | And the answer there is a little bit nuanced,

00:09:03.280 | but the best answer I can give across the board

00:09:05.920 | is if this is a pattern that you're going to be in regularly

00:09:09.540 | over, say, months or years,

00:09:11.400 | then get whatever sleep you can.

00:09:14.140 | Get whatever sleep you can.

00:09:15.260 | If it's something that you're doing somewhat acutely,

00:09:17.560 | like you're traveling to Europe

00:09:18.920 | and you're just gonna force yourselves

00:09:20.100 | to stay up a day and a half,

00:09:21.800 | then in that case, I would say,

00:09:24.800 | no need to get the maximum amount of sleep.

00:09:28.320 | Just try and stay with the local schedule.

00:09:30.280 | We have an entire episode about shift work

00:09:33.060 | that somehow maybe didn't get as much recognition

00:09:37.460 | as it should have for shift workers,

00:09:39.560 | and we'll try and get it out in better form.

00:09:41.060 | We don't always succeed in top-carting things

00:09:43.840 | in a way that gets them out to the most people.

00:09:45.940 | One thing I will say is an opportunity to announce

00:09:48.320 | that our website, HebrewnLab.com, is completely revamped,

00:09:51.560 | so it's highly searchable.

00:09:52.640 | It will take you to exact timestamps,

00:09:54.600 | and now you can segregate out timestamps

00:09:58.400 | from newsletters, from all this stuff,

00:10:00.000 | so thanks to a lot of effort by my amazing team,

00:10:03.000 | you can now navigate that site to real precision.

00:10:06.520 | So if you wanna say ADHD, Adderall, kids, yes, no,

00:10:10.760 | for instance, it will take you to precise timestamps

00:10:13.820 | that will address those issues.

00:10:15.720 | Next question, please.

00:10:17.560 | How does hypnosis therapy work?

00:10:19.220 | Well, this is a very interesting topic to me

00:10:22.880 | because my colleague, associate chair of psychiatry

00:10:26.520 | at Stanford, David Spiegel, is a world expert in hypnosis

00:10:31.520 | and its neural underpinnings and its use

00:10:34.360 | for clinical applications.

00:10:36.160 | His father was a hypnotist, also a psychiatrist,

00:10:39.760 | and when people hear hypnotism,

00:10:43.120 | they think of stage hypnotism and being up on stage

00:10:46.800 | and doing things you don't want to in front of other people,

00:10:49.020 | but really, when we're talking about clinical applications

00:10:52.060 | or wellness applications of hypnosis,

00:10:54.580 | we're talking about self-directed hypnosis.

00:10:56.780 | I really wish there was a better name

00:10:58.500 | because I don't think hypnosis is going to advance

00:11:00.940 | very far as a field, frankly,

00:11:02.240 | because everyone thinks hypnosis,

00:11:04.400 | and it would be like if psychedelics

00:11:07.120 | were just called drugs, right?

00:11:09.500 | We were taught in the '80s that drugs are bad

00:11:12.400 | and that your brain on drugs looks like an omelet

00:11:14.620 | and that's bad, and if you like omelets,

00:11:17.100 | if they're still bad, and drugs of abuse are bad,

00:11:21.260 | and actually, I hope we can talk briefly

00:11:23.300 | about psychedelics at some point because I do think

00:11:25.020 | there's a little bit of a runaway train

00:11:26.400 | around the topic of psychedelics now.

00:11:28.000 | I think we need to be very careful

00:11:29.740 | how we approach that entire landscape,

00:11:32.700 | but hypnosis essentially works by allowing someone

00:11:36.200 | to place their own brain into this very unique state.

00:11:39.300 | Earlier, we were talking about neuroplasticity,

00:11:41.260 | and we talked about the fact that neuroplasticity

00:11:44.840 | involves intense focus followed by deep rest

00:11:48.160 | in the form of deep sleep or non-sleep deep rest,

00:11:50.260 | maybe even Rick Rubin-ing it

00:11:51.980 | and just kind of like laying there.

00:11:53.940 | Hypnosis is different because hypnosis is in a state

00:11:58.940 | in which your focus is very narrow,

00:12:03.060 | the context is very narrow, but you're very, very relaxed.

00:12:06.980 | So maybe the Rubin example of being brain active

00:12:09.860 | and body very still is a bit more like hypnosis, to be fair.

00:12:14.860 | Why would it be the case that David Spiegel and his dad

00:12:19.060 | have literally a tool that is approved by the

00:12:22.380 | psychiatric associate,

00:12:24.700 | the major American Psychiatric Association,

00:12:27.360 | where they can figure out how hypnotizable you are

00:12:29.700 | by having you look up and try and close your eyelids

00:12:32.220 | while continuing to look up,

00:12:33.260 | the so-called Spiegel Eye Roll Test.

00:12:34.900 | Sounds pretty wacky, right?

00:12:36.380 | This is like TikTok level wacky.

00:12:38.520 | Well, the reason is you have cranial nerves,

00:12:41.380 | so they sit more or less near your neck,

00:12:43.820 | that allow you to direct your focus, your eyes upward,

00:12:47.380 | and then you have cranial nerves that have your eyes go down

00:12:50.100 | and the cranial nerves that drive your eyes up

00:12:54.060 | are associated with alertness and eyes open, no surprise,

00:12:57.820 | and the cranial nerves that are associated with

00:13:00.340 | pointing your eyes down and closing your eyelids

00:13:02.360 | are associated with what?

00:13:03.680 | With drowsiness, sleep, and lack of alertness.

00:13:05.740 | There's sort of a push-pull in the autonomic nervous system.

00:13:08.780 | And Spiegel, Spiegel's daddy and him figured out,

00:13:13.780 | 'cause they're geniuses,

00:13:16.000 | that if somebody can maintain upward gaze

00:13:18.740 | while closing their eyelids, two things happen.

00:13:20.780 | One, you'll see the whites of their eyes,

00:13:22.720 | and it's pretty creepy.

00:13:24.420 | Two, that means they're highly hypnotizable

00:13:26.720 | because that is a reflection of the probability

00:13:29.740 | that they can enter a brain state

00:13:31.340 | in which they are both very awake and very relaxed.

00:13:35.340 | Pretty cool.

00:13:36.540 | Now, if that sounds kind of wacky

00:13:38.260 | 'cause you're just looking at the periphery,

00:13:39.520 | keep in mind that one of the primary entry points

00:13:42.520 | for diagnosing concussion is to shine a light in one eye

00:13:46.780 | and have that pupil constrict

00:13:48.500 | and then see whether or not the other pupil constricts,

00:13:51.060 | the so-called consensual or pupillary reflex.

00:13:54.140 | Although technically,

00:13:54.980 | and I've been bothered by this from day one,

00:13:57.040 | it should be called the non-consensual pupil reflex

00:13:59.880 | 'cause the other eye doesn't have a choice

00:14:01.860 | if everything's working.

00:14:03.180 | (audience laughing)

00:14:06.220 | In any case, if you have a hard hit to the head,

00:14:10.220 | you'll see that you shine light in one eye,

00:14:11.660 | the pupil constricts in the other one,

00:14:13.080 | stays really dilated and then you go,

00:14:14.460 | okay, get this person in the emergency room

00:14:17.200 | because there's been a severing of the connections

00:14:18.840 | between the two sides of the brain.

00:14:19.980 | So looking in the eyes and trying to deduce

00:14:22.820 | what might be happening more centrally

00:14:24.360 | within the caverns of the skull and the brain

00:14:26.980 | is not a new thing.

00:14:28.120 | It is a primary diagnostic tool in neurology.

00:14:31.080 | It's also how your parents knew that you were taking drugs

00:14:33.760 | when you came in the door

00:14:34.600 | 'cause your pupils were like that big.

00:14:37.260 | And that reflects a difference in autonomic arousal

00:14:40.920 | in basically stimulants as people dilate their pupils.

00:14:44.600 | This is also why the story about belladonna,

00:14:46.920 | people intentionally dilating their pupils

00:14:49.120 | to trick people into thinking

00:14:50.400 | that they were attracted to them.

00:14:52.120 | Fought about this one a lot too.

00:14:54.560 | It's like not a precursor to good relationship.

00:14:57.920 | It's like someone's using their physiology

00:15:00.320 | to pretend that they're attracted

00:15:01.640 | so the other person thinks that they're attracted

00:15:03.160 | so that they might become attracted.

00:15:04.440 | Anyway, it's a recipe for failure,

00:15:05.840 | almost as bad as most of the dating apps.

00:15:07.940 | Well, I wouldn't know I'm not on them,

00:15:09.000 | but from what I hear.

00:15:10.800 | Okay, so where were we?

00:15:13.520 | Hypnosis.

00:15:15.120 | When you are in a state of elevated attention

00:15:19.220 | but very relaxed, guess what?

00:15:21.220 | Neuroplasticity occurs much faster

00:15:23.640 | because you're essentially marrying the two states

00:15:26.380 | that are normally divorced

00:15:27.840 | which are heightened levels of attention first

00:15:30.760 | and then depressed.

00:15:31.780 | You're essentially putting the nervous system

00:15:33.880 | into a more, I wouldn't call it hyperplastic state,

00:15:36.440 | but a more plastic state.

00:15:37.720 | And for people that are highly hypnotizable,

00:15:40.320 | the success rates at, for instance,

00:15:43.800 | smoking cessation, pain relief are pretty impressive.

00:15:48.800 | Spiegel Lab has published a number of these.

00:15:50.560 | So I think self-hypnosis is a very interesting tool.

00:15:53.400 | I just hope that they rename it

00:15:54.900 | so that it stands a chance of getting off the ground.

00:15:57.640 | I mean, one of the things that you learn

00:15:58.720 | as a public-facing educator is that what things are called

00:16:03.240 | has a great impact on whether or not

00:16:05.280 | they achieve any kind of use in the world.

00:16:09.760 | Hence why I decided to swallow the difficult pill

00:16:13.600 | of partially renaming yoga nidra as non-sleep deep rest.

00:16:18.440 | I don't like to do that.

00:16:19.760 | Yoga nidra has more than a thousand year history,

00:16:22.240 | but it's when people hear yoga nidra,

00:16:24.400 | unless they are very open-minded, they hear magic carpet.

00:16:28.040 | They hear levitation.

00:16:29.260 | And it's unfortunate, and that's not how I feel,

00:16:31.160 | but for years I talked about yoga nidra, it's so cool.

00:16:33.240 | It's like sleep state, but it's like, yeah, yoga nidra, okay.

00:16:37.940 | But if you come from a culture

00:16:39.160 | where that's discussed, they're all about it.

00:16:41.280 | And so non-sleep deep rest, you know, I felt like,

00:16:44.240 | all right, leave my name out of it.

00:16:46.240 | You know, I'll be dead eventually.

00:16:47.560 | I mean, I'm in this line of advisors, right?

00:16:49.300 | I'm like approaching 50.

00:16:50.580 | I'm like, I'm winning in my lineage.

00:16:53.880 | But should I be fortunate enough to, you know,

00:16:56.300 | live past, you know, bullet cancer or car crash far enough,

00:17:01.160 | then, you know, NSDR hopefully will persist,

00:17:04.240 | and I don't need a piece of it.

00:17:05.600 | It's just the hope is that people will learn

00:17:07.060 | to put themselves into brain states that can be adaptive

00:17:09.300 | for them, so it'd be nice if someone could come up

00:17:11.700 | with something other than hypnosis.

00:17:13.480 | I think Spiegel would agree.

00:17:15.200 | Super interested in psychedelics as medicine,

00:17:17.640 | to be done with somebody with experience,

00:17:19.600 | worried about unlocking mental health conditions.

00:17:22.000 | Yeah, you should be.

00:17:23.400 | What does the research say, and what are your thoughts?

00:17:26.800 | Okay.

00:17:27.640 | Barbed wire question, we like that.

00:17:35.040 | Psychedelics, well, let's just back up a little bit

00:17:38.320 | and acknowledge one thing that's more important

00:17:41.800 | than psychedelics or anything else

00:17:44.640 | when it comes to rewiring the brain,

00:17:46.040 | which is that ultimately rewiring of the brain

00:17:49.980 | is about shifts in neuromodulators.

00:17:53.160 | Dopamine, serotonin, epinephrine,

00:17:54.560 | norepinephrine, acetylcholine.

00:17:56.660 | And it's no coincidence that, you know, SSRI,

00:18:00.760 | selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors,

00:18:02.800 | have been one of the major entry points

00:18:05.480 | for attempts to treat things like depression

00:18:08.140 | over the last 20, 30 years or more.

00:18:11.080 | When I was in college, there was,

00:18:12.680 | that's when the book Listening to Prozac came out.

00:18:14.400 | But prior to that, there's a long history of drugs,

00:18:17.760 | prescription drugs in that case,

00:18:19.560 | to change levels of neuromodulators like serotonin

00:18:22.320 | or acetylcholine or dopamine in an attempt

00:18:25.240 | to cure or treat a disease.

00:18:27.680 | But keep in mind, despite the varied success

00:18:30.800 | of SSRIs, a topic unto itself,

00:18:34.240 | that there's a strong belief,

00:18:36.040 | and there has been for a long time,

00:18:37.320 | that if SSRIs worked, it wasn't because

00:18:39.760 | the depressed brain is deficient in serotonin,

00:18:43.080 | but rather because increasing serotonin

00:18:44.960 | offered the opportunity to increase neuroplasticity.

00:18:48.240 | Right, so there's a different way of thinking about it.

00:18:50.760 | And that's a segue for saying that,

00:18:52.640 | when you say psychedelics, that's a broad category of drugs.

00:18:55.560 | Nowadays, people even lump ketamine into that,

00:18:58.200 | although technically it's not a psychedelic.

00:19:00.200 | But the sort of classic, if you will, psychedelics

00:19:02.560 | are LSD, lysergic acid diethylamide,

00:19:05.560 | and psilocybin, aka mushrooms,

00:19:08.400 | although it comes in other sources as well.

00:19:10.880 | The major effect of psilocybin

00:19:12.820 | is to stimulate a particular serotonin receptor,

00:19:16.040 | which has elevated density in particular brain areas.

00:19:20.200 | And indeed, there are many recent clinical trials, many.

00:19:25.060 | Let's just say 12 to 20 good-sized,

00:19:30.700 | clinical trials done in diverse locations on the planet,

00:19:35.440 | many at Johns Hopkins and UCSF, some in Switzerland,

00:19:39.500 | showing that enhancing, and here you notice

00:19:41.920 | I'm using the mechanistic language,

00:19:44.220 | enhancing the transmission of, the release of serotonin,

00:19:47.760 | and activating particular serotonin receptors

00:19:51.140 | leads to an opportunity for more, what, neuroplasticity.

00:19:55.980 | Now, I say it that way, not to add a bunch of word soup,

00:20:00.300 | but because the real question is whether or not

00:20:03.320 | the experience that one has

00:20:05.480 | while under the influence of psychedelics

00:20:08.380 | is critical to the clinical outcome.

00:20:13.380 | Or a growing idea, just as a hypothesis

00:20:17.460 | I think is equally interesting,

00:20:18.660 | is that it's the serotonin itself,

00:20:21.860 | and that the things you see, the things you hear,

00:20:23.900 | the things you experience are not relevant.

00:20:26.840 | Now, I have some experience with psychedelics.

00:20:31.700 | I had a bad time on psychedelics as a teenager.

00:20:34.560 | I was also a pretty wayward youth,

00:20:35.900 | but I've had a bad trip on LSD.

00:20:38.660 | For years I was scared that people were gonna dose me

00:20:40.660 | with LSD after that, it was so bad.

00:20:43.480 | I think across the board we can say kids doing psychedelics

00:20:47.060 | just seems like a bad idea.

00:20:48.220 | Their brains are already hyperplastic.

00:20:50.160 | If you have a predisposition to bipolar type issues

00:20:55.160 | or schizophrenia, it can exacerbate those issues.

00:21:00.240 | And certainly, certainly, certainly,

00:21:01.820 | if you don't have adequate support

00:21:04.280 | in the form of somebody that can guide you

00:21:05.680 | through the sessions, as well as the pre-sessions

00:21:08.040 | which are not done with psychedelics,

00:21:10.360 | as well as the so-called integration afterwards,

00:21:12.960 | it can be a really slippery slope.

00:21:15.120 | I know examples of people really suffering

00:21:17.840 | in the aftermath of psychedelic journeys.

00:21:19.640 | Now, there are a few interesting points as well,

00:21:21.720 | and it wouldn't be fair if I didn't say that several,

00:21:25.160 | if not many, individuals who have had so-called

00:21:29.640 | treatment-resistant depression,

00:21:31.100 | at least in these clinical trials,

00:21:32.320 | have reported feeling far better after psilocybin therapy,

00:21:37.200 | but that psilocybin therapy was done

00:21:39.080 | with several pre-sessions, then the psychedelic sessions,

00:21:43.040 | then several after sessions,

00:21:44.400 | and it's not always the case that things turn out well.

00:21:46.560 | So I think it's early days.

00:21:49.200 | What is interesting, and I think important,

00:21:51.200 | is to recognize that psilocybin,

00:21:53.860 | and the structure of psilocybin,

00:21:55.160 | is very similar to serotonin itself, very similar,

00:21:59.840 | but it activates particular receptors.

00:22:01.560 | A lot of people don't realize

00:22:02.480 | how similar to serotonin it is.

00:22:04.120 | And that microdosing psilocybin,

00:22:06.720 | I should say the data on microdosing psilocybin,

00:22:08.940 | something that's increasingly popular,

00:22:11.200 | is not particularly compelling.

00:22:14.060 | It's not clear what it does.

00:22:16.900 | It's not clear if it's of any use.

00:22:20.780 | And I think the danger here is that we end up

00:22:22.420 | in a situation as we did with, frankly, with cannabis.

00:22:25.260 | And by the way, I'm not somebody who demonizes cannabis.

00:22:27.620 | I think it has its uses for certain people,

00:22:30.040 | but very high THC concentration in cannabis

00:22:32.260 | can be a problem, especially with people

00:22:34.420 | that have a predisposition of psychosis.

00:22:36.180 | And anyone that tells you that cannabis isn't addictive,

00:22:39.220 | just say, great, don't smoke weed for a week.

00:22:42.320 | Let's see how you do.

00:22:43.380 | Yeah.

00:22:45.120 | Let's go on a plane trip together, all right?

00:22:47.400 | And how are you sleeping?

00:22:48.900 | And so I think the chronic cannabis users

00:22:53.220 | are starting to take note of some of the issues it causes.

00:22:55.480 | But again, there are some clinical applications.

00:22:58.320 | Now, when it comes to the high-speed trained psychedelics,

00:23:02.120 | like DMT, that's far less data available there.

00:23:06.920 | And then MDMA-assisted psychotherapy

00:23:09.200 | for the treatment of PTSD,

00:23:10.360 | they're the data I think are more robust,

00:23:12.400 | and I think we're likely to see legalization

00:23:14.360 | or at least decriminalization in the next few years,

00:23:17.240 | but keep in mind that MDMA is methylenedioxymethamphetamine.

00:23:22.240 | So for people that like dopaminergic states,

00:23:26.720 | it's a particularly compelling state to be in,

00:23:28.680 | so much so that they could overindulge in MDMA,

00:23:31.240 | and then there's the issues of purity,

00:23:32.620 | and I could do a five-hour podcast on this right now.

00:23:35.280 | So I think the important point is approach with caution.

00:23:38.360 | Kids, absolutely not.

00:23:41.160 | And I think it's an exciting landscape, very exciting,

00:23:45.120 | and whereas a discussion like the one we just had

00:23:48.440 | would have gotten me fired a few years ago.

00:23:51.900 | I mean, Stanford has big programs now,

00:23:53.920 | a lot of philanthropy, federal grants,

00:23:55.600 | and many laboratories focused on the study of psychedelics.

00:23:59.680 | So I would say stay tuned,

00:24:02.840 | but keep in mind that increasing neuromodulator levels

00:24:06.140 | vary acutely, whether or not it's with a prescription drug

00:24:09.080 | or whether or not it's with psychedelics is really

00:24:11.680 | what lies at the heart of the recovery,

00:24:15.000 | the potential recovery, I should say,

00:24:16.560 | or the negative effects that happen to occur

00:24:19.240 | in anyone that embarks on the psychedelic journey.

00:24:22.840 | Do people who meditate need less sleep

00:24:24.520 | than people who don't?

00:24:26.400 | Oh, that's interesting.

00:24:28.900 | Well, we know that from a study by Wendy Suzuki,

00:24:32.320 | who I believe, if NYU made the right choice,

00:24:35.980 | and I think they did, is now the dean of arts and sciences

00:24:38.880 | at NYU, she ran a memory lab for a long time.

00:24:41.360 | She has data showing that even 10, I think it's 13,

00:24:45.720 | but as little as 10 minutes of meditation,

00:24:48.780 | supposed to be sitting still, breathing,

00:24:51.240 | focusing on your breathing, directing one's attention

00:24:53.800 | to third eye center, et cetera.

00:24:55.780 | We don't have a third eye.

00:24:57.400 | The pineal is thought to be the third eye,

00:24:58.900 | but I don't know why.

00:25:00.960 | It's a light-sensitive tissue deep in the brain,

00:25:03.060 | but maybe that's why they call it the third eye,

00:25:04.440 | but in any case, that type of practice has been shown

00:25:07.200 | to increase memory focus, AKA learning,

00:25:11.320 | but there's some interesting footnotes in those papers

00:25:14.720 | which point to the fact that when people meditate

00:25:16.720 | too close to bedtime, oftentimes they have trouble sleeping

00:25:19.960 | because basically meditation is a focusing exercise.

00:25:24.280 | It's a perceptual exercise.

00:25:26.000 | I don't think meditation is anything mystical.

00:25:27.920 | It's a self-directed shift in your perception to what?

00:25:31.080 | To your interoception, to your internal state,

00:25:33.560 | as opposed to anything beyond the confines of your skin.

00:25:36.000 | There's nothing mystical about that,

00:25:37.960 | and then in that state, your brain starts to generate

00:25:41.880 | patterns of activity that are distinct from when you're

00:25:43.960 | sharing your attention between what's going on internally

00:25:46.440 | and what's happening out in the world, right?

00:25:49.240 | I think we need to demystify what people have cloaked

00:25:51.960 | as mystical, and when I say cloaked, I don't think that

00:25:54.680 | the people that meditate for thousands of years

00:25:57.400 | thought that there was anything mystical about it,

00:26:00.960 | but sometimes what we experience there can feel mystical,

00:26:04.260 | so if you have trouble sleeping,

00:26:06.100 | I recommend doing some sort of non-sleep deep rest practice

00:26:10.380 | like NSDR, aka yoga nidra, although those are different.

00:26:14.500 | NSDR generally lacks the intention piece,

00:26:18.940 | and the ones that I put in the world,

00:26:22.840 | we've stripped away the intentions,

00:26:24.120 | and we've stripped away any kind of language

00:26:26.060 | that would make you think that there was some sort of,

00:26:30.520 | let's just say like cultural aspect to it,

00:26:33.920 | which again is admittedly a bit unfair

00:26:37.040 | to the origin practice of yoga nidra,

00:26:38.840 | but the problem again is that in yoga nidra,

00:26:41.120 | you're gonna be doing intentions and hearing language

00:26:43.140 | that for some people, not all might divorce you

00:26:45.800 | from the wish to do it.

00:26:48.320 | In any case, non-sleep deep rest done at any time of day,

00:26:52.400 | but especially if you fall asleep in the middle of the night

00:26:54.640 | is going to be useful for helping you fall back asleep,

00:26:56.560 | whereas meditation again is going to enhance

00:26:58.660 | your level of focus, so I don't think it's a good practice

00:27:03.520 | if you have trouble sleeping.

00:27:05.040 | Now, to finally answer your question,

00:27:07.000 | if you meditate, can you afford to sleep less?

00:27:10.520 | My friend Matt Walker would say no.

00:27:12.920 | However, many of us can't sleep as much as we want to,

00:27:16.260 | and many of us are not like Matt,

00:27:17.900 | where we can wake up without an alarm clock.

00:27:20.360 | Like, I'll just keep sleeping and sleeping,

00:27:22.760 | unless I went to bed at like eight o'clock.

00:27:24.300 | This is actually interesting.

00:27:25.440 | There's an asymmetry to your sleep needs.

00:27:27.160 | If you go to bed, remember that old adage,

00:27:29.560 | you know, every hour before midnight is worth two after?

00:27:32.500 | Well, it turns out that for people

00:27:33.660 | that are meant to be early risers,

00:27:35.700 | going to bed at eight, you'll wake up

00:27:37.180 | at three or four feeling great.

00:27:38.580 | You go to bed at 11, you feel groggy,

00:27:40.940 | and there are good reasons to explain that.

00:27:43.080 | But Matt would say that you need your sleep, period.

00:27:47.500 | I'm more of the camp based on my read of the data,

00:27:50.080 | and yes, we are allowed to disagree and still be friends.

00:27:53.660 | It's allowed.

00:27:54.500 | In fact, Matt's going to do a series on sleep

00:27:58.840 | with our podcast, even though he has a terrific podcast

00:28:01.060 | of his own, where we maybe debate a little bit of this,

00:28:04.580 | that there are ways that you can at least replace

00:28:08.540 | the feeling of wakefulness that you would have lost

00:28:10.980 | if you don't sleep enough.

00:28:11.900 | And for me, really, that's why NSDR

00:28:13.960 | became such an attractive tool to do

00:28:17.080 | for 10 or 30 minutes each morning

00:28:18.800 | if I didn't sleep enough the night before.

00:28:20.960 | I first learned about yoga nidra,

00:28:22.500 | actually, at an addiction recovery center,

00:28:24.280 | trauma recovery center in Florida in 2017.

00:28:27.780 | I have a friend, a super talented trauma therapist

00:28:31.180 | who also treats addiction that I've sent

00:28:34.340 | many, many people to, and he has this kind of

00:28:37.140 | seemingly wizard ability to get people

00:28:41.620 | who have been addicts to not be addicts.

00:28:43.860 | And one of the tools he uses is yoga nidra every morning

00:28:48.860 | for 30 minutes and eventually an hour,

00:28:52.220 | which seems like a lot.

00:28:53.180 | But then he also has these people wake up very early,

00:28:56.820 | maybe an hour before they would normally wake up

00:28:59.900 | and go into that liminal state

00:29:01.560 | between sleep and wakefulness.

00:29:02.960 | Now, my experience is that 10 to 20 minutes

00:29:05.420 | of NSDR yoga nidra is sufficient to offset

00:29:08.980 | some sleep loss and allow at least me to function,

00:29:12.940 | and many people report the same.

00:29:14.380 | We have a study going with the sleep laboratory

00:29:17.020 | at Stanford to explore this in more depth.

00:29:18.860 | And what I can tell you, 'cause I'm involved

00:29:20.620 | in some of this work, is that there are several

00:29:22.980 | military units, because they have no opportunity

00:29:26.480 | to get sleep because they're working,

00:29:28.340 | that have to rely on tools like this

00:29:30.220 | in order to be able to function at their highest level.

00:29:33.940 | And I'm sure they will tell you, as I will,

00:29:36.060 | that they prefer to get eight to 10 hours of sleep,

00:29:38.980 | but guess what, they can't.

00:29:40.140 | And so I think that's an important takeaway

00:29:41.800 | is that we don't get to pick how much we sleep,

00:29:44.540 | unless you're gonna be completely neurotic

00:29:46.260 | about your sleep hygiene, which makes you

00:29:48.500 | kind of a less interesting person in life,

00:29:50.440 | is what I'm told.

00:29:52.380 | You know, going to bed at eight is great,

00:29:54.500 | like summer most of the time.

00:29:56.300 | But you gotta stay up every once in a while.

00:29:58.320 | I mean, after they released Chimp Empire on Netflix,

00:30:02.140 | I discovered that NSDR is a very valuable tool,

00:30:05.140 | because, and by the way, Chimp Empire and Succession

00:30:08.140 | have a lot of parallels, and if you watch one,

00:30:11.340 | I sort of, I interleave, Chimp Empire Succession,

00:30:14.060 | Chimp Empire Succession, and you start to realize,

00:30:15.640 | like, whoa, like, we're pretty similar.

00:30:18.500 | And then you look at the world differently, I promise.

00:30:22.920 | Your podcast has positively changed the lives

00:30:25.100 | of so many people, including me.

00:30:27.060 | How has it changed your life?

00:30:28.540 | Okay, wasn't expecting that one.

00:30:32.980 | Thank you, Samantha.

00:30:34.580 | Well, first of all, I mean,

00:30:36.500 | as this little 11-year-old told me,

00:30:39.100 | I mean, this is essentially what I've done my whole life.

00:30:43.540 | I'm a fairly private person.

00:30:45.100 | Believe it or not, I'm pretty introverted.

00:30:47.300 | I spend a lot of time alone.

00:30:48.700 | And I think that's required for me to,

00:30:52.820 | you know, I basically have four modes, four modes.

00:30:56.420 | One, I'm either readying myself through sleep

00:30:59.460 | and NSDR to do one of the other three modes.

00:31:06.060 | Maybe there's a fifth mode.

00:31:07.660 | Or I'm in one of these other three modes,

00:31:09.020 | which is I'm either foraging for information,

00:31:11.240 | organizing that information,

00:31:12.380 | or dispersing that information.

00:31:14.660 | Or getting ready to do it all over again.

00:31:17.380 | And then there's this relaxation vacation thing

00:31:19.480 | that they keep telling me about.

00:31:20.900 | But then I went to Italy, and then, like,

00:31:22.400 | Rick and I just hung out there.

00:31:24.580 | And it didn't feel like work.

00:31:28.000 | I also discovered some really great podcasts.

00:31:30.040 | I don't know, I think one of the coolest podcasts out there,

00:31:33.640 | if you like rock and roll, which I love,

00:31:36.060 | is History of 500 Songs by Andrew Hickey's podcast

00:31:39.860 | on rock and roll.

00:31:40.700 | I like the nerdy podcast.

00:31:41.520 | It's like a graduate education in rock and roll.

00:31:44.180 | It's so cool.

00:31:45.340 | And you'll learn a lot about music and history

00:31:49.040 | and the mobs involved and all that stuff.

00:31:50.860 | And from what I was told, Al Capone used to sit there.

00:31:53.540 | His exit was there.

00:31:54.780 | So it was weird, right?

00:31:58.100 | And he died of syphilis.

00:31:59.660 | So I don't know how I feel about all that.

00:32:02.420 | But they told me that.

00:32:03.720 | So I think the podcast has been wonderful

00:32:10.260 | as an opportunity to share things that I love.

00:32:12.660 | If I had my way, it would be more like this,

00:32:15.900 | although more of a dialogue, frankly.

00:32:18.340 | It's changed my understanding of what the world is like.

00:32:23.340 | I certainly get critique, and that's good.

00:32:29.360 | But again, I was raised by an iconoclast,

00:32:32.220 | in particular my postdoc advisor, Ben Barros,

00:32:34.840 | who unfortunately, as I mentioned, is dead

00:32:36.740 | 'cause I worked for him.

00:32:37.940 | But he really encouraged all of us in his lab,

00:32:43.420 | and often we were very close friends.

00:32:46.680 | I spent the last year of his life recording

00:32:48.760 | an interview with him.

00:32:49.600 | There's actually a documentary coming out about Ben.

00:32:51.880 | And then I'm gonna release the audio interviews with Ben,

00:32:56.120 | which he approved, by the way.

00:32:57.700 | And you'll get to realize that the history of what you see

00:33:01.300 | is often not what the dead person really did or said.

00:33:04.580 | It's gonna be fun.

00:33:05.460 | So I can't wait 'til they release this documentary,

00:33:07.220 | and then Ben gets to have his voice infused in.

00:33:10.240 | And it'll be a cool documentary, but as some of you know,

00:33:13.700 | that what appears to be and what was

00:33:15.860 | in the historical narrative is not necessarily

00:33:18.820 | what really happened, but that's just life.

00:33:21.460 | So I suppose the short answer is that I feel very honored

00:33:25.180 | with the opportunity, very, very honored.

00:33:27.420 | And it's a challenge at times.

00:33:32.320 | I suppose that the major challenges are when things

00:33:34.100 | are taken out of context, like little clips

00:33:36.900 | and things of that sort.

00:33:37.940 | Being misunderstood doesn't feel good, but look,

00:33:40.940 | at the end of the day, I feel like the luckiest person

00:33:44.740 | in the world because I get to spend my time learning.

00:33:48.500 | So it's either I'm foraging, I'm organizing,

00:33:51.320 | or I'm dispersing information that I also want

00:33:54.380 | and that I find incredibly useful, or if not that,

00:33:58.820 | then certainly informative and at times enchanting as well.

00:34:03.260 | So I try and focus on the positive,

00:34:05.100 | and I have a number of practices that help me do that.

00:34:08.480 | And I am somebody who engages on social media.

00:34:11.040 | I'm not a post and ghost kind of person.

00:34:12.940 | I want to understand.

00:34:15.020 | I think that cuttlefish are super interesting,

00:34:17.340 | but human beings are super interesting too.

00:34:19.340 | And I have a strong drive for mastery,

00:34:23.060 | but also I do have a strong sense of justice,

00:34:27.620 | and that can be problematic at times.

00:34:29.780 | I define justice as feeling like there's something

00:34:31.700 | for us to do about something.

00:34:34.120 | Like seeing something that upsets us or that excites us

00:34:36.500 | is great, but then if you have a strong sense of justice,

00:34:38.840 | you feel like there's something you need to do about it,

00:34:40.860 | and not everybody feels that.

00:34:42.420 | And then of course, a desire to understand.

00:34:44.780 | And I think for reasons very personal to me

00:34:47.500 | that relate mostly to just having a kind of

00:34:50.220 | incredible array of experiences in life,

00:34:52.820 | many of which were shocking, disturbing,

00:34:55.660 | exciting, enchanting, that I want to understand.

00:34:58.580 | And so it's changed things, but it's like,

00:35:03.580 | I don't know, I got one truck, one watch.

00:35:06.560 | I, you know, it's not to say that I don't care

00:35:09.300 | about having things, there are a few things I really love,

00:35:11.880 | but mostly I'm just thinking about the podcast

00:35:14.960 | we got to record on Monday, which is about willpower

00:35:17.600 | and tenacity, and if I don't stop myself,

00:35:19.280 | I'll give it right now.

00:35:20.540 | So what do you feel is the next big thing

00:35:23.180 | to come to the forefront in the health space?

00:35:25.300 | Thanks for this question.

00:35:26.620 | One is non-protein amino acids.

00:35:32.540 | I love these debates online because I know

00:35:35.240 | that there's something there.

00:35:36.740 | It's so cool, 'cause I grew up in seeing these debates,

00:35:39.800 | and you know there's something interesting there,

00:35:41.680 | because people are debating about it,

00:35:43.700 | but the debate isn't what's interesting.

00:35:45.660 | It's almost always the thing that people aren't talking

00:35:47.660 | about that's sure to surface at some point,

00:35:50.420 | and you know right now there's this obsession

00:35:52.460 | with like seed oils, it's like seed oils, seed oils,

00:35:55.100 | and I can't demonize seed oils.

00:35:56.660 | All the data say that if you separate out

00:35:58.780 | their caloric load, there's nothing inherently bad

00:36:01.260 | about seed oils, and et cetera.

00:36:02.920 | I don't know, it's still in emerging literature,

00:36:04.820 | but there was a scientist at Stanford, Ed Rubenstein,

00:36:10.500 | who passed away at a ripe old age,

00:36:13.600 | a brilliant scientist who talked about,

00:36:16.340 | and I had a lot of discussions with when I was a postdoc

00:36:18.840 | about non-protein amino acids.

00:36:21.280 | Turns out his son is a neuroscientist at UCSF.

00:36:24.040 | His other son's a physician at UCSF,

00:36:26.880 | so he's another one of these low-performing families,

00:36:29.480 | and all wonderful people, and you know,

00:36:35.680 | Ed had data that, you know, unlike a lot of animals

00:36:40.680 | like birds, there are certain amino acids

00:36:44.640 | which are non-protein amino acids that exist

00:36:47.620 | in fairly high density in seeds and nuts,

00:36:50.260 | which is not to say that seeds and nuts are bad, right?

00:36:53.220 | I had almonds this evening, okay, so please.

00:36:56.100 | But non-protein amino acids are similar enough

00:37:01.140 | to mammalian protein amino acids

00:37:06.140 | that if they are consumed in abundance,

00:37:09.940 | and perhaps especially in liquid form,

00:37:12.560 | that they may, again, may, 'cause this is about the future,

00:37:15.520 | this isn't about what we know, this is about where I think

00:37:17.540 | there's an interest and growing interest,

00:37:19.640 | they may be able to incorporate into certain proteins

00:37:22.640 | of our tissues of our body that potentially,

00:37:25.780 | Ed thought, could lead to misfolding of those proteins,

00:37:28.320 | and may explain certain forms of neurodegeneration

00:37:31.000 | and other neurocognitive challenges.

00:37:34.280 | So I think non-protein amino acids

00:37:36.020 | are going to be an important discussion.

00:37:37.900 | Now there are lots of non-protein amino acids

00:37:40.220 | that are not, that don't come from foods,

00:37:42.800 | but I think the discussion around non-protein amino acids

00:37:45.220 | from foods is going to be very interesting.

00:37:48.520 | So that's one area.

00:37:50.240 | The other area, and perhaps you picked up on this

00:37:52.200 | a little bit tonight, is that I like the nuts and bolts-y

00:37:54.560 | stuff around stress, neuroplasticity,

00:37:57.160 | but the high-level stuff, you know, I think,

00:38:00.860 | you know, the relationship between, you know,

00:38:04.740 | structured thought, abstract thought,

00:38:08.020 | I'm not interested in the free will discussion,

00:38:10.420 | I just feel like that's a career ender.

00:38:12.380 | I'm friends with Robert Sapolsky, and he's got a great book

00:38:15.380 | coming out about this, called Determined,

00:38:17.540 | so he obviously doesn't believe in free will,

00:38:19.220 | but he's far smarter than I ever could be,

00:38:21.520 | and it just feels like, I don't know that there's

00:38:25.140 | an end point with that one, but if anyone could find it,

00:38:28.020 | it would be Robert, he's oh so smart.

00:38:32.180 | But I think that the higher-level stuff,

00:38:36.380 | creativity, abstract reasoning and thought,

00:38:40.780 | defining and better understanding the different states

00:38:43.580 | that we can go into in waking, and I confess,

00:38:46.940 | without a hint of sheepishness about it,

00:38:50.360 | that I also think the notion of spirituality

00:38:53.900 | and the belief in things that are beyond our current

00:38:58.900 | and conscious understanding is super interesting.

00:39:01.860 | I think that, you know, as a species,

00:39:05.220 | we've been challenged and conflicted from go,

00:39:10.400 | at least that's what the historical scripture tells us,

00:39:14.460 | and that it's sort of inherent to our experience

00:39:16.700 | that life is challenging and perplexing,

00:39:19.740 | and also wonderful, and so I think a better understanding

00:39:23.300 | of how to navigate all that, I mean this like,

00:39:26.400 | this stuff in our skulls, except for the eyes,

00:39:28.680 | which by the way are two pieces of brain

00:39:30.580 | that are not in your skull, the retinas,

00:39:33.020 | I have to point that out.

00:39:34.260 | You know, it's tricky, and we're trying to use

00:39:38.420 | that very tissue to understand it,

00:39:41.220 | and so I'm intrigued by the possibility

00:39:44.540 | that there are certain aspects of self

00:39:47.220 | that maybe are not intended to be explored,

00:39:53.020 | because they are not really of us, right?

00:39:55.980 | Brains interacting with one another is an interesting area,

00:39:58.860 | certainly for scientific exploration,

00:40:00.440 | but I'm fascinated by and excited about the possibility

00:40:04.120 | that at some point, our species will both understand

00:40:08.180 | the mechanics of our emotions,

00:40:11.260 | mechanics of our thought process, creativity, and so on,

00:40:14.640 | but that we will also allow room for the stuff

00:40:17.560 | that we can't explain with science,

00:40:20.300 | and to allow room for that in our life experience,

00:40:24.260 | because I also believe that can be powerful,

00:40:26.820 | and while understanding things in great detail

00:40:30.380 | and putting mechanism and utility around that

00:40:33.320 | and applying that is wonderful,

00:40:35.320 | it's the stuff of my life, which is obvious,

00:40:40.320 | I also think that there's great value

00:40:42.860 | in not trying to control and understand everything

00:40:46.200 | and enjoying the mystery of things

00:40:48.800 | that are clearly greater than us.

00:40:51.500 | (audience applauding)

00:40:57.260 | How do you balance having fun

00:41:02.780 | with having such a rich knowledge and passion

00:41:04.920 | in neuroscience and optimization?

00:41:07.340 | Fun.

00:41:08.180 | People ask me, like, what do you do for fun?

00:41:11.580 | I think people think I do all the protocols.

00:41:14.140 | It's like, sure, I get my sunlight, I drink my water.

00:41:17.920 | I do them, but fun.

00:41:19.960 | I like learning, I do enjoy physical movement.

00:41:30.420 | I like learning.

00:41:31.980 | For me, it's the little things, I don't know.

00:41:36.420 | Maybe I'm weird, certainly, I've been told that.

00:41:40.860 | Like the other day, there was a frog in my swimming pool,

00:41:43.900 | and he was just like sitting there like,

00:41:45.740 | and I just like spent some time looking at him,

00:41:48.900 | back and forth, and then I had all sorts of ideas

00:41:52.360 | about like, what's he doing, and what's he thinking,

00:41:54.340 | and then I was thinking how Oliver Sacks used to spend time

00:41:59.040 | imagining experiencing life as a bat

00:42:02.360 | through only echolocation.

00:42:03.700 | He talked about this, and I thought,

00:42:06.360 | and why would he do that, right?

00:42:08.040 | And that's kind of cute.

00:42:09.020 | He's like a delightful old man, right?

00:42:11.200 | He had a 600-pound free weight squat,

00:42:12.980 | won the State of California squatting championship,

00:42:14.760 | but also like pretending he was a bat.

00:42:16.620 | He's a weird dude.

00:42:17.460 | Did methamphetamines, raced motorcycles,

00:42:20.380 | you know, like hung out with movie stars,

00:42:22.140 | but then also was like a recluse and liked rocks.

00:42:24.460 | Okay, that's a weird scientist.

00:42:27.100 | Been around a lot of those.

00:42:29.080 | But, you know, in discussions with people that knew him,

00:42:32.420 | I mean, that exercise of, and like seeing something

00:42:34.900 | he thought was cool, like a bat,

00:42:36.660 | you know, allowed him to also use theory of mind

00:42:40.540 | to kind of think, well, what would it be like

00:42:41.860 | to have locked-in syndrome and only be able to

00:42:44.260 | like blink your eyes to communicate?

00:42:46.400 | And gave him an incredible compassion and sensitivity

00:42:49.160 | for other people that then he transmuted

00:42:53.240 | into the form of like these wonderful books.

00:42:55.680 | So for me, fun is really about doing the things

00:42:58.880 | that I do systematically each day,

00:43:00.760 | but then when something excites me, I know that feeling.

00:43:04.320 | I know it physically in my body,

00:43:06.440 | and to just follow that trail, like a weirdo, right?

00:43:10.320 | Like a weirdo, just like Barris was a weird

00:43:12.520 | and Barbara Chapman was weird.

00:43:14.600 | And like, I think everybody's a little weird

00:43:16.720 | if you allow yourself to just see the things

00:43:18.800 | that you think are really cool.

00:43:20.080 | And there are a bunch of things that I think are really cool

00:43:22.060 | that enchant me that a bunch of other people love too.

00:43:25.400 | And I know that 'cause like I see,

00:43:27.700 | we're all watching that video or something like that.

00:43:30.360 | But I think for me, fun is in the practice

00:43:34.520 | of trying to stay open to like the little things.

00:43:38.800 | The little things that kids say are always delightful

00:43:41.640 | 'cause they're not filtering through all the bullshit

00:43:43.360 | that we filter our life experience through.

00:43:46.360 | But also just, yeah, I like reading and learning, exercising.

00:43:50.420 | I mean, I like to think I'm not a very wooden person,

00:43:54.140 | but at the same time, I mean, I didn't see the Barbie movie.

00:43:59.040 | No disrespect to Barbie, you know, I go to movies.

00:44:04.300 | I do that kind of thing.

00:44:05.320 | I don't know what else is there to do at some point,

00:44:08.680 | you know, what else is there to do?

00:44:11.800 | Anyway, I mean, I delight in certain things

00:44:15.640 | as you now know far too much about,

00:44:17.320 | but fun is a relative term.

00:44:20.060 | That was a hard question.

00:44:23.600 | (audience laughing)

00:44:27.000 | (audience applauding)

00:44:27.840 | Thank you.

00:44:28.660 | Thanks for the pass.

00:44:30.080 | - Thanks, man.

00:44:31.200 | - Do you believe time changes due to daylight savings time

00:44:33.800 | is worth a potential loss of productivity?

00:44:36.240 | Daylight saving times is anti-health.

00:44:38.480 | Okay, this is where I'll get like, it's just dumb.

00:44:41.720 | It's just dumb.

00:44:42.880 | It's just so dumb.

00:44:44.960 | It makes no sense.

00:44:45.880 | I mean, the director of the chronobiology unit

00:44:48.640 | at the National Institutes of Mental Health,

00:44:50.800 | my good friend, longtime friend and brilliant scientist,

00:44:53.320 | Samara Hattar will tell you, it's a stupid idea.

00:44:56.380 | It's anti-biology and increased car crashes,

00:44:59.740 | increased heart attacks, increased depression.

00:45:01.760 | It's just, it's like, kids don't like to wake up early.

00:45:04.520 | Anyway, parents don't like to wake up early,

00:45:06.080 | especially with kids that don't like to wake up early.

00:45:08.000 | It makes no sense.

00:45:09.200 | And then there's all these arguments about, you know,

00:45:12.040 | is it really about trying to truncate the late,

00:45:15.600 | you know, you want more light in the evening

00:45:17.440 | so there's less crime?

00:45:18.320 | Like, that's totally unsubstantiated.

00:45:20.160 | Like, it's completely unsubstantiated.

00:45:21.480 | So the daylight savings thing is just stupid.

00:45:24.280 | Basically, try and get as much light in your eyes,

00:45:26.360 | ideally, from sunlight early in the day.

00:45:28.440 | And by the way, if you're worried about cataract,

00:45:31.120 | that's a serious concern.

00:45:32.080 | After all, I have an appointment in ophthalmology.

00:45:33.720 | You know, cataract, macular degeneration, but guess what?

00:45:37.120 | The chair of ophthalmology from Stanford

00:45:39.600 | when he came on the podcast verified this.

00:45:41.640 | When the sun is low in the sky,

00:45:43.560 | you're not really at risk of that, right?

00:45:45.680 | So when the sun is overhead and you're like,

00:45:47.240 | you're beaming your eyes, like trying to get,

00:45:49.240 | yeah, it's a problem.

00:45:50.680 | But we're talking about viewing low solar angle sunlight

00:45:53.040 | in the morning and in the evening.

00:45:54.400 | And if there's clouds, do it anyway.

00:45:56.000 | In fact, do it longer.

00:45:56.840 | And if you can't do that,

00:45:57.880 | look at some artificial light inside.

00:46:00.440 | Daylight savings is just, it's just stupid.

00:46:03.440 | You know, you know.

00:46:06.080 | What happens here is as the night goes on,

00:46:08.160 | the amount of GABA in my brain starts to diminish

00:46:10.200 | and then I just kind of go to short form.

00:46:11.720 | We've thought about podcasting in the middle of the night.

00:46:13.680 | That's why when I went on Lex's podcast recently,

00:46:16.160 | the more recent one, he did it at eight o'clock at night

00:46:18.920 | and he cried.

00:46:19.960 | He made me cry.

00:46:20.920 | He didn't cry.

00:46:21.760 | He made me cry.

00:46:22.920 | I was so tired and then I can't think.

00:46:24.660 | And then he asked me about my dog

00:46:26.040 | and I'm talking about the dog.

00:46:27.040 | So, you know, his goal was to get me to cry.

00:46:29.700 | We have this friendship, you know.

00:46:31.920 | No, he's delightful.

00:46:34.040 | What should I as a 19-year-old college student

00:46:36.280 | be doing to maximize the years of neuroplasticity

00:46:38.620 | I have left?

00:46:39.460 | I get this question.

00:46:40.320 | I'm like, oh man, such a great question.

00:46:42.680 | Reese, well, I'm assuming, yeah.

00:46:44.860 | I don't know who you are, Reese, or what you're doing.

00:46:47.680 | But you're 19, so the cool thing is

00:46:49.960 | your brain is hyperplastic.

00:46:51.160 | Life is a psychedelic experience without psychedelics.

00:46:54.360 | Gosh, people always say, like,

00:46:58.080 | if you could go back to your 19-year-old self,

00:47:00.300 | what would you do?

00:47:01.140 | And that's a tricky one.

00:47:02.040 | There are movies about that, right?

00:47:03.840 | But, you know, I would definitely worry less.

00:47:08.840 | Yeah, I would worry less.

00:47:11.560 | I would have more fun.

00:47:13.300 | I would certainly, listen, I started latching on

00:47:19.400 | to practices and the understanding of science as a way.

00:47:22.280 | For me, it was kind of like, my world felt very unstable.

00:47:26.840 | And for me, it brought stability.

00:47:29.500 | But you want to avoid rigidity.

00:47:30.880 | So, you know, do you want to be the one 19-year-old

00:47:34.540 | who's like, oh, I got to get to sleep.

00:47:36.520 | You know, I got to go back to bed at 8.30 at night.

00:47:39.480 | Now, yeah, enjoy life.

00:47:40.960 | But I would say, when you're 19, learn how you learn.

00:47:45.960 | Learn how to focus, learn how to rest.

00:47:49.780 | Basically, you can stress and focus as much as you want,

00:47:52.240 | as long as you can still fall asleep at night

00:47:53.760 | and sleep well, and fall back asleep if you wake up.

00:47:56.760 | You know, we hear stress is bad, stress is good.

00:47:58.960 | Stress is bad, stress is good.

00:47:59.940 | Stress is bad, unless you're getting enough sleep,

00:48:02.840 | in which case, stress is called learning in life.

00:48:05.140 | Now, obviously, don't do anything dangerous.

00:48:06.600 | Avoid psychological and physical danger.

00:48:09.480 | But I think as a 19-year-old, I mean,

00:48:12.020 | my direct advice would be,

00:48:15.340 | have some cardiovascular activity you like,

00:48:17.900 | have some resistance training activity you like.

00:48:20.760 | Develop some sort of self-awareness practice,

00:48:23.000 | like journaling, could be meditation.

00:48:25.160 | Surround yourself with people that you like,

00:48:29.800 | avoid people you don't like.

00:48:31.820 | I mean, it sounds so straightforward,

00:48:33.340 | but then we can all look into our personal histories,

00:48:35.140 | and be like, well, I spent all this time

00:48:36.500 | trying to resolve this thing that, clearly,

00:48:38.140 | you didn't like them, it's simple.

00:48:39.960 | Like, you didn't like them.

00:48:40.980 | They weren't into cuttlefish or ferrets.

00:48:42.820 | You didn't like them.

00:48:43.660 | Wasn't your kind of person, right?

00:48:44.980 | And that's not a box you can check on the dating apps,

00:48:47.360 | they tell me, right?

00:48:49.340 | The ferret thing, I think it'd be a very,

00:48:51.480 | very small subset of people.

00:48:53.140 | I think, you know, the know thyself thing is huge.

00:48:57.880 | Learn to tap into that early feeling

00:49:00.900 | of like, this feels right, this doesn't feel right.

00:49:02.680 | Learn to be a bit of a rudder for yourself.

00:49:05.940 | And journal, I still have stacks of things

00:49:09.460 | that I wrote across the years, most of it is terrible.

00:49:12.560 | But you will find, if you go back,

00:49:14.240 | that you kinda knew better all along,

00:49:16.720 | even if you didn't do better all along.

00:49:18.940 | That voice in your head, don't do that, do that.

00:49:24.800 | This person's like, everyone else is crazy

00:49:26.660 | about this person, but not me.

00:49:28.780 | But this is like, you know,

00:49:30.380 | I don't wanna sound sentimental,

00:49:31.620 | but you have to find your heart, right?

00:49:35.360 | Or at least not lose it.

00:49:36.980 | You have to make sure that you're in touch

00:49:38.340 | with that piece of yourself that wasn't judging

00:49:41.540 | and just felt good.

00:49:42.740 | And as long as it's not something that's self-destructive,

00:49:44.700 | I think that's the most important thing.

00:49:46.100 | And then, yeah, have tools and practices in place

00:49:48.460 | because they work.

00:49:49.280 | And when you're 19 and your neuroplasticity

00:49:52.140 | is through the roof, you can do a lot less

00:49:54.820 | and get a lot more.

00:49:56.340 | But don't worry about hitting 25 and it all being over.

00:49:59.780 | Certainly, that's not the case.

00:50:01.580 | But you can cram in a lot early on.

00:50:03.900 | I still regret not learning an instrument.

00:50:06.780 | The data on people that learn an instrument

00:50:09.400 | even later in life, but certainly at 19,

00:50:11.660 | is that it greatly increases your ability

00:50:13.460 | to learn all sorts of things.

00:50:15.360 | So learn an instrument.

00:50:16.920 | How can we transform the American education system

00:50:19.200 | to be more effective?

00:50:20.620 | Oh.

00:50:21.460 | So in 10 seconds,

00:50:24.300 | (audience laughing)

00:50:27.300 | So when I'm in charge, no, I'm just kidding.

00:50:30.860 | A little while back, I did an interview

00:50:32.960 | with a major media outlet and they were very gracious.

00:50:35.820 | And then they said, like, what's next?

00:50:37.440 | And I was like, I'm gonna run for office.

00:50:39.260 | I was just like, you know, I was sort of,

00:50:42.040 | look, it's not out of the question,

00:50:43.220 | but frankly, I think that I'm so poorly suited for that.

00:50:46.580 | It's obvious.

00:50:48.260 | I'm so poorly suited for that.

00:50:49.900 | So it wasn't a joke, but it was, you know,

00:50:51.500 | I think as I spent some time afterwards,

00:50:53.020 | like, oh, I should really go talk to people

00:50:54.620 | who do that for a living.

00:50:55.820 | But I am very interested in potentially informing policy.

00:51:02.860 | If I were to ever be asked, I'd certainly respond.

00:51:06.220 | And my stance on this is, you know,

00:51:09.500 | much in the same vein as the podcast,

00:51:11.180 | because keep in mind the podcast,

00:51:12.300 | yes, Lex suggested I start one,

00:51:14.280 | but it was really during those days

00:51:17.860 | of the deep 2020, 2021 pandemic where,

00:51:22.580 | by the way, I wasn't allowed to talk about vaccines,

00:51:24.880 | so I didn't.

00:51:25.720 | And also I don't have any expertise in it,

00:51:27.180 | so I was not well suited to do it.

00:51:29.960 | But I also decided it's a topic

00:51:31.660 | that enough people are talking about.

00:51:32.860 | So my response in life and in general,

00:51:35.180 | when people say, what about something?

00:51:37.100 | Is I like, well, I've got a lot of opinions about that,

00:51:39.260 | but this isn't the venue, okay.

00:51:41.120 | But during the pandemic,

00:51:43.200 | I realized there was a lot of circadian disruption,

00:51:46.820 | anxiety, stress, a bunch of things happening

00:51:49.320 | with visual systems and biological systems

00:51:51.480 | that I felt there were tools

00:51:53.440 | that people could perhaps benefit from.

00:51:55.600 | So I just started putting that information into the world,

00:51:57.520 | and I was really surprised, really surprised,

00:52:00.740 | that people that I knew from the neuroscience community,

00:52:03.560 | for instance, at NIMH or, you know,

00:52:07.340 | in government positions weren't talking about this stuff,

00:52:10.660 | so I just kept doing it.

00:52:11.940 | And I think that it made clear to me

00:52:18.140 | that the education system is not one thing.

00:52:21.820 | It's tough, especially when talking about kids,

00:52:23.860 | like what to do is a tricky thing,

00:52:27.740 | but that the education system, in my mind,

00:52:30.700 | should at least involve some sort of discussion early on

00:52:34.860 | about this thing called the brain,

00:52:37.120 | this thing called the body, how they work,

00:52:39.420 | how you can do certain things

00:52:41.020 | to modulate your stress level, your sleep,

00:52:43.980 | the importance of, not just the importance of sleep

00:52:46.460 | and nutrition and avoiding social isolation

00:52:49.140 | and all these important things,

00:52:50.300 | but giving people some levers and knobs

00:52:53.360 | to maneuver within themselves,

00:52:56.260 | and zero-cost tools as a way to do that

00:52:59.500 | that transcend socioeconomic boundaries,

00:53:03.380 | ideally transcend language as well,

00:53:05.380 | because we're not just talking about the United States,

00:53:07.460 | and of course, within the United States,

00:53:08.820 | there are many different cultures

00:53:10.420 | speaking different languages,

00:53:11.380 | and maybe AI will soon allow us to put out the podcast

00:53:14.940 | into a bunch of different languages, I think it will.

00:53:17.980 | So I think that the education system should start,

00:53:22.300 | in my opinion, with teaching kids

00:53:24.840 | how to understand themselves,

00:53:26.780 | what to do in difficult scenarios

00:53:28.340 | that's really anchored in the real pillars

00:53:30.820 | of biology and psychology,

00:53:33.220 | and try to take some of the mystery out of

00:53:35.700 | trying to navigate the tough business of growing up.

00:53:39.820 | I mean, if you think it's tough being an adult,

00:53:41.980 | which it can be, certainly, it's really tough growing up,

00:53:45.860 | as we all know, and I think that more tools,

00:53:48.980 | more tools, more protocols, more tools,

00:53:51.100 | more tools, more protocols, more tools.

00:53:53.220 | But that's obviously a biased opinion,

00:53:57.060 | and no one's ever asked me, like,

00:53:58.940 | "Hey, what should we be teaching kids?"

00:54:01.900 | But if they ask, you can tell,

00:54:03.580 | like, I'm not gonna shut up, so.

00:54:05.500 | I think that was our last question.

00:54:08.180 | Thank you all for coming tonight.

00:54:09.800 | I want to--

00:54:10.640 | (audience applauding)

00:54:12.300 | Forgive me for going long.

00:54:14.140 | I do want to say thank you, sincere thank you,

00:54:17.920 | for making your way out here,

00:54:19.520 | especially on a weekday night.

00:54:20.860 | Thanks for your hospitality.

00:54:23.140 | My incredible team, I want to thank them,

00:54:25.240 | and certainly, last but not least,

00:54:28.200 | thank you for your interest in science.

00:54:30.220 | Thank you.

00:54:31.040 | Thank you so much.

00:54:31.880 | (audience applauding)

00:54:35.040 | (upbeat music)

00:54:38.640 | (upbeat music)

00:54:41.220 | (upbeat music)

LIVE EVENT Q&A: Dr. Andrew Huberman Question & Answer in Chicago, IL

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