Andrew Huberman on Protein, Peptides, and the Science of Feeling Better

10:44Andrew Huberman:And he's highly revered. He does surgeries no one else will do.

10:48Gwyneth Paltrow:Is he doing the Neuralink stuff?

10:49Andrew Huberman:He has his own company doing that. Sorry, Elon. They would love to get him at Neuralink. He's doing things, honestly, they're doing very cool stuff. He's doing things 10 times cooler. Wow. I mean, he's been written up a number of times. I'm so proud of him. He's gotten people with locked-in syndrome to speak. He had a patient, Pablo, who hadn't spoken in 10 years. And through an AI interface that he built with decoding speech and language, which is really what Eddie's expert at, Pablo said, hello. He can communicate with people.

11:21Gwyneth Paltrow:Oh, my gosh.

11:22Andrew Huberman:I mean, he's been written up a number of times for that and other feats. He's spectacularly good.

11:28Gwyneth Paltrow:And he obviously has the heart of a poet as well. If he's having a bird club and also getting someone to speak, it's so poetic.

11:36Andrew Huberman:It's amazing. It's amazing. I mean, he's changing neurosurgery. He's changing medicine. He saved a, I won't mention, there's a very public facing physician who paralyzed himself with a stem cell injection into his spine recently. Don't get stem cells injected into the discs, I was told, because the discs can't receive stem cells. But he went to a clinic. He was paralyzed. Eddie did the surgery. His team did the surgery, I should say, that no one else would do. This gentleman is now walking again. They were going to sever his spinal cord. So these, these are real heroes. So, you know, I feel like, um, a lot of the podcast for me was about my love of a topic,

12:13Gwyneth Paltrow:right. Um, the beauty and utility of biology and proliferate this wisdom, like throughout the culture, you've so many listeners. I mean, it's amazing to be like the, the tree and then the roots that spread from it.

12:26Andrew Huberman:It's been fun. It's been wild. I mean, I, I, the public facing piece has been really hard. I was not prepared for that.

12:33Gwyneth Paltrow:You weren't. What was hard or what is hard?

12:36Andrew Huberman:You said it in your discussion with Rick, people kind of want to keep you where they found you. And so I think people are like, oh, he's a science professor talking about biology. But I brought on former Mr. Olympia, Dorian Yates on the podcast because he has the best training tools and he doesn't care if there's a double blind placebo controlled study for that. We just want to showcase that knowledge. So people see that and then they go, wait, what's happened to your podcast, but I hate to say this. It sounds kind of selfish because there's always been a give in the podcast, but the podcast is called Huberman lab for a reason.

13:07Andrew Huberman:I mean, it's my podcast. If I want to talk to someone, I'm going to talk to them. I'm totally, you know, my PhD is still there. I'm still tenured. I'm not worried about whether or not I was, or am a scientist.

13:16Gwyneth Paltrow:It's, you know, so it's obviously for the audience, but if I want to talk to Dorian or David Cho,

13:22Andrew Huberman:I'm going to talk to them, you know? And so the hard part I think is when people think that that fundamentally changes the information they heard before. It's not different. It's still true. It's also been important, I think, for me to understand that vegans versus carnivore versus, you know, for a long time, resistance training was looked down upon for women. Now we know it's very important. The science takes a while to catch up. And I think that it's exciting to me now that health and wellness is a hybrid of these things. I've got a colleague at Harvard Med, who studies acupuncture. He's figuring out that certain combinations of needle sites lead to either increases or decreases in inflammation.

14:07Andrew Huberman:The ones that increase inflammation can increase mood because sometimes they'll stimulate dopamine release. The other ones can reliably reduce inflammation to get to gut health issues and things of that sort. So if five years ago or 10 years ago, I said, oh, you know, I'm going to host someone on the podcast to talk about acupuncture. People have been like, oh God, like, what is this? You know, next magic carpets. I'm aware of that. And so, but I think that the sand between the silos is really starting to show up and it's super exciting.

14:36Gwyneth Paltrow:It is. And I think that's also where, you know, the consumer in having this new sort of agency around their health and ideas are really forging forward in that sense. And I also think too, you know, there's, and I say this all the time, you know, in the early days of Goop would, people would say like, why are you writing a piece on acupuncture or something, you know, in that world? And the other part is, you know, first of all, I believe always like if something, if there's a modality that is generations and generations and generations old, there's going to be something in there. There's just always is.

15:12Gwyneth Paltrow:And also you always have to look at, and I'm not saying, of course, we need double blind placebo backed studies, especially when it comes to things like medications and all the things, but there's always somebody who stands to benefit from that monetarily. And somebody who goes out of their way to study acupuncture and puts the science behind it. Nobody's going to patent that. It's not going to become a$3 billion drug. So the impetus isn't there a lot of times to study these things and to put scientific backing behind them, but there's still validity to them.

15:48Andrew Huberman:Oh, absolutely. And I think that there are two areas that I learned about recently through the podcast that have just completely reframed the way I think about traditional and modern medicine. The first was I had a guy on the podcast, Chris McCurdy, he's a researcher down in Florida and he studies kratom, which is this plant that causes both increases in alertness and it's also a mild sedative and it's used in Indonesia and people chew on it there. And, you know, it's just part of the culture here. It's been used to isolate just kratom from the plant and to create these very potent chemical derivatives that act like opioids.

16:29Andrew Huberman:And so it's become a real problem. It's helped some people get off opioids, but it's become a real problem drug. It's sort of like taking the Coca-Cola.

16:35Gwyneth Paltrow:It's like an over the counter thing. I saw it on the show. A lot of issues.

16:38Andrew Huberman:And you're going to start hearing more about this. And he explained that just like the Coca, the Coca leaf can be used to isolate cocaine, which obviously can cause problems for people, but that there are many things within the Coca leaf that are beneficial. And that opened up a discussion where he said, all the drug companies have what are called bioprospectors. Most all of the drugs that we take, unless it's a synthetic version of a hormone or something, or a peptide, are drugs that were discovered because they have bioprospectors literally in the jungle, learning about these different plants, bringing them back, isolating the different components and seeing which one would be good painkillers, which one would be opioids.

17:17Andrew Huberman:So the notion that plants and plant medicine, outside of psychedelics as well, plant medicines, alkaloids and things like that would somehow be woo is ridiculous. These are the origin of most modern medicines. Right.

17:35Gwyneth Paltrow:Isn't willow the basis for aspirin? Absolutely. And berberine is the basis for -

17:41Andrew Huberman:Metformin. Metformin. Yeah. Berberine works as well as metformin for regulating blood sugar at a fraction of the cost. Right. And then I had a guy named David Fagenbaum on the podcast, who was a physician who got Castleman's disease, who cured his own Castleman's disease.

17:56Gwyneth Paltrow:What is Castleman's disease?

17:57Andrew Huberman:Castleman's disease is a very serious disease. It's a cancer-like disease, I believe. Check me on that. But he was close to death in medical school. And he actually had to sign away his life. And he just said, you know, the hell with it. I'm just going to start taking every approved medication in small combinations. and he cured his own Castleman's disease. He now has a not-for-profit called Every Cure, where people who, or whose kids have diseases that are resistant to treatment, can use AI to try and come up with using existing approved medications to treat their condition with great success.

18:37Andrew Huberman:So here's what's interesting. Most drugs, once they pass through the patent, they're not of interest to the drug companies anymore because they can be sold so cheaply. So there are tons and tons of drugs that have 40, 50 different targets in the body that were marketed for one thing, passed through the patent, and actually can be very effective for treating other things. But we don't know. Nobody's studying them in laboratories. No one's marketing them. And his example is an extreme one, but he's got dozens of other examples there. So it means that the so-called pharmaceutical industry, while I do think they provide some useful things, it is a business.

19:12Andrew Huberman:Yeah. And like right now, GLPs obviously are a big deal. And there's something, and by the way, that was discovered because a biologist was studying Gila monsters. Gila monsters don't need to eat very often. What is a Gila monster? A Gila monster is one of those big, chubby, venomous South American reptiles. Oh, okay. I think it was in that movie. What was that? Marlon Brando and Matt, and who's Sarah Jessica Parker's husband?

19:39Gwyneth Paltrow:Matthew Broderick.

19:39Andrew Huberman:Broderick and wasn't it, he was in a movie where there was like a Gila monster or Komodo dragon or something. Anyway, the Gila monster spelled G I L A does not need to eat very often. Some nerdy biologist was like, I wonder how they don't get hungry. Isolated a peptide from the Gila monster. Oh my gosh. Turns out that's the GLP one.

20:00Gwyneth Paltrow:Are you serious?

20:01Andrew Huberman:Serious.

20:02Gwyneth Paltrow:I did not know that.

20:02Andrew Huberman:So this is how biology, like nerd biology, basic science can lead to cures for obesity, even though there's some issues with GLPs perhaps. What are they? Well, you get a lot of muscle loss unless people resistance train. The early versions of the Mozempic, Manjaro, et cetera, for some people, they get a lot of gastric discomfort because there are receptors in the hypothalamus that controls hunger. And there are also receptors in the gut. So it makes people feel really full. And there are receptors for the GLPs all over the brain. Just like serotonin SSRIs, it's not a clean treatment for depression.

20:36Andrew Huberman:people get side effects. Same thing with the GLPs.

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22:48Gwyneth Paltrow:Can you explain why they're saying there are certain GOPs that are single agonists, double and now there are triple agonists, which are purported to be better overall for the health or less, you know, disadvantageous to muscle loss. What, what does that mean?

23:05Andrew Huberman:Yeah. So the, and is that true? It is true. The big thing that's coming out soon is red at true tide, right? People are already taking it, but they're getting gray market versions or black market versions. So the early version of these drugs existed a while ago where you could agonize, meaning increase the amount of GLP-1. That was used to treat diabetes pretty successfully. And those were two to fourfold increases in GLP-1. People did not lose much weight, if any. Then they developed Ozempic Monjaro, which increased levels of circulating GLPs like a thousandfold. So huge increases. The brain and body are not accustomed to seeing this.

23:44Andrew Huberman:But people would lose a ton of weight, but they would also lose muscle mass.

23:49Gwyneth Paltrow:By not eating or there's a secondary?

23:51Andrew Huberman:They would go into subcaloric mode so fast, reduce the appetite so fast at the level of the brain and the body. So feeling full and not having the drive to eat. And they would lose so much weight so fast and a large percentage of it was muscle mass unless they did resistance training. People quickly realized that they could take less and still get a really great effect. That irked the drug companies. The side effects thing kind of got out of control. And then it became somewhat political. People were saying from the exercise community, I think unfairly said, hey, listen, you just need to do lifestyle things.

24:29Andrew Huberman:And I do think that once a person puts on enough adipose tissue, it changes the hormone environment, which changes the brain. And there's a lot of dysregulation that makes it really hard for them to quote unquote, just eat less. I'm not trying to give people a pass. I do think that people should take really good care of themselves, but these drugs were saving lives. We now have GLP-3, which is red atrutide. Eli Lilly holds the patent. I said we, I don't have any relationship with Eli. I wish I bought stock because they're about to make a trillion or more dollars with red atrutide. Red atrutide is a more mild agonist of GLP-1.

25:04Andrew Huberman:It also increases glucagon and something called GIP. It hits three different pathways, each a bit more subtly, so lower side effect profile, and people lose up to a third of their body weight across a year or so.

25:17Gwyneth Paltrow:Wow.

25:18Andrew Huberman:And it does seem to have some muscle sparing effect. Now, what people in the kind of exercise fitness community have realized is that there are places that will synthesize Red at True Tide. They're taking, I'm not recommending people do this, but they're taking a gray market, black market, or getting it from compounding pharmacies. Eli Lilly is very upset about this because they stand to make an absolute fortune with this drug. But people are also realizing again that they can take less. They don't necessarily need to take the full prescription dose, which means they can extend the thousand dollar or whatever it is per month prescription.

25:51Andrew Huberman:I don't know what the exact price is. They can share it with family members, which you're not supposed to do. People have gotten a little bit renegade about this stuff. It's sort of like sharing music in the, in the two thousands. We're like, I'm not going to buy this. Are you kidding me? I'm not going to buy this movie unless I really love the artists that people are starting to get stuff where they can find it. But I do recommend that people avoid black market and gray market sources because they can be less than pure.

26:16Gwyneth Paltrow:Yeah.

26:17Andrew Huberman:And you don't actually know what you're getting.

26:18Gwyneth Paltrow:Well, it's pretty concerning. I mean, I think it's been interesting to observe this whole peptide craze. And I do understand that there are certain injectable peptides that are really helpful for brain health, gut health, retitutide, this kind of thing. but there are like Chinese peptide companies where people are just... So how dangerous is that? I mean, what do you think people should... Because it's sort of like you've got naturopaths passing around peptides and you have kind of these sellers of peptides and they're getting them from China. So I mean, how dangerous?

27:01Andrew Huberman:Yeah. I mean, we're sort of where we were with supplements in the nineties, where there's really no third-party testing and it's kind of word of mouth. And, you know, I mean, there were diet supplements in the nineties and two thousands that contained amphetamine and there were muscle building ones that had steroids in them. We know this. And then now we have third-party testing and reputable brands and, you know, the sort of big five or six brands that we all trust. And then for herbs, people trust certain brands. And so if you are absolutely committed to getting true, pure redditrutide. You'll have to get it from Eli Lilly.

27:37Andrew Huberman:Right. If you -

27:38Gwyneth Paltrow:And what is the vehicle? Is it a needle from Eli Lilly? Yeah.

27:42Andrew Huberman:They're thinking about, and they may even have an oral form, but it's going to be - Injectable. Injectable. Subcutaneous. It's like a little 31-gauge needle. That's dosed out. Yeah. Most likely. So how many people share it then? Oh, or they just draw from the ampule. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's -

27:57Gwyneth Paltrow:You can undo the thing that - Oh, no.

27:59Andrew Huberman:So you just, you'll get the ampoule, draw out some into a disposable syringe and then inject or the pens and they change the needles on the pens. I'm not recommending people do this, but I'm not suggesting people do any of this. This is a good hack. But let's just say I've never taken a GLP, but it'd be kind of interesting to do it as an experiment, see how I felt. But I like to eat. I love to eat. I eat Goop Kitchen every single day. People think this is a promotional. I don't get paid to say that. I'm telling you, I love, I eat it every single day, just as I did before we met in person. Thank you.

28:27Andrew Huberman:Yeah, I love it. We'll get back to that, I'm sure. But I love to eat. The reddit trutide is available now from gray market sources. The problem is that those who gray market sources can have what's called lipopolysaccharide, LPS. It can say 99 % purity, but that 1 % means there could be some LPS. LPS will cause inflammation. One injection isn't going to do it, but multiple injections over time, I could see where that could become problematic. Like compounding pharmacies are going to be better than online, you know, gray and black market sources. People say Chinese peptides as a way of kind of dissing foreign sources.

29:06Andrew Huberman:But the truth is there are a lot of sources here in the United States that are dirty too. And they might not be retitutide. It might be growth hormone. It might be, um, who knows? And that's the problem. So you need a reliable source. I do think regardless of the source of the drug, you need to work with an MD. So if you get it from an MD who gets it to you through a compounding pharmacy, right now it's illegal to do that for Red at True Tide because Lily holds the patent, but people are doing it. But things like BPC-157, which seems everyone is now taking for tissue repair and inflammation. I'm not aware of a single adverse event.

29:43I'm also not aware of a single clinical trial in humans.

29:47Andrew Huberman:There's one which looked at gut health, but it's not a great study. There is a company that owns the patent, but they're just not interested in the drug enough or in this peptide enough to pursue it. And most people say that they heal faster and do better on BPC-157.

30:04Gwyneth Paltrow:Have you ever tried any of the peptides?

30:06Andrew Huberman:Yeah, I've tried a load of peptides. I'll experiment with things and I rarely continue to do things. So I tried a peptide called Pinelin, which has very, very little human data. I no longer take it, but I got great results from it. It gave me three hours a night of REM sleep.

30:22Gwyneth Paltrow:You're kidding. Oh, it was amazing. Three hours a night of REM sleep. Is that healthy to have? It felt great to me.

30:29Andrew Huberman:I thought I'd try it. I'm a bit of an adventure. You know, I didn't put it out there as a protocol or something to suggest to people because that's just me. That's my own use. I've taken BPC 157. If I have a joint that's in pain, I maintain pretty, I've been lucky to be pretty much injury free. Knock on wood. That's because you hung up your skateboard. Because I hung up the skateboard and because I, you know, this is, if I can give any fitness advice to people is don't do the workout that you get challenged to do. Like when it's, when you go visit a friend, they're like, let's do this class or something.

31:00Andrew Huberman:That's when people get hurt.

31:01Gwyneth Paltrow:You know, I always hurt myself putting down the heavy weight. That's every time.

31:06Andrew Huberman:So picking up and putting down weights is often when people get hurt because, because we're not bracing, we're not too ready for the lift. We're not thinking about that. or even just were in a staggered stance and kind of leaning over. I don't know, get someone else to put them back on the way. It'd be good for them too. So I think that, so pineal and BPC, I've tried. The problem is I don't have a control experiment. So pineal and I stopped taking because I couldn't find another clean source and I didn't really need it. My sleep's solid doing what I do. With BPC 157, I'm lucky to not have an injury I'm dealing with, but it's hard to get really true BPC-157 now.

31:52Andrew Huberman:But it's out there.

31:54Gwyneth Paltrow:Why is that? Because this other company holds the patent?

31:56Andrew Huberman:No one's really... Well, it's not supposed to be sold, so no one's compounding it. There might be some places that are, but they're not supposed to. And then I should say there are a bunch of peptides like tesamorelin, ipamorelin, MK677. These are growth hormone secretagogues that people take before sleep to promote growth hormone release in sleep. And those are FDA approved for other things. So those are less kind of mysterious and at the cutting edge because they were approved for other purposes by drug companies.

32:28Gwyneth Paltrow:So what is epimoralin approved for?

32:30Andrew Huberman:For increasing growth hormone for people like with reduced stature. So some people will take growth hormone to try and grow taller when they're kids. Other people will take a growth hormone secretagogue. There are a couple other clinical indications I can't quite remember, but things like melanotan, which is related to a peptide that's essentially secreted from the pituitary and it literally causes tanning of the skin. It tends to make people hypersexual. It's a very interesting peptide and it's naturally occurring. Well, the problem is it can make people so, There are some really scary images online of people taking too much melanotin and they look like they turn deep bronze when their natural skin tone is not that.

33:16Andrew Huberman:Wow. Okay. So you might say, oh, that sounds great, but it looks a bit unnatural. Some of the orange people that you see on television are probably on melanotin. It gives immense amounts of energy, increases libido like crazy, reduces fat. What's really interesting about the peptide that it mimics is it comes from the pituitary and not to nerd out here, but when we are in sunlight, my favorite topic, when we're in sunlight, it increases the release of this particular peptide. Now, this peptide tans people from the inside when they take it, but the pigmentation pathway, so Milano, is very closely related to the dopamine pathway.

33:58Andrew Huberman:Again, I don't want to start getting into the biochemistry here, but there's a -

34:02Gwyneth Paltrow:We can handle it.

34:03Andrew Huberman:There's an enzyme called tyrosinase, which is in the - So tyrosine, which comes from foods, like for instance, hard Parmesan cheese, the crystals on the outside of Parmesan cheese, that's basically tyrosine. It's amino acid, which is a precursor to dopamine. Incredible, right?

34:18Gwyneth Paltrow:Amazing.

34:21Andrew Huberman:the mutation that creates albinism. So you, um, or that, uh, is based on a mutation in the tyrosinase enzyme, which is a rate limiting enzyme in the synthesis of melanin and dopamine.

34:34Gwyneth Paltrow:Wow.

34:35Andrew Huberman:Incredible. And then you think, Oh, what about the beautiful, like Arctic Fox, which is white in the winter and is pigmented in the summer. And guess what? It's because sunlight activates this peptide and some other pathways through the tyrosinase activity or tyrosine activity, tyrosinase, and then eventually dopamine. There's a bunch of steps there, L-dopa and then dopamine. The animal has now energy, libido, it's pigmented, and it goes out and finds mates and mates. In the winter, it's a shutdown time.

35:07Gwyneth Paltrow:Right.

35:07Andrew Huberman:So sunlight is the thing that catalyzes these increases in dopamine, in pigmentation, and so on. And so a smart biochemist figured, oh, let's isolate this peptide. And a company said, oh, let's create melanotan. And it's actually used to treat hyposexuality. It was approved for women first. I think the drug is called Vilesi or something like that. I could be getting that wrong. But this is taken in some niche communities. I've never taken it. But very interesting, right? Energy, libido, dopamine, and mood, levels of activity for long days, 14 hour days. You see this in the animal kingdom and you see it in humans.

35:50Andrew Huberman:I'm not recommending people take melanotan, but that's an FDA approved peptide for instance.

35:55Gwyneth Paltrow:Oh, is it? That's fascinating. Yeah.

35:57Andrew Huberman:So whether or not you're talking about Gila monsters and curing obesity or treating obesity because lifestyle is still important, or you're talking about melanotan and arctic foxes turning brown in the summer and mating only during the summer. See this in tons of different species. There's this beautiful relationship between the seasons, the sun, pigmentation, and dopamine. And of course, testosterone and estrogen, which is all downstream of that. So we're biological creatures and we have this brain override thing where we try and explain everything, but I think we're a lot more susceptible to things like pheromones, even though pheromone effects in humans have been hard to find.

36:40Andrew Huberman:But most odors, the most primitive form of communication between animals is their instructions. So people trust your nose when picking a romantic partner. I really mean that. If their sweat smells really bad to you, if they smell bad to you, I actually think they're bad for you.

36:57Gwyneth Paltrow:Interesting.

36:57Andrew Huberman:I really believe this. I believe this. I don't have, there are some data, but like, I'm convinced that when people are afraid or they're anxious, they emit a certain odorance. And I think we're going to start to learn more about this. And I think it's one of the things that social media divorces us from a bit.

37:13Gwyneth Paltrow:And divorces us from a lot.

37:15Andrew Huberman:It divorces us from a lot.

37:16Gwyneth Paltrow:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's a whole other podcast. Yeah. Yeah. What, what is the most like startling thing that you've learned doing the podcast?

37:27Andrew Huberman:In terms of information, I think the conclusion that I've come to is that we have all the biological mechanisms within us to really take control of our state of mind, of our state of body, to quiet our mind, or to simply be comfortable in the chaos of our mind, but that we're never taught that. So whether or not you use an ice bath to raise your adrenaline and then kind of lean into a hard day and make it feel easier, or you use exercise to raise your mood, or you use long exhale breathing to slow your heart rate, or you get morning sunlight to kind of calibrate your whole system, which is really what it does.

38:10Andrew Huberman:I think I'm just overwhelmed by how amazing the human body is if we do the right things. I think that that's just, I'm still kind of in awe of it. Because I think other animals that have spent a lot of time thinking about their biology are exceptionally good at a couple of things. Our blessing and our curse is that we can be good at any number of different things, but we are all pretty terrible at regulating our internal systems until we know what those things are. So for me, the awe, the appreciation is like, it's all there. Whether or not you decide to do 15 minutes of journaling about something really bothering you three times, the Pennebaker trauma treatment.

39:00Andrew Huberman:The number of quality papers showing that that's extremely useful. You sit down and you write out for 15 minutes about something that's got you in your mind that you can't shake. Then you do it again a few days later, same practice. Then you do it again a few days later. I mean, that's been shown to reduce symptoms of trauma, to help people come to understand things, to purge some of the inner chatter around that, the way it's waking them up and bothering them. So all of those things are available to us. I think that I'm also still blown away by neuroplasticity. The fact that we, unlike other animals, can reshape our neural circuitry because we decide to.

39:43Andrew Huberman:And my scientific great-grandparents David Hubel and Torrance and Weasel, they essentially showed that brain plasticity can really occur. We kind of knew it from language learning and some observations in kids over centuries, but they really defined this thing that we call neuroplasticity. And whether or not somebody does therapy or the Pennebaker journaling or breath work or goes on a solo hike for 10 days or a darkness retreat, something I hope to never do. Me neither. I do not want to go on a dark. I'll tell you one, one thing is going to kill the darkness retreat industry. So forgive me, but someone I know did one.

40:19Andrew Huberman:And I said, I just not for me, sell it to me. And she said, well, it was really tough. Cause at the end they turned on the lights and there were all these spiders in there. And I was like, never, I was like, forget it. I don't mind spiders, but I need to be able to see them around me. I have no interest in it.

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41:13Gwyneth Paltrow:I wonder too if it's a specific personality type or specific like Enneagram type that can weather that. Like I would lose my mind.

41:21Andrew Huberman:Yeah. Well, I'm a solid three on the Enneagram. Okay. Where I am in the terms of the ladder of health, that's up to, you know, you can pull people close to me. but I like to think I'm at least ascending as opposed to descending. Do you like the Enneagram?

41:36Gwyneth Paltrow:Yeah, I'm a one. Can you remind me what the one is? One is a reformer. So one is always trying to improve things all the time.

41:42Andrew Huberman:That's a good one. And so it can index into, you know, like the more beautiful aspect of that.

41:48Gwyneth Paltrow:And it can index into like perfectionism and beating yourself up for stuff. Yeah.

41:53Andrew Huberman:Yeah. I think the Enneagram is brilliant. I do too. I think it's really brilliant. And I think I got a lot more out of the Enneagram than I did out of the sort of five personality dimensions.

42:02Gwyneth Paltrow:Yeah, me too.

42:03Andrew Huberman:Also, I'm very agreeable, except when it comes to what I actually do, you know, I'm kind of disagreeable. Like I like people and I'll take it all in. And then, but in the end, I got to go my own way. So I felt like it didn't really disagreeableness thing. It's like, how do you, when people offer a counter idea, what do you do? I'm not going to fight them on it, but I'm going to go home and I'm going to like make a decision. So I felt like it didn't capture much, but the Enneagram seems to really capture people.

42:26Gwyneth Paltrow:It's very, it has a lot of depth to it. Like there are many layers and aspects to it. The more you read about it, it's pretty fascinating. The three is like the achiever, right?

42:37Andrew Huberman:It's the achiever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My sister always gives me a hard time about that. She's like, you're a three. She's a therapist. I forget what she is. I think my dad's a four. Even though he's a scientist, he's like the romantic. Wow. My dad constructs his days. He's like, I'm going to walk here and we're going to go there. and we're gonna have this for dinner. It's Argentine. You know, it's like everything, everything's, and we were, he reports what he had for dinner. They're in Uruguay right now. He and his wife is seeing his brother. Like, what are you doing? Oh, we had this. It's all about the daily structure.

43:10Andrew Huberman:Yeah, it's really, it's really cool.

43:13Gwyneth Paltrow:Do you use the Enneagram like at work, at hiring people or dating or anything like that?

43:18Andrew Huberman:Oh my, no, I should. Yeah. Well, I should say for work. So I have this weird thing where when it comes to picking people from my lab or coworkers or business partners, I'm proud to say only bullseyes. I mean, people always say, oh, you're going to have this terrible relationship with your graduate. I had a great relationship with my graduate advisor. I knew she was the one to mentor me at that stage and my postdoc advisor. And I hope my students would, you know, they've all done well. They're running labs or off doing their thing. Like I never had these like big conflicts. And then with my podcast team, you know, Rob Moore, and then the other guys I brought in.

43:56Andrew Huberman:Also, I brought them in from skateboarding.

43:57Gwyneth Paltrow:Right.

43:57Andrew Huberman:Rob's not from that, but I, I knew he was the guy. I knew he was the guy to produce the podcast. And I said to him, hopefully he doesn't mind. I was like, I'll do this, but, but only if we're equal partners, I'm not going to, none of this, like kind of, I'm the, you know, it's equal. And he was like, no way. And I'm like, well, then we're not doing it. And he was like, okay. And then we brought other people in. He's a phenom. And I brought Mike Blayback, who's a famous skateboard photographer. He shot Danny Way jumping the great wall. He's, I mean, he's iconic skateboard photographer, portrait photographer.

44:26Um, I was like, we need photos like playback, like who else would be, we bring.

44:30Andrew Huberman:And then Chris, uh, Chris Ray and Martin Phobes there, they've won all sorts of awards for filming. Um, they're on the Red Bull film team and they skateboard and they work like nobody has their work ethic.

44:42Gwyneth Paltrow:My husband was like, can you ask him about this protein intake thing? Because he's like, he has always been into fitness and lifted weights and everything, but he says the amount of protein that he's seeing recommended he thinks is insane. And protein sequestered in every random thing. What are your thoughts?

45:02Andrew Huberman:Yeah, it's insane.

45:03Gwyneth Paltrow:Okay, great.

45:03Andrew Huberman:It's insane. I think if somebody, like a teenager who's growing very fast, should follow their appetite and eat nutritious food, including a lot of protein and healthy fat. I think that this idea of one gram of protein per pound of body weight, it's for some people, it's simple for other people. You feel kind of poisoned. I actually have been, whether you eat breakfast or you don't, doesn't matter so much. I think that we can kind of sense when you've had enough, certainly animal protein. And I think that I don't have any hard studies to back this up. But if you start to feel like, Oh, like you're force feeding anything.

45:45Andrew Huberman:It's bad. That's bad.

45:46Gwyneth Paltrow:But in, it's so conflicting. It's like, okay, you have to eat this much protein. It has to be like, you know, great quality animal protein, whatever grass fed dairy, whatever beef, et cetera. But then you have, you know, cardiologists saying don't eat red meat. And you have, I was reading something really interesting lately around low inflammation, vegetarian diets being so good for lowering inflammation. So what's the deal?

46:18Andrew Huberman:Yeah. So there's a great study here. We can look to some really great peer-reviewed science from Justin Sonnenberg, who's actually my upstairs neighbor at Stanford, world expert in the microbiome. He and his wife, Erica, run probably the best microbiome lab anywhere. and Christopher Gardner, who's been a kind of champion of vegetarian diets. I'm not a vegetarian, I'm an omnivore, but they did a study where they looked at people who ingest low sugar fermented foods versus intentionally increasing low sugar fermented foods versus increasing amount of dietary fiber from vegetables, some fruit, but mostly vegetables, some grains, et cetera.

46:57Andrew Huberman:And then it was a crossover design. So people, the idea to wash out, then people switch groups and they looked at what's called the inflammatome. So looking at a bunch of different inflammatory markers. We can confidently say that ingesting a couple of servings or more per day, low sugar fermented foods, so sauerkraut, natto, kefir, kimchi, Bulgarian full fat yogurt is my favorite, or Greek yogurt, things like that, greatly reduce the inflammatome. So wonderful. By way of improving the gut microbiome in very significant ways.

47:28Gwyneth Paltrow:And what about this thing that people say, well, if you have certain microbes and certain dysbiosis, then low sugar fermented isn't good. It feeds the wrong things.

47:36Andrew Huberman:Yeah. We still don't know exactly which microbes are ideal, but you don't want to be dysbiotic where you don't have enough diversity there. So we're not quite at the place where we can say it's these microbes specifically. There are a few that appear to be beneficial, but diversity of gut microbiome is great. Low sugar fermented foods, and increasing them gradually is going to help so that you don't get a ton of gastric discomfort, but finding a few that you like and ingesting those every day. The fiber group was very interesting. People increased their fiber pretty dramatically. Some people had increases in inflammatory markers.

48:10Andrew Huberman:And we know that some people -

48:12Gwyneth Paltrow:Because of lectins and grains?

48:14Andrew Huberman:It seems that there's at least two different broad groups of people. Some who can just eat lots and lots of vegetables of all kinds, and it doesn't seem to irritate their gut. I think it's highly individual. For instance, I can eat cooked broccoli. Love it. Cannot eat raw broccoli. Cabbage. Love it. Other vegetables. It's tough for me. I feel kind of not well when I eat them. So you need to experiment and find what vegetables and fruits work for you.

48:41Gwyneth Paltrow:Yeah. And it's interesting when people do the food sensitivity blood test, which I don't know if those are really mirror what's good for you or not, but a lot of people have an inflammatory respiratory response to broccoli or, you know.

48:55Andrew Huberman:Yeah. Or even, you know, if you do some blood tests, they'll show that you make antibodies to say strawberries. I do that for, I love strawberries, but the fact that I have antibodies probably reflects the fact that as a kid, I had some mild allergic reaction to them. In fact, I remember getting a little rash because I would eat like a whole bowl of strawberries, but now I can eat them just fine because I have antibodies. So we have to be a little careful with the blood testing versus the actual allergic reaction piece. You were asking about protein, but the reason I'm taking this, this route to it is that But great to eat enough fiber.

49:23Andrew Huberman:This is important. But pick the right fibrous foods. And some people don't do well eating grains. They just don't. So when the cardiologists are saying too much red meat isn't good, what else are people eating? I think that if people are going to increase their red meat consumption, and I love a good steak four nights a week.

49:41Gwyneth Paltrow:Argentina.

49:41Andrew Huberman:I don't tend to eat that many grains. I have some rice, some oatmeal. I like some sourdough. I'll eat homemade pasta. but I don't tend to mix those at the same meal, at least in large quantities. I actually think the best studies have not been done of separating your high protein and then maybe you have a pasta dish later. That hasn't really been done. It's always so extreme. I don't really trust most of the studies, frankly, on nutrition. I think most of them are completely worthless. I really do. At the extremes, I think the conclusions are real. Too much saturated fat, not good, especially if you're consuming a lot of starchy carbohydrates and sugar, you know, the combination of starch and sugar and fat, that's where things get problematic because we can just consume so much of them.

50:25Andrew Huberman:So, but when it comes to one thing that I've been doing recently, and I learned this from Sean Mackey, our head of the pain division at Stanford, when he came on the podcast, I said, what do you think of kind of these, like, you know, kind of woo stuff for gut pain? And he said, he used to think it was ridiculous, but then he himself had some really serious gut issues and he discovered that onions and other histamine producing foods would do this. And some of this might run in families. And so my sister, for instance, said to me, you know, that she started taking a, it's an enzyme to help before any kind of histamine containing food or meal.

51:01Andrew Huberman:I was like, I'll do that. It's like a little pill. I take it. Oh my goodness. I feel so much better. I used to get this kind of thing where I'd feel like a little bit itchy, feel a little tired if I had dairy a little bit later. It was subtle, but I now take this little tiny, you know, histamine, I forget what the name of his, um, HOA. Oh, that's a homeowner's association. Something else. Anyway. Oh, and here I'm talking about my memory. Um, anyway, whatever the, it's a, it's a enzyme that you take before meals that have high histamine content. I don't care what anyone tells me. I'm not waiting for a study.

51:31Andrew Huberman:I feel right. You know, for pennies a day, I feel so much better. So some people might be susceptible to histamines. And Dr. Sean Mackey's MD, PhD after all, he said it relieved his gut pain to avoid high histamine containing foods or to take an enzyme that can help digest histamine containing foods. So I think we're very individual based on genetic lineage and how we grew up and on and on. I think that getting for men, probably getting a hundred grams of quality protein per day minimum is good. Should be pretty easy to do a couple of, even if you're eating twice a day. That's pretty easy to do depending on woman and her, her size and weight, maybe slightly less than that.

52:11Andrew Huberman:But if you're doing a ton of resistance training, you're working very long hours. Sure. Be, you know, increase the amount of protein, but that protein can come from a variety of sources. I don't like to eat meat more than once a day. It's too hard to digest. I get tired. I don't like to eat meat too close to bedtime. I end up with the meat sweats thing. And, you know, I think we should all experiment and figure out what works for us. I couldn't agree. But I don't think he should feel pressured to get whatever it is, one gram per pound of body weight, especially if he's happy with his, you know, with his body composition and he feels like he's holding onto the muscle he's got.

52:43Gwyneth Paltrow:I'm so grateful to you because, you know, my son who's 19, who has, you know, this generation of kids, they have stuff, right? They have anxiety stuff. And you honestly have given him permission to really think about himself as an autonomous person. You know, he wakes up, the first thing he does is go outside. He's timing, you know, cause he's not a good sleeper either. So he follows you religiously. And, you know, I'm like, don't you want a cup of coffee? He's like, no, I have to wait, you know, 60 minutes. He's cultivating good habits.

53:20Andrew Huberman:Well, great. I look forward to meeting him. You have my phone number. So if he has any questions, he can reach out. I'm always happy to. You know, self-care is, is the best. It sets you up to be very successful.

53:31Gwyneth Paltrow:It does. And I think, you know, it's like I'm his mom. So he's seen it this way, but it's just been so nice that he, you know, has found you and he, he loves you. So thank you.

53:41Andrew Huberman:Well, thank you. Please give him my regards. I'm thankful to meeting him. And I'll say this was not promotional, but I continue to eat Goop Kitchen every day. No, they don't pay me to say that. I just love it. I started ordering and I get it for my team. I love, love, love it. Yes, I eat the Huberman chili, but, and the roasted potatoes and the salads and the bone broth, the chicken broth. Yeah. I'm, yeah, it's awesome. Thank you. It's awesome. It's so good. It's so good.

54:04Gwyneth Paltrow:And it's, the ingredients are so clean and I'm, I'm so proud of it. You know, I think there's, as you know, like food is medicine. You, you talked about it today. It's just the, you know, when we're conscious about, you know, and it's a privilege. So if we're lucky enough to be conscious about what we're eating, you know, to be able to provide meals like that that are so delicious and healthy, it's like a lifelong dream fulfilled.

54:29Andrew Huberman:It's awesome.

54:30Gwyneth Paltrow:Thank you.

54:31Andrew Huberman:Thank you.

54:36Gwyneth Paltrow:Thanks for tuning in. This has been a presentation of Cadence 13 Studios. I hope you'll listen, follow, rate, and review all of our episodes, which are available for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts.