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AMA #3: Adaptogens, Fasting & Fertility, Bluetooth/EMF Risks, Cognitive Load Limits & More
AMA #3: Adaptogens, Fasting & Fertility, Bluetooth/EMF Risks, Cognitive Load Limits & More

AMA #3: Adaptogens, Fasting & Fertility, Bluetooth/EMF Risks, Cognitive Load Limits & More

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Andrew Huberman
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Jan 13, 2023
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Episode Transcript
0:00
Welcome to the huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew huberman. And I'm a professor of neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford school of
0:13
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Without further Ado, let's get to answering your questions. And as always, I will strive to be as accurate as possible as
1:23
thorough, as possible. And yet, as concise as possible, the
1:27
first question today is about adaptogens, some
1:30
Of you may have heard of adaptogens. I'm guessing many of you have not heard of
1:33
adaptogens. The
1:35
strict definition of adaptogens is still evolving meaning. No one really knows what
1:38
adaptogens mean and what's included
1:41
in adaptogens
1:42
and what's excluded from adaptogens.
1:44
But the most common definition of an adaptogen is a
1:47
compound that is typically a supplement or a drug. Although it could be a
1:52
behavior if you really think about it that helps you adapt to and
1:56
buffer stress.
1:57
So when you hear about adaptogen,
2:00
There are three main categories
2:01
of adaptogens that come to mind. The
2:04
first are things that are contained in food, so these would be vitamins or micronutrients that one could easily find in food, but one would have to consume a fairly restricted number or type of foods in order to obtain those things or consume a lot of those Foods in order to get sufficient dosages of those.
2:23
Adaptogen compounds in order to buffer stress.
2:26
Some good examples of these would be any kind of
2:30
Amin either water soluble or fat-soluble that can
2:34
adjust or reduced, what our
2:35
so-called reactive oxygen species, and then that's what gives rise to this idea that antioxidants are good for us now over the last 10 years. Or so, there's been a shift what shift has occurred? Well about ten years ago, you often heard about antioxidants, antioxidants, antioxidants and vitamins antioxidants than this food. This super food Etc. And why were people talking about antioxidants will just remind you reactive oxygen.
3:00
And species are types of reactions and
3:03
molecules that occur in cells. When cells get stressed and or age. And antioxidants are the compounds that reduce those reactive oxygen species. Reactive oxygen species are bad for cells because they tend to hinder the function of mitochondria, which are associated with energy production in those cells.
3:22
So what do we know for sure? We know that as cells get older or as any seller biological
3:27
system, organ tissue, Etc. Get
3:30
it stressed a lot over time. The
3:32
number of reactive oxygen species increases in those cells and tissues and
3:37
organs, and antioxidants, which can
3:40
include certain vitamins. But also some
3:42
micronutrients are effective in reducing those reactive oxygen species.
3:47
Now, what's occurred over the last 10 years is that we know that
3:49
reactive oxygen species are a major source of depleting cellular function by way of depleting mitochondrial function,
3:56
but they are just one of many mechanisms that can
4:00
Eat seller function mitochondrial function. So nowadays you'll
4:03
hear about reactive oxygen species and antioxidants but not as much as you used to. Now you
4:08
hear a lot more about inflammatory responses and inflammatory. Cytokines also be an issue. And the truth is all of these things are in
4:15
issue. So, going back to this question about
4:17
adaptogens
4:18
adaptogens. Include these three
4:20
categories. I've told you the first which are
4:22
the vitamins and micronutrients that are contained in food that
4:27
can reduce reactive oxygen species, and
4:30
other aspects of seller stress such as inflammatory. Cytokines? What are some
4:34
of those things that occur in Foods? Well, in order to answer that, let's just think about what sorts of foods
4:39
themselves can act, as adaptogens,
4:42
it's commonly held that the
4:44
dark leafy
4:45
greens type
4:46
foods. For those of you that eat plants, I think the majority of people out there, do we eat plants. I know that the carnivore diet and lion diet and some other diets tend to exclude plants. And we'll address that in briefly at some point in today's
4:59
discussion. But
5:00
Dark leafy greens are known to contain a number of compounds in the form of vitamins and micronutrients that are very effective in reducing
5:09
reactive, oxygen species and inflammatory cytokines.
5:12
So, if you're somebody who's interested in adaptogens and adaptogenic
5:16
processes, reducing stress, and buffering stress, which of course, has its role in buffering daily stress, in order to help you sleep better, to improve cellular function for longevity Sports, Performance cognitive performance.
5:27
That is all good. And it
5:28
makes sense why people would be
5:30
interested in adaptogens. But remember
5:32
that the two main adaptogens that you should think
5:34
to First are
5:36
going to be behaviors and nutrition. I've started with nutrition on
5:39
purpose. As I mentioned, we'll get to behaviors in a moment. So if you're interested in
5:43
adaptogens at all, I highly recommend that you include at least two to four servings of
5:48
dark, leafy greens, and or cruciferous vegetables per day. I think that'd be highly advantageous
5:54
and just be aware that
5:55
excessively heating. Dark leafy greens are cruciferous
5:58
vegetables. Can actually
5:59
destroy
6:00
The very nutrient of micronutrients that actin and adaptogenic way that does not mean that you need to eat raw broccoli or cauliflower. Just the thought of that makes me nauseous. It's very hard to digest. Some people might like that or can digest it more easily than others, so it's perfectly fine to cook your cruciferous vegetables, and dark leafy greens, but you don't want to overcook them. What's over cooking? And what's
6:20
undercooking. There's a
6:22
no strict cut off in terms of temperature.
6:24
But basically, what the literature says is that, if you heat
6:26
vegetables to the point where,
6:30
The colored fluid is leaching out of them
6:32
into a broth type you know into water or whatever. Fluid surrounds them. Well then
6:38
you would be well off to
6:39
ingest that fluid as well because it contained in the the water where the fluid that's leaching out from the cruciferous vegetables. Or from the dark, leafy greens are going to be a lot of those very adaptogenic molecules, that you're interested in the first
6:51
place, okay? So, I probably surprised some people by
6:53
starting off. My answer to the question of what are adaptogens. Are they worth thinking about in pursuing and if so how can I get them?
7:00
Talking about food. But I think it is important to understand that you can get a lot of adaptogens from food. And indeed some of the best adaptogens do come from dark leafy greens, and cruciferous vegetables. So I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that. The
7:11
other two categories of
7:12
adaptogens are going
7:14
to be supplement based adaptogens and then
7:16
behavioral adaptogens again here adaptogen to find is anything that can buffer stress in a substantial or meaningful way. In order to support cellular Health organ health and overall daily living and
7:30
And functioning including sleep in performance, and mental
7:32
health. So the second category of adaptogen are going to be supplements and here again, I just want to take a step back. Make sure that we
7:39
are clear about our operational. Definition about what a supplement is. We
7:43
had an episode all about how to design a
7:46
rational guide to supplementation, which included for example, the idea that for some people, the
7:52
optimal dosage of many supplements is going to
7:54
be 0 and for other people, the dosage will be something else but to
7:57
really pinpoint the key message from
8:00
Episode that I'd like to reiterate now
8:02
but the kit, but a key message from that episode that I'd like to reiterate
8:06
now is that many
8:07
people think of supplements
8:09
as just vitamin supplements. And for that reason, you'll often hear the argument. Oh well, aren't supplements just expensive urine, couldn't you get all of that from food, aren't you? Just urinating out all the water soluble vitamins and maybe even storing excess amounts of the fat-soluble vitamins in a way that's unhealthy or not cost effective. And so on,
8:28
when we talk about supplements,
8:30
yes, it can include vitamin supplements.
8:32
However, there are many compounds that we would describe as supplements that are not vitamin supplements and that you could not obtain from
8:39
food or that you could never obtain from food in. Sufficient enough
8:43
qualities to have a robust positive biological effect without consuming enormous number of calories or overriding your your gut mechanically for instance, if there were say a herb and we'll
8:57
talk about such herbs in a moment that contained an effective ad.
9:00
To Jen, but you would never want to eat the plant
9:03
itself or include that herb in any kind of recipe. Well, then
9:07
chances are this herb which will Define in a moment is not a vitamin supplement. It is probably not even best thought of as a supplement, its
9:16
best thought of as a compound, that sold over-the-counter much like a prescription drug. Although it's not prescription, it doesn't require a prescription to get it.
9:23
So there are a lot of things like that that we include Under the
9:25
Umbrella of this word supplements.
9:27
And unfortunately, because of that
9:30
A lot of people think oh you don't need supplements and of course, you don't need
9:33
supplements per se. But many people do derive tremendous benefit from them in the context of
9:37
adaptogens. There are two or three in particular, that can be very beneficial for buffering the stress response, especially over short periods of time of about two to three weeks. So when would you use these? Well for instance, if you are in a particularly stressful
9:50
mode of life, either because of
9:52
family or relational or school, or work demands or New Kid in the house or any number of different things,
10:00
Or you've been ill or you're recovering from injury, taking an adaptogen, in the form of supplement, can actually be very useful for buffering this hormone and the general systems is associated with
10:10
called cortisol. It's
10:12
very healthy to have high levels of cortisol early in the day, shortly
10:15
after you wake up, and then that ought to taper off toward the afternoon and evening. However, if cortisol is chronically elevated throughout the day, or if that peak in cortisol is
10:24
arriving too late in the day, that is known to be
10:26
associated with mental health, and physical health issues has been shown by
10:29
ABS at Stanford and elsewhere. It's been shown in animal models and in humans
10:34
talked many times before and I'll just remind you again, the one of the best ways to
10:38
restrict that cortisol Peak to the early part of the day, is to get morning sunlight in your
10:44
eyes as soon as you can. Once
10:46
the Sun is up, get outside facing the direction. The sun even on overcast days don't wear sunglasses. Look at it for five to thirty minutes, definitely blink. So you don't damage your eyes so on and so forth. Why? Five minutes or 30 minutes with five minutes on a clear day should be.
11:00
Efficient longer would be fine, again, blink, so that you protect your eyes blink as needed facing the general direction. The sun on
11:06
days when you
11:07
have a lot of overcast or it's really dark dense, cloud cover will, then you'd want to be outside longer. And if you don't have access to sunlight for whatever reason that you want to do the same thing with bright artificial lights indoors either so-called sad lamp or otherwise. That's a
11:20
great way to restrict that cortisol Peak too early in the day, but even if you're doing
11:25
that, if you have a stressful life for whatever reason, even if you're getting that morning sunlight, which I hope you are.
11:29
Our, you're getting your exercise, you're trying to sleep better and more as we all should most of the time. Well,
11:36
then you're, you may be somebody who wants to take
11:39
a adaptogen in the form of a supplement and the 3 supplements that can be very effective in buffering. Cortisol are ashwagandha which I'll talk about first, lion's mane, and chaga lion's mane and chog are in the fungi group. So they count as mushrooms. They are not psychedelic mushrooms. Let's talk about ashwagandha.
12:00
First ashwagandha is at the top of the list because it is indeed a very potent. Adaptogen, how can I
12:06
say that? Well there are a number of studies now including several excellent ones in humans, that report that taking two doses of 300 mg of ashwagandha per day can vary
12:20
dramatically, buffer cortisol. So this is
12:23
something that you would have a near-impossible Time
12:27
accessing from food. I can't imagine that unless you're
12:29
Cooking with the very sources of ashwagandha and extracting, exact amounts, that you'd be able to get this in any other form except supplement
12:37
form. So, here, I'm going to just briefly reference a
12:39
paper, and we can provide a reference to the reference link to this. That is, this is a paper from 2012. That's had a lot of excellent follow-up papers that support it. The title of the paper is a prospective
12:49
randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled, study of safety, and efficacy of high concentration of full-spectrum extract of ashwagandha root in reducing Stress and Anxiety
12:59
in adults.
12:59
It's a really nice study, not a huge subject pool, but both men and women and is carried out for long enough that they got to see some really interesting results. And the the
13:08
I think that the most interesting result is that
13:11
taking 300 mg of ashwagandha twice a
13:14
day led
13:15
to enormous, I mean just enormous changes. In serum cortisol the statistical
13:21
significance that they observed in the study was really fantastic. Fantastically High statistical significance.
13:30
They saw the effects of ashwagandha on day 15 having
13:34
initiated the the ashwagandha consumption on day 1, of
13:38
course, day, 30 and day 45. And again, this was dramatic reductions in stress
13:44
as perceived by people. So subjective, stress, and cortisol level. So
13:47
ashwagandha is very potent at reducing cortisol. How would you recapitulate, this, if you wanted to use ashwagandha to buffer stress? Well, a couple of key points mentioned earlier that you want your cortisol Peak to come,
13:59
You're in the day,
14:01
therefore, you would not want to buffer cortisol early in the day. In fact, cortisol
14:06
peaking early in the day provides an anti inflammatory immune supporting focus and mood supporting
14:14
effect all day long.
14:16
So I would recommend that people take their first dose of ashwagandha of anywhere from 250 to 300
14:22
milligrams, sometime in the early afternoon. And then again in the evening, as opposed to, taking a morning dose in an afternoon dose,
14:29
So, if you're somebody who's exercising for sake of trying to induce adaptations like hypertrophy, the growth of muscles or strength or improve your endurance in any way, muscular endurance or more, traditional cardiovascular endurance. Then I recommend that you not take your ashwagandha prior to exercise because part of the adaptation response is triggered by increases in cortisol during exercise sort of in the same way that
14:55
Some of the best adaptations to exercise, our reductions in blood pressure and resting heart rate, and those
15:01
are stimulated by increases in blood
15:03
pressure and increases in heart rate during exercise. That's just how these biological systems
15:07
work. So the takeaway is pretty simple. If you're interested in using ashwagandha as an adaptogen, I would restrict it to later in the day if you can and not
15:15
before exercise divided into
15:17
two doses of 250 to 300 milligrams.
15:20
That's
15:20
what this paper and other papers. Like it seemed to indicate and then a very important
15:25
Point about ashwagandha, which is that if you're going to take ashwagandha, I recommend not taking it for longer
15:32
than a month and a half as they did in this study. In fact, I was
15:34
suggest that you only take ashwagandha around periods of kind of moderate to extreme stress. What's moderate, what's extreme is going to depend on
15:43
what you're going through. Only you know, how much stress, and life events, you can tolerate. So if you've had trouble sleeping and that's unusual
15:50
for you, or you're dealing with a very difficult life
15:52
circumstances or your
15:54
excessive work,
15:55
And or a new kid, as I mentioned before, it will, then buffering
15:58
stress with ashwagandha buffer and cortisol in the afternoon and evening can be very beneficial for you. But then I would say
16:03
after, about 30 days maximum, I would take at least two to
16:08
four weeks off. Two weeks is probably enough, but four weeks off because you don't want to chronically buffer cortisol. It's just not a good
16:16
idea. But that said, I think ashwagandha is a very powerful.
16:19
Adaptogen I placed at the top of list of supplement based adaptogens, but keep in
16:24
mind that
16:25
If you're taking a supplement based adaptogen, that's no reason to
16:28
abandon the nutrition and behavioral type adaptogenic effects that you can create through eating dark leafy, greens, cruciferous vegetables. Then we'll talk about behaviors in a
16:36
moment. The other to supplement based adaptogens, as I mentioned, our lion's mane mushroom and chaga and I get asked a lot about
16:44
lion's mane and chaga for sake of their purported roles in acting as
16:49
nootropics as quote unquote, smart drugs, there are fewer data on the
16:55
Beneficial
16:56
roles of lines made in chaga for sake of nootropic effects, will do
17:01
an entire episode on nootropics at some point. But there have been a few studies showing that lines made and supplementation and chaga supplementation can improve memory and maybe even
17:12
Divergent thinking associate with
17:13
Craig creativity and things of that sort. Again, these are not psychedelic mushrooms that said there are good data showing that 1000 mg that is one gram of lion's mane per day.
17:26
and or okay, these will talk about the and or portion a moment and or chaga mushroom at 500 to 1500 mg per day can act as adaptogens in again reducing
17:41
Cortisol, but also, and mainly reducing some of the anti-inflammatory cytokines that are known to circulate in high abundance. When you're under a lot of psychological and or physical stress, things like interleukin 6, and some related molecules.
17:55
So here's what I would recommend. If you are interested in exploring adaptogens, I'm a big fan
18:00
as some of you probably know if you heard that episode on rational
18:03
guide to supplementation, I'm a big fan of mainly focusing on taking supplements in single-ingredient formulations, so that
18:11
You can figure out what dosages are best for you and so that you can
18:14
toggle in and out those adaptogens as needed. So I, of course, am a fan of taking certain Blends and mixes the one that we talked about a lot on this podcast. And we've been a sponsor from the beginning, I've taken for a decade now, long before I ever had a podcast is athletic
18:29
greens, which some of you might know does contain some ashwagandha, although the
18:33
levels of ashwagandha that are contained in athletic greens are low enough that I don't see any issue with taking the athletic greens consistently day to day.
18:41
Day because you're not getting anywhere near that six hundred milligram dosage.
18:45
But the idea is that if you are going to take any adaptogen for sake of
18:50
buffering, stress over the short-term say, for a
18:53
week or two weeks or a month.
18:55
And then taking that recommended time off, I would
18:57
start with ashwagandha. And then if you feel, you need something else to buffer
19:02
stress, keeping in mind, of course that you're doing the behavioral and the nutritional
19:05
things to buffer, stress as well, you can never abandon those, right? Well then I would suggest adding a thousand milligrams.
19:11
Or 1000 mg of
19:12
chaga per day and seeing how that further benefits your your system in terms of buffering stress. How would you measure if your stress is being reduced? Well, you're going to be sleeping better at night. You're going to feel subjectively better lower levels of
19:25
anxiety. All the things that are measured
19:27
in the types of studies I described before. Now
19:30
of course there's nothing preventing you from taking
19:33
600 milligrams of ashwagandha, G of lion's mane and a gram of chalk. I know some people like to just kind of Go full tilt
19:39
and everything but I am a big believer.
19:41
In really trying to isolate which supplements and molecules work, best
19:45
for you and which ones don't do
19:48
you need to cycle on, and off lion's mane and chaga, I'm not aware of any data showing
19:52
that you do. If, however, you're taking them every day, I recommend that you cycle off them after a period of 30 days or so.
20:00
And I want to be very clear about
20:01
this just because I said cycle off after a period of 30 days or so does not mean that you can't take
20:06
them for a shorter period of time. So for instance, if you know that you're coming up on a big week of
20:10
stress,
20:11
Well, then you could take ashwagandha and or lion's mane and or chaga for that week or just that weaker heading into that week or in the following week. And then stop. There's no reason why you couldn't take them even just for one day, although the the effects tend to be a bit cumulative. At least, when we're talking about buffering anxiety, in terms of buffering cortisol, that's a very potent affected. As far as we know, is going to take place on day one again, keep that cortisol
20:37
buffering effect away from exercise. That least don't take it be
20:41
For exercise and try and
20:43
buffer your cortisol in the afternoon and evening. And this is assuming that you're working a conventional shift and you're not up all night and sleeping all day for sake of shift work. Okay, so hopefully that clarifies things about what adaptogens are. In fact, I never actually read the specific
20:57
question, but I think I've touched on a number
20:58
of issues that were related to the specific question and then I'll answer the last
21:03
portion of the answer this question in a moment
21:05
as it relates to behavioral tools that can act as adaptogens,
21:10
the question itself.
21:11
Self was there's a lot of mixed
21:12
information about out there about adaptogens like ashwagandha and I think that relates to what I said earlier, which is the definition of an adaptogen has not really been cemented in various
21:23
communities. It's different in different communities and
21:25
it's generally used as a matter of convenience rather than really strictly defining what it is and hopefully we've defined it accurately. And and broadly enough, today is something that buffers stress.
21:38
The second part of the question was, what does the scientific evidence say about
21:41
Opposition to their ability to mediate body's stress response. They say quite a lot and they they say that the stress response can be buffered substantially by certain adaptogens. Mainly dark leafy greens, cruciferous vegetables, ashwagandha lion's mane, and chaga and of course, all the behavioral things that are critical to what list off in a
22:00
moment. And then the third portion of the question is, is there any solid
22:03
evidence that has an effect on neurotransmitters or the HPA which is part of the stress modulation axis,
22:10
the best?
22:11
Evidence is that
22:11
adaptogens can reduce cortisol
22:14
itself. There is very little evidence that adaptogens can
22:18
directly modulate neurotransmitters or neuromodulators like, dopamine serotonin etcetera, but by adjusting the
22:25
timing and levels of
22:26
cortisol especially in the afternoon and evening,
22:29
that is going to
22:30
have indirect effects on levels of dopamine norepinephrine, Etc and serotonin but not Direct effects. So the general Contour that makes for an ideal
22:41
Colonel schedule, you heard of nocturnal. The opposite is diurnal being awake during the daytime and sleep at night. The ideal and of landscape of neurotransmitters is higher
22:49
levels of dopamine, norepinephrine and epinephrine in the early part of the day and cortisol. So-called catecholamine, dopamine norepinephrine and epinephrine and high levels of cortisol early in the day
23:00
as directed by sunlight exercise, caffeine, hydration movement, all that stuff being awakened busy and outside or indoors with bright lights and moving about in the early part of the day and into
23:11
To the early afternoon. That's the best possible way that we are aware of to try and get those catecholamines released at the highest levels in the early part of the day and then the ideal Contour of a 24-hour cycle be in the later half of the day, the evening and nighttime, you have higher levels of things like serotonin the gabaergic system. All the things that are somewhat
23:29
sedative and preparing you for sleep and lower
23:32
levels of the catecholamines in cortisol as I described
23:35
before. So to directly answer the question, is there any
23:37
evidence that adaptogens can alter your neurotransmitters?
23:41
Yes, but only indirectly and yet that indirect control, over neurotransmitters is substantial
23:47
and is important. And if
23:49
you do what I described such as
23:50
getting morning, sunlight, and ideally, you'd get a little bit of deliberate cold water exposure, by the way, to boost, adrenaline and norepinephrine and dopamine those
23:57
catecholamines early in the day so quick one minute, cold shower, even or three-minute cold shower,
24:03
you have access to an ice bath early in the
24:04
day, plus some sunlight, doesn't matter which one you do. First doing that early in the day, is really going to create that peak of
24:11
Cortisol, dopamine epinephrine early in the
24:13
day, I can't emphasize how beneficial all of that can be and exercise. If you can early in the day, some people can't exercise till later in the day. I'd rather see people exercise later in the day, the not at all provided. It does not disrupt their nighttime sleep, which of course, sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical, health, and performance. So yes,
24:31
there's modulation or neurotransmitters, but
24:33
most of those are Downstream of the effects on cortisol that we've been talking
24:36
about. So we've defined nutritional adaptogens. Supplement, based adaptogens hole.
24:41
I don't really like the word supplements anymore. Unless we're talking about vitamin supplements for reasons, we talked about earlier and then there's the third category
24:48
of adaptogens which are the
24:49
behavioral tools that you can use to buffer stress, which
24:52
qualifies those as an adaptogen. I think it's
24:54
really important that we always keep in mind
24:57
that. Yes, there are supplements. Yes, there are prescription drugs out there. In
24:59
fact, their prescription drugs that you can get from a
25:02
doctor that will potent, Lee zero out your cortisol. But most doctors are very reluctant to prescribe those drugs because cortisol
25:11
Hides, a very important and functional role early in the day,
25:15
behaviors are very effective at reducing cortisol. What are the most
25:18
effective behaviors to reduce cortisol? Well, we talked about one
25:22
to restrict cortisol, the early part of
25:24
the day, which is viewing, morning, sunlight. But how would you buffer cortisol in the late
25:29
afternoon? It's going to be all the things associated with reducing stress, for instance, 10 minutes, or even my laboratory and other Laboratories have shown is even five minutes a day of just
25:41
What would be called, mindfulness meditation? Very simple. You don't need to overcomplicate. This, you could use a great app, like the waking up app or another app of the sort
25:48
or you can simply sit down eyes closed, brief through your nose and just concentrate on your breathing every time your
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mind drifts to something else. Bring it back to your breathing. That's shown to reduce stress. You could do a five-minute. Deliberate breathwork practice. My laboratory is published some work related to that the breathwork practice could be any number of things. The two that I recommend the most would be double, inhale followed
26:11
Buy a full exhale and then repeat for a period of five minutes, known to substantially reduce anxiety stress and the various physiological systems associated with arousal. You could also use box breathing, inhale, hold exhale. Hold for equal durations for a period of five minutes will substantially reduce stress. I'm a
26:27
big fan, as many of, you know, of Yoga Nidra which involves is no movement. It
26:30
involves just lying there. Listening to a script lots of Yoga Nidra. Scripts, available online if you're not interested in the
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intentions and other things including Yoga
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Nidra, you can buffer stress
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An adaptogen like NSD are non sleep, deep breath. If you're interested in trying these sorts of things, there's a NSD our protocol that's 10 minutes long, just put
26:50
my name huberman and an
26:53
SDR into the search browser on YouTube and virtuous and is provided and an SDR. That's completely zero cost and works very well for reducing stress. It will also help teach your system and teach you how to learn to fall asleep, better at night. So
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any of those practices 5 to 10-minute breathing practice, or
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Ation or
27:12
a NSD, our Yoga Nidra me.
27:14
If you can do longer 20 or 30 minutes in the afternoon, that's known to buffer
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cortisol substantially as well.
27:21
Anytime you're encountering stress in real time. I highly recommend a tool over and over
27:26
because it's so effective. The fastest way we know to buffer stress and calm down is the so-called physiological
27:30
side, big, inhale through the nose, till your lungs are empty. But then sneak in a little bit more air. B, s, inhale,
27:38
maximally inflate the lungs done a long, exhale until your lungs.
27:41
Or empty one two three of those will reduce your stress substantially over time. That should reduce that is buffer your cortisol acting as an adaptogen. There are a lot of things you could take a hot bath to get. Take a hot shower, you can listen to some pleasant music,
27:53
you know, anything that reduces your
27:55
stress, technically is an adaptogen. So
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I hope I've thoroughly answered your question by yours. I mean this of course this answer
28:02
is going out to all of you. This is a question that was asked by Justine bevilacqua. I hope I pronounce that correctly Justine and thank you for that question. I think there a lot of people interested in
28:11
Ends. So now you know you can use nutrition
28:13
such as cruciferous vegetables, dark leafy greens
28:16
and I should also mention if you're not ingesting
28:18
enough calories each day, well then you are going to be in a mild mode of stress.
28:24
That's not to say that some people
28:26
shouldn't take in fewer calories than they burn in order to lose weight. Some people really need to do that for their health or for whatever other reason. But if you restrict calories too much, you are going to increase cortisol output. So keep that in mind. So ingest.
28:41
Calories for you and for your goals, aim to get dark leafy greens and cruciferous vegetables. Don't overcook them. If you want to explore supplements, the best supplements, the act as adaptogens are going to be ashwagandha, lion's mane and chaga
28:54
one, or two or three of those. Although,
28:58
if you're going to pick one, I'd recommend ashwagandha 600 milligrams per day taken in the later, half of the day and then they're the behavioral tools
29:05
that we just talked about now which are anything that reduces stress can reduce cortisol
29:10
and
29:11
Doing so are technically adaptogens. If you want to know more
29:14
behavioral tools and other tools for adjusting stress and learn more about adaptogens. We did a whole episode
29:19
called mastering stress so you can look to that that episode also pretty
29:23
clearly defines. I like to think what short-term medium-term and long-term stress really are. Keep in mind, stress is
29:29
part of life. Learning how to work with it. How to dance with it,
29:31
how to buffer, it is terrific, but zeroing out cortisol is not the goal, the goal is to learn to modulate and
29:38
control your cortisol. And that's really what,
29:41
Jeans are all about, thank you for joining for the beginning of this. Ask me anything episode to hear the
29:46
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