00:10:03.440And like most people who have had some trauma in their past, whether you've made progress on it or not, I think most of us spend the rest of our lives in some way trying to solve it, address it, heal it, or make it better for others who we can see coming up behind us who have similar issues.
00:10:21.700So, I mean, I would argue that this book, Protocols, is a direct result of all that you went through, and thank you, and thanks to your parents in a way, because as a result, we have such good advice in here.
00:10:35.140I do want to spend one minute on, this was such a sad thing.
00:10:38.360So, you mentioned Professor Carlisle, who became such a mentor to you, and this was an important person in your life, and ultimately, he dies by suicide?
00:10:48.740Yeah. So I don't want to give people the impression that the book is entirely dark. It's a story about lightness and what you can do to better your abilities in sleep and stress mitigation, all these things. But I touch on the science of grief and how to get through things in a healthy way and mental health.
00:11:09.060And, you know, along my path, what I saw was the following. A lot of the kids I grew up with and with this amazing community of skateboarders, I saw some flourish. I saw others succumb to addiction. I saw some succumb to mental health issues.
00:11:27.480and as i went into science i incorrectly thought oh you know what's going to happen is the scientists
00:11:35.340are all going to be super healthy right these are people who understand the brain and as a
00:11:40.840consequence of understanding the brain and biology um i naively thought that they would be immune to
00:11:45.940a lot of the problems uh that uh these this other community uh had um and i found quite the opposite
00:11:52.980So there were three things that happened along the way for me that really motivated me further to write the book Protocols, to have a podcast where we talk about health, where I teach about what we do and don't know about the brain and how people can benefit.
00:12:06.320And the first one really was these observations from my teen years. The next observation was that this guy, Harry Carlyle, who understood mental health, depression, disease, suicidality as chemical issues, for whatever reason, I eventually was able to fill in some of the pieces, took his own life in a pretty dramatic fashion.
00:12:31.280And that told me something, right? I was close friends with his wife and I knew his family. It told me that knowledge alone doesn't save us. Knowledge is important. It's, as we say in science, necessary, but not sufficient, you know?
00:12:45.900And then what happened was I went off to graduate school and had an amazing time in graduate school.
00:12:51.460Everyone says, oh, you know, you finish graduate school and you're aged and you're tired.
00:12:55.760I was so full of life in graduate school.
00:12:58.080And after, I loved my graduate advisor.
00:18:47.720Your good night's sleep begins the moment you wake up.
00:18:51.040And whenever I hear this next part, because I've heard you say this over the years, I think Andrew Huberman is not from the Northeast and does not live in the Northeast.
00:19:01.260And now understanding that you're a California boy, it's starting to come into full focus for me because you want us to get up, go outside within the first 30 minutes or so and stare at the sun for, you know, 10 minutes maybe.
00:19:15.200And now we do mean like at the sun or like right next to the sun, not like the fully bright sun, but you say that's not really the sun you're getting in the morning when it first rises anyway.
00:19:25.620But explain why this is important and explain how this is supposed to work for those of us in places like Connecticut when it's minus 15 and awful when you wake up.
00:19:35.960Fair play. You know, I've largely lived west of Interstate 5, which cuts down through the
00:19:43.260center of California. So all fair. So here's the thing. We also want to live, the rest of the
00:19:51.600country, the people of Minnesota, the people in Washington. You guys are having a couple other
00:19:57.520advantages that we can talk about. So it all evens out. Here's the deal. To really master
00:20:05.820your sleep and get great sleep, but also to have elevated daytime mood focus, etc. You really want
00:20:13.280to master the first hour of your day and the last hour of your day. And fortunately, I'm not going
00:20:17.520to tell you that you need to do a bunch of things in each of those hours that require finances or
00:20:23.640require a lot of energy. Here's the theme, which is we know is conducive to better mental health
00:20:31.200physical health and longevity. You want bright mornings and days and dark nights. Now, if you're
00:20:38.280going to tell me, well, there's not a lot of sunlight out here, but here's the deal. When you
00:20:42.700wake up in the morning, you wake up because of a rise in a hormone called cortisol and because of
00:20:47.200a rise in body temperature. Most people think of cortisol as a stress hormone and they think,
00:20:52.020oh, that's bad. I don't want high cortisol. You want your morning cortisol high. I'll repeat that.
00:20:56.900you want your morning cortisol high. It is not a stress hormone. It is the hormone of energy
00:21:01.480and to mobilize energy in your body and get you moving into the day. And if you get your morning
00:21:06.360cortisol high, it helps ensure that your nighttime cortisol is low. And when your nighttime cortisol
00:21:12.740is low, it's easy to fall and stay asleep and you get great sleep. Your metabolic health will be
00:21:17.240better. The hormone melatonin goes up, which makes you sleepy. You want morning cortisol high,
00:21:22.680nighttime cortisol low. So the best way to kind of book. So think about bookending your days.
00:21:28.740I don't care what time you wake up. If it's 4 a.m. or it's 10 a.m. We can talk about what to do if
00:21:33.980the sun isn't out yet. But within the first hour of waking up, ideally within the first 30 minutes,
00:21:39.880you're going to get up. Most people use the restroom. I suggest you hydrate, drink a little
00:21:43.880bit of water. And if the sun is up, and by the way, you don't need to be able to see the sun.
00:21:49.540It can be completely overcast. But if there's daylight coming through the clouds, which there is even in the depths of winter in Boston, it's much brighter at 7 a.m., for instance, in Boston in the middle of winter than it was at midnight the night before. There's a lot of what we call photons or light energy coming through those clouds. You go outside. You could even stand on a balcony. Best not to do it through a window. But if you have to, you go out on a balcony or outside. You look in the direction of the sun. If you can't see the sun because there's a building in the way, that's fine.
00:28:44.140Yeah, so one of the key things to falling asleep and to stress mitigation, you'll notice I'm trying to fire hose tools at people that they can use any time, right?
00:44:32.740The reason for that second inhale is important.
00:44:35.520Your lungs are not just two big bags of air.
00:44:37.700They have hundreds of millions of little sacks that actually fill with air.
00:44:42.580And those little sacks are kind of moist in the middle.
00:44:46.460And like if you're ever trying to blow up a balloon at a kid's party, sometimes it's easy to blow up the balloon.
00:44:51.500But if they're those little water balloons, sometimes what you find is, you know, if you want to put air into a water balloon so that you can tie it, right, because you filled it too much, you have to get sometimes two pushes, two exhales, right?
00:45:04.260So in order to maximally inflate those little sacks, you get that big first inhale, and that'll inflate most of them.
00:45:10.340But then there are a bunch of them that are collapsed and kind of sticking together from surface tension.
00:45:14.220You do that second inhale, they open up, they don't burst, but they open up. Great. Now you
00:45:19.920can offload more air on the exhale. And by, and there's a story here also about oxygen coming in
00:45:25.720and you're offloading carbon dioxide. A lot of our stress is about too much carbon dioxide
00:45:31.620in the blood. You know, the brain has a set of neurons. Again, this neuroscience thing is
00:45:38.320incredible, right? It's like you have a set of neurons that don't tell you when to breathe
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00:55:29.940out i take it from this discussion you are against falling asleep to an audio book or a podcast yes
00:55:41.340and no so after now you know six years of doing public health science education i've come to the
00:55:48.140place where i you know i was a years ago i took kids backpacking in yosemite that was my summer
00:55:54.460job. And you learn something working with teenagers, which is be a channel, not a damn.0.83
00:56:00.920And it turns out that you want to do the same with adults. If listening to a podcast or having
00:56:07.280the news on helps you fall asleep, I actually suggest you keep doing it. I do. But if you're
00:56:14.640waking up four hours later and having a hard time getting back to sleep, you might want to think
00:56:19.180about how the light from the screen or that noise might be impacting you. You know, this whole thing
00:56:24.800of listening to stuff out of interest is one thing, but when we're listening to podcasts while
00:56:28.680we sleep or we are leaving the TV on, I think it reflects a much bigger, I always ask myself as a
00:56:34.600scientist, why are people doing this? And I think they're doing it because it's hard to turn our
00:56:39.120thoughts off. You know, one of the practices I talk about and I'm happy to share now, I talk
00:56:44.720by in the book I'm happy to share now is this practice of non-sleep deep rest, which sounds
00:56:49.400like meditation, sounds like a nap, but it's not. You know, one of the great super skills in life
00:56:55.120that I wish I had had years ago is the following. Some people have what can really, we call it low
00:57:02.800activation energy, meaning they have a lot of get up and go. You say, let's do this. They get up and
00:57:06.500do it. They go, go. They're ambitious. They're doing sports. They're doing this. Those people
00:57:10.380tend to be the same people that have a hard time turning their mind off. Other people have the
00:57:15.560motivation issue. I don't have an issue with sleep. I have an issue with motivation. Procrastination
00:57:21.040is an issue, right? That's what they say. People who are getting after it, they're exercising,1.00
00:57:26.360et cetera. They're thinking about business, family. The woes of the world, or even just
00:57:31.260the small things are circulating in their head, need to learn to get the mind out of thinking
00:57:37.360and doing and planning and spend a few minutes in order to fall asleep in just pure sensation.
00:57:44.880And there's a practice that was actually developed in India thousands of years ago called yoga
00:57:48.800nidra, which means yoga sleep. It involves no movement where you do, this won't come as a
00:57:54.020surprise now, I call it non-sleep deep rest, but you take a few minutes during the day
00:57:58.340and you could do it sitting or lying down and you close your eyes. You do a few long exhales
00:58:04.960to slow your heart rate down. And instead of meditating by trying to maintain focus between
00:58:10.040your forehead or instead of trying to clear your mind, that's almost impossible to do, right?
00:58:15.220Clear your mind? No, impossible. It's like the don't think of the elephant. You can't not think
00:58:20.840of it. Instead, you migrate your thoughts like a spotlight around your body, your feet, the other
00:58:27.420foot, your knee, the other knee, your heart, your body. And what you're doing there is you're
00:58:32.600occupying just enough of the brain's attention that it makes it very easy to do. You're not
00:58:37.740trying to turn off your thoughts, but what ends up happening is you stop thinking and planning
00:58:42.960and you start just going into pure sensation. And when you do that, the brain goes into,
00:58:49.320we now know from really good science, goes into this kind of liminal state between
00:58:53.000asleep and awake and little pockets of the brain start mimicking sleep.
00:58:57.660Three things happen when you come out of this practice and it could be five minutes,
00:59:01.200could be 10 minutes, could be 20. There are a lot of these non-sleep deep breaths scripts out on
00:59:05.620the internet now, some with my voice, some with much more pleasant voices and so on. They're all
00:59:10.940zero cost. And you emerge from it feeling mentally and physically restored. That's interesting.
00:59:18.220Learning of physical information, cognitive information is enhanced in people that do this.
00:59:25.000You could do this once a week, three times a week or daily. It takes very little time.
00:59:28.380and people's ability to fall asleep gets better. People recover from traumatic experiences better.
00:59:34.480What's going on here? What is going on? What's going on is threefold. First of all, we now know
00:59:40.580that in these states of deep relaxation that are not meditation and are not a nap, there's a clear
00:59:47.880out of debris from the brain. This is called glymphatic clearance. We don't have time to go
00:59:53.100into the mechanisms, but there's a clearance of all the stuff of cellular metabolism in the brain.
00:59:58.380ammonia, carbon dioxide, like cellular debris, the ability to clear that stuff out has been shown to
01:00:06.400offset the development of dementia, reduces the likelihood of dementia, helps you maintain brain
01:00:11.380function. In addition, and some people will just, I usually find that people, this is the one that
01:00:17.620really gets people. If you've ever had a poor night's sleep, you know those bags under your
01:00:21.420eyes? Not yours, but I'm speaking metaphorically here. You certainly don't have this. Whatever
01:00:26.620you're doing you're doing all the right things clearly but when we've all had if i do we have
01:00:30.780the wrong lighting in here well it i don't believe that but in any case the if you've ever had one
01:00:35.440poor night's sleep you look in the mirror and you go oh my god what is that have you ever wondered
01:00:40.000why then two days later after you've slept well you're back to great what happened turns out it's
01:00:45.960the buildup of glymph this lymphatic fluid under the eyes and in the eyes you can even see in
01:00:51.860somebody that hasn't slept well their eyes don't quite look right there's actually lymphatic
01:00:56.260glymphatic clearance from the eyes. So these practices of deep relaxation, as well as sleep,
01:01:02.400where the majority of this clearance of this waste product and the glymphatic clearance occurs,
01:01:08.000you can build in these micro practices throughout the day, or just one minute or five minutes of
01:01:13.840doing this. And you're offsetting dementia. You come out of it mentally and physically restored.
01:01:18.800You don't have the sleep inertia, the grogginess of a nap. And we're finding that people learn
01:01:24.100faster. It's great for stress mitigation. I mean, myriad benefits. In the book, again,
01:01:30.160which is called Protocols, you write about, you can listen to a scripted NSDR session,
01:01:36.600non-sleep, deep rest, scripted. So where can we find that? What's that? Is that like on YouTube?
01:01:41.860Yeah, you can find these on YouTube, Apple, Spotify. You can download them for completely
01:01:46.580free. Download them to your phone so you don't even have a Wi-Fi connection. You can be on the
01:01:49.940plane or wherever. I put a bunch of them that I really like. You go to hubermanlab.com slash
01:01:55.180NSDR, or you could simply do a web search and just put NSDR. For a really pleasant woman's
01:02:02.320voice, my friend Kelly Boyes, B-O-Y-S, does wonderful NSDRs. She's in the Waking Up app
01:02:08.220also. There's some with my voice. You can find some, there's a guy named Liam Gillen,
01:02:12.960who has this, my sister really likes his Irish voice. I think she has a bit of a crush on him,
01:02:17.900if I'm honest. I'm sorry to my sister, but she loves his voice. She's like, he has the best
01:02:22.840voice. She does Liam's. And these are so simple. They cost nothing. And by the way, the reason I
01:02:31.020renamed Yoga Nidra NSDR and put these scripts out into the world is I intentionally took away all
01:02:37.940the intentions, the mysticism. I want to acknowledge the people that initially developed
01:02:43.480Yoga Nidra, but when people hear Yoga Nidra and then they hear they have to do intentions,
01:02:47.900that takes it. I'm not sure my truckers are into it. Exactly. That takes away from the practice.
01:02:53.160And it's, it's sort of like the word hypnosis. I have a colleague at Stanford who does
01:02:58.160medical hypnosis, incredible success rates at a smoking cessation, pain modulation,
01:03:05.140even can't even outcomes from cancer treatment. But I always tell him this, you need to rebrand
01:03:10.480this thing because in his hands, hypnosis is rapid brain plasticity, rewiring of the brain.
01:03:15.640But people hear hypnosis and they think stage hypnosis and people squawking like chickens.
01:03:20.680So what I'm talking about here, whether it's cortisol or darkness, light, breathing, exhales, non-sleep deep rest, I really want to emphasize what I'm talking about is taking your God-given physiology, okay, the cells and circuits in your brain and body that you are endowed with and just putting them to their best use for your health.
01:04:36.920And look, if you go out and have a bunch of drinks with your friends and you're safe about
01:04:41.120it. You're not an alcoholic and you're of age. You're going to be okay. You're going to be okay.
01:04:45.820I think that some people have taken my podcast and my book to mean that everything has to be
01:04:50.000very rigid. I start off the book by saying, listen, true optimization is about accepting
01:04:56.260who you are and what you are and are not going to do. And then trying to get the most vigor and
01:05:01.460enjoyment out of life and most life while also having the occasional sleepless night, sometimes
01:05:07.100due to crisis, sometimes due to a celebration. That's life. This is reminding me something
01:05:11.900recently happened on X. You may have seen it. You know, Brian Johnson, the don't die guy who's been
01:05:16.460on this show. He posted and he knows he's going to get hit for these things. So I kind of admire
01:05:22.620his honesty, but he posted last night I had dinner at a restaurant. I asked for caffeine free
01:05:30.940coffee I'm convinced they brought me caffeinated the sleep protocol was off I could not do my
01:05:37.060morning dunk session which I think is related to basketball I think he means actual dunking
01:05:40.820although I don't know with Brian Johnson you never know they had to cancel it because at my
01:05:44.460whole evening and day were disrupted and the responses were so funny one of them was basically
01:05:50.880Michael Jordan once had 10 beers and then played a game in which he scored 50 points and then went
01:05:59.740on to do a round of golf at which he was like X under par. It's like, we have weakened ourselves.
01:06:06.500And especially this is a man to man situation to the point beyond shame. You should be able to have
01:06:13.380one night of a cup of coffee and not post about it. And the whole next day's activities are off.
01:06:20.880Like, come on. We actually are somewhat resilient. Yes. So a couple of brief points about that.
01:06:27.060Um, I, I know Brian. Um, so yes, X is an environment, um, where you don't want to show
01:06:36.260weakness. Um, you, uh, most certainly if you're going to make exercise claims, you need to put
01:06:41.940videos. And if you put videos, um, don't confuse, uh, you know, you have to, you have to use proper
01:06:48.000form and full, full range of motion or the guys are going to hammer you, right? Like it's a very,
01:06:52.720There should be a third party in your life, someone who doesn't love or work for you, who approves of said video before it gets posted.
01:06:59.960So Brian's, you know, when Brian put that out there, I think there's three phenomenon going on.
01:07:03.980One is, you know, I look at Brian's content, I think he's mostly generating entertainment content for people.
01:07:13.520I mean, his takeaways about sleep, I think are very valid, but it's more of a caricature of longevity, in my opinion, if I'm honest.
01:07:21.220I think that, you know, most people are not going to do all the things he's doing.
01:07:24.840And then he has this chronic disease, which kind of undercut the story.
01:07:28.300But anyway, listen, I think it's great that he's out there, just like I think it's great that Matt Caberline's out there and Eric Topol.
01:07:35.180You need – this is one thing that people really need to understand about health and longevity in the online communities.
01:07:40.960In science, in medicine, and I observed this in the world of skateboarding and action sports, you need a community that represents the sort of different extremes, right?
01:07:52.980In skateboarding, we have our Tony Hawk.
01:07:54.580We had my friend Danny Wei who jumped the Great Wall of China.
01:07:57.340of, you need the variety of characters, right? And in science, you see this too. I don't have
01:08:03.560time to go into it now, but I grew up in science and you get a lot of characters and you need the
01:08:08.980battles. You need all that. But at the end of the day, people are after truth and some things end
01:08:12.980up being more for entertainment purposes and the take, and that's fine. And if it gets people
01:08:17.520paying attention to the space, so be it. Okay. Let me keep it going. I have a question for you
01:13:48.200Well, there's some carryover from the previous thing.
01:13:50.500Just like if you were, you know, waking up, you don't immediately feel wide awake and ready to go about your day.
01:13:55.920There's some, you know, there's some shifting of circuits.
01:13:58.640And actually, in the final chapter of the book, I talk about tools for task switching.
01:14:04.520You know, many people find that they can't focus, but actually their challenge is in dropping the mindset from the previous thing to be able to focus.
01:14:12.740For you and me who do public-facing work, it's a requirement, right?
01:30:40.280So whether you're learning a sport, a musical instrument, or history, or news for that matter, making errors in the process of learning is critical.
01:40:46.640But you need to sleep to be a great caretaker.
01:40:48.800So I'm going to put two caveats and then total agreement.
01:40:53.180The first caveat is there's a section in the book where I talk about data from this guy named James Pennebaker, who developed a tool called expressive writing, where if there's something in the back of your mind that you can't shake, an experience you cannot shake, a time when you experience shame or a trauma, there are now tens of thousands of quality studies showing that if you take 15 minutes, but just 15, not more,
01:41:21.020and you write about that four days in a row by the end of the fourth day you will have
01:41:28.840significantly offloaded a lot of the emotional load of that thing so i want to be fair to that
01:41:34.940so if there's something that like i use the term sometimes that you know there are these
01:41:38.240past experiences that are kind of like barbed wire like we they're painful to get off and
01:41:42.120they're painful to stay on i mean you know so that pennebaker exercise costs nothing you can
01:41:48.700tear up the paper afterwards. Actually, I suggest you do, but you do it four days in a row. You will
01:41:53.580feel significantly better. Say the data. Pretty incredible. Writing does seem to be important,
01:41:59.500handwriting it out. Set a timer, do it. You will come out of that first session not feeling great,
01:42:05.140but you'll move about your day. Symptoms of health, immune system function improves.
01:42:10.840They've done all the measures of biology and psychology that one would want to see,
01:42:14.080and it's really impressive. Okay. So that, that aside, the other thing is I'll just mention a
01:42:19.820saying I didn't come up with, but I, that I love is, and it's harsh, but the difference between
01:42:26.120winners and losers is the following. Losers take things that happened to them, happened to them,
01:42:33.120or that they did that they wish they hadn't done. And they take the negative feelings around those0.93
01:42:39.200things and they use it for self or outward destruction winners i think we would all agree
01:42:47.080take the hard things that happen to them as well as the gifts they've been given they think about
01:42:53.340them as much as they need to but then they transmute that those experiences maybe years
01:42:59.560of experience into things that are good for them and for the world period end of story i know it's
01:43:05.740harsh, winners and losers. But let's face it, most of the bad stuff in the world is because
01:43:10.360people are taking bad stuff that happened to them and doing bad stuff. They feel justified in doing
01:43:14.720it. There's some full-blown psychosis type stuff. Let me just interject quickly. Last week, we
01:43:21.200watched the Novak Djokovic documentary, The Wolf of Winter. He's impressive. Which is, I think,
01:43:26.340on Netflix right now. And of course, he's like, he's the goat. And that's saying something in
01:43:30.580the world of tennis, because there are others who are just right there with him. But he's got the
01:43:35.140most wins when it comes to grand slams, which is how they measure it. So the movie, It's Two Hours
01:43:41.220Long, is very good. But Djokovic is a controversial guy, or was very controversial when he started in
01:43:47.080the tennis world, because he was less mature. He did some mocking of other players. He suddenly
01:43:53.080got injured in matches that he was losing when he was younger. And this turned a lot of people on
01:43:58.160him. And for years, he was booed. He was never the favorite. They created a rivalry in tennis
01:44:04.760between Federer and Nadal. Djokovic wasn't part of it, even though he was up and coming and then
01:44:10.340very much was in it with those two, but would be the lesser than. He has a line in his documentary,
01:44:15.940table for three, please. But they weren't giving this to him because he was never the favorite.
01:44:22.420And what Djokovic talked about was there's something in Serbian culture called in it
01:44:27.540that makes you thrive on that. And people who aren't Serbian or don't have that natural mindset
01:44:34.440that couldn't understand that all those boos and treating him like a second-class citizen
01:44:38.680and making him feel like odd man out, even when he was number one in the world,
01:55:06.120So it's about brain states. It's about understanding that the brain doesn't go from
01:55:10.620sleep to awake, from stress to calm. It's that you need to do things to bridge
01:55:14.980these states, to get from one state to another. And you have that power in your mind and body.
01:55:20.340And so I try and provide tools that represent the fastest and most seamless path to those
01:55:26.320that doesn't require any learning. And all you have to learn how to do them, but there's no,
01:55:32.220it's not like you you need to master the skill you have the skill you just haven't exercised it
01:55:37.240before yeah you probably weren't asking the right questions now because you've mentioned a couple
01:55:42.480times can you tell us about the physiological sigh the physiological side that so that's the
01:55:47.220double inhale long exhale so that's the and then the exhale through the mouth okay and our study
01:55:57.920on that a few years back. We had people do that repeatedly, showed that if you were to repeat that
01:56:03.060and compare to say a meditation practice or to box breathing, which is inhale, hold, exhale,
01:56:09.640hold, or to a meditation practice, what you would find is they all have some benefit,
01:56:13.440but the physiological side allows you to calm down the fastest and it improves your sleep.
01:56:19.080It improves your mood and it improves resting heart rate, heart rate variability. It just has
01:56:25.340so many positive effects and it's so simple and it costs nothing. And if you don't remember to do
01:56:31.200it every day, you just do it every once in a while. And I know it, I know, no, no. I have
01:56:36.180neurosurgeon friends who use it. I have tier one operator friends who use it. I know eight-year-old
01:56:43.360kids who use it. Moms, you know, like even my dog does it, but they do it reflexively. If you watch
01:56:49.220your dog before they go down to sleep, they do a double inhale. Yeah, you write this in the book.
01:56:53.680long exhale and it's to balance their carbon dioxide oxygen ratios. Dogs are so smart because
01:56:58.960they don't worry about stuff. Not mine, but most. Yeah. It's wonderful to see that others have that
01:57:05.220in their pets. Let's talk about nicotine and caffeine because especially nicotine is all the
01:57:11.360rage right now. The little packs that people put in their mouths. What's the story with nicotine?
01:57:17.300Okay. Well, 90% of the world uses caffeine every single day and they're not going to quit. And I
01:57:22.900love caffeine. The data say it can offset dementia. If you don't like caffeine-
01:57:27.440And you say to take it before exercise or drink it, whatever.
01:57:30.460Yeah. You drink yerba mate, which is what I like, or coffee I like as well. People have
01:57:34.940different caffeine tolerances. I will say if you don't like caffeine, don't go drink it to try and
01:57:39.880offset dementia. You'll be fine. But if you do like caffeine, you don't have to worry. I don't
01:57:45.360recommend drinking caffeine too late in the day because it can mess up your sleep, but I love a
01:57:49.4802 p.m. espresso. I love it, I have to say. And I drink it, and I sleep fine.
01:57:57.620Nicotine is a special one because humans throughout history, ever since they discovered
01:58:02.720nicotine, have found a way to get it into their systems. Then they discover it causes cancer,
01:58:06.580they find a new way, they create vaping. Then they find out that vaping isn't good for you,
01:58:11.300not as bad as smoking, but it's still terrible, causes all sorts of lung issues. So then now
01:58:16.400oral nicotine is all the rage. Here's the deal. I'll tell you the positive first.
01:58:23.040Nicotine, there is some evidence, some evidence that it may help offset Parkinson's and dementia
01:58:30.000before it forms. Okay. Why? It increases acetylcholine, which is one of the major
01:58:36.760neuromodulators that's depleted in many forms of dementia, and it increases dopamine and
01:58:43.060movement and parkinson's and dopamine that whole story is about loss of dopaminergic neurons most
01:58:48.900treatments for parkinson's are about increasing dopamine so the problem is that nicotine is
01:58:56.240extremely habit-forming slash addicting okay it it's an amazing stimulant because it makes you
01:59:02.720alert but it also makes you feel calm it puts you in that perfect state for learning and for
01:59:07.820most daytime activities, but it also raises blood pressure, which in particular for men
01:59:13.940can cause cardiovascular issues and sexual health issues because it's a blood flow inhibitor,
01:59:19.540right? So nicotine can cause problems if taken in excess. But the big problem is that now people
01:59:25.860take one, you know, let's say a three to six or even eight milligram pouch of nicotine
01:59:31.220and they feel great. And then they're doing two a day, then three a day. And then pretty soon you
01:59:38.000need an entire canister every few days just to be normal. Same thing with caffeine. Most people
01:59:45.000are drinking caffeine and using nicotine just to be at their normal level of alertness. So if you
01:59:48.820really want to use nicotine as a cognitive enhancer, as a healthy person, you use it very
01:59:54.380occasionally, three to six milligrams, maybe two to three times a week maximum, one pouch.
02:00:00.820But most people don't do that. They're quickly into multiple pouches per day.
02:00:04.900So it's sort of, when I say it's a cognitive enhancer, that's with occasional use. And the
02:00:10.220same goes for caffeine. You need to be alert to get focused. Most people need caffeine just to
02:00:14.680be alert. So you don't get any learning benefit or cognitive benefit from caffeine. You're just
02:00:19.680getting yourself into that plane of alertness that allows you to function. But I love caffeine
02:00:25.040so much. Um, I love yerba mate. I love coffee and you're not going to take it away from me.
02:00:31.160And, um, I just love it. And, and I, so I like to acknowledge that some people really like their
02:00:36.540nicotine, but if you're going to use nicotine, make sure you check your blood pressure and
02:00:40.900ideally you're exercising too. I will say a lot of the guys that I know, it does seem to be mostly
02:00:45.280guys. I went out to, I won't mention which, but a big military school on the East Coast.
02:00:51.540And I did an informal poll of how many of the 4,000 students use nicotine and about two-thirds
02:00:56.580of the hands in the room went up. And then when I spoke to the sports teams, it was like
02:01:00.180almost all of them are using nicotine. But they're athletes, they're young,
02:01:05.420they're running around. Do I suggest it? Not really. But if you're doing that as opposed
02:01:10.280to smoking cigarettes or vaping, great. Definitely be safer for you than alcohol.
02:01:13.960and i'm not a big fan of cannabis some people can do it without issues but it does predispose
02:01:19.820to psychosis in some people it's a whole story into itself this gets very political i'm happy
02:01:24.780to talk about it but what i i did a podcast showing that there are strong data showing that
02:01:29.460thc especially in young males can predispose them to permanent psychosis these very strong thc
02:01:34.760products not all but a lot of them and i got vehemently attacked by the left they were like
02:01:42.180misinformation what are you doing i'm like listen i i gave the balanced picture i don't tell people
02:01:46.860what to do but know what you're doing heard from many parents and people like my kid is schizophrenic
02:01:52.020because of and this is real right then there were some movements on the right the administration
02:01:59.280was trying to actually make some of the laws around cannabis a little bit more liberal and
02:02:04.140then all of a sudden the left started attacking cannabis and so i started realizing like of course
02:02:09.340I don't get political, but I realize, okay, most media, I know you don't do this, but most media,
02:02:15.400they actually are not reporting the issue from a place of heart and understanding of data.
02:02:19.800They're just kind of going, it's like my team, your team's stuff. So the data are this. Some
02:02:24.080people can use cannabis, no problem. It nukes your deep or your rapid eye movement sleep. That's not
02:02:29.940good. But some people can do it, no problem. The edible is not a problem for them. Other people,
02:02:34.740it causes apathy, psychotic issues, one or the other, or in some cases, both. And so you just
02:02:41.320need to be very careful. And I will tell you, I've only had the experience of being male,
02:02:45.440and I will tell you, young males should not use cannabis. You want to develop your life. You want
02:02:51.200to be ambitious, as ambitious as you can, while being a kind person and taking care of yourself.
02:02:57.280cannabis except for extremely talented creatives is a motivation success inhibitor i don't know0.87
02:03:06.260the data for females as well because we don't have a lot of female specific data on it so that's why
02:03:12.760i just sort of mentioned that but i will tell you when young guys are like how do you feel about thc
02:03:17.220i'm like i love it when my competitors take thc in anything you better hope that all your
02:03:23.000competitors take THC because it's a complete killer. I think many of mine do. Yeah. And then
02:03:29.080I will say, someone will come along every once in a while and they'll say, I know this athlete
02:03:33.220who uses cannabis and they're a super athlete. Or my grandfather smoked and drank every day and
02:03:39.960lived to be 102. To those stories, I always say, yeah, well, you know, yesterday, and this is a
02:03:45.600true story, I sat down with somebody whose dad did everything right and got a glioma. So you're
02:03:51.040always, and died. So you're always going to have these, these margin cases at the extremes where
02:03:55.640someone does everything right and still get sick and dies. And someone does everything wrong and
02:04:00.320still lives a long, healthy life. But most people are not at those extremes. And so if you're going
02:04:05.940to use the excuse, like I'm going to do everything wrong and be okay, forget it. The data say that's
02:04:11.300very unlikely. Or if you say, I'm going to do everything right. And I'm certain that I'm going
02:04:16.260to live to be 150. Well, that's not true either. That's not true either. And so what you want to
02:04:22.700do is most things right most of the time and avoid the pitfalls that could cause psychosis
02:04:28.780or drunk driving. I mean, we sort of know this, it's logic, but the health messaging has gotten
02:04:33.920very contaminated by the political sphere in a way that I think has hurt a lot of people.
02:04:39.600I just want people to have the information. No, I laugh because my nana, God love her,
02:04:44.820my mom's mom lived to be 101 and she ate at least in the last 30 years of her life. She ate nothing
02:04:51.200but processed foods. She never saw exercise in any way, shape or form. She walked a little bit
02:04:56.500around her senior citizens complex that she lived in, lived on her own until she was a hundred and
02:05:00.980a half. Amazing. This is your grandmother. And yeah, my Nana, she was stressed out all the things
02:05:06.640that we're not supposed to do, but that's of course the exception, not the rule. We can't go
02:05:11.340by that. I thought the exercise and the eating advice in the book was very sound and it was right
02:05:17.560along the lines of what you're saying. Nothing extreme, you know, a normal sort of natural foods
02:05:24.300diet, less processed, the better. And exercise, yes, weight training, cardiovascular, as well as
02:05:30.720walking, you know, a few times a week in addition to like cardiovascular training, all good.
02:05:36.360But we only have a couple minutes left. Can you just hit, so for the quick learners or the people
02:05:43.280who just want to get a quick highlight, what are the top three things you want them to take away
02:05:47.980when it comes to their wellness, what they can learn from your experience?
02:05:54.900Bright mornings that involve light, ideally from sunlight or artificial lights, some movement,
02:06:01.300some hydration. I'm a big proponent of prayer, meditation, things that orient you to what's
02:06:08.220really important. For me, that's prayer in the morning and before going to sleep at night.
02:06:12.280These things have an outsized positive effect on your health and your mood and your ability to
02:06:17.540focus all day long. The second thing would be do a long exhale or ideally two inhales through your
02:06:24.440nose, a long exhale through your mouth. Anytime you feel stressed or even a couple of times
02:06:28.060throughout the day. You'll improve your heart rate variability, your resting heart rate.
02:06:32.900You'll find that you actually can handle stress very well. You'll lower your baseline levels of
02:06:38.160stress and you'll feel more control over your mind and body in a way that carries over to everything.
02:06:44.620That tool works anywhere and everywhere unless you're underwater. And then darken your sleeping
02:06:50.000environment, cool it down and do some long exhale breathing before sleep. And those three things,
02:06:56.860And of course, you still need to do some exercise, try and walk a bunch and lift some heavy objects now and again, heavy for you. Get your heart rate up doing some exercise. Don't eat too much processed food, this kind of thing, the things we all know. But if you do those three things, you will find that everything gets better right away.
02:07:15.020daytime energy ability to mitigate stress learning presence with emotional presence
02:07:22.400and physical presence with people you love your ability to just enjoy life a bit more
02:07:27.820to pivot your brain state and to reset in that magical phase of our 24-hour cycle sleep that
02:07:35.260no one seems to get away with out doing for very long those things you'll look better you'll feel
02:07:40.700better, you will be healthier, you will live longer. And it sounds like good old fashioned
02:07:44.740advice. Because I'm saying sleep right, exercise, don't stress, social connection. But what no one,
02:07:51.600I will, you know, you know, with humility aside, and humbly, I'll say also, no one ever told us
02:07:58.620how. It's like, we're told what not to do. So I'm not going to bark at you to not drink or not do
02:08:04.360this or not. I'm going to tell you, do those things. And also learn to enjoy them. They're
02:08:08.800for you. And there's, so you can show up better for yourself and other people in life. Learn to
02:08:13.920enjoy them. They're your God-given circuits and molecules. Like we all have them and put them to
02:08:18.640use. And if you miss a couple of days, no big deal, get, get right back on it. They take seconds
02:08:23.020to minutes. They cost nothing. They're available to you in some form every single day. And the,
02:08:29.140I mean, there's over 1200 references in the book that support what I'm saying. I'm not coming up
02:08:33.860with this stuff. I'm not naming it after me. These are not the Huberman protocols. This is your body,
02:08:38.620your physiology, your brain, your mind, and you deserve to get the best from them. And that's my
02:08:43.400deep, deep wish for people. I've seen it. I've experienced how they can help. I've seen how it
02:08:49.160can help others. I just want those for the world. I really, really do.
02:08:54.480You got to get the book now. It's going to sell out. It's called Protocols by Andrew Huberman,
02:09:01.040an operating manual for the human body. Don't wait. It's going to hit the stores soon,
02:09:06.320but you want to get it now because it'll sell out and then you won't have it. It's a pleasure.
02:09:11.300Thank you so much for coming on. I hope I get to talk to you again.
02:09:13.960Thanks so much for hosting me. Forgive me that in my excitement, various times I
02:09:18.240inadvertently spoke over you. I'm a big fan and I really appreciate the opportunity to
02:09:24.200connect to your audience and really enjoyed your questions. Indeed, I learned a lot during
02:09:28.420this conversation. So thank you. Oh, the pleasure is ours. All the best to you and
02:09:32.300good luck with the book. Thank you very much. See you again. Bye for now. Wow. What a guy. So
02:09:36.900interesting. The book is big, but it's an easy read and you can go, you know, chapter to chapter,
02:09:41.700like he was saying, just pick the one on whatever, sleep, nutrition, et cetera, whatever interests
02:09:45.280you. And actually really genuinely will make a great gift as we go, oh my God, into the Christmas
02:09:49.960season. I mean, that's what's next here as we say goodbye to the 80 degree days. Thank you all so
02:09:54.580much for listening. Don't forget to go out and buy protocols today. Thanks for listening to the
02:09:59.320megan kelly show no bs no agenda and no fear
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