Dr. Andy Galpin: Optimal Nutrition & Supplementation for Fitness

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Guest Series,

00:00:02.440 | where I and an expert guest discuss science

00:00:05.120 | and science-based tools for everyday life.

00:00:07.320 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:09.600 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:12.360 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:13.980 | Today's episode marks the sixth and final

00:00:15.920 | of the six episode series

00:00:17.120 | on fitness, exercise, and performance.

00:00:19.200 | And today's discussion is all about nutrition

00:00:21.780 | and supplementation to maximize your fitness,

00:00:24.520 | exercise, and performance goals.

00:00:26.440 | Dr. Andy Yalpin.

00:00:28.200 | - I'm super excited to discuss today's topic,

00:00:30.680 | which is nutrition and supplementation

00:00:33.180 | for performance and recovery.

00:00:34.920 | And I'm particularly excited about this conversation

00:00:37.560 | because I've been interested in supplementation

00:00:39.360 | and nutrition for performance really since my teens,

00:00:42.040 | but also because in recent years,

00:00:43.800 | we've witnessed a massive transformation

00:00:47.120 | in the general public in terms of their view

00:00:49.040 | of supplementation and nutrition.

00:00:50.700 | First of all, more people are thinking about nutrition.

00:00:53.480 | What is good nutrition?

00:00:55.320 | What is not a very barbed wire topic, as you know,

00:00:58.240 | but there are some truths in there that we'll discuss,

00:01:01.580 | but also supplementation.

00:01:03.240 | You know, whereas 10, 15 years ago,

00:01:05.680 | I think most people would either be really into supplements.

00:01:09.160 | That was a small percentage of people,

00:01:10.740 | but the majority of people were either told

00:01:13.700 | or were thinking, oh, you know, vitamins,

00:01:15.440 | you mostly excrete them.

00:01:16.820 | They're just expensive urine.

00:01:18.360 | Nowadays, it seems that many people,

00:01:20.660 | including many of my colleagues and physicians

00:01:23.640 | all the way down to sports performance experts,

00:01:27.020 | are taking and making recommendations

00:01:29.240 | about certain supplements.

00:01:31.120 | And so the way that I like to think about supplements

00:01:33.960 | is that they aren't necessarily just supplements,

00:01:37.200 | which makes it sound like they are augmenting

00:01:40.160 | what should already be there,

00:01:41.440 | but you're not quite getting enough of.

00:01:43.260 | But indeed, a lot of these things we call supplements

00:01:45.720 | are very potent compounds that can transform our ability

00:01:49.440 | to perform in the short term, to recover from exercise,

00:01:53.720 | and that can really shape brain chemistry,

00:01:55.960 | hormone patterns acutely and when taken long-term.

00:02:00.480 | So I'm very excited about today's topic

00:02:02.160 | and to be able to try and sort through this,

00:02:05.100 | let's call it a cloud, hopefully not a storm,

00:02:07.500 | but this cloud of supplements that are out there,

00:02:10.520 | because indeed, many of them are excellent

00:02:12.920 | and can provide us a lot.

00:02:14.840 | Some of them are terrible,

00:02:16.900 | and then some just don't do anything,

00:02:18.360 | and therefore are terrible

00:02:20.160 | because either they have side effects

00:02:22.320 | or because they're very expensive

00:02:23.920 | and they don't do anything.

00:02:24.920 | And then of course, within the realm of nutrition,

00:02:26.880 | there's an equal amount of confusion,

00:02:29.020 | but that's why I'm talking to you,

00:02:31.480 | because you're gonna put clarity and structure and definition

00:02:34.880 | on these incredibly important topics.

00:02:37.520 | - You absolutely nailed it there.

00:02:39.120 | One of the major reasons supplements can work

00:02:41.520 | is because you can consume nutrients

00:02:43.320 | in extremely high concentrations,

00:02:44.920 | such that you would not get in nature through food.

00:02:47.680 | Having said that, you really do wanna focus

00:02:51.040 | on the basic sleep, nutrition, hydration,

00:02:53.200 | and I'm going to get into very specific detail later

00:02:56.080 | with some of those things.

00:02:57.440 | That said, there are plenty of situations and circumstances

00:03:00.980 | when supplementation can do exactly what you said.

00:03:04.540 | Also though, because you are taking them

00:03:06.120 | in such high concentrations,

00:03:08.180 | they can also be unproductive, they can be destructive,

00:03:11.960 | or they can be counterproductive.

00:03:13.940 | So in case if you're taking a couple of supplements

00:03:16.180 | over here, it may actually be counteracting the benefits

00:03:19.280 | of some of the other supplements over there.

00:03:21.240 | So in the ideal situation,

00:03:23.500 | we would be able to work like snipers here.

00:03:25.820 | So we would be able to run full biological testing.

00:03:28.480 | So extensive blood work and saliva and urine and stool

00:03:31.520 | and have an in-depth analysis of your gut microbiome

00:03:34.360 | and your stress patterns and your time of day

00:03:36.900 | and your cortisol curve and like all the things

00:03:38.980 | that we do in our high performance folks.

00:03:41.760 | With that then, we can get extremely high precision

00:03:44.540 | supplementation and quite honestly, our philosophy is

00:03:47.960 | we only give individuals exactly what they need.

00:03:51.080 | So even some of the standard, generally safe

00:03:53.600 | and effective supplements, we don't really necessarily

00:03:56.040 | use them if there's no specific need.

00:03:58.240 | And we've talked about the consequences of this

00:03:59.960 | with things like antioxidants, but even simple stuff

00:04:03.160 | like stimulants and other tools that are effective

00:04:05.560 | for recovery, we don't use them unless we have a reason.

00:04:09.080 | That said, that's not the reality for a lot of people.

00:04:12.400 | They're not going to be able to do something like that

00:04:14.440 | or work with somebody who can help them in that.

00:04:16.460 | So there are a handful of supplements that I would consider

00:04:19.600 | to be in my 80/20 rule, which is sort of like the 20%

00:04:22.880 | of supplements that are going to give you 80% of the benefit

00:04:26.120 | for the lowest cost.

00:04:27.320 | And so what I can actually use to sort of start there,

00:04:29.240 | even though this burns my skin and my soul a little bit,

00:04:31.860 | I absolutely hate this.

00:04:32.980 | I am the context guy, I'm the, it depends.

00:04:35.420 | It's high precision guy, but let's be real.

00:04:38.120 | There are a number of supplements that are fairly effective

00:04:40.080 | and fairly cheap for a wide range of outcomes.

00:04:43.480 | So this is for general public.

00:04:45.400 | This is for people who want to do the three buckets, right?

00:04:48.960 | You want to look a certain way.

00:04:50.800 | So supplements that could enhance muscle growth

00:04:53.320 | and fat loss, non-hormonal based supplements, of course.

00:04:58.320 | Supplements that can improve energy or physical performance.

00:05:00.880 | Again, from everything from squatting more

00:05:03.520 | to feeling better in your yoga class

00:05:05.900 | to having more energy throughout the day

00:05:07.560 | to our third major bucket that we've been talking about

00:05:10.120 | throughout this entire series, which are longevity.

00:05:12.280 | So we can cover those first if you'd like to start there.

00:05:15.040 | - Yes, absolutely.

00:05:16.000 | Let's start there.

00:05:17.020 | - Oftentimes when we think of supplements,

00:05:18.640 | we immediately jump to high sport performance

00:05:20.640 | type of things or vigorous workouts or muscle building.

00:05:24.460 | Though that doesn't necessarily have to be the case.

00:05:26.400 | Take for example, creatine.

00:05:27.840 | And I've spoken about this at length

00:05:29.200 | and with Darren Kandao,

00:05:30.980 | who's done a tremendous amount of research.

00:05:32.600 | I was just up at his lab recently in Canada

00:05:35.000 | and he has covered extensively.

00:05:36.760 | In fact, I think I put up a post,

00:05:38.300 | perhaps I could draw this up,

00:05:41.160 | where he laid out all the myriad of benefits of creatine.

00:05:44.920 | This is taken in the typically three to five grams

00:05:47.640 | per day of dose of creatine monohydrate,

00:05:49.640 | which has the most research behind it.

00:05:51.540 | Seems to be extremely low side effects in almost anyone.

00:05:56.900 | And the benefits include in course,

00:05:58.760 | things like muscle performance and strength

00:06:01.920 | and things like that.

00:06:02.760 | And if you go back to our discussion

00:06:04.800 | and our episode on metabolism and endurance,

00:06:08.000 | we talked about the phosphocreatine system.

00:06:09.800 | So you can figure out kind of what this is going to do

00:06:11.800 | in terms of effect.

00:06:13.180 | That said, there's excellent information

00:06:15.560 | and data coming out now on the benefits

00:06:17.300 | of bone mineral density in creatine.

00:06:20.240 | There's a ton of work looking at a host of cognitive factors

00:06:24.780 | from memory, executive function,

00:06:27.760 | to effects potentially on even things like depression,

00:06:32.680 | mood, to Alzheimer's, Parkinson's,

00:06:37.400 | all forms of neurodegenerative disease.

00:06:40.480 | In fact, it's pretty obvious.

00:06:42.200 | The brain loves creatine as a fuel.

00:06:45.120 | And so not only, we sort of discussed it in the episode

00:06:47.180 | as being the fuel for skeletal muscle contraction,

00:06:49.260 | but the brain needs to do that as well.

00:06:50.520 | The astrocytes around the brain

00:06:51.660 | need to be able to provide energy, et cetera.

00:06:52.960 | So it's very clear that metabolism in the brain

00:06:55.400 | is reduced with things like TBI and potentially concussions.

00:06:58.960 | So now to be extremely clear,

00:07:02.400 | creatine does not prevent any of those diseases.

00:07:05.580 | It does not treat any of them and the data are mixed,

00:07:09.020 | but more and more are coming.

00:07:11.060 | Some show a little bit of benefit,

00:07:13.240 | some show maybe none,

00:07:14.900 | but I'm not aware of any research in those areas

00:07:17.480 | that show it has any downside.

00:07:19.920 | For the most part, side effects are extremely minimal

00:07:22.280 | if not null, and then potentially some benefit

00:07:25.440 | depending on the specific study.

00:07:26.600 | So we could put up, if you'd like,

00:07:28.540 | a couple of links directly to those meta-analyses

00:07:30.520 | and folks can go through those things one by one.

00:07:32.580 | So I only say that to, again,

00:07:35.680 | maybe expand our understanding or thinking

00:07:37.640 | about what these types of supplements can do.

00:07:39.200 | It's not just about growing muscle or high performance.

00:07:44.000 | It's everything to, again,

00:07:45.360 | there's an association with recovery.

00:07:47.580 | So creatine is fantastic for recovery from muscle,

00:07:49.600 | for muscle damage,

00:07:51.080 | helps and can potentially aid in fat loss

00:07:53.960 | and a whole host of things.

00:07:55.140 | So you can actually also even look at websites

00:07:59.040 | like examine.com.

00:08:00.180 | I have no affiliation with them whatsoever,

00:08:02.960 | but if you want to just type in something

00:08:04.580 | like creatine monohydrate,

00:08:06.200 | you can see a whole list

00:08:08.280 | and you're going to see thousands of studies

00:08:11.060 | of the potential benefits of creatine.

00:08:12.920 | So that is always number one on my list.

00:08:15.400 | - I'm relieved to hear that creatine sits at the top

00:08:17.760 | of your supplementation list because,

00:08:20.480 | well, first of all, I started taking it

00:08:21.760 | when I was in college.

00:08:22.580 | At that time, I was taking it in this kind of loading mode

00:08:25.720 | where you take it in anywhere from 15 to 25 grams per day,

00:08:30.720 | often causing some gastric distress,

00:08:33.780 | often combining with fruit juice

00:08:35.320 | to try and shuttle it into the muscles.

00:08:37.180 | And then so-called maintenance phase

00:08:39.080 | of reducing to 10 or 15 grams per day.

00:08:41.640 | Nowadays, I just take about five grams or so,

00:08:45.000 | although later I know you're going to tell me

00:08:46.780 | why I should probably be taking more

00:08:48.360 | than five grams per day given my body weight.

00:08:50.760 | So I know we'll get into some of those specifics

00:08:52.340 | a little bit later.

00:08:53.280 | But in addition to experiencing direct effects

00:08:57.600 | on muscle size and strength, which I did,

00:09:00.960 | I don't know how it contributed to my cognitive function

00:09:03.880 | or if it does now because there's really no way

00:09:05.440 | to tease that out with standard at-home tests like a scale.

00:09:10.440 | But it is very clear to me based on the literature

00:09:14.520 | that you described and some of which we've covered

00:09:16.940 | on other episodes of the podcast

00:09:18.560 | that the phosphocreatine system is vitally important

00:09:21.160 | for forebrain function, right, the forebrain of course

00:09:23.520 | being the portion of brain, broadly speaking,

00:09:27.280 | the portion of brain just behind your forehead

00:09:29.140 | that is responsible for planning, action,

00:09:32.440 | setting rules and context.

00:09:33.920 | So even as simple as if you're going downfield

00:09:36.900 | in a game of soccer or basketball and you're on offense,

00:09:40.160 | and then you make an attempt on goal or basket,

00:09:43.080 | and then it switches and you go back.

00:09:44.580 | Now you're on defense.

00:09:45.900 | Being on defense is very different than being on offense.

00:09:48.320 | And that goal, excuse me, that rule switching

00:09:51.420 | is a prefrontal cortical function

00:09:53.000 | as is every context dependent way of thinking or acting.

00:09:56.920 | And so anything that can favor function of the forebrain

00:10:00.180 | I think is good for humans in general.

00:10:02.680 | It suppresses anxiety,

00:10:03.720 | allows us to interpret what's going on for us.

00:10:05.920 | And so I'm very relieved and gratified to hear

00:10:09.140 | that creatine sits at the top of the list.

00:10:11.000 | Also, as I'm sure you'll point out again later,

00:10:13.740 | creatine is for the most part

00:10:15.640 | a relatively affordable supplement for most people.

00:10:18.280 | So here we're not talking about something

00:10:19.540 | that's really esoteric or that you have to, you know,

00:10:21.560 | fly to some remote location to get an infusion of.

00:10:25.080 | - Right.

00:10:25.900 | Although I apologize to all you

00:10:27.740 | 'cause I know the price has skyrocketed recently.

00:10:29.820 | - Really?

00:10:30.660 | - Yeah.

00:10:31.480 | - Why is that?

00:10:32.320 | - Well, nobody knows,

00:10:33.160 | but it's quote unquote a supply and demand issue,

00:10:37.060 | if you will.

00:10:37.900 | So those prices have gone up.

00:10:39.200 | There's also, of course,

00:10:40.040 | been shipping problems in the world and things.

00:10:42.520 | So every time I talk about creatine right now,

00:10:44.800 | people just flame me for like,

00:10:47.080 | "Oh my God, it's so expensive now."

00:10:48.320 | I'm like, "I know, I'm sorry."

00:10:49.200 | But honestly, it's only so expensive

00:10:51.480 | because you're used to being so cheap.

00:10:53.780 | So when you counter the fact that you're like,

00:10:56.480 | yeah, like relative to the other stuff

00:10:58.320 | you're probably taking,

00:10:59.240 | relative to any other number of purchases for the,

00:11:02.560 | it still lands very high in my ROI list,

00:11:04.560 | my, you know, my 80/20,

00:11:05.720 | because of that, it can be taken any time of the day.

00:11:09.540 | It doesn't have to be in magical combination.

00:11:11.600 | You talked about co-ingesting with carbohydrates.

00:11:13.600 | That can enhance how quickly it can get into the system.

00:11:16.360 | In fact, it's gonna work on the exact same mechanisms

00:11:18.840 | we'll probably potentially talk about in hydration.

00:11:21.700 | But these things are shuttled.

00:11:22.800 | So anytime you're bringing in carbohydrate,

00:11:24.320 | that's going to be shipped into tissue as quickly as it can.

00:11:28.960 | Creatine then goes along for the ride

00:11:30.480 | and then it brings water for the ride.

00:11:31.560 | That's how you enhance hydration.

00:11:32.760 | That's why it's important to have carbohydrates

00:11:34.520 | when you're trying to hydrate.

00:11:36.400 | So you're just gonna take it in there.

00:11:37.320 | And that's also why you get quote unquote cell swelling,

00:11:40.320 | which is a good thing.

00:11:41.840 | It's just enhancing hydration.

00:11:43.180 | We actually use it a ton in our post weigh-in protocols.

00:11:46.040 | So individuals that have to cut water weight.

00:11:48.520 | Creatine's a great thing to throw back in there.

00:11:49.900 | It's gonna help you rehydrate.

00:11:51.000 | It's also why when you take 30 grams of it,

00:11:53.500 | it can pull a bunch of fluid in the intestines

00:11:55.500 | and there you go with your little bit of GI distress.

00:11:57.940 | So yeah, there's a lot of fun things

00:12:00.200 | you can talk about there.

00:12:01.320 | I just had to flag that

00:12:02.160 | because every time I've been talking about it recently

00:12:03.960 | and I say it's cheap, people are killing me for it.

00:12:06.080 | So I apologize.

00:12:07.680 | I don't know how to make it any cheaper,

00:12:08.840 | but it's still fairly affordable.

00:12:11.280 | - Yeah, I would say relatively inexpensive

00:12:13.180 | compared to a lot of supplements out there.

00:12:14.780 | And when thinking about the return on investment,

00:12:17.560 | it's quite good.

00:12:18.600 | - Yeah, so like actually, sorry to cut you off,

00:12:20.480 | but I was just also thinking,

00:12:22.420 | there's been a number of studies on sleep deprivation

00:12:25.800 | as well with creatine that can help.

00:12:27.560 | So obviously sleep deprivation

00:12:28.740 | will generally reduce cognitive function

00:12:30.680 | and creatine can ameliorate some of that drop.

00:12:33.920 | So if you think about it in that context,

00:12:35.480 | I had a crummy night of sleep.

00:12:37.480 | Well, and if that enables you to perform

00:12:39.440 | a little bit better in your job,

00:12:40.420 | then you would make up the dollar or so,

00:12:42.640 | whatever you paid for that day's supply of creatine.

00:12:45.100 | So it is something, kind of on that note,

00:12:48.140 | it's not going to work as an acute response.

00:12:50.180 | So it's not something you're like, I feel terrible,

00:12:51.780 | let me throw some creatine down the hatch, I'll feel better.

00:12:53.620 | That's not gonna work.

00:12:54.540 | It's going to take several weeks to have a noticeable effect.

00:12:57.500 | It needs to be stored in tissue.

00:12:59.620 | It needs to be built up

00:13:00.460 | before you can actually do much of anything.

00:13:02.080 | So it is unlike some of the other things like stimulants

00:13:04.820 | or caffeine that have an acute response right now.

00:13:08.740 | And so if you're going to take it,

00:13:11.180 | you probably need to consume it consistently.

00:13:12.980 | If you can't do that,

00:13:13.820 | then really there's no point in doing it.

00:13:15.880 | And the loading phase, you mentioned distance war here,

00:13:18.620 | is something you can do, again,

00:13:20.480 | if you need to enhance the storage of it really quickly.

00:13:24.200 | So say, for example, we've done this in some military cases

00:13:27.760 | where it's like you get back to base

00:13:29.000 | and you've only got a week and then you got to go back out.

00:13:30.940 | We may actually have to do

00:13:32.840 | a little bit of a loading phase then.

00:13:34.320 | But if that's not the case, the loading phase is unnecessary.

00:13:37.720 | It's not really harmful other than maybe GI stress

00:13:40.040 | and maybe waste.

00:13:41.620 | But you're going to have three or four weeks,

00:13:43.160 | it's going to reach full saturation,

00:13:44.760 | plenty of time to be there in that,

00:13:46.240 | if you're in that three to seven grams per day range.

00:13:48.680 | - Well, I'm glad you mentioned

00:13:49.680 | the slow accumulating positive effects of creatine

00:13:52.780 | as compared to so-called acute effects.

00:13:55.580 | Because the way that I think of

00:13:57.260 | health promoting and performance enhancing protocols

00:13:59.640 | like viewing morning sunlight

00:14:01.720 | or endurance exercise for that matter,

00:14:05.040 | or creatine or sleep, for instance,

00:14:09.180 | is that while they can have effects in the immediate term,

00:14:12.120 | you might feel a little bit,

00:14:13.360 | or in the case of a good night's sleep, a lot better.

00:14:15.860 | It's really the cumulative effect

00:14:17.560 | of raising your baseline level of functioning.

00:14:20.240 | You know, there's another way to think about it is

00:14:22.860 | these supplements or behaviors and quality nutrition

00:14:27.560 | when done consistently over time,

00:14:29.440 | and that doesn't mean 100% of the time,

00:14:31.080 | but you know, probably 80% of the time,

00:14:34.680 | lead to a sort of buoyancy in your system

00:14:37.440 | that allows you to be more resilient

00:14:39.460 | under conditions where conditions aren't perfect, right?

00:14:43.100 | And if conditions are made perfect or close to perfect

00:14:47.080 | and you already have that buoyancy,

00:14:48.460 | that's when you really start to see

00:14:49.760 | the ultra high performance effects that are so much fun,

00:14:53.920 | but they have to be established

00:14:55.640 | through consistent supplementation,

00:14:57.820 | consistent nutritional intake.

00:14:59.060 | So today I know we're going to distinguish between,

00:15:01.900 | normally they're called chronic and acute effects,

00:15:03.940 | but that makes it sound like chronic illness.

00:15:05.660 | The moment people hear chronic,

00:15:06.720 | well, they might think of other things,

00:15:07.800 | but in the context of health,

00:15:09.260 | they typically think of, you know, chronic illness,

00:15:11.260 | and we're not talking about that.

00:15:12.100 | What we're talking about

00:15:13.000 | is slow modulatory effects in the body.

00:15:15.840 | A lot of things in the body take time to build up,

00:15:18.160 | but once they've built up, they clearly can benefit us.

00:15:22.680 | And then other things, as you mentioned,

00:15:24.440 | you know, a stimulant, for instance,

00:15:26.480 | has a very acute effect that is going to occur with,

00:15:28.680 | you know, peak within 30 minutes

00:15:30.100 | and wear off within, you know, four hours or so,

00:15:32.420 | can also have some chronic effects,

00:15:34.080 | but typically it's a short-lived effect.

00:15:36.240 | So we just want to frame up the language that we'll be using,

00:15:39.000 | and I'm really excited to dive into this topic.

00:15:41.560 | I think creatine is a beautiful example of a supplement

00:15:44.560 | that has positive chronic mental and physical benefits.

00:15:49.560 | - Down the road, I can come back

00:15:52.080 | and talk a little bit more about creatine,

00:15:53.760 | and we can cover some other information

00:15:55.760 | regarding best practices for getting the most out of it,

00:15:58.420 | as well as we'll certainly dive into

00:16:00.080 | some of the common side effects,

00:16:01.680 | or at least a thought of side effects.

00:16:04.800 | While we're here, though, I also could throw in a few other

00:16:08.080 | of these high-impact, low-cost, generally safe,

00:16:11.880 | things that are my 80/20 rule, if you will.

00:16:13.800 | So the way I actually kind of think about it is

00:16:15.960 | you want one from each of three categories.

00:16:19.320 | And these categories are fuel,

00:16:21.680 | stimulant, and fatigue blockers.

00:16:26.400 | So creatine is actually in the fuel.

00:16:28.760 | It's not a stimulant.

00:16:29.840 | We talked about the chronic effect there.

00:16:31.080 | So we've already knocked that one off.

00:16:32.760 | Another one from the fatigue blocker

00:16:35.960 | is going to be anything like beta-alanine

00:16:37.600 | or sodium bicarbonate.

00:16:39.240 | And then from the stimulant use,

00:16:40.680 | of course, we have anything like a beetroot juice

00:16:43.360 | to a caffeine or something of the equivalent.

00:16:46.720 | So we can come back again and talk about all those

00:16:49.080 | in more detail a little bit later.

00:16:51.100 | - Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast

00:16:53.640 | is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

00:16:56.280 | It is also separate from Dr. Andy Galpin's

00:16:58.200 | teaching and research roles at Cal State Fullerton.

00:17:00.640 | It is, however, part of our desire and effort

00:17:02.520 | to bring zero cost to consumer information about science

00:17:05.020 | and science-related tools to the general public.

00:17:07.640 | In keeping with that theme,

00:17:08.840 | we'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

00:17:11.440 | Our first sponsor is Momentus.

00:17:13.460 | Momentus makes supplements of the absolute highest quality.

00:17:16.780 | The Huberman Lab Podcast is proud to be partnering

00:17:19.060 | with Momentus for several important reasons.

00:17:21.360 | First of all, as I mentioned,

00:17:22.520 | their supplements are of extremely high quality.

00:17:24.440 | Second of all, their supplements are generally

00:17:27.200 | in single ingredient formulations.

00:17:29.240 | If you're going to develop a supplementation protocol,

00:17:31.660 | you're going to want to focus mainly

00:17:33.120 | on using single ingredient formulations.

00:17:35.220 | With single ingredient formulations,

00:17:37.000 | you can devise the most logical and effective

00:17:39.300 | and cost-effective supplementation regimen for your goals.

00:17:42.760 | In addition, Momentus supplements ship internationally.

00:17:45.080 | And this is, of course, important because we realized

00:17:47.040 | that many of the Huberman Lab Podcast listeners

00:17:49.080 | reside outside the United States.

00:17:51.040 | If you'd like to try the various supplements

00:17:52.600 | mentioned on the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:17:54.440 | in particular supplements for hormone health,

00:17:56.840 | for sleep optimization, for focus,

00:17:58.960 | as well as a number of other things,

00:18:00.140 | including exercise recovery,

00:18:01.800 | you can go to Live Momentus, spelled O-U-S,

00:18:03.920 | so that's livemomentus.com/huberman.

00:18:06.480 | Today's episode is also brought to us by Levels.

00:18:09.040 | Levels is a program that lets you see how different foods

00:18:11.440 | and activities affect your health

00:18:13.140 | by giving you real-time feedback on your blood glucose

00:18:15.840 | using a continuous glucose monitor.

00:18:17.880 | Many people are aware that their blood sugar,

00:18:20.040 | that is their blood glucose level,

00:18:21.760 | is critical for everything from fat loss, to muscle gain,

00:18:26.120 | to healthy cognition, and indeed, aging of the brain

00:18:29.440 | and body.

00:18:30.460 | Most people do not know, however, how different foods

00:18:33.340 | and different activities, including exercise

00:18:36.040 | or different temperature and environments,

00:18:37.840 | impact their blood glucose levels,

00:18:39.360 | and yet blood glucose is exquisitely sensitive

00:18:41.800 | to all of those things.

00:18:43.320 | I first started using Levels about a year ago

00:18:46.180 | as a way to understand how different foods,

00:18:48.060 | exercise, and timing of food relative to exercise

00:18:51.040 | and quality of sleep at night impact my blood glucose levels

00:18:54.300 | and I've learned a tremendous amount from using Levels.

00:18:57.660 | It's taught me when best to eat, what best to eat,

00:19:00.780 | when best to exercise, how best to exercise,

00:19:03.660 | and how to modulate my entire schedule

00:19:06.380 | from work to exercise and even my sleep.

00:19:09.340 | So if you're interested in learning more about Levels

00:19:11.100 | and trying a continuous glucose monitor yourself,

00:19:13.720 | go to levels.link/huberman.

00:19:15.940 | That's levels.link/huberman.

00:19:18.520 | Today's episode is also brought to us by Element.

00:19:20.880 | Element is an electrolyte drink that contains

00:19:22.780 | the exact ratios of the electrolyte sodium, magnesium,

00:19:25.460 | and potassium to optimize cellular functioning

00:19:28.020 | for mental and physical performance.

00:19:29.780 | Most people realize that hydration is key.

00:19:31.740 | We need to ingest enough fluids in order to feel our best

00:19:34.860 | and perform our best, but what most people do not realize

00:19:38.120 | is that the proper functioning of our cells

00:19:40.380 | and nerve cells, neurons in particular,

00:19:42.500 | requires that sodium, magnesium, and potassium

00:19:44.980 | be present in the correct ratios.

00:19:47.360 | Now, of course, people with prehypertension and hypertension

00:19:50.500 | need to be careful about their sodium intake,

00:19:52.640 | but what a lot of people don't realize

00:19:54.400 | is that if you drink caffeine, if you exercise,

00:19:57.260 | and in particular, if you're following a very clean diet,

00:19:59.840 | that is not a lot of processed foods,

00:20:01.800 | which of course is a good thing,

00:20:03.900 | chances are you're not getting enough sodium, potassium,

00:20:06.780 | and magnesium to optimize mental and physical performance.

00:20:09.540 | Element contains a science-backed ratio of 1000 milligrams,

00:20:13.260 | that's one gram of sodium, 200 milligrams of potassium,

00:20:16.180 | and 60 milligrams of magnesium and no sugar.

00:20:19.300 | If you'd like to try Element, you can go to Drink Element,

00:20:21.700 | that's lmnt.com/huberman to get a free Element sample pack

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00:20:26.780 | Again, that's Drink Element, lmnt.com/huberman

00:20:30.380 | to claim a free sample pack.

00:20:31.840 | To start off, I want to ask you about something

00:20:33.920 | that as soon as I say it, some people might roll their eyes

00:20:38.480 | or wonder why are we even talking about that now,

00:20:42.080 | but that I have to believe is among the more fundamental,

00:20:46.280 | if not foundational aspects of nutrition and supplementation

00:20:51.200 | for performance, and that's hydration, right?

00:20:55.220 | I mean, I think we hear hydration, it's like okay,

00:20:57.040 | we have to drink six to eight glasses of water every day,

00:21:00.300 | our urine should be relatively clear,

00:21:02.140 | if it's too dark yellow, we're not doing a good job

00:21:04.160 | of hydrating enough.

00:21:06.100 | How much of that is true?

00:21:07.500 | Is alkaline water worthwhile for changing the alkalinity

00:21:12.040 | of my body?

00:21:12.880 | I learned when I was in college and graduate school

00:21:16.020 | that the alkalinity of the different tissues in your body

00:21:19.260 | is very well controlled in order to keep you alive,

00:21:22.680 | and that you don't want it to shift too much

00:21:24.740 | or you can enter pretty horrible states of seizure,

00:21:27.940 | vomiting, and even death.

00:21:29.640 | So tell me about hydration and woven into that,

00:21:33.080 | if you would, educate me on electrolytes and hydration,

00:21:37.200 | because I think most often when people ingest electrolytes,

00:21:39.900 | sure, they could be ingesting salt tablets,

00:21:43.240 | probably getting some electrolytes, by the way,

00:21:45.160 | electrolyte, sodium, magnesium, potassium

00:21:47.500 | through their food, I think most people think

00:21:49.460 | about drinking electrolytes.

00:21:51.420 | So water and electrolytes, I think,

00:21:53.140 | is a vitally important topic to kick this off with.

00:21:56.140 | - Sure, we can jump right into your alkaline water.

00:21:58.900 | While there's perhaps much to say about this,

00:22:01.920 | we can maybe revisit this in another seven part series

00:22:05.440 | all on its own, I would just say it this way,

00:22:08.820 | there's probably a few things you should do

00:22:12.060 | before worrying about the alkalinity of your water,

00:22:14.400 | and I'll just leave it at that.

00:22:16.500 | - Meaning the alkalinity of the water is sort of irrelevant?

00:22:19.020 | - Not that, you won't go that far, it's just,

00:22:21.540 | it's probably, remember we sort of started off

00:22:23.780 | talking about 80/20?

00:22:25.940 | Well this would be in my like 99/1,

00:22:28.300 | in terms of like, if we're really at the level

00:22:30.900 | of worrying about the pH of your drinking fluid,

00:22:33.700 | we have optimized so many other things,

00:22:37.980 | that then we can talk about it.

00:22:39.080 | But until we have nailed months and years of work

00:22:42.520 | on other things, this is just not gonna make

00:22:44.400 | much of an impact.

00:22:45.740 | - Great, then perhaps you could tell us about

00:22:48.860 | what volume of water we should be drinking,

00:22:51.300 | when we should be drinking that water

00:22:52.760 | relative to training, and just generally.

00:22:55.060 | And anything else related to water and electrolytes

00:22:58.660 | that can improve mental performance, physical performance,

00:23:02.220 | and offset any ill effects.

00:23:04.300 | - I like the fact that you mentioned

00:23:05.660 | physical and mental performance,

00:23:07.120 | because it's clear in both cases.

00:23:08.860 | We hear that we need to drink more water,

00:23:11.260 | and I can give you some numbers, and I will in a second.

00:23:13.580 | What we also need to recognize is there's,

00:23:15.660 | this is hormesis.

00:23:16.500 | We talked about hormesis a few episodes ago.

00:23:19.140 | And this is the case, right?

00:23:20.900 | Whether we talked about food, or hydration,

00:23:22.740 | or I think I gave you the example of cyanide,

00:23:25.940 | naturally occurring in your food.

00:23:27.860 | Hot water is the same way.

00:23:28.940 | So if you are under hydrated or dehydrated,

00:23:32.540 | then there is a clear negative effect on your body.

00:23:34.500 | And as I increase the level,

00:23:35.780 | or improve the level of hydration, things get better.

00:23:37.900 | Whether this is your physical performance,

00:23:39.360 | or whether this is mental performance.

00:23:40.500 | In fact, we know that a body weight reduction

00:23:42.980 | of as low as 2% via dehydration.

00:23:46.020 | So imagine you're doing a bout of exercise,

00:23:47.780 | and you're sweating, and you lose 2% of your body weight.

00:23:50.860 | That alone is enough to reduce accuracy and performance.

00:23:53.820 | So the classic study we talk about here

00:23:55.780 | was in basketball players.

00:23:57.020 | So shooting accuracy, so free throw shooting,

00:23:59.140 | I think is specifically what they looked at.

00:24:01.580 | Significant reduction in performance

00:24:03.900 | with as little as 2% dehydration.

00:24:05.820 | At that level, you also see a significant increase

00:24:08.620 | in perception of difficulty of exercise.

00:24:11.060 | And so only right at 2%.

00:24:13.540 | And again, when I say 2%, I mean percent body weight lost.

00:24:16.460 | Right, that's what that means.

00:24:17.660 | You start getting the three, four or 5% dehydration,

00:24:20.340 | you start having a significant reduction in blood volume.

00:24:23.700 | And that's incredibly important for endurance.

00:24:26.020 | Your blood becomes viscous, it gets hard to pump through,

00:24:28.700 | and you're gonna start having all kinds of issues.

00:24:31.260 | So being dehydrated is again,

00:24:34.060 | not only going to reduce performance,

00:24:35.700 | but because of the mental aspect,

00:24:37.320 | which we just walked through, and neuromuscular issue,

00:24:41.480 | you're gonna lose accuracy,

00:24:42.480 | you're gonna lose total endurance performance,

00:24:44.120 | and you're gonna lose speed and power.

00:24:45.200 | So we have the triad there.

00:24:46.600 | No matter what you're interested in,

00:24:47.840 | it's gonna be harmed by being dehydrated.

00:24:50.880 | That also is happening then

00:24:52.620 | if you're starting your program dehydrated.

00:24:55.280 | So if you're already 1% or so dehydrated,

00:24:58.760 | maybe you're like a little under hydrated

00:25:00.320 | and you lose a little bit of sweat,

00:25:01.440 | you've already hit that 2%.

00:25:02.960 | And so we're starting to see reductions

00:25:04.960 | in performance there.

00:25:05.980 | The same happens on the other side of that hormetic curve.

00:25:09.040 | So if you are optimally hydrated in some large window,

00:25:12.760 | but you start going past that,

00:25:15.280 | we can start running into equal problems.

00:25:16.880 | Remember, there is a need for an optimal concentration

00:25:20.680 | of sodium and potassium and chloride

00:25:22.860 | between your cell, inside your cell and outside your cell.

00:25:25.840 | These are electrolytes.

00:25:26.680 | This is what we call osmolality and osmolarity,

00:25:28.760 | is really what it is.

00:25:29.600 | Think of it like concentration and osmosis,

00:25:31.260 | if you remember those terms.

00:25:32.580 | So if we are trying to create a muscle contraction

00:25:35.480 | that requires an electrical gradient.

00:25:37.500 | And so sodium and potassium,

00:25:39.460 | specifically in magnesium, calcium are positively charged

00:25:42.300 | and chloride is negatively charged.

00:25:44.060 | And we need to have a certain amount inside the cell

00:25:45.860 | and outside the cell so that the positives

00:25:47.520 | and the negatives are balanced appropriately

00:25:49.980 | so that when we move one, we change the voltage

00:25:52.280 | and we have in the case of a muscle contraction.

00:25:54.620 | Okay, I just skimmed through a whole lot of physiology there

00:25:57.940 | to say, if you then go mess with fluid only,

00:26:01.520 | and you say, if I were to give you a bolus

00:26:03.440 | of three liters of pure water right now,

00:26:06.780 | you're going to dilute your blood.

00:26:09.300 | And so there's not going to be as many chemical,

00:26:12.500 | there won't be as many electrical signals in there

00:26:14.340 | 'cause you've taken the same amount of sodium,

00:26:15.940 | potassium, et cetera,

00:26:17.100 | and put it in a larger volume of pure water.

00:26:19.420 | So that gradient is now changed.

00:26:20.980 | That becomes a significant problem for contraction.

00:26:24.860 | I mean, quite literally it can kill you.

00:26:26.420 | This is what we call hyponatremia.

00:26:28.380 | So notremia is spelled N-A, hypo being low.

00:26:31.860 | Hyponatremia, if you actually go to the periodic chart,

00:26:34.620 | N-A is what we use for sodium.

00:26:37.780 | So hyponatremia, it's 'cause the word is natremia actually.

00:26:40.140 | So what that literally means is low sodium.

00:26:43.260 | And you didn't get that from sweating out all your sodium.

00:26:45.400 | You actually get hyponatremia from drinking in too much water

00:26:48.020 | so it's not that the total amount of sodium gets low,

00:26:50.040 | it's the fact that the concentration gets low

00:26:51.740 | from excessive fluid intake.

00:26:53.580 | So in the extremes, in fact, if you look at the literature,

00:26:56.720 | you'll see anywhere between like two to 15% of people

00:27:00.540 | who finish endurance races are into hyponatremia.

00:27:03.540 | Now that varies wildly if you're doing Ironman and Kona

00:27:06.660 | versus like, you know, the marathon in Denver in October.

00:27:11.660 | It's gonna be totally different

00:27:12.940 | depending on other conditions, but these are all important.

00:27:16.180 | So while like death happens, that is sort of extreme,

00:27:18.980 | if you back up just a little bit,

00:27:20.380 | you start seeing the same types of performance increments.

00:27:22.660 | In fact, the symptoms can be identical.

00:27:24.780 | Brain fog, confusion, performance, irritation,

00:27:28.380 | a GI distress, and you think, man,

00:27:30.740 | these are symptoms of dehydration

00:27:32.260 | so then you drink more water

00:27:33.300 | and you're just exacerbating the problem.

00:27:35.000 | And I can actually give you one little example of this.

00:27:39.740 | We had an executive, actually a female CEO,

00:27:43.260 | I'll say she's probably was in her early 40s.

00:27:46.580 | And so she came to us and she thought, man, for sure,

00:27:48.560 | she has some sort of gut problem going on

00:27:50.220 | 'cause we hear a lot about kind of like gut health

00:27:52.060 | and how it affects everything.

00:27:53.060 | And so she's just like, I have brain fog

00:27:54.900 | and I've done all these things and I got blood work done.

00:27:58.140 | And everything's fine, like nothing's going on.

00:27:59.940 | I think I must have some sort of gut thing going on

00:28:02.180 | or whatever, and it's okay.

00:28:03.820 | And we just started going through her stuff

00:28:05.300 | and she was, I think about 170 pounds, plus or minus.

00:28:10.300 | And she was consuming like 250 to 60 ounces of water a day.

00:28:14.000 | That's a ton of water.

00:28:16.460 | And we were like, holy shit, what are you doing this for?

00:28:18.420 | And she's just like, that's sort of like my thing.

00:28:20.340 | It was, but she didn't realize it was more

00:28:22.260 | of like a nervous tick than it was anything else, right?

00:28:23.960 | She just like sip, sip, sip, sip, sip water.

00:28:26.220 | I'm like, man, how often did you go pee?

00:28:28.100 | And she's like, yeah, like every 30 minutes or something.

00:28:31.780 | I'm like, fantastic sleep problems, focus.

00:28:33.940 | And so she's smashing caffeine.

00:28:35.220 | She was at like eight cups of coffee a day.

00:28:36.980 | - Which is also gonna add to excretion of sodium.

00:28:40.240 | - Totally, right?

00:28:41.200 | So it's like, okay, we don't really need to come in

00:28:45.420 | and run a sleep study on you.

00:28:48.100 | We're just gonna lower your water.

00:28:49.060 | And she was like, what?

00:28:50.700 | We dropped her down to like 180.

00:28:52.060 | So basically an ounce per pound of body weight,

00:28:54.620 | which is still high 'cause she did train.

00:28:56.420 | - 180 ounces.

00:28:57.500 | - Correct.

00:28:58.700 | She does work out, so she needed to replenish some stuff.

00:29:00.700 | And we'll cover these numbers in a second.

00:29:03.100 | Instantaneously, I mean like two days in,

00:29:04.860 | she's like, oh my God,

00:29:05.860 | I haven't slept six straight hours in years.

00:29:08.580 | And then after that, it was like,

00:29:10.180 | basically tears coming back to us, right?

00:29:11.800 | My focus, my brain fog is gone

00:29:13.340 | 'cause she's in a very high pressure job.

00:29:16.140 | It's like, everything's coming back.

00:29:17.180 | Like now she was down to three or so cups of coffee a day,

00:29:20.640 | blah, blah, blah.

00:29:21.480 | Like the whole thing, digestion improved, all of it.

00:29:23.740 | She was, like her only problem after all the analysis

00:29:26.980 | was she was just drinking way, way too much water.

00:29:30.380 | And adding more salt to her

00:29:32.020 | would not have solved the problem

00:29:34.300 | 'cause she would have just had simply

00:29:35.380 | way too much fluid in her system.

00:29:37.500 | She was having all kinds of ADH problems and aldosterone,

00:29:39.940 | like the whole thing that that rolls into cortisol.

00:29:43.580 | The whole like system goes into chaos.

00:29:45.940 | So it is important that you pay attention hydration,

00:29:49.540 | even though as you sort of mentioned,

00:29:50.580 | people tend to just kind of like roll their eyes around it.

00:29:52.860 | Because if you're in the middle, it's fine.

00:29:55.100 | But if you're anywhere past, not even the extreme extremes,

00:29:57.760 | but just that first standard deviation away,

00:30:00.660 | you're gonna have problems

00:30:01.660 | and you might be thinking adrenal fatigue.

00:30:04.100 | You might be thinking your testosterone,

00:30:05.300 | like you're gonna think all these things

00:30:06.540 | and you simply just haven't

00:30:07.700 | actually dialed in your hydration.

00:30:09.780 | - Yeah, I think people sometimes roll their eyes

00:30:13.060 | at the discussion of hydration

00:30:14.260 | because it just doesn't sound very sexy.

00:30:15.900 | It's not like, doesn't sound like a neurotransmitter

00:30:18.860 | or a hormone.

00:30:19.700 | It doesn't sound like testosterone or estrogen or DHEA

00:30:21.960 | or dopamine, but it actually is all of those things.

00:30:26.960 | It sits at a level beneath all of those,

00:30:29.780 | but not beneath on a hierarchy,

00:30:31.020 | beneath in terms of a foundation.

00:30:32.700 | It's actually without proper electrolyte balance

00:30:36.240 | and hydration, none of the cells of the body can function.

00:30:39.580 | And then I think people also hear that,

00:30:40.900 | oh, you know, we are 70% water.

00:30:43.260 | And somehow like that statistic alone

00:30:48.300 | where that fact alone doesn't seem to stimulate

00:30:51.960 | any kind of actionable takeaway.

00:30:53.800 | It's like, great, you know, like gravity also keeps us,

00:30:57.240 | you know, from jumping as high as we like.

00:30:59.600 | You know, what do I do?

00:31:01.680 | And so I think it's important that people understand

00:31:05.760 | that every cellular process in the body

00:31:08.080 | critically relies on having enough sodium, magnesium,

00:31:11.680 | potassium around and the way that it's concentrated

00:31:14.480 | in fluid, water, is really the way that you allow

00:31:17.800 | every cell in their body to function

00:31:19.920 | as well as it possibly could and respond

00:31:22.040 | to all of the sorts of kind of quote unquote

00:31:23.640 | high performance tools that we're talking about.

00:31:26.240 | The other thing I've observed many times over

00:31:28.520 | is that if people are ingesting too much water

00:31:30.880 | and also drinking a lot of caffeine

00:31:32.420 | and their electrolytes are low, they get shaky

00:31:35.380 | and they actually can have anxiety like symptoms.

00:31:38.640 | When people come into my lab to do studies

00:31:40.160 | on anxiety and fear, we ask a few questions

00:31:42.240 | and those questions include how much water

00:31:44.760 | they've had that day.

00:31:46.260 | Also a sort of bizarre fact, but one that I think

00:31:49.360 | is worth mentioning is that when the bladder is full,

00:31:51.900 | it stimulates a sort of anxiety.

00:31:53.700 | If you ever had to urinate very badly

00:31:55.740 | and you're in the car or you can't urinate

00:31:57.540 | and then you get to the door, like that's,

00:31:58.900 | talk about an anxiety.

00:32:00.420 | And that's because there's a direct neural pathway

00:32:03.920 | from the bladder that registers the mechanosensors,

00:32:07.060 | how much stretch there is on the bladder

00:32:08.520 | that sends a signal to the brainstem alertness areas,

00:32:12.240 | broadly speaking, locus coeruleus and others,

00:32:15.560 | that wake us up.

00:32:16.560 | These are the, when we're awake, it makes us more awake

00:32:19.160 | and when we're asleep, this is what wakes us up

00:32:20.840 | to urinate in the middle of the night.

00:32:22.180 | - Yeah, that's actually why you can use night urination

00:32:25.520 | as a pretty good diagnostic of sleep disorders.

00:32:28.560 | So if, 'cause of vasopressin, right?

00:32:30.520 | Exactly what you're talking about.

00:32:32.360 | If you're having sleep disorder issues

00:32:34.320 | and you're staying awake and a vasopressin gets taken off,

00:32:37.920 | right, an APN goes straight to the kidneys,

00:32:40.000 | your kidneys are supposed to be dormant basically at night.

00:32:42.160 | You're not supposed to be filtering a lot

00:32:43.360 | and producing a lot of urine at night.

00:32:45.080 | If that's happening and say you have any number

00:32:48.000 | of apneas kicking on or anything going on,

00:32:50.440 | vasopressin keeps going, keeps sending a signal,

00:32:52.520 | kidneys start filtering.

00:32:53.360 | So if you're waking up and peeing multiple times at night,

00:32:55.480 | that's called nocturia, that is a very, very good sign

00:32:58.560 | that either one of two things happen.

00:33:00.080 | One, you have some sort of sleep disorder

00:33:01.600 | or two, you're drinking outrageous amounts of water.

00:33:04.000 | And so that's actually a bit of a backwards cycle now,

00:33:06.040 | right, because you're drinking way too much water,

00:33:07.680 | you're waking up and peeing all night,

00:33:09.600 | that's actually ruining your sleep.

00:33:11.240 | And so we have seen this a number of times

00:33:13.120 | with our sleep company as we go in

00:33:14.480 | and it's just like, you don't need any of this crap.

00:33:16.720 | You just need to be properly hydrated.

00:33:19.240 | Alternatively, if your hydration is sound

00:33:21.240 | and you're still waking up more than one time a night

00:33:23.240 | to pee on average, then you almost,

00:33:25.240 | well, I shouldn't say it like that,

00:33:26.480 | but there's a potential that you actually have

00:33:28.200 | some sort of sleep disorder or sleep condition going in.

00:33:30.660 | So the rule of thumb on that is over here,

00:33:33.400 | once a night or so of urination is fine.

00:33:37.200 | If it is routinely or consistently more than two,

00:33:40.640 | you need to make some adjustments, start with hydration.

00:33:42.740 | It's the simplest way, right, getting a full sleep study done

00:33:44.980 | just figure out hydration.

00:33:46.600 | We've had this happen a number of times

00:33:49.160 | where people wanna get more health conscious

00:33:50.820 | and they just get, they hear things like this

00:33:52.800 | and they're like, I gotta get on my water.

00:33:53.940 | And then they just start train wrecking their sleep

00:33:56.240 | and they're waking it up.

00:33:57.080 | So if you're waking up multiple times and you're urinating

00:34:00.160 | and it is a large amount of urine for you and it is clear,

00:34:03.160 | that's probably not sleep apnea induced nocturia.

00:34:05.780 | That's probably excessive hydration.

00:34:07.320 | If you're waking up a bunch of times

00:34:09.140 | and it's fairly small amounts of urine,

00:34:11.140 | then it's probably not the fluid issue.

00:34:13.400 | It's probably the fact that the vasopressin

00:34:15.440 | is kicking your kidneys into gear.

00:34:16.980 | So that's not a perfect criteria,

00:34:19.320 | but it's just like a quick little tool you can sort of use.

00:34:22.920 | That's actually one of the reasons why we measure

00:34:24.960 | almost always your body weight at night

00:34:27.480 | as well as in the morning.

00:34:29.380 | So that's like the combat sport in the UFC fighters boxers.

00:34:33.040 | We call that your float, so how much you floated overnight.

00:34:35.620 | I like to know that number 'cause I wanna know as well,

00:34:38.540 | your first morning void.

00:34:39.960 | So when you wake up and you went to bed at 200 pounds,

00:34:41.760 | you woke up the next morning at 195.

00:34:45.200 | Oh, you floated five pounds.

00:34:47.560 | Did you pee last night?

00:34:48.400 | Yeah, yeah, three times.

00:34:49.920 | Interesting.

00:34:51.080 | In other case, you woke up, you went to bed at 200 pounds.

00:34:53.520 | You wake up at 199.5.

00:34:56.120 | Okay, you're dehydrated

00:34:57.380 | 'cause you should have a certain amount of fluid

00:35:00.280 | that you're just respirating out as you're breathing

00:35:01.960 | throughout your nose, throughout night ideally,

00:35:04.080 | guaranteed you're gonna wake up.

00:35:05.160 | What was your urine like?

00:35:06.000 | Oh yeah, a little bit pretty dark,

00:35:07.440 | like shocker, you're dehydrated.

00:35:08.720 | So you can kind of look at numbers like that.

00:35:10.960 | A general float is something like a pound to two pounds

00:35:14.560 | for the 170 plus pound person.

00:35:17.000 | As you scale up, that number can go up a little bit,

00:35:19.720 | but you can kind of use these to triage a little bit

00:35:21.740 | about what's going on with this kind of combination.

00:35:24.500 | Everything is everything, right?

00:35:25.680 | So it's like, it's not just about one system.

00:35:27.520 | So you're gonna pay attention.

00:35:28.460 | You can also look, well, I don't know,

00:35:30.640 | if you wanna jump into it, we can,

00:35:31.800 | but there's a whole bunch of ways I can teach you

00:35:33.700 | to diagnose hydration and then maybe we can start there

00:35:36.320 | and then we can talk about hydration numbers.

00:35:37.880 | Yes, I'd love to talk about diagnostics for hydration,

00:35:42.080 | over hydration, dehydration.

00:35:43.620 | To start off, would you be willing to give us some numbers?

00:35:48.480 | How much water should we be drinking?

00:35:50.280 | - The classic rule here,

00:35:51.680 | and you're making me do what I hate, right?

00:35:53.220 | I wanna give all the caveats first,

00:35:54.400 | but I'll go straight to your number.

00:35:55.880 | Half an ounce per pound of body weight is a rough rule.

00:35:59.320 | So if you weigh, again, 200 pounds,

00:36:01.600 | that would mean you drink 100 ounces of water a day.

00:36:03.800 | Most water bottles are like 12 to 20 ounces,

00:36:07.880 | something like that.

00:36:08.720 | So you end up drinking six of those or so a day,

00:36:11.980 | kind of like plus or minus, which is not that unreasonable.

00:36:14.980 | This does depend on a number of factors

00:36:18.600 | which I could go over, but that is a rough starting place.

00:36:21.640 | The only other thing to add to that is

00:36:23.560 | that does not account for exercise-induced water loss

00:36:27.080 | or sauna or anything like that.

00:36:28.640 | So that's assuming just like basal daily needs.

00:36:31.740 | If you are exercising or sweating at all for any reasons,

00:36:35.160 | or work-related, so folks that work outside or in the heat

00:36:38.280 | or a humid environment, these numbers all change

00:36:41.920 | and you can slide the scale up.

00:36:43.540 | But you generally wanna drink about 125%

00:36:47.360 | of the fluids you've lost during that physical activity back.

00:36:50.880 | - And how much do you lose per hour of exercise?

00:36:54.420 | - That number ranges between one to five pounds,

00:36:57.160 | depending on the person.

00:36:58.040 | Nick can even be higher with some of our athletes.

00:37:00.500 | Like I can think of a number of NFL players right now

00:37:03.200 | that's not uncommon for those guys to do eight or nine pounds

00:37:05.800 | even not even like crazy circumstances.

00:37:07.660 | If it's August and we're in Jacksonville,

00:37:10.120 | it's not wild for those guys to go nine, 10 pounds.

00:37:12.840 | - But what about the typical person

00:37:14.120 | who goes to a air conditioned gym

00:37:16.000 | or goes out for a run on a day that is somewhere between,

00:37:19.580 | let's say 55 degrees Fahrenheit and 85 degrees Fahrenheit?

00:37:23.560 | - You're probably looking at like a pound.

00:37:26.080 | It's not extremely high.

00:37:27.120 | If you are totally soaked, might be like a pound

00:37:31.660 | and a half to two pounds.

00:37:32.540 | If you're like come back and like your pits

00:37:34.120 | are a little sweaty and there's a little bit of water

00:37:36.160 | kind of on your neckline,

00:37:37.880 | it's probably like more like a pound or so.

00:37:39.860 | So in that case, you might drink back

00:37:41.560 | a pound and a half of water.

00:37:43.260 | - Okay, so just to review these numbers

00:37:44.600 | to make sure that I'm on the correct page here.

00:37:47.560 | A half an ounce of fluid per pound of body weight

00:37:52.440 | is a sort of a foundation for hydration.

00:37:56.800 | And then you want to replace 125% of the fluid loss

00:38:01.800 | during exercise and exercise varies,

00:38:06.840 | where exercise is done varies,

00:38:08.520 | whether or not people are wearing uniforms or helmets

00:38:10.400 | is gonna impact how much fluid they lose, et cetera.

00:38:13.000 | In a very hot environment, the amount of fluid lost

00:38:17.320 | can be anywhere from one to five,

00:38:20.280 | maybe even 10 pounds per hour of hard exertion.

00:38:24.480 | For most exercise done in conditions

00:38:27.080 | of 55 degrees Fahrenheit to seven,

00:38:29.240 | to excuse me, 85 degrees Fahrenheit,

00:38:31.360 | done with some degree of effort,

00:38:33.120 | one might lose a pound or two pounds of water.

00:38:36.000 | - Super easy way to find out.

00:38:37.880 | All you have to do is weigh yourself naked,

00:38:40.480 | go do your workout, come back in, dry off,

00:38:43.660 | weigh yourself naked.

00:38:45.160 | That'll tell you exactly what you lost.

00:38:46.560 | So if you went in, you were 160 pounds,

00:38:48.200 | you come back out, you weigh 158, you lost two pounds,

00:38:50.760 | drink back two and a half pounds of water, you're good.

00:38:53.440 | So that is, honestly, it's like fairly gold standard

00:38:56.920 | for identifying.

00:38:57.760 | You can actually buy a whole bunch of technology for this

00:39:00.760 | and they are using the exact same equation,

00:39:02.940 | which is your body weight when you were there.

00:39:05.800 | Now, if you do that though, you do need to account

00:39:07.560 | for any fluid you drank during the workout

00:39:09.520 | 'cause that then offsets it.

00:39:11.800 | - Simple, but I think important question,

00:39:13.600 | we're talking about a half an ounce of fluid

00:39:16.900 | per pound of body weight.

00:39:17.800 | Does that include things like coffee, tea, soda,

00:39:20.440 | pre-workout drinks, mid-workout drinks,

00:39:23.400 | Monte, matcha, whatever, there's a Yerba Monte,

00:39:26.800 | there are a million things out there, or just water?

00:39:31.160 | - Any fluid for the most part is gonna count.

00:39:33.860 | - And is it true that fluids that contain caffeine

00:39:37.000 | generally cause us to secrete sodium?

00:39:41.100 | - Yeah.

00:39:42.440 | - Okay, so do you recommend including electrolyte powder

00:39:46.360 | or a small pinch of sodium or any number of other

00:39:49.660 | supplement type electrolytes that can replace

00:39:53.200 | that sodium, magnesium, and potassium?

00:39:55.240 | - A couple of things we have to pay attention to

00:39:56.560 | to accurately answer that question.

00:39:59.720 | What you also sort of asked about,

00:40:00.960 | you may have not even realized,

00:40:02.720 | is does caffeine actually enhance dehydration?

00:40:06.960 | Which is not really what you asked,

00:40:08.280 | but it's probably a lot of people thought that as well.

00:40:11.000 | So caffeine can, but coffee doesn't necessarily do that

00:40:15.600 | because remember you're co-ingesting that with fluid.

00:40:17.520 | And so we used to say that all the time,

00:40:19.480 | I'll coffee dehydrate too.

00:40:20.740 | It doesn't, it might make your urine yellow.

00:40:23.120 | It certainly gives off an odor in your urine,

00:40:25.640 | but in general coffee will not do that

00:40:27.520 | because you're ingesting this.

00:40:28.360 | If you were to now be taking caffeine pills alone,

00:40:31.660 | now there is a bit of a diuretic effect there.

00:40:34.000 | And so you're gonna urinate.

00:40:34.920 | How much?

00:40:35.740 | Maybe not enough for you to be really concerned with,

00:40:39.040 | especially when you balance that against

00:40:40.580 | the ergogenic effects and benefits of caffeine.

00:40:43.040 | It's not something we are concerned about.

00:40:46.000 | Second part of your question,

00:40:47.100 | do you need to then offset the loss of sodium?

00:40:50.200 | I'm not super concerned about the amount of sodium loss

00:40:52.880 | to caffeine.

00:40:53.960 | I am more concerned about simply the amount of sodium

00:40:56.040 | being correct because of the bigger circumstances,

00:40:59.260 | like how much is actually in your system

00:41:00.840 | and how much you lost in the training session.

00:41:03.360 | So it's not the caffeine that I care about that much

00:41:05.360 | relative to, you know, if you lost three grams of sodium

00:41:08.440 | because of the training and you added another few milligrams

00:41:11.600 | because the caffeine, I don't really care or didn't.

00:41:14.340 | - I'm glad you brought up the difference

00:41:15.720 | between a substance like caffeine

00:41:18.720 | and the vehicle it's contained in, like coffee.

00:41:21.980 | This is all really important.

00:41:23.160 | And it also raises a question about individual differences

00:41:25.840 | in sweating ability.

00:41:27.980 | And I call it sweating ability because I have a good friend

00:41:31.100 | I've known for ages, really.

00:41:33.560 | I actually work with him in my laboratory as well.

00:41:37.120 | And he's one of these people that the moment he starts

00:41:39.400 | any physical activity, it's like a flood warning, right?

00:41:42.740 | He just soaks through clothing.

00:41:44.260 | It's just the sweating adaptation

00:41:46.020 | is exceedingly robust in him.

00:41:48.760 | Other people less so.

00:41:50.060 | So is it true that sweating and our ability

00:41:52.160 | to dump heat through it by loss of water

00:41:54.240 | is something that we tend to vary on

00:41:56.560 | and that also that we can build up that capacity.

00:41:58.400 | I know a number of people are probably thinking,

00:41:59.600 | ew, gross, why would I want to sweat more?

00:42:02.020 | But there's actually a huge advantage

00:42:03.320 | to be able to dump body heat during exertion

00:42:05.800 | because body heat in some ways

00:42:08.480 | sets the cap for performance.

00:42:10.800 | - In many, many ways.

00:42:12.240 | - Including mental performance.

00:42:13.880 | Our ability to stay alert often is enhanced by it being cold

00:42:16.920 | and of course we all want to warm up properly.

00:42:18.800 | But in terms of loss of fluid through sweating,

00:42:23.020 | is there a way to easily bend ourselves

00:42:24.820 | into kind of a low sweater, medium sweater, heavy sweater?

00:42:29.480 | That sounds like an article of clothing.

00:42:31.200 | But in any case, you know what I'm, you know what I mean.

00:42:32.920 | - Man, another, a lot to say here.

00:42:34.800 | Wish we had a whole series on this.

00:42:37.440 | - Listen, if we have to go 17 hours, we can do it.

00:42:40.540 | Just everybody, hydrate well.

00:42:42.240 | - I think we've shown the listeners that is a real threat.

00:42:46.840 | That's a very real threat.

00:42:48.280 | Podcasting to failure.

00:42:49.340 | You don't have to do every set in the gym to failure,

00:42:50.960 | but here we are attempting to podcast failure.

00:42:52.760 | In all seriousness, what is the role of sweating ability?

00:42:57.760 | And is this something that any of us should care about

00:43:01.800 | or train for or pay attention to?

00:43:03.480 | Or is this just kind of getting into the arcane?

00:43:05.820 | - Number one, you can train your ability to sweat.

00:43:08.600 | This is important for heat acclimation.

00:43:10.960 | And why that matters, when you sweat,

00:43:13.400 | that actually is not what regulates your temperature.

00:43:16.800 | What you want to have happen is the fluid to hit your skin

00:43:19.600 | and not to be evaporated.

00:43:20.720 | That's the actual mechanism.

00:43:22.100 | So in fact, if you stop sweating,

00:43:25.240 | you can guarantee within a short amount of time,

00:43:27.960 | you're gonna be done moving.

00:43:29.560 | - Oh, very interesting.

00:43:31.080 | I hope people heard that

00:43:32.360 | and really are highlighting that in their mind,

00:43:35.280 | that sweating is a process of bringing fluid from your body

00:43:38.480 | onto the surface of your skin.

00:43:39.840 | And then the heat dumping aspect of sweating

00:43:42.640 | is the evaporation of that off your body,

00:43:45.040 | which brings to mind all sorts of ideas about

00:43:46.920 | how to dress during exercise, et cetera.

00:43:49.760 | But what you said is that if you are not sweating enough,

00:43:54.040 | you are limiting your output capacity.

00:43:55.960 | So it's not just about having enough fluid to sweat.

00:43:59.040 | It's also about being able to sweat

00:44:01.120 | and being dressed appropriately

00:44:04.720 | to allow that sweat to move, to evaporate off your body.

00:44:07.380 | - Yep, and heat acclimation training

00:44:08.860 | is as simple as it sounds.

00:44:10.280 | So just practice it more.

00:44:11.740 | So if you're going into a process

00:44:13.720 | where you either need to be in a hot environment

00:44:15.560 | or you need to improve your sweat rate,

00:44:17.240 | you just need to practice sweating

00:44:18.320 | and your body will get better at that.

00:44:19.600 | Practice a sauna, practice a jacuzzi.

00:44:21.560 | Just get in those things

00:44:22.880 | and you will improve your ability to do that.

00:44:24.680 | Now, there is a huge genetic component.

00:44:27.660 | I have one individual, actually a UFC fighter

00:44:30.400 | I've been working with,

00:44:31.240 | and I don't mind mentioning his name.

00:44:32.400 | He'll give me full permission, Scott Holtzman.

00:44:34.800 | Many, many years, he's actually fighting right now.

00:44:39.400 | Actually today he'll be going.

00:44:41.000 | He is, he is like you described,

00:44:44.360 | like buckets and buckets and buckets of fluids

00:44:46.360 | come off this guy when he's tying his shoes.

00:44:48.420 | He just goes, right?

00:44:50.440 | And we've improved that.

00:44:51.680 | I actually sweat too much.

00:44:52.880 | We worked on that a lot early in his career

00:44:54.640 | and we got some improvements down

00:44:55.920 | to get him to hold onto the fluids better.

00:44:58.240 | That being said, I've worked with other individuals

00:45:00.120 | in his weight category and it's the opposite, right?

00:45:02.320 | So we can have them literally

00:45:03.360 | do the exact same training session together

00:45:05.480 | and Scott will dump six pounds

00:45:06.900 | and other folks at his size will dump two, two and a half.

00:45:09.720 | So there's a genetic component that is just there

00:45:11.500 | and you don't need to worry about it there.

00:45:13.460 | So can you identify if you are a heavy salt sweater or not?

00:45:17.720 | Well, you have a whole bunch of routes for this.

00:45:19.600 | Number one is you can use the old free,

00:45:22.280 | cost free test of just looking at your clothing.

00:45:25.600 | And if you're seeing that white residue all over it,

00:45:28.420 | so you've all have the friend

00:45:29.640 | who probably wears that same baseball hat

00:45:31.600 | that they've had for eight years.

00:45:33.000 | If it is covered in the white junk all over the place,

00:45:37.780 | that's a sign of a higher salt sweater

00:45:40.180 | if the opposite happens.

00:45:42.020 | And it's like you can pull their clothing back

00:45:43.800 | and there's just nothing there.

00:45:45.780 | There may be a little bit of a lower salt sweater.

00:45:48.540 | You can also use any number of hydration tests.

00:45:53.540 | I know that there is some coming out in the market

00:45:55.320 | very, very soon that can give you theoretically real time

00:45:58.420 | measurements just like a CGM would be.

00:46:01.540 | Although I haven't seen any data on

00:46:03.100 | if those are accurate or not, I haven't used one yet.

00:46:05.800 | But there are a number that are out super cheap,

00:46:07.860 | 10, 15, 20 blocks all the way up to a couple of hundred

00:46:10.060 | dollars where you can buy these patches,

00:46:12.120 | put them on you and get a reasonably close estimate.

00:46:15.320 | And again, if those things are five or 10 or 20% off,

00:46:19.120 | I don't know, have to see independent data come out first.

00:46:22.440 | But even if they are, you're not worried

00:46:24.040 | about the specific milligrams, right?

00:46:25.820 | Whether you sweat out 1,250 milligrams in a workout

00:46:28.600 | or if it's 1,340, it doesn't really matter.

00:46:31.000 | You're trying to look for big, big numbers, right?

00:46:33.280 | Are you losing 500 milligrams using three and a half grams

00:46:36.360 | where you're at?

00:46:37.200 | So those things will get you in the ballpark

00:46:38.200 | to do exactly what you decide.

00:46:39.360 | Am I high, medium or low?

00:46:42.160 | And there's a lot of them that I've used in the past.

00:46:44.400 | So that's another way to go about it.

00:46:47.640 | Then what you wanna do is probably match

00:46:49.840 | your electrolyte intake to something close to what you sweat.

00:46:53.680 | That's the ideal scenario.

00:46:55.420 | You can get a lot of information about hydration from blood.

00:46:58.180 | You can look at like acute markers of dehydration,

00:47:00.080 | like hemoglobin, hematocrit.

00:47:02.160 | If your hemoglobin is like 15 plus, it's funny.

00:47:06.560 | We've talked about this in a few episodes before,

00:47:08.320 | but I see that and I'm like, man, that dude's super fit.

00:47:10.760 | That's like a 15 for hemoglobin would be pretty high,

00:47:14.080 | 14 or so would be pretty good for a female.

00:47:16.300 | That's also the exact same thing

00:47:17.720 | as the sign of acute dehydration.

00:47:20.040 | So hematocrit, same thing.

00:47:21.280 | If you're north of 50%, you're probably dehydrated.

00:47:23.040 | So you can get a lot.

00:47:24.360 | There are also though a lot of biomarkers

00:47:27.000 | that can tell you more about chronic dehydration.

00:47:29.400 | So you can run through those things as well.

00:47:30.680 | So a good blood chemistry test can tell you a lot

00:47:33.280 | and you can actually get some insights

00:47:34.440 | in your sodium and potassium.

00:47:35.760 | Albumin is another fantastic way

00:47:37.240 | to measure longer term hydration status.

00:47:39.960 | Now one of these amazing globulins

00:47:42.040 | that we've sort of talked a lot about.

00:47:44.060 | So you can do all those things.

00:47:45.460 | You can also simply measure the body weight pre-imposed

00:47:49.000 | and use a sweat patch or not,

00:47:50.600 | and use the freer version of your clothing test

00:47:53.420 | and get a rough idea of where you're getting it from.

00:47:56.020 | So those are good places to start.

00:47:59.920 | I wanna go back though and make sure I wasn't over

00:48:02.440 | terrifying the audience too much on a sort of a piece.

00:48:04.560 | If you're performing a type of training

00:48:06.880 | or exercise or sport in which you're not losing

00:48:09.880 | more than 2% of your body weight,

00:48:11.520 | you don't need to be overly concerned

00:48:13.800 | about hydrating in the sport.

00:48:16.360 | And so we can actually get into some equations

00:48:19.440 | for how much water to drink during training right now.

00:48:22.160 | But if you're again losing less than that, it's not critical.

00:48:25.440 | You can have some fluids that like makes you feel better,

00:48:27.920 | but you're not gonna be experiencing tremendous amounts

00:48:30.120 | of performance increments.

00:48:31.120 | If you're, again, out playing a baseball game

00:48:34.780 | and it's 50 degrees out, you're fine.

00:48:37.360 | You can drink some water,

00:48:38.200 | but that's not gonna be compromising performance or recovery.

00:48:40.400 | So we can actually then, if you'd like,

00:48:43.100 | I can go through the three-step system

00:48:45.360 | for optimizing hydration,

00:48:47.020 | but I wanna make sure I planted that flag

00:48:49.420 | so people aren't just terrified

00:48:50.400 | that they gotta be guzzling down water

00:48:52.200 | if they're going to their physical therapist

00:48:54.480 | for some stretching.

00:48:55.320 | That's probably not super important.

00:48:57.180 | I'd like to take a brief break

00:48:58.440 | and acknowledge our sponsor, Athletic Greens.

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00:49:49.680 | I would love for you to tell us

00:49:51.480 | what I refer to as the Galpin equation.

00:49:54.940 | Understanding, of course,

00:49:55.940 | that you did not name it the Galpin equation.

00:49:57.900 | Listen, folks, scientists can have things named after them,

00:50:00.640 | but in general, it's not reflective of healthy psychology

00:50:04.760 | if they name things after themselves.

00:50:06.540 | - Correct.

00:50:07.380 | - Sometimes, yes, neuroanatomists used to do that,

00:50:08.920 | but in any case, Dr. Andy Galpin did not name

00:50:12.140 | the Galpin equation after himself.

00:50:13.520 | I named it after him and the Galpin equation

00:50:16.320 | for how much fluid to ingest during exercise is?

00:50:20.060 | - You want to take your body weight in pounds

00:50:23.820 | and divide that by 30.

00:50:25.580 | And you want to consume that number,

00:50:27.680 | which would be in ounces, about every 15 to 20 minutes.

00:50:31.340 | So in the example of you being 200 pounds,

00:50:34.440 | you would take 200 divided by 30,

00:50:36.600 | which is, let's just call that number seven to be close,

00:50:39.240 | which means you would consume about seven ounces of water

00:50:42.180 | every 15 or 20 minutes or so.

00:50:44.560 | - Okay.

00:50:45.400 | - Now, as a little bit of a point,

00:50:46.540 | while I also did not name it,

00:50:47.660 | I also didn't do the research.

00:50:49.560 | It's important to point out

00:50:50.480 | that other scientists figured these things out.

00:50:52.520 | I just read their papers

00:50:53.880 | and made that derivation of their equation

00:50:56.280 | to make it a little bit easier for us folks

00:50:57.620 | who do not work on the metric system.

00:50:59.880 | - Okay, a couple of things.

00:51:00.820 | First of all, I'm not 200 pounds,

00:51:02.520 | but it doesn't matter how much I weigh

00:51:03.660 | because the point is that the listener

00:51:06.400 | - Correct.

00:51:07.240 | - Should take their body weight in pounds divided by 30

00:51:09.240 | and just that number of ounces in fluid every 15 minutes.

00:51:12.960 | And then for those out there outside the US

00:51:15.640 | that are accustomed to thinking in milliliters

00:51:18.620 | and liters, not ounces and kilograms, not pounds,

00:51:22.920 | what is the Galpin equation in the metric system?

00:51:26.020 | - This would be two milliliters per kilogram,

00:51:28.880 | which again, if you were, let's say 200 pounds,

00:51:31.760 | that's going to be something roughly like,

00:51:33.420 | we'll call it 90 kilos.

00:51:35.640 | And so if you did two milliliters per kilo,

00:51:37.500 | you'd be something like 180 milliliters of fluid,

00:51:40.920 | again, every 15 or 20 minutes.

00:51:43.260 | - Great.

00:51:44.100 | And how should people ingest that fluid?

00:51:46.360 | And of course, I would imagine it's through their mouth,

00:51:49.520 | I would hope.

00:51:50.360 | - I hope.

00:51:51.180 | - Other orifices that it might suffice,

00:51:53.060 | but let's not go there.

00:51:55.180 | They're drinking that water consistently,

00:51:57.520 | or is it every 15 minutes they slug it back?

00:51:59.940 | Does it matter?

00:52:01.140 | - Okay, yeah, that's very good.

00:52:02.620 | A handful of things.

00:52:04.860 | In general, when you talk hydration,

00:52:06.620 | the slower and steady, you can go the better.

00:52:08.700 | In fact, the reason this two milliliters per kilogram

00:52:11.900 | number came out is because a number of trials were run,

00:52:15.340 | when they looked at that every 15 minutes,

00:52:17.220 | just one bolus of it, in different derivations.

00:52:21.380 | And it's pretty clear that the slower pace one could do it,

00:52:25.300 | the better.

00:52:26.140 | So whether you're doing it every 10 minutes

00:52:27.660 | or 15 or 20 minutes, the reason we actually give that gap

00:52:29.920 | is because you have to be also offset

00:52:33.020 | a little bit of GI distress.

00:52:34.060 | In fact, like kind of the four golden rules of recovery,

00:52:37.740 | if you will, we use sort of three R's.

00:52:40.840 | You need to rebuild, rehydrate, and replenish.

00:52:42.900 | What that really means is you need to have

00:52:44.660 | a continuous glucose stream.

00:52:46.740 | You need to have a continuous amino acid stream.

00:52:49.460 | You need to hydrate.

00:52:51.380 | And you need to do all one, two, and three

00:52:53.940 | without disturbing your gut too much.

00:52:56.180 | And so in this particular case, it

00:52:58.660 | was sort of found that we can hit that level in general

00:53:01.940 | and be just fine for most people.

00:53:03.900 | So I mean, a little bit of context.

00:53:05.500 | The example we gave there in both cases,

00:53:07.260 | it's something like six to seven ounces for 15 or 20 minutes.

00:53:10.980 | If you think about that, there are 16 ounces in a pound.

00:53:14.680 | And most water bottles, like if you go buy a water bottle

00:53:16.940 | at a store here, they generally come

00:53:18.580 | in like 16 ounce bottles-ish.

00:53:20.700 | So six or seven ounces is really like a third

00:53:23.300 | of a water bottle, maybe, every 15 or 20 or so minutes.

00:53:27.700 | So it's not some egregious amount of water

00:53:29.760 | that you have to slam down.

00:53:30.600 | Now, that is influenced heavily

00:53:33.020 | by how hydrated you started the session with,

00:53:36.540 | so how hydrated you came in.

00:53:38.460 | External factors like heat, humidity,

00:53:40.480 | temperature, things like that.

00:53:41.520 | But that gives you a rough idea that, again,

00:53:45.260 | and these are numbers that you would need

00:53:46.900 | to consume to optimize performance.

00:53:49.640 | At the end of that, then is when you would look

00:53:53.740 | to see how much I lost, like we talked about earlier,

00:53:57.180 | and then add back that 125%, taking into account

00:54:01.180 | how much fluid you ingested.

00:54:02.520 | So if you're 200 pounds and you drank a total of, say,

00:54:07.180 | a pound of water during the training,

00:54:10.060 | and you started off at 200 and you finished at 198,

00:54:12.920 | you actually lost three pounds, not two pounds,

00:54:17.640 | because you lost three, you drank one during it,

00:54:19.980 | so your final net number is two.

00:54:22.020 | So now you really need to drink back 125%

00:54:26.200 | of that remaining two pounds, two and a half pounds,

00:54:29.060 | something like that.

00:54:30.200 | These numbers, especially that 125,

00:54:32.680 | they're just rough guidelines.

00:54:34.140 | Some actually papers suggest it's all the way up to 150%.

00:54:38.100 | So it's just like an idea.

00:54:39.500 | Don't measure out whether you need 5.5 ounces or 6.2 ounces.

00:54:44.300 | It just sort of gives you an idea of where to start.

00:54:46.540 | All right, a few sips every 15 or 20 minutes

00:54:48.840 | is close enough.

00:54:50.220 | - I've actually started using the Galpin equation

00:54:53.020 | to determine how much fluid I need for mental work.

00:54:56.860 | Given the now robust data that are out there

00:55:00.580 | on the relationship between hydration and mental work,

00:55:03.120 | it's been very effective for me.

00:55:05.500 | And again, there are peer-reviewed studies

00:55:07.380 | that support the idea that hydration is important

00:55:10.780 | for proper mental clarity and energy and focus,

00:55:13.780 | and that even being slightly dehydrated can disrupt that.

00:55:16.620 | But if one is drinking so much water

00:55:20.060 | that they're frequently going to the restroom

00:55:22.020 | and can't comfortably focus on the work they're doing,

00:55:25.200 | that's also an issue.

00:55:26.180 | So that's very helpful.

00:55:28.900 | What are the three most critical features of hydration?

00:55:31.740 | And then I'd like to move on to some of the more particulars

00:55:34.740 | about supplementation and nutrition.

00:55:36.620 | Three parts, start hydrated, maintain hydration throughout.

00:55:41.620 | Part three is hydrate post to fix it, okay.

00:55:45.940 | We gave you the half ounce per pound of body weight equation

00:55:49.260 | so you start the training hydrated.

00:55:51.100 | We gave you the two milliliters per kilogram

00:55:54.900 | slash body weight divided by 30 to stay hydrated.

00:55:58.180 | Then we gave you the 125%.

00:56:00.540 | But I can actually just give you sort of,

00:56:02.300 | I'm giving you another list here, I'm sorry.

00:56:04.420 | But it is my five step cheater guide

00:56:08.420 | for optimizing hydration for performance.

00:56:10.120 | Sorry, step number one,

00:56:11.340 | drink a lot of water first thing in the morning.

00:56:13.860 | This gets everything kickstart, it gets you going.

00:56:15.380 | It also saves you from having to drink

00:56:17.160 | a bunch of water at night,

00:56:18.580 | which is then going to compromise your sleep.

00:56:20.620 | - What's a lot?

00:56:21.840 | - Depending on how big you are,

00:56:23.140 | the general thing I'll tell people is like

00:56:25.100 | one of the very first things you should do

00:56:26.500 | throughout your day, you wake up, go to the bathroom.

00:56:29.720 | As you're consuming your sunlight, consume water.

00:56:32.220 | This is maybe chugging a full glass.

00:56:34.080 | It's honestly what I do, it's not the best route,

00:56:35.800 | but I'll just get that going.

00:56:37.120 | - 16 ounces.

00:56:37.960 | - 16 ounces or so is great, it's fine.

00:56:39.120 | If you're larger, I'm 165 to 70 pounds,

00:56:43.620 | depending on what's going on,

00:56:45.040 | maybe a little higher sometimes.

00:56:46.780 | If you're 225 pounds, maybe that number is 30 ounces.

00:56:50.700 | So you just sort of scale up and down.

00:56:52.500 | And the only reason I say a lot is

00:56:53.860 | it just depends on what you're doing.

00:56:55.860 | And I also should clarify,

00:56:56.980 | I don't really literally mean chug.

00:56:59.040 | Just like sips, because the faster you drink water,

00:57:01.400 | the faster it's going to expand blood volume.

00:57:03.260 | The faster it extends blood volume,

00:57:04.900 | the faster you get rid of it.

00:57:06.340 | - I don't think a lot of people know that.

00:57:09.260 | - Yeah, this is maybe this is clarifying.

00:57:11.300 | This is also, we sort of talked about earlier,

00:57:13.420 | if you drink too much water, you'll dilute the system.

00:57:15.680 | Well, if you have a diluted system,

00:57:17.580 | your body's first reaction is to rid of water,

00:57:20.720 | to bring total blood volume down, right?

00:57:22.120 | Remember, if you were to go to a doctor

00:57:24.740 | and they looked at your total blood volume,

00:57:26.020 | they're like, man, you're five and a half liters.

00:57:27.760 | You're going to be like, holy crap,

00:57:28.860 | you're going to be put on a diuretic

00:57:30.220 | because you don't want to have a heart attack

00:57:31.380 | and have blood pressure.

00:57:32.220 | - I wonder if people are drinking a 16 ounce glass of water

00:57:36.980 | or other fluid all at once before going to sleep.

00:57:40.580 | And that's why they're waking up in the middle of the night.

00:57:42.100 | - Totally.

00:57:42.940 | - Given what you just said,

00:57:44.020 | probably a better protocol would be to sip

00:57:47.540 | on a glass of water in the final hour

00:57:50.100 | or two hours before sleep.

00:57:51.580 | - Generally, the number we say is three hours.

00:57:53.340 | In the three hours preceding sleep,

00:57:54.660 | you want to basically limit fluid intake

00:57:56.900 | to sipping as needed.

00:57:58.700 | - I think that's, I'm going to start that tonight

00:58:02.120 | because I wake up generally once per night to use the bathroom

00:58:05.780 | and I do drink some fluids before I go to sleep,

00:58:08.020 | mostly because I'm pretty thirsty at that time.

00:58:10.400 | But I'm going to start sipping that water

00:58:13.280 | in the three hours heading into sleep.

00:58:15.740 | - Yeah, so you can actually pay attention to is,

00:58:18.940 | to go back, this is actually, I love doing this stuff,

00:58:20.940 | but if you're waking up at night

00:58:23.540 | and you have a very dry mouth.

00:58:25.100 | - Not for me.

00:58:27.220 | - All right, because it can be one of two things.

00:58:28.860 | You might actually be dehydrated.

00:58:31.020 | And so then the mistake people make is like,

00:58:32.600 | man, my mouth is so dry.

00:58:33.620 | I keep getting up to drink water at night.

00:58:36.000 | That makes you then pee too much.

00:58:37.600 | What that also indicates is probably your mouth breathing.

00:58:41.100 | So a lot of ways to fix people waking up

00:58:44.120 | and urinating too much at night is to tape your mouth

00:58:46.900 | and or use a dilator over your nose.

00:58:49.780 | And then what happens is you don't feel like

00:58:51.520 | you have a dry mouth.

00:58:52.360 | So you don't get up to consume any extra water

00:58:53.920 | throughout the night.

00:58:54.760 | So that actually reduces your fluid intake.

00:58:56.900 | So you don't have the problem of actually now having

00:58:58.660 | too much fluid to do it.

00:59:00.520 | And so it's another reasons why mouth taping

00:59:02.420 | can really, really help.

00:59:03.620 | If you are having those issues and or snoring,

00:59:08.240 | those are not benign.

00:59:09.900 | That's a really, like you really should get

00:59:11.780 | some work on those.

00:59:13.240 | Something, you're not sleeping very well

00:59:15.700 | is the way I'll say it.

00:59:16.960 | It doesn't necessarily mean something life-threatening,

00:59:19.380 | but it's not a good thing.

00:59:21.140 | So you're gonna run kind of your triaging things

00:59:23.680 | back and forth.

00:59:24.520 | So if you're like, I'm waking up to pee a lot

00:59:25.700 | but my mouth isn't thirsty.

00:59:27.860 | Okay, great.

00:59:28.740 | Then you may actually have just a water consumption issue.

00:59:31.420 | If it is, my mouth is dry, but I'm actually waking up

00:59:35.140 | and I'm having these large urinations,

00:59:37.600 | then you're not actually dehydrated.

00:59:38.980 | You're just breathing through your mouth.

00:59:40.580 | If you're waking up and your mouth is dry

00:59:43.100 | and there's not a lot of pee there,

00:59:44.180 | then you actually might actually legitimately be

00:59:46.260 | under hydrated.

00:59:47.180 | So a little bit of a game you can play there.

00:59:49.460 | - Well, that's super informative.

00:59:50.980 | I think that the point alone that gulping a bunch of water

00:59:56.820 | all at once is going to cause you to need to excrete

01:00:00.660 | that water soon after is a really important point.

01:00:05.660 | Also for people that are going to, I don't know,

01:00:08.260 | give a talk or you don't want to have to get up

01:00:11.500 | to use the restroom.

01:00:12.340 | You have to sit through a long meeting.

01:00:14.460 | Clearly I'm violating all these rules up until right now.

01:00:17.020 | I've been, you know, not, I sort of followed

01:00:18.980 | the seagull approach to consuming fluids,

01:00:22.020 | just in enormous volumes.

01:00:25.000 | I'm going to start sipping fluids instead.

01:00:28.820 | What are some of the other rules of hydration?

01:00:30.900 | - So you're going to wake up, you're going to start your day

01:00:32.740 | and start hydrated.

01:00:33.980 | So, you know, you're consuming a larger percentage

01:00:36.980 | of your water earlier in the day.

01:00:38.760 | Then you get all the performance enhancing effects of water

01:00:41.700 | and you don't have to worry about it compromising your sleep.

01:00:44.500 | So that's step number one.

01:00:45.560 | Also now you're going to start your session

01:00:47.560 | closer to hydration.

01:00:49.080 | All right, great.

01:00:49.920 | Number two, eat mostly real whole foods.

01:00:54.800 | Why?

01:00:56.740 | Interesting.

01:00:57.580 | What you may or not have thought about is a huge determinant

01:01:00.360 | of your hydration status is your food choices.

01:01:03.200 | If you look at different foods, for example, most fruit.

01:01:06.680 | Watermelon, watermelon is like 95 plus percent water.

01:01:10.200 | Like fantastic source.

01:01:11.880 | Also, by the way, since we're here,

01:01:13.240 | it is not extremely high in carbohydrate.

01:01:14.920 | It's not an extremely high in sugar.

01:01:16.640 | It is by percentage,

01:01:17.480 | but since it is almost exclusively water you're eating,

01:01:20.560 | it is not something that is extremely dangerous

01:01:22.880 | in terms of sugar.

01:01:24.380 | There alone, probably all the things we've talked about

01:01:26.500 | in the six episodes, that comment right there

01:01:29.000 | will probably blow the internet to pieces

01:01:31.340 | and I'll probably get hate mail for life for it, but.

01:01:33.460 | - From people throwing watermelons.

01:01:37.140 | - Yeah, oh my gosh, it's funny.

01:01:38.460 | - Well, I don't think the point is that sugar

01:01:39.960 | is necessarily bad.

01:01:40.900 | I think the point is that for most people,

01:01:43.340 | they're ingesting too much sugar, most people.

01:01:46.140 | And it's interesting.

01:01:47.480 | Oftentimes the people who are justifying the ingestion

01:01:49.620 | of sugar are exactly the kind of people

01:01:51.180 | that should not ingest so much sugar.

01:01:53.480 | So there's a little bit of a user bias there.

01:01:56.320 | - The point here is if you're eating whole, real food,

01:01:58.360 | this is like, now we're kind of splitting hairs

01:02:01.240 | about those things, so.

01:02:03.320 | - So morning hydration, consumed food.

01:02:05.820 | - Yeah, now, important point here.

01:02:07.720 | If you compare it to other foods,

01:02:10.620 | like actually meat is a very high percentage of fluid,

01:02:14.300 | depending on how well or long you've cooked it.

01:02:16.720 | You will just remember you said earlier,

01:02:18.620 | over 70% water, right?

01:02:19.800 | So if you're eating meat,

01:02:20.640 | you're getting actually a big chunk of water.

01:02:22.120 | As you cook it, of course, you lose some of that.

01:02:24.040 | But meat can be like,

01:02:25.840 | I wouldn't call it a hydrating food item,

01:02:27.800 | but it is not as low as something like a biscuit,

01:02:30.640 | which can be actually like 10% water.

01:02:32.840 | That's why it's like dry and dense,

01:02:34.000 | which doesn't mean it's bad for you.

01:02:35.060 | But there, if you're eating highly processed foods,

01:02:38.300 | almost by association,

01:02:39.620 | that means they've been dehydrated or partially, right?

01:02:42.480 | So you're just getting less total fluid intake.

01:02:44.560 | In addition, they have also been highly salted in general.

01:02:48.760 | So now we're in this position

01:02:49.720 | where we're under hydrated and highly salted, bad spot.

01:02:53.240 | If you now switch over to mostly,

01:02:55.840 | again, just mostly whole real food-ish,

01:02:58.360 | whatever that means to you,

01:02:59.680 | then your hydration is gonna skyrocket.

01:03:02.160 | You're gonna have a lot.

01:03:02.980 | So you're eating a ton of food.

01:03:04.000 | In fact, it should be a large percentage

01:03:06.040 | of the fluid intake you have actually

01:03:07.400 | should be coming from your food.

01:03:08.600 | You shouldn't have to be smashing water bottles

01:03:10.760 | after a water bottle all day.

01:03:12.320 | In that case though, you do need to add salt back.

01:03:14.720 | So we do see this a lot

01:03:16.520 | with people who try to make a transition

01:03:17.960 | for maybe a suboptimal nutritional lifestyle.

01:03:21.000 | And they give up a little bit other processed food

01:03:22.920 | and they come over and they start having problems

01:03:24.280 | because they're not actually consuming enough salt.

01:03:26.760 | So add that back.

01:03:27.760 | Easy way to do that.

01:03:29.020 | You can use electrolytes

01:03:29.920 | and we could talk about those numbers if you want.

01:03:31.440 | If you just salt your food that you're making to taste,

01:03:35.660 | that's gonna get most people in a pretty good spot.

01:03:38.360 | So start hydrated, consume hydrating foods.

01:03:43.360 | Step number two.

01:03:44.560 | Step number three, you wanna pre-hydrate.

01:03:47.160 | If you know you're gonna do a workout session

01:03:49.600 | and it's gonna be hot and long or one of those things,

01:03:51.920 | you wanna look for that half a pound

01:03:54.880 | per body weight of ounces.

01:03:57.120 | So that's the number we're looking for

01:03:58.500 | to start our hydration session.

01:04:00.000 | We do that, we're pretty much taken care of.

01:04:02.080 | And then, like I said,

01:04:02.920 | adjust depending on lifestyle, humidity

01:04:04.920 | and other factors like that.

01:04:06.920 | You can use what is called the WUT system, W-U-T.

01:04:11.720 | I think Bob Kenefic has done a ton of research in this area.

01:04:14.680 | If you wanna read more, look up his research.

01:04:17.400 | It is simply weight, urine and thirst.

01:04:21.920 | So in other words, check your body weight,

01:04:24.080 | look at your urine color and gauge your thirst.

01:04:26.660 | And actually you can use those three things

01:04:29.420 | and those can significantly predict actual hydration status

01:04:32.720 | independent of actually measuring osmolology

01:04:35.480 | or anything like that.

01:04:36.320 | So those three metrics alone are pretty good indicator

01:04:39.640 | of where you're at.

01:04:40.600 | So you're gonna have that normal amount of water

01:04:42.860 | plus or minus, if you miss that number for whatever reason,

01:04:46.660 | you get distracted.

01:04:48.080 | The number we typically tell people is like something like

01:04:50.560 | 400 to 500 milliliters of water

01:04:53.360 | in the hour proceeding the training, all right?

01:04:56.500 | So that's like 13 to 20 ounces.

01:04:59.160 | So like, you know you're gonna go work out at three o'clock,

01:05:01.960 | it's two o'clock and you realize,

01:05:03.560 | oh man, I have not drank much water today.

01:05:06.280 | You don't need to go smash tons and tons and tons.

01:05:08.600 | Just look for something like that, you know,

01:05:10.700 | call it a bottle of water, if you will.

01:05:13.200 | If that's not enough, if you're in a really tough spot,

01:05:15.460 | you can do more like five to eight ounces,

01:05:19.460 | 15 or 20 minutes before exercise.

01:05:23.080 | You wanna be really careful about drinking a bunch of water

01:05:25.480 | like in the seconds before exercise,

01:05:28.760 | because you're just gonna feel a whole bunch of water

01:05:30.460 | bouncing up and down in your stomach and nobody likes that.

01:05:32.580 | So one to 300 milliliters, 15 or so 20 minutes before.

01:05:37.400 | That assumes you're in this like 185 pound range ish.

01:05:42.120 | Again, if you're talking people of much larger size,

01:05:44.680 | you may need to increase those values accordingly.

01:05:48.120 | If you do all that, then you use the Galpin equation

01:05:51.620 | for your intra workout hydration

01:05:54.200 | and you're in a pretty good spot.

01:05:56.220 | What you want to consume in that is what I call sweat.

01:05:59.720 | What I mean by that is you don't actually

01:06:02.220 | wanna necessarily consume water only during a workout.

01:06:06.620 | You wanna consume something that is isosmotic to your blood.

01:06:11.620 | So something that is the same concentration

01:06:14.840 | that you've lost in your sweat.

01:06:16.280 | So if you've done a sweat test,

01:06:18.080 | you would then drink a fluid that is of the same osmolality.

01:06:23.080 | The short version of that,

01:06:25.180 | something in the neighborhood of 200 to 400 milligrams

01:06:29.860 | of sodium, most electrolytes products

01:06:33.220 | are gonna be something like that.

01:06:34.060 | Now I know element is 1,000 milligrams and it's a lot higher,

01:06:37.840 | but most products now that you're gonna find

01:06:39.860 | are 250 to 400 milligrams.

01:06:42.200 | And they're typically in the like two to maybe up to three

01:06:45.780 | to one sodium to potassium range, right?

01:06:49.020 | Coconut water is actually cool.

01:06:50.700 | It's like basically the opposite.

01:06:52.720 | Like a cup of coconut water, I think has something

01:06:54.500 | like 200 milligrams of sodium,

01:06:56.540 | but like 600 milligrams of potassium.

01:06:58.920 | So like total spoiler alert,

01:07:00.860 | but when we use coconut water, a lot of hydration,

01:07:03.500 | just add a little pinch of salt

01:07:05.040 | 'cause that'll bring the sodium way back up.

01:07:07.020 | - Yeah, one note about sodium,

01:07:09.100 | obviously people who have pre-hypertension or hypertension

01:07:12.220 | wanna be careful with their sodium intake.

01:07:14.320 | In time I've suggested that people might consider

01:07:17.500 | ingesting more sodium, you know, it's sort of,

01:07:19.780 | it's like putting a target on your back.

01:07:22.300 | And yet the data are pretty good showing that

01:07:25.020 | if people are not getting enough sodium,

01:07:28.180 | their mental clarity, their focus, their mental stamina,

01:07:31.820 | their physical stamina really suffers.

01:07:34.440 | And then people argue, well,

01:07:36.000 | most of us are getting too much salt.

01:07:38.180 | That often is true for people

01:07:40.180 | that are eating a lot of processed foods.

01:07:41.980 | - And not training.

01:07:42.900 | - And not training.

01:07:43.980 | But for many people who are already sort of health conscious

01:07:48.400 | who are training, they're largely consuming,

01:07:51.580 | or I should say they're consuming largely non-processed

01:07:54.820 | or minimally processed foods.

01:07:56.220 | And especially for folks who are not ingesting

01:07:59.300 | many carbohydrates and are consuming caffeine,

01:08:03.140 | a lot of people don't know that carbohydrates hold water

01:08:06.760 | and that makes it sound bad.

01:08:08.220 | It's not necessarily that you're gonna get

01:08:09.820 | subcutaneous swelling of your body.

01:08:12.060 | - Now it's recovering.

01:08:13.380 | - It's bringing water into your system and it holds water.

01:08:15.700 | So when you drop carbohydrates, starches in particular,

01:08:18.380 | you urinate a lot more.

01:08:19.500 | And when you drink caffeine, you also urinate a lot more,

01:08:23.820 | as you pointed out earlier.

01:08:25.100 | So you start combining a few things

01:08:26.860 | like slightly lower carbohydrate or low carbohydrate,

01:08:29.580 | eating really quote unquote clean.

01:08:31.700 | You're not getting a lot of salt in your food

01:08:33.460 | and drinking caffeine and then exercising.

01:08:36.060 | And then pretty soon, those numbers that come along

01:08:38.580 | with a gram of sodium in your electrolyte drink

01:08:41.900 | are not all that outrageous.

01:08:43.460 | And what you find is people feel much, much better

01:08:46.020 | when they're getting enough sodium.

01:08:48.140 | And of course, I should say that there's no reason

01:08:51.800 | why someone has to ingest a supplement like Element

01:08:54.580 | or something, there are plenty of other ways

01:08:56.100 | to bring sodium into your system.

01:08:57.420 | You can use a pinch of pink salt or Himalayan salt

01:09:00.340 | or sea salt or even just table salt in water,

01:09:03.460 | or just making sure that you're salting your food enough.

01:09:06.040 | And I think that there too, salt appetite

01:09:09.100 | and salt taste is a pretty good guide.

01:09:10.820 | If you taste something and it tastes really salty to you,

01:09:14.100 | that's an indication that either it's really salty

01:09:16.260 | or your salt stores are kind of tapped off, you're okay.

01:09:19.860 | Whereas if you're craving salt and you're thinking,

01:09:22.580 | gosh, I really want to put salt on this already salty thing.

01:09:26.740 | Not necessarily, but oftentimes that means

01:09:28.900 | that you are salt deficient.

01:09:30.340 | So salt appetite is a pretty hardwired set

01:09:32.800 | of neural circuits and hormones.

01:09:34.060 | And I think we would all be wise to learn to tap into the,

01:09:37.100 | our kind of intuition about salt intake,

01:09:38.780 | but of course also to measure your blood pressure, et cetera.

01:09:41.000 | - Yeah, of course, if you think you have some sort

01:09:43.220 | of contraindication there that work with a medical specialist

01:09:46.060 | without question, those situations you laid out though,

01:09:49.460 | were very real.

01:09:50.300 | A lot of people are living like that.

01:09:51.140 | And so it's important for those folks to understand

01:09:52.900 | if you are going through symptoms, fatigue,

01:09:55.140 | lack of focus, cognitive function, performance isn't there,

01:10:00.240 | then hey, like you may be under salted.

01:10:03.340 | And again, actually a good amount of blood chemistry work

01:10:07.300 | can unravel that a lot.

01:10:08.620 | And it can sort of tell you if you're running out of whack.

01:10:11.020 | There are a number of folks who are extremely sensitive

01:10:14.780 | to sodium in terms of health risk.

01:10:16.420 | And that is a real thing.

01:10:17.820 | Again, work with your individual folks on that.

01:10:21.060 | I don't work with anyone for disease treatment

01:10:22.940 | or management at all.

01:10:23.840 | I've said that probably four times,

01:10:25.660 | I'll say it six more times.

01:10:27.660 | I only take people who are healthy

01:10:28.900 | and try to make them perform at their best possible level.

01:10:31.160 | So it's actually funny you mentioned that

01:10:32.900 | because I was going to give people my recommendation

01:10:35.040 | for sodium intake in general throughout the day.

01:10:36.960 | And then I decided, I'm not going to say that

01:10:38.460 | 'cause all it's going to do is make all the rest

01:10:40.420 | of the people who aren't coming to come after me

01:10:41.860 | for the watermelon comment, come after me for that.

01:10:44.060 | So I'll say that.

01:10:44.900 | - By the end of today's episode,

01:10:45.740 | the goal is that everyone's coming after you,

01:10:47.600 | but also that everyone has learned something of value.

01:10:50.500 | You've already given us a tremendous insights

01:10:54.020 | and actionable information on creatine and hydration.

01:10:58.500 | And along those lines,

01:11:00.740 | I'd love for you to tell us about some of the things

01:11:03.420 | that we can do with supplementation

01:11:06.180 | in order to enhance training

01:11:08.540 | by taking certain things before we train.

01:11:10.860 | And I also have the question of how long before training

01:11:14.460 | should we start thinking about supplying nutrients

01:11:17.180 | and supplements for the training session?

01:11:20.020 | - I'm not sure I actually finished my fiber.

01:11:21.540 | Maybe I wasn't clear enough about the last one.

01:11:23.320 | So I just want to tie that bow

01:11:24.760 | and then we'll go to the next one.

01:11:26.020 | Yeah, no, it was probably my fault.

01:11:27.260 | So that, in addition to the Galpin equation

01:11:31.620 | in terms of amount, I recommend it at roughly three to one,

01:11:36.620 | sodium to potassium recommendation.

01:11:38.060 | And I gave you some rough numbers for things like that.

01:11:40.380 | I actually, in all honesty,

01:11:42.060 | use probably six to 10 different electrolyte companies,

01:11:46.740 | depending on the situation.

01:11:47.880 | Some of them are really good.

01:11:49.380 | In the case, again, like element,

01:11:50.820 | that's nice about that is there's no carbohydrate.

01:11:52.700 | However, the downside is there's no carbohydrate.

01:11:54.920 | So sometimes I want carbohydrates in the training,

01:11:57.780 | 'cause as you mentioned, there's significant evidence,

01:12:00.440 | going back actually several decades,

01:12:02.600 | on the benefit of carbohydrate during exercise.

01:12:06.500 | So if you're in a situation where you're trying to,

01:12:09.300 | again, maximize actual exercise performance,

01:12:12.220 | especially if it is either a long duration,

01:12:14.400 | so more than two hours, or extremely high intensity,

01:12:18.100 | and this has to be well north of 100% of your VO2 max.

01:12:21.340 | In that situation,

01:12:22.260 | as we talked about in the endurance episode,

01:12:24.500 | you can actually start having a decrement in performance

01:12:26.660 | because of a drop of muscle glycogen,

01:12:28.900 | liver glycogen can start coming down.

01:12:31.300 | If that's the case,

01:12:32.620 | augmenting with the carbohydrates during the training,

01:12:34.900 | that is going to enhance performance.

01:12:36.300 | It's gonna do what we call spare the liver,

01:12:39.020 | and it's gonna keep, my second rule of my four,

01:12:42.540 | which is maintain glucose ingestion,

01:12:45.040 | is gonna keep that going.

01:12:46.560 | In general, what you're gonna find is,

01:12:48.400 | the number is like a five to 9% glucose concentration

01:12:52.360 | in your fluid,

01:12:53.200 | which turns out to be like exactly the number

01:12:54.960 | that most sports drinks have,

01:12:56.740 | as well as I think that's pretty much exactly

01:12:58.340 | what coconut water is.

01:13:00.320 | The downside of sports drinks, since we're here,

01:13:02.400 | is they actually tend to be undersalted,

01:13:04.640 | and so that they don't provide enough of them.

01:13:06.700 | If you look at the numbers,

01:13:07.760 | they're gonna say something like 60 to 100 grams

01:13:10.800 | of carbohydrate per hour, is the target.

01:13:13.680 | And now if you're using the sort of,

01:13:15.740 | galloping equation,

01:13:16.580 | and you're splitting that up into 15 minute intervals,

01:13:19.280 | it's something again like 20 or so grams of carbs,

01:13:23.240 | per 15 to 20 minutes.

01:13:25.360 | If you're doing again, an hour long plus training valve.

01:13:28.740 | So admittedly, 100 grams is a bit much for some folks,

01:13:32.340 | depending on your size.

01:13:33.280 | So I would recommend starting in that 60 gram or so range,

01:13:37.180 | again, per hour total is what you wanna get to.

01:13:39.800 | And only in the situation in which,

01:13:41.780 | muscle glycogen depletion is becoming a limiting factor

01:13:45.160 | to performance.

01:13:46.000 | So the other benefit of that is, as you mentioned,

01:13:48.760 | that actually drives water into the cell.

01:13:52.640 | And so you're gonna be in that nice sweet spot of,

01:13:55.480 | you're actually keeping glucose going,

01:13:57.360 | which is gonna enhance performance,

01:13:58.520 | and you're helping hydration at the same time.

01:14:01.360 | So the other little part that's important

01:14:03.320 | to pay attention to here is,

01:14:05.200 | the type of carbohydrate matters.

01:14:07.600 | So you can use actually a whole combination

01:14:09.200 | of things called resistant starches,

01:14:10.700 | which I will use for a long bouts of exercise,

01:14:13.280 | but in the middle of the workout,

01:14:15.520 | you're going to want to focus on glucose and fructose,

01:14:18.040 | mostly glucose.

01:14:19.360 | Typically at least a two or three to one ratio

01:14:21.760 | of glucose to fructose.

01:14:22.800 | And the reason is those actually get into tissue

01:14:25.040 | through separate transporters.

01:14:27.140 | And so what happens is once the glucose transporters

01:14:29.440 | get full, you can't bring anything else in.

01:14:32.040 | However, since fructose comes in a separate route,

01:14:34.800 | you can maximize total carbohydrate intake

01:14:37.400 | by using two different unique forms.

01:14:39.840 | There's a lot of ways you can do this,

01:14:42.200 | but this is where the momentous fuel product

01:14:45.200 | is like specifically has that exactly in it.

01:14:48.720 | So it's fantastic.

01:14:50.460 | You can use food, no problem.

01:14:52.700 | You can use a combination of things like honey

01:14:54.960 | and different easily absorbable and usable

01:14:58.400 | and things that you can actually like maybe put in a drink

01:15:01.580 | to get away with.

01:15:02.420 | So there's lots of routes for it,

01:15:03.840 | but you want to look in that sort of combination

01:15:06.440 | of five to 9%, roughly glucose for there.

01:15:09.680 | So you do need to train your gut.

01:15:12.040 | So do not do anything.

01:15:14.040 | And there's a generally a good rule.

01:15:15.440 | Do not do anything in your competition

01:15:17.680 | that you've never done in practice.

01:15:20.480 | So try these food items, try these amounts,

01:15:23.360 | the carbohydrate numbers, try the sodium numbers,

01:15:26.420 | try the total amount of water.

01:15:28.440 | Start low, you can always increase.

01:15:31.000 | What you don't want to do is have to run out

01:15:32.760 | during the middle of your spin class

01:15:34.380 | and sprint to the bathroom and hope nobody's in your way,

01:15:37.040 | which in the lab we've seen, we'll just say accidents

01:15:41.060 | like that occur more than once.

01:15:42.300 | So just be careful of your stomach.

01:15:44.760 | - I'd like to take a brief break

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01:16:46.920 | I realized I jumped the gun a little bit

01:16:48.360 | asking about supplementation for before,

01:16:50.480 | during, and after a workout,

01:16:52.120 | because what I neglected to ask about

01:16:53.740 | was training in the fasted state.

01:16:56.220 | This is something that we talked about in an earlier episode,

01:16:58.420 | but I think it's worth highlighting now.

01:17:00.360 | Sometimes the best way to supplement, if you will,

01:17:03.320 | a workout or pre-workout is ingesting nothing.

01:17:07.020 | I'm one of these people.

01:17:08.140 | I actually prefer to do my weight training

01:17:10.200 | somewhere between seven and eight a.m. each morning,

01:17:13.220 | sometimes a little earlier, sometimes a little bit later.

01:17:16.080 | I drink fluids, water, and I do ingest caffeine

01:17:20.160 | prior to those training days.

01:17:22.940 | On days when I don't train, I do,

01:17:24.820 | as I often recommend people do,

01:17:27.640 | delay my caffeine intake 90 to 120 minutes after waking.

01:17:31.260 | But in any event, it's water and caffeine,

01:17:34.840 | yerba mate or coffee or some sort of stimulant

01:17:37.400 | for weight training workouts,

01:17:39.400 | and generally not for cardiovascular training workouts,

01:17:42.120 | although sometimes yes.

01:17:43.540 | So I'm training fasted.

01:17:44.600 | That said, I'm ingesting carbohydrate the night before

01:17:46.920 | to make sure that I have glycogen stores that are topped off

01:17:51.080 | and so it's fasted, but with that caveat.

01:17:54.760 | What are your thoughts on training fasted?

01:17:57.160 | And what I just described is fasted overnight,

01:18:00.880 | but some people are training in the afternoon

01:18:03.520 | and they may opt to not eat anything

01:18:06.400 | in the two to four hours prior to training

01:18:10.320 | or maybe even longer.

01:18:11.720 | I personally find that caffeine hits my system a lot better

01:18:15.560 | when I'm fasted.

01:18:16.660 | Better meaning it just seems to have more of a potent effect.

01:18:19.240 | There are some reasons for that.

01:18:21.520 | And of course we dissuade people from ingesting caffeine

01:18:24.960 | too late in the day 'cause it'll disrupt sleep.

01:18:26.620 | So I'm not saying fast for three hours then drink caffeine,

01:18:29.580 | but who knows, maybe that's in your protocol.

01:18:31.740 | The simple version of this question is,

01:18:34.920 | what are your thoughts on training fasted?

01:18:37.060 | And if people are going to train fasted,

01:18:39.240 | how should they modulate their fluid intake if at all?

01:18:43.380 | - What happens with exercise?

01:18:44.700 | In the endurance and metabolism episode,

01:18:47.440 | we walk through and the fact that no matter

01:18:48.940 | what you're using for fuel, carbohydrates or fat,

01:18:52.020 | or even other potential sources,

01:18:54.900 | the end product of all of those is ATP, CO2 and water, right?

01:19:00.520 | So you're trying to make ATP.

01:19:02.620 | That is the fuel for exercise.

01:19:04.200 | Now, ATP is adenosine triphosphate.

01:19:06.480 | So one, two, three phosphates on top of an adenosine.

01:19:09.080 | Well, what you may have not put together

01:19:11.480 | is if you hydrolyze ATP

01:19:15.760 | and you break off one of those phosphates,

01:19:17.200 | you now have ADP.

01:19:18.200 | If you do it again, you have AMP, adenosine monophosphate.

01:19:22.600 | If you do it one more time, now you just have adenosine.

01:19:26.280 | And if you have then,

01:19:28.240 | therefore run through a lot of exercise,

01:19:30.840 | burned a lot of energy,

01:19:32.020 | you have increased the amount of adenosine

01:19:33.840 | that's floating around.

01:19:35.540 | Now, if you have a high concentration of adenosine,

01:19:38.720 | what's that gonna make you want to do?

01:19:41.360 | That's gonna bind to certain receptors.

01:19:42.720 | And we know when those receptors get bound to, you fall?

01:19:45.640 | - Asleep.

01:19:46.480 | - Bingo.

01:19:47.320 | Caffeine will competitively bind to those receptors.

01:19:50.800 | Therefore, that's why caffeine stops you

01:19:53.880 | from feeling like you wanna go to sleep, right?

01:19:56.100 | So we have a very clear relationship between exercise, fuel.

01:20:00.140 | In fact, if you look at the literature,

01:20:01.740 | there's a pretty clear relationship

01:20:03.020 | between the more caloric expenditure in different sports

01:20:06.760 | and the higher amount of hours needed for sleep.

01:20:10.140 | So there's a nice tie between how hard you're exercising,

01:20:13.220 | how much energy you're burning,

01:20:14.160 | how much you need to sleep, stimulants,

01:20:16.220 | which brings us all the way back

01:20:17.340 | to your question of fueling.

01:20:19.580 | So do I need to fuel prior to my exercise bout?

01:20:22.100 | If you're going to be limited

01:20:23.500 | in your exercise bout by fuel, then fueling is necessary,

01:20:28.500 | one way or the other.

01:20:30.220 | If it is a type of training that is not,

01:20:32.100 | then it's not going to matter.

01:20:33.700 | And so the examples we gave, if you're doing,

01:20:36.780 | if you're gonna go do a 30-second bout of maximal exertion

01:20:40.780 | and you're gonna do it one time,

01:20:42.380 | you don't need to worry about fueling at all.

01:20:44.980 | - We're eating within your workout

01:20:47.380 | 'cause it's only 30 seconds.

01:20:48.340 | - Yeah, 30 seconds.

01:20:49.580 | You don't need to worry about hydration post-exercise.

01:20:52.080 | You don't need to worry about recovery.

01:20:53.300 | Total energy expenditure was nothing.

01:20:55.580 | If you're gonna go, you know, you're gonna go practice,

01:20:58.940 | you're gonna go to the driving range

01:21:00.420 | and practice your golf swing,

01:21:01.980 | you don't need to worry about it.

01:21:03.060 | The total amount of energy expenditure is just not high.

01:21:05.340 | In fact, in that case, you might wanna keep it somewhat low

01:21:08.060 | because you wanna keep blood glucose fairly even

01:21:10.220 | and you don't wanna bring it into the system.

01:21:11.340 | You certainly wouldn't wanna use stimulants, right?

01:21:13.340 | 'Cause you may get over exerted inside.

01:21:16.040 | In all of these things,

01:21:17.020 | we probably should have started off

01:21:18.100 | our conversation with this.

01:21:20.020 | In terms of macronutrients, the total amount

01:21:23.500 | throughout the day is more important generally

01:21:27.140 | than the timing of them, which is why you can do things

01:21:31.160 | like have a bunch of carbohydrate at night,

01:21:33.360 | not eat the next morning and lift and be just fine.

01:21:37.140 | It doesn't matter that you didn't have them

01:21:38.620 | in a few hours before, your muscle glycogen is topped off,

01:21:41.260 | your liver is glycogen is topped off,

01:21:43.300 | you're absolutely fine, you have plenty of fuel.

01:21:45.420 | Even if you were to wait a few more hours.

01:21:46.780 | In fact, even if you were to do conditioning,

01:21:48.940 | you're probably fine.

01:21:50.180 | I have plenty of athletes that prefer

01:21:51.980 | to do many of their training sessions faster than morning

01:21:55.000 | for personal reasons, not because it enhances performance,

01:21:58.220 | but if it doesn't enhance or harm it then,

01:22:01.620 | and it's a personal preference thing, fine.

01:22:04.000 | If you're gonna go do a session though,

01:22:05.500 | where you're going to be really concerned

01:22:07.180 | with muscle glycogen depletion,

01:22:08.340 | and again, you can go back to that episode

01:22:09.640 | to learn different types, when those thresholds hits

01:22:13.340 | and what you're worried about,

01:22:14.540 | then the feeling would be important.

01:22:15.700 | You would either need to have something before the session

01:22:17.860 | or consume it during the session.

01:22:20.020 | So one of the other things we'd like to say here

01:22:21.740 | is recovery starts during the previous workout, right?

01:22:26.740 | So if you're working out right now

01:22:28.920 | and you optimize nutrition right now,

01:22:31.180 | even if you don't necessarily need it

01:22:32.420 | for the current workout, if you can get ahead on recovery,

01:22:35.820 | then you're gonna be fine the next day.

01:22:37.940 | And the differentiation here between carbohydrate

01:22:40.540 | and protein is important.

01:22:41.980 | So the total amount of protein you ingest

01:22:44.420 | throughout the day is probably a bigger determinant

01:22:46.320 | for things like muscle growth than the timing.

01:22:48.700 | So the post-exercise anabolic window,

01:22:51.140 | it doesn't necessarily matter.

01:22:52.840 | Carbohydrate is different.

01:22:54.580 | The timing of that does matter.

01:22:56.060 | It needs to be around and available

01:22:58.800 | so you can maximize both hydration

01:23:01.460 | and muscle glycogen resynthesis,

01:23:03.780 | which is restoring the muscle glycogen

01:23:05.420 | you burn during exercise.

01:23:07.500 | I also work with athletes that train multiple times a day.

01:23:10.100 | So in those particular cases,

01:23:12.140 | a recovery window is half what you normally have.

01:23:14.620 | So if you're in a situation where you have two or three days

01:23:17.280 | before you work out again,

01:23:18.500 | you don't need to worry about getting carbohydrate

01:23:20.440 | in before, during or after,

01:23:21.980 | because by the time you go to train again,

01:23:23.840 | you will have restored your muscle glycogen levels easily.

01:23:26.500 | However, if you're training every day or twice in a day,

01:23:29.880 | then the timing of carbohydrate really starts to matter.

01:23:32.700 | And in that case, I see no reason to not ingest

01:23:35.600 | those nutrients either before, during or after.

01:23:38.040 | You don't need to necessarily do it, but you can.

01:23:41.400 | The general rule of thumb I give is something like this.

01:23:45.060 | If you're doing something where you're trying

01:23:47.240 | to really work hard, whether this is hypertrophy training

01:23:50.280 | or a lot of endurance,

01:23:51.920 | energy expenditure is gonna be high,

01:23:53.880 | potential muscle damage is high

01:23:55.320 | and/or energy utilization is high.

01:23:59.200 | What you wanna look for is a number,

01:24:00.840 | something in the area of like half a gram of carbohydrate

01:24:05.840 | per pound of body weight.

01:24:07.800 | So you weigh 200 pounds.

01:24:11.060 | You wanna make sure that either pre, mid or post or total,

01:24:14.820 | you bring in 100 grams of carbohydrate.

01:24:17.180 | It's just a very rough number to start.

01:24:19.200 | Protein is about half of that.

01:24:21.740 | So it's about a quarter of your body weight, right?

01:24:24.780 | So those numbers would be if you're 200 pounds,

01:24:27.380 | make sure you have 100 grams of carbs

01:24:28.900 | and 50 grams of protein.

01:24:30.600 | And again, it doesn't necessarily have to be before

01:24:32.780 | or during or after and you'll be in a good spot.

01:24:36.340 | All you need to do then is alter, what I do I should say,

01:24:41.340 | is alter the amount of carbohydrate

01:24:44.340 | based on energy expenditure.

01:24:45.780 | So a lower energy and easier workout,

01:24:49.420 | instead of having 100 grams of carbs,

01:24:51.300 | I might tack that down to 75 or even 50

01:24:54.100 | and be at a one to one carb protein ratio.

01:24:57.320 | If it was even harder, more sun, hotter outside,

01:25:01.560 | more fluid loss, I might go from 100 grams of carbs

01:25:05.060 | up to 150 or 200 and get closer to like a three to one

01:25:08.620 | or four to one carbohydrate protein ratio.

01:25:10.940 | So those are the numbers that I generally go by.

01:25:14.140 | - Well, as I take a sip of my double espresso Americano

01:25:18.060 | here, I'd love for you to tell us about stimulants.

01:25:21.260 | - Sure, there's no shortage of these in most of our lives.

01:25:24.980 | And of course you can cover the health benefits of it later.

01:25:28.580 | Maybe you have an episode.

01:25:29.540 | - Yes, we have an episode on caffeine

01:25:31.300 | and it does have certain health benefits,

01:25:32.760 | although one has to use caffeine correctly

01:25:35.320 | in order to drive those.

01:25:36.760 | - So there's, caffeine is the easy one to start with

01:25:39.520 | and we won't belabor the point here.

01:25:41.660 | The evidence is strong.

01:25:42.880 | It has an ergogenic effect.

01:25:44.380 | You can take it at whatever dosage is reasonable for you.

01:25:48.680 | And of course there is a bit of a learning curve there

01:25:52.160 | such that obviously the more you take it,

01:25:54.320 | the more you need to take,

01:25:55.240 | even though there's actually some recent evidence showing

01:25:57.940 | even folks who are acclimated to it

01:26:00.000 | will still see an ergogenic benefit,

01:26:01.480 | even though if they don't feel a big boost of it.

01:26:03.500 | So typically that takes 30 to 45 minutes or so,

01:26:07.580 | but it's highly dependent upon the person.

01:26:09.420 | So some people can smell coffee and immediately feel better.

01:26:13.000 | And that's probably working actually

01:26:14.260 | through a different mechanism of anticipation,

01:26:17.240 | but you can take it there.

01:26:18.600 | The half-life of it is four to six hours

01:26:21.360 | or something like that.

01:26:22.200 | It can totally depends on the person.

01:26:23.400 | So don't let it ruin your sleep.

01:26:25.480 | But if you take it prior to performance,

01:26:27.180 | it has a noticeable effect on particularly endurance.

01:26:31.620 | A maximum strength, maybe less, quite clearly less so.

01:26:35.160 | In fact, the data are mixed there

01:26:37.060 | on whether it actually does anything for peak strength.

01:26:39.520 | Although I think most people would suggest that,

01:26:43.680 | you're going to take it prior to trying to truly lift

01:26:45.500 | as high as trying to lift a one repetition max or similar.

01:26:50.500 | But most of the documented effects

01:26:52.620 | are on the endurance-based activities.

01:26:55.260 | - Yes, so my read of the literature

01:26:57.980 | in terms of performance-enhancing effects of caffeine

01:27:00.580 | are that one to three milligrams,

01:27:05.320 | I want to make sure that people hear the units correctly

01:27:07.180 | before people blitz themselves out with that caffeine,

01:27:09.580 | one to three milligrams per kilogram of body weight

01:27:13.220 | about 30 minutes prior to exercise

01:27:17.060 | has a definite performance-enhancing effect.

01:27:19.220 | It also has a definite mental performance-enhancing effect,

01:27:22.820 | especially when people who are regular caffeine users

01:27:26.140 | have abstained from caffeine

01:27:28.180 | for anywhere from two to 15 days.

01:27:31.460 | And that's an extremely rare circumstance.

01:27:33.960 | But even if they have not,

01:27:35.620 | it appears that one to three milligrams per kilogram

01:27:37.840 | of body weight of caffeine taken about,

01:27:40.480 | again, it's not super precise as far as I can see,

01:27:44.380 | about 30 minutes before the event starts

01:27:47.020 | can really enhance reaction time and power output.

01:27:51.740 | And as well as, as you mentioned, endurance.

01:27:54.980 | When I was researching the caffeine episode,

01:27:56.900 | one interesting caveat that I discovered

01:27:59.340 | was that if people are not caffeine-adapted,

01:28:02.620 | they are not regular users of caffeine,

01:28:05.260 | the sudden introduction of caffeine

01:28:07.180 | can really degrade performance,

01:28:10.580 | mostly because people don't know how to operate

01:28:12.740 | at that high level of autonomic arousal.

01:28:14.780 | Have you ever observed that?

01:28:15.820 | - Yeah, 100%.

01:28:16.740 | In fact, there's actually data going up

01:28:17.980 | as high as 10 milligrams per kilogram of body weight,

01:28:20.620 | which is, in fact, once you cross

01:28:22.820 | the five milligram per kilogram threshold,

01:28:25.980 | you will start seeing performance decrements.

01:28:28.060 | So there's absolutely such a thing

01:28:30.500 | of ruining your performance with too much caffeine.

01:28:33.380 | So most people listening to this, if you're thinking,

01:28:36.180 | wow, they said caffeine, I'm all in,

01:28:38.140 | and then you just stop listening,

01:28:39.620 | and now you go for your quad espresso shot

01:28:43.020 | before every time you go to work out,

01:28:45.400 | you probably are passing that threshold.

01:28:47.100 | If you think about those numbers,

01:28:48.340 | one to three milligrams per kilogram body weight,

01:28:51.340 | if you weigh 100 kilograms, that's 220 pounds,

01:28:54.660 | that'd be something like two to 500 milligrams of caffeine,

01:28:57.500 | which is like a pretty high amount,

01:28:59.900 | but a coffee is gonna get you close,

01:29:02.780 | and espresso is gonna get you somewhat in that ballpark,

01:29:04.900 | depending on source and stuff.

01:29:06.940 | So you don't really need to go

01:29:08.400 | and blister your brain with caffeine.

01:29:10.220 | In fact, if you do, it's quite common,

01:29:12.820 | and in fact, likely,

01:29:14.060 | that you'll actually make performance worse.

01:29:16.220 | - Right.

01:29:17.060 | - Yeah, the amount of caffeine in different coffees

01:29:20.900 | and sodas, et cetera, of course, varies.

01:29:23.580 | One thing that people ought to know is that

01:29:25.460 | the smallest of commercially available coffees

01:29:29.580 | at the most popular commercial vendors

01:29:31.980 | generally contain anywhere from 250

01:29:37.020 | to 350 milligrams of caffeine.

01:29:39.980 | What that means is that the so-called medium and the large

01:29:43.300 | contain as much as 500 milligrams or one gram of caffeine.

01:29:47.320 | So for you morning large coffee

01:29:50.460 | at a commercial vendor, drinkers,

01:29:53.660 | if you're wondering why you get a headache

01:29:56.040 | if you're 30 minutes late on that caffeine,

01:29:58.660 | or if you can't access that caffeine at all,

01:30:02.920 | or even if you're drinking coffee, excuse me,

01:30:05.340 | from another source, and you're finding like,

01:30:06.980 | oh, it's really not doing it for me,

01:30:08.240 | it's because the amount of caffeine

01:30:10.240 | in the now commercially sold coffees is exceedingly high.

01:30:15.200 | It's about two or three times higher

01:30:16.920 | than the standard lookup tables

01:30:18.520 | that you'll see on the internet.

01:30:19.520 | So I'm not saying that to demonize caffeine,

01:30:22.120 | we can pretty quickly adapt to

01:30:23.940 | and form a tolerance to caffeine.

01:30:25.880 | Some people never really can get over the jitters.

01:30:27.800 | Other people are just fine

01:30:30.760 | with even a thousand milligrams of caffeine,

01:30:32.920 | but only because they've been drinking

01:30:34.280 | a lot of caffeine consistently.

01:30:35.920 | Anyway.

01:30:36.760 | - It's also wildly inconsistent from location to location.

01:30:39.880 | The brew type, the functionality.

01:30:41.440 | So yeah, that stuff can be very hard

01:30:43.800 | to figure out what's happening.

01:30:45.200 | - There's only one way, really,

01:30:46.940 | to objectively measure caffeine,

01:30:49.220 | and that's to use caffeine tablets.

01:30:50.960 | And they work pretty well.

01:30:51.880 | Actually, someone I know who's prominent

01:30:55.160 | in the podcast space uses 100 to 200 milligrams

01:30:59.320 | of caffeine in tablet form, combined with tea.

01:31:02.520 | So they've now conditioned themselves

01:31:04.660 | to think that herbal tea actually

01:31:06.040 | has this caffeinating effect.

01:31:08.040 | But tablet form caffeine,

01:31:10.540 | while I'm not recommending it to outright,

01:31:13.400 | it is going to give you the best sense

01:31:15.340 | of how much caffeine you can tolerate

01:31:17.280 | and how much is performance enhancing

01:31:18.720 | or is performance degrading.

01:31:20.200 | - There's actually another line of supplementation

01:31:23.400 | that we can go down here,

01:31:24.240 | which is not technically a stimulant,

01:31:26.160 | but it's something I use to help performance

01:31:29.920 | when you don't want caffeine.

01:31:31.520 | And so this thing specifically,

01:31:33.040 | if you're one of those folks who have to exercise at night,

01:31:36.380 | and you want a little bit of boost for your training,

01:31:39.660 | but you don't want to have caffeine

01:31:40.880 | 'cause it messes up your sleep.

01:31:42.400 | And this is when you can turn to the whole like citrulline,

01:31:44.840 | arginine, nitric oxide sort of route.

01:31:47.340 | And we'll skip the explanation there,

01:31:49.400 | but effectively what happens is nitric oxide

01:31:52.340 | is this wonderful compound that causes vasodilation.

01:31:55.600 | And of course, that's going to aid then

01:31:58.240 | in transporting nutrients in and out of the cell.

01:32:01.300 | So it has an ergogenic effect.

01:32:03.480 | You have a number of ways you can go about this.

01:32:06.200 | Some of them have more pros and cons than others.

01:32:09.380 | And there are more and more data coming out

01:32:11.540 | specifically on citrulline and more recently.

01:32:14.680 | If you look though, in my opinion,

01:32:16.600 | the most consistent evidence

01:32:19.400 | for the most consistent effect

01:32:20.760 | is in the supplement of beetroot or beetroot juice

01:32:23.380 | or extract or something like that.

01:32:24.780 | So you can find those supplements

01:32:26.620 | and they tend to, again, they're pretty effective

01:32:29.240 | at enhancing performance,

01:32:30.140 | specifically anything moderate

01:32:32.260 | to longer duration endurance performance.

01:32:34.120 | And they are not a stimulant.

01:32:35.880 | So they won't ruin your sleep that much.

01:32:38.480 | - One note of caution for those of you

01:32:41.520 | that are interested in citrulline or beetroot,

01:32:43.900 | because they are in the arginine pathway,

01:32:45.600 | if you're somebody who has a predisposition to cold sores,

01:32:49.500 | oral cold sores that is, or other forms of cold sores,

01:32:53.400 | that because activation of the arginine pathway

01:32:56.600 | can exacerbate some of the neural related aspects

01:33:00.360 | of cold sores, and that's because the viruses

01:33:02.760 | that cause those cold sores actually live on neurons,

01:33:05.460 | then you want to be very cautious with citrulline,

01:33:07.480 | especially high dose citrulline.

01:33:09.060 | I can really amplify the cold sore response.

01:33:12.780 | What about non-stimulant yet focus enhancing supplements?

01:33:17.780 | Things like alpha GPC, for example,

01:33:23.600 | I routinely use 300 to 600 milligrams of alpha GPC

01:33:27.760 | prior to hard physical training, typically weight training.

01:33:31.640 | But occasionally I'll take 300 milligrams of alpha GPC

01:33:35.240 | prior to a mental workout, less often these days,

01:33:39.580 | 'cause I kind of reserve it for physical training,

01:33:42.900 | and I don't tend to use it every day,

01:33:45.860 | maybe once every third or fourth workout,

01:33:49.480 | combined with caffeine.

01:33:50.480 | So that combination is pretty potent, I find.

01:33:53.380 | And so technically, because it's a cholinergic agonist,

01:33:56.540 | it's not a stimulant in the traditional sense,

01:33:59.620 | but it has a focusing and an alertness promoting

01:34:03.500 | aspect to it.

01:34:04.620 | - What are your thoughts on those sorts of compounds?

01:34:06.780 | - There's not much human exercise performance data on those.

01:34:11.020 | There are certainly cognitive functioning tests on those.

01:34:15.420 | So you're not going to find a lot of information.

01:34:17.140 | No, but there isn't none.

01:34:19.080 | We actually will use many of these substances.

01:34:22.300 | You could globally call them nootropics,

01:34:24.500 | which is any substance that specifically

01:34:28.140 | will enhance brain function,

01:34:29.320 | is a rough way to think about it.

01:34:31.460 | We'll use them prior to more challenging bouts of training.

01:34:35.540 | This is something that we'll pull out,

01:34:36.860 | say on the sparring day only,

01:34:39.000 | or the most important training session,

01:34:40.340 | or a session when you're trying to work on pitch command,

01:34:43.340 | or when you're trying to enhance work on your shot,

01:34:45.820 | and as a basketball player,

01:34:46.980 | or you're really trying to improve a certain swing

01:34:49.120 | as a golfer or something like that.

01:34:50.680 | But we do not use them every day.

01:34:52.220 | We do not use them with every person.

01:34:53.380 | So yeah, we will use those.

01:34:55.260 | They are not stimulants,

01:34:56.100 | but they can be performance enhancing.

01:34:57.860 | And another kind of way to think about this is,

01:35:00.560 | if you're in the case of caloric restriction,

01:35:04.120 | so whether you're trying to lose weight,

01:35:06.060 | or we're actually trying to control weight

01:35:07.380 | for weight purposes in terms of a sports

01:35:10.880 | where you have to be in a certain weight class

01:35:12.100 | or something like that,

01:35:13.900 | well, we may not be able to give you food.

01:35:15.680 | In fact, we may not be able to give you stimulants

01:35:17.620 | because of the sleep thing,

01:35:18.580 | or because we're already like maxed on our stimulants.

01:35:21.280 | Now we can go this route.

01:35:23.440 | And so you at least like mentally,

01:35:24.480 | you're a little bit there,

01:35:25.320 | and you're more likely to be alert and focused,

01:35:28.060 | and you can train harder despite the fact

01:35:29.500 | that we didn't actually change fuel.

01:35:30.660 | Now that's a little bit of a short game

01:35:33.200 | in terms of that's not your permanent solution.

01:35:35.660 | You eventually need to bring calories up

01:35:37.080 | or whatever other training you're training

01:35:39.940 | or whatever you're going to do,

01:35:40.780 | but it can work in a nice short pinch.

01:35:43.740 | - I'm very interested to learn from you

01:35:45.360 | about fatigue reducers.

01:35:47.260 | And I'm hoping that Rodeo la Rosea

01:35:49.300 | will come up in the conversation.

01:35:51.260 | - Yeah, great.

01:35:52.100 | Let's just start right there then.

01:35:53.400 | There's actually a lot of research on this

01:35:55.780 | despite most people not having heard of it.

01:35:59.620 | I think I mentioned in a previous episode,

01:36:01.460 | I've used it a lot over many, many years.

01:36:03.640 | You have to be a little bit careful of it.

01:36:06.600 | There's, well, first of all,

01:36:08.140 | no, we should have said this at the onset,

01:36:10.660 | no supplement is a panacea, right?

01:36:12.660 | Nothing's going to work for everything.

01:36:13.660 | And Rodeo is no different.

01:36:15.060 | It can have a number of effects.

01:36:16.620 | If you look across the literature,

01:36:18.300 | you're going to find generally somewhere

01:36:19.540 | between a small benefit to little benefit,

01:36:22.980 | but not often is it detrimental with a few exceptions.

01:36:26.880 | I know of a handful of papers

01:36:28.320 | that would be two specifically,

01:36:30.580 | where it may actually reduce muscular endurance.

01:36:33.940 | Okay, fine.

01:36:35.300 | If you think about what's happening is

01:36:37.580 | one of the benefits that has been seen so far with Rodeo la

01:36:41.500 | is helpful at managing cortisol.

01:36:44.580 | But cortisol suppression is not necessarily a good thing.

01:36:48.140 | We talked about how if you do an acute bout of stress,

01:36:51.320 | cortisol will go way up.

01:36:52.680 | And that is a sign of acute stress.

01:36:54.540 | However, a sign of long-term excessive stress

01:36:58.480 | is cortisol suppression.

01:37:00.260 | And so this is a thing to be really careful of

01:37:02.780 | is if you're feeling down or lethargic or tired,

01:37:05.880 | and you think your adrenals are messed up,

01:37:07.400 | and then you start taking cortisol modulators,

01:37:09.380 | you could be making the problem worse,

01:37:11.380 | because now your cortisol is actually suppressed.

01:37:14.260 | And now you're taking these things to blunt it

01:37:15.900 | or keep it low.

01:37:17.020 | And you continue to feel lethargic and lack of desire

01:37:20.220 | and libido and focus and sort of all these things.

01:37:22.100 | So cortisol is not a bad thing.

01:37:24.300 | We want this to be going up and down

01:37:26.280 | in the amounts that we want.

01:37:29.000 | So if we're thinking about like, for example, waking up,

01:37:31.840 | you would want generally something like a 50% reduction

01:37:35.240 | in the first hour in terms of cortisol concentrations.

01:37:37.940 | However, if you're extremely suppressed already,

01:37:40.920 | going down is only gonna be a problem.

01:37:42.600 | So Rodeo la has a good evidence base to support it for that.

01:37:47.600 | You'll see actually a number of studies

01:37:49.620 | that have looked at it in a whole host of areas for benefit.

01:37:53.440 | So something good to do.

01:37:55.320 | The difficult part with Rodeo la, to be quite honest,

01:37:58.120 | is getting it from a high quality brand and source.

01:38:01.040 | It's difficult to get as a single source,

01:38:03.200 | which is a very, very important thing to do with supplements

01:38:06.680 | is try to get them sourced alone.

01:38:08.040 | Rodeo la typically comes in combination

01:38:09.720 | with any other herbals or other stuff,

01:38:13.000 | adrenal support and et cetera, et cetera.

01:38:15.440 | Also then getting them then third-party certified,

01:38:17.900 | which for most folks is not necessary,

01:38:20.120 | but for any athletes

01:38:20.960 | that need to go through drug testing systems,

01:38:22.920 | you should not take any supplement at all

01:38:25.920 | that does not have some sort of third-party certification.

01:38:28.640 | So those are the challenges.

01:38:30.200 | That being said, if you've ever ran into somebody

01:38:32.680 | who's taken Rodeo la and they're like,

01:38:34.080 | I didn't do anything for me, it's possible.

01:38:36.800 | That's, you know, nothing works for everyone.

01:38:38.720 | It also could be just very poor quality sourcing.

01:38:42.360 | So if you look at the,

01:38:45.120 | there have been a number of papers on its perception

01:38:49.180 | of fatigue and you sort of mentioned

01:38:51.180 | that you felt pretty immediate effects

01:38:54.180 | of taking it a few times.

01:38:55.300 | - Yeah, I'm fairly sensitive to supplements,

01:38:57.240 | but I've started taking Rodeo la before workouts

01:39:02.060 | and found that I could push much harder,

01:39:05.200 | much longer through the workout.

01:39:06.640 | Normally I would, or typically before taking it,

01:39:09.400 | that is in sessions where I did not take it,

01:39:12.900 | I would be able to work out very hard for 20 minutes or so.

01:39:17.520 | The next 10 minutes I could get some work output

01:39:20.160 | and then the remaining period of time,

01:39:23.080 | it was kind of a tapering off.

01:39:24.740 | Now, granted, these are very intense training sessions.

01:39:26.960 | These are not the endurance training sessions.

01:39:28.380 | These are the weight training sessions,

01:39:29.560 | that one time per week per body part type sessions.

01:39:33.080 | What I've noticed is I can complete the entire 60 minutes

01:39:37.220 | with minimal fatigue now.

01:39:39.560 | I mean, obviously I hit fatigues within sets

01:39:41.800 | and then of course, you remain human despite taking it,

01:39:45.320 | but I found to be very useful and I've been using it

01:39:48.460 | whenever I use Alpha GPC prior to workouts

01:39:51.620 | and I've been impressed by it overall.

01:39:54.820 | I do wanna highlight something that you said

01:39:56.460 | because I think it's so, so vitally important,

01:39:59.400 | which is that using single ingredient formulations

01:40:02.200 | for most things is critical to figuring out

01:40:04.760 | what works for you, what doesn't, what dosages you need,

01:40:07.480 | being able to take things two on, one off,

01:40:11.080 | two days on, one day off, for instance,

01:40:12.840 | being able to increase dosage in the morning

01:40:15.320 | and then maybe reduce the dosage

01:40:17.280 | and combine with something else in the afternoon.

01:40:19.580 | Single ingredient formulations

01:40:20.920 | are pretty much the only way to do that.

01:40:23.360 | There's perhaps only one supplement that I take at all

01:40:26.160 | and that's Athletic Greens

01:40:27.520 | as they've been a regular podcast sponsor for a long time,

01:40:30.060 | that is a cocktail of many, many things

01:40:32.280 | and those are all adaptogens as well as some probiotics

01:40:34.800 | and vitamins and things like that.

01:40:35.960 | So I'm not opposed to blends

01:40:38.280 | where the blends include a lot of nutrients

01:40:40.980 | that are synergistic,

01:40:42.160 | but for all pill capsule-based supplements

01:40:46.780 | where I'm looking for a very targeted effect

01:40:48.800 | and it's not just about foundational nutrition,

01:40:51.760 | I really believe strongly

01:40:54.480 | that single ingredient formulations are the way

01:40:56.780 | that you can build a rational approach to supplementation

01:40:59.360 | and also make adjustments

01:41:00.440 | if something isn't making you feel better

01:41:01.760 | and also make adjustments

01:41:02.720 | if something's really working for you.

01:41:04.200 | So for instance, some people might take Alpha GPC

01:41:06.640 | 300 milligrams and not feel anything,

01:41:09.360 | go up to 600 milligrams, not feel anything,

01:41:11.480 | maybe just feel kind of, eh, they don't like it.

01:41:13.380 | Other people like myself took 300 milligrams of Alpha GPC

01:41:16.520 | the first time I was like,

01:41:17.360 | wow, this really puts me in the zone,

01:41:20.140 | but I wanna be really careful how often I use it.

01:41:22.140 | I did mention I go up to 600 milligrams occasionally,

01:41:25.200 | but that really puts me on the outer threshold

01:41:27.360 | of kind of overall levels of focus and amped up

01:41:30.220 | such that if I drink too much caffeine,

01:41:32.220 | it can tilt me over the edge.

01:41:33.640 | So I encourage people to become scientists of themselves

01:41:36.020 | and the only way to do that

01:41:37.220 | is to try and limit the number of variables.

01:41:39.700 | And the final point is that

01:41:41.180 | I think that single ingredient formulations

01:41:43.640 | are by far the best in terms of changing things over time.

01:41:48.020 | This could be women during their menstrual cycle

01:41:51.760 | might find that during certain phases of the cycle,

01:41:54.380 | they're more sensitive to certain things than not others.

01:41:57.220 | And for men and women,

01:41:58.760 | it may be that certain times of year even,

01:42:01.560 | and certain supplements might go better closer to sleep,

01:42:04.840 | some earlier in the day and on and on and on.

01:42:07.080 | There's just no real way, in my opinion,

01:42:10.080 | to have a supplementation protocol

01:42:12.760 | that involves lots and lots of blends.

01:42:14.920 | One or two blends, okay, but lots of blends,

01:42:17.440 | I actually think that's potentially dangerous territory.

01:42:21.320 | - Yeah, I mean, just take rhodiola as a good example.

01:42:23.640 | I know a new meta-analysis came out

01:42:26.400 | just in the last few months looking at it.

01:42:28.720 | And they found in general, you see, again,

01:42:30.760 | a slight to moderate improvement

01:42:32.600 | in everything from power output

01:42:35.360 | to fatigue resistant antioxidant effects

01:42:38.480 | to endurance performance.

01:42:39.640 | So it's like, okay, great.

01:42:40.880 | Maybe there's a little bit here.

01:42:42.600 | Now let's say you went to do it,

01:42:43.840 | and the only way you could access rhodiola

01:42:45.400 | is in combination with that and some lion's mane

01:42:49.600 | and some other of these adaptogens.

01:42:52.440 | And it's like, well, wait a minute.

01:42:53.660 | I just wanted to take this to get a better workout.

01:42:55.960 | But now it also came with this stimulant

01:42:57.840 | or this cortisol suppressor or cortisol activator.

01:43:00.520 | Well, now all of a sudden you can't take it at night

01:43:03.440 | or you can't take it in the morning

01:43:04.640 | 'cause you already had coffee.

01:43:06.240 | Your options are just way limited.

01:43:08.000 | So I think the biggest part of all that

01:43:10.600 | is if something doesn't feel good,

01:43:12.360 | you have absolutely no idea.

01:43:14.160 | You don't know if it was rhodiola.

01:43:15.800 | You don't know if it was the Boswellia that's in there.

01:43:17.480 | You don't know if it was any of the other things

01:43:19.060 | that were smashed in there,

01:43:19.920 | or it could be something as simple

01:43:21.320 | as the citric acid they use,

01:43:24.920 | like some other combination of thing.

01:43:26.240 | And now here you are thinking that some supplement

01:43:28.520 | that actually works for you doesn't,

01:43:30.360 | and you throw that out of your repertoire

01:43:33.040 | for the rest of your life,

01:43:33.880 | which is not the biggest crime,

01:43:36.040 | but it's not needed and you're not really going to know.

01:43:37.880 | So yeah, I fully stamped.

01:43:39.880 | You can look back at my course lectures for the last decade

01:43:43.120 | and you will see like stamped number one

01:43:45.760 | on the supplement of the sections

01:43:47.020 | is make sure you're taking single ingredient supplements

01:43:50.720 | at all costs.

01:43:51.780 | The last part about that too is you're more likely

01:43:56.960 | to ensure the amount that is on the label is correct.

01:44:01.820 | So if you're taking Rhodiola and it says,

01:44:04.340 | you know, it's a hundred milligrams in there,

01:44:06.480 | and if that's only thing that's in there,

01:44:08.060 | you're more likely than not to actually get something close.

01:44:11.000 | Now they're never perfect, but it will be close.

01:44:13.180 | If it's in a combination of 20 other things,

01:44:15.520 | you actually don't have any idea if that's in there.

01:44:18.100 | In fact, there have been many papers on melatonin

01:44:22.200 | and vitamin D and a number of other supplements

01:44:25.480 | in which when you actually just pull them off the shelf,

01:44:27.400 | these are standard studies where they would go

01:44:29.320 | and I said like 20 to 25 different supplements

01:44:31.760 | in the case of melatonin.

01:44:33.520 | And they will actually measure the amount of melatonin

01:44:34.900 | actually in them.

01:44:35.740 | And despite the fact that the label says five milligrams,

01:44:38.940 | they can be up to a 500 to a thousand fold

01:44:41.700 | actual concentration in that supplement.

01:44:43.820 | And then you wonder why some people react great

01:44:45.540 | to melatonin and some people that absolutely destroys you.

01:44:47.820 | And this is also why like we'll actually,

01:44:49.780 | we'll see this constantly where people will have

01:44:52.460 | like 500 times the upper limit of melatonin

01:44:56.360 | the morning after.

01:44:57.820 | When the half-life is supposed to be more like 90 minutes,

01:44:59.980 | it should be totally gone.

01:45:01.460 | But we're seeing extremely high,

01:45:03.260 | I'm not even talking like double.

01:45:05.060 | I'm talking 10, 20, 30 X the upper limit range

01:45:08.020 | for melatonin the next morning.

01:45:09.760 | And then it's like, well, what are you taking?

01:45:10.880 | He's like, oh, I got this melatonin at X store

01:45:14.180 | or X website and you're like, holy cow.

01:45:17.040 | So I'm not opposed to melatonin theoretically,

01:45:20.820 | but you have to be careful with that one in particular.

01:45:23.100 | So any supplement has that to be true.

01:45:25.780 | So you wanna buy them from as many places

01:45:29.220 | as you can that are high quality.

01:45:30.580 | And if they are third-party tested,

01:45:32.100 | even if you're not a performance athlete,

01:45:35.040 | I wanna stress this,

01:45:35.880 | even if you're not a performance athlete,

01:45:37.380 | third-party certified and tested supplements,

01:45:40.580 | you're less likely to just get wildly high concentrations

01:45:44.020 | or low concentrations of active ingredients.

01:45:45.900 | And so relative to other ones who you might get for cheaper,

01:45:49.380 | but you could be totally wrecking yourself

01:45:50.980 | by getting 50 milligrams of melatonin every night

01:45:54.500 | and not realizing it.

01:45:55.380 | So then of course the next morning

01:45:56.460 | you drown yourself in caffeine

01:45:58.500 | and then you can see what death cycle you're in now.

01:46:01.080 | - Yeah, and people could look for

01:46:02.620 | third-party certification on the packaging.

01:46:04.960 | And some websites will allow you to zoom in

01:46:07.660 | on the bottle beforehand.

01:46:08.840 | It's largely listed on certain vendor websites.

01:46:12.780 | A brief point about supplement cost and blends.

01:46:15.380 | And I promise this will be a brief point.

01:46:17.420 | Different ingredients,

01:46:20.800 | meaning different types of supplements

01:46:22.420 | have widely varying costs in order to, you know,

01:46:26.120 | create, to get them, to manufacture them.

01:46:28.300 | So often what you'll find is that

01:46:30.500 | blends will include the least amount

01:46:34.500 | of the most expensive ingredient, right?

01:46:38.380 | Not always the case.

01:46:39.340 | There are some, there are certain exceptions to this.

01:46:41.700 | And I mentioned some blends that I like a few minutes ago

01:46:44.300 | that are for foundational nutrition,

01:46:45.820 | adaptogens and probiotics.

01:46:47.900 | Athletic greens, of course,

01:46:48.740 | just being one of several examples out there.

01:46:51.740 | But when it comes to say a sleep blend

01:46:54.420 | or a pre-workout blend,

01:46:56.180 | there are some decent products out there,

01:46:57.860 | but a lot of them tend to put in

01:46:59.900 | more of the least expensive ingredients

01:47:03.220 | and less of the ones that you're actively seeking.

01:47:05.420 | And so those tend to be,

01:47:07.460 | caffeine tends to be a kind of a buffer

01:47:09.300 | against the other things.

01:47:10.860 | Meaning if you have pre-workout,

01:47:12.940 | putting caffeine in there isn't necessarily a bad thing.

01:47:15.540 | But if it has five other things in there,

01:47:17.460 | oftentimes what manufacturers will cheat on

01:47:20.640 | is the actual amount of the things that are costly.

01:47:24.080 | So again, single ingredient formulations

01:47:26.260 | for 80% of your supplements,

01:47:28.520 | I think is really the way to go.

01:47:30.840 | And the other thing that I know is gonna come up

01:47:33.120 | as we're talking about all these supplements

01:47:34.740 | is this issue of dependency.

01:47:36.480 | I often get this question

01:47:38.060 | and when I solicit for questions on social media

01:47:41.460 | in anticipation of this episode,

01:47:43.060 | number of people said,

01:47:43.900 | "Okay, so if you take a sleep formulation,

01:47:46.000 | do I need to take it every night?

01:47:47.060 | If I don't take it,

01:47:47.900 | will I have an incredibly hard time sleeping?

01:47:49.980 | If I take a pre-workout every time I train,

01:47:51.920 | will I need it?"

01:47:53.960 | It's a great question.

01:47:56.060 | Some people will take supplement holidays,

01:47:58.560 | as they may be called,

01:47:59.960 | for a couple of days each week, back to back.

01:48:02.460 | Some people take them straight through.

01:48:04.220 | I myself take a sleep cocktail, we've described this,

01:48:07.180 | it's magnesium theanine and things.

01:48:09.160 | This is not one ingredient, these are multiple ingredients.

01:48:11.240 | In fact, precisely because some people who have sleep,

01:48:13.940 | walking and vivid dream issues

01:48:15.520 | can't take theanine before bed.

01:48:17.340 | In any case, I've had times when I

01:48:20.220 | either forgot my supplements, that's rare,

01:48:22.660 | or I just didn't have what I needed,

01:48:24.500 | or just simply took a break for a night

01:48:26.040 | and it was not a problem.

01:48:28.480 | But in terms of pre-workout,

01:48:30.380 | I do think that people become dependent

01:48:32.380 | on being in that really ramped up state.

01:48:34.900 | But I don't think we view all this as true dependency,

01:48:38.180 | kind of like addiction.

01:48:39.260 | - Totally.

01:48:40.100 | - I mean, I define addiction as a progressive narrowing

01:48:42.340 | of the things that bring you pleasure.

01:48:43.940 | So I suppose people could get addicted to pre-workout,

01:48:47.780 | but it seems a little unlikely.

01:48:49.580 | More likely there would be a dependency

01:48:51.260 | such that if you didn't have your pre-workout,

01:48:53.420 | you might feel like, oh, you're not motivated to train.

01:48:55.380 | So what are your thoughts on taking little holidays

01:48:58.000 | from supplements and varying the frequency

01:49:00.660 | of supplement intake, in particular as it relates

01:49:03.060 | to stimulants and fatigue reducers?

01:49:05.900 | - The end goal, anytime I coach somebody,

01:49:09.240 | is to get them into a physiological state

01:49:11.540 | in which they require no or close to no supplementation.

01:49:16.280 | That's the target.

01:49:17.580 | We should really be in a position to where our lifestyle,

01:49:21.900 | our sunlight exposure, our stress management,

01:49:24.140 | our physical activity, our sleep and our hydration,

01:49:26.340 | and our whole food nutrition

01:49:28.020 | provide us almost everything we need.

01:49:30.140 | Now, look, again, there are some foundational items

01:49:34.100 | that we can give people.

01:49:35.720 | We've put together a little bundle actually for this,

01:49:37.700 | the basic things that you can go look at.

01:49:40.900 | But that's the goal, right?

01:49:42.520 | So the target is to let your physiology run the guide.

01:49:44.980 | Your physiology is way smarter than we are.

01:49:47.680 | Even if I take a bunch of biomarkers from you,

01:49:49.860 | your physiology still knows better

01:49:51.620 | than those few markers can tell me.

01:49:53.460 | So that's always where we're ending up.

01:49:55.540 | I actually personally don't like people being in a position

01:49:59.360 | that they have to take a supplement for anything.

01:50:02.420 | So I don't like it if you have to take a supplement

01:50:04.500 | to have a good night of sleep.

01:50:05.660 | I don't like it if you have to have a supplement to train.

01:50:08.080 | We will use any of these stimulants very, very carefully

01:50:12.500 | with any of the athletes we work with

01:50:14.000 | and certainly for the non-athletes,

01:50:15.520 | because at least the athletes, we have an end date.

01:50:17.580 | We have a fight schedule.

01:50:19.000 | We have a season.

01:50:19.840 | We have a game you're gonna pitch, whatever.

01:50:21.920 | When you don't have that,

01:50:23.080 | it's sort of like you're in this endless cycle of,

01:50:25.000 | oh, you're just gonna do that all day, every day?

01:50:28.060 | We don't really need to be in that spot.

01:50:30.520 | So the way that I'll describe my philosophy is

01:50:33.800 | I will use those short-term tactics

01:50:36.640 | to symptom manage if I have to.

01:50:38.440 | So if somebody comes to me and they're like,

01:50:39.840 | you're feeling awful and we've got to get through the hump.

01:50:42.600 | Okay, great.

01:50:43.440 | Maybe we'll give you something for sleep immediately

01:50:45.160 | to get you sleeping.

01:50:46.580 | That allows us to then come back

01:50:48.280 | and work on the causal problem, right?

01:50:50.600 | So this is what is,

01:50:51.560 | why are you having a hard time sleeping anyways?

01:50:53.940 | If you have to take a nine cocktail supplement to sleep,

01:50:58.720 | then all we're doing is blinding the reason.

01:51:01.520 | Why are you in that position to begin with, right?

01:51:03.200 | So we see this all the time, whether it is sleep problems,

01:51:05.820 | whether it is cortisol or testosterone,

01:51:07.520 | the question is, well, why is that low?

01:51:09.580 | Now we may give you something again

01:51:10.800 | to manage it immediately, but the task,

01:51:13.440 | the mystery I'm going to try to unveil is why?

01:51:16.440 | Why is it there to begin with?

01:51:18.500 | This could be something like this is natural for you

01:51:20.460 | and your lack of energy is something else.

01:51:23.160 | Or it could be, actually it is not a natural level for you,

01:51:25.840 | but something is suppressing it.

01:51:27.160 | Any number of, you've got some infection going on,

01:51:30.180 | there's some allergic reaction

01:51:31.920 | to something in your environment.

01:51:33.180 | There's a mold, mercury, like that one comes up a lot.

01:51:37.520 | You'll see mercury in folks

01:51:38.600 | and that's causing a lot of problems.

01:51:40.120 | Or any number of heavy metals or toxins,

01:51:43.120 | any host of things, psychological distress,

01:51:45.440 | bad daily habit, you don't ever see the sun.

01:51:47.420 | Like you don't ever sweat, you don't ever drink.

01:51:50.440 | We was talking about so many things.

01:51:51.720 | So I'm always going to hunt for that.

01:51:54.300 | And I hate using this phrase.

01:51:55.540 | It's highly maligned for a good reason, but root cause.

01:51:59.560 | All right, so we're trying to find that.

01:52:01.140 | It's like, are we making sure

01:52:02.160 | that we're not causing this problem?

01:52:03.480 | And I'm not going to want to give you a supplement

01:52:06.480 | to cover up something if we're not even trying

01:52:08.760 | to solve the problem of what's being there.

01:52:11.940 | That being said, am I that concerned

01:52:13.960 | about people taking a multivitamin?

01:52:16.100 | Just all throughout, no, not really.

01:52:18.200 | Am I concerned about people taking creatine?

01:52:20.200 | No, like go ahead.

01:52:22.200 | Those ones are generally pretty fine to just take.

01:52:25.180 | But anything else, I want a reason.

01:52:28.080 | I really don't like giving people anything

01:52:31.100 | in a super physiological concentration

01:52:33.540 | or a super food concentration, right?

01:52:35.520 | So again, an amount you wouldn't find in a normal food dosage

01:52:38.680 | unless we have really a specific reason.

01:52:40.480 | Some of these things are more problematic.

01:52:42.900 | Others are less problematic.

01:52:44.760 | So to answer the question of dependency,

01:52:47.320 | you have a combination

01:52:48.360 | of actual physiological dependency, caffeine.

01:52:51.080 | Like that actually creates a physiological dependency

01:52:53.640 | versus a emotional or psychological dependency

01:52:58.160 | or just a, I like drinking this.

01:53:00.220 | Like that's my habit, that's my routine.

01:53:01.840 | There's a fancy scientific phrase for that,

01:53:04.060 | but it doesn't matter.

01:53:05.540 | So yeah, we wanna get off that.

01:53:07.080 | And like, again, my personal philosophy is

01:53:09.080 | I don't want you dependent upon anything.

01:53:10.640 | I wanna create extremely resilient people.

01:53:12.900 | And I wanna create physiological resilience.

01:53:14.640 | We actually have a fancy little algorithm we use

01:53:16.800 | to measure that in people.

01:53:18.440 | And so we can actually calculate that number.

01:53:19.880 | And the goal of us is to push that number higher

01:53:21.920 | so that we don't have to have anything.

01:53:24.140 | So many situations pop up in your real life

01:53:26.720 | that you're not gonna have your supplement

01:53:28.420 | or you're not gonna have your routine

01:53:29.660 | or you're not gonna have your journal or whatever,

01:53:32.080 | but also for the longterm.

01:53:33.600 | I don't wanna create a situation

01:53:35.040 | in which this is a short-term success

01:53:36.700 | that you have to now do that the rest of your life.

01:53:39.460 | Now, let's just get out of the way.

01:53:40.720 | Let's fix the problem if there is something,

01:53:42.680 | symptom management, that's real,

01:53:45.320 | while we're actually searching

01:53:46.360 | for better foundational habits.

01:53:49.180 | The last thing I wanna say about this is

01:53:51.960 | if you're only covering symptom,

01:53:53.980 | you're really missing signal, right?

01:53:57.000 | Which is if you're constantly tired throughout the day

01:53:59.740 | and all you're doing is giving yourself

01:54:01.280 | a number of alpha GPCs and caffeine, et cetera,

01:54:04.740 | even though there's good little sugar,

01:54:06.500 | are you really just using that

01:54:08.140 | to allow your poor sleep hygiene to happen?

01:54:10.460 | If they took those away, I bet you,

01:54:13.020 | you would actually start addressing your sleep

01:54:14.860 | if that's the cause, right?

01:54:16.100 | Or your stress or your poor hydration.

01:54:18.580 | You would go hunting for the problem.

01:54:20.580 | And so you wanna walk a fine line here of going like,

01:54:23.140 | "Hey, look, is an athletic greens supplement

01:54:26.020 | "that big a deal?"

01:54:26.860 | No, probably not.

01:54:27.700 | But wait a minute, am I actually now covering up

01:54:31.260 | the pain point that is maybe needed?

01:54:33.780 | It's a signal to actually get my ass in gear

01:54:36.700 | to go make one of these changes, whatever it needs to be.

01:54:41.200 | So I know I've got like a little bit meta on you

01:54:43.820 | and a little bit philosophical,

01:54:44.740 | but that's honestly how I approach it.

01:54:46.060 | - Yeah, I think it's really important.

01:54:47.260 | A friend of mine who's a physician has a great saying,

01:54:50.120 | which is better living through chemistry

01:54:53.160 | still requires better living.

01:54:54.780 | - Oh, boy, that's cool then, that's so good.

01:54:57.220 | - You know, and it pertains also to things

01:54:59.140 | like antidepressants and ADHD drugs and things of that sort.

01:55:02.540 | Most all of those things were developed as tools

01:55:04.780 | to allow people to move from a maladaptive state.

01:55:08.500 | Maladaptive is hard to define,

01:55:10.100 | but think about in any domain of life,

01:55:13.140 | you can either be back on your heels,

01:55:14.540 | flat-footed or forward center of mass.

01:55:17.280 | And there are times when people are so compromised

01:55:20.620 | neurochemically that they need to use pharmacology

01:55:23.720 | in order to get into a flat-footed position.

01:55:26.420 | You know, they're really back on their heels,

01:55:27.640 | flat-footed or forward center of mass.

01:55:29.120 | But the idea was always that those things were developed

01:55:31.940 | as things to allow people to engage

01:55:33.540 | in the sorts of behaviors that can produce

01:55:34.960 | the same sorts of neurochemical shifts.

01:55:36.960 | And if people are thinking, well,

01:55:38.180 | what sorts of behaviors can induce

01:55:41.140 | these neurochemical shifts?

01:55:42.160 | I'll just zoom out myself for a moment here and say,

01:55:44.580 | I am a big proponent, I believe you are as well, if I may,

01:55:48.280 | in doing behavioral tools first whenever possible.

01:55:53.340 | Really establishing good habits, the do's and don'ts,

01:55:56.700 | which we've talked a lot about in this series

01:55:58.280 | and in this episode.

01:55:59.820 | Then excellent nutrition, which involves do's and don'ts,

01:56:03.380 | volume, food choice, timing, all the factors.

01:56:06.400 | And then also supplementation.

01:56:09.720 | And also they're sometimes a case for prescription drugs,

01:56:13.060 | certainly, and often brain machine interface

01:56:17.020 | or body machine interface, measuring stuff using devices.

01:56:20.640 | But the foundation of behaviors and good nutrition

01:56:23.760 | are really, truly foundational.

01:56:26.240 | And it's hard in anything to skip steps,

01:56:28.860 | but supplements and prescription drugs are one place

01:56:31.160 | where people often skip steps and then they don't actually

01:56:34.400 | learn how to cultivate the best behavioral practices,

01:56:37.600 | including the don'ts, as you mentioned.

01:56:39.720 | And then just one more point along these lines.

01:56:42.640 | You know, you talked about taking anything for energy

01:56:46.320 | is really disruptive to the system.

01:56:49.080 | And it is because, especially caffeine,

01:56:51.180 | while it has its uses and even health benefits,

01:56:53.900 | it's really borrowing.

01:56:55.520 | It's against the adenosine system with interest.

01:56:59.080 | And so, because caffeine acts as an adenosine antagonist,

01:57:02.680 | effectively, while caffeine is present in those receptors,

01:57:05.920 | you don't feel as sleepy.

01:57:06.900 | You have more energy, your reaction time goes down,

01:57:09.760 | memories, enhanced focus, performance of all kinds.

01:57:12.400 | Yes, but then when that caffeine is dislodged

01:57:15.720 | from the receptor, then the adenosine can act

01:57:18.720 | even more potently at those receptors.

01:57:21.120 | So it's sort of like being able to borrow against

01:57:23.720 | the normal variations in wakefulness and sleep.

01:57:26.080 | And this is why we encourage people,

01:57:27.640 | if they're not training first thing in the morning

01:57:29.320 | to push their caffeine intake out

01:57:30.680 | about 90 to 120 minutes after waking,

01:57:32.640 | so they can clear some of that adenosine in the morning,

01:57:34.800 | which tends to happen even after we wake up.

01:57:39.180 | People can listen to the episodes on Master Your Sleep

01:57:41.740 | or Perfect Sleep or the caffeine episode

01:57:43.400 | to understand more about that.

01:57:44.780 | But the final thing I just want to say here,

01:57:46.560 | and then it prompts a question,

01:57:48.840 | is in thinking about supplement protocols,

01:57:53.080 | I think a lot of people assume

01:57:56.040 | that once they start taking something,

01:57:57.720 | they're going to have to take it all the time.

01:57:59.680 | And one idea, perhaps,

01:58:01.800 | is that people have some alpha-GPC around

01:58:05.520 | that they could take.

01:58:06.940 | And granted, it'd be great if people could try things

01:58:08.960 | without having to buy a whole product.

01:58:10.340 | I think companies, hopefully, are listening to this

01:58:12.400 | and will give people a sample

01:58:14.120 | to see if something works for them

01:58:15.760 | and then give them an opportunity to try it,

01:58:17.720 | to have things around,

01:58:18.960 | but not necessarily assume

01:58:20.120 | you're going to take it every time.

01:58:21.760 | Some things you take every day,

01:58:22.880 | foundational nutrition, supplements, for instance.

01:58:26.600 | But then also to take a look

01:58:28.000 | at how well you're eating or not eating.

01:58:30.120 | At times when I'm eating much better,

01:58:31.800 | I, consuming low-sugar fermented foods,

01:58:34.640 | which are great for the gut microbiome,

01:58:35.920 | I consume less probiotics.

01:58:37.480 | If ever I've been really compromised, for whatever reason,

01:58:41.080 | then I will take pill-form probiotics,

01:58:42.700 | but I don't take those all the time

01:58:44.800 | because I get them from food

01:58:45.960 | and from certain green drinks,

01:58:48.320 | like athletic greens and so forth.

01:58:49.840 | So I think that nutrition and supplementation

01:58:51.840 | are tethered in this way in my mind.

01:58:54.520 | And I don't think that,

01:58:55.960 | most people think of supplementation as something

01:58:57.960 | that where you can induce a lot of variability

01:59:00.060 | in when and how you take them.

01:59:01.460 | But as far as I'm concerned,

01:59:02.640 | as long as they're single ingredient formulations,

01:59:04.820 | you can use supplements once a week if you want.

01:59:09.200 | You can use them seven days a week.

01:59:10.480 | You could use them twice a day,

01:59:12.520 | four times a day, every day,

01:59:14.600 | or you could use them not at all.

01:59:16.640 | Agreed?

01:59:17.480 | - Yeah.

01:59:18.320 | Some of them will have an effect randomly like that.

01:59:22.060 | Others will not.

01:59:23.540 | And we talked about creatine being one of them.

01:59:25.820 | It's, if you're going to take it once or so a week,

01:59:28.180 | then there's, I mean, basically-

01:59:29.600 | - No benefit.

01:59:30.440 | That's a very good point.

01:59:31.260 | Yeah, creatine's-

01:59:32.680 | - Beta alanine is another fantastic example

01:59:35.700 | of something you need to take consistently

01:59:37.880 | if you want some sort of benefit.

01:59:39.520 | It needs to be built up in muscle.

01:59:42.120 | We need to use that to create carnosine,

01:59:44.720 | which is what's actually going to help us

01:59:45.880 | with our fatigue management.

01:59:46.880 | That's why we call it like an acid buffer.

01:59:49.160 | So in our previous metabolism episode,

01:59:50.680 | we talked about that being a major cause of fatigue.

01:59:53.400 | The wonderful part,

01:59:54.320 | one of the reasons why beta alanine works so effectively

01:59:56.320 | is it blocks that buildup.

01:59:58.740 | So that is an example of another one

02:00:00.120 | that you would want to take.

02:00:01.080 | Other things like fish oil,

02:00:03.120 | you could certainly skip a day here and there.

02:00:05.000 | It wouldn't be that big a deal.

02:00:06.400 | I also do support your comment

02:00:08.160 | of you can take absolutely none of these things

02:00:10.160 | and be just fine.

02:00:12.520 | In terms of,

02:00:13.720 | and we'll come back maybe to beta alanine in a second.

02:00:16.800 | In terms of some other fun stuff,

02:00:18.520 | my colleague Greg Osicki ran a really cool number of studies

02:00:21.740 | looking at how exercise actually alters the gut microbiome.

02:00:25.400 | This is actually an area that we've,

02:00:26.840 | I probably have 300 stool samples

02:00:29.360 | sitting in my freezer in my lab.

02:00:30.800 | - Well, goodness, another reason to pause

02:00:32.600 | before entering your lab.

02:00:33.920 | - Yeah, another reason to not apply

02:00:35.760 | to come be one of my graduate students,

02:00:37.960 | unless you want to deal with that.

02:00:39.560 | And we actually have a number,

02:00:40.400 | we've applied for a couple of grants

02:00:42.000 | to look more into this, specifically with females.

02:00:44.920 | So hopefully we can get that funded.

02:00:46.500 | But nonetheless, you can actually see some pretty traumatic,

02:00:51.500 | and I say that word on purpose,

02:00:52.880 | changes in the gut microbiome.

02:00:54.240 | This one in particular study I was thinking of

02:00:55.760 | that Greg did is he looked at the changes

02:00:58.640 | pre, post and ultra marathon.

02:01:00.080 | And even within a single bout of exercise,

02:01:03.900 | I can't remember the sum of the markers,

02:01:05.480 | but I know one of the markers was specifically increased

02:01:08.400 | by like 14,000% after a single bout of exercise.

02:01:12.880 | Now this is an ultra marathon.

02:01:14.640 | This is like totally absurd amount of exercise

02:01:17.720 | relative to what normal people would be.

02:01:20.160 | But that number, I remember it was like 14,229%

02:01:24.720 | or like something, some random number like that.

02:01:26.800 | - Of something meaningful?

02:01:27.920 | - Yeah, something meaningful.

02:01:28.960 | I can't remember which marker that was.

02:01:32.500 | That had changed.

02:01:33.760 | I know streptococcus was in there.

02:01:35.560 | Streptococcus went up like maybe something more

02:01:37.240 | like 30 or 40 or 50%.

02:01:39.200 | The point is we haven't even had the proper time,

02:01:42.320 | and we don't, to even launch into the gut microbiome.

02:01:45.600 | Supplementation there needs to be ultra specific.

02:01:48.620 | You wouldn't be best served to just jump in

02:01:51.500 | and take random things there.

02:01:53.160 | It's a whole area of emerging science.

02:01:56.160 | We know very, very, very little about it,

02:01:57.780 | but there is a number of actionable things

02:01:59.600 | one could do there.

02:02:01.440 | So probably something to not mess with.

02:02:05.040 | I would certainly work with a qualified physician

02:02:07.560 | if you think you have something going on clinical

02:02:09.520 | or some actual problem there.

02:02:13.120 | Don't work with someone who's not a specialist,

02:02:15.280 | a medical doctor there,

02:02:16.140 | but just randomly assigning a bunch of probiotics

02:02:19.600 | or prebiotics without intention

02:02:21.000 | is maybe the next forefront of human performance research,

02:02:24.840 | but we'll have to maybe come back in a few years

02:02:26.920 | and dive into that in detail,

02:02:27.960 | or perhaps you can bring somebody out as an expert in that

02:02:30.380 | to discuss that.

02:02:31.720 | - Yeah, gut microbiome is fascinating.

02:02:33.560 | I think of sleep as the most powerful

02:02:37.240 | performance enhancing activity.

02:02:40.060 | Of course you still have to do the activity.

02:02:43.180 | I consider it foundational.

02:02:45.500 | It basically raises the tide on mental health,

02:02:48.160 | physical health, performance of all kinds.

02:02:50.620 | There's recent data that during sleep,

02:02:54.380 | your body goes through all its various forms

02:02:57.080 | of metabolism possible, which is amazing.

02:03:00.600 | So it's measured from breath in human subjects,

02:03:02.680 | breath metabolites in human subjects.

02:03:04.560 | So obviously if one is thinking about supplementation

02:03:08.140 | and wondering, okay, what's the best supplement

02:03:10.660 | to enhance performance?

02:03:11.720 | You gave some great rationale for why creatine

02:03:14.420 | would be an excellent choice provided you're eating well

02:03:16.920 | and hydrating well.

02:03:19.440 | And then to my mind, the next thing on the list

02:03:23.120 | would be anything that allows you to improve the quality

02:03:27.520 | and maybe even the duration of your sleep.

02:03:29.720 | Although if you wake up and you feel rested

02:03:31.760 | throughout the day and only need a short nap

02:03:33.640 | in the afternoon, not everyone needs one,

02:03:35.520 | but then generally that means you're feeling okay.

02:03:37.360 | People sometimes get flipped onto this idea

02:03:39.780 | that they have insomnia.

02:03:41.240 | Insomnia is excessive daytime sleepiness

02:03:43.460 | where you're falling asleep during the day.

02:03:44.740 | That's insomnia.

02:03:45.680 | It could also be narcolepsy, but that's insomnia.

02:03:48.360 | But supplementation to improve the quality

02:03:51.940 | or duration of sleep or both,

02:03:54.240 | seems to me like the most direct route,

02:03:56.640 | even though actually technically it's an indirect route

02:03:59.560 | to a performance enhancement.

02:04:01.600 | And then thinking about things that increase alertness

02:04:05.360 | and stimulants and fatigue reducers.

02:04:07.640 | Do you think that's a good logic?

02:04:09.080 | - Yeah, we go to absurd lengths

02:04:12.820 | to dial sleep in as much as we can.

02:04:15.040 | I mean, the honest answer is like truly absurd.

02:04:18.440 | This is a conflict of interest that my company,

02:04:21.200 | I'm a part of this, Absolute Rest is anyway that company.

02:04:23.880 | We actually go out to your house

02:04:25.920 | and run a full clinical grade sleep study in your bedroom

02:04:29.200 | on you and run that over multiple nights.

02:04:31.080 | So instead of having to go to a sleep clinic

02:04:32.400 | and have it done in this weird hospital room

02:04:34.560 | or sort of setting with these people

02:04:36.000 | looking at you through a mirror, it's like totally creepy.

02:04:39.740 | That is important because that's the only way

02:04:41.540 | to truly determine how you are sleeping.

02:04:43.400 | Now that said, the technology of wearable trackers

02:04:46.720 | is getting better.

02:04:47.560 | In fact, I would actually predict those things

02:04:50.320 | will reach a level of accuracy equivalent to the PSG

02:04:52.880 | in the next couple of years

02:04:53.720 | and probably we'll get FDA approval

02:04:55.660 | to be able to diagnose officially sleep disorders.

02:04:58.800 | That's my prediction from some inside information.

02:05:01.640 | I don't know that to be true,

02:05:02.480 | but it is getting a lot better.

02:05:03.880 | Right now those wearables are not accurate enough

02:05:06.400 | to meet that threshold.

02:05:07.720 | So what we do is we bring up basically all the equipment

02:05:10.840 | to do that.

02:05:11.680 | So we'll come in and do that.

02:05:12.640 | Now, once we understand exactly how you're sleeping,

02:05:15.480 | the next question is to answer,

02:05:16.920 | why are you sleeping that way?

02:05:18.400 | And so this is a full fourfold system.

02:05:21.380 | Number one is we're going to look at biology,

02:05:23.840 | which means you're going to take saliva and blood.

02:05:26.160 | And we're looking at everything from neurotransmitters,

02:05:29.580 | concentrations to vitamins, B6, B12, et cetera,

02:05:33.400 | that are important for sleep performance.

02:05:35.520 | So we're going to see, is it a physiological problem?

02:05:38.040 | Is there something happening there?

02:05:39.000 | Is cortisol DHEA ratio that we've previously talked about

02:05:41.820 | or is something like that off?

02:05:44.400 | If it's not physiology,

02:05:45.480 | then we're going on the next one, which is environmental.

02:05:47.840 | We run a full environmental scan of your bedroom

02:05:50.400 | during those nights of sleep that were there.

02:05:52.520 | And that's really important because we can look at everything

02:05:54.280 | from dander and pollen and allergens that are in the air.

02:05:57.680 | A quick tip here is wash your sheets at least once a week.

02:06:02.400 | One of the common, most common places

02:06:04.780 | that people get allergens in the air

02:06:08.200 | is actually from accumulation on your sheets.

02:06:10.440 | So if you clean those more often,

02:06:12.600 | you'll be in a better spot.

02:06:14.200 | And next one, the next one there also is like, keep your,

02:06:16.940 | I'm sorry, this hurts my heart.

02:06:18.140 | I don't even, in truthfulness, I violate this,

02:06:21.800 | but keep your pets out of your bedroom and certainly

02:06:24.520 | keep them off your bed.

02:06:26.200 | Our ghost face killer is my dog and Nelke's my other one.

02:06:29.400 | They don't go on my bed, but they're right next to my bed.

02:06:32.240 | So we violate that one.

02:06:33.280 | But full environmental scan includes all those things.

02:06:36.500 | Of course, we measure light and temperature and humidity

02:06:39.920 | and everything else that's going on in the room.

02:06:42.840 | Volatile organics that are coming out of the mattress,

02:06:45.000 | formaldehyde, lead out of the wall,

02:06:47.120 | like all of these things that could potentially

02:06:49.320 | disrupt your sleep.

02:06:50.200 | And we wanna make sure that none of those things

02:06:52.040 | are kicking on.

02:06:52.880 | We see this constantly.

02:06:54.640 | People will have things like trying to be cool

02:06:57.480 | and they wanna be cold at night 'cause that's important.

02:07:00.440 | And so they'll turn an air conditioner on or a fan,

02:07:02.600 | but the air conditioner kicking on and off at night

02:07:04.520 | actually can shoot you out of various sleep stages.

02:07:06.820 | So you wanna be really careful about this going.

02:07:09.040 | The last metric on that is actually CO2.

02:07:12.160 | And so what you remember from our metabolism discussion

02:07:14.600 | is when you exhale, you're breathing out CO2.

02:07:17.580 | Well, if your room is closed and the ventilation isn't great,

02:07:21.180 | the amount of CO2 in your room starts to build up.

02:07:23.260 | And we actually very specifically know the threshold

02:07:26.620 | based on information collected

02:07:27.820 | from the International Space Station, actually.

02:07:29.840 | We know the threshold at which CO2 crosses

02:07:32.060 | and starts disrupting sleep.

02:07:33.700 | So we wanna make sure that you're not sitting

02:07:35.060 | in this CO2 bath in front of your face

02:07:37.060 | and then breathing it back in and disrupting your sleep.

02:07:39.120 | So environment is the second one.

02:07:41.020 | The third one is actually now psychology.

02:07:43.800 | So one of the members on our team is a Harvard MD

02:07:47.240 | in psychiatry and put together an entire sleep scan survey.

02:07:51.000 | So we run through all that to see if there's anxiety,

02:07:52.740 | depression, anything like that psychologically going on.

02:07:55.560 | And then the fourth one there

02:07:57.480 | is if you have some sort of actual sleep pathology.

02:08:00.660 | And so this again will include some eye tracking stuff

02:08:03.440 | that we can use.

02:08:04.280 | So we take all those data, they go back to our team.

02:08:07.600 | We work in combination with Steve Lockie from Harvard,

02:08:10.360 | who's done a ton of stuff.

02:08:11.200 | He actually set up a lot of the circadian rhythm stuff

02:08:13.020 | in the International Space Station as well.

02:08:14.960 | Himself, Jeffrey Drummer, an MD PhD, et cetera.

02:08:17.140 | And all of these folks in a room go over your data,

02:08:20.360 | identify what's going on and build action plans off of that.

02:08:23.220 | Occasionally those action plans will include supplementation,

02:08:26.140 | but only if necessary.

02:08:27.340 | We're really gonna try to come back

02:08:29.120 | and work through a system to improve the sleep,

02:08:32.580 | however is needed.

02:08:33.420 | So I realized that is not totally accessible

02:08:37.400 | for a lot of people,

02:08:38.240 | but like if you really need to go to the end of the earth

02:08:41.460 | to figure it out sleep, that service is available.

02:08:44.800 | Absolute Rest sounds like an amazing tool,

02:08:47.440 | given that most people won't be able to use it

02:08:50.800 | or access it, although we will provide a link

02:08:52.680 | in case people are interested in it and do want to try it.

02:08:56.380 | You mentioned a few things that I think everyone

02:08:59.480 | should assay their sleeping environment for

02:09:03.500 | and determine whether or not they are hindering their sleep

02:09:07.900 | without realizing it.

02:09:08.740 | For instance, the air conditioning going on and off,

02:09:11.200 | or this could be heater going on and off,

02:09:12.740 | or central heating or cooling unit.

02:09:15.780 | This could be keeping the room dark.

02:09:18.500 | This could be cleaning your sheets.

02:09:20.660 | Certainly that doesn't require

02:09:22.980 | that one sign up for Absolute Rest.

02:09:24.220 | So cleaning one sheets routinely,

02:09:25.740 | keeping pets out of the bedroom,

02:09:27.500 | as you admitted you don't entirely,

02:09:30.200 | different opinions about that.

02:09:33.140 | But if you're having sleep issues,

02:09:34.260 | the dander from animals may be part of those issues.

02:09:36.820 | And then one that I'll just add,

02:09:38.840 | which I think is pretty interesting,

02:09:40.240 | is there's some beautiful data out of Michael Turman's lab

02:09:43.800 | at Columbia Medical School in New York

02:09:46.960 | on negative ionization.

02:09:48.860 | And this sounds pretty wacky, kind of new agey.

02:09:52.240 | I'm sure some people are like, negative ionization.

02:09:54.240 | But listen, the Turman lab is a serious laboratory

02:09:57.000 | focused on circadian biology for many decades now.

02:10:00.080 | Negative ion concentrations

02:10:01.600 | are higher near coastal locations.

02:10:03.800 | So if you've ever gone to the sea or gone on vacation

02:10:06.120 | and you sleep better near a body of water,

02:10:08.720 | that's actually a real thing.

02:10:10.720 | And there are negative ionization machines,

02:10:12.640 | but there are also some things that one can do

02:10:14.200 | in order to increase the negative ion concentration

02:10:17.040 | in their sleeping environment

02:10:18.540 | that are nearly zero cost, if not zero cost.

02:10:22.040 | You can look those up online

02:10:23.560 | and we probably will do an entire episode

02:10:25.160 | about this in the future.

02:10:26.000 | But I think what you described for Absolute Rest

02:10:28.520 | really highlights a more general set of themes

02:10:30.600 | that I think are really important,

02:10:31.640 | which is your sleep environment is an environment.

02:10:34.440 | It's got a lot going on in it.

02:10:36.120 | And it's worth running through the checklist

02:10:38.840 | that you described and asking,

02:10:40.640 | where are things maybe not optimized,

02:10:43.600 | but where am I really getting in my own way

02:10:45.380 | in terms of sleep?

02:10:46.900 | All of this, again, being related to the fact

02:10:48.600 | that getting excellent sleep consistently

02:10:51.080 | will completely transform everything that you do

02:10:54.040 | and not getting excellent sleep consistently,

02:10:56.320 | which is a challenge for so, so many people,

02:10:58.880 | will also transform everything that you do

02:11:01.100 | and think and feel, but in the negative direction.

02:11:03.440 | - Yeah, I can also offer a few tips on sleep

02:11:06.160 | based on things we find most consistently

02:11:08.240 | for those that can't go through the whole protocol.

02:11:11.040 | One quick little actually app called Time Shifter

02:11:15.160 | is really cool for anyone that's dealing

02:11:17.180 | with consistent travel and jet lag.

02:11:19.340 | So you can go and enter your location, your time,

02:11:22.000 | where you're going, the location,

02:11:24.240 | and then it'll actually back calculate

02:11:25.960 | and it'll give you full light, stimulant, food,

02:11:29.440 | hydration and stuff protocol,

02:11:30.660 | and you just follow along with that.

02:11:31.880 | And we've used that for many years actually,

02:11:34.040 | especially when traveling to Abu Dhabi for advice

02:11:36.500 | and Mongolia and Brazil for the Olympics

02:11:40.000 | and sort of all over the place.

02:11:41.060 | So I think that app is still available, I hope so.

02:11:44.360 | It's great, a nice tool.

02:11:46.600 | A couple of things we found major.

02:11:48.480 | If you're dealing with acid reflux,

02:11:50.300 | so if you're someone who has problems like that,

02:11:53.000 | you can just elevate the head of your bed by like six inches.

02:11:57.240 | So if you put little piece of wood

02:11:59.120 | or something underneath it,

02:12:00.680 | you can also buy very inexpensive pillows

02:12:03.400 | that can elevate that.

02:12:04.240 | Now that's not solving the problem,

02:12:05.680 | but at least it can help you sleep,

02:12:07.420 | whether it's just that night

02:12:08.420 | or if it's a consistent problem, you can do there.

02:12:11.500 | If you're snoring, like I said, that's not really benign,

02:12:14.880 | you should probably take a look at that.

02:12:16.320 | Your first step there is mouth tape.

02:12:18.320 | If that doesn't work,

02:12:19.200 | you can go through what's called myofunctional therapy,

02:12:21.960 | which I don't know if you've covered that before,

02:12:23.700 | but it's basically tongue exercises.

02:12:25.840 | And that can be quite effective specifically for people

02:12:28.640 | who have problems with REM sleep.

02:12:31.080 | So myofunctional therapy,

02:12:33.140 | it's kind of like you do, depending on the protocol,

02:12:36.820 | some tongue exercises kind of in the morning,

02:12:38.480 | afternoon and night.

02:12:39.480 | And that takes a while, to be honest,

02:12:41.680 | you're probably going to need at least six weeks

02:12:43.660 | before you start seeing anything,

02:12:44.760 | but that actually is pretty well demonstrated

02:12:47.020 | to help with sleep.

02:12:47.860 | So you can probably Google, we could find a link

02:12:50.280 | for exact protocols, I don't wanna describe all them,

02:12:52.800 | but yeah, you're gonna strengthen your tongue

02:12:54.800 | so that it stops falling in the back of your neck

02:12:57.040 | and waking you up at night.

02:12:58.120 | So that's a really free, easy free protocol to use.

02:13:01.340 | If you're struggling with not, it could be insomnia,

02:13:06.560 | but it could be just things like when you get into bed,

02:13:08.900 | you're super tired and you can't fall asleep

02:13:10.840 | or things like that.

02:13:12.480 | Kind of a basic rule of thumb we use

02:13:15.000 | is only two things happen in your bed.

02:13:17.120 | And if you can make sure

02:13:17.960 | those are the only two things you do in your bed,

02:13:20.180 | the problems of falling asleep or insomnia tend to go down.

02:13:22.800 | Those two things are you have sex and you sleep

02:13:25.000 | and nothing else goes down in your bed.

02:13:26.440 | And so you can make that environment very special

02:13:29.660 | and that can help quite effectively improve your ability

02:13:32.680 | to fall asleep and then not wake up early.

02:13:35.000 | So keeping that environment specific to what it's for

02:13:39.720 | can be effective.

02:13:40.600 | The only other thing I would think of is,

02:13:43.720 | and I hate to say this 'cause it's not super practical,

02:13:45.860 | but it's just quite clear at this point,

02:13:48.400 | sleeping with a partner in your bed,

02:13:50.440 | it's just not very good for sleep.

02:13:52.560 | - Good luck with that one.

02:13:53.720 | - I know.

02:13:54.840 | You can do a couple of things if it helps.

02:13:57.920 | You can get two smaller beds

02:13:59.500 | and put them right next to each other.

02:14:01.400 | If you can actually have separate sheets,

02:14:03.480 | that alone can be helpful.

02:14:05.600 | So if you get, even if you're on a king-sized bed

02:14:08.320 | or something, and again, I know some people,

02:14:10.480 | they're just like, there's no chance,

02:14:11.600 | but if you want to know the cost for your like the effect--

02:14:15.320 | - You can end your relationship.

02:14:16.440 | - You can just lose your loved one.

02:14:19.520 | Ideally-- - Please don't, please don't.

02:14:22.120 | Oh my goodness.

02:14:22.960 | - So the only last thing I want to mention here

02:14:26.360 | is something that's popped up just a few times recently,

02:14:29.800 | but you're going to see more of,

02:14:31.480 | which is called orthosomnia.

02:14:32.880 | So that is a term that is, people are growing concerned over,

02:14:37.200 | which is wearables and sleep trackers causing sleep issues.

02:14:41.760 | So people basically become too obsessed

02:14:44.840 | with optimizing, maximizing scores.

02:14:46.640 | And that alone, well, actually it's actually,

02:14:49.560 | so you learn when to wake up.

02:14:50.920 | So you have actually an anticipatory response

02:14:53.600 | when many hours prior to waking up.

02:14:55.920 | So if you actually learn to have a little bit of a,

02:14:58.040 | what's that little molecule of like excitement and reward,

02:15:00.720 | oh, dopamine, that's the one.

02:15:03.080 | If you start getting that 'cause you wake up

02:15:04.600 | and you get super excited to check your score

02:15:07.880 | or your phone, it's the same thing

02:15:09.000 | if you check your phone or Twitter

02:15:10.240 | or whatever and immediately morning,

02:15:11.620 | that'll actually start carving back your wake up time

02:15:14.680 | because you start launching it.

02:15:15.680 | So it can ruin sleep becoming too obsessed.

02:15:18.600 | So what I'll say is if you're going to use a sleep tracker

02:15:22.240 | and you just like don't care,

02:15:23.240 | you wanna check it and you have fun with it, great.

02:15:25.940 | But if like you are really, really, really interested in it

02:15:28.360 | and you pay a lot of attention to it,

02:15:29.600 | don't check your sleep score

02:15:30.920 | for at least the first 60 minutes after waking up

02:15:33.840 | and then that should help you.

02:15:35.960 | - That's a great tool.

02:15:37.040 | I think they'll, and piece of advice, I think generally,

02:15:40.180 | because I think a lot of people are waking up

02:15:42.000 | in the middle of the night, checking their phone

02:15:43.120 | two or three times per night.

02:15:44.720 | I'm kind of wondering why they're doing that

02:15:46.240 | and I'm guessing it's this anticipatory wake up circuit.

02:15:48.920 | - Yeah, you absolutely should use either your night mode

02:15:51.800 | or do not disturb or airplane mode or something overnight.

02:15:54.520 | - Or leave it out of the room.

02:15:55.680 | - Yeah, I mean, if you have to wake up

02:15:56.940 | and like some people have like a family member

02:16:00.760 | who's maybe not in great health

02:16:02.120 | and so they have to get their phone around

02:16:03.240 | in case they call or things like that.

02:16:05.440 | So I get it, you're like, I can't leave it out.

02:16:07.560 | Leave it in there, leave it in, do not disturb

02:16:09.460 | and enter in their phone number or whoever's phone number

02:16:12.020 | so only they can get through it, but keep it black and white.

02:16:14.040 | So if you do have to look at your phone at night,

02:16:16.360 | you see black and white and you do not have notifications.

02:16:19.000 | So make sure that there's no notification for no email

02:16:22.240 | and no DM, like get all that stuff off your screen

02:16:24.860 | and so you look at the, did anybody call?

02:16:26.680 | Did anybody text of importance?

02:16:28.280 | What time is it?

02:16:30.700 | No emergency going on, black and white,

02:16:32.400 | okay, right back to sleep.

02:16:33.560 | So that can help a little bit.

02:16:35.100 | - One of the supplements that I've found is extremely useful

02:16:37.960 | for being able to fall back asleep

02:16:40.000 | if I've woken up in the middle of the night

02:16:41.360 | and for some reason can't and is also very effective

02:16:45.300 | for enhancing sleep when one is ingesting

02:16:49.160 | fewer carbohydrates, an issue that a lot of people run into

02:16:53.440 | or for people that are fasting for many hours before sleep,

02:16:57.280 | people are trying to not eat anything

02:16:58.600 | within two to four hours, but is inositol,

02:17:01.280 | 900 milligrams of myoinositol, I find, again,

02:17:05.520 | this is anecdotal data to be clear,

02:17:07.720 | that if I wake up in the middle of the night

02:17:09.760 | and I've taken 900 milligrams of inositol

02:17:12.920 | before initially falling asleep,

02:17:15.480 | that I fall back asleep much more easily.

02:17:17.980 | So that's why I've added 900 milligrams of inositol

02:17:20.360 | to my so-called sleep stack.

02:17:22.160 | I've also tried just taking it alone

02:17:23.680 | and it works well alone, but it works better, of course,

02:17:26.160 | with the Mag-3 and 8 Apigen and Athenian sleep stack.

02:17:29.820 | Also in terms of tools for sleep,

02:17:34.400 | the app Reverie that was developed by my colleague,

02:17:38.120 | Dr. David Spiegel, who's a medical doctor

02:17:39.960 | at Stanford Psychiatry,

02:17:41.200 | Stanford School of Medicine Psychiatry,

02:17:43.280 | there is a free trial.

02:17:44.760 | There's a nominal cost if you use it month to month,

02:17:47.880 | but the data are really strong that people that use that,

02:17:52.580 | I think it's eight to 11 minutes sleep hypnosis once a week,

02:17:56.640 | and it doesn't have to be in the middle of the night

02:17:58.120 | when you wake up, really helps improve people's ability

02:18:01.840 | to fall asleep quickly, stay asleep, fall back asleep

02:18:04.200 | if they wake up in the middle of the night,

02:18:05.720 | in some cases, curing insomnia.

02:18:07.260 | In other cases, really just helping people

02:18:09.200 | with their general sleep issues.

02:18:10.760 | And I mention this because obviously it's the technology,

02:18:13.760 | it's not a supplement,

02:18:14.600 | but I know that some people are supplement-averse.

02:18:16.500 | Also, if you look at the cost comparison

02:18:19.040 | between taking the sleep stack and the Reverie app,

02:18:23.920 | it's pennies on the dollar, really.

02:18:26.560 | So again, I'm a proponent of both for myself,

02:18:28.980 | but I realized that people have varying budgets.

02:18:31.080 | And again, I should say, as always, behavioral tools first.

02:18:35.280 | And I think of the Reverie app as more or less

02:18:37.840 | a behavioral tool.

02:18:39.280 | - Yeah, it's really just a tool.

02:18:42.920 | Any of these breathwork protocols, hypnosis protocols,

02:18:47.320 | they're just a tool for you to touch back in

02:18:49.860 | with your own physiology,

02:18:51.060 | rather than a substance that's coming in.

02:18:53.880 | So I fully support those.

02:18:55.380 | We have used a number of those in protocols.

02:19:00.380 | There's some other tricks that we can pull in those areas.

02:19:04.740 | I probably shouldn't say this,

02:19:05.700 | but the reality of it is, depending on what's keeping you up,

02:19:08.920 | sometimes we recommend just getting up and getting it done.

02:19:12.000 | Like if it's a project or a thing or whatever,

02:19:17.900 | like sometimes, rather than laying there all night

02:19:20.480 | not sleeping, you can get up, get it done,

02:19:22.500 | and then if you stay awake, fine,

02:19:23.840 | at least the anxiety is gone.

02:19:25.960 | Or sometimes you can actually go back to sleep

02:19:27.640 | 'cause you're like, especially if the task

02:19:29.000 | only literally would take like 10 or 15 minutes.

02:19:32.800 | It may ruin your sleep, but you're gonna have

02:19:34.620 | ruined sleep anyways, so you can try that tool.

02:19:38.760 | You don't wanna pull that card very often,

02:19:40.140 | and you have to be very careful

02:19:41.580 | with what you consider to be something worthy of doing that.

02:19:45.040 | But that is between me and you and nobody else here.

02:19:47.800 | That's a tool I have used personally more than a few times,

02:19:50.460 | where it's just like, I get an idea and I don't lose it,

02:19:53.460 | or the solution for something you've been doodling on

02:19:56.140 | for a long time pops in your head,

02:19:57.560 | and you're not wanting to forget it.

02:20:00.340 | Just get up, get it done, and get on with your day.

02:20:03.840 | - In several previous episodes,

02:20:05.120 | you emphasized how exercise induces various adaptations

02:20:08.280 | depending on the type, specificity,

02:20:09.820 | volume, intensity, et cetera, of the exercise.

02:20:13.380 | And that during exercise, the degree of adaptation

02:20:17.460 | that one triggers is often associated with things

02:20:20.540 | that normally we don't associate

02:20:22.000 | with exercise-related health.

02:20:23.860 | Things like huge increases in blood pressure

02:20:27.260 | during exercise, huge increases in inflammatory markers,

02:20:31.940 | muscle damage, and these things all sound terrible,

02:20:35.520 | but as you beautifully explained,

02:20:38.580 | all of that triggers adaptations

02:20:40.220 | that then bring those markers below the baseline

02:20:43.620 | with which they were previous to the exercise.

02:20:45.780 | So that's the adaptation and the recovery.

02:20:48.540 | Within the realm of supplementation and nutrition,

02:20:50.420 | I'm aware of a number of things,

02:20:52.740 | some herbal, some lipid-based, other compounds,

02:20:56.940 | that are used for various things,

02:20:59.660 | but that are known to have a potent anti-inflammatory effect.

02:21:03.460 | Things like omega-3 fatty acids,

02:21:06.700 | ashwagandha for its effect on cortisol,

02:21:08.980 | although that's a bit indirect to the inflammatory pathway,

02:21:11.940 | curcumin, and things of that sort.

02:21:16.340 | Given that we want inflammation

02:21:19.800 | in order to trigger the adaptation response to exercise,

02:21:24.740 | and given that we want to reduce inflammation

02:21:27.140 | in the recovery period,

02:21:28.980 | can we put together a logical framework

02:21:30.620 | as to when is best to take anything anti-inflammatory,

02:21:34.780 | whether it's supplement-based or prescription

02:21:36.460 | or over-the-counter drug,

02:21:37.580 | and when to strictly avoid

02:21:39.420 | taking any anti-inflammatory supplement

02:21:42.260 | or behavioral tool?

02:21:45.700 | You mentioned ice can reduce inflammation.

02:21:47.780 | That's why you don't want to do it too close to exercise.

02:21:50.220 | Anyway, I think you get the gist of the question.

02:21:52.340 | What about specific supplements related to inflammation

02:21:55.860 | and anti-inflammatory responses?

02:21:57.860 | What are the best ones?

02:21:59.260 | When should we take them?

02:22:00.660 | When should we avoid taking them?

02:22:01.860 | - The way that I think about it is understanding

02:22:04.540 | what we call the fitness fatigue model.

02:22:06.420 | So what I mean by that is,

02:22:07.540 | whenever you do some sort of insult,

02:22:09.580 | the whole idea is for you to come back

02:22:11.580 | and get an adaptation.

02:22:12.420 | Now, recovery is not adaptation, right?

02:22:14.540 | Recovery is recovery.

02:22:15.620 | Adaptation is what happens after you're recovered, right?

02:22:18.340 | So there's a very important distinction there.

02:22:20.020 | Fitness fatigue model says basically you've done something

02:22:22.140 | and you've got an adaptation and you've enhanced fitness.

02:22:25.380 | And by fitness, in this case,

02:22:26.460 | I mean it as a nonspecific term.

02:22:28.980 | So you got stronger, you've improved your endurance,

02:22:32.380 | like whatever thing you're trying to train for.

02:22:34.660 | At the same time, though, your fatigue elevated.

02:22:38.020 | So what happens is if fitness increases

02:22:40.220 | at the same or similar rate as fatigue,

02:22:43.100 | your performance actually isn't any better.

02:22:45.620 | And so you may think, "Oh, my program isn't working.

02:22:48.180 | "I need to then train harder,

02:22:50.200 | "or I need to take more anti-inflammatory,"

02:22:52.380 | or whatever the things are.

02:22:53.960 | When in reality, all you really need to do

02:22:56.220 | is reduce fatigue.

02:22:57.660 | And if you do that, your performance will increase

02:23:00.820 | and all the training adaptations will be actualized.

02:23:03.380 | So the way that we do that is a couple of things.

02:23:05.320 | First and foremost is actually a taper.

02:23:07.280 | So the first step I think of,

02:23:10.200 | if someone is training very, very hard

02:23:11.660 | and you're not seeing any results,

02:23:13.460 | and we want to think about supplementation,

02:23:15.820 | before I get there, I want to think about taper and deload.

02:23:18.220 | If you're actually training hard and sleep

02:23:20.240 | and everything else is taken care of.

02:23:22.520 | So just without going too far into taper,

02:23:25.420 | some general parameters there.

02:23:27.880 | You want to think about about a 50% reduction

02:23:30.440 | in training volume over the course of about a week

02:23:34.100 | for every eight weeks of training.

02:23:36.480 | Super, super rough, right?

02:23:38.280 | So if you've been training hard

02:23:39.420 | for three months for something,

02:23:41.900 | you might want to taper for two weeks.

02:23:44.340 | Something like that, right?

02:23:45.360 | It's sort of a rough estimate.

02:23:47.560 | That taper, you actually don't need to reduce intensity

02:23:51.280 | because intensity is not the driver of fatigue.

02:23:52.920 | It tends to be volume.

02:23:54.080 | So as long as your volume is reduced by 50%,

02:23:56.200 | you can maintain intensity.

02:23:57.700 | You can maintain, in fact,

02:23:58.780 | I generally would recommend maintaining frequency.

02:24:01.600 | So if you're used to working out four days a week,

02:24:03.120 | keep it four days a week.

02:24:03.960 | You can go down a little bit in frequency,

02:24:06.260 | but if you go down too much in frequency,

02:24:07.900 | you actually tend to feel super lethargic.

02:24:10.160 | So I wouldn't do that.

02:24:11.440 | If you do those things correctly,

02:24:13.820 | you can typically see somewhere between like a three

02:24:16.360 | to 8% improvement in performance within a matter of days.

02:24:20.220 | So it's important to do that.

02:24:22.840 | We actually ran a study on cross-country runners years ago,

02:24:26.200 | testing on a metabolic heart, muscle biopsies,

02:24:29.640 | blood, a whole bunch of things,

02:24:30.740 | and we did it pre and post three weeks of taper.

02:24:33.440 | And we actually, this is cool

02:24:34.480 | because we did this in competitive season.

02:24:36.240 | So these were collegiate cross-country runners,

02:24:38.320 | and we got them to come to our lab

02:24:40.080 | three weeks before their conference championship,

02:24:42.440 | ran them all through a bunch of testing, biopsied them.

02:24:44.520 | They went through their three-week taper,

02:24:45.840 | and then we biopsied them again,

02:24:46.960 | and then they went and ran

02:24:48.800 | their conference championships and stuff.

02:24:50.680 | Well, what happened was they ended up

02:24:52.180 | hitting about a 50% reduction,

02:24:54.000 | because what they did is they took out

02:24:55.400 | what we call the junk volume.

02:24:56.980 | So they kept their race tempos

02:24:58.200 | to high-intensity stuff in there.

02:25:00.080 | They kept their recovery stuff,

02:25:01.160 | and then at medium pace, they just basically reduced.

02:25:03.960 | Now, they were terrified, as any endurance runner

02:25:06.600 | or endurance athlete or participant would understand,

02:25:10.080 | when you take volume away, they tend to get very nervous.

02:25:12.760 | And so they didn't like that.

02:25:14.880 | But as a result of that, what we saw is their VO2 max,

02:25:18.280 | despite the fact that they covered half the mileage,

02:25:21.000 | their VO2 max did not go down

02:25:23.420 | in three weeks of reduced taper.

02:25:25.300 | Your fitness is extremely stable.

02:25:27.960 | And in fact, once we actually looked at their data,

02:25:30.840 | the enzymes and their muscle were responsible

02:25:32.880 | for oxidative metabolism were maintained.

02:25:35.720 | And so you don't have to worry about losing,

02:25:38.120 | again, fitness when we're talking about overall performance,

02:25:40.420 | or even oxygen capacity, mitochondrial function, et cetera.

02:25:45.020 | That was all preserved.

02:25:46.180 | Obviously, we saw performance go up.

02:25:48.520 | What was actually really interesting is we saw,

02:25:50.520 | I think it was around a 10% increase in type two,

02:25:54.400 | which are fast twitch muscle fiber size.

02:25:57.140 | So we saw a 10% increase in fast twitch fiber size

02:26:01.460 | at the end of three weeks of tapering.

02:26:04.280 | Now, what you may think is like, wow,

02:26:07.580 | I guess tapering is anabolic,

02:26:09.640 | but that's probably not what happened.

02:26:10.820 | What realistically probably happened

02:26:12.380 | was their volume of training

02:26:14.800 | was actually causing their fibers to be reduced in size.

02:26:17.860 | And then once we removed that fatigue,

02:26:19.800 | they just recovered back to normal.

02:26:22.220 | So that's a good example of what I'm talking about.

02:26:24.200 | Once you remove the fatigue,

02:26:26.400 | you can actually see enhances in performance,

02:26:28.340 | not because you're necessarily getting better,

02:26:29.680 | but because you're removing the stimuli

02:26:31.640 | by suppressing you.

02:26:32.980 | So that being said,

02:26:34.700 | the way that you want to think about recovery like this

02:26:37.100 | is although recovery, especially like injury recovery,

02:26:40.860 | like seems chaotic, biology is very organized

02:26:44.300 | and there's a very specific three-step process

02:26:46.940 | that you're going to go through for recovery.

02:26:48.660 | And then there are different supplements

02:26:50.040 | that can help you in each of those three areas.

02:26:52.580 | So area one is basically inflammation.

02:26:56.180 | So this is when the cytokine storm comes rolling out,

02:26:59.460 | it starts signaling the injuries there,

02:27:01.380 | in this case, even if it's muscle damage,

02:27:03.340 | and activates immune system to kick on

02:27:05.300 | and that whole repair process happens there.

02:27:07.960 | What you're trying to do effectively,

02:27:10.580 | in fact, this is why you probably ever wonder

02:27:12.860 | like why is inflammation a thing?

02:27:15.060 | What you're trying to do is bring in fluid,

02:27:17.900 | enhance the size and increase blood flow in

02:27:20.340 | so that you can get nutrients for repair

02:27:22.020 | and immune cells and everything like that in the system

02:27:24.180 | and get the waste out.

02:27:25.420 | So short-term inflammation,

02:27:27.180 | even in the case of muscle soreness

02:27:28.740 | is the example we talked about in the previous episode,

02:27:31.860 | but any inflammation, it is part of the necessary process.

02:27:34.740 | That's why you would not want to take an anti-inflammatory

02:27:37.380 | in that state.

02:27:38.580 | And so why you also would not want to do things

02:27:40.500 | like an ice bath.

02:27:42.080 | So in that immediate inflammatory response time window,

02:27:45.640 | this is seconds to hours after training,

02:27:48.740 | you would want to stay away from things like that.

02:27:51.640 | A good option here are things like omega-3s.

02:27:54.700 | Good evidence somewhere in the neighborhood

02:27:56.660 | of like two to five grams total,

02:27:59.520 | typically like a one-to-one EPA to DHA ratio is fine.

02:28:04.700 | Similarly, this is another example of when good

02:28:07.840 | doesn't mean more is better.

02:28:09.900 | 'Cause for example, there is actually evidence

02:28:11.860 | showing up to 15 grams will harm the immune response.

02:28:16.860 | And so you don't just want to be like,

02:28:18.380 | man, I'm super sore, I'm training harder,

02:28:19.740 | I'm just gonna go to 10 grams a day or more and more.

02:28:21.500 | You're actually causing yourself more of a problem.

02:28:24.520 | So antioxidants, anti-inflammatories are fine.

02:28:26.840 | Again, omega-3s in that dosage are a decent thing.

02:28:31.020 | You can also do something like 500 milligrams of curcumin

02:28:33.940 | three times a day.

02:28:34.940 | That's gonna be enough to keep you in a decent spot.

02:28:38.660 | There are some other things that you could look up,

02:28:41.000 | maybe some potential benefit for ginger and buswellia

02:28:44.700 | and some things like that for inflammation.

02:28:46.320 | But unless we're in like very specific circumstances

02:28:49.860 | where we have like an injury,

02:28:51.660 | we're probably not going to those areas.

02:28:54.260 | - I just wanted to highlight one thing

02:28:55.580 | that came up in a previous episode.

02:28:57.460 | Some, not all people, but some, including myself,

02:29:00.740 | are very sensitive to curcumin.

02:29:03.140 | It has a very potent effect in reducing DHT,

02:29:07.300 | dehydrotestosterone, and leads to all sorts of clamping

02:29:11.580 | of testosterone-associated positive things.

02:29:15.060 | So I have experienced that myself.

02:29:18.800 | I've had people write to me and say, "I don't understand.

02:29:20.960 | "I started taking a supplement.

02:29:23.040 | "Curcumin's supposed to be a great anti-inflammatory.

02:29:25.720 | "It flatlined my libido.

02:29:27.440 | "It took away my drive."

02:29:29.380 | And kind of wondering what's going on there.

02:29:31.220 | Those people are very likely to be very DHT-sensitive.

02:29:34.460 | Curcumin, while it's a potent anti-inflammatory,

02:29:36.580 | can also potently reduce DHT,

02:29:38.620 | but some people tolerate it quite well

02:29:40.820 | and are hearing this and probably think, "That's ridiculous."

02:29:43.220 | Well, it's certainly substantiated

02:29:46.100 | by the biochemical pathways that curcumin taps into

02:29:48.880 | in the known roles of DHT on libido, aggression,

02:29:51.660 | power output, et cetera, and mood.

02:29:53.920 | So just be wary that A, there's no way to predict this.

02:29:57.780 | One simply has to figure it out empirically,

02:30:00.180 | meaning you have to try and see if you like it or don't.

02:30:03.360 | The good news is, is those negative effects on DHT

02:30:06.460 | seem to reverse pretty quickly

02:30:08.180 | after ceasing to take curcumin.

02:30:11.860 | So just a mention of something

02:30:13.340 | that came up in a previous episode,

02:30:14.580 | but in case people didn't hear that segment,

02:30:17.280 | just wanted to highlight those facts.

02:30:19.480 | - Further evidence, I strongly discourage,

02:30:22.980 | strongly discourage taking anything

02:30:24.940 | in the anti-inflammatory antioxidant realm

02:30:27.460 | unless you actually have a reason to do so.

02:30:29.900 | If you're waking up and you're like,

02:30:31.360 | "Maybe I'm inflamed," it's probably not a good approach.

02:30:34.940 | Let's have a reason to do so.

02:30:36.340 | Step two is actually what we call proliferation,

02:30:38.780 | and that's kind of like the cleanup crew.

02:30:40.620 | That's when you're gonna be going in there

02:30:41.980 | and cleaning out dead cells and debris

02:30:44.380 | and misfolded proteins and things like that.

02:30:46.860 | At this stage, a fantastic evidence-based supplement

02:30:51.180 | is glutamine.

02:30:52.220 | Glutamine, 20 grams a day.

02:30:53.500 | We typically honestly split it up into two dosage,

02:30:55.500 | 10 grams morning, 10 grams night.

02:30:57.100 | It's a conditional amino acid,

02:30:58.620 | which means you can make it,

02:31:01.480 | your body can make enough of it at times,

02:31:03.000 | and other times you may wanna support it.

02:31:04.780 | Generally, those conditional times

02:31:06.180 | are things like burn victims,

02:31:08.700 | high stress situations or injury, things like that.

02:31:12.140 | So there isn't also like a ton of downside to glutamine

02:31:16.660 | because it can go through a transamination,

02:31:20.020 | which means your body can take it and say like,

02:31:22.060 | "We don't need anything here for our muscle recovery.

02:31:24.980 | Let's make it into something else and use it."

02:31:28.580 | For whatever else is needed.

02:31:29.820 | So it's kind of another one of these like low risk products.

02:31:33.900 | It's honestly why you see it in a lot of recovery products.

02:31:37.340 | If you're ever wondering like,

02:31:38.160 | "What the heck is that in there?

02:31:39.520 | I don't need amino acids."

02:31:40.840 | And you're thinking it's like for protein synthesis.

02:31:42.560 | It's really not.

02:31:43.400 | It's because of this,

02:31:44.220 | it is beneficial to this proliferation process.

02:31:47.740 | - I've been taking glutamine for years.

02:31:50.220 | I tend to take it in higher dosages

02:31:53.260 | several times throughout the day

02:31:54.340 | if I'm ever feeling particularly run down.

02:31:56.800 | I know there are decent data, not great,

02:31:58.940 | but decent data on the role of glutamine for leaky gut.

02:32:01.460 | - Totally.

02:32:02.300 | - We're off saying leaky gut.

02:32:03.120 | That's getting a little bit into the realm

02:32:04.720 | of like not super well substantiated,

02:32:08.900 | but in the peer reviewed literature,

02:32:11.180 | but a lot of anecdotal data

02:32:13.680 | and certainly some peer reviewed work, but not a ton.

02:32:17.920 | And then there is also growing interest

02:32:20.600 | in the idea that glutamine,

02:32:22.580 | because it can trigger activation of the neurons in the gut

02:32:25.140 | that signal to the dopamine pathway in the brain,

02:32:28.060 | that it can be used to offset sugar cravings.

02:32:31.020 | This is kind of an interesting new and emerging theme,

02:32:34.180 | which makes sense given the biology of the neurons

02:32:36.500 | in the gut that respond to specific amino acids,

02:32:40.020 | including glutamine, essential fatty acids, and sugar.

02:32:43.060 | And because they respond to any and all three of those,

02:32:47.340 | any one or combination of those, I should say,

02:32:51.020 | to trigger this dopamine response.

02:32:52.380 | Some people have taken to a teaspoon or so of glutamine

02:32:56.980 | in some water or other drink

02:32:58.700 | a couple of times throughout the day

02:32:59.660 | as a way to reduce their sugar cravings.

02:33:01.160 | Because what's essentially doing

02:33:02.740 | is it's tricking the pathway into activation

02:33:05.540 | of those neurons through an alternate

02:33:08.180 | ligand receptor interaction.

02:33:09.780 | - Right, also another interesting point.

02:33:12.200 | There are very, I'm trying to think right now

02:33:15.180 | off the top of my head, I can't think of a time,

02:33:17.900 | and I've used glutamine a lot.

02:33:20.020 | I can't think of a time where I've ever heard anybody

02:33:21.900 | come back with any side effect reports.

02:33:24.540 | - I think if you take enough of it,

02:33:25.740 | you can get some gastric distress.

02:33:27.300 | But of course, you take enough of any powdered substance

02:33:30.180 | mixed in water, you're going to get

02:33:32.460 | a gastric distress response.

02:33:34.540 | And what I've noticed about gastric distress

02:33:36.860 | with things like creatine, glutamine,

02:33:40.300 | and even protein powders for that matter,

02:33:41.860 | I use a high quality whey protein powder routinely,

02:33:45.880 | is that if you build up to it over the course of a few days,

02:33:49.460 | then you can get away with using much higher dosages

02:33:51.620 | without any issue.

02:33:52.620 | - Yeah, yeah, beta-alanine is the same thing, by the way.

02:33:55.140 | We sort of talked about that earlier.

02:33:56.980 | If you've ever tried that and you're like,

02:33:59.220 | "Oh my gosh, I feel like I've just rolled around in grass

02:34:02.820 | and my skin is itching everywhere."

02:34:04.340 | - Oh, it's that ants under the skin sensation?

02:34:06.500 | - Yeah, all that stuff.

02:34:07.900 | You can just take a little bit of a lower dosage

02:34:09.540 | and be fine for the most part.

02:34:11.480 | And then you will build up a tolerance

02:34:13.500 | to that pretty quickly, so you can up that dosage

02:34:16.120 | along the way.

02:34:16.960 | So what we will oftentimes do there is start at a dosage

02:34:19.500 | that's pretty minimal, like two grams,

02:34:21.800 | and then every week or so you can go up another gram

02:34:24.620 | until you get to whatever final point you want to be,

02:34:26.860 | five, six grams a day, you know, whatever.

02:34:29.440 | So that's another way you can sort of mitigate that problem.

02:34:32.020 | So the third step in this recovery process,

02:34:34.420 | after inflammation, proliferation,

02:34:36.220 | we're now into remodeling.

02:34:37.420 | And this is when you're actually, you know, quote unquote,

02:34:39.280 | growing back bigger and stronger.

02:34:40.940 | This is where the majority of the repair

02:34:43.160 | is actually taking place.

02:34:44.420 | And at this point, we're basically playing a micronutrient

02:34:47.100 | and macronutrient game, right?

02:34:48.940 | By that I mean, we've talked about basic macronutrients.

02:34:52.780 | One thing to pay attention to.

02:34:54.880 | Oftentimes if people are hurt, whether they had an injury

02:34:58.900 | or they've had, just they're super sore.

02:35:02.100 | And they are concerned about eating excess calories.

02:35:05.700 | They tend to want to eat less food during this process

02:35:08.460 | 'cause they're like, I'm not working out so much,

02:35:10.360 | so I'm gonna eat less calories.

02:35:11.920 | Well, one of the things that you have to pay attention to

02:35:13.540 | is injury can increase basal metabolic rate by up to 10%.

02:35:18.700 | So what you want to do in general

02:35:20.820 | is just take your calories up about 10%.

02:35:23.100 | At least that's what I recommend.

02:35:25.500 | If that is an extended period of time,

02:35:27.220 | then yes, you may put on a slight amount

02:35:29.460 | of body fat or something.

02:35:31.260 | But if that also means you come back some percentage faster,

02:35:34.700 | then it's worth the exchange.

02:35:36.420 | So we recommend that.

02:35:38.060 | In terms of your carbohydrate or fat split,

02:35:41.860 | I'm not super worried about it.

02:35:43.040 | My general recommendation is just don't make

02:35:44.660 | any major changes relative to what you were doing, right?

02:35:48.060 | Keep yourself pretty much in the same spot.

02:35:51.180 | In terms of protein, this is the big one.

02:35:52.940 | You want to make sure you are absolutely

02:35:54.700 | at one gram per pound of body weight

02:35:56.640 | because we need those amino acids to come in

02:35:58.700 | and start helping with recovery.

02:36:01.040 | - One gram of protein per pound of body weight

02:36:04.040 | or more or one gram?

02:36:05.380 | - Or more, yeah.

02:36:06.740 | There's gonna be very little downside to having more.

02:36:09.420 | Remember, protein and carbohydrates,

02:36:17.380 | both stimulate insulin.

02:36:19.100 | And remember, insulin is anabolic.

02:36:20.500 | And so we're trying to drive this process of recovery.

02:36:23.820 | That's why you want both.

02:36:24.720 | So you wouldn't want to skimp on carbohydrates in this phase

02:36:27.380 | nor would you want to skimp on protein

02:36:28.760 | because you need the activation, the drive into the tissue,

02:36:31.520 | as well as the structure.

02:36:33.160 | Going back to one of our earlier conversations

02:36:34.860 | and at this point in the week,

02:36:36.380 | I honestly can't remember at all

02:36:37.780 | what episode we covered this in,

02:36:39.140 | but I gave an analogy about making a campfire

02:36:43.060 | and using fat and carbohydrates as the wood

02:36:46.100 | and the log and the protein were the metal structure.

02:36:49.740 | So you need that supply.

02:36:50.900 | If you've cleared out in the previous step damaged proteins

02:36:55.100 | and you need to make new ones to recover that process,

02:36:58.060 | you have to have the raw supply and material.

02:37:00.600 | So you wouldn't want to avoid either one of those things.

02:37:02.620 | There's actually some indirect inflammation management

02:37:04.860 | that comes from fatty acids,

02:37:05.980 | which you actually sort of alluded to earlier.

02:37:08.300 | I don't think you need to necessarily go crazy.

02:37:09.940 | You don't need to change your fat intake that much.

02:37:12.980 | Just don't drop it, depending on where you're at.

02:37:15.920 | So if you're a little bit of a higher carb,

02:37:18.060 | lower fat person, great.

02:37:19.760 | If you're moderate, great.

02:37:21.020 | If you're the indirect, if you're higher fat,

02:37:22.840 | lower carb person, awesome.

02:37:24.760 | Just don't make an extreme change

02:37:26.700 | and try to not be on the extremes

02:37:28.720 | of either one of those ratios.

02:37:30.020 | But the only specific number to pay attention to, again,

02:37:32.640 | is that protein number.

02:37:34.460 | And if you go a little bit high or even a lot high,

02:37:36.860 | it's totally fine.

02:37:38.040 | Just don't go low.

02:37:39.480 | So that's the macronutrient portion of remodeling.

02:37:42.960 | In terms of micronutrients, to be honest,

02:37:45.100 | you just get your bases covered.

02:37:46.680 | This is when a basic multivitamin is effective.

02:37:50.920 | What you're really trying to look at here

02:37:52.500 | are vitamin A and zinc.

02:37:54.160 | They actually have independent mechanisms

02:37:55.700 | that are helpful here.

02:37:56.840 | But those are typically covered in most multivitamins.

02:37:59.320 | So we generally just give people a multivitamin.

02:38:02.840 | Magnesium actually has some benefits here.

02:38:05.140 | Something like six milligrams per kilogram of body weight

02:38:08.160 | is the dosage you're looking for there.

02:38:11.540 | Magnesium citrate probably has the most evidence

02:38:15.160 | in terms of this respect,

02:38:16.240 | but it doesn't mean, I actually have no reason

02:38:18.440 | to think you couldn't use glycinate

02:38:20.720 | or if you're using another form for sleep,

02:38:23.840 | that's probably fine.

02:38:24.840 | I don't know that for sure,

02:38:27.280 | but I can't think of a reason

02:38:28.480 | why the other forms of magnesium

02:38:30.400 | would all of a sudden not work.

02:38:32.080 | So you could probably choose whichever form you like.

02:38:34.840 | I'll be at citrate has probably

02:38:36.920 | the most research in this aspect.

02:38:38.760 | The only other things you would probably consider here,

02:38:41.660 | three things, calcium might be on your list,

02:38:45.040 | particularly if you're trying to,

02:38:46.780 | if you're concerned with some sort of bone injury

02:38:48.640 | and we've sort of gone past like recovery

02:38:50.780 | and we're actually like into injury.

02:38:52.940 | So you'll see that in recovery products occasionally

02:38:54.820 | and that's why.

02:38:55.900 | And then the last two ones of course are vitamin D

02:38:58.460 | and that's pretty well researched.

02:39:00.800 | And then the last one is actually something

02:39:02.860 | that can help you if you're at this stage

02:39:05.340 | and you still are dealing with a lot of soreness or not.

02:39:08.460 | And that is tart cherry juice.

02:39:09.760 | And that's actually effective for both DOMS,

02:39:12.420 | muscle injury, muscle soreness,

02:39:14.380 | and actually has another benefit

02:39:15.640 | of potentially aiding with sleep.

02:39:17.020 | So not a bad one to turn to as well.

02:39:19.340 | And there's a number of companies that make these things.

02:39:22.020 | Yeah, and then there's actually more ongoing research

02:39:23.540 | that I know of on those areas,

02:39:24.640 | but a promising literature we'll say.

02:39:27.280 | - Not often, but every once in a while on this podcast,

02:39:30.740 | I will solicit social media for questions from the audience

02:39:35.740 | where I should say the audience to be.

02:39:37.880 | And then ask some of those questions on the fly

02:39:41.760 | during the podcast.

02:39:42.720 | I did this with Dr. Lex Friedman.

02:39:44.540 | I'm going to do it with you.

02:39:47.220 | Your goal is to answer each of these questions,

02:39:51.280 | certainly not all of them,

02:39:52.580 | thousands of them within the last couple of hours,

02:39:55.280 | to answer each of these questions

02:39:57.580 | in three or four sentences.

02:39:59.500 | I certainly won't be counting the number of sentences

02:40:01.380 | that you speak.

02:40:02.500 | So just know that if you want to go over a little bit,

02:40:05.020 | that's fine.

02:40:05.980 | But feel free to refer to your Instagram site

02:40:09.980 | at a future time where you might go more in depth

02:40:12.200 | or to refer to a study.

02:40:13.920 | Or if you like, you can also say pass

02:40:16.200 | if you don't think that you can answer the question

02:40:18.980 | succinctly enough for this format.

02:40:21.040 | And here, the goal is not to put you on the spot.

02:40:24.440 | The goal is simply to allow the audience

02:40:26.060 | to ask some questions directly.

02:40:27.580 | And I confess I'm looking at these for the first time.

02:40:30.840 | So I'll try and be quick with my reading.

02:40:34.200 | Some of these we may have touched on in previous episodes

02:40:37.740 | or in this episode even,

02:40:38.700 | in which case you can just kind of cue us to the reminder.

02:40:41.540 | This is not directly related to supplementation,

02:40:45.020 | but it is related to nutrition.

02:40:47.160 | And I don't think we touched on this directly.

02:40:49.260 | Can we do intermittent fasting,

02:40:51.760 | AKA time-restricted feeding,

02:40:53.500 | with keto and still gain muscle mass?

02:40:57.020 | - TBD.

02:40:58.480 | I am quite clear such study does not exist.

02:41:02.620 | So I don't know.

02:41:04.360 | I think I've alluded to before

02:41:06.940 | that we did run an intermittent fasting 16/8

02:41:10.280 | hypertrophy study.

02:41:11.680 | There was no keto arm.

02:41:13.540 | The results of that study, by the time this comes out,

02:41:15.780 | we'll probably be ready though, I'm not sure.

02:41:17.840 | So I can't comment on it.

02:41:19.100 | I haven't looked at the data.

02:41:20.740 | But regarding whether or not if you did that with keto or not,

02:41:23.020 | I can't comment scientifically.

02:41:24.960 | - Do you ever prescribe the use of GABA supplements?

02:41:31.660 | - Well, I can't prescribe anything to make sure we're clear.

02:41:34.900 | - But you're a professor, you can profess.

02:41:36.420 | - I can profess.

02:41:37.900 | We generally don't spend too much time on GABA, rarely.

02:41:42.060 | - Is it okay to wait, train fasted,

02:41:43.620 | then not break the fast

02:41:45.940 | and eat for three or four hours after training?

02:41:48.420 | So in other words, train fasted, I do this,

02:41:50.820 | but then also not eat immediately following training

02:41:53.380 | and wait another three to four hours after training.

02:41:55.760 | - Once we have our results

02:41:57.580 | from our intermittent fasting study back,

02:41:59.300 | we will have a better answer here.

02:42:01.100 | My general recommendation as it stands now though,

02:42:05.020 | is as long as your total protein intake is sufficient,

02:42:09.060 | you should be in a decent spot.

02:42:11.780 | - Great, a lot of questions about fasting and training,

02:42:15.980 | just to note that.

02:42:18.620 | Can you train high performance fasted

02:42:20.340 | and how long before you need to refuel the body?

02:42:24.100 | - Yeah, you can certainly do that.

02:42:25.300 | I know of actually many athletes,

02:42:27.500 | some athletes that will do that,

02:42:28.540 | though the vast majority will not.

02:42:30.980 | As it gets higher and higher in intensity and or duration,

02:42:34.580 | it gets more challenging,

02:42:35.820 | but it really does come down

02:42:36.760 | to what you did the day before as well.

02:42:38.220 | So if you ate sufficient calories the day before,

02:42:41.180 | didn't train and your glycogen stores are topped off,

02:42:45.180 | you have a fighting chance.

02:42:46.500 | Now the duration part of that equation

02:42:48.400 | is really kind of dependent upon you.

02:42:51.520 | So are you really talking 30, 45 minutes, 60 minutes?

02:42:54.460 | You're probably fine.

02:42:56.140 | And whether you're out past that in several hours,

02:42:57.980 | you may not be.

02:42:59.280 | And then the only other comment I would make is,

02:43:01.860 | keep in mind whenever you think about fasting

02:43:03.820 | and any other, let's say against the textbook,

02:43:07.040 | you know, quote unquote style,

02:43:08.780 | you really, really need to be careful

02:43:10.400 | in thinking the difference between can I do it

02:43:13.360 | and is it optimal?

02:43:15.020 | So I have absolutely no reason to think

02:43:17.660 | fasting like that would improve performance.

02:43:20.680 | I only work for the most part with people

02:43:22.480 | who are trying to perform at the highest level possible.

02:43:25.060 | So I can't think of a scenario

02:43:26.200 | in which I would go to fasting to try to enhance performance.

02:43:29.700 | So whether or not you can maintain

02:43:31.460 | some level of performance, probably.

02:43:33.760 | Will it provide any benefit?

02:43:35.420 | I struggle to find scenarios

02:43:36.980 | in which that would actually make you perform better.

02:43:39.740 | - How do different forms of carbohydrates

02:43:41.380 | impact performance?

02:43:42.220 | And then right below it,

02:43:43.060 | another question about carbohydrates,

02:43:44.880 | which is does carbohydrate cycling work?

02:43:47.300 | So these are two questions from people

02:43:51.540 | that I think don't know one another,

02:43:52.940 | but a lot of questions about carbohydrates and performance,

02:43:55.600 | which we've touched on.

02:43:56.660 | Anything else that you want to add to that conversation?

02:43:59.900 | - I don't think I really,

02:44:01.080 | maybe you might want to think about

02:44:03.380 | carb loading slash carb cycling.

02:44:05.820 | So carbohydrate loading does help.

02:44:08.960 | However, a misconception there is it's just, you know,

02:44:11.940 | a big bowl of pasta the night before.

02:44:14.660 | That can help top off storages,

02:44:16.060 | but really optimal carbohydrate loading

02:44:18.100 | prior to a long duration endurance performance

02:44:21.760 | is probably best over the course of three or four days.

02:44:24.740 | So you want to gradually increase carbohydrate intake

02:44:27.040 | for multiple days,

02:44:28.420 | rather than just have one big bowl of pasta.

02:44:30.620 | - Branch chain amino acids

02:44:35.040 | and essential amino acid supplementation.

02:44:38.000 | Yay, nay, or as I would say, meh.

02:44:40.760 | - Meh, usually.

02:44:42.700 | If your total protein intake is fine,

02:44:45.560 | then you don't really have a need for them.

02:44:47.820 | If you're, for whatever, any number of valid reasons,

02:44:52.180 | total protein is not,

02:44:53.720 | then going to an essential amino acid

02:44:55.420 | would be my first step rather than a BCAA.

02:44:58.120 | Now, admittedly,

02:44:58.960 | we actually do use essential amino acids somewhat regularly

02:45:03.440 | because it's also sort of like a,

02:45:05.080 | there's no real harm other than if you're price conscious

02:45:08.580 | and you're sort of like, I'm wasting money, that's fine.

02:45:10.500 | The people I work with generally, again,

02:45:11.880 | that's not a few dollars to maximize.

02:45:15.780 | Recoveries is not that big.

02:45:16.840 | So we will sometimes use that pre-emitter post training

02:45:20.700 | in some circumstances.

02:45:22.020 | Total protein would be a high quality whey,

02:45:25.900 | something like that.

02:45:27.100 | If you can't use whey for whatever reason,

02:45:29.620 | there are plenty of high quality vegan proteins

02:45:33.060 | you could use.

02:45:34.020 | If you want to top all that off though

02:45:35.460 | and add some essential amino acids,

02:45:37.060 | it wouldn't hurt anything and may potentially help slightly.

02:45:39.780 | So you choose based on that algorithm.

02:45:43.380 | - Ah, I was hoping somebody would ask this.

02:45:45.700 | I've touched on it a little bit.

02:45:47.300 | It's a little bit of a loaded question

02:45:50.120 | the way they phrased it.

02:45:51.100 | So I'm at risk of leading the witness.

02:45:54.080 | Does the mythical anabolic window really exist?

02:45:56.940 | And I'm just laughing 'cause of the way

02:45:57.940 | they posed the question.

02:45:58.780 | They're already telling us what their stance is.

02:46:01.700 | Making it more effective as to create hypertrophy

02:46:05.740 | to eat within a certain timeframe after working out.

02:46:07.880 | I'm going to assume that this person genuinely wants to know

02:46:10.420 | whether or not the anabolic window really exists or not

02:46:14.700 | because they refer to it as mythical.

02:46:17.700 | I'm gonna assume that they're suspicious

02:46:21.020 | but what's the deal?

02:46:21.940 | Is the anabolic window a real thing?

02:46:24.180 | - The post-exercise anabolic window is extremely real.

02:46:26.460 | So what this is, you can see more detail

02:46:29.460 | in a number of videos on my YouTube page, I believe.

02:46:32.560 | It is the idea that you need to,

02:46:34.660 | must consume some sort of nutrients,

02:46:37.380 | specifically, usually protein in some time domain,

02:46:41.380 | 30 or 60 minutes post-exercise in order to maximize growth.

02:46:45.880 | So is that window real?

02:46:47.240 | Yes.

02:46:48.080 | Are you hypersensitized to nutrients in that timeframe?

02:46:50.720 | Yes.

02:46:51.560 | Is it very important that you rehydrate,

02:46:54.360 | replenish muscle glycogen and rebuild tissue

02:46:57.980 | quickly after you exercise to maximize recovery?

02:46:59.900 | Absolutely.

02:47:01.240 | It's not real though, in the sense that you have to have it

02:47:04.340 | within 30 minutes.

02:47:05.820 | In the case of protein, as we talked about a second ago,

02:47:07.740 | your total protein intake throughout the day

02:47:09.420 | is more important.

02:47:10.320 | Timing though for things like carbohydrate,

02:47:13.500 | especially if you're training multiple times a day,

02:47:16.460 | it is very real.

02:47:17.300 | So it is a very real thing.

02:47:19.080 | It's just, you may or may not actually care about it.

02:47:20.940 | It may not be important for your context.

02:47:23.540 | Garlic seems like an appropriate question.

02:47:26.620 | What, if any, functional roles does garlic have

02:47:30.460 | in performance?

02:47:31.700 | Garlic's actually really cool.

02:47:33.020 | There's a number of things you can dive into

02:47:36.220 | that are outside of my three to four sentences,

02:47:37.940 | considering I'm at like two and a half probably already.

02:47:40.580 | You're not gonna find strong human data on garlic extract.

02:47:44.620 | However, there is a little bit suggesting

02:47:48.020 | it can actually enhance recovery from injury

02:47:51.260 | or potentially tissue damage.

02:47:52.460 | So you gotta kind of be careful though

02:47:55.380 | because in order to understand what's happening,

02:47:57.040 | you have to differentiate between innate

02:47:58.820 | and adaptive recovery processes.

02:48:01.140 | And when we say things like immunity,

02:48:02.900 | realize friends, that's not one thing.

02:48:05.820 | That's just like a very colloquial term

02:48:07.400 | for a number of things.

02:48:09.160 | - Again, it's a verb.

02:48:10.540 | Like it's a noun, right?

02:48:11.820 | The immune system, but immunity is a bunch of processes

02:48:16.040 | or processes, if you're about to correct my speech,

02:48:18.340 | I'll correct yours right back.

02:48:20.380 | Not yours, Andy, for the listeners.

02:48:22.020 | Processes, but tomato, tomato, it's a verb.

02:48:25.700 | Immunity is a verb.

02:48:27.620 | - This is my problem with immune boosters.

02:48:30.840 | Same issue, right?

02:48:31.680 | You're like, well, what are you boosting specifically?

02:48:34.600 | Because in fact, if you're boosting the wrong part

02:48:37.140 | of immunity during the wrong phase of recovery with garlic,

02:48:41.220 | you may be actually hurting the process

02:48:45.200 | because you are theoretically could be trying

02:48:47.720 | to down-regulate that portions

02:48:49.020 | that you can up-regulate the next portion.

02:48:50.740 | That's the faster way to say it, if you will.

02:48:52.820 | So we actually, you may see more data come out

02:48:56.260 | that says the garlic extract's overrated.

02:48:59.560 | I don't know.

02:49:00.400 | I actually don't even know yet.

02:49:01.220 | We just don't have enough human data on it,

02:49:02.640 | but yeah, there's some stuff there

02:49:04.900 | if you want to look hard enough.

02:49:06.500 | - I'm going to ask this question for myself

02:49:10.380 | 'cause I'm curious to know the answer.

02:49:11.860 | - Selfish.

02:49:12.700 | - Tart cherry extract.

02:49:14.420 | Pretty effective, actually, for two things,

02:49:18.340 | potentially aiding in sleep, getting to sleep,

02:49:20.780 | as well as muscle soreness.

02:49:22.420 | That's the bulk of the research is in muscle soreness

02:49:25.620 | and seems to be a moderate effect there.

02:49:27.720 | - I think for people that might be interested

02:49:30.260 | in dosages of things like tart cherry extract,

02:49:32.500 | garlic, et cetera, obviously Dr. Andy Galpin's Instagram

02:49:37.500 | and Twitter are great places to ask questions like that

02:49:39.800 | and to find answers to questions like that,

02:49:42.220 | as well as examine.com is a terrific website.

02:49:46.200 | They actually recently overhauled their entire website,

02:49:49.100 | so they have this human effect matrix

02:49:50.840 | that shows the effects and the strength of different effects

02:49:55.000 | in human studies of many, many different compounds

02:49:58.340 | relating to everything to hormone health in men and women,

02:50:03.900 | sports performance, cognitive performance.

02:50:06.100 | It doesn't cover everything,

02:50:07.920 | but it certainly covers a lot with links to studies.

02:50:11.260 | There's a lot that's available at completely zero cost.

02:50:14.700 | By joining examine.com,

02:50:17.300 | you can access some additional features.

02:50:19.500 | And this is, by the way,

02:50:20.660 | not a paid endorsement from examine.com.

02:50:22.540 | I'm simply a long-time user of examine.com myself.

02:50:26.900 | And so I just want to cue people to it.

02:50:28.880 | And again, many of the resources there

02:50:31.340 | are available completely free of cost.

02:50:32.960 | It's a wonderful site.

02:50:34.660 | So for dosages of garlic, tart cherry extract,

02:50:38.400 | and things of that sort,

02:50:39.240 | whether or not you're getting it from food

02:50:40.300 | or you're getting it from extra powders, rather,

02:50:43.260 | all of that information is pretty nicely laid out there.

02:50:47.700 | So unless you have something to add to that,

02:50:49.460 | I was just going to cue people to that resource.

02:50:51.540 | - No, I've been using that

02:50:52.860 | since the first day that website was launched.

02:50:55.180 | I was made aware that it was coming.

02:50:58.220 | Been fortunate to know those guys for a while.

02:51:00.820 | So yeah, I've used it.

02:51:01.660 | I've used it in all my classes.

02:51:02.700 | I use it, I don't even know, probably weekly at this point.

02:51:07.020 | Another nice feature that's actually on there

02:51:08.940 | is they have a series of,

02:51:11.580 | like they'll do some topical reviews, basically.

02:51:13.460 | So they'll write a big paper out on muscle damage

02:51:16.820 | or blood pressure.

02:51:17.660 | - Or testosterone, testosterone enhancement,

02:51:19.560 | or hormone, menstrual cycle, and-

02:51:23.900 | - Yeah, PCOS, I think they do on and all kinds of stuff.

02:51:26.380 | So you can search by topic,

02:51:28.220 | like energy or recovery or whatever,

02:51:30.660 | or you can search by black cumin seed extract

02:51:33.420 | or like whatever number of things you want to do.

02:51:35.580 | And they'll also tell you

02:51:36.420 | if there's any interactions to pay attention to.

02:51:38.300 | So it's really, really nice.

02:51:39.220 | So be carefully predicting A and B or whatever.

02:51:42.980 | So yeah, it's wonderful, wonderful.

02:51:45.420 | - Yeah, they've done a marvelous job.

02:51:47.100 | So thank you, examine.com.

02:51:48.700 | Keep up the amazing work.

02:51:50.740 | Well, we've come close to the end of this episode.

02:51:53.300 | And that means that we're close to the end of this series

02:51:56.900 | where you have so graciously joined us

02:51:58.800 | for six full episodes of the Huberman Lab Podcast

02:52:01.900 | to educate us on all things fitness.

02:52:07.100 | Episode one, you reviewed and educated us

02:52:10.580 | on assessing our level of fitness.

02:52:13.000 | In fact, I learned so many ways of assessing fitness

02:52:15.980 | that I had not thought about,

02:52:17.780 | and also assessing my recovery capacity, for instance.

02:52:22.060 | One thing that I'm definitely going to implement

02:52:23.820 | from that episode is a routine broad jump test,

02:52:28.740 | and an in-home high jump, jump and touch test.

02:52:32.940 | If people don't know what I'm referring to,

02:52:34.260 | that's all contained in that episode, it's timestamped.

02:52:36.700 | These are very straightforward, zero cost ways

02:52:40.180 | to assess one's level of fitness.

02:52:42.400 | There are a few others that require a bare minimum

02:52:44.880 | of technology, like taking your pulse rate

02:52:46.720 | in very specific ways at specific times.

02:52:49.480 | Also some timing of mile runs and some other things

02:52:53.420 | related to strength and hypertrophy and on and on.

02:52:56.180 | Really, it's a buffet of options that we can select from.

02:53:00.640 | And I already know the four or five

02:53:02.660 | that I started implementing this week.

02:53:05.300 | I've recognized how I'm pretty good in a couple of areas.

02:53:08.280 | I'm doing maybe, maybe better than pretty well in one area,

02:53:13.620 | but then I'm doing abysmally poorly

02:53:16.380 | in a few areas that I just wasn't aware of.

02:53:19.100 | And so I've already started taking on ways

02:53:21.920 | to adjust that over time, and I'll keep people posted.

02:53:25.700 | So that first episode was absolutely incredible,

02:53:28.140 | and just provides so much actionable knowledge

02:53:30.540 | and the rationale behind it.

02:53:32.360 | The second episode, you educated us about strength,

02:53:34.900 | speed, and hypertrophy training.

02:53:37.020 | And there too, an immense amount of incredible knowledge.

02:53:41.040 | We got way down into the details.

02:53:43.900 | You explained sets, reps, the rationale for sets, reps,

02:53:47.260 | rest, cadence, number of workouts per week.

02:53:51.140 | I'm definitely gonna take away my need

02:53:52.660 | to do some speed-based training

02:53:54.340 | and some power-based training.

02:53:55.880 | Normally, I think in terms of strength or hypertrophy,

02:53:58.940 | and I'm relieved to learn that a lot of the speed

02:54:01.740 | and power-based training, it's low intensity enough

02:54:04.940 | that it can be done fairly often

02:54:06.220 | and incorporated into my program,

02:54:08.240 | which already touches on strength and hypertrophy,

02:54:11.280 | and indeed some endurance work as well.

02:54:13.300 | So amazing tips that you provided there.

02:54:15.820 | I'm certainly going to implement the three to five program

02:54:18.420 | that you described, three to five exercises

02:54:21.740 | done for three to five repetitions,

02:54:24.220 | three to five minutes between sets.

02:54:28.700 | You're doing this three to five times per week,

02:54:30.380 | and so on and so forth.

02:54:31.220 | All the details, again, time-stamped

02:54:33.420 | in the strength and hypertrophy episode show notes,

02:54:36.540 | so just incredible.

02:54:37.460 | - We even used that to set up PR with you this week.

02:54:40.100 | - That's right, I did PR this week thanks to your input

02:54:43.540 | and following that program,

02:54:45.180 | and I'm really grateful for that.

02:54:47.260 | It does feel good to break through a barrier,

02:54:49.620 | and I intend to break through more barriers,

02:54:52.600 | but not just with strength and hypertrophy

02:54:54.100 | because episode three, you taught us all about endurance,

02:54:58.000 | the four different forms of endurance,

02:54:59.860 | how to train for each of those different forms,

02:55:02.380 | the value of doing even very brief 20 second sprints

02:55:07.100 | or bouts of jumping jacks throughout the day,

02:55:08.980 | which to some people might just sound like a little hack

02:55:12.260 | or a gimmick, but no, these are actually tapping

02:55:14.280 | into fuel systems and modes of neuromuscular interactions

02:55:18.060 | that greatly aid other forms of endurance

02:55:19.940 | like long duration endurance.

02:55:22.020 | I would love to return to my high school mile time.

02:55:25.580 | I won't reveal what that is

02:55:26.700 | 'cause this is not really about me,

02:55:28.480 | but I plan to start doing, if not mile repeats,

02:55:31.500 | then doing some mile runs and testing there once a week.

02:55:36.040 | You laid out a beautiful program for how to do that,

02:55:38.600 | and then in the next episode, you wowed us again

02:55:42.740 | with a description of the science and the tools

02:55:45.960 | and this right down to the details,

02:55:47.860 | but all laid out very cleanly and clearly

02:55:51.520 | as to how to design an optimal fitness program.

02:55:54.480 | What are the things that really represent

02:55:56.620 | an optimal program, what questions does one have to answer

02:56:00.000 | before designing a program?

02:56:01.920 | What are some of the barriers in the way?

02:56:04.000 | This concept of defenders as things that prevent you

02:56:06.880 | from reaching your goals, and one of the key things,

02:56:09.320 | I have it right here in front of me

02:56:11.040 | that I took away from that episode

02:56:12.280 | was this quadrant approach of really thinking about

02:56:17.120 | and figuring out how much one intends to devote

02:56:19.720 | to work career calling, let's make that one bin,

02:56:22.820 | relationships, another bin, fitness in the other bin,

02:56:26.600 | and recovery in the other bin,

02:56:27.840 | and here we'll tip our hat to our good friend, Kenny Kane,

02:56:31.440 | for mentioning that overall scheme for doing things.

02:56:35.840 | It's been immensely useful, and I've actually charted it out

02:56:38.980 | and thought about and drawn out which different things

02:56:41.380 | fall into each of these categories.

02:56:42.680 | You might think it's obvious, okay, relationships,

02:56:44.360 | but that includes a lot of different things,

02:56:45.600 | and there's crossover between these bins

02:56:48.120 | in terms of how you can combine enhancing relationships

02:56:51.120 | with fitness, work, recovery, and so on.

02:56:53.700 | So that episode is just, again, a treasure trove

02:56:56.860 | of knowledge, and then in the next episode,

02:56:59.420 | you educated us on recovery in all its forms

02:57:03.420 | in the very short term within the workout,

02:57:06.380 | immediately after the workout, and from workout to workout,

02:57:09.360 | ways to really accelerate recovery, assess recovery,

02:57:12.580 | and as you pointed out, for people like me

02:57:15.180 | who always assume that we don't recover very well

02:57:17.460 | and that's some sort of character trait

02:57:19.700 | or nervous system thing or genetic,

02:57:21.820 | to really think about how my training is impacting

02:57:24.360 | my level of recovery, and in doing so,

02:57:26.460 | it's revealed to me that I have far more capacity

02:57:29.340 | than I thought I had, and already this week,

02:57:31.780 | I've managed to train more often, doing more work,

02:57:35.980 | and I feel better than ever, and that's also,

02:57:38.920 | despite the fact that we've spent a fair amount of time

02:57:41.160 | in these chairs across from one another.

02:57:42.620 | - That's a kind way to say it.

02:57:44.340 | - Well, it's been a pleasure, and then in today's episode,

02:57:49.500 | you explained nutrition and supplementation

02:57:52.500 | as it relates to performance, and of course,

02:57:54.320 | that touches into recovery, but also optimal mental states

02:57:58.860 | for training, how to approach one's training,

02:58:01.340 | and how to extract the most from training

02:58:03.640 | through quality nutrition, so what to eat and when,

02:58:06.620 | which carbohydrates, protein amounts,

02:58:09.020 | windows of opportunity, windows you absolutely

02:58:12.260 | don't want to miss, and then some

02:58:13.780 | that are a bit more flexible, and then we went deep

02:58:17.000 | into the weeds of magnesium, garlic,

02:58:19.660 | tart cherry extract, alpha GPC, we touched on

02:58:23.040 | neural transmitter-related systems, hormone-related systems,

02:58:27.040 | we went deep into a discussion about sleep,

02:58:28.780 | because of course, sleep is the foundation

02:58:30.640 | for recovery and performance of all kinds,

02:58:33.000 | emotional, mental, and physical recovery and performance,

02:58:37.140 | and in taking us through this enormous arc

02:58:39.460 | of a journey through fitness, I think it's fair to say

02:58:43.060 | that you've given us your knowledge contained in your head.

02:58:46.600 | I was telling someone just the other day

02:58:48.340 | that one of the things that I always lamented in science

02:58:51.100 | is that I would encounter these incredible professors

02:58:53.300 | and scientists in other domains of life too,

02:58:56.820 | and you just wish there was some way to download their brain

02:58:59.080 | because they had so much knowledge inside them,

02:59:00.940 | and I'm looking for a USB or USB-C port on you,

02:59:04.820 | and I don't see one yet, but what you've effectively done

02:59:07.620 | for us across these six episodes is to download

02:59:10.540 | the actionable knowledge, and it's wonderful,

02:59:13.060 | the information you've provided is clear,

02:59:15.940 | it's super interesting, it's highly, highly actionable,

02:59:20.700 | and in many cases, it's counterintuitive and surprising,

02:59:23.620 | but once one understands the logic behind it,

02:59:26.500 | as you've provided for us also, then it all makes sense

02:59:29.680 | in a way that's extremely satisfying

02:59:32.420 | and extremely motivating, so it's certainly motivating me

02:59:34.880 | to change the way that I train in a number of ways,

02:59:37.580 | and I promise that I'll report back to our audience

02:59:39.780 | and to you as to what my results are,

02:59:41.660 | but really, as we both agree, this is not about me,

02:59:46.380 | this is not about you,

02:59:47.560 | this is really about the people listening,

02:59:48.900 | and so for those of you listening,

02:59:50.380 | I hope you can appreciate what an incredible gift it is

02:59:53.800 | to have somebody of Dr. Andy Galpin's experience

02:59:57.740 | and drive and scholarly background

03:00:02.460 | who also works with athletes and everyday people

03:00:04.780 | just to splay out all this knowledge for us

03:00:08.660 | systematically over six episodes, Dr. Andy Galpin,

03:00:13.520 | thank you ever so much.

03:00:15.720 | - I appreciate that far too kind of words to me.

03:00:19.680 | If you've been following along through this entire journey,

03:00:21.860 | as you called it, you know I like first principles thinking

03:00:25.020 | and I like lists, so I'm going to get you with one more list

03:00:28.100 | and I got five things on this final list.

03:00:31.420 | Get your pen and pad out, please.

03:00:33.580 | Number one, I want to really emphasize science itself

03:00:38.820 | as a verb, which means it's ongoing and changing.

03:00:41.680 | I did my best over the course of these many, many, many hours

03:00:46.340 | to provide my interpretation of the science,

03:00:50.020 | to provide my practical knowledge and things that I use,

03:00:53.660 | but that's fallible.

03:00:55.740 | Science changes, there are many, many things in my career

03:00:58.300 | that I was very sure that the evidence was clear on,

03:01:02.140 | and then it changed.

03:01:03.400 | So as you move forward, do not think of

03:01:05.580 | any of the recommendations I gave you,

03:01:07.680 | whether they were about supplement dosages and timing,

03:01:11.560 | rep ranges or breathing tactics, anything in between.

03:01:14.940 | Just use them as guidelines.

03:01:17.620 | So number one, science is a verb.

03:01:21.620 | Number two, I really want to thank the audience.

03:01:25.180 | This has been an extremely long haul.

03:01:27.880 | Some of you have somehow I'm sure, which I'm not sure how,

03:01:31.700 | but some of you have probably made it

03:01:32.820 | through this entire journey and listened to all six episodes

03:01:35.060 | and you should probably get some sort of free

03:01:37.580 | Huberman Lab shirt or something or a plaque or I don't know.

03:01:40.780 | - How about a Galpin plaque?

03:01:42.060 | - Ah, Galpin plaque.

03:01:43.020 | How about an internet high five?

03:01:45.040 | And even if you just dropped in for a few of the episodes,

03:01:47.780 | I appreciate you taking the time.

03:01:49.380 | There's a lot of things you could be doing with your time

03:01:51.660 | and to spend those resources on my words is touching.

03:01:56.620 | Number three, I want to actually thank you, of course,

03:02:00.300 | Andrew and the whole team and the crew up here

03:02:02.500 | for three things.

03:02:03.740 | Number one, I think it's incredibly important

03:02:08.400 | that you have gone out of your way

03:02:10.700 | to give other people credit for their work.

03:02:12.980 | You go out of your way on your large platforms

03:02:14.860 | of social media to tag people,

03:02:16.620 | to give scientists credit for their work

03:02:18.220 | and most people do not do that

03:02:20.020 | and that's something you don't have to do

03:02:21.820 | and I think that is a culture, I know why you do it.

03:02:24.980 | You come from science, that's just what you do.

03:02:26.980 | You give people credit for their work

03:02:28.140 | but you go out of your way to do that

03:02:30.300 | and so I want to thank you for that.

03:02:32.700 | The next one is many people who have outlets and platforms

03:02:37.700 | will try to fill those with people

03:02:40.900 | who are going to grow their platforms.

03:02:43.660 | It doesn't mean these people are wrong or bad

03:02:44.940 | but I think what's extremely special

03:02:47.100 | about what you've created here

03:02:48.620 | is again you have gone out of your way

03:02:50.200 | to bring on the direct source of information.

03:02:53.600 | I can't even imagine how many of your podcasts, guests,

03:02:56.540 | have never been on a podcast before

03:02:58.500 | or have been on a very short number of them

03:03:00.500 | and you've made an extremely large platform

03:03:02.660 | doing nothing but talking about super deep dork science

03:03:06.420 | directly from the scientists themselves

03:03:08.780 | and to create a community like that,

03:03:10.580 | I'm so happy that science has made it here

03:03:14.740 | and you've shown the world.

03:03:16.780 | People aren't stupid.

03:03:18.140 | People want detail and people want science

03:03:20.340 | and you've given it to them.

03:03:21.740 | And the last one of course,

03:03:25.420 | let's see if I can get through this,

03:03:26.180 | is thank you for what you've done for me in my career.

03:03:29.320 | I understand there could have been any number of people

03:03:33.160 | in this chair.

03:03:34.440 | To put me on your platform once was incredibly gracious

03:03:38.080 | but to do it for 600 hours or whatever we did in this series

03:03:42.400 | is I can't thank you enough for that opportunity.

03:03:45.480 | So I hope I lived up to it and I had a tremendous time

03:03:48.120 | and thank you for being such a gracious host.

03:03:50.720 | - Well, you more than exceeded expectations.

03:03:54.640 | You are absolutely the person to be in this chair

03:03:57.620 | talking about these topics with me and for the world.

03:04:01.620 | And once again, I just want to say thank you

03:04:05.500 | as a colleague, as a public educator,

03:04:09.980 | as an exercise scientist and as a friend.

03:04:13.080 | If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast,

03:04:16.300 | please subscribe to our YouTube channel.

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03:05:20.040 | Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion

03:05:22.280 | about fitness, exercise, and performance

03:05:24.240 | with Dr. Andy Galpin.

03:05:25.760 | And as always, thank you for your interest in science.

03:05:28.720 | (upbeat music)

03:05:31.300 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

Dr. Andy Galpin: Optimal Nutrition & Supplementation for Fitness | Huberman Lab Guest Series

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