Your Top Health Questions Answered

22:11So if you miss a day, double up on the amount you get outside the next day. This by the way is also why when you travel someplace, your circadian clock doesn't shift right away. It's still on your previous city's schedule. It takes a few days for things to adjust. That's a bad thing when you travel, it's called jet lag. It's a great thing when you're at home because it gives you some flexibility. So you don't have to optimize everything to the point where you're like 20 minutes every day, 10 minutes every day, get 20 minutes one day, get five the next perhaps, get 15 the next, do what you can.

22:39More photons better, as long as you blink to protect your eyes but if you're getting fewer photons make it a little bit longer and give yourself some ease give yourself some grace these mechanisms will take really good care of you all on their own and next question please hello dr hugh berman my name is dr datogelashvili md i have a simple question about longevity and optimization culture i've seen people be strict and diligent with very optimal protocols. However, sometimes it becomes a source of stress. When would you say longevity protocols do more bad than good if people worry about them? Oh, thank you so much, doctor.

23:17I'm just going to refer to you as doctor because, forgive me, I couldn't make out the pronunciation of your name. And if I were to attempt it, I would probably not get it right. So forgive me, I'm just going to refer to you as doctor, but I'm also going to extend my gratitude for your question again, because I know a lot of people are thinking about this over optimization question issue these days and it's a very important one you know i've spent the last six years or so talking about protocols for health for all sorts of things on the huberman lab podcast and others have as well of course and the real issue i think that everyone's dealing with right now is kind of protocol overwhelm like what am i supposed to do i barely have time to do the basics and now we're you know getting right down into the details of particular mechanisms at particular times of day, like what am I supposed to do?

24:05Here's the big picture, at least in my opinion. Optimization in its truest form

24:11Andrew Huberman:is about addressing each day of your life as an independent unit and asking yourself, okay, what can I do today to set myself up for the best possible day, given the constraints upon me, right? Maybe you're dealing with a sick family member. Maybe you're dealing with jet lag. Maybe you're dealing with a deadline. You know, I've dealt with all these things, some of them recently. Maybe you're dealing with being extremely well rested and you're on vacation and you wonder if you should just kind of take the day off and relax. These are real life issues and optimization has to meet those real life issues, not the other way around.

24:47So optimization is about stepping back and saying, okay, what are the things I really enjoy doing and that clearly give me energy, clearly make me feel better? These are the ones that are easy to do. For me, that's getting morning sunlight. It's hydrating in the morning. It's exercise. I happen to like exercise, okay? Some days more, some days less, but I happen to like it. Some people loathe it, okay? If you like a particular protocol, you're more likely to do it. That just stands to reason. But then we also have to ask ourselves, what are the most important protocols to do consistently over time?

25:19And those are very straightforward. Everyone knows what those are. You want to do what you can to get the best possible sleep, enough of it and high quality sleep. But we're all human. And it's also great to stay out late doing fun things every once in a while. Perfectly fine. I do that. All of you should give yourself permission to do that, in my opinion. You will be just fine in the short and in the long term. Okay? I do believe that getting bright light in our eyes, ideally from sunlight in the first hours of the day, is one of the things to really strive for because it's so brief, it costs nothing, and it is so well supported by human data to create, excuse me, outsized positive effects on your mental and physical health.

25:57It sets everything into its right place. But as I just talked about a few minutes ago to the previous question, if you miss it one day, no big deal. The next day, just make up for it. I do think that a neurotic approach to trying to get everything exactly right is going to harm our mental health, maybe not severely in the short term, but in the long run, it's just going to lead to a different kind of burnout, kind of health optimization burnout, which again is not about true optimization anyway. So we say morning sunlight, Great. Dimming the lights at night. These are all zero cost, very effective ways to improve our health and wellbeing.

26:30If you're under the bright lights at an event or doing something fun, or God forbid you have to be at the hospital for a loved one or you yourself in the hospital and the lights are bright, you'll be okay. You want to try and mitigate that if you're confronted with it day after day after day, you may get an eye mask, et cetera. But every once in a while, no big deal. We know that hydration is critical and is very overlooked as a tool for increasing energy and well-being. This is just true, right? Most people don't think of hydration as exciting or interesting, but it's very, very important for mental clarity, physical and mental energy.

27:05So do that, right? People argue how much you need to drink, whether or not your urine needs to be clear or not. It doesn't, by the way, but making sure that you're getting enough fluids. And by the way, the idea that all fluids that aren't water are dehydrating you, including coffee and caffeine, the literature just doesn't support that. I do think you should drink some just good old water every once in a while, but if you're getting a lot of your liquids from, you know, I drink a lot of yerba mate or coffee, you're getting hydrated, okay? Also drink some water if you can. And then we know that exercise, nutrition, and social connection are also vital.

27:39These are the core pillars. Now, it's highly individual as to whether or not somebody needs these every single day, right? I resistance train three times a week, I do cardio three times a week, so that's six days a week of exercise, but some of those sessions, in particular the high intensity interval training, it's very brief, six to 12 minutes to get a sort of quote unquote max heart rate, VO2 max type workout and very brief. One of the cardiovascular exercise training sessions is longer, it's an hour long hike or jog once a week. You have to figure out what you can do consistently over time.

28:10This is the other critical feature. Over optimization is going to come from feeling that you have to do everything all the time, right? Which undoubtedly will lead to mental or some other form of burnout or resentment of this whole protocols, health optimization thing. It's what you can do consistently over time. And when I say over time, I don't mean your whole life. When I was in graduate school, I literally only exercised two to three days a week because I was in lab all the time, but I was going back and forth to the, I had to go to the vivarium, I'd go back and forth and back. I was doing so much physical activity.

28:42So two or three times a week, I wasn't happy about that, but I was in heaven doing experiments and I love doing science. So I was full and I was young too. So I probably offset some of the whatever health detriments would have been there. And I didn't take very good care of my sleep. It eventually caught up with me. I made adjustments to my sleep. So what I'm trying to say here is that true optimization is about taking a rational look at your life over the next six months or year, or if you're confronting a deadline over the next month or two, or if you have a newborn child over the next, you know, six to 12 months and you're, you know, as anyone who's had a kid will tell you, you know, you have to constantly update what you can do and what you can't do at particular times of day because your job is to make sure that they are taken care of first and then that you're taken care of, right?

29:24This is obvious, but optimization is not going to be about being rigid, it's going to be about being adaptive. So there's no simple prescriptive, like when you travel, cut back on exercise. In fact, when I travel, I try to exercise as much or more than when I'm at home because I tend to do better on travel, less jet lag, et cetera. I actually try to eat better when I'm traveling, that means mostly unprocessed or minimally processed foods. And I enjoy doing that. For some people going on vacation, for them is really just an opportunity to just say, I just want to be a complete lazy lump and enjoy myself.

29:59Okay, if that's your thing, that's your thing. You are in charge. And I think this is the key point. You are in charge of which health, quote unquote, optimization protocols you use. You are in charge of which ones you don't use. I think the burnout and the stress that people are experiencing, and I do think your point is a good one, that it can be detrimental if we internalize the stress, I have to, I have to, I have to, can only be addressed one of three ways. The first one is to change your attitude about it. Okay, well, do I like this? Do I like the effects? All right, well, if I don't like it, but I like the effects and they're big enough for me, cool, I'll do it anyway.

30:33Ideally, you like it and you like the effects, right? That's ideal, you're more likely to do those things. The next one is you have to ask yourself, can I be consistent about this? Can I be consistent with six workouts a week, even though some are very short? Maybe I just need to work out longer three times a week, or maybe you just get two times a week to work out. Can you eat clean, mostly unprocessed, minimally processed foods, plenty of fiber, plenty of low sugar fermented foods, get enough protein, et cetera, whatever that means to you, if you're a vegan vegetarian or you eat meat. Everyone has their different kind of regimens, but you need to be able to do that in a way that you enjoy.

31:09I like eating healthy food, okay? I don't really feel good after eating garbage food. So I don't like garbage food. I'm not drawn to garbage food. But some people really like their treats. They like their quote unquote bad food. You're going to have to allow yourself a little bit of that if you're going to remain a happy person. And certainly if you're going to resent all of the process, that's the third category. If you're going to resent something, you're going to resent yourself or whoever you think told you to do it. Look, I don't tell anyone what to do. I make suggestions that you can take or leave.

31:38And that's what other people in the public health communication space are doing too. So, you know, and this is true for alcohol too, as well. You know, I've talked a lot about alcohol. Zero is better than any. Two is probably fine for non-alcoholic adults, et cetera, et cetera. But that doesn't mean that I condemn people that drink. I personally don't like drinking. I feel better when I don't. But I have many people in my life that enjoy having a drink every once in a while. And I've insisted that they not apologize to me when they order a glass of wine. I don't want that. You know, that can only lead to resent, okay?

32:06So the big one is to ask yourself what you can do consistently over time, and then really understand what that time word means for you this week, this month, this period of your life, and just be willing to be flexible, update, and then check yourself for resentments, right? Do you resent me? Do you resent the world that's telling you to do this? Or are you like, oh, this is cool. Like I can take it or leave it. You know, you're your own person. I'm telling you this to everyone, not just you, doctor, of course. I'm telling you this to everyone. You're your own person. You are in charge of you.

32:37Self-care for you is going to mean something different than it does to me or somebody else. And by no means should you feel guilty for coming off the gas a little bit, as we say, and like easing up a little bit. And I will make this point. By no means should any of you feel guilty for doing every little thing perfectly as you see perfect to be because you enjoy that and because you think it makes you feel better. Do not apologize for being you. That's the most important point. And I think that's what real optimization is about. You know, the saying that I've put out on social media a few times over the years, but perhaps I haven't put out enough, is do what you want for you, provided you're not hurting anyone else, but know what you're doing.

33:17This podcast is about trying to educate people about what they're doing when they do A or B, what you might benefit from if you do A or B, but you have to be your own laboratory. And most importantly, like I just said, be you. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1.

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34:09Andrew Huberman:And therefore, I love seeing them added to the existing AG1 formula. As most of you know, I've been taking AG1 every day for nearly 14 years now. I started taking it long before I even knew what a podcast was. It's a great product and it's now made even better with the new AG1 Pro formula. If you would like to try AG1 Pro, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to get a special offer. AG1 is giving away a free bottle of omega-3 coenzyme Q10 with your first subscription. Again, go to drinkAG1.com slash Huberman to get a free bottle of omega-3 coenzyme Q10 with your first AG1 subscription. Okay, these are great questions, so let's get another.

34:47Hello, Dr. Huberman. My name is Sarah, and I come from the south of England in the UK. And I would love to know what your top health hacks from a neuroscience perspective were for improving your memory and also improving your sense of smell. Those two things I would really like to work on. And I was wondering if you could tell me what the best things to try would be. Great. Well, thank you, Sarah, from south of England. just came back from London recently. Used to get over there a lot more to the UK. It's a lovely place. I won't attempt my British accent, but I'm envious of the British accent.

35:33It's delightful. Okay. Neuroscience supported tools for improving memory. There's a vast neuroscience literature on memory, in particular that memories are encoded, right? They're first made in the structure that we call the hippocampus. You actually have two of them, hippocampi, one on each side of your brain. And then memories, once they're formed, are kind of pushed out. They're not really pushed out, but they're sent to different circuits in the neocortex, which is the outer part of the brain, the bumpy part of the brain that appears wrinkly when the skull is removed. And what we know about that process is that memories change from when we first make them to when they're first stored to many years later, depending on whether we rehearse or we have to recall in some instances what those memories were.

36:26Meaning a memory that you formed in the fifth grade that might've been very relevant to your life then. Remembering that the intersection where a good friend, not your best friend, but a good friend lived and how to navigate there. Important perhaps when you were friends with that person in the fifth grade, not later, right? So the memory was made, it was put into your neocortex and elsewhere, presumably. And eventually it just sort of dissipates, but it's still there. And the reason I'm giving you this brief neuroscience lesson and it's only a tiny, tiny fraction of what we know about the formation and storage of memories is because when you're thinking about neuroscience supported ways to increase your memory, there's really two approaches to that.

37:07One is about recall of things that you very likely will lose if you don't continue to practice them. The other is about learning new things, okay? And these operate differently in terms of how your brain is able to remember additional things going forward. In other words, you need to practice both forms of memory, that is recalling previous memories to keep them available to you, as well as learning new things in order to keep the whole memory system vital and able to continue to both remember things like names, which people often are upset that they start forgetting as they get older, that they see as a warning sign that they might be developing dementia or something of that sort, which isn't necessarily, I should point out, and their ability to continue to learn new things.

37:55So we can break this down into either a four-hour podcast or a brief answer. And I'm going to try and provide a brief but sufficient for now answer for you and anyone else interested in this issue. If you are interested in forming new memories, the most important pieces of the formula are the following. And this is very well supported in the neuroscience literature. You must be focused at the time of encoding, at the time when you're trying to learn the thing, okay? That means you also have to be alert. There's no focus without alertness. That also means getting good sleep. That also means exercise.

38:33And this is a point about exercise and brain longevity that most people miss, which is that many, not all, but many of the benefits of exercise on brain health and memory are because of the pro arousal effects of exercise. Meaning if you do a 30 minute jog or brisk walk even, or you do a moderate to high intensity resistance training session, or you hop on like one of those airdyne bikes with the fan, which you'll quickly learn is not designed to cool you off, but rather to provide resistance. And you warm up for a minute and then you sprint hard for a minute or half a minute, and then pedal easy for a minute and then go 30 seconds again, that sort of thing will get your heart rate up, up, up.

39:13Now, there is now a vast literature showing that all those forms of exercise and others as well, even things as mellow as Tai Chi, which turns out to be pretty difficult. I tried it recently. It's not that easy to do correctly. Tai Chi, a yoga class, all forms of exercise, because they raise your levels of autonomic arousal and alertness, and they get these, again, the catecholamines is a repeating theme, the dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine circulating. Yes, they increase things like brain-derived nootrophic factor, et cetera. They set you up to learn better in part because of the chemicals and their ability to make your brain connections more plastic.

39:51But the biggest effect of exercise is the pro-arousal effect. Put differently, it increases alertness, which allows you to focus better, which is the first real step in triggering learning and neuroplasticity. So this is a very important point for people to understand because people want to hear, ah, you know, it's this form of exercise or that form of exercise. It's the form of exercise that gives you a boost in alertness. Sure, BDNF and there are other things too, IGF-1. I mean, I could make a list of 50 chemicals that exercise increases that facilitate neuroplasticity. But the most potent effects are by virtue of the fact that exercise increases arousal, which then allows you to focus better in the following one to six hours.

40:36What do you do in those one to six hours is really the key to actually learning something that benefits your memory. Just being more alert, but not focused on anything specific is not going to help your memory specifically. It might facilitate brain health. So the exercise thing is the first domino that needs to fall. But if you can be alert and really focused on any kind of learning without doing exercise first. Yes, you should still exercise for other reasons, but there's nothing special about exercise in terms of neuroplasticity of learning other things, except this arousal effect. Okay. Alertness allows you to be focused.

41:13When you're focused, the neuroscience tells us that you have to make errors. You have to make errors. Whether or not you're trying to learn dance, you're trying to learn, do a crossword puzzle, you're trying to get better at chess, you're trying to learn how to code, you're trying to learn how to be different in certain social interactions, whatever it is you're trying to learn, or a physical skill, you have to push yourself past the limits of your abilities. Why? Well, put simply, if your nervous system can carry out something that you're trying to do, there's absolutely no reason for it to change.

41:44Period. End of story. You have to make errors through deliberate effort to do things correctly, right? You can't just do throwaway errors. This is obvious, but just for sake of example, you can't go out to the tennis court and intentionally miss a bunch of serves and get better at serving. That's obvious, right? What you have to do is serve to the best of your ability, serve to the best of your ability. And when you fail, when you screw up, that sends a signal through a very interesting set of circuits that's relayed through your mini brain, as they call your cerebellum in the back, that then carries the air signal forward.

42:18And then the rest of your brain has to reshape itself. And here's a critical point. The reshaping occurs during deep rest, in particular sleep, both slow wave deep sleep and rapid eye movement sleep, which we talked about earlier in this episode. Both are crucial. Some people need six hours of sleep a night, some seven, some eight, some nine. Okay. Do your best to get what you need consistently. So you need that sleep and then ideally the night after you try and learn something or every night. Please see previous question about the problems with over optimization. I don't want anyone to take these things as rule of law.

42:48If you don't sleep well for a night or two, it's not like your learning is completely new, but you don't want to do that consistently. The deep rest piece is critical. But then there's another one. There's a really impressive literature that shows, and this is backed by neuroscience, okay, so brain imaging. It's backed by performance, which is perhaps the most important thing, people's ability to learn new information. And remember the other important aspect of memory, to call back memories of things from the past, and it's self-testing. This is the most overlooked, powerful protocol for neuroplasticity.

43:23In fact, I covered a bunch of studies on this in the how to study and learn episode of the podcast. I'm guessing a bunch of students watch that podcast, very popular episode. And I'm guessing a lot of non-students probably didn't because the word study probably sounded like if you're not in school, this wouldn't be relevant, but it's highly relevant. And here are the key takeaways. People were given a passage of information to read and they could either do it once, twice, three times, or four times. This has been done with multiple iterations in different studies. Some studies included taking notes, some studies including highlighting, you know, all the different ways that people study information to try and learn.

43:56By far, the most impactful thing for forming stable memories over time or calling back old memories to keep this memory system thriving was self-testing. That self-testing can take the form of just, hmm, can I do a mental walk back to my friend's house from the fifth grade? Now, you have to ask yourself, is this relevant information for your life now? Well, perhaps not, but maybe you're just testing your memory system, right? And here's the key, errors should be expected and embraced. Whether you're trying to learn some new information from two days ago, whether you're trying to remember information from three years ago or 30 years ago, when you can't remember, that's your nervous system's cue that it's going to need to draw it out of those circuits, which are now in your neocortex.

44:42It's deep within your memory, although it's a bit of a misnomer because your hippocampus sits deeper to your cortex, But anyway, that's a nerdy side point. It's distributed out there and you need to call it back. And the only way to really call back those memories in a way that they're going to stay with you going forward, to keep your memory and keep these circuits going that allow you to continue to form new memories, keep this whole system robust, is to make errors where you go, oh, I can't remember what came after 0.3 in, well, question one of the Huberman Lab podcast Q &A, like right now, what was that third thing?

45:16So you have to test yourself. Now, if you go right back and you just get the information, that's not going to help you much. That's just like reading it again or hearing it again or highlighting it. It's not going to help you that much. You have to remember what you can remember and then you have to hit the point of, oh, I can't remember that. Darn it, that friction point, that tip of the tongue phenomenon, or I can't remember that person's name. Great, those memories are now resurfacing. If you wait some period of time, typically they come back. If you have to go look them up later, great. You won't forget them as readily as if, of course, you didn't go look them up.

45:46The point here is that all of learning is anti-forgetting. It almost sounds like a giant duh when you hear it, but all of learning and memory is anti-forgetting. And we need to push both the learning, right? Alertness, focus, trigger that plasticity, deep rest and sleep, allow the plasticity to actually occur, the physical reshaping of circuitry that's going to carry those memories. But then we have to consolidate that over time. We have to recall it, okay? and self-testing with errors, pushing ourselves to the point where we can't remember something and then looking it up and reconsolidating it.

46:20That's the key. That's what the neuroscience literature says. That's what the psychological literature says. And there's just so much data to support this. So Sarah, my suggestion would be test yourself on things that you're interested in learning, regardless of whether the learning occurred recently or it's from the past, both forms of testing yourself. And again, this can just be done mentally on a walk. You could write down questions for yourself. Most people won't do that. These days, I'll use ChatGPT to test myself on material, either from a podcast or even some material that I learned long ago.

46:53And I'll sort of say, design a basic test at the level of kind of second year graduate school at, I don't know, for me, it was, you know, graduate school neuroscience. And, you know, in synaptic transmission, I of course remember that stuff, but there are little details that over time, if you don't practice can wane. And of course, I'm learning new things all the time. And in order to put those to memory, to really consolidate those, I'll use ChatGPT to generate a test for myself. And it is really good because I can say, you know what, that was too easy. Make it harder. Okay. So there's a lot more to say about that.

47:24I suggest listening to the how to study and learn episode if you'd like to go deeper into that. We've done a number of episodes on memory, including working memory elsewhere. But the general themes here are consistent across all forms of memory, all ages, and all forms of learning. Your second question, Sarah, was about how to improve sense of smell. The one very well supported way is to test yourself on smells, to actually take a lemon. You will probably also want a quite different smell, maybe a rose, maybe some chocolate. This could be a fun one to do. Any number of different smells. Let's avoid noxious smells.

47:58And I'll tell you why you can avoid noxious smells in this, because there's a hardwired pathway for that. You actually never lose your core ability to detect noxious smells, unless you've had some damage to the olfactory system. It's a different pathway. But all these other smells, coffee, you can lay those out and you simply want to take some time to do more sniffs than you think you need to do. We had a very popular episode of the podcast with Noam Sobel, who's one of the world experts in olfaction and in our ability to detect smells. And he taught there and I followed up on what he taught and it's a beautiful literature showing that our sense of smell is actually on par with that of canines.

48:38I know dogs, and you might say, that's impossible. Well, it turns out that if you look at the sheer number of olfactory neurons, we don't have quite as many, but we're headed in that direction. Our ability to smell at a given level and their ability to smell at a remarkably higher level has much more to do with the amount of sniffing that they do per unit time than the olfactory system itself. And it turns out that some people can get really, really good at detecting smells. The olfactory neurons, the ones that are critically involved in our sense of smell, not only do they turn over throughout the lifespan, so this is very different than other central nervous system neurons, which you basically get one set for life.

49:19There are a few others that turn over, but the olfactory neurons are really the world heavyweight champions of turnover throughout the lifespan. You're constantly turning them over. That turnover and their tuning to particular smells, which translates to your ability to smell, is activity dependent. It requires the electrical activity of those neurons. How do you generate the electrical activity of those neurons? You sniff. Sniffing is what does it and smelling particular odors is what does it as well. You need those two things in combination, obviously. So, or, and really paying attention. So close your eyes, try and make it a quiet environment.

49:56If there's some background noise, no big deal. If this is in a crowded restaurant or something, give a really good set of sniffs, So really good, deep, long inhale. Why am I telling you this? Well, the more times that you sniff, the longer those inhales, the more those cells fire in the presence of that odor. And by the way, odors are the actual molecules of that thing entering your nose, which is why we're not talking about noxious things as well. It's clear now why. This is such a beautiful system. I could talk about it for hours, but I'm going to keep this brief going forward. I promise, just a few more minutes.

50:27Dogs, when they sniff, they're actually getting many more sniffs through one inhale. How can that be? Well, if you've ever seen that sort of J-shaped nostril on the dog's nose, it's kind of like little notches on the sides. It creates a physical environment where every inhale keeps the odor in and keeps it circulating. So they're spending a lot of time with each odor, even if they smelled something a few seconds or even minutes ago. They're integrating odors across space. They actually have stereo, which simply means they're comparing the odors coming in through one nostril versus another, unconsciously, presumably, paying attention to odor plumes, what direction they're coming from.

51:11They are so spectacular, in particular, the scent hounds. Other animals do this too, of course, but dogs are a great example. And so when they sniff, what's there? They're getting a rich amount of information, in part because they have a lot of neurons to detect it, but also because they're paying total attention. Watch a dog when it's really fixated on a smell. They're almost, you know, it almost seems as if they're deaf to anything you're saying and blind to anything that's around. They're really focused. They're cutting out all other sensory cues. And they're spending a lot of time with that odor by virtue of the physical structure of their nose.

51:43There's a beautiful literature on this, by the way. So to build up your sense of smell, spend some time with some smells, inhale longer, pay attention, focus on it. This might sound like kind of just kind of trivial, you know, nuts and bolts type stuff. Like, oh yeah, well of course, right? You know, how else would I build up my sense of smell? But this is really the way that the activity dependent rewiring and reestablishment of this ongoing turnover of this population of neurons occurs. Now, if you have a respiratory illness or God forbid someone takes a head hit, the cribriform plate, which is a kind of, it's like a Swiss cheese shaped bone at the back of the nose, where the olfactory neuron axons go through, they can often get sheared off and people can become so-called adnosmic, anosmic.

52:30So they can't smell for some period of time. And a lot of people think they'll never get their smell back, but these sorts of things have been shown to help, especially immediately after the injury. Although there is some evidence that you can get enhanced smell over time. And if you haven't had such an injury, you can really build up your sense of smell. So improving our sense of smell is vital enough that when it's reduced or removed it can be really rough on people in a serious way okay it um it can really inhibit their quality of life but if you're going to put in major effort to get your sense of smell back well then i can just say if it were me i would do the kind of smell training or i should say the multiple sniff training all right let's hear your next question hi this is van spina there's a lot of advice on the internet around eating specific foods for fertility what do you see in the literature around any specific foods that boost either male or female fertility beyond just eating a healthy, balanced diet?

53:30Andrew Huberman:Thank you, Van, for your question. This is a very interesting question, and I've hosted a number of guests on the Huberman Lab podcast, including some female fertility experts. I had a discussion about male hormone health and fertility with Dr. Kyle Gillette, who's a medical doctor. and there are a couple of basic principles that apply to both men and to women. So I'll cover those first. And those, at least in the context of nutrition, can be summarized the following way. You need adequate calories to ensure fertility, but you don't want an excess of calories. Now that might seem obvious, but when you think about it a little bit more deeply, it has some important implications, not just about caloric load, but food choices as well.

54:12So I was in a discussion with Dr.

54:15Andrew Huberman:Kyle Gillette, MD, who is truly an expert in male hormone health and fertility. And we were talking on the podcast a while ago, and I've had some offline conversations with him as well, about should men be wary of cutting calories too much if they want to have their testosterone and their fertility in the ideal range? Okay, what are we talking about when we talk about ideal? Yes, there's a reference range, the so-called 300 nanograms per deciliter up to typically 900 or in some countries, 1 ,200 nanograms per deciliter. That's a huge reference range, but keep in mind that that's just one indication of hormone health and testosterone health.

54:51Andrew Huberman:There's also your free testosterone, which is critical. There's also the testosterone to estrogen ratio. And contrary to what many people believe, men do not ideally want their testosterone really high and their estrogen really, really low because estrogen is actually very important. So we were having this general discussion and Dr. Gillette explained it very simply. if a man is carrying excess body weight, if he's starting to carry more than say 20 % body fat, then he would be wise to cut calories to a sub-maintenance level and lose some of that body fat, ideally while doing resistance training in order to preserve or even build muscle and bring that body fat percentage down.

55:31Andrew Huberman:And that's going to improve his testosterone-free testosterone and other hormone markers of virility, vitality, and fertility. However, he pointed out that if a male is 15 % body fat or less, if he cuts calories below maintenance level for too long, so I'm not talking about one or two days per week, I'm talking about consistently across the week, six or seven days per week perhaps, and doing that for two or three or more weeks in order to lower body fat percentage, that's very likely to reduce his testosterone and free testosterone levels. and in the context of fertility, that could potentially have a negative impact on his fertility.

56:15Andrew Huberman:Now, fertility in males has a number of different metrics. It's not assessed by just one thing. It's not just sperm count. It's also sperm quality, which has a number of different measures itself. Fortunately, the measures of male fertility in the context of a sperm sample are very inexpensive to obtain nowadays. There's some male home kits that men can use if they'd like to do that at home. There are clinics that can do this, and it's very inexpensive and easy to assess. So if you're a male and you're interested in conceiving, or you're just generally thinking about your fertility, given some other things you might be doing or your medical history, you might want to get a sperm analysis.

56:55Andrew Huberman:It's easy to do, it's inexpensive. All of that is fairly straightforward to do nowadays, and you can get a snapshot into your fertility at basically any age and in the context of other medications and things that you might be taking. Okay, so that's the caloric either excess, okay? So men who are carrying excess body fat should try and get that body fat level down. Men who are in a healthier range of body fat percentage would be wise to not go into at least a severe caloric deficit, okay? Probably no more than 500 calories per day caloric deficit for extended periods of time if you're thinking about conceiving or you want to maintain fertility.

57:31Andrew Huberman:And then I should just put this out there, and this wasn't part of the question, but I know there's a lot of interest nowadays in testosterone replacement therapy. Be aware, this is the critical point. If you take exogenous testosterone, even a little bit, even if you're quote unquote micro dosing it, so less than a hundred milligrams per week or so, it will negatively impact your sperm count. It will negatively impact your sperm count. It can be partially to completely offset by taking HCG, which is typically taken, you know, something like 500 I use three times a week. Some people will do higher doses, et cetera.

58:05Andrew Huberman:alongside the testosterone therapy. But if you don't take HCG and you're taking any kind of exogenous testosterone, because of the negative feedback loop by which testosterone is made in the male body, it will deplete your sperm count, okay? And whether you can bring that sperm count back up with HCG and other therapies later on, usually the answer is yes, but sometimes the answer is no. So you want to be very careful, So very, very careful about using exogenous testosterone. Do it in the context of a well-informed doctor, let them know your fertility goals and let them also tell you that your fertility goals may change over time.

58:43Andrew Huberman:So if you're like, I don't want kids, maybe someday you will and you need to think about that. Maybe even just freeze a sperm sample. Okay, for women. Who on average carry higher percentages of body fat than do men, right? The same general principle applies. And this is based on conversations that I've had with Dr. Natalie Crawford, who's a fertility expert. And I've had other fertility experts on the podcast, Dr. Thais Ali Abadi. And they agree on several things related to female fertility generally in this context of nutrition and calories and so forth. which is if a woman is carrying a much higher than is healthy percentage of body fat, there's a higher degree of inflammation in the body.

59:27Andrew Huberman:And it would be wise to try and bring that percentage of body fat down somewhat, or even considerably, if the goal is to get pregnant. The general principle of if you're carrying excess body fat, then trying to reduce that by virtue of eating a sub-maintenance, not by a ridiculous amount, but a sub-maintenance caloric intake for some period of time in a healthy way, still eating a nutrient-dense diet and so forth, getting enough protein, getting enough fiber, getting enough fruits and vegetables and micronutrients, but bringing that body fat percentage down, down, excuse me, often can help. But as most everybody knows, if a woman's body fat percentage comes down too far, she may stop menstruating entirely or it could adversely impact fertility in other ways.

1:00:13Andrew Huberman:So that's really a discussion that you have to have with your OBGYN. The point being, you don't want to be too lean, nor do you want to be carrying too much excess body fat. What all the physicians who work on either male and or female fertility agree on is that you want to consume a low inflammation diet. Okay, what's a low inflammation diet? Well, immediately people jump to, okay, lots of fruits and vegetables and lots of fiber and Mediterranean diet. Yes, yes, and we need to add a bit more information here. High in micronutrient diet is something that's often overlooked. And in terms of reducing inflammation in the body, I'm aware of one study that talks about specifically what to do in addition to what not to do.

1:00:59Andrew Huberman:Because I think we all now know too much hyper-processed food, you know, too much packaged food, any food that can survive for long periods of time on the shelf in its near to ready eat form is considered highly processed, right? You know, when I talk about, you know, rice can sit for a long time on the shelf, but it has to be prepared, right? So you're not really processing it, you're preparing it. But yes, fresh fruits and vegetables. Yes, lean proteins like chicken and fish, probably some lean red meat like beef, if that's within your diet as well. Eating monounsaturated fats like olive oil.

1:01:32Andrew Huberman:I think we all know this stuff by now. Lentils, rice, starches, but not too many. So the whole idea behind this low inflammation diet is really also thinking about micronutrients that are going to be rich in fruits and vegetables, eating quality proteins. When I say quality proteins, it's about high quality protein to calorie ratio, meaning look at foods like lean beef, chicken, fish, if you like shellfish, scallops, this sort of thing. Think of those as quality protein with all the essential amino acids without a high caloric load. The fruits, the vegetables, and some of the starches without excess fats.

1:02:09and if you're going to eat fats, mostly unsaturated fats,

1:02:12Andrew Huberman:maybe a little bit of saturated fat from the animal proteins, that's basically the low-inflammation diet. And I mentioned there's one thing specifically that has been shown in the human literature to reduce inflammation, and that's low-sugar fermented foods. Highly overlooked, highly beneficial. This has been shown in a beautiful study from my colleagues Justin Sonnenberg and Christopher Gardner at Stanford University School of Medicine. People were given either a low sugar fermented food, sort of call to action to eat more of those each day or increase their fiber intake pretty markedly. They did a ramp up because you need to do that kind of slowly for a few weeks in order to get your system acclimated to it.

1:02:53Andrew Huberman:You don't want to go from like no low sugar fermented foods to tons of them, but slowly adding a few servings a day, one serving, two servings, up to about four servings a day, which isn't very much by the way, a few spoonfuls here, some Bulgarian yogurt there, maybe some low sugar kombucha there, and you're getting essentially what they quote unquote prescribed in this diet for the subjects. What they saw is that many inflammatory markers were significantly reduced in the low sugar fermented food group. Whereas in the fiber addition group, they found something interesting. Some people who significantly increased their fiber intake experienced a reduction in inflammatory markers.

1:03:33Andrew Huberman:Others had an increase in inflammatory markers. Does that mean fiber is bad? No, it means that certain types of high fiber foods might cause some inflammation in some people, not others. And that's an important discussion going forward. Personally, I have family members who will take some coelium husk, like a small amount of coelium husk. It's very inexpensive to increase fiber. So you could do that route, but ideally eating fruits and vegetables, plus maybe a little bit of that for increasing fiber is going to benefit most people in terms of colon health and reducing inflammation. but the low sugar fermented foods is a recommendation that I've certainly adopted into my own life.

1:04:09Andrew Huberman:I eat Bulgarian yogurt, I eat sauerkraut. You have to eat the type that needs to be refrigerated and the low sugar part is important. So no, we're not talking about beer. We're not talking about sweetened pickles. We're not talking about that sort of thing. We're talking about the stuff that has to be in the refrigerator, natto, kimchi, and so on, and really striving for the low sugar variety. So low inflammation diet. Okay, that's enough about diet. I touched a little bit on TRT. in discussions with the other people I mentioned earlier in this answer, as well as in the episode that I did about male and female fertility, which admittedly is a very long episode.

1:04:42In that episode, I did touch on some of the things that have some,

1:04:47Andrew Huberman:I want to be really careful, have shown some positive impact on egg quality, which is an important metric when trying to conceive, as well as sperm quality. I talked about some of those metrics as well. and those include things like L-carnitine, coenzyme Q10. Why would those be potentially useful? And I should mention when having discussions with now three different fertility doctors, okay, about male and female fertility, okay, so we're talking sperm and egg health and quality, all three of them say, yeah, I recommend to my patients coenzyme Q10, I recommend to my patients some L-carnitine, Some fertility experts will also recommend other things.

1:05:30Andrew Huberman:And for that, I'll just cue you to Natalie Crawford's excellent book titled The Fertility Formula, as well as her podcast episode that she did with us, where she gets into some details of some other things that can be beneficial. Because some experts will recommend things like low-dose melatonin at night, presumably to improve sleep, perhaps other things as well. Some don't. Some will recommend DHEA, others not. So here I'm just going to focus on the overlap in the Venn diagram, as they say, where everyone says, yep, I recommend that to my patients. I don't think it's necessary for my patients, but as long as they're trying to increase their fertility, their egg quality or their sperm quality, I suggest they do it if they can afford it.

1:06:11And that's L-carnitine and coenzyme Q10, both of which have been shown to, well, in the case of males to improve sperm motility,

1:06:20Andrew Huberman:not so much count, but motility and quote unquote quality, because that's a multi-metric label quality, as well as egg quality. And L-carnitine can be taken orally as capsules. Typically those are higher dosages. So those can be as high as 500 milligrams or 750 milligrams a day. You don't absorb as much of it when you take it orally. Some people will actually do the injectable form of L-carnitine. And then with coenzyme Q10, the dosage recommendations vary. I'll point you to Natalie's podcast with me. We'll put a link to that particular segment in the show note caption, but these are the things that seem to help with egg quality and sperm quality.

1:06:57Andrew Huberman:Why? Because they seem to indirectly, perhaps directly, but indirectly support mitochondrial health. And so much of what's happening in conception and the formation of the early embryo is about taking that fertilized egg and creating more cells from it. And that's highly dependent on a number of different factors that mitochondria are critical for. And mitochondrial health within the early embryo, within the egg and the sperm, but within the early embryo is crucial for the normal development to lead to a successful pregnancy. So I want to be really clear. I'm not saying that the linchpin factor in fertility is coenzyme Q10 or it's L-carnitine.

1:07:39Andrew Huberman:It's going to be multivariate. I think the most important thing is to set a context for overall reproductive health. So that's going to be body-wide, keeping inflammation, relatively low through the low inflammation diet, exercise being critical. So yes, nutrition, sleep being a critical one to keep inflammation low, you know, and so on and so on and so on. A lot of it's age dependent. There probably is some genetic variation, but if somebody's struggling to achieve or maintain fertility or somebody is at the kind of age threshold where they're more and more concerned about these things, then it just stands to reason to do more to try and support fertility so if you're trying to get your fertility in the right direction for you well these things have been shown to help i'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors element element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't that means the electrolytes sodium magnesium and potassium all in the correct ratios but no sugar proper hydration is critical for brain and body function even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance.

1:08:45Andrew Huberman:It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium are vital for the functioning of all cells in your body, especially your neurons or your nerve cells. Drinking Element makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes. My days tend to start really fast, meaning I have to jump right into work or right into exercise. So to make sure that I'm hydrated and I have sufficient electrolytes, when I first wake up in the morning, I drink 16 to 32 ounces of water with an element packet dissolved in it. I also drink element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.

1:09:24Andrew Huberman:Element has a bunch of great tasting flavors. In fact, I love them all. I love the watermelon, the raspberry, the citrus, and I really love the lemonade flavor. So if you'd like to try element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free element sample pack with any purchase. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. Okay, next question, please. Hello, Dr. Huberman. This is Jusimara from Brazil. My question is, as women enter perimenopause, what is the actual impact on mental health during this stage? Is it common for women to experience more panic attacks or panic disorder symptoms, or are these not related to perimenopause?

1:10:05If they are related, how long do these symptoms typically last? Thank you so much. Thank you, Josemata. I think that is the pronunciation of your name, and forgive me if it's not. Thank you, Josemata, for your question. We received a lot of questions about perimenopause and menopause, suggested treatments, what's new in the literature, and so on. And so I just want to start off by saying that this topic and set of questions deserves an entire episode of the Huberman Lab podcast, or indeed several. and I've been looking for guests to have this discussion with in more depth. So I want to be very clear about that.

1:10:41We have also done a few episodes that cover perimenopause and menopause from different perspectives. So we'll put a link to some of those in the show note caption. Just to take a step back from all of this, as most people know, perimenopause menopause reflects massive changes in hormones, in particular estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone in women at a particular stage of their life.

1:11:06Andrew Huberman:And it can be fairly gradual or it can be more accelerated over a shorter time period. That means that the range of symptoms that women experience is highly variable from one to the next. And I think this has been part of the challenge in the literature. The other big challenge in the literature is that indeed there were far too few studies of perimenopause and menopause and possible treatments in the previous decades. You know, we're now entering what hopefully is a new era where there's more studies devoted to women's health, perimenopause and menopause, but also PCOS. And indeed, all the things that potentially differ between women and men as it relates to cancer, cancer treatments, you know, nutrition, et cetera.

1:11:51There are a huge number of unanswered questions in the women's health space that hopefully will be resolved in the upcoming years. Also, and many people are now aware of this, one of the largest scale studies about hormone replacement therapy for menopause, to some extent perimenopause, but it was mainly focused on menopause from some years back.

1:12:11Andrew Huberman:It's largely general consensus now. There might be a few holdouts, but many, many people now conclude that the early conclusions of those studies were wrong. Meaning the early studies concluded that hormone replacement therapy was either dangerous or ineffective or only mildly effective. and I think a large number of people, and this is independent of politics, this is independent of whether or not people are pro-hormone therapy or anti-hormone therapy, they will conclude that there does appear to be a beneficial effect of certain hormone replacement therapies for perimenopause and menopause if the therapies are started early enough, meaning if the therapies were started too late, there was some evidence of some detrimental effects perhaps, But if the therapies were started early enough, either in menopause or perimenopause, then there were some beneficial effects observed that weren't advertised, weren't popularized enough on the basis of the actual data.

1:13:10So that's created a landscape now where fortunately people are reevaluating those data, doing new studies, right?

1:13:16Andrew Huberman:We always need more, but doing new studies to evaluate the best timing for hormone therapies. And when I say hormones, I'm deliberately being broad about that because we know that estrogen, testosterone, and progesterone, and other hormones all change during perimenopause and menopause, and there are now different forms of hormone replacement therapy. To be very direct in answering this specific question, which was, is there a relationship between perimenopause and menopause that changes in hormones? Because it's not always reduction. sometimes it's increases in certain hormones because all these hormones have intense interplay in terms of how they regulate themselves and each other.

1:13:57Andrew Huberman:Is there a relationship between that and things like anxiety? Now, the short answer is absolutely yes. In perimenopause and menopause, when steroid hormones like testosterone and estrogen are changing and other hormones as well, of course, like progesterone and on and on, so many hormones change during perimenopause, menopause, many cells are not just changing the way that they're quote unquote behaving. They're not their short-term physiologies, but some cells are turning off the expression of certain genes and proteins and other cells are turning them on. And so we know that many hormones have a strong effect on neurons, nerve cells in the circuits of the brain, including the hypothalamus, which regulates all sorts of things, hunger, sleep, body temperature.

1:14:45And yes, it's also involved in anxiety. You have the so-called hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis, which is involved in the production of cortisol.

1:14:53Andrew Huberman:So the short answer is yes, yes, and yes. When hormones change, neural circuit activities change in the short term, but the propensity for those circuits to be active or hyperactive or hypoactive, not active enough, is going to be strongly regulated by steroid hormones as well. Hormones in particular, they're impacting hundreds, if not thousands of systems. So I don't throw all this out there to confuse any of you. It's simply to say that you should trust your experience, right? You have to trust your experience. If you're seeing a reduction in a particular hormone on a blood test in perimenopause or menopause, or frankly, at any stage of life, that is correlated in your experience with an increase in anxiety, right?

1:15:36Andrew Huberman:Can you really tack your change in anxiety to that hormone directly? In some cases, yes. In many cases, no, because there are just so many little tributaries of mechanistic overlap here. I think the key takeaway is this. The early studies that concluded that hormone replacement therapy was either not beneficial or could be detrimental were apparently flawed either by virtue of the conclusion, meaning the conclusion didn't match the data, or those studies weren't done correctly. The therapies in many cases were started too late, right? And it does seem that starting the therapies at the right, these hormone therapies at the right time and at the right dosages, not surprisingly, is very important.

1:16:14Andrew Huberman:So that almost forces the conclusion that if you're experiencing anxiety in perimenopause, menopause, while it may not be directly related or even indirectly related to a change in hormones, there is a mechanistic basis to suspect that it could be. And therefore you should absolutely talk to your doctor. Any doctor that truly cares about your health should be willing to have a conversation about whether or not your levels of estrogen, perhaps even testosterone, progesterone, need adjusting through any number of existing therapies, many of which are very inexpensive nowadays, by the way, in order to bring things back to a place where you're feeling less anxious, more vital.

1:16:52Andrew Huberman:Whatever symptoms you may be struggling with, those could be overcome. But of course, there are other ways to approach this as well. I will mention that on previous episodes of the podcast where I had experts in perimenopause and menopause on to discuss these specific issues. There was also a lot of discussion about the importance of eating a low inflammatory diet to making sure that you get adequate sleep. And many people often say that in perimenopause and menopause, their sleep suffers. So whether or not that needs to be approached from the symptom level, like going after sleep specifically, like, okay, you're going to make certain lifestyle changes to try and make it easier to get to sleep.

1:17:26Andrew Huberman:But if there's middle of the night wakings, night sweats, these kinds of things, perhaps hormone therapies are going to get more at the foundation of those issues. And any doctor that cares about you will be willing to have this multi-pronged conversation. Again, this is a absolutely critical area of women's health and therefore human health. We receive so many questions about it. I will apologize again for not getting into more depth about this, but that really deserves having an expert guest on the podcast to go into what's latest in this area in terms of the research and the clinical trials.

1:17:58It's not happening fast enough, but there are new data. So stand by. We'll talk about it more soon. Okay. Next question. Hello, Huberman Lab team and Andrew. My name is Nick Ferrendo. I live in North Carolina, United States. Me and my fiance are getting married this October. And when planning our outdoor wedding ceremony, we got to thinking about whether doing the ceremony during the sunrise hours of the day or sunset hours of the day would have a different mental effect on our guests because of the sunlight being received during those two times and didn't know if it was different or the same and would love your input.

1:18:49Thank you very much. Later. well i never predicted that i'd be giving marriage advice on the huberman lab podcast but here we go nick and to your fiance congratulations um super happy for you guys and the fact that you're thinking about sunlight and its effect on your guests just shows not only a compassion for your guests but uh that you're fully integrating your wedding and presumably your your life together going forward in this incredible thing that is our circadian rhythm in any event the answer here can be pretty direct and brief which is i would go for the sunset wedding and i'll tell you why otherwise you're going to be getting ready very very early in the morning and typically people like some time to get ready for weddings while i would say about 20 percent of people fall

1:19:47Andrew Huberman:into this category that we call early birds by virtue of chronotype meaning they are genetically hardwired to prefer to get up very early and to go to sleep very early most people are either night owls they like to get up later you know after 9 a.m and stay up late or the majority of people prefer to get up between 6 and 8 a.m and go to sleep somewhere between 10 p.m and midnight that's It's just the majority of people in the world. And people are going to want to have time to prepare for the wedding ceremony. They're going to want to get up, hopefully get some sunlight, get dressed and do all those things.

1:20:25And it's going to be tough for people to push early into the day for an early ceremony.

1:20:29Andrew Huberman:But of course, they're there to honor you guys and they can do it. And I'm saying all of this because it illustrates a really important larger point, which is that although our circadian rhythm is a really powerful force in our energy levels and when we like to go to sleep, most everybody has the ability to stay up later than we would prefer to, meaning we can push a couple more hours past our normal to bedtime and stay up later. But it's very hard for people to get into gear and be wide awake and alert earlier than their normal wake-up time. So you're being kind to all your guests by putting the event in the afternoon.

1:21:08I suppose the night owls will be happiest because to them that's sort of their, it's not still their morning, but it's kind of their early afternoon. To the people that tend to be on a more normal chronotype schedule, waking up between six and 8 a.m. and going to bed between 10 and midnight, hopefully they'll stay for the entire party.

1:21:26Andrew Huberman:I imagine you'll have a celebration of some sort and they'll be able to do that just fine. They might get to bed a little bit later than they normally do, they'll be just fine. And the early risers might struggle with the party, but they'll be fine as well. It just so happens that by time the ceremony rolls around at sunset and I don't know what time of year, if it's going to be in the Carolinas or elsewhere. So I don't know exactly when the sun is setting. Now we could get into details as to whether or not the ceremony is going to be east facing or west facing, but I don't think we need to do that.

1:21:56That's too down in the weeds. Very simply, if you want to have the most number of people alert and rested and prepared and felt like they had enough time to get there the few stragglers who are going to be late and all of that make sure everyone's in attendance i would go for the evening wedding and as a more general point going forward i again wish you congratulations and definitely get that morning sunlight as a couple if you can if one of you sleeps in a little bit later honor that too all right chronotypes are a real thing some people will argue that having aligned chronotypes and schedules is critical for a relationship.

1:22:34Some people would argue that it's good to have slightly asynchronous ones. Look, there are no real studies on that. And were they to do those experiments? And I doubt they ever will. I think what you find is that either can work. Watching a sunrise together is great. Watching sunsets together is great. And watching both is even better. Hello, my name's Kelly. And I had a question about recovering from a kidney donation surgery and what you can do following the surgery to retain as much muscle mass as possible during that recovery time. Also, if there's anything you would do beforehand to increase the odds of less loss in that post-surgical time period.

1:23:21Thank you very much. well thank you for your question kelly and really thank you for uh the incredible um act that you're uh that you're asking about a kidney donation i mean these things save lives gosh there aren't even words for it i mean to give a kidney to save somebody's life what a wonderful and remarkable thing so thank you so much for that what a beautiful example of uh humans helping humans how to best go into and recover from any surgery, and in particular, this one. The short answer is go into it as fit and rested as you possibly can. Now, life constraints will determine what that means for you, but it's very clear.

1:24:08Andrew Huberman:And in particular, if you're thinking about maintaining muscle and maintaining general fitness and speed of recovery, that having your strength and your cardiovascular health, as good as it can be heading into the procedure, and that also means not exhausting yourself or injuring yourself by overtraining, is going to be immensely beneficial. And I can say this because I have several friends who are surgeons that will say to me always, that the athletes that come in, even if they're dealing with major surgeries, even if they're not pro athletes, they're just sort of recreational athletes, always recover faster.

1:24:44Andrew Huberman:Why? Well, their metabolic health is better. Their circulation is better. And yes, they probably also are used to pushing into challenge and coming out of surgery can be challenging. I've had surgeries before, and I can tell you that it's always striking to me how absolutely dreadful I would feel coming out of it, you know, two, three days. I was like, oh my God, I don't know how I'm ever... And then five days later, like, wow, I can't believe how quickly I've healed. And I don't consider myself, you know, any kind of serious athlete. I mean, I'm athletic, I exercise and so forth. Those surgeries were when I was younger from broken bones and things like that.

1:25:22So they weren't nearly as intense and invasive as what you're asking about here. But have your cardiovascular fitness in place if you have time before the surgery. So great time to do, and I imagine you might be doing any number of things that I'm about to describe, but perhaps more as well. But as we talked about earlier, at least one long, slow distance, you know,

1:25:43Andrew Huberman:of about 45 minutes to an hour, zone two, three-ish cardio per week, some high-intensity interval training at least once per week, maybe twice and something more moderate in the middle, kind of moderate intensity of about 30 minutes or so, and some strength training for both the lower body and the upper body, most probably on days other than the cardiovascular training, two to three days per week. And again, not overtraining, right? Not pushing yourself to try and get so fit that you're exhausted because you don't want to go into a surgery exhausted. But you do want to go in getting adequate sleep.

1:26:18Andrew Huberman:It's normal the night before a big surgery to perhaps not get as great sleep as you normally do. That's normal. I think most surgeons will attest to the fact that while not ideal, that doesn't prohibit a really great recovery either. It's just normal kind of pre-surgery anxiety is common. But in the days and weeks before the surgery, being as rested as possible. And here's the big one, both going into and out of surgery. And I know some of you are going to go, oh, here he is again with the sunlight thing. I will tell you, based on a lot of experience visiting people in the hospital, which was just adjacent to my lab at Stanford, these are people who are dealing with everything from cancer to surgery, patients of different ages.

1:26:58I actually was, I sat in on, I didn't participate. Of course, I'm not a surgeon, on a brain surgery recently up at UCSF. And I'll tell you in talking with the brain surgeons

1:27:10Andrew Huberman:that when patients get and stay on a as normal as possible circadian rhythm coming out of surgery, it helps immensely. There are even data showing that recovery from surgery and other illness in the hospital is significantly improved if the patient is next to a window where they get some natural light. If you can't do that, really think about eye mask at night so that you can get it as dark as possible. It's really hard in some hospitals to get it really dark and quiet because there's a lot of noise from the equipment and people are coming in for the checks all night. And you have the night staff, great eye mask for sleeping at night, great earplugs to keep it as quiet as possible so you can sleep on as normal as is possible for you schedule.

1:27:54If you can be positioned next to a window, I think if you're giving a kidney, they should put you next to a window and they should put you next to an east-facing window. I don't know what hospital you're at. This person is giving a kidney. They deserve to be near an east-facing window, darn it, for their recovery. And that will allow you to get on and stay on a normal circadian schedule. Or even west-facing, as we talked about earlier, get some ambient light in the early part of the day and get that outdoor time, some fresh air. This is going to massively help your overall state. It's going to tremendously help your sleep, which is going to tremendously help reduce the inflammation post-surgically.

1:28:33it's going to accelerate your healing and on and on. This circadian rhythm stuff, folks, is real. It is absolutely real and it is foundational to our health. Then in terms of what you can do to just get back the muscle that you had or maintain it through this period,

1:28:50Andrew Huberman:if you have been exercising and doing strength training and perhaps hypertrophy and strength training for some period of time going into this, you will be amazed at how quickly an atrophied limb or an overall reduction in muscle and strength comes back. A lot of the quote-unquote muscle memory that we talk about is skill-based muscle memory. I haven't ridden a bike in years, but I can still do it, muscle memory. But there's the other kind of muscle memory, which is the nerve to muscle, the motor neuron to muscle, which controls muscular contractions, quote-unquote memory, which is the reestablishment of strength, the reestablishment of hypertrophy when you had it prior.

1:29:31So regaining strength and muscle size is far easier than gaining it for the first time. The one exception being that when you're young, if like you're in your late teens, early 20s, it's pretty easy to gain muscle fast when you first start exercising, but that tapers off pretty quickly after about a year or so. And then you have to fight for every bit of it. And as you get older, it's harder to get stronger and to build muscle, but you can do it. Now, that's the conventional stuff. And even that doesn't sound that conventional. I'm guessing that a lot of doctors probably are not talking about this, but that's not because they don't talk about it.

1:30:05It's just, it's hard to prescribe to a lot of patients. And in particular, and here I'm calling out the hospitals, not Stanford Hospital, but other hospitals, they treat people, they want them to heal, they want to free up beds, they want to send them home, but the environment in the hospital is not circadian friendly to the patients or the staff. It's just not, it's not the nature of how hospitals work. and I'm not just talking about the emergency rooms. It's just not. The bright lights, the noises in the middle of the night, and the lack of natural daylight coming through. And it has a negative impact.

1:30:39It really does at multiple levels. So you have to kind of push back on the system in order to try and get the best possible circadian environment, if you will. Once again, Kelly, thank you ever so much. You're a godsend for somebody out there and we need more people like you. Okay, before our last question, I just want to put a note out to Cody Morrison, who asked a great question about careers in science. First of all, Cody, good luck on your PhD defense. Let me know how it goes. Second, I'm happy to talk about postdocs with you. I don't know if you're in neuroscience or another field. I'm not currently taking postdocs in my lab, but I've had several, including several who have laboratories of their own now and graduate students who now have laboratories of their own as professors.

1:31:27So even though the landscape has changed, the funding and other landscapes have changed since I started my research lab, I have some things that perhaps will be of interest to you that we can discuss. So I'll be reaching out directly to you. And the only reason I didn't take your question publicly is because I think that most people listening are probably not in the research science track. but also because I'd like to give all your questions adequate time. And obviously, I have a soft spot for anyone who's seriously considering going into research science and would love to be of help in any way that I can.

1:32:00All right, final question for today. We'll do more in the future. Hello, Mr. Andrew Heberman. My name is Kevin. And my question is, how does one find what they are truly passionate about? because anyone that follows you and what you do can safely assume that you're passionate about health, science, and teaching the community about those things. And as someone who just graduated from college and is finding themselves in the world, and I'm sure I can speak for millions of other people, I was wondering if there was any science-backed evidence of being able to find what someone is really, truly passionate about.

1:32:44Kevin, thank you so much for your question. This is a vital question in our lives, regardless of age. Oh, and congratulations on graduating college. That's no small feat. I know people have mixed feelings nowadays about the value of degrees, et cetera. I, you know, and here I'm heavily biased. I'm a university professor and I'm, you know, super enthusiastic about learning and teaching and all the rest. But I still think for many, not all, it's a wonderful choice and it's no small thing to finish a degree. So congratulations to you and to your family. Finding your passion. That's a big question.

1:33:22It's actually one that I touch on in the final chapter of my book, among other things in that chapter. And that's not a plug for the book. It's just simply to say that I go into this in some detail beyond what I'm gonna offer here, just for sake of time. I'll do my best to give you and anyone else listening to this, what I think are the key things, regardless of age. First of all, if you don't know what your passion is, and even if you think you might, even if you are absolutely sure you do, it is absolutely critical that if you want to be successful, that you continue to be structured about your daily life.

1:34:03Now, I don't mean over-optimization, doing every single health protocol.

1:34:07Andrew Huberman:That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is you need to have a purpose each day in waking up, even if it's not the thing, it doesn't feel like the thing. So I think it's very important if you're a student to focus on your studies. If you're able to do that and not work, more power to you. Many people have to do that and work. If you're working a job, no matter how far from where you would like to be eventually, internally, if it's the completely wrong career for you, until you start to feel something pulling you or even just tilting you in a slightly different direction, it is vitally important to continue to take care of yourself, to try and get the sleep that you can, to get your morning sunlight, to get some exercise, do those things.

1:34:51Doesn't matter if you're a store clerk, you're selling shoes.

1:34:54Andrew Huberman:I mean, long before I became a scientist, I mean, I worked in skateboard shops, I sold shoes, I assembled radio flyer wagons and toys at a toy store. I mean, I worked in a bakery, I had a paper route, I mowed lawns, I did all those things. I can't say that I loved all those jobs. Some of them I liked more than others. Some of them paid barely anything. Some of them paid a little better, but it's just so important to stay busy and to continue to work and work on yourself. And this isn't just theory, right? You're cultivating the skills that in some way you're going to apply to your passion once you find it.

1:35:33Now, how do you find the passion? The way you find the passion can be best summarized, not to sound mystical here, it sounds a little bit like a riddle, but the great Joe Strummer from The Clash, who in my opinion started the better band, the Mescaleros later, which wasn't punk rock. It's not, I don't even know if it's rock and roll. It's just music, amazing. He created three masterpieces later in his life. He had this saying, which was, it was literally called Strummer's Law, which is no input, no output. You need to be interfacing with the world in order to have ideas and to discover what your passion is.

1:36:09You know, the other day, because I had a bunch of just kind of wrote things to do, I had to handle a bunch of stuff that could be done kind of mindlessly, but it had to be done. I was listening to a lecture on modern art history. I just decided to put that in modern art history documentary into YouTube to saw what came up. And I discovered two artists that just completely blew my mind. And I love art. I love modern art. I hadn't really gone down this rabbit hole of these two particular artists. And it doesn't really matter who they are or what they did. But in that listening, I had a couple of ideas about things related to the visual system that I worked on years ago.

1:36:47And some interest that I have in eye health as it relates to some of this emerging peptide science field. Okay? That's the way the brain works. It's taking different nodes of interest

1:37:01Andrew Huberman:and combining them, and that's what your original contribution to the world, whatever it happens to be in, whether it's an exercise science or finance, or you're a high school teacher, those things are gonna converge in the unique version that is you. Now, the only way that you can find your passion is to keep an active interest in the world. That also means not getting pulled into other people's rabbit holes. You need to avoid two things critically. These are the don'ts. Avoid drama, especially getting pulled into it and avoid numbing out. Anything that activates you, gets you angry. Okay, that might be something that could turn into a sense of justice and advocacy, great.

1:37:40If that's your path, okay. Maybe you go into public policy or something of that sort or into advocacy for animals or the world or certain group of people, great. But you have to be very careful that you're not getting pulled into meaningless dramas, that you're not also numbing out because a lot of what's out there in the world is designed to do one or two of those things. So stay structured in your life. Do some job, work. This is critical. I also think at a certain age for some people earlier than others, because they have to, earning your own money just feels good, even if it's not a lot. Just earning your own money, putting in savings, maybe spending some of it, putting into investment account, that kind of thing feels really good.

1:38:22You're building something. that algorithm, that underlying operation of doing something, showing up, trying to be good at it, maybe even great at it, even though it's not your calling, sets the stage. It prepares you for when you get kind of pulled towards something. Oh, I'm really interested also in this aspect of fitness or this aspect of filmmaking. And eventually you'll pick your trajectory. And the key thing is to remember that's not your final trajectory. You're heading off on a vector that will take you to some place that will take you someplace else, someplace else. You may have one career, you may have several in your lifetime, but no input, no output.

1:39:00Remain curious and become good and ideally great at listening to your own inner compass. Or I like to think about antennae. Occasionally I see something, I'm just like, wow, this is, I don't know why it's interesting and I don't care. You're inspired by it. Some element of it gets into your consciousness and you move forward with that. I actually have a notebook. This is something I've done since my teens. Early in my academic career, I had a list. I update that list and I have names of different people. Some were from the world of science, some from health and fitness, some from art, some from music.

1:39:38I'm not a musician. I have zero minus infinity musical talent, but I love music as a consumer. I just really enjoy being a consumer of it. These are people whose kind of careers or what they did really impressed me. they resonated with me. That's the thing because I mean, a lot of people impress me, but it resonated with me. And over the years, I would cross them out and add some in. And in many ways, the career arc that I've taken, the passion arc or passions, plural arc that I've taken is a reflection of all of that. Plus my own unique experience. By the way, this was long before podcasts or even heard about personal development or any of that.

1:40:14Get in touch with what moves you, what wakes you up, what kind of gives you a charge in your body that's not meaningless drama and also avoid numbing out. And here's the other piece. If you're going to go down a particular path, this is so critical. If you're going to go down a certain path, don't try and bring your unique spin into it too early. Every career path, whether it's biological sciences or psychology or exercise physiology or finance, there's a chop wood, carry water phase of that where you have to develop the competency and go from unskilled to skilled and hopefully from skilled to mastery in that thing.

1:40:53And first of all, no one wants to work with the person that's trying to bring their own unique spin to the thing that they barely understand too early, okay? You have to get your chops in something. So you have to apprentice yourself to something. And that can be very difficult for people who have a sense of self that they're a little different. They don't want to do things the way everyone else does. They need to see themselves, their unique gift in the thing. and I'll tell you what, you will be able to do that and you can transform an entire field. You will literally change the game of what you do, but you gotta get the core mechanics and the basics first.

1:41:28You don't get to come in there and be like, I'm me and I'm gonna change the game. No, it's chop wood, carry water. So that's like, you know, dribble, shoot, guard, pass, like, you know, basketball, whatever. Whatever your, at that time, vocation turns out to be, you have to work through the core mechanics of that. You have to see the things you're proficient at, the things that come naturally. And then of course, they're gonna be things that are much harder for you. And you're gonna have to overcome those to be in that field. And this can be a tough pill for a lot of people to swallow. But if you can accept that, you're gonna apprentice yourself to this thing for a short while knowing that it's not, or a long while knowing that it's not your final destination and that you'll eventually be able to bring in some, probably not all, but some of your unique gifts to that craft.

1:42:14And that's where your unique contribution is going to come through. So what I'm describing here are a number of different tributaries that all start with you that eventually converge in your unique gift to your passion. But in the meantime, stay structured, take care of yourself, avoid meaningless drama, don't numb out, try different things, develop a sense of taste, what moves you toward or away from things. Learn yum, yuck, meh. Like if you see something or like something in a given area of whatever, any vocation, like, yes, I love that. Or no, I definitely don't like that. Or meh, there can be some mehs and some yums, but the, ugh, no, that's not going to work.

1:42:54But with that said, once you take on something, you decide to do it, there are going to be some things that are hard. Don't confuse that for yuck. It just means you haven't developed the skillset yet. And you're going to have to embrace and tackle certain things that are hard for you. You have to chop wood, carry water for a while. but once you go from unskilled to skilled and you're starting to transition from skill to mastery, and certainly once you've developed mastery in an area, then you can bring together or include some of your unique experience and do something truly unique, truly exciting, and transform your field, likely transform the world, because in some small or large way, you're gonna transform the world.

1:43:29So that's the recipe for finding your passion. It's really about being you, but plugging yourself into some sort of system long enough to get really good at something so that then you can put your stamp on it. Worked for me. All right, everyone, that closes out our Huberman Lab podcast Q &A session. I really appreciate all of you joining. Extra special thanks to those of you that called in with questions. And again, if your question wasn't selected for today, there's still a chance it will be selected for a future Q &A session of the Huberman Lab podcast. And of course, to all of you, the question askers and all of you listening, thank you for your interest in science.

1:44:09Thank you.