LIVE EVENT Q&A: Dr. Andrew Huberman Question & Answer in New York, NY

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

00:00:02.260 | where we discuss science and science-based tools

00:00:04.900 | for everyday life.

00:00:05.880 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.240 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.100 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.240 | Recently, the Huberman Lab hosted a live event

00:00:17.620 | at the Beacon Theater in New York City.

00:00:19.940 | The event was entitled The Brain-Body Contract,

00:00:22.540 | and it consisted of a lecture

00:00:24.140 | followed by a question and answer session with the audience.

00:00:27.400 | We wanted to make the recorded version

00:00:28.940 | of that question and answer session available to everybody,

00:00:31.880 | regardless of who could attend.

00:00:33.580 | So what follows is the question and answer period

00:00:36.180 | from The Brain-Body Contract live Huberman Lab event.

00:00:39.700 | I want to be sure to thank the sponsors from that event.

00:00:42.200 | They were Eight Sleep, which makes smart mattress covers

00:00:45.100 | with heating and cooling capacity.

00:00:47.400 | I started sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover

00:00:49.280 | about eight months ago,

00:00:50.420 | and it is completely transformed by sleep.

00:00:52.740 | I sleep so much deeper.

00:00:54.620 | I wake up far less during the middle of the night,

00:00:56.660 | if at all, and I wake up feeling far better than I ever have

00:00:59.940 | even after the same amount of sleep.

00:01:02.260 | In fact, I love my Eight Sleep so much that when I travel,

00:01:05.820 | now I'm quite bothered that Airbnbs and hotels

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00:01:10.740 | and I've even shipped my Eight Sleep mattress cover out

00:01:13.220 | to meet me in the location that I arrived to

00:01:15.420 | so that I get the best possible sleep.

00:01:17.580 | If you want to try Eight Sleep,

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00:01:27.040 | Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada,

00:01:29.320 | United Kingdom, select countries in the EU, and Australia.

00:01:32.940 | Again, that's eightsleep.com/huberman.

00:01:35.560 | I'd like to also thank our supplement partner, Momentus.

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00:01:55.320 | And now without further ado,

00:01:57.000 | the question and answer session from the live event

00:01:59.180 | held at the Beacon Theater in New York City.

00:02:01.880 | And as always, thank you for your interest in science.

00:02:04.680 | [upbeat music]

00:02:07.260 | You've said before that stress can be good for us,

00:02:19.140 | but how do we know when it's too much?

00:02:21.080 | That's a good question.

00:02:22.480 | And I should preface that by saying

00:02:26.240 | that there's some incredible work

00:02:28.440 | that was done by a colleague of mine, Dr. Alia Crum,

00:02:33.440 | Ali is how she goes by, Dr. Ali Crum,

00:02:36.900 | who is a, she was a Division I athlete.

00:02:39.960 | She has a, she's a tenured professor

00:02:42.840 | of psychology at Stanford.

00:02:44.680 | She's a licensed clinical psychologist.

00:02:46.680 | Like every once in a while I look around at my colleagues,

00:02:48.280 | I'm like, oh my goodness, you know, who are these people?

00:02:51.640 | Very humbling place to be.

00:02:52.720 | But she's made some important discoveries

00:02:54.260 | and I want to just highlight one,

00:02:55.880 | which is this notion of mindset.

00:02:57.280 | And no, these are not placebo effects,

00:02:58.920 | but let me just tell you, when you think about stress,

00:03:01.600 | how you think about stress is really important.

00:03:03.960 | First of all, you can't lie to yourself,

00:03:05.440 | but if, for instance, you watch a one or three minute video

00:03:10.240 | as she's given subjects in her lab about stress,

00:03:14.160 | and it tells you all the terrible things

00:03:15.400 | that stress does to your immune system and sleep,

00:03:18.240 | then you experience those things, increases in blood

00:03:20.980 | pressure, et cetera.

00:03:21.820 | However, if you watch a one to three minute video

00:03:23.420 | that's also true about the fact that stress can sharpen

00:03:26.340 | your decision making for certain kinds of things

00:03:28.660 | actually can accentuate your immune system.

00:03:30.820 | I wish someone would help me get this narrative

00:03:32.740 | right out there.

00:03:33.920 | Stress does not deplete your immune system

00:03:35.840 | unless it goes on a long, long time.

00:03:37.440 | We'll talk about what long means in a moment.

00:03:39.800 | Why would it?

00:03:40.640 | Think about it.

00:03:41.840 | If you had to fast and move with family

00:03:45.800 | or weather a storm of any kind, emotional or physical,

00:03:50.040 | and you got sick, that wouldn't make any sense.

00:03:52.660 | It's usually after you're stressed.

00:03:54.680 | If you've ever been go, go, go or taking care of a loved one

00:03:57.000 | or studying or working hard and then you finally go

00:03:59.000 | on vacation, you rest, you arrive and you get sick,

00:04:01.620 | it's because your immune system shut down, it stopped.

00:04:04.860 | Your immune system is mobilized by that alertness side

00:04:08.920 | of your autonomic nervous system, but you do need sleep.

00:04:13.000 | You do need sleep and it's actually, we think,

00:04:14.880 | the slowing of circulation and this is why it's probably

00:04:17.520 | not a good idea to exercise if you're already sick

00:04:20.300 | and if you're veering towards sick.

00:04:22.840 | Probably limit the intensity of any kind of interaction

00:04:25.520 | as best you can and just still yourself.

00:04:27.520 | Well, Ali's lab has clearly shown us over and over again

00:04:32.480 | that what we know, our knowledge base,

00:04:34.640 | really does shape the physiology over those outcomes.

00:04:37.180 | Now you know that stress is both bad and good,

00:04:39.600 | so which one is it?

00:04:40.440 | Does it average to nothing?

00:04:41.880 | No, it turns out that you can bias this in one direction

00:04:46.540 | or the other depending on which information

00:04:49.160 | you're listening to more often.

00:04:50.900 | I think this is really important.

00:04:52.840 | You know, I still am trying to get my head and my mind

00:04:56.320 | around what's happened over the last few years

00:04:59.320 | and where it's placed us, like where did it land us?

00:05:01.440 | Are we more resilient now or are we just really beat up?

00:05:04.800 | I don't know.

00:05:06.320 | I really don't know, but I think how we interpret

00:05:08.840 | the last few years is gonna make a big difference

00:05:10.920 | in terms of how it impacts us.

00:05:12.680 | How do we know if we are...

00:05:16.680 | Thanks, yeah, what we're missing out there, I think,

00:05:20.040 | is a narrative from somebody that people listen to,

00:05:22.300 | and I'm not saying that person should be me.

00:05:23.560 | In fact, it shouldn't be me, but somebody that can help us

00:05:27.560 | frame what's just happened to us, much like a good,

00:05:29.640 | I think that the world needs a good therapist, basically.

00:05:32.680 | It's a very good therapist.

00:05:34.100 | So I would call short-term stress,

00:05:38.560 | which is very beneficial for us,

00:05:39.920 | is the kind of stress that happens on the order of a day,

00:05:42.400 | two or three days.

00:05:43.880 | Not a problem, even if you feel torn apart,

00:05:45.780 | provided you can get rest afterwards.

00:05:48.000 | Long-term stress is the kind of stress that really starts

00:05:50.560 | to impede your sleep-wake cycle,

00:05:52.980 | make your dreams more stressful and more like nightmares

00:05:55.480 | and they're not going away.

00:05:56.460 | And I can promise you that for those of you

00:05:59.580 | that have challenges with sort of a accumulation of stress

00:06:04.160 | from the past that's now compounded

00:06:05.960 | by what's happening now, et cetera,

00:06:08.080 | the solution does seem to be to get yourself

00:06:11.600 | into a supported environment of some kind

00:06:13.800 | that will allow you to go through a full catharsis.

00:06:16.440 | Again, it doesn't have to require psychedelics.

00:06:19.520 | That can take you through the full ride

00:06:22.080 | of autonomic intensity catharsis of some sort

00:06:26.160 | and then relaxation.

00:06:27.800 | That does seem to be what snaps people out

00:06:30.120 | of what we would call longer-term stress

00:06:32.680 | and historical stress.

00:06:34.800 | There's even the question of whether or not

00:06:37.640 | focusing directly on the trauma and the story is so critical.

00:06:41.340 | I think it is.

00:06:42.680 | Obviously, that's something that should be done

00:06:44.060 | with a clinician.

00:06:45.880 | But stress that impedes your sleep for three nights or more

00:06:49.500 | that shifts the pattern of dreams to more anxious dreams,

00:06:52.700 | that is more long-term stress.

00:06:54.760 | And for that, you need to take it seriously.

00:06:57.380 | And it's the kind of thing where

00:06:59.540 | if you don't take it seriously,

00:07:00.960 | you can start degrading things like your immune system,

00:07:03.960 | et cetera.

00:07:04.800 | And I would say that under those conditions,

00:07:07.000 | use sleep as a good marker.

00:07:09.600 | In fact, I'm sure there's some clinicians in the room.

00:07:13.440 | I mean, one of the questions that is used as a diagnostic

00:07:15.920 | for whether or not people are depressed

00:07:18.280 | or anxiously depressed is whether or not

00:07:19.860 | they're sleeping well or not, right?

00:07:21.320 | Again, language is not very good at parsing

00:07:24.160 | what's going on inside.

00:07:25.240 | We have to look to behaviors and regularity of sleep,

00:07:27.820 | wake cycles, et cetera.

00:07:29.180 | Hopefully, that was at least a partial answer.

00:07:33.520 | I tried to be accurate, but if I were exhaustive,

00:07:38.520 | I might actually cure insomnia someday with these podcasts,

00:07:42.880 | the if nothing else.

00:07:44.460 | How has hypnosis been impacting my life?

00:07:48.160 | I'm in hypnosis now.

00:07:49.400 | No, I actually spend most of the afternoon in hypnosis.

00:07:52.640 | Before I do these, I spend a good hour in hypnosis.

00:07:55.520 | Again, self-directed hypnosis, gosh, it's so unfortunate.

00:07:59.080 | I keep talking to David Spiegel about this.

00:08:01.680 | Again, his dad was one of the originators of hypnosis

00:08:06.360 | as a valid psychiatric treatment.

00:08:08.920 | There's even the idea that things like EMDR,

00:08:12.360 | the scanning of eyes back and forth

00:08:13.840 | while reporting a narrative,

00:08:14.880 | may actually be capturing some of the elements of hypnosis.

00:08:18.200 | Again, and this is why, at least for me,

00:08:20.960 | I appreciate the opportunity to come together tonight

00:08:22.820 | to talk about principles.

00:08:23.920 | I would hope that after tonight,

00:08:25.320 | you could look at any practice, anything, any compound,

00:08:29.500 | any breathing exercise, and just be able to frame up

00:08:33.420 | which continuum, where on the continuum,

00:08:35.860 | what's it really designed to do,

00:08:36.980 | move you up towards alertness or down towards calm.

00:08:40.300 | And in fact, 'cause I can't help myself,

00:08:41.820 | I'll just tell you, for all the breathing stuff,

00:08:44.100 | it can be made very simple.

00:08:45.620 | If your exhales are longer and more vigorous

00:08:47.940 | than your inhales, you're gonna get calmed down.

00:08:51.300 | If your inhales are longer and more vigorous

00:08:53.780 | than your exhales, you're going to become more alert.

00:08:56.860 | If you hold your breath,

00:08:57.820 | just eventually just start breathing again.

00:08:59.980 | The physiology maps perfectly to that.

00:09:03.500 | That maps perfectly to the physiology.

00:09:05.580 | And if you, for instance, you do box breathing,

00:09:07.300 | inhale, hold, exhale, hold, and this kind of thing,

00:09:10.020 | well, you're gonna stay right where you're at.

00:09:12.060 | You're gonna be on an even plane, more or less, okay?

00:09:15.380 | So that sort of hopefully captures

00:09:16.900 | all of breath work in one sentence.

00:09:18.540 | Now I'll answer the question you were asking me.

00:09:20.540 | Hypnosis, it's impacted my life in a couple of ways.

00:09:24.300 | One way is more from a practical, scientific way,

00:09:29.300 | which is that my laboratory works on vision

00:09:31.900 | and we work on stress.

00:09:33.660 | And in some ways, those might seem divorced,

00:09:36.420 | although now with the cuttlefish

00:09:37.660 | and the fact that your eyes narrow their field of view

00:09:40.580 | when you're stressed, et cetera,

00:09:41.500 | it should become obvious why that is.

00:09:43.460 | But hypnosis also takes advantage

00:09:45.380 | of this really weird kind of cool feature,

00:09:48.300 | which is, and this is always weird

00:09:50.140 | when you do a group exercise,

00:09:51.580 | but I can't really see you all that well.

00:09:53.900 | I certainly can't see your eyes well enough to know this.

00:09:56.420 | But David Spiegel, there's actually something in the,

00:09:59.860 | this is a valid thing called the Spiegel eye roll test,

00:10:02.580 | and it's not the teenage eye roll,

00:10:04.940 | that when you look up, while not moving your head,

00:10:07.960 | when you look up, you actually are engaging circuits

00:10:11.300 | in your brain stem that are involved

00:10:13.740 | in generating alertness.

00:10:15.460 | And when you look down and your eyes close,

00:10:17.960 | the opposite is true.

00:10:18.800 | You're engaging circuits in the brain

00:10:20.460 | that are taking you into a calmer state.

00:10:22.740 | Now, wouldn't it be wonderful if all you had to do

00:10:24.300 | was look down and you'd be calm and look up

00:10:25.740 | and you'd be alert?

00:10:26.580 | That doesn't quite work that way.

00:10:27.800 | But to induce hypnosis, what they do

00:10:29.500 | is they have people look up,

00:10:31.340 | and then while looking up, close their eyes,

00:10:34.820 | which is actually kind of hard to do.

00:10:36.340 | Some people can't do it.

00:10:38.320 | Their eyes roll forward, hence the Spiegel eye roll test.

00:10:41.840 | Some people, their eyes get,

00:10:42.940 | you see the whites of their eyes

00:10:44.180 | and it looks really spooky,

00:10:46.100 | and they're looking up while their eyes close.

00:10:47.660 | Those people are very prone to hypnosis.

00:10:50.580 | Why?

00:10:51.420 | Well, hypnosis is a state of deep relaxation

00:10:55.140 | with alertness and focus.

00:10:56.700 | It's a contextual narrowing, excuse me.

00:10:59.460 | So it's like being in early-stage sleep,

00:11:01.420 | and that's why stage hypnosis works

00:11:03.260 | with people telling people to do certain things.

00:11:05.780 | It's not that they don't care

00:11:07.300 | or they're under the control of the hypnotist.

00:11:09.980 | It's that they forget what's around them.

00:11:11.800 | Why?

00:11:12.640 | Because their mind is focused internally

00:11:15.620 | and on the dialogue with the hypnotist

00:11:18.320 | and is not paying attention to context.

00:11:20.780 | So it's a narrowing of context.

00:11:22.020 | But hypnosis for me has been very useful

00:11:24.000 | because A, it validated the relationship

00:11:25.900 | between vision and states of mind.

00:11:27.620 | It also checks off this box again,

00:11:29.980 | which is that to access neuroplasticity, what do you need?

00:11:32.220 | You need focus plus you need a state of deep relaxation.

00:11:36.620 | Usually first focus, then sleep or non-sleep deep rest.

00:11:41.180 | But Spiegel and his daddy figured out,

00:11:43.780 | 'cause they're way smarter than I am,

00:11:45.860 | that you can get people into that perfect state

00:11:48.540 | of neuroplasticity by combining them both in real time

00:11:52.300 | through this atypical thing we call hypnosis.

00:11:54.660 | So I do a daily or maybe every other day hypnosis script

00:11:59.660 | that's about, it's self-directed hypnosis script

00:12:03.580 | of about five to 15 minutes,

00:12:06.260 | usually trying to get myself to be less pissed off

00:12:09.140 | about something that I'm really pissed off about, frankly.

00:12:12.140 | I imagine the stuff I'm really pissed off about

00:12:13.980 | in the screen on the left side.

00:12:15.820 | I think about all the things that make me feel good,

00:12:17.340 | and then I keep thinking about how angry I am.

00:12:19.340 | This is really how it goes.

00:12:20.740 | And then over time I've noticed,

00:12:22.980 | well, you're coupling that bodily state of calm

00:12:25.520 | to the anger thing.

00:12:26.400 | This is all very hard to do in talk therapy.

00:12:29.300 | No disrespect to talk therapy.

00:12:30.580 | There's a tremendous advantage to talk therapy

00:12:33.340 | that I myself have benefited from it.

00:12:35.700 | Although according to certain people in my life,

00:12:37.380 | not enough, but hypnosis works

00:12:41.280 | because it's capturing neuroplasticity processes.

00:12:44.820 | Thank you.

00:12:45.660 | Thank you for that question.

00:12:48.860 | What are the most effective protocols

00:12:51.520 | for boosting the microbiome?

00:12:53.060 | Oh, well here I'm very fortunate

00:12:54.860 | because my upstairs neighbor at Stanford

00:12:58.040 | is the great Justin Sonnenberg,

00:13:00.020 | and he and his wife Erica run this amazing lab

00:13:02.420 | defining all the principles of the gut microbiome.

00:13:04.620 | And they have a really cool idea.

00:13:06.540 | I don't know if he's serious about this,

00:13:08.320 | but I can't help but chuckle

00:13:11.720 | when I think that this might actually be true.

00:13:13.900 | We all know, and this is definitely true,

00:13:15.900 | that we all carry around trillions of little microbacteria,

00:13:19.180 | not just in our gut that goes from one end of our throat

00:13:22.020 | to the other, any mucosal lining, eyes, genitalia, nose,

00:13:26.100 | we have microbiomes in our nose, et cetera.

00:13:29.540 | This is why we're heading into the winter months,

00:13:31.460 | being a nasal breather, right?

00:13:33.300 | That sounds like crazy new-agey stuff,

00:13:36.180 | be a nasal breather.

00:13:37.340 | There's actually a book written by Paul Ehrlich

00:13:39.420 | and Sandra Kahn at Stanford with a foreword by Jared Diamond

00:13:42.820 | and Robert Sapolsky, the book "Jaws."

00:13:44.780 | So these are some heavy hitters.

00:13:46.060 | And there's very good evidence that people who mouth breathe

00:13:49.500 | are making themselves more prone to illness

00:13:52.220 | when nasal breathing, because of the microbiome,

00:13:54.180 | it's just a better filter for germs.

00:13:56.300 | So this winter, and always really,

00:13:58.420 | try and be a nasal breather all the time.

00:14:00.080 | One of the best ways to do that

00:14:01.260 | if you're not into the mouth-taping thing,

00:14:04.020 | which people do, is to try and do some of your exercise

00:14:08.540 | with just nasal breathing.

00:14:10.340 | It'll take a little while to get used to,

00:14:11.540 | but I'm not good at the nasal breathing thing

00:14:13.880 | 'cause I'm always talking.

00:14:15.180 | The microbiome is all over us and in us, it's on our skin.

00:14:20.340 | We're actually exchanging it when we meet and we shake hands.

00:14:22.940 | Do you know what happens usually in the first 10, 15 seconds?

00:14:25.940 | Data from Noam Sobel's lab at the Weisman

00:14:27.940 | has shown that we wipe our eyes.

00:14:29.540 | We wipe other people's molecules on us.

00:14:32.100 | We're really good at that.

00:14:33.760 | Just watch these interactions.

00:14:35.140 | Now everyone's gonna be doing the germ-free handshake.

00:14:37.340 | They're gonna be fist-bumped.

00:14:38.940 | But there is this idea that maybe we are the house cats.

00:14:43.840 | Maybe we're not just transporting all these microbiota

00:14:47.540 | because it's good for us.

00:14:48.700 | What if we're just the vehicles

00:14:50.860 | and they're running the planet and they're like,

00:14:52.940 | oh, we're running out of some stuff.

00:14:55.500 | We should figure out somebody to take us to Mars

00:14:58.500 | and then we'll take over Mars.

00:15:00.020 | Maybe it's all them.

00:15:01.940 | Justin was the one that told me that and I was like,

00:15:03.500 | that's kind of eerie if you think about it,

00:15:05.220 | but there might be these other intelligences

00:15:08.060 | that are hijacking us and that's kind of scary

00:15:11.060 | 'cause we like to think that we're in charge and who knows.

00:15:14.740 | What's good for your microbiome or what's good for them?

00:15:18.180 | That is, well, prebiotic fiber seems to be very important,

00:15:23.180 | but the studies of fiber,

00:15:25.460 | at least as it relates to the microbiome

00:15:27.620 | are somewhat controversial.

00:15:29.580 | There was a study done on humans at Stanford

00:15:31.660 | by Chris Gardner and Justin Sonnenberg

00:15:34.060 | that showed that people who eat one to four,

00:15:36.900 | they sort of, you have to ramp up

00:15:38.780 | servings of low sugar fermented foods.

00:15:40.700 | This would be your kimchis, your nattos, your sauerkrauts,

00:15:43.220 | your kefirs, your kombuchas, et cetera, per day,

00:15:47.780 | develop a very robust microbiome

00:15:50.620 | and fiber did not do that.

00:15:54.180 | In fact, fiber increased the so-called inflammatome,

00:15:56.740 | which is the markers for inflammation,

00:15:58.380 | but that doesn't mean that fiber is bad.

00:16:00.900 | Fiber actually is, getting enough fiber

00:16:03.380 | is correlated with a number of other things that are great,

00:16:05.780 | like reduced cardiovascular disease, for instance,

00:16:09.700 | cancers of the colon, for instance.

00:16:11.480 | So fiber and gut microbiota.

00:16:13.680 | Prebiotics, probiotics, probably only necessary

00:16:17.240 | if you have a dysbiosis, if you've been taking antibiotics

00:16:20.660 | or if for some reason you're depleted of the microbiome.

00:16:22.780 | One of the great ways to deplete your microbiome

00:16:24.480 | is to just eat highly processed foods,

00:16:26.780 | but hopefully most people aren't doing that.

00:16:29.360 | So prebiotic fiber and these low sugar fermented foods,

00:16:33.020 | and then someone always says beer, right?

00:16:35.500 | Someone always, yes, yes, beer will support your microbiome,

00:16:38.940 | but it might do other things too.

00:16:40.680 | So in general, low alcohol, low sugar fermented foods,

00:16:45.580 | reduced the number of inflammatome markers,

00:16:48.660 | that's very, very clear from the Sonnenberg data.

00:16:51.300 | And then there are other ways, of course,

00:16:53.620 | the microbiome actually interacts with temperature,

00:16:55.860 | so the cold exposure thing

00:16:57.060 | is actually good for your microbiome,

00:16:58.780 | but, and I wanna really emphasize this,

00:17:01.580 | if you hear about studies that such and such improves

00:17:04.220 | such and such, keep in mind that anything

00:17:06.540 | that improves your sleep, your microbiome,

00:17:09.000 | or your social interactions will improve

00:17:12.780 | basically everything else.

00:17:14.760 | And those are what we call modulating effects,

00:17:18.180 | not mediating effects.

00:17:19.240 | This is really important, and we teach first year

00:17:21.560 | graduate students and medical students about this.

00:17:23.740 | Like for instance, if there were a fire alarm pulled

00:17:25.860 | right now, God forbid, it would modulate

00:17:27.720 | all of your attention, but would you say

00:17:29.040 | that fire alarms mediate attention?

00:17:30.940 | No, it's not directly in the line of mechanism,

00:17:33.860 | but it can adjust an existing mechanism.

00:17:36.260 | So great sleep is great for everything,

00:17:38.740 | but it doesn't control it directly.

00:17:40.940 | And so things like getting great sleep,

00:17:43.020 | keeping your microbiome healthy,

00:17:44.940 | getting enough sunlight, et cetera,

00:17:46.300 | they provide a kind of buoyancy

00:17:48.300 | to all the organs and systems of your body,

00:17:50.460 | but they aren't necessarily the thing that cures ADHD.

00:17:54.020 | But of course, if you have ADHD or issues with focus,

00:17:57.140 | getting enough sleep will help.

00:17:59.360 | Is nutrition the way to cure your ADHD?

00:18:01.780 | No, but if you improve your gut microbiome,

00:18:04.580 | it's very likely that your neurotransmitter systems

00:18:06.700 | will improve, limiting sugar will help, et cetera, et cetera.

00:18:10.180 | So there's reason to think that great sleep,

00:18:15.180 | solid nutrition, microbiome, social interactions, exercise,

00:18:19.860 | those are kind of the big five.

00:18:21.780 | There are others too, of course.

00:18:23.940 | With those, you set a good buoyancy to all the other systems

00:18:28.940 | and then we get into the things

00:18:30.060 | of how to directly increase focus

00:18:31.780 | or modulate dopamine and so on and so forth.

00:18:34.020 | Oh, well, I realize some people are afraid of dogs.

00:18:41.860 | We actually have a dog stimulus in our fear lab.

00:18:45.880 | We get people that are terrified of dogs.

00:18:47.420 | We hired this dog trainer guy who has these pit bulls

00:18:50.080 | that will attack you while you're in VR.

00:18:52.780 | By the end, people are a little more comfortable

00:18:54.780 | with dogs in general.

00:18:58.300 | For you and me, if you're not afraid of dogs,

00:19:00.980 | that's not terribly terrifying.

00:19:03.540 | But if you are, even the thought of that

00:19:06.960 | can be pretty terrifying.

00:19:08.980 | A couple of things people have thought about,

00:19:10.620 | the eye contact thing, they make eye contact.

00:19:13.380 | We're big on eye contact, humans too.

00:19:15.960 | Eye contact is meaningful in terms of oxytocin release.

00:19:20.480 | That's all real, those data are,

00:19:22.300 | the more and more data that come out from better studies,

00:19:24.380 | eye contact is a big deal.

00:19:25.960 | I think it's also that just the dogs are always game

00:19:28.720 | to show up exactly where you wanna meet them

00:19:30.960 | and they always show up

00:19:31.780 | in their most loving possible state for them.

00:19:35.700 | It's a pretty simple equation if you get it right

00:19:38.340 | and they need proper care.

00:19:39.540 | But I mean, Costello was unique because the bulldog also,

00:19:44.540 | you don't wanna get me going on dog breeds,

00:19:46.520 | but the bulldog also looks disappointed all the time.

00:19:49.680 | (audience laughing)

00:19:50.740 | And then you do something it likes

00:19:52.380 | and then it looks delighted

00:19:53.480 | and pretty soon you're working for their approval.

00:19:57.180 | And we were like the odd couple, me and him.

00:19:59.300 | And I realized he's got me trained really, really well

00:20:01.900 | to do my best to please him and delight him,

00:20:05.020 | which delighted me.

00:20:06.340 | And there I was on the hook.

00:20:07.820 | So that's one reason.

00:20:09.900 | I think there's also another reason which is super nerdy,

00:20:12.660 | which is this C-tactile fiber thing,

00:20:14.600 | which is you have these little nerve endings in your skin.

00:20:17.340 | And we know, of course, that oxytocin is released

00:20:20.620 | from parent and child.

00:20:22.540 | We know this from neuroimaging, et cetera.

00:20:24.080 | We know oxytocin is released from romantic interact,

00:20:27.060 | non-sexual romantic touch.

00:20:28.860 | One of the things that is very powerful

00:20:31.020 | for the release of oxytocin, very powerful,

00:20:33.940 | is non-sexual grooming touch among members of a species

00:20:38.940 | or even across species.

00:20:40.300 | Those pictures of monkeys picking around in each other

00:20:44.340 | or people who insist on popping things on one another

00:20:47.660 | or people who go to the hairdresser or the barber

00:20:50.300 | and they like touch.

00:20:51.380 | It doesn't even have to be massage,

00:20:52.620 | massive oxytocin release.

00:20:54.860 | Those data don't get as much play as all the data

00:20:57.220 | on oxytocin and love.

00:21:00.580 | It's called the love hormone,

00:21:01.820 | but it's basically a neurochemical signaling system

00:21:05.860 | for this interaction feels good

00:21:08.740 | and is very much of the present.

00:21:10.580 | And I think that's an important distinction

00:21:11.980 | to make more broadly is that dopamine is really about

00:21:16.120 | the pursuit of all things beyond the confines of our skin.

00:21:20.320 | I'm gonna get that thing.

00:21:21.500 | I want that because it's all about anticipation.

00:21:24.100 | And when you have some distance between yourself

00:21:25.980 | and the thing that you think will deliver,

00:21:28.100 | whatever it is you want, usually pleasure

00:21:30.140 | in some form or another or excitement,

00:21:31.980 | whatever your pleasure is or combined,

00:21:34.360 | then you actually have to mobilize

00:21:36.260 | and dopamine is the precursor to adrenaline.

00:21:38.420 | A lot of people don't know that.

00:21:39.300 | Adrenaline is made from dopamine.

00:21:41.020 | It gets you into motion.

00:21:42.460 | Then you have the reward systems that are more

00:21:44.100 | about what you have from your skin surface inward.

00:21:47.220 | So this is gentle touch, holding hands

00:21:50.100 | and indeed stroking your dog probably does that

00:21:54.320 | for you to activate the C fibers as they're called

00:21:56.880 | in your skin, which feed right into these serotonin

00:22:00.420 | and oxytocin systems of the brain.

00:22:02.320 | Sounds a little pop psychology ish, but it's a real thing.

00:22:05.340 | And it exists in essentially all mammalian species.

00:22:07.920 | So I think a lot of us just like dogs

00:22:09.540 | 'cause they'll let us just pet them all day.

00:22:11.640 | Some people like to be touched a little bit more or less

00:22:15.000 | even when they trust is all consent.

00:22:17.600 | It's consensual, age appropriate, context appropriate.

00:22:20.580 | In this case, species appropriate.

00:22:22.300 | Those are the conditions, very important.

00:22:25.100 | When I was a kid, I had, I don't know why,

00:22:28.320 | my sister's in the office.

00:22:29.160 | I don't know why she decided to do this in the first place,

00:22:31.520 | but I loved having my face kind of like pet like that.

00:22:35.060 | I still like it, but don't try it 'cause she's the only one.

00:22:37.680 | She can't do it anymore even.

00:22:39.240 | So we all have these things that feel good

00:22:41.720 | and I think it feels good

00:22:42.560 | because it releases these chemicals.

00:22:44.600 | And these are ancient systems, ancient, ancient systems

00:22:48.360 | that we all have and I think dogs let us do that.

00:22:51.000 | And cats toy with us with this one

00:22:54.360 | because there are those cats that let you pet them,

00:22:56.700 | but most of the time they're doing it to you

00:22:58.660 | and then they withdraw.

00:23:00.280 | And I don't know many dogs that do that.

00:23:02.280 | So I think people, I'm gonna answer the question finally.

00:23:04.500 | I think dogs, we love them so much

00:23:06.400 | because they let us pet them as much as we want.

00:23:08.780 | And cats play this very diabolical game

00:23:11.520 | that's a lot more like human relationships.

00:23:13.780 | (audience laughing)

00:23:16.780 | How can night owls best function

00:23:19.540 | in a society made for morning birds?

00:23:21.720 | Can you change your chronotype

00:23:24.740 | or do us night owls just have to suffer?

00:23:26.860 | Okay, well, as a former night owl,

00:23:29.900 | I used to work long hours in the lab.

00:23:32.120 | I still work long hours, but less in the lab.

00:23:35.580 | Just so happens, that's the way the career goes.

00:23:38.140 | I put tinfoil on the windows, I would lock the doors,

00:23:40.980 | I'd blast the music and I would stay there over the holidays

00:23:43.620 | until I had to go home just for the holiday events.

00:23:47.300 | And my clock would drift, so I became a night owl

00:23:49.740 | and then my clock would flip and everyone was gone.

00:23:52.420 | Your mind gets really tweaked

00:23:53.900 | when you're not interacting with anybody.

00:23:55.780 | By the way, seeing faces in the morning

00:23:58.600 | and seeing faces at some point during the day,

00:24:00.700 | once you're ready to face the day,

00:24:02.620 | very important for mental health.

00:24:04.760 | This is something I wish more people knew about.

00:24:06.980 | It also, and here I'm not trying to evoke

00:24:08.840 | any kind of sentimentality, but when you think about people

00:24:12.480 | who just are clearly not doing well,

00:24:14.920 | whether or not they have shelter or not,

00:24:18.280 | how often do we actually make direct eye contact nowadays?

00:24:21.120 | It's not very often.

00:24:22.620 | So eye contact is important,

00:24:26.840 | but I've also shifted to being a morning person.

00:24:28.920 | And so here's the thing, if you are a true night owl,

00:24:32.600 | that means that your circadian clock,

00:24:34.280 | meaning the genes that control the area of your brain

00:24:36.780 | and your hypothalamus that controls wake sleep cycles,

00:24:40.420 | is fundamentally different.

00:24:42.600 | Very unlikely you'll become a morning person

00:24:44.800 | without being a kind of angry morning person.

00:24:48.480 | So you can use that argument and you can cite me.

00:24:52.720 | However, as we get older, it is true

00:24:56.980 | that the amount of slow wave sleep to REM sleep

00:24:59.760 | tends to change and we can do better

00:25:02.040 | on shorter bouts of sleep,

00:25:03.780 | mostly because we're getting less rapid eye movement sleep.

00:25:07.320 | And even if we try, we can't.

00:25:09.400 | Those people would probably be better off

00:25:11.400 | sticking to a limited amount of sleep at night

00:25:14.240 | and then getting a short nap.

00:25:15.520 | The rule with naps is nap if you want to,

00:25:18.040 | don't if you don't want,

00:25:18.920 | but not if it interferes with your nighttime sleep.

00:25:21.520 | And if you can't nap, do some sort of non-sleep deep rest

00:25:23.860 | or NSDR, as I refer to it, non-sleep deep rest.

00:25:26.960 | So you can probably shift your clock

00:25:29.040 | by anywhere from two to eight hours.

00:25:31.900 | And that's true for jet lag as well.

00:25:34.600 | Light is going to be the best way,

00:25:36.080 | but if you really wanna shift,

00:25:37.500 | you're gonna have to stack the big three or four.

00:25:40.060 | Light, so get light when you wanna be awake.

00:25:42.640 | Temperature, you have to increase

00:25:43.780 | your body temperature to wake up.

00:25:44.900 | You have to decrease body temperature to go to sleep.

00:25:47.140 | Keep in mind, if you get into an ice bath or cold shower,

00:25:49.220 | you get very, very cold.

00:25:50.120 | But then what happens,

00:25:51.220 | it's like putting an ice pack on the thermostat,

00:25:54.820 | your body temperature goes up.

00:25:56.020 | Remember thermogenesis,

00:25:57.180 | that's the warming of the body in response to cold.

00:25:59.460 | Of course, if you stay in a long time,

00:26:00.700 | you'll get crispy cold, you'll turn into a popsicle.

00:26:03.460 | But the idea is that if you take a cold shower

00:26:06.480 | and you get some bright light and you get some exercise

00:26:08.280 | and you drink some caffeine,

00:26:09.580 | you can train your system to expect that

00:26:11.860 | at a certain time of day.

00:26:13.100 | And you'll wanna go to sleep a little bit earlier

00:26:15.760 | or much earlier and you'll wanna wake up

00:26:17.300 | when you stack those things.

00:26:18.360 | But that also means not taking caffeine and cold showers

00:26:22.580 | and doing exercise late at night.

00:26:23.840 | So it's gonna take some work.

00:26:24.780 | But those are the big four.

00:26:26.260 | It's gonna be light is the most powerful way to shift.

00:26:29.260 | More light awake, less light asleep.

00:26:32.160 | Temperature increase awake, temperature decrease asleep.

00:26:36.180 | Food is the other one.

00:26:37.380 | Eating, you can force yourself to eat breakfast

00:26:39.620 | even if you're not a breakfast eater.

00:26:41.720 | This works when you travel too,

00:26:42.980 | just get onto the local meal schedule

00:26:44.620 | 'cause you have a clock system in your gut,

00:26:46.460 | believe it or not.

00:26:47.540 | You wanna synchronize that with your brain.

00:26:49.380 | And then activity, getting some sort of exercise.

00:26:51.900 | But it takes a little bit of work, but you can do it.

00:26:54.300 | You can definitely do it.

00:26:55.500 | If you're nocturnal, that's weird,

00:26:58.300 | unless it's because of your work,

00:27:00.020 | in which case there are tools for shift work

00:27:02.000 | that we've put out there on the podcast.

00:27:04.220 | Your podcast has been well in success.

00:27:05.460 | How do you see it growing over the next few years?

00:27:07.340 | Honestly, I try and live in the tunnel

00:27:10.460 | of lack of understanding and awareness

00:27:12.220 | about what's happening with all this.

00:27:14.060 | I really do.

00:27:15.900 | Lex suggested we do the podcast.

00:27:18.460 | That's a true story, doing it.

00:27:20.860 | I still really do feel very much like I did

00:27:23.640 | when I was a little kid.

00:27:24.480 | I'm just gonna keep trying to learn and share.

00:27:26.940 | I'd love for people to share the tools.

00:27:28.660 | I don't want credit for them.

00:27:29.860 | If people credit us, great.

00:27:31.860 | But if you think about it, most of what we talk about

00:27:34.680 | are not things that you buy.

00:27:36.300 | These are tools that, again, work the first time every time.

00:27:38.700 | I always say behavioral tools first,

00:27:41.340 | then nutrition, supplementation.

00:27:44.420 | And then for some people, prescription drugs

00:27:46.640 | or some of these more experimental drugs make sense.

00:27:49.460 | For some people, it doesn't.

00:27:50.300 | For instance, I don't think kids

00:27:51.120 | should be doing psychedelics.

00:27:52.100 | I mean, childhood is enough of a psychedelic experience

00:27:54.620 | in and of itself.

00:27:55.720 | But I had an amazing clinician.

00:27:59.800 | He's actually a triple board-certified

00:28:01.420 | psychiatrist neurologist at Stanford,

00:28:03.420 | Nolan Williams, on the podcast.

00:28:05.060 | And he talked about even the use of Ibogaine and MDMA,

00:28:08.340 | even in some younger populations,

00:28:09.800 | but again, with therapeutic oversight.

00:28:11.640 | It blew my mind.

00:28:14.320 | I also didn't know this, that MDMA I thought was toxic.

00:28:17.120 | Please don't just take it off the street.

00:28:18.560 | But if you're interested in clinical trials,

00:28:20.280 | there are great clinical trials happening through maps.

00:28:22.340 | And you can look at Nolan's website as well.

00:28:25.300 | Most of the knowledge about the effects of MDMA

00:28:27.660 | is from the LDS community

00:28:31.660 | because they volunteered for these studies

00:28:34.580 | because it's not on the banned substance list.

00:28:37.160 | And so there's a lot of knowledge.

00:28:40.120 | And they don't tend to, or they don't use other substances

00:28:44.580 | like alcohol and marijuana and cocaine.

00:28:47.300 | So much of what we know about the effects of MDMA

00:28:49.820 | on the body and brain is from that community,

00:28:52.540 | other communities too as well.

00:28:54.180 | So what are we gonna do with the podcast?

00:28:56.500 | Well, every Monday I'm gonna keep putting out episodes

00:28:59.420 | until they put me in that grave with the thing.

00:29:03.220 | Thank you.

00:29:04.060 | (audience applauding)

00:29:05.620 | It is a labor of love and it's a lot of fun.

00:29:08.120 | And we're just always trying to make them better, clearer.

00:29:11.540 | Somehow they're not getting shorter.

00:29:13.080 | I always tell Rob, this one's gonna be 90 minutes.

00:29:15.020 | And he's like, yeah, I'll believe it when I see it.

00:29:17.460 | I think for me, one thing that it has brought

00:29:21.300 | that's really wonderful is the opportunity

00:29:24.020 | to learn from people in other domains

00:29:27.260 | that are far better at putting information

00:29:29.620 | and things into the world.

00:29:30.500 | So I've been, I hope he doesn't mind me saying this.

00:29:33.820 | I've been very blessed to have become really good friends

00:29:36.540 | with Rick Rubin, who's been really helpful to me.

00:29:39.500 | He has an amazing book on creativity coming out.

00:29:41.620 | That's not a plug for the book,

00:29:42.760 | although I guess I just kind of accidentally did it.

00:29:44.760 | But Rick, of course, has produced and created

00:29:48.240 | all this amazing music, everything from Run DMC,

00:29:52.300 | BC Boys, Slayer, Johnny Cash, everything, just amazing.

00:29:55.180 | And one of the things that he's been impressing on me

00:29:58.200 | is that it's very important to stay focused

00:30:02.140 | on the process of what you're doing

00:30:04.540 | and to really not get into too much of what that's,

00:30:09.140 | how that's landing.

00:30:10.080 | So I do like to hear when things are not clear.

00:30:12.740 | That's really helpful to me.

00:30:14.260 | I do like to hear suggestions about great people

00:30:16.420 | to bring on the podcast.

00:30:17.460 | I love criticism, most of the time.

00:30:22.460 | I try my best, it's hard sometimes,

00:30:25.820 | but I really try and just absorb it for what it is.

00:30:28.220 | But I love that aspect of interacting in this,

00:30:31.340 | even though this is very fairly unidirectional.

00:30:34.140 | Hopefully there'll be more opportunities

00:30:37.820 | for kind of dialoguing and learning what's out there.

00:30:39.780 | My real hope is that practitioners

00:30:41.340 | will start to incorporate things.

00:30:42.940 | And again, it's not about me.

00:30:44.660 | I'm gleaning from fields and the work

00:30:46.820 | and discoveries of other people

00:30:48.820 | and trying to thread across fields.

00:30:50.420 | So that's where I see the podcast going

00:30:52.100 | just more of the same, more of the same, more of the same,

00:30:55.260 | but a lot more and more topics as best we can.

00:30:58.740 | Lots of guests.

00:30:59.620 | And we actually have an episode with Rick coming out

00:31:01.620 | at some point about creativity,

00:31:02.860 | which I think is one of the more interesting aspects

00:31:05.060 | of our being.

00:31:07.420 | So you can watch for that.

00:31:09.500 | What is the stress inoculation protocol

00:31:12.860 | for the workplace anxiety?

00:31:14.900 | Speaking, does the principle of staying calm

00:31:16.340 | under high adrenaline stage?

00:31:17.460 | Yeah, definitely.

00:31:18.500 | I think if you were to pick some sort of practice

00:31:22.340 | that you could do privately and safely,

00:31:24.340 | again, how cold should you make the water?

00:31:26.260 | Cold enough that it's really uncomfortable

00:31:27.980 | and you really, really wanna get out,

00:31:29.140 | you can safely stay in.

00:31:30.420 | And that's why we never say 40 degrees,

00:31:32.820 | because you can kill yourself with cold water.

00:31:35.220 | It's just hard to do.

00:31:36.460 | You have to get really, really cold

00:31:39.140 | before you kill yourself.

00:31:40.580 | And open bodies of water aren't good.

00:31:42.980 | Actually, I told my friend, Samir Hattar,

00:31:44.660 | he's the director of Chronobiology Unit

00:31:46.940 | at the National Institutes of Mental Health.

00:31:48.460 | He came on the podcast, got him really excited.

00:31:50.580 | He's great about all the stuff on light and sleep,

00:31:52.860 | taught me a lot of that over the years.

00:31:54.220 | We're good friends.

00:31:55.060 | I told him about the cold water thing

00:31:56.100 | and he got into some river in Bethesda

00:31:58.540 | and almost drowned.

00:31:59.900 | I was like, Samir, now he has this story

00:32:01.860 | about how he almost drowned and what he was,

00:32:03.420 | and he thought about a paper he wanted to write

00:32:05.500 | while he was almost drowning.

00:32:06.940 | So just be careful, open bodies of water,

00:32:11.060 | that kind of thing.

00:32:12.140 | But I think you can quickly see within about a week or so

00:32:16.220 | of doing some sort of deliberate adrenaline release.

00:32:19.540 | It could be cyclic hyperventilation,

00:32:21.180 | 25 hyperventilated breaths with a short breath hold repeat,

00:32:24.420 | done two or three times.

00:32:25.500 | We have good data to support that in the lab.

00:32:27.900 | You see massive shifts in people's baseline level.

00:32:30.900 | You become a little bit more like Costello, you really do.

00:32:33.660 | And the way to think about it is,

00:32:35.260 | if you are more on a seesaw than on the continuum,

00:32:39.020 | you get better at loosening that hinge

00:32:42.180 | and controlling that hinge.

00:32:43.700 | Or you can imagine kind of moving up and down that seesaw

00:32:47.300 | a little bit more easily.

00:32:49.020 | And then of course,

00:32:49.860 | you have to place yourself into the environment.

00:32:52.020 | You have to test yourself in that environment.

00:32:53.660 | And some people will do Toastmasters and things like that

00:32:55.860 | and it can work.

00:32:57.580 | My way, I don't know if it works for everybody,

00:33:00.260 | my way is just start talking and don't stop.

00:33:02.940 | I can't feel the stress.

00:33:04.340 | What do you think will be the next hot topic,

00:33:08.020 | new trend in the field in neuroscience,

00:33:09.340 | behavioral therapeutics?

00:33:10.420 | Ooh, I like that.

00:33:11.600 | 'Cause I have a lot of opinions about that.

00:33:15.300 | First of all,

00:33:16.120 | I do not think it's gonna be brain machine interface.

00:33:19.220 | My good friend, Eddie Chang,

00:33:20.500 | who I've known since we were nine, he came on the podcast.

00:33:22.620 | He works on epilepsy, he's the chair of neurosurgery.

00:33:25.300 | We had a bird club when we were kids.

00:33:28.140 | Had two members.

00:33:29.220 | You had to know the names of all the talking birds

00:33:34.740 | and then you had to know which one was the best talker

00:33:36.820 | and it's the minor bird.

00:33:38.020 | And of course, no one wanted to join.

00:33:40.960 | No one even took the test,

00:33:42.020 | but he became a neurosurgeon

00:33:43.820 | and does brain machine interface.

00:33:45.780 | He's doing truly incredible work,

00:33:47.380 | getting people with locked-in syndrome to speak

00:33:49.820 | through a device implanted under the skull.

00:33:52.340 | They just think what they wanna say.

00:33:54.140 | These are people who haven't moved or shared a word

00:33:57.120 | with anybody and they're now communicating,

00:33:58.980 | but here's what's really cool.

00:34:01.100 | He has also realized that facial expression is a lot.

00:34:04.140 | It's one thing to see on a screen what somebody in a chair

00:34:07.580 | or a hospital bed is thinking, that's wonderful,

00:34:10.960 | but facial expression is such a rich part of this.

00:34:13.560 | So this is a really good use of AI.

00:34:15.480 | He has now created very realistic iPad images

00:34:19.240 | of that person's face

00:34:20.180 | and so they're actually speaking the words

00:34:22.180 | and people form a deep relationship to the person

00:34:24.940 | who's right next to their avatar.

00:34:27.540 | So that's a positive use, I think, of avatars

00:34:30.620 | and Eddie's doing amazing work.

00:34:32.200 | That kind of work, a brain machine interface,

00:34:35.100 | neural link, et cetera,

00:34:36.300 | I think is going to be very useful and popular

00:34:39.620 | in the realm of therapeutics for Parkinson's,

00:34:42.340 | movement disorders, epilepsy, locked-in syndrome, et cetera.

00:34:46.360 | I think we are many, many, many decades

00:34:49.300 | from chip implantation into the brain for things

00:34:52.700 | like enhancing memory.

00:34:53.860 | And frankly, I wouldn't want it.

00:34:55.420 | Not because I wouldn't want to enhance my memory,

00:34:58.040 | but because of what I said earlier,

00:34:59.820 | is that the nervous system

00:35:00.740 | has a certain amount of real estate

00:35:02.180 | and you don't want to make that real estate very lopsided.

00:35:05.980 | And so I think we're going to see something very different

00:35:08.520 | in the next 10, 20 years.

00:35:11.860 | And I hope, hope, hope this carries over

00:35:14.860 | to the younger populations.

00:35:16.040 | I think we're going to hopefully start learning

00:35:17.980 | about our nervous system and what it can do.

00:35:20.500 | And the fact that we have these preexisting circuits in us

00:35:24.280 | that we can learn to leverage

00:35:25.780 | that work first time, every time.

00:35:27.220 | So I'm strongly biased in my answer,

00:35:29.480 | but I think that it still remains an open question,

00:35:33.400 | for instance, whether or not people could require less,

00:35:36.520 | perhaps, or no medication for certain things.

00:35:39.660 | And I say certain things because for conditions

00:35:41.700 | like schizophrenia, bipolar in particular,

00:35:44.560 | medication OCD has proved very effective,

00:35:46.900 | but then there are a whole other set of conditions

00:35:48.700 | like depression and anxiety

00:35:50.660 | for which behavioral tools really work,

00:35:52.420 | but most people just don't even know they exist.

00:35:55.180 | So that's my hope.

00:35:56.260 | And again, I love the therapeutic community

00:36:00.340 | could try and expand their toolkit.

00:36:02.700 | I also think we're starting to see a blurring of the lines

00:36:04.800 | between different fields of psychology.

00:36:06.340 | So it's no longer psychoanalytic

00:36:08.660 | versus cognitive behavioral versus dialectic

00:36:10.760 | versus EMDR versus hypnosis,

00:36:13.100 | that it's all going to be governed

00:36:14.160 | by some central principles.

00:36:15.840 | All those camps, it's just silly, frankly, to me.

00:36:19.180 | It makes sense academically why those came to be,

00:36:21.720 | but in neuroscience, we had the same thing.

00:36:23.280 | You used to have to pick.

00:36:24.400 | It was like a John Hughes film from the '80s.

00:36:26.340 | Are you going to be a jock or a punker or a popular kid?

00:36:30.060 | Now it's not like that, and half this audience

00:36:31.860 | is looking at me like, "What are you talking about?"

00:36:33.300 | And that's exactly the point, which is, I'll never forget,

00:36:36.140 | I grew up in the skateboard thing.

00:36:37.200 | The first time I saw someone wearing skateboarding shoes,

00:36:39.060 | I was like, "Damn, they skateboard."

00:36:40.460 | And they're like, "No, people are just wearing this stuff."

00:36:43.760 | Right, so what you start to realize

00:36:46.460 | is it all blended together, which is great.

00:36:48.640 | And in the field of neuroscience, you used to have to pick.

00:36:50.920 | Are you an anatomist or a physiologist?

00:36:53.520 | Are you into neural computation?

00:36:55.060 | Now your lab has to do it all,

00:36:56.580 | or you collaborate with people.

00:36:57.780 | Those divisions have really melted

00:36:59.380 | because people are interested in questions,

00:37:01.300 | and they're interested in answers.

00:37:03.100 | And don't get me started, but the careerism

00:37:06.220 | of the requirement for everyone

00:37:07.860 | to have their own independent laboratory

00:37:09.820 | and say, "This is my mission."

00:37:11.060 | That is one of the worst things about science,

00:37:14.440 | because everything we know says that collaboration,

00:37:18.600 | collaboration, collaboration leads to faster progress.

00:37:22.400 | And I'm not gonna take on the whole academic system.

00:37:24.980 | It's been very good to me,

00:37:26.560 | but I'd like to see a blurring of the boundaries.

00:37:29.520 | It used to be that labs weren't,

00:37:31.160 | here, I'm really guilty, Huberman Lab,

00:37:33.120 | but it used to be that labs were named

00:37:34.780 | after the problem they worked on,

00:37:36.920 | Vision Lab, Stress Lab, Happiness Lab.

00:37:40.320 | I like that quite a bit more,

00:37:42.000 | but I screwed up and called this whole thing

00:37:43.500 | the Huberman Lab.

00:37:44.480 | (audience laughing)

00:37:47.080 | You've had a number of performance,

00:37:49.640 | nutrition, fitness experts on your show.

00:37:50.960 | What changes have you made to your fitness protocol

00:37:52.620 | including nutrition?

00:37:54.160 | Oh, yeah, well, I'm an omnivore,

00:37:59.160 | so I like those things they call carbohydrates.

00:38:02.060 | And I eat them in moderation.

00:38:05.200 | So I've never really been too extreme about any of this

00:38:08.880 | or the fasting thing,

00:38:09.800 | although I do kind of just,

00:38:11.080 | I'm not very hungry in the morning.

00:38:12.560 | That's also 'cause I like to eat a lot at night.

00:38:14.960 | I wake up not that hungry.

00:38:17.920 | So what have I changed?

00:38:19.280 | Well, in terms of the fitness stuff,

00:38:20.740 | I've definitely started to incorporate more nasal breathing

00:38:24.160 | when I do cardiovascular work

00:38:25.640 | because it has eliminated any sleep apnea I had.

00:38:30.280 | And sleep apnea is very, very bad, very, very bad.

00:38:33.820 | I wish I could say snoring was no big deal,

00:38:37.200 | but we know based on work at the Stanford Sleep Lab,

00:38:40.480 | Penn Sleep Lab, other sleep labs,

00:38:42.060 | that people who have sleep apnea are really in for trouble

00:38:46.520 | for a number of reasons.

00:38:47.500 | So you want to learn to be a nasal breather.

00:38:49.480 | And some people will tape their mouth shut

00:38:51.200 | with medical tape when they go to sleep.

00:38:52.960 | Other people will just start doing cardiovascular work,

00:38:55.760 | keeping their mouth closed.

00:38:57.240 | And that requires that you not go too intensely,

00:38:59.700 | but it does create a dilation of the nasal passages.

00:39:04.040 | Those sinuses can dilate.

00:39:05.220 | So I've definitely done that.

00:39:06.320 | And at the end of training,

00:39:07.720 | I try and do a one minute or three minute decompress,

00:39:10.040 | not immediately look at my phone

00:39:11.360 | to kind of learn to shift from high intensity

00:39:14.680 | kind of thinking and to lower intensity thinking

00:39:17.800 | and shift throughout the day.

00:39:18.800 | Task switching, I think,

00:39:19.920 | is gonna be a big area of science

00:39:22.040 | and neuroscience in general.

00:39:25.160 | We still don't know how to task switch well,

00:39:27.720 | how to shift the mind from focus to defocus and back again.

00:39:31.320 | That's something that there's...

00:39:32.160 | But by the way, this is, I think,

00:39:34.040 | a rich opportunity for people to develop tools.

00:39:37.240 | We don't know a lot about that.

00:39:38.200 | We got too caught up on consciousness flow and free will.

00:39:41.680 | And that stuff is great, but I like, as you can tell,

00:39:44.280 | I like tools, I like physiology.

00:39:46.400 | I like the things that work in my lifetime

00:39:48.320 | and that we can figure out and agree upon in my lifetime.

00:39:51.120 | Let's see.

00:39:54.360 | Got it.

00:39:56.680 | And I'm told that this final question,

00:39:58.760 | when they had put the clock up here earlier too,

00:40:00.840 | they said that we're gonna run it for 60 minutes.

00:40:02.280 | My first question was, where's the snooze button?

00:40:04.640 | It's not gonna keep going,

00:40:05.640 | but I think they're gonna hold me to it.

00:40:07.240 | And I know people, this is New York after all.

00:40:09.040 | There are other fun things to do.

00:40:10.920 | For things that take a long time,

00:40:12.280 | career, pursuing a degree,

00:40:14.440 | is there a right way to know that we're on the right path?

00:40:17.880 | Is there a way to know we're on the right path?

00:40:20.200 | Thank you for that question.

00:40:21.960 | I get asked this a lot.

00:40:24.440 | And gosh, there's so much information out there,

00:40:30.480 | so much information about this.

00:40:32.880 | We don't yet have a gauge of whether or not

00:40:37.600 | we're in too much stress or not,

00:40:39.600 | but there is one tool that's used

00:40:41.980 | in the free diving community and in other communities

00:40:44.700 | that you can use as a kind of thermometer

00:40:46.520 | of how well you're functioning.

00:40:49.000 | And some of you may know it already,

00:40:50.400 | and if you do, forgive me,

00:40:51.240 | it's this carbon dioxide tolerance test.

00:40:53.360 | So why am I answering this question this way?

00:40:56.480 | Well, I like to start with actionable tools.

00:40:59.100 | If, for instance, you were to just take

00:41:00.960 | three or four breaths, and then take a big, deep breath,

00:41:04.680 | and then do a very slow, controlled exhale,

00:41:07.580 | could be through your nose or through your mouth,

00:41:09.120 | ideally through your nose,

00:41:10.600 | and you're trying to make that exhale as long as possible

00:41:13.080 | until your lungs are empty, and you time that.

00:41:15.500 | That's called the carbon dioxide discard rate,

00:41:17.560 | or discard rate, or the exhale discard rate.

00:41:19.840 | And it tells you how well you're controlling your diaphragm

00:41:24.300 | using something called the phrenic nerve.

00:41:26.360 | It also tells you how well you're managing carbon dioxide,

00:41:30.500 | and how well you're managing stress.

00:41:32.260 | And if you're very stressed,

00:41:33.540 | that number will be very, very short.

00:41:35.340 | And I'm not talking about how long

00:41:36.240 | you can sit with lungs empty.

00:41:37.440 | I'm talking about an honest appraisal

00:41:40.540 | of how long you can control that exhale for.

00:41:43.240 | And if it's anywhere from zero to 20 seconds,

00:41:46.020 | your stress level is high.

00:41:48.640 | And if it's from 20 to 40 seconds,

00:41:51.700 | it's moderate, and longer than 40 seconds

00:41:54.020 | means you have good control over your

00:41:56.660 | carbon dioxide system, more or less.

00:42:00.460 | Now these are averages, and guess what?

00:42:02.140 | It has nothing to do with fitness.

00:42:03.860 | And also, it has nothing to do with you per se,

00:42:07.540 | because if you do this when you first wake up

00:42:09.140 | after a good night's sleep,

00:42:10.260 | you'll have a long discard rate.

00:42:11.860 | If you do this after running,

00:42:13.740 | you'll have a short discard rate.

00:42:15.460 | You're not out of breath,

00:42:16.620 | you're just not managing the system very well.

00:42:18.660 | So you can touch into this every once in a while

00:42:20.800 | as sort of a blood pressure reading type thing.

00:42:23.340 | This is very back of the envelope, it's not perfect.

00:42:25.820 | But it works well enough that alongside things

00:42:28.820 | like resting heart rate, heart rate variability, et cetera,

00:42:33.380 | you can get a window into how well you're managing stress.

00:42:36.560 | Why am I answering this question this way?

00:42:38.160 | Well, this is something I recommend

00:42:40.340 | doing every once in a while,

00:42:41.380 | especially if you are in a period of a career,

00:42:44.080 | or any kind of pursuit,

00:42:46.140 | where you are feeling like you're grinding.

00:42:49.340 | I think once your carbon dioxide discard rate

00:42:53.620 | starts to really get shorter and shorter,

00:42:55.540 | you're having trouble sleeping,

00:42:57.040 | I think it's time to focus on

00:42:59.900 | reestablishing that buoyancy to your nervous system,

00:43:02.280 | because then and only then can you make good judgments

00:43:05.180 | about whether or not you're in the right trajectory for you.

00:43:08.380 | Now, in terms of the larger psychological themes,

00:43:10.320 | are you doing something that brings you meaning or not?

00:43:12.420 | That gets into some complicated territory.

00:43:14.620 | We're very good at assigning meaning retrospectively,

00:43:17.220 | and saying, well, that was a good experience,

00:43:19.020 | because we had it and we learned from it, et cetera.

00:43:21.240 | But I think most people would like to avoid things

00:43:23.460 | that they can only look back on and say it was useful,

00:43:26.820 | because I learned something from it.

00:43:28.820 | And for that, I'll just give the default,

00:43:32.740 | but I think, at least to me, accurate answer,

00:43:34.820 | which is the more often that you can tap into that feeling

00:43:38.820 | of excitement and delight in your work,

00:43:42.900 | even if from small things or from surprising things,

00:43:45.540 | or from the social interactions

00:43:47.340 | that you're able to glean from that work,

00:43:49.880 | the longer and better you're going to be able

00:43:53.360 | to pursue that line of work.

00:43:54.940 | For me, in graduate school, I was very isolated.

00:43:57.460 | I worked alone in the lab.

00:43:58.820 | Maybe it was 'cause of the tinfoil I put on the walls

00:44:01.220 | or the windows.

00:44:02.380 | I don't know.

00:44:03.220 | In fact, my graduate advisors,

00:44:04.380 | one complaint was that I'd seemed unfriendly.

00:44:06.900 | I wasn't unfriendly, I was just busy.

00:44:08.880 | But I got to be very good friends with the janitorial staff,

00:44:11.300 | 'cause they were the only one around

00:44:12.860 | at the time I was working, were a few other people.

00:44:15.380 | And those small interactions actually became

00:44:17.580 | very significant to me and became sources of brief,

00:44:22.220 | but to me, at least at the time, meaningful social exchange.

00:44:25.380 | And of course, eventually I made friends

00:44:26.900 | and had relationships of other kinds

00:44:29.660 | and things that were healthy as well.

00:44:32.420 | But I think learning to tap into this love

00:44:35.980 | of what you're doing is sometimes hard,

00:44:38.000 | but you have to look for it.

00:44:39.020 | It's an active process.

00:44:40.140 | And I'll default to the work and the podcast

00:44:43.340 | that's coming with Rick Rubin.

00:44:45.380 | And a lot of what he talks about in terms of creativity

00:44:47.820 | is about accessing what he and others

00:44:50.340 | have talked about as the source.

00:44:52.140 | If that is an abstract, I don't know what is.

00:44:54.340 | But the source is this ability to see yourself

00:44:57.920 | as more of a portal for getting certain things

00:45:00.620 | done in the world than being so careerist

00:45:04.220 | and focused on whether or not outcomes

00:45:06.120 | are really matching what you need.

00:45:08.160 | It involves some mental flexibility

00:45:10.260 | and is, of course, okay to pivot back and forth.

00:45:13.260 | But we can only access this feeling of delight and joy

00:45:17.540 | and this feeling that we're somehow connected

00:45:19.080 | to some larger theme, aka meaning,

00:45:21.740 | I think when we are able to be calm enough

00:45:23.940 | and not so focused.

00:45:25.220 | But in order to get anything done,

00:45:26.500 | we have to be hyper focused.

00:45:27.620 | And that brings me back to the basic principle

00:45:29.400 | of today's whole discussion,

00:45:31.240 | which is that it's not about landing yourself

00:45:33.820 | in a state of focus, motivation, and drive

00:45:35.900 | or in a state of deep sleep, certainly not in a coma.

00:45:38.840 | It's about being able to move up and down

00:45:41.280 | the various continuums that allow you to access focus

00:45:45.240 | and real gas pedal down to the floor

00:45:48.540 | kind of thinking and action,

00:45:50.800 | but then also deliberately back off,

00:45:53.260 | transition to periods of rest.

00:45:55.320 | And the real key is for you to feel

00:45:57.680 | like you're in the driver's seat.

00:45:58.840 | If we know anything from the last 100 plus years

00:46:02.000 | of psychology and neuroscience literature,

00:46:04.980 | it's that if an animal or a person feels

00:46:07.660 | that they are in control of the physiological process

00:46:10.960 | within them, and they know they can get themselves out

00:46:13.880 | some way, somehow, at some point,

00:46:15.760 | and back into a state that they want somehow,

00:46:17.980 | some way, at some point,

00:46:19.480 | well then all the language around meaning

00:46:23.040 | and happiness and delight starts to emerge.

00:46:26.220 | So learn to move along those continuums,

00:46:29.780 | learn to do it deliberately,

00:46:31.740 | and I wish you the very best of luck in it.

00:46:33.680 | I know it works.

00:46:34.780 | (audience applauding)

00:46:36.400 | Thank you.

00:46:37.960 | Thank you so much, thank you.

00:46:40.460 | (audience applauding)

00:46:42.260 | Thank you.

00:46:43.460 | Thanks so much for coming out.

00:46:45.060 | I really appreciate it.

00:46:47.660 | And I'm grateful to our sponsors, of course.

00:46:52.440 | Thank you, and to all of you for your time.

00:46:54.460 | I know there's a lot to do in the city

00:46:56.600 | and I hope everyone enjoys it.

00:46:58.560 | And of course I'd be remiss if I didn't say

00:47:01.300 | thank you for your interest in science.

00:47:03.320 | (audience applauding)

00:47:06.240 | (upbeat music)

00:47:08.820 | (upbeat music)

00:47:11.400 | (upbeat music)

00:47:13.980 | (upbeat music)

LIVE EVENT Q&A: Dr. Andrew Huberman Question & Answer in New York, NY

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