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Here's the diabolical thing.

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The risk of dying early if you have bright nights goes up immensely.

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There have been a lot of studies on people after 6 p.m. on devices getting artificial LED exposure.

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They live shorter lives, cancer rates go up, they're metabolically unhealthy.

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But here's the really scary thing.

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We have a generation of kids that are metabolically sick.

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They cling to their iPads, they're on devices.

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But the problem is the most things are designed to make people do less of what's good for them.

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And we don't talk about this enough.

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And Andrew, you're one of the most trusted voices in health today.

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And we've waited many, many years for this.

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Protocols, an operating manual for the human body.

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Yeah, these 10 protocols are well established.

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They're the ones that are going to move the needle the most in terms of one's mental health, physical health and performance.

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Okay, so let's get into it.

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So protocol number one, you want to get sunlight because exposure each day to the skin increases testosterone and estrogen in both women and men and is important for libido.

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And then the second, and this is really key, is to reduce stress fast.

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And I'll explain how to do that in a moment.

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And then number three, working out with weights for 45 minutes, taking your sets near to failure.

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It will triple or quadruple your cortisol levels.

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But a lot of people have been told, don't spike your cortisol.

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It's the stress hormone.

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But it's a preparation hormone.

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You're preparing for adversity, but also great things.

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The next thing, and this is one of the most valuable skills, if you do it for five minutes per day, you will experience a significant improvement in mental and physical health.

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And then sleeping on your side, very important for offsetting dementia, getting rid of bags under your eyes.

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But Steven, the number one thing that you need to know about is the moment I started , my life got so much better.

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And I really started to see what I could only describe as miracles.

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Andrew, I have this outstanding question that I have to ask you.

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You don't really talk in depth about supplements.

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Oh, I do.

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I go ham.

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So you can only do five for the rest of your life.

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Oh, gosh.

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I highly recommend getting it.

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Guys, I've got a favor to ask before this episode begins.

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The algorithm, if you follow a show, will deliver you the best episodes from that show very prominently in your feed.

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So when we have our best episodes on this show, the most shared episodes, the most rated episodes, I would love you to know.

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And the simple way for you to know that is to hit that follow button.

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But also, it's the simple, easy, free thing that you can do to help us make this show better.

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And I would be hugely grateful if you could take a minute on the app you're listening to this on right now and hit that follow button.

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.

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Andrew Huberman, we've waited many, many years for this.

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And now it has arrived.

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This is your long-awaited book called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body.

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And inside this book, I counted roughly 50 different protocols split across seven different areas.

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Sleep, exercise, stress control, nutrition, light, focus, motivation and learning and personal growth.

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You've written 10 of the protocols you want to focus on sharing today.

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Can I ask, why did you choose those 10?

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They're the ones that are going to move the needle the most in terms of one's mental health, physical health, and quote-unquote performance.

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Your life will be so much better if you do them.

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And do they cost a lot of money to do the 10 that you've picked?

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No.

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They could be done either at completely zero cost or on an existing budget.

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And do you do these 10 things?

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Every day.

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Every day?

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There's one on there that I don't do every single day.

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I take off one day per week.

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But every single day without fail.

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And when you wrote them, did you write them in order of sequencing?

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Yeah, throughout the day.

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From start to finish.

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Because this is the other thing.

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Protocols synergize.

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They ratchet together.

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How well you slept last night is dictating how well you feel now.

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These are gears in a larger system.

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One moves...

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the other ones move.

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And while there is a place for pharmacology and supplements and things that you take, ultimately these gears fit together based on what you do.

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Okay.

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So let's get into it.

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What was the first thing that you drew?

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Cause I saw there was a picture there.

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Okay.

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So in my unelegant drawing, but I am a biologist, so we're allowed to do this.

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I mean, this is essentially a plot of where you wake up in the morning and then where you go to sleep at night, you know, and these are not hours of the day.

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These are the different protocols.

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1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

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Okay, so this line represents the healthy cortisol curve.

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Most people don't realize that, but you wake up because of a rise in cortisol.

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It's literally called the cortisol awakening response.

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If you've ever woken up one minute before your alarm clock, it's because the cortisol awakening response is heavily entrainable, meaning it can be matched to external stimuli.

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You want this peak in cortisol as high as possible in the first 60 minutes of your day.

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Everyone thinks you want low cortisol, but here's the deal.

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High cortisol in the early part of your day is what provides for elevated mood, focus, attention, your ability to learn.

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It's also what establishes low cortisol in the afternoon and at night, which is a requirement for falling and staying asleep.

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So this peak sets up this trough.

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So you want high morning cortisol, low nighttime cortisol.

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These represent melatonin, the hormone of sleepiness.

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As we know, if you've slept the night before, then melatonin essentially is low at morning.

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And the dashed line is adenosine, which is a downstream product of the use of ATP in your cells.

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The more you're awake, the more activities you do, the more you think.

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Adenosine builds up.

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That's why you get sleepy.

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So what's very interesting is that when you spike your morning cortisol, and I'll explain how to do that in a moment, and you do that within the first hours of your day, you also establish a case where these little blips are stress, stressful text, stressful event, but they're brief.

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We always hear that cortisol is bad, but our ability to have big inflections in cortisol stress out and then they come back down to normal is very, very good.

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if this peak was high.

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If this peak is not as high, and this is kind of like a medium or flat, what they call a flattening of the cortisol curve, you see shorter lifespan, less recovery from every kind of illness, and these stress bouts last a very long time because they're riding on a higher baseline.

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So if your morning cortisol level is lower or flat,

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then if I get that stressful text during the day, it will be a longer cortisol spike, more stress.

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Bigger and longer.

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Oh, wow.

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And not only that, but there's an indirect but very important interaction between cortisol and melatonin.

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Your sleepiness hormone doesn't come on and function as well.

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And so sleep gets very disrupted.

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So a lot of people think, oh, I don't want my morning cortisol high.

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And a lot of women in particular have been told, don't spike your cortisol.

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It's going to lead to excess visceral fat, moon face, et cetera.

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There's this condition called Cushing syndrome, which is a massive overproduction of cortisol.

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Yeah.

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Very rare condition.

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I mean, it happens, but most people are not dealing with that, right?

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Most people's morning cortisol is too low, and their afternoon and nighttime cortisol is too high.

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How do they know this stuff?

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Like, how do they test this?

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This healthy curve, as it's called, was measured through just consistent blood draws around the 24-hour cycle.

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And then it's been looked at in response to everything from caffeine to cold plunges to exercise to sunlight.

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And there's this very— So protocol number one—

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is hydrate.

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Okay.

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Your mind is exceedingly more sharp when you're well hydrated.

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And it actually helps boost your morning cortisol.

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There's a very interesting interaction between when the bladder being emptied, usually after people wake up, they use the restroom, they urinate, and then hydrating.

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And there's an, I'll talk about this a few times, but there's an ascending pathway along the vagus nerve that serves to wake up the brain and then,

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And part of that has to do with hydration first thing in the morning.

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You awake from bed to urinate in the middle of the night because of an arousal phenomenon of hydration and the bladder being full.

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When you say hydrate, do you mean electrolytes or just water?

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16 to 32 ounces of good clean water is fine.

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If you want to add electrolytes, great.

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How much is that?

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Is that a cup or is that?

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This is 16 ounces, maybe 18 ounces.

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Okay, so like a big mug.

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Yeah.

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You want to consume about 80 ounces of water throughout your day.

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It's a lot.

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But you don't want to consume, basically everything you want to do in the early part of the day, you want to do less in the evening part of your day.

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The next thing, and this is really key, it could have gone first, but you want to view sunlight or 10,000 lux artificial light.

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I could spend three hours talking about this, but I'll keep it really brief.

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When you view sunlight, there's this beautiful phenomenon that activates these melanopsin, intrinsically photosensitive ganglion cells, you know, the major focus of my work for many, many years, so I'll resist saying more.

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They literally extend physical wires that we call axons into your hypothalamus.

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Your master circadian clock resides there.

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We call that your suprachiasmatic nucleus.

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And when you view low solar angle sunlight, sun low in the sky, there's an abundance of, yes, UV, but it's lower when it's low in the sky.

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You actually can look at the morning sun more easily than you can the overhead sun.

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Why?

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The morning sun looks more yellow, orange, or even some red tones.

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Mm-hmm.

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compared to the overhead sky.

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Well, the light coming from the sky is the same, right?

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But the specific wavelengths of light, as we call them, that are coming from the sun when it's low in the sky are the optimal stimulus for these melanopsin intrinsically photosensitive cells that tell your central clock it's time to wake up.

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The day is beginning.

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Okay.

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There's also something incredible that happens if you get bright light in your eyes in that first, ideally 30 minutes, but even 60 minutes of your day, which there are two pathways by which your brain circadian clock wakes you up.

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One is it sends signals through peptides that releases and neural signals, but it's able to activate what we call the HPA axis, hypothalamus pituitary gland, which is sort of hangs outside the brain, and then adrenals.

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You release adrenaline.

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there's a unique window that passes after about an hour following waking, where your suprachiasmatic clock can trigger an alternate pathway that literally goes down your spinal column and triggers your adrenals to release additional cortisol.

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In fact, viewing sunlight in the first hour of your day takes this peak.

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Here's what it would look like if you didn't view bright light in the first hour of your day.

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It would be here, which is bad.

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And your stress responses then would be bigger and longer.

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This increase in cortisol is driven by viewing sunlight.

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Now, when I say sunlight, people say, especially in the UK, they'll say, there's no sun where I live.

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Okay.

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This could easily say daylight.

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Why?

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Because there's always daylight out.

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If you look at how bright it is on an overcast day in the middle of December, even in the UK at 8am versus midnight the night before.

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It's different.

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You know, it's obvious.

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When there's overcast skies, less of the long wavelength like the oranges and reds are coming through.

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But you want daylight in your eyes in the first hours of your day.

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Go out on your balcony if that's all you can do.

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If you're in a car, roll down the window.

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It's not good to try and do this through a window or windshield.

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There's so much data showing that spiking your morning cortisol this way

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establishes low cortisol and high sleepiness hormones, let's call them at night, which is great, buffers stress, and moreover, kickstarts your immune system to protect you against bacteria and viruses you can encounter during the day.

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It is great for your metabolism, mood, ability to learn, and on and on.

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And in the book, I explain a number of different ways how this peak relates to this trough if people are interested, but...

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If you don't have access to sunlight or daylight, using a 10,000 lux artificial light can be very beneficial.

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These 10,000 lux lights have been shown to significantly offset the symptoms of seasonal affective disorder, etc.,

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But what we're finding from this huge study from the UK Biobank is that you want bright days and you want dark nights.

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And they're additive.

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So having bright days is great for your mental health and physical health along a huge number of parameters.

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Significantly improves them.

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But having dark, even if you were in dim light all day, making it dark at night, people are healthier.

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The risk of dying early if you have bright nights goes up immensely.

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And we don't talk about this enough.

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If you don't have access to enough daylight, like you wake up before the sun comes out and you're up for two hours, let's say, before the sun comes out.

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I highly recommend getting a 10,000 lux artificial light.

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And last time we spoke, you took me outside after the conversation and you had an app on your phone.

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Right.

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Light meter.

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I have no relation to the app, but I use it.

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And that is able to tell you how much lux of light you're getting at the moment.

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But it's additive.

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So one thing that's important to note is let's say you miss a day, right?

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The next day, get outside for twice as long.

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How long should you do it?

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On a very clear morning with the sun rising.

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And by the way, you don't need to see the sun cross the horizon.

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You can just wait till it's elevated, but it's low in the sky.

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People who are concerned about UV damage should know that when the sun is low in the sky, the UV index is much lower.

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And there's a reason for that.

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It's a phenomenon called Rayleigh scattering.

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Sunrises and sunsets are very beautiful and colorful.

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When the sun's overhead, it's hard to look at.

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It's this big ball of light.

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It's so bright because you're getting all the wavelengths, the UV all the way out to the infrared coming at you in more or less equal light.

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intensities.

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When the sun is low in the sky, the UV is not completely scattered, but not as much of that is reaching your eyes.

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Much lower risk of sunburn, much lower risk of eye damage, and so on.

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So here's the diabolical thing.

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Your screens are not nearly bright enough to kickstart this increase in cortisol in the morning,

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But they are very capable of increasing your cortisol levels at night because this low level of cortisol makes you vulnerable to big increases in cortisol.

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It's a little bit of a detail that I explain in the book.

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I was going to say on this point, is it just exposing my eyes to the light or does my body need to be exposed to it?

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Great point.

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And one of the protocols in there, it's not one of the 10 I listed, is about the importance of getting sunlight on as much of your skin as possible, as is socially appropriate.

222
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Beautiful work from Glenn Jeffrey's lab at University College London.

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You know, I can believe this.

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They do a glucose tolerance test.

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So they fast people, they have them drink a glucose drink.

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They measure how fast blood sugar rises.

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And

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If they shine red light, so long wavelength is, red is long wavelength light.

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Like that, like that?

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Yeah, like this would be medium wavelength because it's yellow.

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A red would be, so this is probably, I'm guessing, somewhere between 500 and 600 nanometers of light.

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And red would be probably somewhere between 580 and 700.

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And then infrared goes out further, you know, into the 800s and 1000s.

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The sun emits all of those.

235
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Okay, so this is long wavelength light.

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Okay, so they shine a long wavelength light on people's backs and they do the glucose tolerance test and they observe a more than 25% reduction in the peak.

237
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And they also look at the rate of rise of blood glucose.

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It's buffering blood glucose rise, which we know is a good thing.

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Just to summarize, they shine red light on someone's back while they have a glucose shot and their glucose spike is lower.

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That's right.

241
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And you can do this onto bare skin or you can do it through a t-shirt.

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Turns out that these people's metabolism rose significantly.

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Right.

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Why?

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How?

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Well, long wavelength light can actually go into and through your body.

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It gets absorbed and it can go about eight centimeters into the body.

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Red light.

249
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Long wavelength light of infrared can pass all the way through the body.

250
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They show that beautifully in this study.

251
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So that's not good.

252
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No, it's fantastic because along the way it.

253
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makes conformational changes in the way that your mitochondria handle the electrons, basically.

254
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This long-wavelength infrared light that comes from the sun, it's the heat that you feel from the sun or from a long-wavelength light device, allows...

255
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It's so amazing.

256
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It actually allows your mitochondria to function more effectively, more efficiently.

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Now, it's not to say that short wavelength light, blues and greens and ultraviolet light are bad.

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We need ultraviolet light.

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We need it on our skin to make vitamin D. What you want is full spectrum balanced light, but not so much UV that you get a sunburn.

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And you don't want a lot of short wavelength light in the absence of long wavelength light.

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Best way to do that, sunlight in the early and later part of the day because the UV index is low.

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You're getting the full spectrum.

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Indoor LED lights like this, which we all spend a lot of time under, there's now evidence from Glenn Jeffrey's lab and others that it actually may damage the mitochondria.

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We talked about melatonin coming from the pineal gland that makes you sleepy at night.

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You also have melatonin in most all of the cells of your body, and there, it doesn't make you sleepy.

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It serves as an antioxidant.

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But it's sort of captured, and the way to liberate it

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is through long-wavelength light.

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So you have a protective mechanism that's kicked on with long-wavelength light that protects you against the oxidative stress and damage to cells.

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And this has many, many positive effects.

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So Glenn's lab has done experiments where they literally take in a light like this, and they have people look at it like this for one to three minutes a couple times a week.

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They look at people different ages, different eye conditions.

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He's a serious vision scientist, right?

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He's not a biohacker.

275
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He has no interest in commercial products, actually.

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although sometimes I wish he did.

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People over 40 who experience age-related vision loss, we all do a little bit,

278
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experience improvements in vision when they do this simple thing.

279
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And why would that be?

280
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Well, it turns out that your photoreceptors, which absorb light and convert it into electrical signals that allow you to see, are the most mitochondrial-rich and metabolically active cells in your entire body.

281
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Now, biologists love to play this game where they go, your tongue is the most metabolically active.

282
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Then they go, no, everyone makes a claim on this.

283
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The photoreceptors, my friends, are the most metabolically active cells in your entire body.

284
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So they have a ton of

285
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they need to protect themselves against the oxidative damage that comes with generating a bunch of downstream products from ATP.

286
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So long wavelength light is what protects us in this.

287
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So you can see significant improvements in vision for people that view long wavelength light a couple of times a week, but only in people older than 40.

288
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And get this, only in people that do that

289
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In the first three hours of their day.

290
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Yes.

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Your eyes and your body and brain are not the same at this first third of your day versus this middle third of your day versus the last third of your day and at night.

292
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They're not.

293
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Your sensitivity to bright light causing bad effects on you after sundown increases, not immediately, but it increases gradually.

294
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Your need for bright light in your eyes in the early part of the day is...

295
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immense.

296
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You need this.

297
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You want this.

298
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And if you miss a day, get out the next day and view some more light.

299
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You asked, will light to other parts of the body work?

300
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Not for setting this system in motion, but it's a great idea to get out two to three times per week.

301
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When the UV index is low, you can just look on your phone.

302
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What's the UV index?

303
00:18:20.922 --> 00:18:27.767
And in general, be the earlier or the later half of your day when the UV index is lower and to get out and get some light onto your skin.

304
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You don't have to be naked or in a swimsuit.

305
00:18:30.188 --> 00:18:31.689
Great if you are, and that's appropriate.

306
00:18:32.009 --> 00:18:35.531
But you can also just wear a T-shirt because the long wavelength light will go all the way through.

307
00:18:35.951 --> 00:18:43.315
So Glenn Jeffrey and Roger Schwelt, he's a physician who talks about the immense benefits of getting sunlight onto the skin.

308
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For getting over disease, for enhancing immune system function, and on and on.

309
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Can you, because there's going to be a lot of people right now that are going to go buy a red light lamp.

310
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Not necessary.

311
00:18:54.280 --> 00:18:54.941
Not necessary.

312
00:18:55.261 --> 00:18:57.804
No, sunlight, Pink Floyd, Pink Floyd Apple.

313
00:18:58.345 --> 00:19:03.031
Past sunlight, through a prism, it bends the light and you see the rainbow.

314
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Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.

315
00:19:05.454 --> 00:19:10.460
But also in that sunlight is ultraviolet light, some UVB exposure each day to the skin.

316
00:19:11.121 --> 00:19:16.146
increases testosterone and estrogen in both women and men, and is important for libido.

317
00:19:16.447 --> 00:19:24.115
It actually reinforces romantic relationships for reasons other than sexual interactions, attractiveness, et cetera, strong effects.

318
00:19:24.375 --> 00:19:25.636
So sunlight has it all.

319
00:19:26.017 --> 00:19:29.400
What you don't want is to go outside when there's so much UV that you get a sunburn.

320
00:19:30.161 --> 00:19:34.787
And you don't want to think that, you know, red light's the only light you need.

321
00:19:34.807 --> 00:19:36.449
You want that warmth from the sun.

322
00:19:36.489 --> 00:19:40.053
And it gets better because, and notice I'm sort of like, it gets better like a salesman.

323
00:19:40.093 --> 00:19:41.995
I'm selling nature, okay?

324
00:19:42.015 --> 00:19:47.482
I'm telling you, when you go outside and there's a lot of greenery, greenery reflects nature.

325
00:19:47.898 --> 00:19:49.900
Long wavelength red and infrared light.

326
00:19:50.300 --> 00:19:56.285
Throw on some infrared goggles and you're not going to do this, but you look and all that stuff would be glowing white in those goggles.

327
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Greenery reflects down infrared light.

328
00:20:00.268 --> 00:20:01.389
How do you know it reflects light?

329
00:20:01.689 --> 00:20:06.313
I'm stealing Roger's words as I say this, but where's the coolest place to be on a hot day?

330
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Under a tree.

331
00:20:07.554 --> 00:20:08.114
Why is that?

332
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Because it's reflecting the heat, the infrared light.

333
00:20:10.696 --> 00:20:16.200
But when you're out in greenery, you're getting all that long wave length light and it bounces around and it goes through you.

334
00:20:16.220 --> 00:20:18.061
So get out into nature, walk outside.

335
00:20:18.161 --> 00:20:25.506
If you work and live in a city, get outside, take off a brimmed hat because you do want the sun getting down onto your face.

336
00:20:25.546 --> 00:20:31.671
People are so terrified about accelerating aging based on UV, but we're not talking about baking yourself in UV light all day.

337
00:20:32.691 --> 00:20:34.593
The health benefits of this are immense.

338
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There's a Swedish study that actually showed that the more sunlight people got, the longer they lived.

339
00:20:39.817 --> 00:20:49.044
In fact, smokers who got a lot of sunlight, this isn't my favorite study, but we have to admit it's there, lived longer than non-smokers who didn't get enough sunlight.

340
00:20:49.524 --> 00:20:51.846
And there are other things too, like exercise, etc.

341
00:20:51.866 --> 00:20:53.848
But don't smoke, but get sunlight.

342
00:20:53.988 --> 00:20:55.709
There'll be a lot of night shift workers listening.

343
00:20:56.029 --> 00:20:59.152
I have a section specifically for night shift workers because...

344
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Here are the two scariest things.

345
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Night shift workers live shorter lives.

346
00:21:05.997 --> 00:21:06.978
Cancer rates go up.

347
00:21:07.458 --> 00:21:08.838
They're metabolically unhealthy.

348
00:21:09.259 --> 00:21:11.680
And it's very hard to mitigate.

349
00:21:11.740 --> 00:21:16.882
But I provide some tools specifically for night shift workers and for jet lag, by the way, because people travel.

350
00:21:18.042 --> 00:21:19.203
Here's the really scary thing.

351
00:21:20.333 --> 00:21:39.847
you and I qualify as night shift workers because the studies on night shift work, barring some of the more extreme ones, was most of them were on how many people after 6 p.m., right, are on devices, getting artificial LED exposure, or doing activities besides eating and socializing with their family or in bed.

352
00:21:40.067 --> 00:21:43.309
If you work at night at home, you're still a night shift worker.

353
00:21:43.570 --> 00:21:45.591
You don't have to work all night to be a night shift worker.

354
00:21:45.911 --> 00:21:48.293
So we have a generation of kids who,

355
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that are metabolically sick.

356
00:21:50.295 --> 00:21:52.657
And I don't like to be one of these, like, fear monger people.

357
00:21:53.478 --> 00:21:54.339
But here's the cool thing.

358
00:21:54.519 --> 00:21:57.882
I'm going to skip, because we're on to this, I'm going to skip to number six.

359
00:21:58.022 --> 00:21:58.242
Okay.

360
00:21:58.743 --> 00:21:59.043
Okay?

361
00:22:00.004 --> 00:22:02.726
As the sun is going down, you don't have to watch the sunset.

362
00:22:02.746 --> 00:22:04.108
That would be cool to watch the sun.

363
00:22:04.148 --> 00:22:04.989
Everyone loves sunsets.

364
00:22:05.669 --> 00:22:09.333
But try and get some daylight in your eyes in the late afternoon or evening.

365
00:22:09.353 --> 00:22:09.713
If you're going...

366
00:22:09.713 --> 00:22:19.759
going to be working indoors from like after lunch until nightfall, try and get near a window, do your best, go out on a balcony, take a quick walk around the building, do what you can to get some sunlight in your eyes without sunglasses.

367
00:22:19.919 --> 00:22:29.525
When you get some sunlight in your eyes in the late part of your day, let's just say in the last third of your day, and the clock times don't matter here because we all get up and go to sleep at different times.

368
00:22:30.525 --> 00:22:36.449
You buffer those cells in your eye against the negative effects of artificial light at night.

369
00:22:36.869 --> 00:22:40.171
This is your Netflix inoculation, as I call it.

370
00:22:40.651 --> 00:22:48.816
Like you can be on your computer at 9 or 10 at night without it damaging your melatonin levels quite as much, without it disrupting your blood glucose levels in your sleep.

371
00:22:49.297 --> 00:22:50.778
If you get some bright light in your eyes...

372
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in the later part of your day.

373
00:22:52.817 --> 00:22:55.400
But there's one population of people for whom this doesn't work.

374
00:22:55.960 --> 00:22:57.281
And it seems to be adolescents.

375
00:22:57.742 --> 00:23:00.905
You can't buffer them against the negative effects of screen light at night.

376
00:23:01.225 --> 00:23:03.167
What happens if you view screen light at night?

377
00:23:03.367 --> 00:23:08.972
You get big bumps in cortisol and people say, well, I can fall asleep just fine after being on my iPad or screen.

378
00:23:08.992 --> 00:23:09.833
But...

379
00:23:10.013 --> 00:23:19.377
True, some people don't have as much of a negative effect from blue light at night, but the blood glucose effects and the next morning cortisol effects are the problem.

380
00:23:19.677 --> 00:23:22.058
Remember I said high cortisol sets you up for low cortisol?

381
00:23:22.298 --> 00:23:22.498
Yeah.

382
00:23:23.218 --> 00:23:25.299
Low cortisol sets you up for high cortisol.

383
00:23:25.419 --> 00:23:32.642
So you've got a population of people, kids, who have their cortisol is slightly but significantly higher in the evening and at night because they're on devices.

384
00:23:33.002 --> 00:23:36.764
And the next morning, their cortisol levels are struggling to get up.

385
00:23:37.930 --> 00:23:42.992
You know, this is a tough one because teens socialize that way and you don't want to take their phones away.

386
00:23:43.032 --> 00:23:48.834
They cling to their iPads like, you know, like my new bulldog, Strummer, clings to a chew toy.

387
00:23:48.894 --> 00:23:51.635
You know, it's like you can take it away from them, but like they hate you for it.

388
00:23:51.735 --> 00:23:57.117
So I said view daylight because you can't always see the sun, but even if it's overcast, just get out for a few minutes and take a walk.

389
00:23:57.197 --> 00:23:58.177
Your sleep will be better.

390
00:23:58.897 --> 00:24:00.418
I feel like I'm giving a lecture in class.

391
00:24:00.458 --> 00:24:00.958
That's amazing.

392
00:24:00.998 --> 00:24:01.438
That's what I want.

393
00:24:01.458 --> 00:24:03.059
So we said hydrate sunlight.

394
00:24:03.419 --> 00:24:05.600
And then number three, I know everyone's heard it.

395
00:24:06.160 --> 00:24:11.984
But if you can exercise in the first three to four hours of your day, you could do it in the afternoon without problem.

396
00:24:12.304 --> 00:24:17.347
But there's a huge advantage to doing cardiovascular resistance training in the first three hours of your day.

397
00:24:17.407 --> 00:24:19.308
Cardiovascular or resistance training.

398
00:24:19.328 --> 00:24:19.429
Yeah.

399
00:24:19.829 --> 00:24:23.011
And in the book, I devote an entire chapter, chapter two, to exercise.

400
00:24:23.051 --> 00:24:29.375
And I explain what I think personally is the best way to structure an exercise program for somebody who doesn't want to be the most jacked,

401
00:24:29.655 --> 00:24:31.537
but wants muscle and definition and strength.

402
00:24:31.977 --> 00:24:36.361
Somebody that doesn't need to run a marathon for a record time, but wants endurance.

403
00:24:36.601 --> 00:24:41.445
Somebody who wants to be able to sprint reasonably fast and has middle distance ability too.

404
00:24:41.986 --> 00:24:43.187
And it's basically structured.

405
00:24:43.207 --> 00:24:52.214
You either lift or do cardio on alternating days, three days total of lifting, warm up, reasonably low volume of work sets, two to three work sets per exercise.

406
00:24:53.035 --> 00:24:54.576
emphasizing compound movements.

407
00:24:54.676 --> 00:24:58.378
So not like a preacher curl or a tricep kickback.

408
00:24:58.398 --> 00:25:03.841
Those are fine, but you're gonna get a lot more bang for your buck if you're doing pull-ups, rows, dips.

409
00:25:04.221 --> 00:25:05.281
Multiple muscles at once.

410
00:25:05.501 --> 00:25:08.323
Multiple joints moving at once as a compound exercise.

411
00:25:08.563 --> 00:25:09.644
Some hip hinge movement.

412
00:25:09.704 --> 00:25:12.285
So it could be squat, hack squat, some deadlifts.

413
00:25:12.385 --> 00:25:15.187
And I talk about how to get specific aesthetic effects in there too.

414
00:25:15.207 --> 00:25:19.651
I mean, I'm by no means an exercise physiologist, but I've been in resistance training since I was 16.

415
00:25:19.691 --> 00:25:20.572
I'm now 50.

416
00:25:20.612 --> 00:25:21.713
I'll be 51 in a month.

417
00:25:21.793 --> 00:25:23.114
So I feel great.

418
00:25:23.154 --> 00:25:25.936
Cardio at the start if you're doing resistance training or not at all?

419
00:25:25.976 --> 00:25:31.640
I warm up for five minutes of cardio and then resistance train, but I do the cardio on alternate days, three days total of cardio.

420
00:25:32.161 --> 00:25:34.263
One day of cardio is long and slow for about an hour.

421
00:25:34.603 --> 00:25:36.624
One is about 30 minutes at moderate intensity.

422
00:25:36.985 --> 00:25:40.588
One is a short one like I did this morning, jumped on the Airdyne bike, pedal, pedal,

423
00:25:41.108 --> 00:25:47.592
easy for a minute, then go all out for 30 seconds, easy for 10, 30, 10, 30, 10, 30, 10, and then you're off the bike.

424
00:25:47.672 --> 00:25:48.832
Basically max heart rate training.

425
00:25:49.372 --> 00:25:53.194
And the day after leg day, if you do your legs right, take a rest day.

426
00:25:53.735 --> 00:25:53.935
Yeah.

427
00:25:54.435 --> 00:25:56.696
But here's the interesting thing about exercise.

428
00:25:57.097 --> 00:25:58.918
You notice I didn't say deliberate cold exposure.

429
00:26:00.278 --> 00:26:01.459
You want to blow some minds?

430
00:26:02.620 --> 00:26:06.442
I will go toe-to-toe with anybody on the internet or off the internet.

431
00:26:06.822 --> 00:26:08.863
Deliberate cold exposure does not raise cortisol.

432
00:26:08.883 --> 00:26:09.023
Yeah.

433
00:26:11.640 --> 00:26:18.405
It's amazing to me that the same people that are suggesting moderate to high intensity exercise are saying that deliberate cold exposure raises cortisol.

434
00:26:18.465 --> 00:26:19.506
It's simply not true.

435
00:26:20.046 --> 00:26:23.129
Not true for women because a lot of people said, is your book going to be for women and men?

436
00:26:23.169 --> 00:26:27.132
I distinguish between data when there are data showing that it's different for women and men.

437
00:26:27.212 --> 00:26:28.993
I acknowledge when there's no data in women.

438
00:26:29.674 --> 00:26:31.475
And the data are very clear in women and men.

439
00:26:32.095 --> 00:26:33.336
Trivial increases in cortisol.

440
00:26:33.356 --> 00:26:33.517
Right.

441
00:26:34.346 --> 00:26:40.630
magnificent, huge increases in adrenaline, norepinephrine, and dopamine from deliberate cold exposure.

442
00:26:40.910 --> 00:26:44.052
And those so-called catecholamines are great to have rolling into your day.

443
00:26:44.072 --> 00:26:45.673
They're the things of alertness and focus.

444
00:26:46.174 --> 00:26:51.237
The appropriate stressor for cortisol, appropriate meaning the one that you want, is a psychological stressor.

445
00:26:51.357 --> 00:26:51.877
We know that.

446
00:26:52.698 --> 00:26:57.921
Working out with weights for 45 minutes, taking your sets near to failure, going for a run for 30 minutes.

447
00:26:58.381 --> 00:26:59.282
So, yeah,

448
00:26:59.442 --> 00:27:05.664
The point being, if you do this exercise in the first three hours of your day, you're getting a big inflection in cortisol.

449
00:27:06.224 --> 00:27:07.665
Again, this is what you want.

450
00:27:08.425 --> 00:27:10.906
Now, some people can't exercise first thing in the day.

451
00:27:10.946 --> 00:27:14.147
They either don't want to or they can't by way of schedule.

452
00:27:14.647 --> 00:27:17.688
And if you're going to exercise in the later part of your day, that's fine.

453
00:27:17.708 --> 00:27:19.068
Your cortisol will come back down.

454
00:27:19.088 --> 00:27:21.529
You can do some long exhale breathing to slow your heart rate.

455
00:27:21.769 --> 00:27:22.869
Andy Galpin talks about that.

456
00:27:23.169 --> 00:27:24.590
Take a hot shower, which...

457
00:27:25.430 --> 00:27:28.252
paradoxically lowers your core body temperature and then helps you sleep.

458
00:27:28.452 --> 00:27:36.277
When you heat up the surface of your body, you have a thermostat in your brain called the medial pre-optic area, and it goes, oh, the surface of my body is warm.

459
00:27:36.437 --> 00:27:39.278
I should probably cool my core body temperature down, and you fall asleep better.

460
00:27:39.538 --> 00:27:43.381
You know, this is like the putting socks on effect or the hot bath effect, right?

461
00:27:43.621 --> 00:27:45.422
I assume a massage or something like that also.

462
00:27:45.462 --> 00:27:45.802
Great.

463
00:27:46.443 --> 00:27:50.225
You have access to that in the last hour of your day, like, we need to learn more about your life.

464
00:27:51.360 --> 00:27:54.425
My fiance used to be a masseuse for many years, so she...

465
00:27:54.705 --> 00:27:54.986
Awesome.

466
00:27:55.586 --> 00:28:01.555
So when you exercise for a few days early, in the first three hours of your day, let's say you do that two times.

467
00:28:02.522 --> 00:28:06.246
The next morning you wake up feeling a little bit more willing to exercise.

468
00:28:06.646 --> 00:28:07.968
Did your willpower change?

469
00:28:08.128 --> 00:28:09.229
Well, in some sense, yes.

470
00:28:09.269 --> 00:28:12.352
But what happened was your cortisol entrainment mechanisms changed.

471
00:28:12.612 --> 00:28:16.076
Your suprachiasmatic nucleus all day is clocking what you're doing.

472
00:28:16.236 --> 00:28:19.800
Let's say you eat like 9, 12, snack at 3 and 6.30.

473
00:28:20.100 --> 00:28:21.662
You have a food anticipatory signal.

474
00:28:22.222 --> 00:28:22.463
You have...

475
00:28:23.173 --> 00:28:24.934
Ghrelin is secreted, makes you hungry.

476
00:28:25.254 --> 00:28:28.516
We are clocks, and the synchronization of those clocks is very, very important.

477
00:28:28.776 --> 00:28:35.800
When you exercise at roughly the same time of day, early in the day, you will have more energy to exercise in the first 15 minutes before that.

478
00:28:36.041 --> 00:28:37.641
You'll notice you kind of start stirring around.

479
00:28:37.962 --> 00:28:43.745
Yes, part of it is cognitive, but a lot of it actually is your brain is anticipating that you're not going to be able to do it.

480
00:28:43.905 --> 00:28:44.806
Exercise is coming.

481
00:28:45.066 --> 00:28:46.747
Oh, cool.

482
00:28:46.827 --> 00:28:48.708
I teach neuroanatomy, so this is fun.

483
00:28:49.309 --> 00:28:51.230
I have a brain here in front of me.

484
00:28:51.250 --> 00:28:52.651
It does open up in case you want to open it up.

485
00:28:52.691 --> 00:28:54.652
But you just reminded me of something.

486
00:28:54.672 --> 00:28:54.812
Yeah.

487
00:28:55.132 --> 00:28:59.515
You reminded me of something that I saw you talk about, which was the anterior mid-cingulate cortex.

488
00:28:59.535 --> 00:28:59.915
Oh, yeah, yeah.

489
00:29:00.736 --> 00:29:05.759
And I think you described this as being one of the most interesting discoveries of neuroscience.

490
00:29:06.339 --> 00:29:13.124
So cingulate cortex, I mean, it's not directly exposed here, but the anterior mid-cingulate cortex would sit somewhere like...

491
00:29:13.775 --> 00:29:14.035
There.

492
00:29:14.616 --> 00:29:17.660
This is an amazing structure, right?

493
00:29:18.141 --> 00:29:29.776
I mean, just to remind people, like when we feel some sort of pressure, social pressure, physical pressure, traffic that we hate, and we decide I'm going to lean into this,

494
00:29:30.397 --> 00:29:38.320
like I'm going to compete or I'm going to push through this internal or external resistance, neurons in the anterior mid-cingulate cortex are just firing away.

495
00:29:38.640 --> 00:29:47.324
And if that area is stimulated, my colleague Joe Parvisi at Stanford showed this, he's a neurosurgeon, people say, I feel like a challenge is coming on and I'm going to lean into it.

496
00:29:48.004 --> 00:29:50.445
This is the brain area of tenacity.

497
00:29:51.500 --> 00:29:56.682
And the amazing thing is it has connections all over the brain with reward systems, etc.

498
00:29:56.762 --> 00:30:04.506
So it's collecting information about when it gets activated, what's going on in the world that makes you feel pressure, when you feel like pushing back, when you don't.

499
00:30:04.726 --> 00:30:07.908
But the best part is it is highly subject to plasticity.

500
00:30:08.368 --> 00:30:10.589
People who diet successfully.

501
00:30:11.832 --> 00:30:14.893
their anterior mid-cingulate cortex gets bigger and more active.

502
00:30:15.733 --> 00:30:20.333
People who embark on a new exercise program, adding some component of exercise.

503
00:30:20.353 --> 00:30:23.574
For me, it's mobility work, because I've got a little stiff over the years, I know.

504
00:30:24.174 --> 00:30:34.396
So when you do something that you don't want to do, that you don't reflexively do, your anterior mid-cingulate cortex gets bigger and more willing to engage in challenging things going forward.

505
00:30:34.776 --> 00:30:40.017
Yeah, so that's the key point, which is that sets you up to be able to do more challenging things in the future.

506
00:30:40.057 --> 00:30:40.437
That's right.

507
00:30:41.373 --> 00:30:43.575
Why would you do deliberate cold exposure?

508
00:30:43.856 --> 00:30:44.657
I'll tell you why.

509
00:30:45.197 --> 00:30:58.332
Because your ability to sit calmly or even not so calmly when your system is flooded with adrenaline and norepinephrine and to be able to trigger that with cold water safely, like cold shower, getting into a cold ice bath, it's safe as long as it's not so cold.

510
00:30:58.352 --> 00:31:00.874
As long as you're not hyperventilating beforehand on purpose.

511
00:31:01.635 --> 00:31:06.981
That carries over to your ability to keep your head straight when other things trigger adrenaline.

512
00:31:07.202 --> 00:31:08.744
You don't get 10 stress systems.

513
00:31:09.104 --> 00:31:13.830
You get one, and stress looks like your adrenaline goes, and it comes down slowly.

514
00:31:14.090 --> 00:31:15.091
This is a hallmark of stress.

515
00:31:15.131 --> 00:31:16.813
Cortisol goes up, goes down.

516
00:31:17.354 --> 00:31:17.834
Right, so the...

517
00:31:18.535 --> 00:31:19.796
Oh, you are prepared, my friend.

518
00:31:19.836 --> 00:31:20.316
My goodness.

519
00:31:20.576 --> 00:31:21.917
You should be a university professor.

520
00:31:22.497 --> 00:31:23.658
You want to teach with me at Stanford?

521
00:31:24.018 --> 00:31:26.860
So I came up with a model for arousal, right?

522
00:31:26.880 --> 00:31:29.801
When people hear arousal and they think, oh, it's got to be romantic arousal.

523
00:31:29.861 --> 00:31:32.743
It can be, but arousal is really just how alert or sleepy you are.

524
00:31:32.823 --> 00:31:37.186
So you can be really sleepy, like in a coma, or you can be in full-blown panic.

525
00:31:37.246 --> 00:31:38.006
Nobody wants that.

526
00:31:38.426 --> 00:31:42.348
But a seesaw is the right analogy here because we have this thing called the autonomic nervous system.

527
00:31:43.049 --> 00:31:44.250
And the autonomic nervous system

528
00:31:45.331 --> 00:31:50.637
is made up of two parts, parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous system.

529
00:31:50.857 --> 00:31:52.059
They're in different parts of the body.

530
00:31:52.119 --> 00:31:56.023
They both connect to most every organ, but in general,

531
00:31:56.925 --> 00:32:02.487
When you are relaxed, that's what we call the reflection of parasympathetic tone going up.

532
00:32:02.647 --> 00:32:05.568
When you're stressed, it's the reflection of sympathetic tone going up.

533
00:32:05.988 --> 00:32:10.889
But as you get sleepy, your parasympathetic nervous system starts to dominate a bit.

534
00:32:11.430 --> 00:32:14.391
And as you get really sleepy, it dominates more.

535
00:32:14.531 --> 00:32:21.893
When you wake up in the morning, and then if you do the right things like hydrate, get sunlight and some exercise, well, then your cortisol goes up and you're going to be more alert.

536
00:32:23.005 --> 00:32:32.287
The ability to navigate stress of all kinds depends on your ability to do what I call is control the tightness of this hinge.

537
00:32:32.587 --> 00:32:50.030
When you train your ability to think, breathe, stay calm when your system is flooded with adrenaline, and that happens later in a way that was non-voluntary, something happened that you didn't want to happen, your brain immediately flits to the understanding of that place.

538
00:32:52.950 --> 00:32:53.530
thoughtfulness.

539
00:32:53.570 --> 00:32:54.871
You can know to not speak.

540
00:32:54.971 --> 00:32:56.152
That's often the best thing you can do.

541
00:32:56.452 --> 00:32:57.893
You know to react or not react.

542
00:32:58.454 --> 00:33:12.623
In fact, when you get into a cold plunge, one of the beautiful things about cold is that your prefrontal cortex that's involved in strategy setting and making meaning out of what's going on, its activity is greatly suppressed for the first 20 to 30 seconds.

543
00:33:13.244 --> 00:33:16.286
Know this about every stressful circumstance.

544
00:33:16.306 --> 00:33:19.048
In the first 20 to 30 seconds, you are brain damaged.

545
00:33:19.808 --> 00:33:21.151
You are brain damaged.

546
00:33:21.511 --> 00:33:24.196
You are in that mode of like you could react physically.

547
00:33:24.797 --> 00:33:28.743
Sometimes that can save your life, but most times you just don't want to do anything.

548
00:33:29.296 --> 00:33:32.017
step out of the way of the car, get away from the aggressor, whatever.

549
00:33:32.057 --> 00:33:35.138
But most times you're best off not saying a darn thing.

550
00:33:35.478 --> 00:33:38.279
And then your prefrontal cortex slowly starts coming back online.

551
00:33:38.299 --> 00:33:40.120
And then you're back again, because you ruminate.

552
00:33:40.380 --> 00:33:41.541
This is good relationship advice.

553
00:33:41.781 --> 00:33:43.081
Very good relationship advice.

554
00:33:43.121 --> 00:33:44.702
I wish I had learned it long ago, right?

555
00:33:45.162 --> 00:33:49.424
Actually, last night I looked on Twitter and I saw something that was both perplexing and a little bit upsetting to me.

556
00:33:49.624 --> 00:33:51.865
And I went to sleep, like, I know how to deal with this.

557
00:33:51.885 --> 00:33:54.005
Some long exhale breathing, which will slow your heart rate.

558
00:33:54.045 --> 00:33:54.826
And we'll talk about that.

559
00:33:55.466 --> 00:34:00.332
But I woke up this morning, turns out it was a complete misunderstanding and everything was reversed.

560
00:34:00.372 --> 00:34:03.997
But last night I thought about sending a text, but I thought...

561
00:34:05.023 --> 00:34:07.544
Later at night, the prefrontal cortex is already diminished.

562
00:34:07.624 --> 00:34:10.525
This is why stress feels so much harder to deal with at night.

563
00:34:10.685 --> 00:34:14.306
And prefrontal cortex, we should describe that as being logic and stuff.

564
00:34:14.326 --> 00:34:17.127
So frontal cortex, so here it's logical.

565
00:34:17.787 --> 00:34:20.108
You have the frontal and motor areas here.

566
00:34:20.128 --> 00:34:27.651
And prefrontal cortex is basically a big patch of real estate behind your forehead that in humans is greatly expanded compared to in humans.

567
00:34:28.351 --> 00:34:29.312
other mammals.

568
00:34:29.613 --> 00:34:33.998
I don't like calling them lower, but they have less prefrontal cortex, so they're more driven by their impulses.

569
00:34:34.559 --> 00:34:40.227
One of the most incredible things that every child and adult needs to develop is what's called top-down inhibition.

570
00:34:41.268 --> 00:34:43.891
You feel an impulse, but you resist the impulse.

571
00:34:44.292 --> 00:34:44.552
Yeah.

572
00:34:45.388 --> 00:34:53.110
In fact, the way I've mostly trained my dog's drummer, because it works, is I taught him at nine weeks of age, put down a piece of food.

573
00:34:53.130 --> 00:34:54.130
Of course, he goes for it.

574
00:34:54.150 --> 00:34:54.810
He loves food.

575
00:34:55.250 --> 00:34:56.071
And you teach him weight.

576
00:34:56.671 --> 00:34:58.651
And he sits there and you teach him to look at you.

577
00:34:58.811 --> 00:35:01.412
And then now he, I can have him moving toward a piece of food.

578
00:35:01.932 --> 00:35:03.992
And I say, wait, and his nose can be this far.

579
00:35:04.372 --> 00:35:05.073
And he'll just stop.

580
00:35:05.113 --> 00:35:06.693
He has great top-down inhibition.

581
00:35:07.113 --> 00:35:07.913
Is it about food?

582
00:35:08.233 --> 00:35:08.373
No.

583
00:35:08.413 --> 00:35:09.334
Am I trying to torture him?

584
00:35:09.394 --> 00:35:09.934
Of course not.

585
00:35:10.354 --> 00:35:14.615
It's so that if I say, wait, he can suppress his arousal.

586
00:35:15.455 --> 00:35:22.781
This is one of the most valuable skills, and people with frontal damage show an inability to do that, which is why sometimes they're violent or they say inappropriate things.

587
00:35:23.501 --> 00:35:32.228
People who are tired, stressed, drunk, prefrontal cortex activity is suppressed, get in a cold shower, first 20, 30 seconds.

588
00:35:32.468 --> 00:35:33.149
It's kind of fun.

589
00:35:33.309 --> 00:35:40.875
You're like, here I am with less of a brain than I had getting in, and then 30 seconds later, you're like, I can do this.

590
00:35:40.915 --> 00:35:42.796
This explains why you shouldn't do things tired.

591
00:35:42.816 --> 00:35:42.917
Yeah.

592
00:35:43.577 --> 00:35:45.438
Don't do things tired, don't say things tired.

593
00:35:45.518 --> 00:35:46.278
Absolutely.

594
00:35:46.458 --> 00:35:47.919
Impulse control is way worse.

595
00:35:47.979 --> 00:35:59.543
So, when I heard you talk about the anterior mid-singulate cortex, and that there was this part of the brain that was kind of like the willpower, or you described it then as the tenacity muscle, it completely changed my relationship with hard things.

596
00:36:00.023 --> 00:36:12.308
Because it made me realize, at some sort of like, I guess some conceptual level, that every hard thing I overcome is better equipping me, like when I, you know, curl weights in the gym, to do harder things tomorrow.

597
00:36:12.408 --> 00:36:12.608
Yes.

598
00:36:12.868 --> 00:36:17.213
When I heard, oh, there's like a neurological, I'm making a neurological investment in my future.

599
00:36:17.813 --> 00:36:22.579
And then you talked there about doing voluntary difficult things like the cold plunge, whatever.

600
00:36:23.179 --> 00:36:24.180
Or learning a new language.

601
00:36:24.941 --> 00:36:26.263
It can be cognitive in nature.

602
00:36:26.903 --> 00:36:29.266
It can be learning to dance if that's stressful for you.

603
00:36:29.366 --> 00:36:34.211
And it can be anything that creates some resistance for you, internal resistance.

604
00:36:34.231 --> 00:36:34.812
Yeah.

605
00:36:35.172 --> 00:36:36.073
anything of that sort.

606
00:36:36.093 --> 00:36:44.417
This is a beautiful structure because it's wired into cognitive capacities and our ability to build them and challenges with that too, emotional challenges.

607
00:36:44.557 --> 00:36:46.918
We're kind of optimizing our lives towards comfort though, aren't we?

608
00:36:46.938 --> 00:36:50.220
That's like a winning formula is more comfortable things.

609
00:36:51.080 --> 00:36:52.581
I think Jack Dorsey said it best.

610
00:36:52.601 --> 00:36:54.743
There's this great video of him online.

611
00:36:54.763 --> 00:37:06.472
It was a small lecture that he was giving where he said, anytime we exchange ourselves, our money, our time for convenience, we are almost always giving up something that's like fundamentally useful for us neurologically.

612
00:37:06.852 --> 00:37:07.993
And it's okay to do.

613
00:37:08.654 --> 00:37:12.337
I order food on DoorDash because there's great food and I don't have a lot of time to cook.

614
00:37:12.357 --> 00:37:13.798
I'd like to devote my time to other things.

615
00:37:14.438 --> 00:37:15.619
I'm trading for convenience.

616
00:37:16.200 --> 00:37:17.821
But if you're aware of the trade-off,

617
00:37:18.790 --> 00:37:19.631
you're much better off.

618
00:37:20.331 --> 00:37:23.113
And the real question is what you're gonna do with that additional time.

619
00:37:23.433 --> 00:37:35.760
While I'm against over-optimization to the point that it pulls you out of life, like it diminishes life, I am all for striving and optimization, quote unquote, in ways that allow you to lean into the rest of your life with more vigor.

620
00:37:36.100 --> 00:37:41.804
I think Arthur Brooks says it best, I mean, we are wired and meaning comes from striving.

621
00:37:42.224 --> 00:37:47.087
And within striving is some struggle, and within struggle is also the release from struggle.

622
00:37:47.827 --> 00:37:50.435
And that's also very satisfying.

623
00:37:50.916 --> 00:37:53.524
Here's the over-optimization thing to me in a nutshell, which is,

624
00:37:55.378 --> 00:38:04.141
There are people for whom doing two of the things I described for five minutes each per day will experience a significant improvement in their mental and physical health.

625
00:38:04.461 --> 00:38:06.861
There are people for whom they're sort of like junkyard dogs.

626
00:38:06.881 --> 00:38:07.762
They can live on anything.

627
00:38:07.782 --> 00:38:08.622
They have a ton of vigor.

628
00:38:08.842 --> 00:38:11.843
And they can be like, yeah, I didn't feel that much from like drinking some water and getting something.

629
00:38:12.103 --> 00:38:13.063
Cool, I got you.

630
00:38:13.083 --> 00:38:19.505
You're one of those people who can fall asleep in front of the screen, get up and just keep going on a sugary muffin and something like, great.

631
00:38:20.923 --> 00:38:31.690
But everyone can afford to take a look at what they're doing now and try and move the needle toward more vigor, well-being, happiness, peace by doing certain things.

632
00:38:31.790 --> 00:38:34.892
Do you become more sensitive to the thing when you stop doing the thing?

633
00:38:35.492 --> 00:38:36.313
Depends on the thing.

634
00:38:36.513 --> 00:38:38.594
So, for instance, if people like...

635
00:38:39.135 --> 00:38:41.877
I talk about nutrition in there and it's one of the cards.

636
00:38:41.957 --> 00:38:45.839
I actually cover everything from the all-meat diet to vegan diets.

637
00:38:45.959 --> 00:38:47.860
I really go into the literature so people can choose.

638
00:38:48.181 --> 00:38:49.582
But really, if you look at what...

639
00:38:50.417 --> 00:38:51.877
most people could benefit from doing.

640
00:38:52.417 --> 00:38:54.078
And you could do this with vegan or vegetarian.

641
00:38:54.098 --> 00:38:56.938
It's a little harder, but the best diet is going to be the following, right?

642
00:38:57.778 --> 00:38:59.559
Not too many calories, not too few.

643
00:38:59.959 --> 00:39:00.659
That's individual.

644
00:39:00.719 --> 00:39:01.599
You can calculate that.

645
00:39:01.719 --> 00:39:03.740
It's an easy thing to do, but I provide a way to do that.

646
00:39:04.240 --> 00:39:09.081
You need to get what's, what are high complete protein to calorie ratio proteins.

647
00:39:09.321 --> 00:39:14.322
This is a concept I came up with because if you look at the literature, yes, we need the essential amino acids.

648
00:39:14.782 --> 00:39:17.863
So that's a complete protein, but you can get that from

649
00:39:20.607 --> 00:39:21.518
30 grams of

650
00:39:22.557 --> 00:39:28.798
complete protein from beans and rice, you're going to consume about four to five times as many calories as is required if you get it from a chicken breast.

651
00:39:29.339 --> 00:39:32.459
So this is the factor that's kind of obvious, but no one ever talks about.

652
00:39:32.759 --> 00:39:35.900
So you want to eat some high complete protein to calorie ratio protein.

653
00:39:35.960 --> 00:39:41.601
So, you know, eggs, lean meat, fish, and then everyone knows you need fiber, right?

654
00:39:41.802 --> 00:39:42.982
So vegetables and fruits.

655
00:39:43.062 --> 00:39:52.284
But what I will say is that many people who remove starches entirely or remove vegetables entirely will find that their autoimmune issues resolve.

656
00:39:53.425 --> 00:39:54.486
And there are reasons for that.

657
00:39:54.526 --> 00:39:55.867
And we have to acknowledge that.

658
00:39:56.267 --> 00:40:00.491
But most people should be eating some vegetables and fruit for micronutrients and fiber.

659
00:40:01.052 --> 00:40:02.893
Low-sugar fermented foods, very clear.

660
00:40:02.933 --> 00:40:06.056
Justin Sonnenberg's work from Stanford, very clear.

661
00:40:06.336 --> 00:40:07.377
Lowers the inflammatory.

662
00:40:07.678 --> 00:40:09.680
In fact, when they had people eat more fiber,

663
00:40:10.729 --> 00:40:12.770
For many people, inflammatory markers went up.

664
00:40:13.390 --> 00:40:21.313
No one likes to talk about that, especially not the vegans, but too much fiber can be noxious for some people and pro-inflammatory.

665
00:40:21.333 --> 00:40:26.075
So low sugar fermented foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, beet kvass is delicious.

666
00:40:26.575 --> 00:40:30.737
Problem is they tend to be expensive, but you can make your own and there's recipes online to do these things.

667
00:40:31.849 --> 00:40:34.470
I don't want to get into the seed oil debate.

668
00:40:34.670 --> 00:40:36.231
Just use olive oil, it's delicious.

669
00:40:36.551 --> 00:40:39.232
It's relatively inexpensive nowadays to get real olive oil.

670
00:40:39.852 --> 00:40:40.793
Small amounts of butter.

671
00:40:41.873 --> 00:40:43.954
Okay, like why are we even debating seed oil?

672
00:40:43.974 --> 00:40:44.554
It's so dumb.

673
00:40:44.934 --> 00:40:48.696
It's like the seed oil debate is like the fastest way to kill neurons that I'm aware of.

674
00:40:49.261 --> 00:40:50.262
You know, it's like so dumb.

675
00:40:50.322 --> 00:40:52.764
It's like, because the studies are not well done.

676
00:40:52.784 --> 00:41:00.670
You're comparing a processed food diet that includes seed oils versus, or you're talking clean seed oils versus a high meat diet with processed meat.

677
00:41:00.790 --> 00:41:01.231
It's a mess.

678
00:41:01.451 --> 00:41:04.574
It's like, as a scientist, you just look at this and you go like, this field sucks.

679
00:41:05.194 --> 00:41:15.640
Like it, someone wants to have a magnificent career in science, go into the field of nutrition and do some really good studies because the studies are lousy.

680
00:41:15.720 --> 00:41:17.542
90% of them, like you can look at it.

681
00:41:17.562 --> 00:41:18.822
You don't even have to be trained in nutrition.

682
00:41:18.842 --> 00:41:21.544
You go, there are five different variables here and four over here.

683
00:41:21.564 --> 00:41:23.545
This is like what you would call a bad experiment.

684
00:41:24.226 --> 00:41:26.327
So olive oil, the data are great.

685
00:41:27.463 --> 00:41:28.043
It's impressive.

686
00:41:28.143 --> 00:41:35.227
And then starches are great for fueling muscles and glycogen and brain, but you don't want to overdo them.

687
00:41:35.347 --> 00:41:40.869
And the way that people tend to overdo starches is by eating starches combined with a lot of fats.

688
00:41:41.830 --> 00:41:43.050
So sourdough bread is great.

689
00:41:43.070 --> 00:41:44.491
Sourdough bread with butter is great.

690
00:41:45.275 --> 00:42:10.404
even better if you ask me sourdough bread with equal amounts of butter and bread you're starting to get into problems it's very hard for people to go from like to overeat starches unless they have a lot of fats with them or sugar with them on starches is there an impact i think i've heard you talk about an impact on your sleep with what you eat late at night many people who don't eat enough starches find that they have sleep issues and there are reasons for this because we talk about comfort foods

691
00:42:11.743 --> 00:42:18.484
Typically people think junk foods when they think comfort foods, but foods that increase glucose lower cortisol.

692
00:42:18.985 --> 00:42:20.465
Hmm, that's weird.

693
00:42:20.865 --> 00:42:26.026
Starches lower cortisol and you want your cortisol low at night, helps you fall and stay asleep.

694
00:42:26.186 --> 00:42:27.666
Now you don't wanna eat too close to bedtime.

695
00:42:27.846 --> 00:42:29.887
You also don't wanna have gnawing hunger at bedtime.

696
00:42:30.227 --> 00:42:30.887
We talk about that.

697
00:42:31.367 --> 00:42:32.667
But here's the interesting thing.

698
00:42:32.727 --> 00:42:33.608
What is cortisol?

699
00:42:34.348 --> 00:42:35.188
I should have mentioned this earlier.

700
00:42:35.228 --> 00:42:35.788
What is cortisol?

701
00:42:35.828 --> 00:42:36.668
Is it a stress hormone?

702
00:42:36.868 --> 00:42:39.189
No, it's a hormone that's released during stress.

703
00:42:39.809 --> 00:42:45.373
But cortisol's job is not to deal with stress.

704
00:42:45.433 --> 00:42:48.096
Cortisol's job is to mobilize energy in the body.

705
00:42:49.076 --> 00:42:52.759
When cortisol goes up, glucose is mobilized and other fuels too.

706
00:42:53.240 --> 00:42:56.182
So when you eat starches, you buffer cortisol.

707
00:42:57.555 --> 00:42:59.438
There's a very clear relationship here.

708
00:42:59.858 --> 00:43:12.437
So people who are not eating enough starches who then allow themselves that bowl of rice or a bowl of pasta in their final meal of the day or a little bit at lunch and at dinner, maybe even a bowl of oatmeal breakfast, they feel more even-

709
00:43:13.278 --> 00:43:15.398
psychologically, they have more physical energy.

710
00:43:15.618 --> 00:43:18.539
Sometimes people with chronic stress issues notice they stop shaking.

711
00:43:18.759 --> 00:43:24.560
People with autoimmune issues sometimes resolve those because your cortisol is buffered, because your blood glucose is elevated.

712
00:43:24.900 --> 00:43:29.021
And so your body isn't tapping into the survival system to try and mobilize glucose.

713
00:43:29.641 --> 00:43:31.881
So- I have this outstanding question that I have to ask you.

714
00:43:31.901 --> 00:43:33.962
It goes back to the picture that you drew of the graph.

715
00:43:34.002 --> 00:43:34.622
Where is that one?

716
00:43:34.842 --> 00:43:37.722
You said high cortisol in the morning is a good thing.

717
00:43:37.742 --> 00:43:37.923
Yep.

718
00:43:38.343 --> 00:43:39.743
So what if I-

719
00:43:40.963 --> 00:43:43.965
pick up my phone first thing in the morning and I look at my worst emails?

720
00:43:44.945 --> 00:43:50.508
In some sense, from the perspective of spiking your cortisol, like, it's a good thing, but can you do it outside while getting sunlight?

721
00:43:51.449 --> 00:43:55.011
I was wondering if it matters, like, how the cortisol comes, because what if I stress myself out in the morning?

722
00:43:55.031 --> 00:43:55.591
It doesn't matter.

723
00:43:55.651 --> 00:43:55.951
I really...

724
00:43:55.971 --> 00:43:56.492
It doesn't matter.

725
00:43:56.772 --> 00:43:58.673
The problem is the rumination that comes with stress.

726
00:43:58.693 --> 00:43:58.873
Okay.

727
00:43:59.233 --> 00:44:05.777
Right, so, you know, the nice thing about physical stressors that we control, like a workout or a cold plunge, is...

728
00:44:06.157 --> 00:44:08.439
is that they have an onset and an offset.

729
00:44:09.079 --> 00:44:11.601
And yes, they start faster than they end, right?

730
00:44:11.901 --> 00:44:13.963
You have stress and it kind of carries over, you ruminate.

731
00:44:14.383 --> 00:44:20.127
But psychological stressors tend to bang around in our brain a lot and late at night, and they tend to come back.

732
00:44:20.507 --> 00:44:27.792
I will say this, I think 2027 is gonna be the year that we close the coffin on this cortisol is bad thing.

733
00:44:27.972 --> 00:44:29.753
So how should I think about cortisol?

734
00:44:29.773 --> 00:44:31.515
Because right now I think of it as the stress hormone.

735
00:44:32.155 --> 00:44:33.216
It's to mobilize energy.

736
00:44:33.856 --> 00:44:34.717
So you can use it.

737
00:44:35.358 --> 00:44:38.361
And if you're going to sleep at night, you don't need to mobilize energy so you can use it.

738
00:44:38.381 --> 00:44:39.982
You need to rest and reset your body.

739
00:44:41.223 --> 00:44:44.587
Cortisol is an energy promoting hormone.

740
00:44:44.727 --> 00:44:50.132
So if I walk up on stage, my cortisol level, like before I go up on stage and there's a big audience, whatever, my cortisol level is going to go up then?

741
00:44:50.668 --> 00:44:54.592
Yeah, if you're stressed about it, maybe a little bit more, but it's a preparation hormone.

742
00:44:54.692 --> 00:44:57.516
You're preparing for adversity, but also great things.

743
00:44:57.676 --> 00:45:04.864
There are these beautiful studies from a guy named James McGaw and Larry Cahill, which showed, do you know that if you want somebody to learn something, you know what you do?

744
00:45:05.084 --> 00:45:07.747
You spike their cortisol before, during, or after that thing.

745
00:45:08.908 --> 00:45:09.389
Should work.

746
00:45:09.589 --> 00:45:09.969
Why not?

747
00:45:10.070 --> 00:45:11.792
Trauma does that, and you never forget.

748
00:45:12.626 --> 00:45:15.888
All you do is work on trying to remove the emotional load of that traumatic thing.

749
00:45:16.128 --> 00:45:24.473
Wait, so does that mean that someone who's listening to this podcast right now in the gym is going to have better knowledge recall of what we talked about than someone who's listening in bed?

750
00:45:24.613 --> 00:45:25.233
Great question.

751
00:45:25.313 --> 00:45:28.735
So I have a chapter that's all about learning motivation and plasticity.

752
00:45:29.036 --> 00:45:32.358
And we've all heard exercise makes your brain better.

753
00:45:33.478 --> 00:45:33.738
How?

754
00:45:34.379 --> 00:45:34.599
Why?

755
00:45:35.039 --> 00:45:37.481
Turns out it's very important to understand there are two ways it does it.

756
00:45:38.256 --> 00:45:38.876
or at least two.

757
00:45:39.417 --> 00:45:41.298
One is it raises your levels of arousal.

758
00:45:42.278 --> 00:45:43.679
Exercise doesn't make you smarter.

759
00:45:43.799 --> 00:45:49.922
Exercise makes you more alert coming out of the exercise so you can go learn things, because it turns out you have to be alert to learn things.

760
00:45:50.283 --> 00:45:54.025
In particular, you need adrenaline and cortisol elevated to learn things.

761
00:45:54.745 --> 00:46:05.211
So when people say, you know, weightlifting is good for your brain, cardio is good for your brain, turns out long, slow cardio, my endurance friends aren't going to like this, not that great for your brain.

762
00:46:05.831 --> 00:46:07.932
It's not bad for your brain, but it's not that great for your brain.

763
00:46:08.552 --> 00:46:15.236
Turns out an intense weightlifting session or high intensity interval training session, in the four hours after that, you are primed for learning.

764
00:46:15.496 --> 00:46:15.836
Why?

765
00:46:16.317 --> 00:46:20.799
You got a lot of stimulatory molecules in your body and you can focus better.

766
00:46:20.879 --> 00:46:26.821
What about if I'm a podcaster and I want to be able to ask good questions and use my mouth and my brain in that context?

767
00:46:27.241 --> 00:46:30.603
Not necessarily just learning, but performance of my sort of cognition.

768
00:46:30.703 --> 00:46:32.883
So the performance curve basically is inverted U.

769
00:46:33.384 --> 00:46:35.684
If you're not alert enough, you can't do what you need to do.

770
00:46:35.864 --> 00:46:38.606
If you're too alert, you can't do what you need to do or learn.

771
00:46:38.886 --> 00:46:40.826
So you want to be at the top of that inverted U.

772
00:46:41.306 --> 00:46:47.569
And a lot of what learning is about and a lot of what the anterior mid-singulate cortex is about is getting from, I don't want to do it.

773
00:46:48.309 --> 00:46:49.450
up to the top of that U.

774
00:46:49.890 --> 00:46:51.691
Then it's usually about not getting too stressed.

775
00:46:52.011 --> 00:46:55.873
Now, I learned the best trick for this, like the two best tricks.

776
00:46:55.893 --> 00:47:03.477
And in fact, that will take us to number five, you can use any time of day, which is use physiological size to reduce stress fast.

777
00:47:03.658 --> 00:47:07.420
Okay, so I have a chapter on stress mitigation and it's got essentially two components.

778
00:47:07.600 --> 00:47:09.461
One is how to limit stress in the moment.

779
00:47:09.981 --> 00:47:10.181
Okay.

780
00:47:10.521 --> 00:47:13.203
Very, very important to know how to limit stress in the moment.

781
00:47:13.223 --> 00:47:14.743
And here- Why is it so important?

782
00:47:14.963 --> 00:47:15.464
Oh, gosh.

783
00:47:15.524 --> 00:47:24.528
Because meditation, great night's sleep, massage, social relations, being well-fed, hydrated, all of that helps you buffer stress.

784
00:47:25.429 --> 00:47:32.792
But when something happens and your heart rate is too high or you're shaking and you can't organize your thoughts in the way you want, none of that helps.

785
00:47:33.653 --> 00:47:34.533
You've gone over the line.

786
00:47:34.973 --> 00:47:38.055
You're too far on the arousal spectrum towards alert.

787
00:47:39.370 --> 00:47:45.971
And it was about 2016 that I realized I'm going to take a significant portion of my lab and work on this problem.

788
00:47:46.191 --> 00:47:48.692
I want to find real-time tools for mitigating stress.

789
00:47:48.912 --> 00:47:52.693
So I started hanging around with people from special operations who sit in ice baths in cold water.

790
00:47:52.733 --> 00:47:54.893
And they don't actually do ice baths, by the way, in the SEAL teams.

791
00:47:54.913 --> 00:47:57.173
They spend a lot of time in cold water during their training.

792
00:47:57.473 --> 00:48:05.715
And I started talking to people in performance fields, in particular neurosurgeons, people who deal with life or death circumstances for many, many years and maintain immense calm.

793
00:48:05.915 --> 00:48:09.177
One of my closest childhood friends, you should have him on this podcast.

794
00:48:09.618 --> 00:48:13.301
His name is Dr. Eddie Chang, and he's a neurosurgeon at UCSF.

795
00:48:13.321 --> 00:48:18.104
He's the chair of neurosurgery, and he's brought people out of locked-in syndrome to speak through AI.

796
00:48:18.244 --> 00:48:19.505
He's also a bioengineer.

797
00:48:19.825 --> 00:48:22.007
He's also been my friend since we were seven years old.

798
00:48:22.387 --> 00:48:31.514
And we talk three times a week these days about science, and I actually visited his laboratory and got to see him take a golf ball-sized tumor out of a guy's forebrain while the guy was awake.

799
00:48:32.115 --> 00:48:35.117
Eddie is the calmest guy you'll ever meet.

800
00:48:35.217 --> 00:48:35.417
Wow.

801
00:48:35.577 --> 00:48:35.837
Why?

802
00:48:35.917 --> 00:48:40.321
Because a movement of less than a millimeter in the wrong direction for him could cost a patient's life.

803
00:48:41.102 --> 00:48:43.624
People have ways to calm down in real time.

804
00:48:43.925 --> 00:48:45.126
So I teamed up with a colleague.

805
00:48:45.146 --> 00:48:46.187
His name is David Spiegel.

806
00:48:46.227 --> 00:48:46.647
He's ours.

807
00:48:47.247 --> 00:48:55.275
At that time, he was our associate chair of psychiatry, and he studies hypnosis, but clinical hypnosis for smoking cessation, pain management and anxiety.

808
00:48:55.295 --> 00:48:55.775
Yeah.

809
00:48:55.915 --> 00:49:00.597
And I should say, mainly, Melise Yilmaz-Balban in my lab did a study.

810
00:49:01.038 --> 00:49:06.080
She built this stress lab with VR and stress, and that's a whole other thing.

811
00:49:06.440 --> 00:49:14.384
And then we did this study where about 100 or so subjects were fixed with trackers that measured heart rate and heart rate variability and sleep.

812
00:49:14.705 --> 00:49:14.905
And...

813
00:49:15.545 --> 00:49:17.146
People were in one of four groups.

814
00:49:17.166 --> 00:49:24.148
They either meditated for five minutes a day or they did box breathing, inhale, hold, exhale, hold for five minutes, okay?

815
00:49:24.368 --> 00:49:25.488
Like four seconds each or something.

816
00:49:25.588 --> 00:49:28.329
There's a way you can measure it, which is the carbon dioxide tolerance test.

817
00:49:28.349 --> 00:49:32.551
Like how well you can control an exhale will tell you a little bit about how stressed you are.

818
00:49:32.591 --> 00:49:35.572
When you're stressed, you tend to blow off carbon dioxide very quickly.

819
00:49:35.792 --> 00:49:39.273
And when you're less stressed, it tends to shift towards long exhales become easier.

820
00:49:39.713 --> 00:49:44.335
So one of the groups, and then I'll say what the mechanism is, did cyclic hyperventilation.

821
00:49:45.312 --> 00:49:48.693
Some people call this Wim Hof breathing, tummo breathing, pranayama breathing.

822
00:49:48.933 --> 00:49:53.755
It's big inhales, passive exhales, repeated for five minutes.

823
00:49:56.256 --> 00:49:59.357
Massively spikes adrenaline, which isn't a bad thing.

824
00:49:59.697 --> 00:50:00.777
You're controlling it anyway.

825
00:50:00.997 --> 00:50:03.218
Does not spike cortisol very much, incidentally.

826
00:50:04.437 --> 00:50:07.778
And when you do those exhales, you're blowing off a lot of carbon dioxide.

827
00:50:07.798 --> 00:50:10.659
So it shifts your internal state and tends to make people very alert.

828
00:50:11.800 --> 00:50:18.862
Or they did, there was a fourth condition where they did a double inhale, long exhale, repeat, the so-called physiological sigh.

829
00:50:19.422 --> 00:50:30.946
So Jack Feldman at UCLA and some other folks in the 1930s had observed that animals and people, when they're very relaxed, would do this kind of strange pattern of breathing where they would go,

830
00:50:34.088 --> 00:50:36.109
It's a double inhale, long exhale.

831
00:50:37.270 --> 00:50:47.578
Jack's lab discovers there's a brain area called the parafacial nucleus, which is specifically there to generate this double inhale, exhale pattern in animals and in humans.

832
00:50:48.698 --> 00:50:48.999
Wild.

833
00:50:49.219 --> 00:50:51.601
Well, nature doesn't make mistakes like that, okay?

834
00:50:51.621 --> 00:50:53.162
Turns out there are two breathing centers.

835
00:50:54.122 --> 00:50:57.665
One is called the Prebotzinger Complex, named after a bottle of wine,

836
00:51:00.160 --> 00:51:03.682
pattern of breathing where you inhale, exhale, what that you alternate.

837
00:51:03.982 --> 00:51:27.392
This other structure, the parafacial nucleus, which we all have, is involved in anytime you double up the inhales or exhales, and it's involved in breathing while you speak or sing or eat, and it generates these physiological sighs, which it turns out get triggered in environments where there's not enough oxygen, or when you get claustrophobic, or when you get very stressed, carbon dioxide goes up, your brain senses that,

838
00:51:28.292 --> 00:51:29.832
And it triggers the gasp reflex.

839
00:51:30.033 --> 00:51:35.754
That double inhale maximally inflates the millions, hundreds of millions of little sacs in the lungs.

840
00:51:36.114 --> 00:51:39.795
And then when you exhale, you offload the greatest amount of carbon dioxide.

841
00:51:39.955 --> 00:51:49.618
So if you just go, you're not offloading as much carbon dioxide, but if you, that second short inhale,

842
00:51:50.873 --> 00:51:57.616
takes these little sacks in your lungs, which are like balloons at a kid's party, and they're empty, but they're fluid lined on the center.

843
00:51:57.636 --> 00:51:59.397
So there's some surface tension inside them.

844
00:51:59.477 --> 00:52:00.358
They're sticking together.

845
00:52:00.698 --> 00:52:04.200
So you go, it's the double inhale that opens those up.

846
00:52:04.820 --> 00:52:06.521
And then you offload the carbon dioxide.

847
00:52:07.121 --> 00:52:11.564
Now that's great, but the real magic of deliberate long exhales

848
00:52:12.462 --> 00:52:16.786
is that they slow your heart rate down through a process called respiratory sinus arrhythmia.

849
00:52:17.547 --> 00:52:23.612
This is like the most important thing for anyone interested in stress, exercise, sleep and wellness.

850
00:52:24.193 --> 00:52:27.776
Because the wild thing is we have this vagus nerve.

851
00:52:27.816 --> 00:52:29.377
Everyone likes to talk about the vagus nerve.

852
00:52:29.578 --> 00:52:37.225
It's a massive nerve bundle that collects sensory information and chemical information from the organs of the body and sends it up to the brain.

853
00:52:37.865 --> 00:52:38.125
Cool.

854
00:52:38.726 --> 00:52:41.748
And it's classified as parasympathetic, calming.

855
00:52:42.389 --> 00:52:43.130
But you know what's funny?

856
00:52:43.270 --> 00:52:50.396
Neuroscientists, when they want to wake up a person during an experiment, like a neurosurgery experiment, they stimulate the vagus.

857
00:52:51.357 --> 00:52:54.219
A treatment for depression is to stimulate the vagus.

858
00:52:55.160 --> 00:52:55.881
Guess what that does?

859
00:52:56.221 --> 00:52:57.182
Makes people more alert.

860
00:52:57.762 --> 00:52:58.903
So it's a mixed nerve.

861
00:52:59.704 --> 00:53:04.048
But the really cool part about the vagus is that it's not all ascending.

862
00:53:05.139 --> 00:53:18.524
The 85% of the information is going up from the body through the Vegas, but there's another pathway to, and it goes down and it goes down to your heart and it controls the slowing of the heart rate.

863
00:53:18.664 --> 00:53:24.767
When you exhale heart rate, variability is the slowing of your heart rate.

864
00:53:24.907 --> 00:53:25.567
When you exhale.

865
00:53:27.448 --> 00:53:28.748
You wanna increase your HRV?

866
00:53:29.089 --> 00:53:31.489
Do a few deliberate exhales during the day.

867
00:53:32.370 --> 00:53:33.850
People go, how do I get my HRV up?

868
00:53:33.950 --> 00:53:36.091
Well, yeah, you do some VO2 max training, right?

869
00:53:36.131 --> 00:53:39.732
Like, you know, obviously you do some max heart rate training, some HIIT workouts, et cetera.

870
00:53:40.253 --> 00:53:43.074
You really wanna increase your HRV in sleep and while waking?

871
00:53:43.474 --> 00:53:52.897
Just do some deliberate exhales during the day because that's the parasympathetic, the calming arm of the vagus pushing down on your heart rate.

872
00:53:53.357 --> 00:53:54.838
And all of the groups I described,

873
00:53:55.825 --> 00:53:59.448
saw benefits, but it was the people who did these physiological size that benefited the most.

874
00:54:00.689 --> 00:54:05.333
So then I started exploring, well, how fast does heart rate slow down with physiological size?

875
00:54:05.373 --> 00:54:07.035
And it turns out you don't need to do it for five minutes.

876
00:54:07.635 --> 00:54:08.116
Do it once.

877
00:54:08.356 --> 00:54:10.118
You just go, okay, you're feeling stressed.

878
00:54:10.138 --> 00:54:10.978
You're going on stage.

879
00:54:10.998 --> 00:54:12.500
You're waiting for a diagnosis.

880
00:54:12.920 --> 00:54:18.485
You don't feel, you feel too alert relative to how you want to feel for whatever reason, good or bad.

881
00:54:18.565 --> 00:54:19.926
You're about to get married, right?

882
00:54:20.006 --> 00:54:20.787
You know, whatever.

883
00:54:21.347 --> 00:54:21.768
You just...

884
00:54:27.145 --> 00:54:30.346
until your lungs are empty and it's immediate.

885
00:54:31.406 --> 00:54:33.706
And I, for me, that was immensely gratifying.

886
00:54:33.986 --> 00:54:34.186
Yes.

887
00:54:34.246 --> 00:54:35.607
Cause it's fun to publish papers.

888
00:54:35.627 --> 00:54:39.888
We publish it and sell reports and Malice gets let's the lion's share of the credit for that.

889
00:54:39.908 --> 00:54:43.108
There were other people on the paper, but she did so much hard work from that and analysis.

890
00:54:43.728 --> 00:54:51.450
I was so gratified because I'm like, oh, finally, like if I didn't sleep well, or if I'm something stressful, even though I slept well, I can calm myself down.

891
00:54:51.490 --> 00:54:51.650
Like,

892
00:54:52.170 --> 00:54:52.670
like that.

893
00:54:53.790 --> 00:54:57.651
I thought real-time tools for stress are what we all need.

894
00:54:58.111 --> 00:55:02.052
The interesting thing is that you can also raise your stress threshold.

895
00:55:02.112 --> 00:55:05.172
And a lot of the stress mitigation chapter is also about how to do that.

896
00:55:05.632 --> 00:55:10.513
We need to train for discomfort so that the little things don't feel so big.

897
00:55:11.273 --> 00:55:13.914
This is also important in survival situations, right?

898
00:55:13.934 --> 00:55:20.175
You need to be able to think very clearly about what order of operations to take, what direction to escape through.

899
00:55:20.195 --> 00:55:21.455
This is not about, like,

900
00:55:22.663 --> 00:55:25.046
setting yourself to tolerate more pain and abuse.

901
00:55:25.306 --> 00:55:26.868
This is about the exact opposite.

902
00:55:27.528 --> 00:55:28.609
So this is about safety.

903
00:55:28.630 --> 00:55:29.811
This is about self-protection.

904
00:55:29.851 --> 00:55:40.422
This is about noticing when we're alert but calm, we can notice the subtle ripples in people around us who needs our attention, who we really don't like.

905
00:55:40.442 --> 00:55:41.043
Mm-hmm.

906
00:55:41.283 --> 00:55:42.764
But we never really realized it.

907
00:55:43.065 --> 00:55:44.366
You can notice that stuff.

908
00:55:44.466 --> 00:55:46.487
A lot of people, they wake up at like 2 or 3 a.m. in the morning.

909
00:55:46.607 --> 00:55:46.868
Yeah.

910
00:55:47.228 --> 00:55:47.888
In the middle of the night.

911
00:55:48.249 --> 00:55:49.149
And they don't really know why.

912
00:55:49.169 --> 00:55:50.370
They don't know how to get back to bed.

913
00:55:50.390 --> 00:55:52.252
They start worrying and remunerating.

914
00:55:52.292 --> 00:55:53.253
Very, very common.

915
00:55:53.493 --> 00:55:53.953
Yeah.

916
00:55:53.973 --> 00:55:55.875
So they can use this as a tool in that moment.

917
00:55:55.895 --> 00:55:56.355
Definitely.

918
00:55:56.555 --> 00:55:58.397
10 long, deliberate exhales.

919
00:55:58.597 --> 00:56:01.479
There's also this really crazy trick that I put in the book.

920
00:56:01.499 --> 00:56:03.140
It has indirect scientific support.

921
00:56:03.481 --> 00:56:05.382
You want it like best way to fall back asleep.

922
00:56:05.402 --> 00:56:06.403
You want to hear this crazy.

923
00:56:06.463 --> 00:56:07.184
This is so nuts.

924
00:56:07.364 --> 00:56:07.724
Yeah.

925
00:56:07.824 --> 00:56:11.830
to fall asleep or to fall back asleep, you need to stop thinking about your body position.

926
00:56:12.571 --> 00:56:12.711
Hmm.

927
00:56:13.452 --> 00:56:13.893
Turns out,

928
00:56:14.781 --> 00:56:26.604
There's a direct relationship through a few steps, but there's a dedicated circuit, I should say, between your eyes, their movements, and your cerebellum, which is involved in proprioception and balance and a number of other things.

929
00:56:26.644 --> 00:56:32.625
We call the cerebellum the mini brain, but it's this guy back here who really get nerdy.

930
00:56:32.645 --> 00:56:34.546
These hyperfoliated lobes back here.

931
00:56:34.566 --> 00:56:35.626
Foliators are just folds.

932
00:56:35.726 --> 00:56:37.526
It's just nerd speak for foldy bumpy.

933
00:56:37.826 --> 00:56:38.767
It's involved in balance.

934
00:56:39.207 --> 00:56:39.887
It's involved in...

935
00:56:40.828 --> 00:56:47.494
Learning, it's actually very important for generating and responding to the error signals between what you're trying to do and what you can do.

936
00:56:47.794 --> 00:56:54.120
That error signal turns out to be one of the most important things for generating learning to make errors through genuine attempts.

937
00:56:54.440 --> 00:56:55.761
And your cerebellum is critical for that.

938
00:56:55.781 --> 00:56:56.922
It's also involved in timing.

939
00:56:57.283 --> 00:56:59.725
So you need to kind of turn off your learning

940
00:57:01.048 --> 00:57:03.329
recognition of your own limbs to fall asleep.

941
00:57:04.089 --> 00:57:04.989
How do you do that?

942
00:57:05.509 --> 00:57:06.469
You know what works with babies?

943
00:57:06.710 --> 00:57:15.992
Walk back and forth at a particular pace, and this was defined in this Japanese study, and have people swing the baby back and forth just gently as they do it and the baby falls asleep.

944
00:57:16.492 --> 00:57:16.852
Guess what?

945
00:57:16.952 --> 00:57:24.874
Parents figure out the exact cadence with a very small margin of error through trial and error to figure out how to get their kid to sleep.

946
00:57:24.914 --> 00:57:26.015
It's like a natural experiment.

947
00:57:26.035 --> 00:57:27.035
It's been looked at in the lab.

948
00:57:28.072 --> 00:57:32.157
Turns out when you rock back and forth, your eyes move.

949
00:57:32.998 --> 00:57:43.252
This is a very, very ancient system that exists in all jawed animals, including us, that as we move through space, walking, running, swimming, whatever, the world is gliding by what we call optic flow.

950
00:57:44.193 --> 00:57:45.475
You would see the world blurry

951
00:57:46.429 --> 00:58:03.559
but you have a compensatory eye movement that unbeknownst to you, because of a connection between your eyes and these brainstem areas, whose names aren't important right now, and your cerebellum, creates a visual slip error and your eyes automatically offset that error.

952
00:58:03.819 --> 00:58:04.560
So when I go like this,

953
00:58:06.696 --> 00:58:07.596
The world seems stable.

954
00:58:08.396 --> 00:58:17.178
And it turns out there's a pattern of eye movement that can shut down the proprioceptive circuits in the cerebellum, which make you forget your limb position.

955
00:58:17.958 --> 00:58:22.479
And it greatly facilitates the speed at which you fall back asleep.

956
00:58:23.399 --> 00:58:24.700
Okay, you're gonna close your eyes.

957
00:58:25.580 --> 00:58:25.820
Great.

958
00:58:26.500 --> 00:58:31.021
You're gonna move your eyes slowly to one side, underneath your eyelids, then to the other side.

959
00:58:32.302 --> 00:58:34.243
then up, then down.

960
00:58:34.923 --> 00:58:40.384
Now you're gonna move them counterclockwise in a circle-ish and then clockwise in a circle-ish.

961
00:58:40.564 --> 00:58:44.265
And now still with your eyes closed, you're gonna kind of point them towards your nostrils.

962
00:58:44.285 --> 00:58:46.666
You're not gonna cross your eyes and you're gonna do a long exhale.

963
00:58:49.007 --> 00:58:49.247
Great.

964
00:58:50.327 --> 00:58:55.949
That done two or three times generally has people waking up the next morning and like wild.

965
00:58:56.189 --> 00:58:59.730
What happens, what happened is your proprioceptive circuits are shut down.

966
00:59:00.385 --> 00:59:05.106
Now, that's kind of fun to do and you'll see and it costs nothing and it generally works.

967
00:59:05.566 --> 00:59:10.028
Some people, if they're really, really stressed, it might not work, but this is what I do if I wake up in the middle of the night.

968
00:59:10.128 --> 00:59:15.109
I usually go to the bathroom, get back in bed, do long exhale breathing and I do that and I wake up the next morning.

969
00:59:15.249 --> 00:59:16.309
It really works well.

970
00:59:16.969 --> 00:59:22.691
So well, in fact, that there's a company based on work done from two MIT scientists.

971
00:59:23.331 --> 00:59:26.452
They have a sleep mask that generates this pattern of

972
00:59:27.587 --> 00:59:31.008
eye movements through a little electrode behind the ear.

973
00:59:31.408 --> 00:59:36.110
It just like, and it stimulates the extraocular muscles in just the right patterns.

974
00:59:36.610 --> 00:59:38.091
And I tried it and you fall right asleep.

975
00:59:38.271 --> 00:59:38.771
You're joking.

976
00:59:38.971 --> 00:59:39.131
No.

977
00:59:40.112 --> 00:59:41.352
And it monitors REM.

978
00:59:42.413 --> 00:59:49.075
You know, we monitor REM through like an eight sleep or a whoop or some other device through changes in heart rate and breathing.

979
00:59:49.435 --> 00:59:51.156
This is direct monitoring of REM.

980
00:59:52.461 --> 00:59:58.702
It's wild and it can control your eye movements to induce more REM if you want more REM.

981
00:59:58.802 --> 01:00:09.564
There will be a time very soon, like within the next 12 to 14 months, when because of devices like the one they and others are making, when you're going to be able to say, you know what, I want two hours of deep sleep.

982
01:00:10.105 --> 01:00:14.826
I want two hours of REM across a six hour night because I can't afford to sleep my ration of eight.

983
01:00:15.286 --> 01:00:21.487
And you will be generating those eye movements during sleep in order to facilitate, not force, but facilitate,

984
01:00:22.147 --> 01:00:23.188
those patterns of sleep.

985
01:00:43.723 --> 01:00:45.764
nor do they have the power to sign off anything at all.

986
01:00:46.084 --> 01:00:48.645
And this is why so much budget gets wasted.

987
01:00:48.825 --> 01:00:58.469
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988
01:00:58.649 --> 01:01:01.171
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989
01:01:01.572 --> 01:01:03.793
Instead, you're defining exactly who sees it.

990
01:01:04.074 --> 01:01:09.338
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991
01:01:09.739 --> 01:01:13.041
Give them a try at linkedin.com slash diary.

992
01:01:13.362 --> 01:01:22.510
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993
01:01:22.810 --> 01:01:23.490
Keep this to yourself.

994
01:01:23.530 --> 01:01:24.491
Terms and conditions apply.

995
01:01:25.452 --> 01:01:28.394
I want to speak to the business owners listening and watching right now.

996
01:01:28.795 --> 01:01:31.236
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997
01:01:31.276 --> 01:01:36.100
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998
01:01:36.340 --> 01:01:39.262
It's the kind of mental load that takes its toll below the surface.

999
01:01:39.482 --> 01:01:44.306
I recently did some tests through our sponsor, Function, which got me thinking about that invisible impact.

1000
01:01:44.666 --> 01:01:56.712
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1001
01:01:56.812 --> 01:02:05.916
I get up in the morning and the first thing I now do is I go for a walk outside in the sunshine, in part to help my vitamin D levels increase, but also because it helps to reset my circadian rhythm.

1002
01:02:05.976 --> 01:02:10.318
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1003
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1004
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1005
01:02:26.510 --> 01:02:29.192
Did I hear you say that there's a peptide that can help your REM sleep?

1006
01:02:29.352 --> 01:02:33.135
Yes, I have no affiliation to it because it's called pinealon.

1007
01:02:33.755 --> 01:02:38.539
I will tell you, in the book, I do not talk about hormone therapies, peptides, or psychedelics.

1008
01:02:39.672 --> 01:02:41.075
The book is about what I know for sure.

1009
01:02:42.096 --> 01:02:45.983
Hormones, peptide therapies, and psychedelics are at the front edge right now.

1010
01:02:46.003 --> 01:02:47.506
I'm very much involved in

1011
01:02:49.058 --> 01:02:51.159
looking at the research, talking to the people that are doing these things.

1012
01:02:51.199 --> 01:02:53.320
And yes, I dabble in these things, right?

1013
01:02:53.340 --> 01:02:54.401
I'm very interested.

1014
01:02:54.441 --> 01:02:56.482
I experiment on myself, and I'm an adult.

1015
01:02:56.502 --> 01:02:56.922
I can do that.

1016
01:02:57.602 --> 01:03:11.749
So pineelon is very interesting because I found that if I took an itty-bitty bit every third night, I tried this experiment for about a month, I got massive amounts of REM sleep that night, but also on subsequent nights.

1017
01:03:12.310 --> 01:03:16.252
I hosted a Dr. Abud Bakri on my podcast, who's in my...

1018
01:03:17.012 --> 01:03:21.614
view is the most knowledgeable physician on the topic of peptides.

1019
01:03:21.634 --> 01:03:22.455
Oh, I saw that episode.

1020
01:03:22.475 --> 01:03:22.955
It's amazing.

1021
01:03:22.975 --> 01:03:23.736
He's amazing.

1022
01:03:23.856 --> 01:03:26.597
And I think you guys would have an even better conversation, frankly.

1023
01:03:26.797 --> 01:03:31.800
But in any event, he tells me that pinealone is potentially involved.

1024
01:03:31.820 --> 01:03:36.542
There are some data supporting its use for encouraging pinealocyte health.

1025
01:03:36.602 --> 01:03:38.243
So the actual health of the pineal.

1026
01:03:38.623 --> 01:03:39.223
Pineal gland.

1027
01:03:39.263 --> 01:03:42.105
Yeah, the pineal gland, which makes melatonin and does other things too.

1028
01:03:42.185 --> 01:03:45.727
So I think pinealone is a great tool to use sporadically.

1029
01:03:46.525 --> 01:03:47.406
I don't use it regularly.

1030
01:03:47.686 --> 01:03:51.891
You know, as long as we're talking about peptides, I do think that there's, I mean, I'm peptide curious.

1031
01:03:51.911 --> 01:03:53.412
You know, I'm from the Bay Area.

1032
01:03:53.512 --> 01:03:54.573
I've got peptide curious.

1033
01:03:54.794 --> 01:04:00.640
I have not tried any GLPs yet, but I'm getting curious about very, very low dose terzepatide or retitrutide.

1034
01:04:00.680 --> 01:04:02.682
I'm peptide curious, but I'm scared.

1035
01:04:03.142 --> 01:04:03.382
Yeah.

1036
01:04:03.722 --> 01:04:06.705
I'm scared because I don't, you've got to inject most of them, right?

1037
01:04:07.085 --> 01:04:08.886
It's a tiny little thing, you know?

1038
01:04:09.407 --> 01:04:11.748
What's your take on peptides as like a cat?

1039
01:04:11.808 --> 01:04:12.949
It's a big category, isn't it?

1040
01:04:13.029 --> 01:04:14.530
Bloody everything seems to be a peptide these days.

1041
01:04:14.730 --> 01:04:15.451
Here's my opinion.

1042
01:04:15.631 --> 01:04:18.353
It will be popular with some people, unpopular with others, but...

1043
01:04:21.100 --> 01:04:28.847
Obviously, as with hormone therapies or anything else or supplements like sleep, hydration, sunlight, exercises, nutrition, like you need all that stuff.

1044
01:04:29.188 --> 01:04:30.789
The behavioral tools are the foundation.

1045
01:04:31.490 --> 01:04:33.972
Great things can happen when you build on a foundation.

1046
01:04:35.233 --> 01:04:38.937
Okay things can happen when you build on non-foundation, but it doesn't last long.

1047
01:04:39.057 --> 01:04:43.041
But the combination of the two can be pretty awesome, especially if somebody has the means and the interest.

1048
01:04:43.501 --> 01:04:45.623
So the GLPs.

1049
01:04:46.244 --> 01:04:46.384
Mm-hmm.

1050
01:04:47.089 --> 01:04:47.890
Which are the weight loss drugs.

1051
01:04:47.930 --> 01:04:48.690
The weight loss drugs.

1052
01:04:49.110 --> 01:04:50.531
I think redditrutide is amazing.

1053
01:04:50.551 --> 01:04:51.572
It's not just a GLP.

1054
01:04:51.612 --> 01:04:54.094
It also hits the glucagon and GIP pathway.

1055
01:04:54.114 --> 01:05:00.238
This is the one that Lily invested, Eli Lilly invested hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more, into researching.

1056
01:05:00.258 --> 01:05:01.939
And it's went through phase three.

1057
01:05:01.999 --> 01:05:06.583
People lost one third, approximately, of their body weight in about a year or so.

1058
01:05:07.403 --> 01:05:09.465
Is that a good thing for everybody?

1059
01:05:09.705 --> 01:05:09.905
No.

1060
01:05:09.945 --> 01:05:13.868
So what's happening is people are, okay, so the psychedelic,

1061
01:05:14.666 --> 01:05:16.810
community talked about microdosing.

1062
01:05:17.551 --> 01:05:26.246
That microdosing phrase has been now incorporated into GLPs, and people realized they could bypass a lot of the side effects and the cost.

1063
01:05:27.336 --> 01:05:29.057
by microdosing GLPs.

1064
01:05:29.197 --> 01:05:29.978
These are anecdotes.

1065
01:05:30.178 --> 01:05:33.180
So I want to be clear and I'm not pushing peptides or selling peptides.

1066
01:05:33.240 --> 01:05:34.380
I say quite comfortably.

1067
01:05:34.460 --> 01:05:38.563
I have a friend who's very, very skeptical about anything that's not fully FDA approved.

1068
01:05:38.783 --> 01:05:42.785
I don't want to hear about your biohacking nonsense, this kind of thing, but she has chronic fatigue syndrome.

1069
01:05:43.486 --> 01:05:45.427
And she talked to me about like, what can I do?

1070
01:05:45.487 --> 01:05:46.828
She's seen all these physicians.

1071
01:05:46.908 --> 01:05:48.569
Mind you, these are physicians at Stanford.

1072
01:05:48.589 --> 01:05:50.710
These are physicians at UCSF.

1073
01:05:50.850 --> 01:05:55.033
And she's a very smart, nuanced person, but she has a wall there.

1074
01:05:56.806 --> 01:06:02.348
She started taking a very low, very low dose of truzepatide once every 10 days.

1075
01:06:02.488 --> 01:06:03.409
And truzepatide is?

1076
01:06:03.689 --> 01:06:05.349
It's one of the GLP drugs.

1077
01:06:05.369 --> 01:06:10.331
So we could talk about Munjaro, Zempic, but it's not touching GIP or glucagon.

1078
01:06:10.351 --> 01:06:14.253
It's mainly just increasing levels of glucagon-like peptide.

1079
01:06:14.913 --> 01:06:18.635
which is this thing that suppresses hunger and appetite, but also seems to lower inflammation.

1080
01:06:19.236 --> 01:06:23.458
Yes, there are concerns about vision loss in people who have certain structural abnormalities of the eye.

1081
01:06:23.838 --> 01:06:26.480
Yes, there are concerns about apathy if people take too much of them.

1082
01:06:26.720 --> 01:06:31.483
You know, it seems to reduce alcohol craving for people that like alcohol and sugar craving more generally.

1083
01:06:32.024 --> 01:06:35.125
And it can reduce craving for everything if you take enough of it.

1084
01:06:36.066 --> 01:06:40.249
Keep in mind, these drugs are ramping up levels of GLP a thousandfold or more.

1085
01:06:41.129 --> 01:06:42.170
thousandfold or more.

1086
01:06:42.190 --> 01:06:48.193
The body has never seen this level of glucagon-like peptide in the history of humans.

1087
01:06:48.773 --> 01:06:58.338
And remember, this whole thing was discovered because a smart biologist was studying why Gila monsters, these reptiles that I think are ugly, he probably thinks are beautiful, only have to eat a couple times a year.

1088
01:06:58.719 --> 01:07:04.602
It's because they make a peptide called extendin, which turned out to be homologous to glucagon-like peptide 1 in humans.

1089
01:07:05.362 --> 01:07:08.947
The reason these reptiles don't have to eat very often is because they always feel satiated.

1090
01:07:09.087 --> 01:07:09.328
Why?

1091
01:07:09.388 --> 01:07:11.711
Because they have very high levels of glucagon-like peptide.

1092
01:07:12.628 --> 01:07:13.128
circulating.

1093
01:07:13.188 --> 01:07:13.628
We don't.

1094
01:07:14.609 --> 01:07:20.691
And it works through two mechanisms, tells the brain mechanisms for satiety to ramp up their activity.

1095
01:07:20.711 --> 01:07:23.192
And so your brain is telling you, I don't really want food.

1096
01:07:23.533 --> 01:07:27.674
And it also makes people feel full, which is the basis of some of the side effects of nausea and other things.

1097
01:07:28.214 --> 01:07:31.496
So she will tell you, oh my God, my energy's back.

1098
01:07:31.676 --> 01:07:33.857
My inflammation markers are way lower.

1099
01:07:34.397 --> 01:07:36.638
I'm not cured, but I feel so much better.

1100
01:07:37.178 --> 01:07:41.220
Very, very hard to dispute that kind of experience if you're the patient.

1101
01:07:41.640 --> 01:07:44.662
We could talk about safety and sourcing and, you know, et cetera.

1102
01:07:44.682 --> 01:07:53.147
But anyway, so people are trying to realize they can microdose stuff, but you won't see randomized control trials that are going to push this kind of notion.

1103
01:07:53.167 --> 01:07:55.288
You can tell it's terrible for business, right?

1104
01:07:55.988 --> 01:08:00.951
So then there are things like pinealone for sleep, epitalin, perhaps for DNA repair.

1105
01:08:00.991 --> 01:08:02.592
I haven't dabbled with that one yet.

1106
01:08:03.093 --> 01:08:05.234
And then there are the so-called growth hormone secretagogues.

1107
01:08:05.654 --> 01:08:08.236
So we're talking about tessimorelin, ipamorelin, CJC1295.

1108
01:08:08.256 --> 01:08:08.516
Yeah.

1109
01:08:10.817 --> 01:08:13.683
These will promote more growth hormone release and sleep.

1110
01:08:14.345 --> 01:08:16.309
They will have a negative feedback

1111
01:08:17.175 --> 01:08:25.799
effect where they're going to shut down some of your own production and people get a bit leaner and they claim their deep sleep is better and it can increase insulin sensitivity.

1112
01:08:25.879 --> 01:08:27.459
I'll tell you, I've tried Cermorelin.

1113
01:08:27.679 --> 01:08:29.040
I've tried a few of these other ones.

1114
01:08:29.580 --> 01:08:31.001
They nuke my REM sleep.

1115
01:08:31.141 --> 01:08:32.321
They give me a ton of deep sleep.

1116
01:08:32.622 --> 01:08:33.242
I don't like them.

1117
01:08:33.722 --> 01:08:34.582
I've tried pinealine.

1118
01:08:34.602 --> 01:08:35.403
I'll take it now and again.

1119
01:08:35.423 --> 01:08:36.223
I don't do it right now.

1120
01:08:37.103 --> 01:08:42.326
And BPC is the one that gets everybody talking because body protection compound 157 is made in the gut.

1121
01:08:43.258 --> 01:08:52.782
People claim, and I do think their claims are accurate, that they feel, notice what I said right there, is they feel as if their recovery from injury was accelerated.

1122
01:08:52.962 --> 01:09:02.606
And I believe them because I've spent a lot of time with the animal data, whether it's an Achilles tendon transaction or nerve regrowth or tendon or ligament regrowth and vascular.

1123
01:09:03.226 --> 01:09:07.388
Yes, it does seem to accelerate healing across the board, but the concern is you could vascularize tumors.

1124
01:09:07.668 --> 01:09:07.808
Now,

1125
01:09:09.465 --> 01:09:10.005
Would I take it?

1126
01:09:10.205 --> 01:09:11.466
No, I don't have an injury right now.

1127
01:09:11.766 --> 01:09:13.006
I don't have any reason to take it.

1128
01:09:13.506 --> 01:09:16.287
So I don't think people should say, should I take peptides?

1129
01:09:16.307 --> 01:09:18.928
You should ask what effect in your life are you trying to achieve?

1130
01:09:19.608 --> 01:09:19.828
Right?

1131
01:09:20.269 --> 01:09:22.409
And then maybe VPC makes sense.

1132
01:09:22.449 --> 01:09:23.090
Maybe it doesn't.

1133
01:09:23.570 --> 01:09:25.530
You're not going to find many clinical trials on it.

1134
01:09:26.071 --> 01:09:35.214
It has a very, very high, maybe infinite, you know, LD50, meaning no one has really figured out how much can kill you, but that's not a good kind of way to run your life.

1135
01:09:35.954 --> 01:09:36.074
And

1136
01:09:37.663 --> 01:09:40.124
You know, it's somewhere between a drug and a supplement.

1137
01:09:40.364 --> 01:09:49.309
I think this is one of the concerns, or one of the conversations I often hear around GLPs at the moment, is that they've just not been around long enough for us to know the side effect profile over a long period of time.

1138
01:09:49.349 --> 01:09:50.370
Is there any truth to that?

1139
01:09:51.267 --> 01:09:53.808
Well, do you want to be in the experiment or out of these?

1140
01:09:53.868 --> 01:09:56.269
You want to be in the control group or you want to be in the experimental group?

1141
01:09:56.289 --> 01:10:05.794
Well, for somebody who has like serious obesity issues, the terzepatides and monjaros and ozempics and retitrutide could potentially save their life, okay?

1142
01:10:06.674 --> 01:10:08.615
Vision loss is a serious consideration.

1143
01:10:08.835 --> 01:10:10.736
Although I'll go on record, you know,

1144
01:10:11.554 --> 01:10:14.776
Vision is my home and I'll just be direct.

1145
01:10:14.796 --> 01:10:15.737
I don't tap dance at all.

1146
01:10:15.777 --> 01:10:17.058
And I'm not trying to start any battles.

1147
01:10:17.118 --> 01:10:19.499
And David and I can talk about it directly.

1148
01:10:19.519 --> 01:10:26.844
David Sinclair recently went on Rogan and said, you know, the amount of blindness caused by GLPs has doubled, which scared everybody.

1149
01:10:27.105 --> 01:10:27.485
I heard that.

1150
01:10:27.805 --> 01:10:32.046
But there's a structural abnormality in the eye of a subset of people for whom that's true.

1151
01:10:32.526 --> 01:10:34.126
And it's a great idea to get your eye scanned.

1152
01:10:34.146 --> 01:10:36.246
But yeah, so as the, ah, comes apart?

1153
01:10:36.426 --> 01:10:36.606
Yeah.

1154
01:10:36.807 --> 01:10:38.067
Oh man, this is fun.

1155
01:10:38.327 --> 01:10:41.947
It's a good thing I only come on here every once in a while because I do this, I'll do this all day, every day.

1156
01:10:42.347 --> 01:10:53.389
So, you know, light obviously comes in and you've got that cornea on the outside of the eye and the lens focuses the light onto your retina, which is this pie crust-like structure that lines the back of your eyes.

1157
01:10:53.409 --> 01:10:54.549
It's an amazing structure.

1158
01:10:54.970 --> 01:10:56.810
You know, three cell layers thick.

1159
01:10:57.822 --> 01:11:00.003
catches light, absorbs light.

1160
01:11:00.203 --> 01:11:04.304
The photoreceptors turn that into electricity through phototransduction.

1161
01:11:04.604 --> 01:11:05.084
Amazing.

1162
01:11:05.604 --> 01:11:11.745
Then that electricity is cast forward to a set of cells that line the inner part of the retina that we call retinal ganglion cells.

1163
01:11:11.805 --> 01:11:16.486
And then they send their wires, their so-called axons out the optic nerve into your brain.

1164
01:11:16.927 --> 01:11:22.328
They course along the bottom of the brain and they enter your brain, including your circadian clock.

1165
01:11:23.233 --> 01:11:28.717
You get vision, you get sleep-wake rhythms, you get hormone regulation by light, it's just incredible.

1166
01:11:29.638 --> 01:11:32.160
Well, where they exit the eye is called the optic nerve head.

1167
01:11:33.061 --> 01:11:39.026
And if the optic nerve head is a nicely shaped and sized tube for them to exit, great.

1168
01:11:39.286 --> 01:11:40.287
Too big, that's not good.

1169
01:11:41.202 --> 01:11:43.924
but too tight's not good either because those wires get pinched off.

1170
01:11:44.645 --> 01:11:54.171
This is part of what happens in the disease glaucoma, which is the eye pressure goes up and those axons die away, these cells die away, and it's a second leading cause of blindness in the world.

1171
01:11:54.512 --> 01:12:09.303
So in some people who have a structural abnormality, a structural feature of the optic nerve head here where these wires leave the eye, it does seem that the GLPs put them at greater risk for causing some cinching off of those...

1172
01:12:10.199 --> 01:12:12.580
of those cells and there have been cases of blindness.

1173
01:12:13.121 --> 01:12:16.543
But the thing that wasn't really cool, David, is this.

1174
01:12:17.143 --> 01:12:23.307
He is developing some very potentially impressive tools to rescue vision and glaucoma, et cetera.

1175
01:12:24.007 --> 01:12:27.029
But meanwhile, GLPs are not making many people go blind.

1176
01:12:27.629 --> 01:12:31.631
Okay, that's about as true as masturbation is making people go blind.

1177
01:12:32.132 --> 01:12:33.813
I'm not saying you should do either one.

1178
01:12:34.393 --> 01:12:35.554
That's your personal choice.

1179
01:12:36.501 --> 01:12:47.550
But the point here is that he scared the daylights out of people, pun intended, telling them that they can make you go blind, but everyone should get this area of their eye image.

1180
01:12:47.570 --> 01:12:48.731
And it turns out it's very easy.

1181
01:12:48.751 --> 01:12:52.354
You can go to your ophthalmologist or optometrist, ask for an eye pressure test.

1182
01:12:52.654 --> 01:12:55.156
Usually insurance covers it, but definitely worth paying for.

1183
01:12:55.975 --> 01:12:56.795
That was number five.

1184
01:12:57.155 --> 01:12:57.435
Ha.

1185
01:12:57.795 --> 01:12:58.156
Number five.

1186
01:12:58.176 --> 01:12:59.616
We got into peptides, yeah.

1187
01:12:59.656 --> 01:13:01.256
Good thing we're not talking about psychedelics.

1188
01:13:01.296 --> 01:13:02.077
We'll do that another time.

1189
01:13:02.097 --> 01:13:02.337
Oh, gosh.

1190
01:13:02.357 --> 01:13:03.477
We won't do them another time.

1191
01:13:04.237 --> 01:13:05.797
I don't do psychedelics publicly.

1192
01:13:05.837 --> 01:13:06.738
Listen, I'm open-minded.

1193
01:13:07.318 --> 01:13:07.898
I did DMT.

1194
01:13:07.918 --> 01:13:08.318
I didn't care.

1195
01:13:08.398 --> 01:13:10.439
Not as open-minded as you'd be if we do psychedelics.

1196
01:13:10.479 --> 01:13:11.219
No, I'm kidding.

1197
01:13:11.259 --> 01:13:12.379
True, yeah.

1198
01:13:12.459 --> 01:13:13.119
You took DMT?

1199
01:13:13.379 --> 01:13:15.540
In a far away land where it was very legal.

1200
01:13:15.860 --> 01:13:19.821
Because, you know, I sit here and talk about these things and psychedelics, and I actually did work in a psychedelics company for about a year.

1201
01:13:20.241 --> 01:13:22.041
But it was deeply, deeply fascinating.

1202
01:13:22.142 --> 01:13:23.382
The reason I was compelled by it is,

1203
01:13:24.402 --> 01:13:33.204
the efficacy as it relates to mental health and the studies being done out of London around things like, you know, psilocybin and ibogaine and DMT treatments.

1204
01:13:33.224 --> 01:13:36.225
And I just thought, wow, you know, it's unbelievable some of the clinical data.

1205
01:13:36.645 --> 01:13:37.325
I'd love to learn more.

1206
01:13:37.646 --> 01:13:41.627
So I did a psilocybin and then I did a DMT and it was really just...

1207
01:13:41.907 --> 01:13:42.867
I've not done DMT.

1208
01:13:43.650 --> 01:13:44.411
You've never done DMD?

1209
01:13:44.471 --> 01:13:44.872
No, no.

1210
01:13:44.892 --> 01:13:49.259
I've done clinical MDMA and psilocybin.

1211
01:13:49.419 --> 01:13:53.205
I think I'm done with that, not because I had a negative experience, but I got what I wanted out of it.

1212
01:13:53.766 --> 01:13:56.090
And I found it to be immensely beneficial.

1213
01:13:57.659 --> 01:14:03.642
The combination of therapy going in, therapy during, and therapy coming out of combination MDMA, psilocybin.

1214
01:14:03.902 --> 01:14:04.462
Do you know what?

1215
01:14:05.102 --> 01:14:19.989
It's one of the things that made me think a lot about religion, was having a DMT experience where what I experienced felt indistinguishable from this reality in terms of the vividness and the realness of it, and me just pondering this concept that a tiny little inhale of

1216
01:14:21.149 --> 01:14:23.413
could completely change my material reality.

1217
01:14:23.453 --> 01:14:32.169
So therefore I concluded that my material reality is literally, I mean, tell me if my logic's wrong, is a small amount of chemicals.

1218
01:14:32.922 --> 01:14:33.963
being uninterrupted.

1219
01:14:34.664 --> 01:14:35.705
Does that make logical sense?

1220
01:14:35.805 --> 01:14:36.125
Yeah.

1221
01:14:36.165 --> 01:14:38.248
So I think about this way too much.

1222
01:14:38.308 --> 01:14:40.610
I guess we are going to talk about psychedelics, reality, and religion.

1223
01:14:41.111 --> 01:14:42.813
A couple of short statements about this.

1224
01:14:43.133 --> 01:14:44.815
You're fascinated by this.

1225
01:14:44.875 --> 01:14:46.256
I'd love to hear you talk more about it.

1226
01:14:46.276 --> 01:14:51.342
But here are a couple of ways that I think about it in a non-dismissive way.

1227
01:14:52.655 --> 01:14:56.516
most all of biology is just compartmentalized chemistry.

1228
01:14:57.276 --> 01:15:06.078
So whether or not it's the flow of electricity along neural circuits to generate tenacity, for instance, or learning, you're just guiding chemistry in particular ways, okay?

1229
01:15:06.098 --> 01:15:08.378
That's not a way to trivialize it, it's kind of a way to think about it.

1230
01:15:09.139 --> 01:15:13.900
There are two ways that you can change brain function, behavior, and chemistry.

1231
01:15:14.680 --> 01:15:15.620
One is mechanical.

1232
01:15:16.812 --> 01:15:18.233
I can breathe differently.

1233
01:15:19.073 --> 01:15:20.794
I can get a massage, right?

1234
01:15:21.074 --> 01:15:23.395
I could poke myself with a knife, okay?

1235
01:15:23.415 --> 01:15:26.657
So there are mechanical forces that change our physiology.

1236
01:15:26.957 --> 01:15:32.440
And then there are chemical forces, pharmacology, things we eat, and chemicals within us, serotonin, et cetera.

1237
01:15:32.780 --> 01:15:33.400
That's really it.

1238
01:15:33.900 --> 01:15:34.981
There's no other thing.

1239
01:15:35.701 --> 01:15:37.482
In many ways, you're absolutely right.

1240
01:15:37.822 --> 01:15:42.504
It's compartmentalized chemistry, and mechanics and other chemicals are what control that chemistry.

1241
01:15:43.345 --> 01:15:43.545
And...

1242
01:15:44.940 --> 01:15:54.014
I think organizing one's thoughts sometimes in that way can be helpful because you realize the stress response is really just a bunch of chemicals happening in certain places and so on.

1243
01:15:55.183 --> 01:16:08.425
I personally am intrigued about the idea of things outside of our conscious understanding in biology that maybe things like DMT give us access to, or maybe just prayer gives us access to, or faith gives us access to.

1244
01:16:08.966 --> 01:16:21.608
And it comes from my recognition, both as a neuroscientist and just a human who's been alive for 50 years and some change, that our biology and psychology, let's mold those together,

1245
01:16:23.867 --> 01:16:31.589
extraordinarily good at accomplishing certain things, but there are certain things that are outside and,

1246
01:16:32.386 --> 01:16:35.628
the abilities of our psychology and biology.

1247
01:16:36.208 --> 01:16:49.695
And if we are asking our psychology and biology to satisfy something that our psychology and biology simply cannot satisfy, we're going to miss out on a lot of potential meaning in life.

1248
01:16:50.275 --> 01:16:56.478
And what I, to be very direct about it, like at the point where I decide to really embrace the idea of faith of a God, right?

1249
01:16:56.978 --> 01:17:00.400
That there are powers outside of human understanding

1250
01:17:01.438 --> 01:17:03.039
that can be very useful.

1251
01:17:04.600 --> 01:17:05.580
Everything got better.

1252
01:17:06.941 --> 01:17:10.823
It relieved me of the pressure to control everything internally and externally.

1253
01:17:11.403 --> 01:17:22.349
And I find it not just intriguing, but absolutely captivating that a force outside of us, some people call it God, the universe, right?

1254
01:17:22.589 --> 01:17:23.050
Some people...

1255
01:17:24.111 --> 01:17:25.152
might think it's Jesus.

1256
01:17:25.192 --> 01:17:34.804
Some people might think it's something else, might actually hold some power in how we could potentially behave, be better.

1257
01:17:35.365 --> 01:17:43.295
Wouldn't it be wonderful if there's this thing planted in us or some of us, which is a question about things outside of us that if we were to embrace,

1258
01:17:44.706 --> 01:17:47.406
could allow us to get to a better place as a species.

1259
01:17:47.707 --> 01:17:51.047
Why would we think that a technology like AI would do that?

1260
01:17:51.387 --> 01:17:53.948
AI is wonderful, but why would we think that it would come from computers?

1261
01:17:54.008 --> 01:17:55.428
That's of us, right?

1262
01:17:55.628 --> 01:17:59.468
Why would we think it would come from anything that humans and only humans could do?

1263
01:17:59.969 --> 01:18:14.131
To me, embracing the notion of a God and having faith, which by the way is about having doubt, but still doing the things, the practices, prayer, is like to me one of the most liberating and educating things

1264
01:18:14.570 --> 01:18:20.172
thing, not just about stuff of God in the universe, but about the human brain.

1265
01:18:20.752 --> 01:18:21.512
Okay, I've got some questions.

1266
01:18:21.532 --> 01:18:25.053
Yeah, I mean, it's like we're not meant to solve this on our own.

1267
01:18:25.413 --> 01:18:26.273
Do you believe in God?

1268
01:18:26.473 --> 01:18:27.013
Absolutely.

1269
01:18:27.434 --> 01:18:29.074
When did God come into your life?

1270
01:18:30.034 --> 01:18:37.336
Very early, but I was very good at suppressing the notion that it was real.

1271
01:18:38.016 --> 01:18:39.737
Like I would pray in private.

1272
01:18:40.782 --> 01:18:43.744
I would hide it and not just in bad times.

1273
01:18:44.525 --> 01:18:48.208
And then I think I lived enough and observed enough hardship.

1274
01:18:48.668 --> 01:18:50.349
We've talked about some of this on a previous podcast.

1275
01:18:50.369 --> 01:18:59.556
I talk a little bit about that in the book, but I observed it out there too, not just in my own life, that I started to realize, especially if you stick your hands in enough brains,

1276
01:19:00.557 --> 01:19:08.219
And you see my good friend Eddie Chang record from the brain of a awake human and remove a tumor and save that person's life.

1277
01:19:08.899 --> 01:19:14.821
And you also realize that brain areas are controlling things because when they're stimulated, that person feels and responds in a certain way.

1278
01:19:15.201 --> 01:19:17.762
You realize that we're not all meat and potatoes in there.

1279
01:19:17.842 --> 01:19:20.283
There's something else.

1280
01:19:20.363 --> 01:19:20.463
Yeah.

1281
01:19:21.504 --> 01:19:23.765
but I'm not sure that it all comes from us.

1282
01:19:23.905 --> 01:19:25.146
It's sort of hard to explain.

1283
01:19:25.806 --> 01:19:30.589
The best way I kind of wriggle out of this is that I brought my dad on my podcast.

1284
01:19:31.729 --> 01:19:33.950
My dad and I, for many years, had a choppy relationship.

1285
01:19:33.970 --> 01:19:35.151
We have a great relationship now.

1286
01:19:35.171 --> 01:19:36.071
He's 83 years old.

1287
01:19:36.111 --> 01:19:38.132
He's super vigorous.

1288
01:19:38.393 --> 01:19:39.273
He loves ideas.

1289
01:19:39.293 --> 01:19:42.435
He's into quantum computing.

1290
01:19:42.495 --> 01:19:45.456
And he's a theoretical physicist, right?

1291
01:19:46.277 --> 01:19:46.477
And...

1292
01:19:47.197 --> 01:19:48.778
I asked him to explain quantum mechanics.

1293
01:19:49.099 --> 01:19:51.161
I go, okay, like tell my audience how relativity works.

1294
01:19:51.181 --> 01:19:53.182
He worked on chaos theory, okay?

1295
01:19:53.322 --> 01:19:54.283
Tell us how chaos works.

1296
01:19:54.764 --> 01:19:56.305
And he said, I'll do that.

1297
01:19:56.766 --> 01:20:09.417
But you have to understand that one of the most important things about understanding quantum mechanics is that early on you are told and you learn that the human brain can't wrap its head around quantum mechanics with logic.

1298
01:20:10.273 --> 01:20:12.896
with human understanding, you have to rely on the math.

1299
01:20:13.776 --> 01:20:19.021
And he says, anyone who talks about the quantum field who can't show you the math, can't show you the proofs, is lying.

1300
01:20:19.502 --> 01:20:21.984
He loves it when people are like, oh, the quantum this and the quantum that.

1301
01:20:22.044 --> 01:20:24.887
It's often as in like the meditative communities but others too.

1302
01:20:25.147 --> 01:20:29.431
And he goes, people throw this word around because very few people actually understand quantum biology.

1303
01:20:29.691 --> 01:20:34.076
There's gaps, there's some logic, but there's gaps in their logic that the math doesn't line up with.

1304
01:20:34.576 --> 01:20:35.857
And the math doesn't lie.

1305
01:20:36.338 --> 01:20:50.890
So what he was saying, and we were having a discussion about God, and he said, yeah, at some point, if you're going to have faith in a higher power, God, you have to depart this notion that your logical brain can go from A to B to C, and boom, you're there.

1306
01:20:51.371 --> 01:20:53.452
But in quantum mechanics, it's the same thing.

1307
01:20:53.973 --> 01:20:56.355
But on the basis of quantum mechanics, you can build stuff.

1308
01:20:56.515 --> 01:21:00.519
You can engineer stuff in the real world, like that red light or a rocket or a rocket

1309
01:21:01.235 --> 01:21:03.217
Are you saying, but you don't know all of this?

1310
01:21:03.437 --> 01:21:09.101
There's no math to prove this thing that I call the existence of God.

1311
01:21:09.121 --> 01:21:09.842
There's no math.

1312
01:21:09.962 --> 01:21:12.504
And it's not worth torturing yourself over.

1313
01:21:12.965 --> 01:21:15.627
What I believe is worth torturing yourself over

1314
01:21:16.788 --> 01:21:28.502
and there's also great beauty in there, is embracing the practice of prayer, embracing the questions, and like opening the aperture of your beliefs just for a moment, going, maybe I'm going to just believe in God for 10 seconds.

1315
01:21:29.082 --> 01:21:29.723
See what that's like.

1316
01:21:30.144 --> 01:21:33.548
And I started to experience beauty and experience...

1317
01:21:34.769 --> 01:21:41.051
peace around not trying to control things that obviously were not under my control, not just within me, but in other people.

1318
01:21:41.712 --> 01:21:44.873
And I really started to see what I could only describe as miracles.

1319
01:21:45.473 --> 01:21:54.456
And by miracles, I mean, I would pray for some indication of what the right path might be on something where it wasn't clear to me.

1320
01:21:55.117 --> 01:21:57.938
And then two or three days later, something would

1321
01:22:00.301 --> 01:22:01.902
seem almost completely unrelated.

1322
01:22:01.962 --> 01:22:03.623
And the answer would come in that thing.

1323
01:22:04.064 --> 01:22:05.665
And then I just locked in.

1324
01:22:05.685 --> 01:22:08.386
I'm like, listen, I'm a disciplined guy when I really want to be.

1325
01:22:08.707 --> 01:22:10.728
I'm going to pray every night before I go to sleep.

1326
01:22:10.888 --> 01:22:14.510
If I fall asleep, I'll get out of bed and pray when I wake up in the middle of the night.

1327
01:22:14.550 --> 01:22:16.252
I've not missed a night in nearly three years.

1328
01:22:16.912 --> 01:22:21.155
I was recently invited up to Stanford to give a talk with Arthur Brooks, who's a lifetime Catholic.

1329
01:22:21.195 --> 01:22:22.356
He's in mass every morning.

1330
01:22:22.577 --> 01:22:25.639
You know, he and I have very different experiences of God and religion.

1331
01:22:25.699 --> 01:22:27.120
My family was mixed religion.

1332
01:22:27.420 --> 01:22:34.926
I got to sit up there and just say, listen, I'm going to tell you that I for sure am the person who's least knowledgeable, least versed in this room.

1333
01:22:35.527 --> 01:22:37.669
But what I can tell you is my experience with prayer.

1334
01:22:38.069 --> 01:22:45.135
What I can tell you is what I've observed in myself when I open the aperture for faith.

1335
01:22:46.153 --> 01:22:54.039
The reason I did that talk is because our former director of neurosciences at Stanford had written to me and said, I think you should consider talking to this group.

1336
01:22:54.059 --> 01:23:00.564
And he did some of the most important experiments in the history of neuroscience, linking neuronal activity to perception.

1337
01:23:00.784 --> 01:23:05.888
Really show that if you stimulate certain brain areas, people perceive things a certain way, regardless of what's happening out in the world.

1338
01:23:06.549 --> 01:23:13.314
Like there's a brain area I could trigger right now, and I could show you a movie of a bunch of dots moving up, and everyone here would be like, they're moving up.

1339
01:23:13.594 --> 01:23:15.516
And if I tickled the right neuron in your brain...

1340
01:23:16.353 --> 01:23:17.354
You'd say, they're going down.

1341
01:23:17.374 --> 01:23:18.935
I'm like, that's wild.

1342
01:23:18.975 --> 01:23:20.917
Then I'd turn it off and you'd say, oh yeah, of course they're going up.

1343
01:23:21.438 --> 01:23:36.031
Your understanding of the world is an abstraction that occurs inside your skull on the basis of photons that come in through your eyes, sound waves that hit your ears, mechanical forces that hit your skin, and chemicals that go in your nostrils and in your mouth.

1344
01:23:36.191 --> 01:23:40.175
And then you create, you abstract reality in here.

1345
01:23:41.217 --> 01:23:49.064
Now, the laws of physics dictate how those things, like photons have properties, soundways have properties, and those are converted.

1346
01:23:49.545 --> 01:23:59.374
They're transformed into signals, but then you abstract the world with enough accuracies that I can pick up this pen, okay, and not miss it, at least for now.

1347
01:24:00.055 --> 01:24:00.195
So-

1348
01:24:01.697 --> 01:24:10.065
If you understand neuroscience that way, and then you go, we don't see infrared in this room because we don't have the sensors, but a pit viper does.

1349
01:24:10.465 --> 01:24:11.886
Does that mean that there's a God?

1350
01:24:12.867 --> 01:24:14.407
No, not necessarily.

1351
01:24:14.827 --> 01:24:16.288
That alone doesn't prove that.

1352
01:24:16.788 --> 01:24:32.351
But what it does prove is that we only have access to the physical events in the world that we have the filters within us to extract, which is a kind of mealy mouthed way of saying, you can't see it because you can't see it.

1353
01:24:33.051 --> 01:24:34.092
You don't have the sensors.

1354
01:24:34.312 --> 01:24:37.552
You can throw on infrared goggles and then you can see it, but that's a technology.

1355
01:24:38.533 --> 01:24:40.213
I don't think there will ever be the God goggles.

1356
01:24:40.948 --> 01:24:43.970
the emotional goggles, so to speak, come from this thing that we call faith.

1357
01:24:44.571 --> 01:24:50.675
Faith is the infrared goggles of human understanding about why we're here.

1358
01:24:51.035 --> 01:24:54.918
And the challenge for people is, I feel like people come in three categories.

1359
01:24:55.178 --> 01:24:56.519
They either, at least three.

1360
01:24:57.040 --> 01:25:00.282
They either would force religion in a bad way, so they hate it.

1361
01:25:01.653 --> 01:25:06.655
They never had access to it in a way that made them gently pulled toward it.

1362
01:25:06.695 --> 01:25:09.536
Or, you know, they were like, it was like people knocking on their door.

1363
01:25:09.556 --> 01:25:10.537
It felt like a disturbance.

1364
01:25:10.577 --> 01:25:15.439
And, you know, I'm not against proselytizing if it's done kindly and with, you know, delicately.

1365
01:25:16.379 --> 01:25:22.141
Or they're absolutely convinced that it can't be, which I look at as sort of a spiritual anorexia.

1366
01:25:22.562 --> 01:25:29.524
You know, there are regions of the brain that when stimulated, people get a godlike experience, the experience of God, not as themselves, but they feel it.

1367
01:25:29.584 --> 01:25:30.705
You had this idea.

1368
01:25:31.185 --> 01:25:34.668
And so people have said, oh, well, then there's a God region of the brain and it's just a brain region.

1369
01:25:34.688 --> 01:25:36.630
It's just a brain region that can't be.

1370
01:25:37.731 --> 01:25:38.771
But we have brain regions.

1371
01:25:40.012 --> 01:25:41.954
Arthur says this much more eloquently than I could.

1372
01:25:41.974 --> 01:25:52.943
There are brain regions for thirst, which in the philosophical way, again, this is coming from him, not me, would say, well, that proves the existence of water.

1373
01:25:53.664 --> 01:25:56.045
The thirst proves the existence of water, right?

1374
01:25:56.446 --> 01:25:59.809
So I have a thirst circuit for thirst.

1375
01:26:00.756 --> 01:26:05.361
gaining understanding of this thing that we call life and whatever comes after it.

1376
01:26:06.182 --> 01:26:21.939
And in that thirst, I decided to open the aperture to the idea that the thing, the stimulus, the water, the photons, I'm not able to extract that through thought, through my eyes, through my ears,

1377
01:26:23.365 --> 01:26:28.709
Just like my dad couldn't come to understand quantum mechanics by thinking really hard about it, you have to do the math.

1378
01:26:29.090 --> 01:26:30.911
And there are gaps in my reasoning here.

1379
01:26:30.971 --> 01:26:32.532
Like, it's not a perfect one-to-one.

1380
01:26:33.393 --> 01:26:35.014
But also, life's just so much better, man.

1381
01:26:35.655 --> 01:26:37.977
I don't think anxiety sticks in us very long.

1382
01:26:38.017 --> 01:26:43.061
If we're feeling anxious, you pray, God, please, like, help me remove this.

1383
01:26:43.101 --> 01:26:44.342
It's not do this for me.

1384
01:26:44.382 --> 01:26:45.122
It's help me...

1385
01:26:46.447 --> 01:26:48.848
Put energy in me to do the right things today.

1386
01:26:49.349 --> 01:26:50.870
Put energy in me to serve people.

1387
01:26:50.930 --> 01:26:52.030
I prayed before I came in here.

1388
01:26:52.470 --> 01:26:53.071
Really?

1389
01:26:53.811 --> 01:26:57.493
On my knees, for every podcast, guest or host, I prayed.

1390
01:26:57.613 --> 01:27:01.816
I prayed for, I just said, please help me move my ego out of the room.

1391
01:27:02.596 --> 01:27:03.317
We all have an ego.

1392
01:27:04.304 --> 01:27:05.546
help me move my ego out of the room.

1393
01:27:05.826 --> 01:27:10.433
I would hope that people could learn useful information that might help them and that they would propagate that information.

1394
01:27:11.074 --> 01:27:18.786
Please make sure that I maintain humility, maintain like help me, help me strive for clarity and, and,

1395
01:27:19.607 --> 01:27:26.551
I also said, and help Stephen and I do something that we're not predicting that would happen, but you want us to happen that we don't understand.

1396
01:27:27.212 --> 01:27:29.673
And maybe that's this part of the conversation, right?

1397
01:27:30.014 --> 01:27:31.595
Like, you know, I don't know.

1398
01:27:31.995 --> 01:27:33.296
And the point is not to know.

1399
01:27:33.316 --> 01:27:37.258
It's also fun as a scientist who loves mechanisms and cells and circuits and neuromodulators.

1400
01:27:37.298 --> 01:27:43.362
And it's enriching to have a part of life that, like, I can just explore in.

1401
01:27:43.402 --> 01:27:44.963
Like, I like mysteries.

1402
01:27:46.252 --> 01:27:51.633
Like science is about mysteries and it's about solving mysteries, but it's also about being in awe of the mystery.

1403
01:27:52.253 --> 01:27:54.474
And I'm all in, man.

1404
01:27:54.974 --> 01:27:59.774
I mean, I'm different all in than other people talk about being all in.

1405
01:28:00.515 --> 01:28:02.755
And I don't tell people what to do morally.

1406
01:28:02.815 --> 01:28:05.796
I'm really just trying to navigate my own path.

1407
01:28:06.356 --> 01:28:10.116
But it is one of the best things that ever happened to me.

1408
01:28:10.216 --> 01:28:13.017
It's so liberating and life is still plenty hard.

1409
01:28:13.717 --> 01:28:14.558
But I love it.

1410
01:28:15.018 --> 01:28:21.584
It seems to be an antidote that a lot of people are reaching for now, based on the way that we've kind of designed our lives over the last couple of decades.

1411
01:28:21.925 --> 01:28:36.258
The sort of individualism, the loneliness, the, I don't know, nihilism, the me, me, me, the material success, the, you could say, like, low-level narcissism of being on social media and trying to get as many followers as you can.

1412
01:28:36.318 --> 01:28:37.739
And we've become islands.

1413
01:28:37.759 --> 01:28:38.400
Yeah.

1414
01:28:38.818 --> 01:28:56.083
And I've been thinking a lot about this idea of God and meaning because it does appear to me that we are meant to be anchored to ourselves and our family and then our community and then maybe our city and then maybe our country and then maybe the planet and then something above.

1415
01:28:56.423 --> 01:28:57.624
I mean, you're an ambitious guy.

1416
01:28:57.664 --> 01:28:58.384
Go bigger, man.

1417
01:28:58.804 --> 01:28:59.564
I'm not trying to push you.

1418
01:28:59.624 --> 01:29:00.865
No, no, please.

1419
01:29:00.985 --> 01:29:08.387
The biggest thing is that is a non-human force in the universe that wants goodness.

1420
01:29:09.942 --> 01:29:11.703
and can exemplify perfection.

1421
01:29:12.803 --> 01:29:21.747
And you and I, if I may, by virtue of being human, by virtue of having circuits that, I mean, the famous studies, like people get to stimulate different areas of their brain.

1422
01:29:21.767 --> 01:29:27.029
You know, the area that people like to stimulate a lot, the area that generates frustration and anger, that arousal.

1423
01:29:27.569 --> 01:29:29.830
I saw that result and I was like, oh man, that's disappointing.

1424
01:29:30.310 --> 01:29:33.952
Why not beauty, giddiness, or even feelings of being drunk?

1425
01:29:33.992 --> 01:29:36.293
They found that too, but they were not as interested in that.

1426
01:29:37.093 --> 01:29:37.814
Are we bad?

1427
01:29:37.994 --> 01:29:38.734
No, we're not bad.

1428
01:29:38.954 --> 01:29:44.517
We are wired with an animal part of our brain and we are wired with a conscious, thoughtful part of our brain.

1429
01:29:45.137 --> 01:29:49.319
And it's a lot of work to ascend.

1430
01:29:49.679 --> 01:29:56.543
I know that word is like in the looks maxing thing now, but like it's to ascend as a human to a place where

1431
01:29:57.503 --> 01:30:04.066
You're living in a controlled and thoughtful and peaceful way with yourself and with your pursuits.

1432
01:30:04.386 --> 01:30:08.508
And you're putting, striving to put goodness in the world and take care of people.

1433
01:30:09.568 --> 01:30:13.290
And to do that with a little less friction.

1434
01:30:13.850 --> 01:30:19.753
I know from experience that comes from trying not to control every aspect of every process.

1435
01:30:19.793 --> 01:30:21.634
And somehow everything just goes much better.

1436
01:30:22.154 --> 01:30:23.395
So, you know,

1437
01:30:24.593 --> 01:30:26.434
people will be like, oh, he really drank the Kool-Aid.

1438
01:30:26.474 --> 01:30:31.535
Like, I don't know, I actually think that this was pumping in my veins from go.

1439
01:30:32.256 --> 01:30:37.377
Yes, I worked on a lot of topics, stress, vision, et cetera, but I studied neural development for a long time.

1440
01:30:37.417 --> 01:30:43.800
And, you know, sperm meets egg and cells start dividing and you get a human.

1441
01:30:44.880 --> 01:30:48.361
And yes, we understand induction factors.

1442
01:30:48.401 --> 01:30:53.383
I teach developmental neurobiotic, cell migration, axon guidance, you know, mesoderm, ectoderm, et cetera.

1443
01:30:54.797 --> 01:30:55.037
Great.

1444
01:30:55.978 --> 01:31:00.000
Like, compartmentalized chemistry can give you a human.

1445
01:31:00.960 --> 01:31:11.365
But there are gaps in our understanding, and there's magic in that orchestration that goes beyond what the science can even begin to understand.

1446
01:31:12.226 --> 01:31:14.987
And it's nothing short of spectacular.

1447
01:31:15.007 --> 01:31:15.588
You just, like...

1448
01:31:16.688 --> 01:31:18.550
Also, who doesn't want more awe in their life?

1449
01:31:18.791 --> 01:31:28.282
It's like Dr. Keltner, who's like the awe guy at Berklee, like he said, yeah, awe is when you go from small aperture to big aperture, and from big aperture to small aperture.

1450
01:31:28.682 --> 01:31:33.988
That transition induces awe, and you can hear it in sound too, like when you walk in off the street and you go into...

1451
01:31:34.709 --> 01:31:36.951
like Stanford has this incredible church.

1452
01:31:37.111 --> 01:31:40.753
Memorial church is unbelievably beautiful with this giant organ.

1453
01:31:40.773 --> 01:31:48.959
And you walk in there and people change, not just because it's a, like there's this high ceiling, you know, like, wow, like this is incredible.

1454
01:31:48.979 --> 01:31:50.320
And of course I know humans made it.

1455
01:31:50.541 --> 01:31:54.704
Like I'm not an idiot, but day aperture to,

1456
01:31:56.225 --> 01:31:56.965
Holy aperture.

1457
01:31:57.806 --> 01:32:00.347
Like these, and you can get this other ways, right?

1458
01:32:00.628 --> 01:32:09.093
I'm not saying you can't get this other ways, but I like the idea that if we dial out really far, that there's something much greater than us.

1459
01:32:09.193 --> 01:32:17.598
And I don't know what it, exactly what form it takes or exactly what shape it takes or exactly what ways that it, God would exert

1460
01:32:19.398 --> 01:32:22.480
influence over our minds, but... You don't need to.

1461
01:32:22.660 --> 01:32:23.420
You don't need to.

1462
01:32:23.720 --> 01:32:28.783
This is the thing that I think I have to come to terms with, is I go, okay, this is really interesting.

1463
01:32:28.803 --> 01:32:30.724
There's lots of meaning and benefits to my life.

1464
01:32:30.944 --> 01:32:32.764
You know, if we're just thinking about benefits, right?

1465
01:32:33.365 --> 01:32:35.606
And then I go, okay, so which Bible have I got to believe?

1466
01:32:36.404 --> 01:32:38.907
And then I start looking at the Bibles and I'm like, okay, Noah's Ark.

1467
01:32:39.067 --> 01:32:39.908
Look at a bunch of them.

1468
01:32:39.928 --> 01:32:42.011
I think one will call to you more than the others.

1469
01:32:42.291 --> 01:32:44.494
Listen, it may end up being atheism for some people.

1470
01:32:44.534 --> 01:32:51.523
But when I said spiritual anorexia earlier, anorexia is the most deadly of the psychiatric illnesses.

1471
01:32:52.995 --> 01:32:54.977
It's like it's incredibly deadly.

1472
01:32:55.217 --> 01:33:02.104
And it's a something happens to the neural circuits where people with true anorexia feel reward.

1473
01:33:02.304 --> 01:33:08.610
Some sort of sense of, quote unquote, reinforcement is better than reward reinforcement from avoiding food as opposed to eating it.

1474
01:33:08.650 --> 01:33:12.814
So that's very like runs against our evolution as a species.

1475
01:33:12.854 --> 01:33:13.055
Right.

1476
01:33:13.615 --> 01:33:14.116
And our health.

1477
01:33:14.636 --> 01:33:14.796
But.

1478
01:33:15.746 --> 01:33:20.511
The desire for food, as Arthur would say, proves the existence of food, right?

1479
01:33:20.551 --> 01:33:22.874
The desire of thirst proves the existence of water.

1480
01:33:23.354 --> 01:33:23.514
And...

1481
01:33:24.667 --> 01:33:26.529
There are atheists who are like, yeah, I don't need it.

1482
01:33:26.569 --> 01:33:26.989
Not for me.

1483
01:33:27.009 --> 01:33:30.192
And then there are atheists who are, who have a kind of spiritual anorexia.

1484
01:33:30.672 --> 01:33:34.755
It's almost like they get their spirituality is not believing in a God.

1485
01:33:35.296 --> 01:33:39.259
And I look at them and I go, well, you're kind of on the, like the same, like extreme.

1486
01:33:39.299 --> 01:33:44.383
It's almost like it wraps around so far that the truly religious people and the atheists kind of meet right here.

1487
01:33:44.403 --> 01:33:47.906
They both have the same sort of thing, but there's kind of an inversion of the circuit right there.

1488
01:33:48.467 --> 01:33:51.930
And so I don't know, someone will work out the neuroscience or not.

1489
01:33:52.510 --> 01:33:54.531
I'm going to keep praying because my life is that much better.

1490
01:33:55.051 --> 01:33:57.832
When I heard you talk about it, I started praying a little bit.

1491
01:33:58.232 --> 01:33:58.712
Oh, right on.

1492
01:33:58.852 --> 01:34:03.454
Not all the time, but there's several moments where I thought, do you know what, now would be a good time to just pray.

1493
01:34:05.015 --> 01:34:12.958
Someone like you saying that you do it gives a lot of other people permission to try and to investigate for themselves because, you know—

1494
01:34:14.058 --> 01:34:17.939
like if I'm in the Huberman camp, maybe I'm someone that really cares about scientific rigor and precision.

1495
01:34:18.339 --> 01:34:31.422
And then if you change that camp to also be open-minded to spirituality and religion and these sort of other pursuits, I can still be sort of ideologically who I believe I am while also investigating these other things.

1496
01:34:31.462 --> 01:34:40.283
So it was really impactful for me to hear you talk about prayer because it impacted my, it gave me permission, I should say, at some weird level to also investigate.

1497
01:34:40.603 --> 01:34:43.364
And yeah, like I report the same findings as you that...

1498
01:34:44.540 --> 01:34:45.461
It helps.

1499
01:34:45.521 --> 01:34:46.281
Yeah, it helps.

1500
01:34:46.661 --> 01:34:55.645
My former chair and director of neurosciences at Stanford, who encouraged me to do that talk at Veritas, where I mostly talked about how ignorant and naive I am on these topics.

1501
01:34:56.165 --> 01:34:57.846
He's a brilliant neuroscientist.

1502
01:34:58.607 --> 01:34:59.207
He has faith.

1503
01:35:00.179 --> 01:35:01.981
And I respect him and I respect his mind.

1504
01:35:02.382 --> 01:35:05.906
I also think there's maybe a kind of fun analogy here that just came to mind.

1505
01:35:06.366 --> 01:35:09.931
You know, it happens in every dimension, like audience and podcasters.

1506
01:35:09.971 --> 01:35:13.335
But this happened during the pandemic with the health community.

1507
01:35:13.395 --> 01:35:15.357
And we're seeing the long tail of that now.

1508
01:35:15.417 --> 01:35:15.577
But...

1509
01:35:16.218 --> 01:35:18.680
You know, when you're a kid, you think your parents are everything.

1510
01:35:19.160 --> 01:35:20.782
You think they can do no wrong.

1511
01:35:21.242 --> 01:35:23.564
And then there's this thing called being an adolescent teenager.

1512
01:35:24.024 --> 01:35:28.688
And you catch them, like lying or saying things occasionally or doing things.

1513
01:35:28.708 --> 01:35:29.668
You go, wait, you said that?

1514
01:35:29.688 --> 01:35:30.749
And it's like this.

1515
01:35:31.090 --> 01:35:34.292
And all of a sudden, you're like, you don't know anything.

1516
01:35:35.373 --> 01:35:39.676
Then you gain some, hopefully, some agency and some velocity in life.

1517
01:35:39.896 --> 01:35:43.719
And you get to this point where you think you know everything and you accept that they don't.

1518
01:35:44.020 --> 01:35:45.741
But you're really the one that understands.

1519
01:35:48.960 --> 01:35:55.126
I think that as adults, we eventually get to the place after that where we go, oh, wait, it's outside of me.

1520
01:35:55.526 --> 01:35:56.387
I'm going to look outside of me.

1521
01:35:56.407 --> 01:36:00.211
And then you go, no, everyone, like all these adults, we were all, they went through it and we went through it.

1522
01:36:00.611 --> 01:36:07.217
And the real like, oh, it's going, oh, wait, no, no, I'm looking at humans for something that doesn't, isn't going to come from human beings.

1523
01:36:07.558 --> 01:36:08.498
We're all flawed.

1524
01:36:09.079 --> 01:36:10.720
We're all, we're all imperfect.

1525
01:36:11.381 --> 01:36:23.765
And so the notion, the belief that perfection exists outside us and that we can strive for certain things through works, through practices, that's not just compelling.

1526
01:36:23.805 --> 01:36:33.368
That's just like downright fantastic to me because you fully embrace the woes and the beauty of being human.

1527
01:36:34.351 --> 01:36:35.293
in embracing God.

1528
01:36:35.313 --> 01:36:36.295
It's kind of a weird thing.

1529
01:36:36.335 --> 01:36:38.459
So listen, more power to the atheists.

1530
01:36:38.539 --> 01:36:40.182
If they can pull it off without all that, great.

1531
01:36:40.262 --> 01:36:41.925
But meanwhile, I'm going to keep at it.

1532
01:36:42.446 --> 01:36:42.667
Amen.

1533
01:36:44.565 --> 01:36:46.706
This is something that I've made for you.

1534
01:36:46.786 --> 01:36:50.927
I've realized that the Diary of a CEO audience are strivers, whether it's in business or health.

1535
01:36:51.167 --> 01:36:53.048
We all have big goals that we want to accomplish.

1536
01:36:53.388 --> 01:37:05.133
And one of the things I've learned is that when you aim at the big, big, big goal, it can feel incredibly psychologically uncomfortable because it's kind of like being stood at the foot of Mount Everest and looking upwards.

1537
01:37:05.533 --> 01:37:08.594
The way to accomplish your goals is by breaking them down into

1538
01:37:08.794 --> 01:37:12.297
Tiny, small steps, and we call this in our team the 1%.

1539
01:37:12.317 --> 01:37:16.542
And actually, this philosophy is highly responsible for much of our success here.

1540
01:37:16.722 --> 01:37:23.028
So what we've done so that you at home can accomplish any big goal that you have is we've made these 1% diaries

1541
01:37:24.049 --> 01:37:26.431
And we released these last year and they all sold out.

1542
01:37:26.751 --> 01:37:32.856
So I asked my team over and over again to bring the diaries back, but also to introduce some new colors and to make some minor tweaks to the diary.

1543
01:37:32.876 --> 01:37:37.319
So now we have a better range for you.

1544
01:37:37.519 --> 01:37:47.106
So if you have a big goal in mind and you need a framework and a process and some motivation, then I highly recommend you get one of these diaries before they all sell out once again.

1545
01:37:47.186 --> 01:37:49.948
And you can get yours at thediary.com.

1546
01:37:50.188 --> 01:37:51.930
And if you want the link, the link is in the description below.

1547
01:37:53.249 --> 01:37:54.970
Okay, so we haven't done number seven.

1548
01:37:55.270 --> 01:37:56.391
And what's number eight?

1549
01:37:56.411 --> 01:37:57.231
We haven't done number eight?

1550
01:37:57.331 --> 01:37:57.531
Yeah.

1551
01:37:57.871 --> 01:38:00.112
And we haven't done... Well, we sort of did this.

1552
01:38:00.132 --> 01:38:03.594
So at night, once you're asleep, try and keep your sleeping environment as dark as possible.

1553
01:38:03.814 --> 01:38:05.075
A good eye mask is useful.

1554
01:38:05.175 --> 01:38:06.435
Some people like earplugs too.

1555
01:38:06.835 --> 01:38:16.540
If you wake up in the middle of the night, do some long exhale breathing or do the, you know, this wacky eyes to the side, eyes up, and then, you know, counterclockwise and clockwise.

1556
01:38:17.040 --> 01:38:18.281
So at night, dim the lights.

1557
01:38:18.381 --> 01:38:18.661
Why?

1558
01:38:18.721 --> 01:38:20.282
Bright lights stimulate cortisol release.

1559
01:38:20.302 --> 01:38:21.923
You want your cortisol low at night.

1560
01:38:22.003 --> 01:38:22.503
Everyone says...

1561
01:38:23.003 --> 01:38:25.486
Yeah, dim the lights because it suppresses melatonin.

1562
01:38:25.746 --> 01:38:26.246
That's true.

1563
01:38:26.767 --> 01:38:28.108
But that's just half of the story.

1564
01:38:28.128 --> 01:38:31.392
The other reason is it increases cortisol and you want your cortisol low at night.

1565
01:38:31.452 --> 01:38:33.414
What about this whole conversation around phones at night?

1566
01:38:34.094 --> 01:38:34.335
Yeah.

1567
01:38:34.535 --> 01:38:35.055
And blue light.

1568
01:38:35.676 --> 01:38:40.121
Well, dim your phone or triple click program it to go to the red screen.

1569
01:38:40.201 --> 01:38:40.421
Oh, yeah.

1570
01:38:40.541 --> 01:38:40.741
Yeah.

1571
01:38:41.262 --> 01:38:41.762
Just do that.

1572
01:38:42.643 --> 01:38:47.726
I think in the last, let's be reasonable, the last 30 minutes before sleep, no screens.

1573
01:38:48.327 --> 01:38:53.830
First 30 minutes after waking, you should be looking at the sun and exercising, hydrating and doing that kind of thing.

1574
01:38:53.890 --> 01:38:54.930
And chuck the partner out of the bed.

1575
01:38:55.331 --> 01:38:56.091
I've had some.

1576
01:38:56.631 --> 01:38:56.932
Really?

1577
01:38:57.092 --> 01:38:57.972
Oh, they're sleeping.

1578
01:38:57.992 --> 01:38:58.693
Babe, I'm joking.

1579
01:38:58.853 --> 01:38:59.653
I'm the opposite.

1580
01:39:00.034 --> 01:39:00.854
I'm a spooner.

1581
01:39:01.174 --> 01:39:02.495
So am I. I read some studies.

1582
01:39:02.555 --> 01:39:03.836
I sleep best as big spoon.

1583
01:39:04.376 --> 01:39:04.596
Yeah.

1584
01:39:04.616 --> 01:39:05.077
With a human.

1585
01:39:05.097 --> 01:39:05.677
I have no choice.

1586
01:39:05.717 --> 01:39:05.957
Yeah.

1587
01:39:06.017 --> 01:39:06.578
I didn't get, yeah.

1588
01:39:06.698 --> 01:39:06.938
Yeah.

1589
01:39:07.118 --> 01:39:07.398
You've got.

1590
01:39:09.239 --> 01:39:12.581
No, but I did hear a study that, you know, it does impact sleep, but who cares?

1591
01:39:12.601 --> 01:39:13.502
I don't know.

1592
01:39:13.542 --> 01:39:17.525
I mean, the bed cooling thing is very helpful because I tend to run warm.

1593
01:39:17.545 --> 01:39:19.986
So having another person in there is like really warm.

1594
01:39:20.006 --> 01:39:21.467
Like it's like sleeping with a.

1595
01:39:21.847 --> 01:39:22.388
It's so funny.

1596
01:39:22.428 --> 01:39:23.208
I don't want to diminish.

1597
01:39:24.009 --> 01:39:25.330
Come into a giant hot water bottle.

1598
01:39:25.370 --> 01:39:26.390
She runs really warm.

1599
01:39:26.430 --> 01:39:28.352
So having the cooling mattress helps.

1600
01:39:28.392 --> 01:39:29.512
But okay.

1601
01:39:29.712 --> 01:39:31.694
You really want to do these two things.

1602
01:39:31.774 --> 01:39:33.115
These actually go very well together.

1603
01:39:34.007 --> 01:39:36.409
You need to do a bout of work of 90 minutes to two hours.

1604
01:39:36.829 --> 01:39:38.630
Like you got to strive and try and learn something.

1605
01:39:38.690 --> 01:39:40.431
Do something hard every day mentally.

1606
01:39:41.192 --> 01:39:43.033
This is critical for your ability to focus.

1607
01:39:43.693 --> 01:39:45.675
And by the way, you asked about phones.

1608
01:39:45.975 --> 01:39:47.756
Awesome study came out.

1609
01:39:47.956 --> 01:39:54.700
They had people with their phone off, upside down on the table or in their bag, underneath their chair or in the opposite room, a separate room.

1610
01:39:54.721 --> 01:39:57.963
And what they found is people can focus just fine in all three conditions.

1611
01:39:58.863 --> 01:40:01.345
But if the phone is anywhere in the room,

1612
01:40:02.508 --> 01:40:06.973
the amount of cognitive flexibility they have with the material they're focusing on is diminished.

1613
01:40:07.093 --> 01:40:12.138
In other words, it requires more energy to focus, even if they're not getting calls and notifications.

1614
01:40:12.658 --> 01:40:17.363
There's a subscript running in the brain, apparently, that's anticipating that this thing is going to

1615
01:40:18.244 --> 01:40:18.765
reach for me.

1616
01:40:18.805 --> 01:40:19.525
It's going to call me.

1617
01:40:19.726 --> 01:40:23.950
So it's calling you even if it's not calling you, which is pretty cool.

1618
01:40:24.110 --> 01:40:29.014
And so the way to increase focus and cognitive capacity is actually to just get the phone out of the room.

1619
01:40:29.034 --> 01:40:29.875
That's a big part of it.

1620
01:40:30.656 --> 01:40:32.778
And actually visual field matters a lot too.

1621
01:40:33.298 --> 01:40:37.062
You know, like the kid in school with the hoodie who's not asleep, like that actually is helpful.

1622
01:40:37.122 --> 01:40:42.927
I talk about some of the history of tools for focus, pharmacology, but also physical devices, you know, they used to design helmets.

1623
01:40:42.947 --> 01:40:43.728
They used to design helmets,

1624
01:40:43.788 --> 01:40:47.029
for kids to like try and focus the kids that had troubles.

1625
01:40:47.189 --> 01:40:50.951
Problem is now with the phone, you've moved to the whole world right in front of you.

1626
01:40:51.691 --> 01:40:58.294
So focusing just here doesn't work, but get the phone out of the room and do some effortful learning bout.

1627
01:40:58.534 --> 01:40:59.754
And it should feel like a fight.

1628
01:40:59.834 --> 01:41:04.696
Keep in mind the friction you feel trying to learn something, that's adrenaline.

1629
01:41:05.597 --> 01:41:07.117
Remember, how do we block learning?

1630
01:41:07.337 --> 01:41:11.279
We block adrenaline and it's downstream effects with propranolol.

1631
01:41:12.374 --> 01:41:19.852
Being alert but calm or a little stressed and making errors through deliberate attempts to do something, not just throwaway errors,

1632
01:41:21.308 --> 01:41:21.968
That's how you learn.

1633
01:41:22.068 --> 01:41:22.368
Why?

1634
01:41:22.888 --> 01:41:25.969
If I can reach out and grab this pen, my brain doesn't change.

1635
01:41:26.730 --> 01:41:31.631
One of the biggest lies in public education about neuroscience is that every experience changes your brain.

1636
01:41:31.671 --> 01:41:33.592
By the time I'm done saying this, your brain will be different.

1637
01:41:33.652 --> 01:41:34.892
No, that's absolutely not true.

1638
01:41:34.912 --> 01:41:35.932
That's a bunch of hooey.

1639
01:41:36.513 --> 01:41:37.873
I studied neuroplasticity.

1640
01:41:37.893 --> 01:41:38.813
I teach neuroplasticity.

1641
01:41:38.833 --> 01:41:40.674
I'll tell you, you know what induces neuroplasticity?

1642
01:41:40.894 --> 01:41:46.836
Being a baby who's trying to learn or being an adult who's forcing yourself to try and learn and you can't do the thing.

1643
01:41:47.176 --> 01:41:50.317
The error is what stimulates the plasticity.

1644
01:41:51.187 --> 01:41:58.051
So if you, and the appropriate level of difficulty, say the computational modeling is somewhere around 15% on average.

1645
01:41:58.131 --> 01:41:58.831
Now, what does that mean?

1646
01:41:59.111 --> 01:42:00.272
There's two kinds of practice.

1647
01:42:01.313 --> 01:42:03.494
One is practicing doing things I already know how to do.

1648
01:42:04.074 --> 01:42:06.335
There, you're aiming for 100% performance, right?

1649
01:42:06.355 --> 01:42:08.156
You're reinforcing what you already know how to do.

1650
01:42:08.497 --> 01:42:13.079
Talk to a great dancer and they'll tell you they drill, drill, drill, drill, the things they already know how to do.

1651
01:42:13.439 --> 01:42:19.543
But when you're trying to learn the new language, the new emotional skill, the new physical skill, the new cognitive emotional skill,

1652
01:42:20.451 --> 01:42:24.695
You need to make genuine attempts and you need to fail some of the time.

1653
01:42:24.955 --> 01:42:32.322
And those failure signals are relayed to your cerebellum and your cerebellum propagates through networks that say change.

1654
01:42:33.463 --> 01:42:37.847
So there's a set of conditions in the chapter on plasticity that say you need to be alert.

1655
01:42:38.008 --> 01:42:40.009
So I talk about all the ways you can get alert.

1656
01:42:40.690 --> 01:42:43.231
including pharmacology supplements and behavioral tools.

1657
01:42:43.931 --> 01:42:44.951
Then you need to be focused.

1658
01:42:45.051 --> 01:42:49.112
I talk about all the tools for focus, which you can devote to anything, not just learning.

1659
01:42:49.592 --> 01:42:57.954
And then I talk about the conditions for plasticity and you need to get this friction and these errors and then you need to stop.

1660
01:42:58.354 --> 01:43:00.815
You need to come back a day or two later, do it again.

1661
01:43:01.355 --> 01:43:04.336
And then you need to make sure that you reinforce what you learned.

1662
01:43:04.876 --> 01:43:07.816
Here's where AI is gonna be a wonderful tool, already is a wonderful tool.

1663
01:43:08.116 --> 01:43:10.397
The best way to learn is to not forget.

1664
01:43:11.458 --> 01:43:25.952
Meaning, if you test yourself mentally, or you could use any one of the LLMs, but I'll go into chat GBT and I'll just say, generate a short test of a graduate student at Stanford level, questions about neuroplasticity.

1665
01:43:26.012 --> 01:43:30.196
And I'll just, and I go, oh, and I remember this, this is, and there's just one thing I don't remember.

1666
01:43:30.557 --> 01:43:33.619
That's how you maintain and build knowledge over time.

1667
01:43:33.860 --> 01:43:34.500
Self-testing.

1668
01:43:35.361 --> 01:43:36.002
Self-testing.

1669
01:43:36.022 --> 01:43:38.084
People hear the word test, they think of external tester.

1670
01:43:38.444 --> 01:43:39.285
You're the test taker.

1671
01:43:39.665 --> 01:43:40.246
Self-testing.

1672
01:43:40.566 --> 01:43:45.010
That's a really interesting idea for this podcast episode, which we should definitely run, team.

1673
01:43:45.191 --> 01:43:46.252
Should we generate a quiz?

1674
01:43:46.652 --> 01:43:46.912
Yeah.

1675
01:43:46.932 --> 01:43:53.198
So we can take the transcript and we can turn it into a test of the 10 protocols that you've talked through.

1676
01:43:53.659 --> 01:43:56.481
And we'll link it below if you want to take the test.

1677
01:43:57.202 --> 01:43:57.462
Awesome.

1678
01:43:57.782 --> 01:43:58.102
Yeah.

1679
01:43:58.142 --> 01:43:59.623
ChatGPT is great at doing this.

1680
01:43:59.983 --> 01:44:07.544
You can change the difficulty and you can actually say, I'm a professor of neuroscience and I want a 15% error rate on average.

1681
01:44:09.164 --> 01:44:10.005
Hit me.

1682
01:44:10.365 --> 01:44:11.585
So it's pretty cool.

1683
01:44:11.925 --> 01:44:20.267
You know, the study I love that really backs this up is that there've been a lot of studies of learning where they have students read the same passage one, two, three, or four times.

1684
01:44:20.607 --> 01:44:24.968
And then they also have them highlight or take notes or they just have them read it once and self-test.

1685
01:44:25.168 --> 01:44:26.908
And they look six months and two years later.

1686
01:44:27.869 --> 01:44:40.056
reading it once, no notes, no highlighting and self-testing, you know, about a week later and looking up what you got, couldn't remember or got wrong led to much more stable learning over time.

1687
01:44:40.817 --> 01:44:41.117
Awesome.

1688
01:44:41.497 --> 01:44:45.740
Now this doesn't work so well for physical endeavors because there you have to like actually do the physical thing.

1689
01:44:45.760 --> 01:44:47.681
You have to test yourself physically.

1690
01:44:48.181 --> 01:44:53.465
But I love that set of experiments because it tells us everything we should be doing.

1691
01:44:53.885 --> 01:44:55.726
So I think in doing this for me, it could be a book.

1692
01:44:55.766 --> 01:44:56.046
It could be

1693
01:44:57.007 --> 01:45:00.568
Lately, I've been podcasting and recording my audiobook.

1694
01:45:00.608 --> 01:45:01.789
Have you done a book?

1695
01:45:01.949 --> 01:45:03.989
Yes, and I did the audiobook, which was horrific.

1696
01:45:04.049 --> 01:45:04.910
Are you due for another one?

1697
01:45:05.370 --> 01:45:05.630
I am.

1698
01:45:05.930 --> 01:45:06.950
I've actually written it already.

1699
01:45:06.970 --> 01:45:07.271
I wrote it.

1700
01:45:07.291 --> 01:45:10.071
I finished writing it last year, but I... Oh, man, what's it about?

1701
01:45:10.572 --> 01:45:11.612
It's called Just Fucking Do It.

1702
01:45:12.372 --> 01:45:13.753
I asked the audience multiple times what...

1703
01:45:14.213 --> 01:45:17.214
I showed them multiple covers of books, hundreds of them, and asked them what they wanted.

1704
01:45:17.774 --> 01:45:19.435
And that was the one that most of them tried to buy.

1705
01:45:19.795 --> 01:45:22.816
And so it's really just a breakdown of how to do the thing.

1706
01:45:22.836 --> 01:45:27.698
And actually, I reference you in there, in the chapter about the anterior mid-singulate cortex and what you said about it.

1707
01:45:27.758 --> 01:45:29.178
And so, yeah.

1708
01:45:29.198 --> 01:45:35.520
Well, to be clear, I didn't discover that structure, but I'm happy to expound on all its incredible abilities.

1709
01:45:35.560 --> 01:45:39.982
I just quote what I heard you say about it in your podcast, but I'll show you what I wrote.

1710
01:45:40.222 --> 01:45:40.382
Cool.

1711
01:45:40.402 --> 01:45:40.942
I'll get a copy.

1712
01:45:41.362 --> 01:45:42.543
I'm late to the train, obviously.

1713
01:45:43.483 --> 01:45:45.765
So I think it's enriching as a person.

1714
01:45:45.825 --> 01:45:48.847
It's not about optimization per se.

1715
01:45:48.948 --> 01:46:00.677
It's about being a human being and learning and effort that's followed by learning and reward, especially for things that you might, well, including things that may not immediately benefit you, but just to enrich your mind is cool.

1716
01:46:00.697 --> 01:46:05.181
Like if you're interested in the history of medicine, read a hard book, The Prince of Medicine about Galen.

1717
01:46:05.361 --> 01:46:10.105
If you're interested in light, there are a bunch of cool books about sunlight coming out now from Galen.

1718
01:46:10.545 --> 01:46:12.728
people other than me about how cool sunlight is.

1719
01:46:12.788 --> 01:46:14.510
And there's just like cool books out there.

1720
01:46:14.710 --> 01:46:18.795
But this is linked to brain health and dementia, these kinds of things, no?

1721
01:46:19.335 --> 01:46:20.156
To some extent, yeah.

1722
01:46:20.196 --> 01:46:25.382
I mean, the data on dementia say that people who stay mentally and physically active and are socially enriched...

1723
01:46:27.884 --> 01:46:28.445
do much better.

1724
01:46:28.485 --> 01:46:43.477
In fact, Masoud Hussain, who's this brilliant neurologist from Oxford, has been talking about patients who, it turns out, live a very long time, have lots of plaques and tangles, the signature anatomical features of Alzheimer's dementia, but no dementia.

1725
01:46:44.197 --> 01:46:44.517
Oh, yeah.

1726
01:46:44.758 --> 01:46:50.002
And these people are exercisers, and they are people who stay very avidly engaged in learning.

1727
01:46:50.622 --> 01:46:54.405
So there are a lot more people with, quote, unquote, with Alzheimer's walking around.

1728
01:46:54.425 --> 01:46:58.028
They have all the diagnostic features of Alzheimer's except the memory loss and dementia.

1729
01:46:58.608 --> 01:47:00.830
So this says that to some extent the physical...

1730
01:47:02.078 --> 01:47:10.260
ramifications of Alzheimer's and the consequence of those changes in neurons are somewhat separable.

1731
01:47:10.460 --> 01:47:11.160
We want to be fair.

1732
01:47:11.180 --> 01:47:27.344
I mean, he also told me that there are patients who have Parkinson's who can't generate smooth movement, but if they have to escape a burning building, they can, which is interesting, a little frustrating as a message because it sort of sends, could potentially send the wrong message, like they're just not motivated enough.

1733
01:47:27.364 --> 01:47:30.585
But it points to the fact that if motivational systems are...

1734
01:47:31.720 --> 01:47:40.553
high enough that there may be alternate motivational systems in the same way that kids with very severe ADHD, if you give them a video game they love, they are locked and loaded.

1735
01:47:42.115 --> 01:47:48.097
They're in a focus tunnel like this for two hours, which tells you they can focus, but not on things that they're not really interested in.

1736
01:47:48.497 --> 01:47:52.438
And a lot of life is about forcing yourself to be interested in things you don't really want to do.

1737
01:47:52.959 --> 01:47:53.659
So that's number four.

1738
01:47:53.699 --> 01:47:54.359
We've got one left.

1739
01:47:54.499 --> 01:47:55.019
Number 10.

1740
01:47:55.439 --> 01:47:55.700
Yeah.

1741
01:47:56.020 --> 01:47:59.181
So number 10 to frame this a little bit.

1742
01:47:59.661 --> 01:48:01.901
The last chapter of my book is on personal development.

1743
01:48:02.242 --> 01:48:06.063
I thought a lot like, am I going to write a book, a last chapter on like relationships?

1744
01:48:06.083 --> 01:48:06.643
Yeah.

1745
01:48:06.970 --> 01:48:07.751
That seemed like a no.

1746
01:48:08.211 --> 01:48:17.858
Not because I haven't had them or not because I haven't had some great ones, but because I think people who like work on that as their academics, you know, fundamentally should do that.

1747
01:48:18.038 --> 01:48:20.040
Then again, I had a chapter on nutrition and exercise.

1748
01:48:20.080 --> 01:48:24.223
But in any event, I decided to write about relationship to self.

1749
01:48:25.923 --> 01:48:28.825
And then I thought, no, personal development is something we're all trying to do.

1750
01:48:29.246 --> 01:48:31.548
And here's the key question set up at the beginning.

1751
01:48:31.948 --> 01:48:35.351
I talk about grief and what the science of grief is and how to navigate grief.

1752
01:48:35.391 --> 01:48:39.694
But early on in that chapter on personal development, I sort of set it up the following way.

1753
01:48:40.515 --> 01:48:48.341
I look out on the landscape of all the personal, psychological, and relationship development stuff out there online, in books, in papers, et cetera.

1754
01:48:48.962 --> 01:48:52.285
And it looks like there's sort of two bins.

1755
01:48:52.845 --> 01:48:54.146
One is how to...

1756
01:48:56.262 --> 01:49:05.385
find what's important to you, do what's best for you, and be the person you're supposed to be for the world and maybe for you also.

1757
01:49:05.765 --> 01:49:16.828
And then there's this other bin, which is that we need to be very careful about pursuing things and fulfilling roles because we can get very far off track from our core, like what Martha Beck would call our essential self.

1758
01:49:17.368 --> 01:49:24.110
And I'm a huge fan of her work, if in no small part, because she talked about that in her books, which were very, very impactful for me.

1759
01:49:24.790 --> 01:49:26.835
But she also has three degrees from Harvard.

1760
01:49:26.855 --> 01:49:28.979
So this isn't somebody who like can't get stuff done.

1761
01:49:29.521 --> 01:49:32.728
And she's a mom and she's navigated complicated life landscapes.

1762
01:49:33.991 --> 01:49:35.431
So I was like, okay, this is kind of it.

1763
01:49:35.911 --> 01:49:41.192
And then I hosted James Hollis, this 84-year-old Jungian analyst on my podcast.

1764
01:49:41.232 --> 01:49:46.413
And he just wowed the heck out of all of us.

1765
01:49:46.893 --> 01:49:49.154
And he basically said this, here's a really good life.

1766
01:49:49.234 --> 01:49:52.894
Mind you, this guy's written books like the Eden Project on relationships.

1767
01:49:52.914 --> 01:49:56.835
He's written books like Under Saturn's Shadow on the healing and trauma of men.

1768
01:49:56.955 --> 01:49:58.695
He's a brilliant thinker.

1769
01:49:58.735 --> 01:50:02.556
And he said, look, there's three things you gotta do every day.

1770
01:50:03.605 --> 01:50:07.847
And he encourages his patients to write this on their refrigerator or carry it around with them.

1771
01:50:07.947 --> 01:50:09.327
He says, first, shut up.

1772
01:50:10.288 --> 01:50:13.189
I'm like, I thought it was gonna be like this, like nice young analyst.

1773
01:50:13.209 --> 01:50:14.269
Like he goes, shut up.

1774
01:50:15.110 --> 01:50:16.910
There's always somebody suffering more than you.

1775
01:50:17.571 --> 01:50:18.951
You have to have gratitude.

1776
01:50:18.971 --> 01:50:20.572
You have to have a gratitude practice.

1777
01:50:20.872 --> 01:50:25.554
So I spent some time talking about what that really looks like, because there's a science of gratitude.

1778
01:50:25.574 --> 01:50:27.455
And then there's the common understanding about what that is.

1779
01:50:27.495 --> 01:50:30.716
It's really about receiving gratitude.

1780
01:50:30.736 --> 01:50:31.056
Right.

1781
01:50:31.699 --> 01:50:38.381
Or yes, having a gratitude practice of all the things that are good in your life, but really it's about giving gratitude and receiving gratitude.

1782
01:50:38.441 --> 01:50:41.982
And that's a, I talk about that and how to accomplish that.

1783
01:50:42.022 --> 01:50:45.243
Second thing he said, so I go, okay, now he'll kind of soften up and he is.

1784
01:50:45.683 --> 01:50:46.824
He says, suit up.

1785
01:50:47.884 --> 01:50:50.645
You're not going to be able to do well in anything in life unless you prepare.

1786
01:50:51.349 --> 01:50:55.991
get up in the morning, take care of your health, do what you need to do to shower, brush your teeth, get organized.

1787
01:50:56.011 --> 01:51:00.732
This sounds a little bit like Jordan Peterson's clean your room, but it was even like edgier than that.

1788
01:51:01.072 --> 01:51:08.875
It was like, how in the world could you perform well on an exam or in a relationship or in a sport or at work if you don't actually do your homework?

1789
01:51:09.275 --> 01:51:12.736
I was like, oh man, this guy's like, there's some like boomer knowledge right here.

1790
01:51:13.236 --> 01:51:14.657
And then he says, and show up.

1791
01:51:15.257 --> 01:51:18.738
He said, happy people fulfill outward roles.

1792
01:51:20.371 --> 01:51:20.931
for the world.

1793
01:51:21.111 --> 01:51:21.852
They fulfill roles.

1794
01:51:22.192 --> 01:51:24.173
Father, mother, sister, brother.

1795
01:51:24.193 --> 01:51:30.477
They look at themselves, and this is not the totality of it, but they look at themselves as somebody who needs to fulfill roles.

1796
01:51:31.317 --> 01:51:35.379
Teacher, mechanic, whatever, engineer, podcaster.

1797
01:51:36.540 --> 01:51:38.761
But you have to shut up, suit up, and show up.

1798
01:51:38.801 --> 01:51:39.762
You need to fulfill roles.

1799
01:51:39.782 --> 01:51:45.325
There is no human being that doesn't have to do stuff for the world.

1800
01:51:45.485 --> 01:51:46.385
You can't freeload.

1801
01:51:46.986 --> 01:51:48.847
But then he said, there's this other bin.

1802
01:51:49.723 --> 01:51:54.745
Which is, if you carry on like that for 10, 20, 30 years, you can end up quite happy.

1803
01:51:54.765 --> 01:51:58.606
But most of the time, if people just do those things, they end up pretty miserable.

1804
01:51:59.246 --> 01:52:00.327
And I was like, oh, man.

1805
01:52:01.667 --> 01:52:07.049
And he said, the other piece is, once a day, you need to get out of role fulfillment.

1806
01:52:07.269 --> 01:52:10.210
You need to get out of preparation, suit up.

1807
01:52:10.250 --> 01:52:12.511
And you need to get out of trying to be more grateful.

1808
01:52:13.763 --> 01:52:23.766
You still need to do that, but you need to get out of that and you need to go into what he called exiting the stimulus response mode of being, which could be sitting quietly in meditation.

1809
01:52:24.046 --> 01:52:25.607
It could be drawing, listening to music.

1810
01:52:25.627 --> 01:52:28.088
You're not trying to accomplish anything.

1811
01:52:28.768 --> 01:52:34.930
And you're just letting your unconscious mind feed you information about what he called your deepest heart's desires.

1812
01:52:36.230 --> 01:52:38.131
And I was like, yes, yes.

1813
01:52:39.433 --> 01:52:40.715
This is why we go camping.

1814
01:52:40.735 --> 01:52:42.939
He said, yes, you can take longer extended breaks.

1815
01:52:42.959 --> 01:52:43.880
You can go backpacking.

1816
01:52:43.900 --> 01:52:44.521
You can run.

1817
01:52:44.561 --> 01:52:45.082
You can do that.

1818
01:52:45.102 --> 01:52:47.105
You can allow this to happen in any number of ways.

1819
01:52:47.185 --> 01:52:48.027
But once a day...

1820
01:52:49.173 --> 01:52:52.254
Take some space for yourself and just touch in with self.

1821
01:52:52.335 --> 01:52:54.936
Now, if you're sitting there going, okay, what do I want to be when I grow up?

1822
01:52:54.976 --> 01:52:55.456
It should happen.

1823
01:52:55.656 --> 01:52:56.336
It's not the way it works.

1824
01:52:56.356 --> 01:53:11.864
Your unconscious mind speaks to you in emotions, in analogies, and it sets you up to go back into life to be able to see connections and start navigating in new and interesting ways, ways that are unique to your heart's desires about what you like and what you don't like.

1825
01:53:12.504 --> 01:53:16.327
And to know that those choices are in goodness and in keeping with who you are.

1826
01:53:16.808 --> 01:53:19.110
I can't tell you what your deepest heart's desires are.

1827
01:53:19.250 --> 01:53:21.011
Only you can come to that clarity.

1828
01:53:21.331 --> 01:53:26.095
But you need to do it through a practice where you're not trying to be the football coach, the mom, the best this.

1829
01:53:26.235 --> 01:53:27.476
You need to listen to yourself.

1830
01:53:28.017 --> 01:53:29.838
But you also need to keep fulfilling those roles.

1831
01:53:29.899 --> 01:53:35.403
Because he and I both agree, and I mentioned this several times, because I get asked all the time, how do I find my calling?

1832
01:53:35.623 --> 01:53:39.026
You find it while working your butt off doing something else.

1833
01:53:39.046 --> 01:53:39.386
That's how.

1834
01:53:40.247 --> 01:53:42.089
You don't sit around going, oh, that's my calling.

1835
01:53:42.729 --> 01:53:46.452
You work your butt off doing something else and you hate it, so you do something that you hate a little less.

1836
01:53:46.512 --> 01:53:47.893
You do something you hate a little less, maybe.

1837
01:53:48.233 --> 01:53:51.876
And eventually you get pulled forward to this thing that is your key self.

1838
01:53:52.076 --> 01:53:59.743
And there's not necessarily a... Because people often, when they talk about finding your passion, passion is a word that happens to be singular, which can be somewhat...

1839
01:54:00.443 --> 01:54:00.964
distorting.

1840
01:54:01.244 --> 01:54:05.388
Because then you think, almost like an Easter egg, I have to go search for it, and there's going to be one of them somewhere.

1841
01:54:05.969 --> 01:54:07.230
I can handle five-year chunks.

1842
01:54:07.390 --> 01:54:14.517
Maybe this just reflects my years and years of getting degrees, where it's like three to five years for this, then three to five years for that, postdoc, graduate school, et cetera.

1843
01:54:15.138 --> 01:54:17.140
I'm navigating from 50 to 55 now.

1844
01:54:17.360 --> 01:54:18.061
That's what I know.

1845
01:54:18.601 --> 01:54:21.844
I know what I'm going to carry forward, exercise, faith,

1846
01:54:22.779 --> 01:54:46.262
hydration so i know what i'm going to carry forward but i don't know what's coming next i've never been 60 before so the end of the day and there were two questions that i had for you here based on some of the research um the first is i'll say it's a technical one but sleeping on your side i heard there's um there's different outcomes for your brain based on how you sleep yeah when you sleep you have a washout of waste products from the brain yeah

1847
01:54:46.562 --> 01:54:48.463
Very important for offsetting dementia.

1848
01:54:48.523 --> 01:54:49.903
Very important for feeling rested.

1849
01:54:50.043 --> 01:54:53.865
And if that's not enough incentive, very important for getting rid of bags under your eyes.

1850
01:54:53.945 --> 01:54:57.587
You know, in the morning when you're, have you ever seen yourself after one night's shitty sleep?

1851
01:54:57.747 --> 01:54:58.287
Oh my gosh.

1852
01:54:58.447 --> 01:54:58.627
Right.

1853
01:54:58.747 --> 01:55:00.348
Sleep two nights well, you see yourself.

1854
01:55:00.468 --> 01:55:00.828
Yeah, yeah.

1855
01:55:00.848 --> 01:55:01.308
What the hell?

1856
01:55:01.328 --> 01:55:03.209
Yeah, you're your handsome self again, Stephen.

1857
01:55:03.669 --> 01:55:03.969
You know?

1858
01:55:04.389 --> 01:55:05.610
So what is that?

1859
01:55:05.630 --> 01:55:09.431
That's accumulation of lymph and other fluids and waste products here.

1860
01:55:09.572 --> 01:55:10.452
That one flushed out.

1861
01:55:10.832 --> 01:55:11.613
Yeah.

1862
01:55:11.653 --> 01:55:22.468
So during sleep, there's this glymphatic clearance and it does seem it can be slightly but significantly improved by sleeping on your side with your head slightly elevated.

1863
01:55:22.928 --> 01:55:24.330
We used to think it was slightly inverted.

1864
01:55:24.350 --> 01:55:25.372
Now we think it's slightly elevated.

1865
01:55:25.772 --> 01:55:26.673
When you get up in the morning,

1866
01:55:27.852 --> 01:55:28.532
I'm actually a big fan.

1867
01:55:28.552 --> 01:55:33.053
I've got one of these inversion tables, but most people won't, you know, where you lie back and you go upside down.

1868
01:55:33.093 --> 01:55:33.933
No, you just hang upside down.

1869
01:55:33.993 --> 01:55:35.113
This feels good on my back.

1870
01:55:35.553 --> 01:55:38.134
But some people get the shaker, some people do some jump rope.

1871
01:55:38.154 --> 01:55:42.015
You can just kind of shake out and move because the lymphatic system is really incredible.

1872
01:55:42.055 --> 01:55:45.995
It's one way valves stacked up from your feet all the way up to your brain.

1873
01:55:46.595 --> 01:55:51.276
People think about the role of lymph and lymph nodes in immune checkpoints and immune system.

1874
01:55:51.296 --> 01:55:52.256
That's all true, of course.

1875
01:55:52.616 --> 01:55:55.297
But the lymph system is taking liquid

1876
01:55:56.157 --> 01:56:05.842
and it's dumping it back into your blood circulation, and it can accumulate when you're lying, or when you're, you know, this is lymphedema, is, you know, swelling of the lower limbs, et cetera.

1877
01:56:06.022 --> 01:56:07.242
So you need to move.

1878
01:56:07.282 --> 01:56:13.926
When you move, you're essentially squeezing the lymph in these one-way valves up to dump back into the general circulation.

1879
01:56:13.986 --> 01:56:15.666
Your brain doesn't have that mechanism.

1880
01:56:16.147 --> 01:56:18.288
So miraculously, in sleep,

1881
01:56:18.868 --> 01:56:36.798
you get the astrocytes, the glial cells, actually create a bit of extra space in the brain between neural tissue that allows the waste products, the glymph, as we call it, glia, lymph, glymph, to flow up and out towards the surface of the brain, and then it dumps out of the brain

1882
01:56:38.356 --> 01:56:40.298
still in the body, of course, and down and out.

1883
01:56:40.438 --> 01:56:46.623
Actually, the puffiness of the eyes, the anterior chamber of the eyes, some of the cloudiness of the eye, these systems are shared.

1884
01:56:46.983 --> 01:56:50.966
And actually, some of it actually comes out through the nose, which is wild.

1885
01:56:51.567 --> 01:56:54.709
But get upright, move around,

1886
01:56:55.490 --> 01:56:59.455
There's a bunch of ways of like, you know, these like tapping, shaking, it looks silly.

1887
01:56:59.495 --> 01:57:00.476
It looks kind of crazy.

1888
01:57:00.716 --> 01:57:04.220
Looks like you've been in California too long if you do these things, but it can help move lymph out.

1889
01:57:04.641 --> 01:57:06.643
But sleeping does that, clears glymph.

1890
01:57:06.803 --> 01:57:14.673
The other thing that's, there's a recent study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that I do detail in the book, which is a short meditation.

1891
01:57:15.795 --> 01:57:19.236
believe it or not, increases glymphatic clearance in the daytime.

1892
01:57:19.556 --> 01:57:27.938
Now this is super interesting because folks like you and me always wanna figure out how we can get by with less sleep and still feel awesome and not short circuit our health.

1893
01:57:28.338 --> 01:57:33.340
Turns out that the regular meditators are probably able to shave an hour off their sleep

1894
01:57:34.306 --> 01:57:39.308
20 minutes a day meditation because they're getting the glymph clearance during their meditation.

1895
01:57:39.669 --> 01:57:52.755
And so in sleep, the timing of sleep and how long you sleep has a lot to do with body temperature, but also there seems to be a drive for glymph clearance that says you need to sleep longer, which is one of the reasons why when you're sick, you sleep a lot more.

1896
01:57:53.175 --> 01:57:54.375
One of them, there are others as well.

1897
01:57:54.736 --> 01:57:57.137
So short, I'm now back to meditating.

1898
01:57:57.937 --> 01:58:02.240
And my meditation practice is pretty feeble compared to many, but here's what I do.

1899
01:58:02.280 --> 01:58:06.763
I wake up in the morning, and the first thing I do is 10 breaths of meditation.

1900
01:58:07.244 --> 01:58:12.527
I tell myself if I can't concentrate for 10 breaths without my mind going elsewhere, what kind of day am I gonna have?

1901
01:58:12.928 --> 01:58:16.230
And also what kind of human am I if I can't organize myself for 10 breaths?

1902
01:58:16.510 --> 01:58:18.952
Then I get out of bed, I usually go straight to the bathroom,

1903
01:58:20.224 --> 01:58:20.484
pee.

1904
01:58:20.924 --> 01:58:22.045
Then I go hydrate.

1905
01:58:22.345 --> 01:58:23.165
Then I get sunlight.

1906
01:58:23.225 --> 01:58:24.346
Then I try and get some movement.

1907
01:58:24.386 --> 01:58:26.807
Although these days, because of the dog, I get a walk in.

1908
01:58:27.007 --> 01:58:29.108
Then I come back, drink some caffeine, exercise.

1909
01:58:29.749 --> 01:58:31.810
And the 10 step starts.

1910
01:58:31.850 --> 01:58:32.950
It starts all over again.

1911
01:58:33.010 --> 01:58:33.931
We are this rhythm.

1912
01:58:34.071 --> 01:58:38.833
No human being has ever escaped these circadian influences in cortisol and melatonin.

1913
01:58:39.193 --> 01:58:43.036
Do you take... You don't really talk in depth about supplements or recommend supplements.

1914
01:58:43.077 --> 01:58:43.477
Oh, I do.

1915
01:58:43.497 --> 01:58:44.858
I always get asked, what should I take?

1916
01:58:45.058 --> 01:58:47.320
I talk about alpha-GPC, L-tyrosine.

1917
01:58:47.440 --> 01:58:48.421
I talk about theanine.

1918
01:58:48.741 --> 01:58:55.688
I talk about theanine's use with low-dose caffeine for enhanced task switching, which is a very interesting literature.

1919
01:58:56.268 --> 01:58:57.049
I talk about...

1920
01:58:58.610 --> 01:59:07.240
ways to improve sleep, everything from tart cherry to apigenin to quivivic, which is one of the Doras, one of these orexin drugs.

1921
01:59:07.280 --> 01:59:08.321
I talk, oh, I...

1922
01:59:08.701 --> 01:59:09.903
But what do you take every day?

1923
01:59:10.543 --> 01:59:11.404
You got another three hours?

1924
01:59:11.745 --> 01:59:12.145
Oh, really?

1925
01:59:12.165 --> 01:59:12.406
No, no, no.

1926
01:59:12.426 --> 01:59:12.946
Is that a lot?

1927
01:59:13.186 --> 01:59:14.087
No, not really.

1928
01:59:14.128 --> 01:59:18.392
What are you like if you had to pick five, if they said to you, Andrew, you can only do five for the rest of your life?

1929
01:59:19.133 --> 01:59:20.153
What five supplements would it be?

1930
01:59:20.334 --> 01:59:23.855
Well, if somebody's sleeping terrifically well, I'd say nothing for sleep.

1931
01:59:24.075 --> 01:59:30.478
If they're not sleeping terrifically well, I would suggest they try magnesium threonate or magnesium bisglycinate.

1932
01:59:30.498 --> 01:59:31.718
They're interchangeable for sleep.

1933
01:59:32.038 --> 01:59:32.799
Okay, that's one.

1934
01:59:33.519 --> 01:59:38.701
I'm a big believer in getting at least one gram per day of EPA omega-3.

1935
01:59:39.621 --> 01:59:45.224
I suggest getting it because it's now available generic and cheap, but prescription form, Lovasa.

1936
01:59:45.504 --> 01:59:46.384
EPA, what's that?

1937
01:59:46.404 --> 01:59:48.125
The form of omega-3 that's...

1938
01:59:49.325 --> 01:59:53.690
that you want for brain health, probably also for cardiovascular health and reduced inflammation.

1939
01:59:53.710 --> 01:59:55.191
How do I know if that's the omega-3 that I have?

1940
01:59:55.712 --> 01:59:56.433
You need a prescription.

1941
01:59:56.853 --> 01:59:57.574
Oh, you need a prescription?

1942
01:59:57.594 --> 01:59:58.855
But here's what's awesome about it.

1943
01:59:58.935 --> 02:00:02.298
It's very high concentration EPA, and it's cleared of all heavy metals.

1944
02:00:02.579 --> 02:00:02.819
Okay.

1945
02:00:04.105 --> 02:00:06.788
And it's very, very inexpensive.

1946
02:00:07.068 --> 02:00:09.651
So the challenge is getting a doctor to prescribe it for you.

1947
02:00:09.691 --> 02:00:12.934
Just tell them you want Lavazza or else you're gonna take a bunch of stuff over the counter.

1948
02:00:12.954 --> 02:00:14.035
You might get mercury poisoning.

1949
02:00:14.135 --> 02:00:15.277
There you go.

1950
02:00:15.297 --> 02:00:16.678
Don't threaten your doctor, but you get the idea.

1951
02:00:17.178 --> 02:00:21.763
So that's for mental health, physical health, big believer in boosting omega-3s.

1952
02:00:21.803 --> 02:00:22.884
Also, I don't eat fatty fish.

1953
02:00:22.904 --> 02:00:25.227
I don't like salmon unless it's sushi.

1954
02:00:25.267 --> 02:00:26.868
And like, I'm just not good at eating seafood.

1955
02:00:27.893 --> 02:00:28.814
So that's two.

1956
02:00:29.675 --> 02:00:32.940
Vitamin D. Vitamin D. 5,000 to 10,000 IUs per day.

1957
02:00:32.960 --> 02:00:34.321
People will be like, oh, you don't know that.

1958
02:00:34.341 --> 02:00:35.242
You need to blood test.

1959
02:00:35.283 --> 02:00:35.843
You don't want to over...

1960
02:00:36.044 --> 02:00:37.545
Okay, don't take 25,000.

1961
02:00:38.026 --> 02:00:42.952
But most people are underdosing vitamin D. And also, I'm not...

1962
02:00:43.847 --> 02:00:47.069
And I know it pisses people off, but I'm not trying to like hit the RDA.

1963
02:00:47.749 --> 02:00:48.049
Okay.

1964
02:00:48.369 --> 02:00:49.270
Just like I...

1965
02:00:49.490 --> 02:00:50.470
The recommended daily allowance.

1966
02:00:50.530 --> 02:00:50.770
Yeah.

1967
02:00:50.810 --> 02:00:52.251
I'm not just trying to hit the RDA.

1968
02:00:52.271 --> 02:00:55.052
I'm also not trying to like blow a gasket by taking too much.

1969
02:00:55.092 --> 02:00:56.273
Like let's be rational here.

1970
02:00:56.653 --> 02:00:56.853
Right.

1971
02:00:57.213 --> 02:00:59.875
I'm trying to get to a point where I can derive...

1972
02:01:01.002 --> 02:01:02.702
Safety, but additional benefits.

1973
02:01:02.722 --> 02:01:11.965
And it's clear that dosing of 5,000 IU per day has some additional benefits that go way beyond conventional benefits of vitamin D that are discussed.

1974
02:01:12.485 --> 02:01:13.745
For instance, hormone health.

1975
02:01:14.005 --> 02:01:21.387
Like I can see my blood's getting better when I take 5,000 as opposed to 3,000 IU of vitamin D and I'm not changing anything else.

1976
02:01:21.767 --> 02:01:23.327
So vitamin D and I get sunlight.

1977
02:01:24.288 --> 02:01:27.488
Maybe 10,000 was a little high, but I take five to 10.

1978
02:01:27.528 --> 02:01:28.109
So that's three.

1979
02:01:28.629 --> 02:01:29.649
And then the other two would be

1980
02:01:30.867 --> 02:01:39.429
If you're going to exercise or work intensely late in the day, or if you're going to, if you really want a stimulant to go with your caffeine.

1981
02:01:39.789 --> 02:01:42.270
By the way, 90% of the world consumes caffeine every day.

1982
02:01:42.410 --> 02:01:44.830
So that's a foregone conclusion that they're already taking it.

1983
02:01:46.051 --> 02:01:48.171
I am a big fan of alpha GPC.

1984
02:01:48.411 --> 02:01:48.751
I am.

1985
02:01:49.291 --> 02:01:51.592
600 milligrams or 900 milligrams of it.

1986
02:01:51.752 --> 02:01:52.272
What's that?

1987
02:01:52.452 --> 02:01:54.893
It increases choline, which increases acetylcholine.

1988
02:01:55.233 --> 02:01:56.813
Oh, I feel like acetylcholine in the cupboard.

1989
02:01:56.833 --> 02:01:59.154
Yeah, which can increase your ability to focus.

1990
02:01:59.254 --> 02:02:00.254
I'm a big believer in this.

1991
02:02:01.955 --> 02:02:05.518
not for everyone, but rather than going straight to a prescription stimulant.

1992
02:02:05.938 --> 02:02:06.699
And I'll tell you why.

1993
02:02:07.079 --> 02:02:12.784
There are very, very few things that can increase focus and energy that don't damage your sleep.

1994
02:02:12.844 --> 02:02:15.787
But even better, Alpha GPC gives you more REM sleep.

1995
02:02:16.753 --> 02:02:18.954
Nobody wants to hear this, but it's absolutely true.

1996
02:02:18.974 --> 02:02:25.596
But the other thing, the important caveat is that it can increase something called TMAO, which can increase cardiovascular risk.

1997
02:02:25.656 --> 02:02:32.158
So a simple way to mitigate that is you take 600 milligrams of a garlic capsule, and it doesn't smell like garlic.

1998
02:02:32.178 --> 02:02:33.298
So I kind of tuck that in with it.

1999
02:02:33.758 --> 02:02:35.139
And you can take it anytime same day.

2000
02:02:35.937 --> 02:02:36.537
Is that five?

2001
02:02:37.298 --> 02:02:39.099
That's five because I threw garlic in there.

2002
02:02:39.219 --> 02:02:42.620
No, because we said it was magnesium bisglycinator 3 and 8.

2003
02:02:42.660 --> 02:02:44.121
We said omega-3.

2004
02:02:44.221 --> 02:02:52.925
We said vitamin D. And then we said alpha-GPC would be my preferable thing to nicotine or prescription stimulants.

2005
02:02:53.446 --> 02:02:54.446
But caffeine is great.

2006
02:02:54.726 --> 02:02:55.707
Great data on caffeine.

2007
02:02:56.187 --> 02:03:03.411
In fact, 200 to 400 milligrams of caffeine per day has been shown to offset dementia in meaningful ways.

2008
02:03:04.338 --> 02:03:04.978
meaningful ways.

2009
02:03:05.038 --> 02:03:08.539
It's not causal, it's correlative, but those data are covered in there as well.

2010
02:03:08.599 --> 02:03:11.620
So I'm going to continue drinking my yerba mate and my coffee.

2011
02:03:12.441 --> 02:03:18.963
And then, so I suppose the last one, you know, that's kind of like creatine.

2012
02:03:19.083 --> 02:03:19.243
Yeah.

2013
02:03:19.503 --> 02:03:19.743
Yeah.

2014
02:03:19.803 --> 02:03:26.025
So I was going to say dealer's choice, but creatine seems to work best for cognitive enhancement when you're a bit sleep deprived or stressed, this kind of thing.

2015
02:03:26.705 --> 02:03:27.006
I don't know.

2016
02:03:27.026 --> 02:03:28.986
I've been taking creatine since I was 17 or 18,

2017
02:03:34.328 --> 02:03:38.170
I mean, I'm trying to maintain or build strength, and it puts water in your muscles.

2018
02:03:38.590 --> 02:03:41.051
It makes you stronger, and it feels good to be strong.

2019
02:03:41.691 --> 02:03:44.352
And you got to train, but that's why I take it.

2020
02:03:44.652 --> 02:03:46.993
Okay, the last thing I want to ask you about is I saw a clip.

2021
02:03:47.033 --> 02:03:56.097
I think it was one of your most viral clips of all time where you just talked about how going for a walk after you eat can have a really big impact on your body.

2022
02:03:57.022 --> 02:03:58.363
That most people don't realize.

2023
02:03:58.603 --> 02:03:59.383
Most people don't realize.

2024
02:03:59.723 --> 02:04:04.085
There's a section, I think walking is necessary but not sufficient for health.

2025
02:04:05.065 --> 02:04:10.928
You know, I don't think you need to count 10,000 steps per day, but I think 7,000 to 8,000 steps per day should be the goal.

2026
02:04:11.348 --> 02:04:13.469
You can do it, I'll pace while I'm on calls.

2027
02:04:13.969 --> 02:04:18.071
I take every, I finish a podcast with my team, we take a walk.

2028
02:04:18.151 --> 02:04:19.592
I'm always trying to take stairs.

2029
02:04:19.672 --> 02:04:22.333
When I travel, I take stairs, not the escalator.

2030
02:04:23.093 --> 02:04:27.375
You arrive a little sweatier to your plane, but you're also rucking your bags and this kind of thing.

2031
02:04:27.395 --> 02:04:35.680
So walking is incredible because those low-level repeated muscle contractions really help buffer blood glucose, especially after a meal.

2032
02:04:36.060 --> 02:04:44.665
But there's this wild study where the soleus muscle, the one that gives the calf width, you know when you do seated calf raises, right?

2033
02:04:45.486 --> 02:04:47.887
It's this muscle underneath the gastrocnemius, right?

2034
02:04:47.907 --> 02:04:48.127
Yeah.

2035
02:04:49.530 --> 02:04:56.215
That muscle is about 1% of your total musculature, but it has an outsized and significant glucose utilization.

2036
02:04:56.936 --> 02:04:57.356
Interesting.

2037
02:04:57.556 --> 02:05:07.404
So in this study, which is not practical, they had people do what they called soleus pushups, which are basically non-weighted seated calf raises while sitting, and they had them do it repeatedly.

2038
02:05:07.825 --> 02:05:11.287
And they looked at blood glucose regulation, and that powerfully...

2039
02:05:12.172 --> 02:05:13.953
regulated blood glucose increases.

2040
02:05:13.993 --> 02:05:14.994
It buffered the peaks.

2041
02:05:15.434 --> 02:05:17.755
And it turns out that this is related to walking.

2042
02:05:17.775 --> 02:05:26.119
So I'm not suggesting, unless perhaps you're stuck on a plane or while in the office, that you, you know, if you're a knee bouncer, rejoice, you know, you're doing yourself good.

2043
02:05:27.200 --> 02:05:28.301
But this movement...

2044
02:05:29.250 --> 02:05:32.312
really seems to help blood glucose management.

2045
02:05:32.372 --> 02:05:33.853
Now, some people say, oh yeah, this is so silly.

2046
02:05:33.873 --> 02:05:35.513
They're talking about all day, you're gonna do this.

2047
02:05:35.794 --> 02:05:37.174
Yeah, some people probably accuse us of this.

2048
02:05:37.214 --> 02:05:41.357
No, what I'm saying is walk, because when you walk, you're getting that low level repeated muscle contraction.

2049
02:05:41.597 --> 02:05:42.657
It's a slow twitch muscle.

2050
02:05:43.018 --> 02:05:51.702
And it seems to be, I don't wanna call it a sink, but it seems to be an unsuspected furnace for glucose utilization.

2051
02:05:51.782 --> 02:05:52.683
And why does that matter?

2052
02:05:53.493 --> 02:05:55.033
You don't want big peaks in glucose.

2053
02:05:55.053 --> 02:05:55.854
You can manage them.

2054
02:05:55.874 --> 02:05:59.835
I mean, you get more insulin will be secreted if you have a big peak in glucose.

2055
02:05:59.855 --> 02:06:03.055
That's why insulin's there to make sure that glucose is managed.

2056
02:06:03.075 --> 02:06:03.996
You don't want it too high.

2057
02:06:04.256 --> 02:06:05.536
You don't want to be hyperglycemic.

2058
02:06:05.576 --> 02:06:06.496
In fact, that can be deadly.

2059
02:06:06.516 --> 02:06:07.937
You don't want to be hypoglycemic.

2060
02:06:08.377 --> 02:06:12.278
But when people eat, they experience an increase in blood glucose.

2061
02:06:12.318 --> 02:06:20.640
And while the peaks are manageable, if you're buffering them, so you're sort of flattening out those peaks with five to 10 minutes of walking after a meal,

2062
02:06:21.924 --> 02:06:23.905
You will have fewer energy crashes.

2063
02:06:24.766 --> 02:06:30.310
In theory, over time, your metabolic health can be better or at least cannot get worse.

2064
02:06:30.951 --> 02:06:42.439
And, you know, there's Dr. Rhonda Patrick has pointed out there's a sort of a comparison study where people either walked after meals or for 30 minutes or so on per day or they did.

2065
02:06:42.699 --> 02:06:46.302
you know, 10 air squats every 45 minutes or so, just stand up and do air squats.

2066
02:06:46.322 --> 02:06:47.943
And it looks like they were comparable.

2067
02:06:47.983 --> 02:06:49.104
Maybe the air squats were better.

2068
02:06:49.604 --> 02:07:01.212
I don't know about you, but I'm not going to stand up and do air squats in a restaurant or when I get out onto the street of New York, if I have the great, you know, experience of having dinner with you and James Sexton again, that was the last time you shared a meal.

2069
02:07:01.232 --> 02:07:02.453
I'm not going to do air squats.

2070
02:07:02.493 --> 02:07:03.354
Oh, we're going to walk.

2071
02:07:03.534 --> 02:07:06.796
So I think I'm not being disparaging of Rhonda.

2072
02:07:06.816 --> 02:07:10.318
I think she was pointing out a mechanistic feature, not a, not a, not a, a,

2073
02:07:11.359 --> 02:07:15.201
protocol, but necessarily, but if you're stuck on a plane, you could do some air squats.

2074
02:07:15.221 --> 02:07:22.244
You could, you could, you know, bounce your knee and, you know, non-exercise induced thermogenesis is a massive calorie burn.

2075
02:07:22.544 --> 02:07:25.425
You know, people who move a lot tend to be rather thin.

2076
02:07:25.806 --> 02:07:26.506
They tend to be lean.

2077
02:07:27.546 --> 02:07:35.110
The studies on those, I go back to my undergraduate days when we worked on metabolism and physiology, like Rothwell and Stock and some other folks

2078
02:07:35.950 --> 02:07:42.160
A scientist who figured out that there were people who could eat a lot more than you would think they needed, but they always stayed lean.

2079
02:07:42.380 --> 02:07:45.785
Turns out they're moving a lot during the day, burning up to 1800 calories a day.

2080
02:07:47.933 --> 02:07:52.838
Now that's extreme, but some people who just move a bit more, about a thousand calories per day.

2081
02:07:52.938 --> 02:08:00.045
And there's this paper published in the journal Science, which is a great journal, not as great as Nature, but the Brits get the cake there.

2082
02:08:00.106 --> 02:08:08.174
And people will argue, but it's true, that the decline in metabolism that we all associate with aging, like, oh, metabolism slows as you age, turns out that's not true.

2083
02:08:08.594 --> 02:08:10.777
Turns out that if people maintain muscle mass,

2084
02:08:11.257 --> 02:08:11.797
That doesn't happen.

2085
02:08:11.817 --> 02:08:16.020
You say, okay, well then aging is muscle mass loss, is reduction in metabolism.

2086
02:08:16.160 --> 02:08:18.021
Actually, no, people are moving less.

2087
02:08:18.681 --> 02:08:26.485
And I've been, as everyone else has been absorbed with this longevity thing, I look at older people and in particular people in their eighties.

2088
02:08:26.525 --> 02:08:27.606
And you know what I see a lot of?

2089
02:08:28.606 --> 02:08:31.928
A lot less spontaneous movement and a lot of mouth breathing.

2090
02:08:34.278 --> 02:08:35.598
which at rest is not good.

2091
02:08:36.239 --> 02:08:38.880
We know this, that deprives the brain of oxygen, it's not good.

2092
02:08:38.900 --> 02:08:44.822
You can mouth breathe during exercise, physiological size, et cetera, but you don't wanna be a mouth breather in sleep or in wakefulness.

2093
02:08:45.182 --> 02:08:54.285
And then you host people like James Hollis or Twyla Tharp, who's, I don't know her exact age, I think she's in her early 80s, but choreographer, world-class dancer.

2094
02:08:55.085 --> 02:09:02.967
who deadlifts a lot and works out for two hours a day at five in the morning, who boxes, who choreographs.

2095
02:09:03.427 --> 02:09:06.028
They're so mentally sharp, they're physically lean.

2096
02:09:06.388 --> 02:09:09.529
There are other examples I could rattle off and you go, what is happening?

2097
02:09:09.549 --> 02:09:12.869
Mike Snyder, my colleague at Stanford, who's not that old, but he's in his seventies.

2098
02:09:12.889 --> 02:09:14.650
You look at him, you go, what's going on?

2099
02:09:14.910 --> 02:09:16.530
And they're moving all the time.

2100
02:09:16.970 --> 02:09:19.331
They're moving, they're mentally active, they have posture like you.

2101
02:09:19.911 --> 02:09:22.693
They're exercising, sure, but they are moving, moving, moving.

2102
02:09:22.713 --> 02:09:24.735
The spontaneous movement is burning calories.

2103
02:09:25.116 --> 02:09:27.798
That's one piece, but it's also the glucose regulation.

2104
02:09:28.278 --> 02:09:39.268
It's the fact that they're not sitting stagnant in their own... You know, there's... Lane Norton has pointed out quite beautifully, actually, that what's the problem with caloric excess?

2105
02:09:39.488 --> 02:09:41.249
Okay, there's the fat aesthetic piece, right?

2106
02:09:41.269 --> 02:09:42.190
Body fat aesthetic piece.

2107
02:09:42.651 --> 02:09:43.551
But that aside...

2108
02:09:44.535 --> 02:09:48.578
It's that you have a toxicity of energy.

2109
02:09:48.978 --> 02:09:52.580
The world's expert in mitochondria came on my podcast recently, Jared Rutter.

2110
02:09:52.640 --> 02:09:58.443
I mean, he's a phenom in the biochemistry and the genetics of mitochondria.

2111
02:09:58.463 --> 02:10:02.126
And he will tell you, he's like, when you overload a system,

2112
02:10:03.054 --> 02:10:07.036
and therefore a cell with calories, the mitochondria, the whole system gets sick.

2113
02:10:07.277 --> 02:10:09.758
The energy management system of a cell gets sick.

2114
02:10:10.358 --> 02:10:15.942
And your metabolism, this thing that you call your metabolism, is the collective makeup of all these trillions of cells.

2115
02:10:16.382 --> 02:10:20.985
So you jam too much fuel in there, like they don't work as well.

2116
02:10:21.605 --> 02:10:27.349
And caloric restriction at times might be beneficial, caloric maintenance maybe a little bit more at times, a little bit less.

2117
02:10:27.369 --> 02:10:27.989
This is good.

2118
02:10:28.650 --> 02:10:32.292
So movement, movement, movement, because it's obviously calories in, calories out.

2119
02:10:33.170 --> 02:10:33.957
You know what this is, right?

2120
02:10:34.220 --> 02:10:35.451
You're telling me I need to stop.

2121
02:10:35.795 --> 02:10:37.736
No, no, no, no, no, this is not a clock.

2122
02:10:39.416 --> 02:10:41.357
This is a CO2 monitor.

2123
02:10:41.377 --> 02:10:42.578
I thought it was a lux meter.

2124
02:10:42.638 --> 02:10:45.299
OK, OK, how are we have a lot of CO2 in here?

2125
02:10:45.319 --> 02:10:45.539
Yeah.

2126
02:10:45.799 --> 02:10:50.761
It's something that we always have in the studio because I think I learned over time that the higher this got, the more sort of tired I felt.

2127
02:10:51.501 --> 02:10:53.962
And obviously, because there's not great ventilation in this studio here.

2128
02:10:54.102 --> 02:10:56.683
We started at 600 and we're now at 1,700.

2129
02:10:56.843 --> 02:10:58.224
And we're under short wavelength light.

2130
02:10:58.404 --> 02:11:00.505
But before we came in here, what did we do?

2131
02:11:00.545 --> 02:11:04.627
We went outside and we got a blast of full spectrum sunlight.

2132
02:11:04.687 --> 02:11:05.067
Sunlight.

2133
02:11:05.687 --> 02:11:08.991
Yeah, I think about this a lot now when I'm trying to do good cognitive work.

2134
02:11:09.011 --> 02:11:13.616
I've read some studies that if this gets above a thousand parts per million, cognitive performance starts to go down.

2135
02:11:13.656 --> 02:11:18.242
Well, if your cognitive performance gets any better, we're all hosed because you're... You're very kind.

2136
02:11:19.042 --> 02:11:21.005
Andrew, thank you so much for so many reasons.

2137
02:11:21.025 --> 02:11:23.167
It's such an honor to get to learn from you, but I...

2138
02:11:23.953 --> 02:11:26.936
You know, there's, I'll be honest, there's no books that I'm waiting for.

2139
02:11:27.216 --> 02:11:28.637
There's no books that I've been waiting for.

2140
02:11:28.877 --> 02:11:30.739
Is there any book in my life that I've been waiting for?

2141
02:11:31.079 --> 02:11:31.560
No, there's not.

2142
02:11:32.200 --> 02:11:35.703
This is the only book in my life that I've been waiting for, for years now.

2143
02:11:36.304 --> 02:11:39.987
And I say that to say, because I believe in your approach.

2144
02:11:40.127 --> 02:11:49.195
I believe in your approach, your scientific rigor, the nuance you apply, the stories that you tell, the experiences you've had, the unbelievable, almost like mesmerizing ability you have to remember things.

2145
02:11:49.896 --> 02:11:54.117
Remember, you didn't reference one study without referencing like the author of the study.

2146
02:11:54.137 --> 02:11:54.817
And I've like never seen it.

2147
02:11:55.037 --> 02:11:56.198
I was thinking, how the fuck has he done that?

2148
02:11:56.638 --> 02:11:58.558
Like, how do you know all the names of all these people?

2149
02:11:58.618 --> 02:12:04.640
Years of training and advisors who drilled into me that attribution is important.

2150
02:12:05.400 --> 02:12:06.120
It's remarkable.

2151
02:12:06.500 --> 02:12:10.781
There's so much information out there around health and all the things that we've graced today.

2152
02:12:11.021 --> 02:12:14.862
I was waiting for your book because I'm not very good at reading books, right?

2153
02:12:15.163 --> 02:12:17.043
Well, there's an audio version too, if you prefer.

2154
02:12:17.323 --> 02:12:18.425
It'll be a long run.

2155
02:12:18.445 --> 02:12:21.108
No, I'm trying to build the anterior mid-singulate cortex, Andrew.

2156
02:12:21.128 --> 02:12:27.495
So I'm going to, I always said to myself, whenever he publishes that bloody book, I will read the whole thing from cover to cover.

2157
02:12:27.935 --> 02:12:31.079
And this is the first book in the world, I believe, that's been printed.

2158
02:12:31.119 --> 02:12:35.284
Yeah, this is an opportunity to say what I've been waiting this entire podcast to say.

2159
02:12:35.684 --> 02:12:37.606
The copy you're holding in your hand is the first...

2160
02:12:38.347 --> 02:12:44.348
the very first and the only hardcover copy that I have or have touched or have seen, and I'm gifting it to you.

2161
02:12:44.828 --> 02:12:45.668
And I'm gifting it to you.

2162
02:12:45.688 --> 02:12:46.709
I want you to have the book.

2163
02:12:46.849 --> 02:12:47.329
Seriously.

2164
02:12:47.449 --> 02:12:48.369
I want you to have it.

2165
02:12:48.489 --> 02:12:49.589
Oh, wow.

2166
02:12:50.409 --> 02:12:52.530
And I'll sign it if you want or not sign it if you don't.

2167
02:12:52.550 --> 02:12:53.130
Yes, please do.

2168
02:12:53.230 --> 02:12:58.591
But it would be an honor for me to be able to do that because I've learned so much from you.

2169
02:12:58.651 --> 02:13:03.472
You've been an amazing colleague and friend and supporter, but also just...

2170
02:13:04.463 --> 02:13:06.825
really a, you're an amazing human being.

2171
02:13:06.865 --> 02:13:08.866
You're a truly good human being.

2172
02:13:09.006 --> 02:13:11.748
And I've spent time with you on and off mic.

2173
02:13:12.169 --> 02:13:17.372
And you know, the number one thing that you need to know about Steven is he is who he appears to be.

2174
02:13:18.153 --> 02:13:23.277
He's a super kind, curious, loving person, flawed like the rest of us.

2175
02:13:24.555 --> 02:13:27.196
I'll be less flawed than me, that's clear.

2176
02:13:28.396 --> 02:13:35.299
But you really are a great human being and you're trying to do great things in the world for everyone around you and for the world.

2177
02:13:35.359 --> 02:13:44.503
So it's a vastly lesser token of my gratitude to you for all those things than it could be or should be, but I'd like to gift it to you.

2178
02:13:44.523 --> 02:13:45.343
No, it's such an honor.

2179
02:13:45.563 --> 02:13:47.764
I was like thinking of ways to steal it, so go ahead.

2180
02:13:48.144 --> 02:13:49.505
Well, I'm gifting it to you.

2181
02:13:49.825 --> 02:13:50.686
I'm gifting it to you.

2182
02:13:52.267 --> 02:13:53.768
And now I'm going to go read your book.

2183
02:13:53.788 --> 02:13:55.189
And I look forward to your next book.

2184
02:13:55.309 --> 02:13:55.509
Yeah.

2185
02:13:55.909 --> 02:13:56.149
Yeah.

2186
02:13:56.430 --> 02:13:56.970
Thank you so much.

2187
02:13:57.030 --> 02:13:58.671
It's such a beautiful book.

2188
02:13:58.751 --> 02:14:02.734
And I'm really glad that it netted out at the size that it did as well.

2189
02:14:03.414 --> 02:14:04.616
It is, I think, the perfect size.

2190
02:14:04.916 --> 02:14:06.698
And I think you've done a wonderful job throughout.

2191
02:14:06.718 --> 02:14:11.885
As I was flicking through as you were speaking and jumping to different sections, I think you've done a wonderful job of making it really accessible.

2192
02:14:12.666 --> 02:14:17.533
Because, you know, I'm not the smartest cookie as it relates to science, but I was able to understand everything.

2193
02:14:17.773 --> 02:14:19.015
And I think that's a really remarkable thing.

2194
02:14:19.275 --> 02:14:20.236
It is also gorgeous.

2195
02:14:22.517 --> 02:14:49.504
there I say it I'll probably get fucked up for this but I think sometimes the British version of books is good looking and then the American versions I always wonder why they're a little bit uglier the aesthetics in Britain you know like people dress really well in Britain they take care they like pay attention to these little details like in their shoes and things like what do you call it smart like they dress really smart right I'm a big fan of like Ben Sherman and Fred Perry clothes and things like that and like the details are what make

2196
02:14:50.104 --> 02:14:51.145
Those look so cool.

2197
02:14:51.305 --> 02:14:54.148
Well, this felt like a very sort of European-designed beautiful book.

2198
02:14:54.409 --> 02:14:57.472
And also, your podcast is incredible.

2199
02:14:57.492 --> 02:15:04.559
I have to say, so many of the guests that I've had on here are because I listen to your show, and I get mind-blown by the guests that you have on your show.

2200
02:15:04.899 --> 02:15:07.382
And then I'm like to my team, oh, my God, this person is unbelievable.

2201
02:15:07.422 --> 02:15:07.882
He said this one.

2202
02:15:08.103 --> 02:15:09.324
And I'm sending your podcast all around.

2203
02:15:09.344 --> 02:15:12.968
Whenever someone in my life is really struggling with something, I go out and search...

2204
02:15:13.808 --> 02:15:35.745
usually on YouTube and then I stumble across your channel and find an episode that you've done about that particular thing and I'm always sending them around so I highly recommend anyone that subscribes to my channel to go and subscribe over on your show as well I'll link it below so everyone can get it so it turns out Huberman Lab is a sort of gateway drug to diary the CEO for science and health content literally literally it's worth being honest about it and you've got to get the book

2205
02:15:36.365 --> 02:15:37.065
It's finally here.

2206
02:15:38.346 --> 02:15:39.067
Comes out September.

2207
02:15:39.187 --> 02:15:40.847
So this episode will air in September.

2208
02:15:40.867 --> 02:15:43.129
So it should be out now for pre-order or order.

2209
02:15:43.489 --> 02:15:44.529
You've got to go get it.

2210
02:15:44.710 --> 02:15:46.971
It's for me the definitive book on this subject.

2211
02:15:47.171 --> 02:15:48.091
Thank you so much, Andrew.

2212
02:15:48.231 --> 02:15:48.832
Thank you, Stephen.

2213
02:15:48.892 --> 02:15:49.832
I love this conversation.

2214
02:15:49.932 --> 02:15:51.793
I hope to have another conversation sometime soon.

2215
02:15:52.034 --> 02:15:52.254
Yes.

2216
02:15:52.294 --> 02:15:52.594
Thank you.