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
medicine. Today, we're discussing supplements or more specifically a rational guide to
supplementation. Now, to
be forthright, I want to tell you that I am not a fan of the word supplements because it stems from this idea that
all supplements are somehow food,
supplements or designed.
To compensate for what one could otherwise get from
food and that's simply not the case.
Many supplements are compounds that are extremely efficacious,
for instance, for enhancing sleep or for enhancing hormone function or for enhancing focus.
And many of those compounds are simply not found in food or are not found in enough. Abundance in food to have the desired effect now that raises the issue as to whether or not these compounds are good to take safe to take and whether or not they are actually
Fish oil for us. And the short answer is that like everything else supplements can either be good for us or dangerous for us, depending on dosage sourcing Etc.
But more importantly, we need to think about supplements and a rational guide to supplementation, as taking into account, a number of different factors and we need to set aside. The idea that all non-prescription compounds that fall under this umbrella term supplements are simply things that could be extracted from food, but most people don't
either
ingest enough of those Foods or pan.
Enough attention
to their diet in order to obtain
them. In fact during today's episode, I'm going to give you a number of different, very specific questions that you can answer in order to decide whether or not you should be taking any so-called supplements or not and whether or not you should be taking one type of supplement or another type of supplement more or
less than the other. I'm also going to discuss safety of
course. And I will discuss
cost because obviously monetary cost is a serious consideration for most, if not everybody considering the use of
supplements,
In today's episode, I will also discuss which specific supplements are optimal for achieving specific and points such
as improved sleep. Such as improved focus and such as improved hormone function among other things. I plan to cover the
full range of what are referred to as supplements, including so-called foundational supplements that are designed to act as a sort of insurance policy
against any deficiencies that might exist within your
diet. All the way up to very targeted, outcome, supplements and compounds, that is compounds, that are
Non-prescription that are designed to achieve very
specific and points such as enhanced Focus over the next four to six hours of physical work, or mental work. So on and so forth,
plan to cover everything in between that as well. And I promise to cover how supplements interact with other things, such as behavioral tools prescription drugs, when supplements might be a good alternative to prescription drugs. When they might, not be a good alternative to prescription drugs when supplements can serve as an augment to already excellent nutrition and
Protocols and every feature of
supplements, as it relates to mental health, physical, health, and performance.
By the end of today's episode, you should be armed with a number of different questions. As I mentioned before, that will allow
you to develop the most
biologically effective and cost effective supplement regimen for you. And of course, I want to acknowledge that for some people, the total amount or dosages of a given supplement or supplements that you might need to take. Could be
0, there are such
individuals but that many people can in fact,
Fact arrived tremendous benefit from supplements in a way that can be more cost effective than trying to obtain the same non-prescription nutrients from food. As we head into today's conversation, I want to emphasize something very important. Not just as it relates to supplements, but as it relates to all
aspects of mental health, physical, health, and
performance. And that is, I take the stance that behavioral tools that is specific actions that we take and specific actions that we avoid form the foundation of mental health, physical health,
and performance.
So things like viewing morning, sunlight, and exercise
our behavioral tools. They don't require the ingestion of anything within the realm of Behavioral tools. That are also some donuts or do
not that can greatly enhance our mental health, physical, health, and performance such as avoiding bright light exposure to your eyes, between the hours of 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. or
avoiding caffeine too late in the afternoon. Because even if
you can afford a sleep after ingesting caffeine in the late afternoon, we know it disrupts. The architecture of your sleep in ways that greatly diminish your
Mental health, physical, health, and performance the following day, for instance. So behavioral tools
form the foundational
layer of all tools for mental health, physical, health, and performance.
Second to that, I would say, the next layer is, in fact nutrition. No amount of supplementation or non-prescription compounds, or prescription compounds for that matter can ever compensate for poor
nutrition. At least not for very
long. Okay, so this is a key Point, even though many supplements are not simply food supplements because they are not
Designed to compensate for anything that you could otherwise, get from food.
That is not to say that you can live on supplements. You know, I suppose
you could live on whey protein and fish oil capsules and vitamin capsules or tablets for a short
while. But before long you'd
either, suffer from boredom,
to the extent that you want to go back to food or some other deficiency would show up. I think it's the rare
individual that tries to survive entirely on food supplements and things of that sort, most everybody, and I would hope
Everybody is paying attention to their nutrition. So I would Place
behavioral tools, do's and do Nots
as layer 1, the deepest layer, the Bedrock of all mental health, physical health, and
performance. On top of that, I would Place nutrition. And of course, that's going to mean different things to different people. With the understanding that there's a huge array of different food choices and nutritional programs nutrition is fundamentally important for macronutrients, for storage
of energy, in the form of glycogen fats, and phosphor
Doors and so forth. But also for
obtaining basic nutrients vitamins, minerals and micronutrients. Okay, so, we've got
behavioral tools, nutritional tools that then, on top of that, I would place. What
is typically called
supplementation. Although today, I'm trying to expand that
word to include not just things that compensate for
food,
deficiencies or that are layered on top of food as a way to enhance the amount of nutrients that you could get from food. But as I mentioned before,
compounds that are non-prescription that can be
for a variety of different.
Purposes. And many of which are not available in food. So I
place supplementation right on top of nutrition, then pass that I would say
prescription drugs. Obviously prescribed, from a board-certified MD
can serve a very vital
purpose in the treatment or augmentation of mental health, physical health, and performance goals. So some people do, in fact need prescription antidepressants. Other people do not some people do. In fact, need prescription drugs, for attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder or sleep Related Disorders.
So on and so forth. The whole issue of whether or not there is an
over prescription epidemic or not is a separate conversation for a separate podcast. I would argue that many prescription drugs. Do in
fact, save lives. This includes the category of prescription drugs related to statins
and cardiovascular
health related to
any number of different things even sleep
disorders, and insomnia narcolepsy. And so
forth that said, there are many instances in which people can
either reduce
Deuce, their dosages of prescription compounds
or can replace those prescription compounds with quality
behavioral tools, nutrition, and supplementation.
But there are many instances in which prescription drugs are the only route by
which people can achieve the mental health, physical health, and performance goals that they wish to achieve. So I would place that as the fourth layer in this stack of layers directed towards mental health, physical health
and performance. So just to list off again, I fundamentally
We believe that behaviors do's and do Nots form the foundation of mental health,
physical health performance. And next in line would be nutrition,
that is the specific Foods. We
eat the amount that we eat the combinations of foods that we eat in a given sitting, and the timing in which we eat our food.
Then on top of that, I would Place supplementation, the topic of
today's episode and finally prescription drugs, and of course, all of these things interact in important and interesting ways, many of, which interactions we will discuss
During today's podcast as we drill into the topic of supplementation, developing a rational supplementation protocol, and one that is most biologically and cost-effective
before. Moving further into today's episode, I want to emphasize a very important point, which is that I am not a
physician that is I'm not a clinician. So I do not prescribe anything. Nor am I going to do that today? I'm a professor, I review the research literature. I
describe tools gleaned from the research literature and developed from the research literature. So I
Professor many things. But I do not prescribe anything, and
I think it's vitally
important that any time you are thinking of adding, or subtracting any behavioral. Protocols nutritional protocols, supplementation, based, protocols and
certainly prescription drug based protocols
for whatever purpose that you consult a trusted board
certified physician. That's absolutely essential,
I don't say that merely to protect me. I mainly say
that to protect you.
The most important aspect of today's episode is
not going to be that you
discover one particular supplement or category of supplements or blend of
supplements, that is going to transform your
mental health, physical health, and performance.
Know, the purpose of today's episode is for you to understand where you have
needs that, can be met by supplementation better than any other
approach. And most importantly how to think about supplementation that is how to think about the different categories of supplements that are out there and how those interact with your nutrition and your behaviors.
So that you can maximize
your immediate and long-term Health.
What I mean by this is that we have this word supplements are supplementation but that means many many different things, it means vitamins and minerals. That means adaptogens, most people probably don't even know what an adaptogen really is. And in fact, many people talking about adaptogens, never actually
Define what an adaptogen is or designed
for or the fact that many adaptogens are also used for other purposes. So today's discussion is really about
About you learning how to think about supplementation the same way. You would learn to think about nutrition or exercise or anything related to brain
and body health for that matter
in a way that lets you navigate this vast space that we call supplementation and develop protocols that are optimal for you. And indeed it may be the case that the ideal dosage of a given supplement for you is 0 mg. For instance if I ask you, are you sleeping
deeply and enough each night do
You're rested throughout the day. Maybe you need a short nap and that's it, or maybe you don't, and you say, yes, I feel great, I sleep great. I wake up, feeling great. I only need
a short nap or no nap. During the day to feel rested throughout the day. Well then there's really no discussion about sleep.
Supplementation to be had between you and me.
However, if you are not sleeping, well then a big discussion opens up as to what the reasons are. Is it related to
nutrition, or when you're exercising, you're ingesting caffeine. In other words, no discussion about
supplementation can be had in a vacuum rather.
Discussions about supplementation need to be considered in a larger context. So today you're going to learn how to place the discussion and thinking about supplementation in
a larger context and think about how
specific supplement that is specific ingredients and combinations. Of ingredients can indeed be used to buffer and support your overall health and lead you to specific health and
performance outcomes. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
It is however, part of my desire
and effort.
To bring zero cost to Consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public in keeping with that theme. I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.
Our first sponsor is momentous momentous makes supplements of the absolute highest quality. The huberman Lab podcast has decided to partner with Momentis because of the extremely high quality of momentous supplements and because they have single
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Flipping a rational highly efficacious supplement regimen. And that's because the ideal supplement.
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again if you're interested, you can go to Helix sleep.com huberman to get up to $200 off and two free pillows, let's talk about supplements and supplementation and how to develop a rational supplementation. Regimen, one of the things that's really emerged over the last 20 years is that supplements and their I'm referring to non-prescription compounds designed to augment nutrition prescription drugs and behavioral protocols.
Have emerged as a main stay within the health and wellness but also the medical communities that are focused on developing mental
health, physical health, and performance, for their patience, and their athletes. And for the everyday person. Essentially, what I'm saying is that 20 years ago, a discussion about supplements would mainly, take place within the niche, communities of health food stores or a particular athletes, but nowadays, I think almost everyone is familiar with the fact that yes, indeed, there are standard vitamin.
Supplements. But that there are also supplements such as Vitamin D3, which are designed to make sure that people have a certain amounts of hormones in their bloodstream because they might not be getting enough Sunshine. Although I'll be very clear over and over throughout this episode that there is no pill
replacement for Sunshine. Nor is there a pill replacement or food replacement for that matter for exercise or for social connection, or for sleep or for simply getting smarter
again. There is no pill that's going to replace. Excellent behavioral, protocols. And
Fact, a physician friend of mine has a great saying that, I think
everybody should keep in mind as we wade into this
conversation. Which is that Better Living Through Chemistry still
requires Better Living? I think that's a very important phrase to keep in mind when thinking about the optimal supplementation or prescription drug protocol for you. So, what is an ideal supplementation protocol?
Well, I think what we need to do is to take a step back and ask what are different supplements designed to do? For instance, there are
Foundational supplements, these are supplements that are designed to establish a foundation or provide Insurance along with your nutritional intake to ensure that you're getting all the things that you need in order to
have a basic level of mental health, physical, health, and opportunity for Optimal Performance.
Now this is the one category of supplements for which I think it's appropriate and in fact, advantageous to have multiple ingredients in a given supplement.
Throughout the rest of today's discussion. I'm going to talk about the advantage of mainly focusing on taking single-ingredient formulations for a variety of reasons, but when it comes to foundational supplements, what were mainly talking about our supplements that contain vitamins and minerals that are designed to compensate for any
deficiencies, you might have from diet or from lack of adequate diet, how would such a lack of vitamin and mineral intake
arise? Well, for instance, if you're somebody that practices in
Mitten fasting or other
components of fasting, or if you're somebody who does not get enough vitamins and minerals from vegetables and fruits and Grains and meat. Well, then taking a supplement that can act as a insurance
policy against any vitamin and mineral deficiencies. In many ways can be advantageous, although I will talk about some of the safety concerns in just a few minutes.
Now, I want to acknowledge that as soon as we talk about vitamin and mineral,
Elements, the Skeptics immediately raise their hands and say all that vitamin and mineral supplements do is give you a very
expensive urine. And there
the Skeptics are referring to. The fact, the reality that when you
ingest high levels of water soluble vitamins. So thank vitamin C and some of the other vitamins
that indeed, you will excrete them in your urine. However, it's also the case that many people are not getting
enough of the water-soluble vitamins from their foods.
And it's also the case that many people are
And it's also the case that ingesting higher than needed amounts of most
water-soluble vitamins, provided those levels aren't exceedingly
high is, or at least we should say, can be safe. And again, this is provided that the levels that they're
ingesting are not exceedingly
high. So the typical vitamin mineral supplement is indeed
going to cover any gaps or deficiencies, that might arise in the water soluble vitamins from your food
intake, but the reality is that, most people are getting enough of the water
soluble vitamins.
Owens from their food,
if they are paying
attention to a couple of things and those things are very simple to lay out, regardless of whether or
not you're a vegan or vegetarian a more traditional omnivore eating from both animal-based and plant-based sources grains, Etc. Or even if you're in the
pure carnivore or strict, I guess it's called The Lion diet where it's just meat and salt,
regardless of what type of nutrition you follow, you will get vitamins and minerals but you'll get more or fewer of them.
Depending on the nutritional program you follow and of course depending
on how often and how much you eat, that's just sort of
obvious.
Most people who take a vitamin mineral supplement will indeed
excrete. A lot of the water soluble vitamins, they
will retain
the fat-soluble vitamins,
and there, again, the Skeptics will raise their hands and say, you do not want to take high levels of fat soluble vitamins, because they will be stored in your system potentially to levels
that are dangerous. Again,
provided that vitamin
mineral. Supplements are not taken in excess.
It's unlikely that you're going to have such a buildup of the fat-soluble vitamins in your system that they're going to
to be a
problem. So that raises a very specific question that you need to ask. Do you
want to take a vitamin mineral supplement? Well, the answer to, that will be highly individual but you really just need to address two things. First of
all
is the cost within the range that you can afford and
want to pay, right?
Oftentimes, these vitamin mineral supplements can be quite inexpensive but some of them can be quite expensive and you can see the full range of ones that are pennies per day. All the way up to many
dollars or tens of dollars per day.
Because of what are reported to be variations in quality and sourcing and so
forth. I'm not aware of any real differences between
the quality of the water soluble in fat soluble vitamins, found in the less expensive, versus the more expensive, vitamin mineral, supplements more
typically, the cost scales with the dosages of these different vitamins and
minerals and as could probably be
expected, the more expensive to obtain
and Source
vitamins and
Owls tend to be in lower quantities in
the less expensive versions of vitamin mineral supplements. This is kind of
obvious, so you need to ask yourself, can you afford it financially and then you need to ask yourself? Are you able to regularly, ingest enough foods with
enough variety to cover, your vitamin mineral needs just from food. And for some people, the answer is going to be an immediate. Yes, they are. Careful to get enough of the foods that allow them to obtain their vitamin and mineral quota
and four other individuals, the
There will be, no, I would say for people that are extremely physically and/or, mentally, active, and for people that
perhaps are following a intermittent fasting schedule. So they are not ingesting a lot of food in general or
restricting their food intake to specific times of day. Well then a vitamin mineral supplement, likely make sense for them. However, it's going to be very important to ingest that vitamin-mineral supplement
with food and ideally early in the day so that can set up a little bit of a challenge for the intermittent fasters who are restricting their feeding window too late.
In the
day. Why do I say this? Well, many of the water soluble vitamins. In particular, the B vitamins need to be ingested with food because
otherwise, they can cause some stomach
upset and again there's a range there. Some people like myself can take B
vitamins on an empty stomach and feel fine. Other people feel really lousy. When they take B vitamins there, a few other things that we'll talk about later, namely zinc and coenzyme. Q10, that really should also be taken
with food, but the best time to take a vitamin mineral supplement is with food. And I believe that if you're going to take a vitamin
Mineral supplement
that you want to take it with food and you don't want to take dosages of vitamins and
minerals from supplements that are exceedingly high
for a couple of reasons. One is the build-up of fat soluble vitamins that we talked about before. The other reason is that, when people tend to take very high levels
of vitamins and minerals from
supplements, they tend to spend less time and focus on making sure that they're
optimizing their nutrition or at least trying to get their nutrition. Right. What do I mean by getting their nutrition, right?
Well, I think,
regardless of whether or not, you're Quito omnivore
carnivore, vegan or any other
nutritional plan, the key thing is to get most that is about 75 to 80% of your Foods or more from non-processed or minimally
processed sources. I think there is agreement across the board that
most people should avoid highly processed foods. Highly processed foods are going to be foods with very long ingredient lists that have very long.
Shelf lives. So this often includes snack foods, it does include snack foods, like chips, Etc. Pastries, that could sit on the Shelf, a long time,
but it also includes things like canned soups. And number of different other foods that have many, many ingredients, preservatives. Most people would do well to avoid those kinds of foods and focus, most of their intake on things that are non
process. So these would be things like fruits and vegetables. You notice that the non-processed foods will tend to have very short shelf life or require refrigeration in some cases, such as meat,
Eggs
Etc or minimally processed foods, such as rice and oatmeal's
and pastas beans and things of that sort beans often times can be completely unprocessed as well. Of course, this
is two general categories, unprocessed and minimally processed that should make up about
80% or more of your food intake. If your goal is health and obtaining adequate amounts of vitamins and minerals
the so-called foundational, supplements include, of course, vitamin and mineral supplements but has expanded over the last decade or more to also include supplements that have
Vitamins and minerals, but also things like digestive enzymes. And again, here we have an example, where indeed, you can get digestive enzymes from food, for instance, eating a bit of
papaya, or even a little bit
of Pineapple can assist in the
digestion of certain aspects of macronutrients because these are naturally occurring enzymes, that help digest things like carbohydrates, fats and proteins. And there are other food-based sources of enzymes. You're welcome to look those up online. If you
put food based sources of enzymes and you'll find those.
But nowadays, A lot of the foundational supplements will include
papain or they will include different lipases
or any time you hear the word Ace. By the
way, it means a an enzyme and enzymes designed to break down or to catalyze some sort of reaction biology and in nutrition in
particular. So you can find foundational supplements that include vitamins and minerals and digestive enzymes and nowadays, more and more the quality Foundation.
Supplements are also including things like adaptogens and hear the name
adaptogens is sort of vague and it indeed has no
specific operational definition. This is
something really important to understand about supplementation is that companies
and indeed podcast can talk about adaptogens without
actually defining what an
adaptogen is in an operational way. When we say operational, what we mean is a definition
that everyone in a
given Arena or space research for instance?
I agree on. So
that when we talk about the adaptogenic effects of a given
compound, we're all talking about the same things.
Well, foundational supplements, nowadays
include vitamins, minerals, digestive enzymes, and the so-called adaptogens and the
adaptogens. Broadly speaking are thought to improve the
body and brains ability, ability to buffer against various stressors. So, these could be things like herbs, like ashwagandha that are designed to reduce cortisol levels, and that sends ashwagandha is an adaptogen, but ashwagandha has other
effects related to
Hormone augmentation in both the testosterone and estrogen, and maybe even the thyroid Pathways will talk about this a little bit later when we talk about supplements for hormone augmentation.
So foundational supplements has really expanded to include a lot of different categories of nutrients and micronutrients vitamins and minerals digestive enzymes designed to achieve a broad
spectrum of effects.
Again, this is the one category of supplementation where I think it makes sense to explore multi ingredient formulations.
And the other thing that's often included in the
these so-called foundational
supplements are probiotics or prebiotics which are designed to augment and support the
so-called gut microbiome. The gut microbiome
is the collection of trillions of little micro bacteria
that exists in all of us.
They mainly exist in the mucous membrane lined
tissues of the body so that
would be your nasal passages your mouth,
the vagina, the urethra, and the gut, the whole
From your
mouth all the way out the other end. So not just your
stomach trillions of bacteria, live there. Trillions of micro bacteria. Also live on your
skin. In fact, every time you shake someone's hand, you
are exchanging microbacteria. These micro bacteria, often are healthy for us, good for us, they support a
huge number of positive biological functions, but
there are other micro bacteria
that live in our gut and Elsewhere on those mucus line tissues that can be disadvantageous for us that can harm our health.
A
growing idea. These days based on a
number of different Laboratories work, including the laboratory of my upstairs,
neighbor at Stanford, dr. Justin Sonnenberg,
who's been a guest on this podcast? Is
that having a great diversity? A range of
microbiota. Other as they're called micro biome microbiota,
and these micro bacteria are all
referring to the same thing. The microbiome is the whole collection
of these micro bacteria, but having a lot of different so-called species of
these micro bacteria
is known to be advantageous.
For immune system function hormone function,
it supports the so-called gut-brain axis.
That's important for a number of things, including mood and motivation. Actually supports the production of neurotransmitters in the brain and body
that can help. Keep you motivated elevated, mood,
support the general function of neurons, well not surprisingly, there are ways to support the gut microbiome and there are ways to harm the gut microbiome. I'll refer to the podcast episode, we did with Justin
Sonnenberg. You can find that at Hubert
And labs.com. If you want to learn all the different ways, you can support your gut
microbiome. But for sake of today's discussion, I want to emphasize that some of those
methods of supporting the gut microbiome are
through the direct consumption
of particular foods. And there are two categories of foods
that if you're getting enough of them,
it's likely
that your gut microbiome is diverse and is going to
support all those important functions. I just listed off and other functions as well.
The two sources of got my grow biota supporting foods are
Low sugar. Fermented food. So, these would be things like
sauerkraut, kimchi,
Greek yogurt, again, low sugar, Greek yogurt, kombucha in particular, as a drink things like kefir, they're a bunch of other varieties of fermented foods, different cultures that different
fermented food. So the Japanese natto is
another source of ferment,
that is very good for the gut microbiome
and work from Justin Sonnenberg
slab and
And close by Labs at Stanford,
School of Medicine, have shown that if people ingest four servings a day of these low sugar, fermented foods, it greatly improves the function of the gut microbiome and in particular enhances the function of the immune system and it reduces the
so called inflammatory. It reduces inflammation in the brain and body in the ways that are helpful and effective for brain and body. That is mental health, physical, health, and performance. So there are ways to
support your gut microbiome, strictly from food,
But it should come as no surprise. That most people are not ingesting four servings a day of
fermented
foods. Hopefully, they're getting enough fiber, especially Prebiotic fiber, which is one other way to support the gut microbiome. Although the study is from Justin Sonnenberg slab point to the fact that fiber
intake itself was
not directly supportive of the gut microbiome in everybody. It wasn't some individuals but not in others. In some had no effect and in other individuals, it
We made the category or I should say the
array of inflammatory markers worse. It actually led to more inflammation
so that's not to say that fiber is bad. In fact, in the episode that we did with dr. Lane Norton.
He discussed the many benefits of getting enough fiber. There are a lot of reasons why people should get enough fiber in their diet, but at
least for supporting the gut microbiome, four servings a day of low sugar. Fermented
foods seems to be the best way to support the gut.
Through the intake of nutrition
again, most people are not achieving that and therefore these foundational
supplements that can be
just vitamin and mineral supplements or could be vitamin and mineral supplements plus digestive enzymes or both of those things plus adaptogens. Now, also tend to include prebiotics and probiotics that are designed to support the proliferation and maintenance of enough gut
microbiota in order to support the gut microbiome and the gut brain.
Axis now,
because of the importance of the gut microbiome and because most people are not getting enough
support for the gut microbiome in the form of low sugar, fermented foods, and Prebiotic fiber from their
diet. I think perhaps one of the most essential foundational
supplements,
irrespective of whether or not it includes vitamins and minerals adaptogens. And digestive enzymes is some way to
support the gut microbiome.
Now this gets into a whole dimension of categories of presentation.
A biotic and probiotic capsules. And one needs to be very careful there. I do want to say that most of the Prebiotic and probiotic capsules that you can buy.
First of all, are very expensive. The best ones are going to be refrigerated or require refrigeration. Just as do any good low sugar, fermented foods by the way. So, for instance, pickles are a low sugar fermented food that can support the gut microbiome. But if you're buying pickles from the section of the grocery store, where they, the pickles are not
Refrigerated well then you're not going to get the
gut microbiome supporting effects from those pickles. So funny we're even having this conversation talking about pickles but the reality is they can greatly enhance the microbiota. If you are getting the pickles that are and require refrigeration and include the brine which is the liquid around them, the same is true for sauerkraut non-refrigerated. Sauerkraut is not going to support your gut microbiome. It
will supply some other things, perhaps, but it's not going to
support your gut microbiome. It has to be the
diversions for the reason that most people are not getting enough food based support for the gut microbiome and because of the importance of the gut microbiome, one of the key categories of foundational supplements are supplements that create
support for the microbiome through prebiotics or probiotics. Again, they tend to be the
refrigerated varieties of the ones that are actually going to work.
Those also tend to be very expensive.
And there are some evidence that taking excessive amounts of
prebiotics and probiotics. That is typical of these
All
forms of prebiotics and
probiotics if they're taken ongoing not for short periods of time. But if they're taken ongoing can lead to some
issues like brain fog, there's a nice literature on this that and a growing one
at that. So my suggestion is that if people are going to take supplements to support the microbiome, that those supplements include low enough levels that is small enough amounts of prebiotics and probiotics that you don't
start to venture into the realm of brain fog and some
Of the other issues that could be associated with taking too much Prebiotic, and probiotic in the form of supplements.
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off the other category of foundational supplements are those
adaptogens that we mentioned earlier
adaptogens, again being a very poorly, defined category. But these are typically micronutrients herbs, sometimes they go into the mushroom category and
these are non psychedelic
mushrooms that provide either.
Some buffering to the stress system by reducing cortisol, typically or that are thought to or known to based on research studies to enhance things like blood flow to the
brain or to enhance some aspect of cognitive function, by way of enhancing neurotransmitter function, this
category of so-called adaptogens is an important one. We'll get back to this a little bit later. The reason I mention it now is that it is indeed hard
to get the so-called adaptogens in sufficient concentrations from food based sources.
Have to assume that most people aren't out there collecting chaga, mushroom, or the ashwagandha herbs, and then combining them with their
salads or their foods. And so that's why this
adaptogen category fits into foundational.
Now this opens up the category of foundational supplements that are broad spectrum that is that include vitamins and
minerals that have digestive enzymes that have adaptogens and that also have prebiotics and probiotics at the appropriate
dosages. This is one reason why I'm a big fan of supplements like athletic
greens, which is many of
A sponsor of this podcast and does really
nicely cover, all of these categories of foundational nutrition.
But I do want to emphasize that this is not a way to focus on athletic green. Specifically. There are other categories and brands of excellent foundational, nutritional supplements that cover these categories of vitamins and minerals
probiotics prebiotics digestive enzymes and adaptogens. It just so happens that
that athletic greens is the one that I discovered in that works best for me and that many people find
works.
Really well for
them. So this is why when people approach me and they ask me, as they often
do very, very often do. I should say,
if I'm only going to take one supplement, what supplements should I take? Rather than just give them one
specific answer? I actually asked them three
questions. First question, I ask them is how well are you sleeping at
night? Are you getting enough sleep? Are you waking up feeling
rested? Because if they're not that
opens up a whole different set of interactions that we need to have and discussions around, what sorts of things they need to do.
And
possibly take in order to get their sleep, right? Because sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical, health, and performance. We will have that discussion a little bit later in this episode. The
second question, I ask them is, how is your nutrition? That is, are you eating regularly? Have you found the combination of macronutrients or which diet is right for you. Do you think you're getting enough vitamins? And minerals, how's your digestion? We have that conversation. And then the third thing that I ask, which is extremely important.
Is what's your budget because if somebody has
$10 a month total to spend on supplements versus a thousand dollars, a month to spend on supplements total. Well
then there's a different set of conversations to be had as to, which
supplements they should take. Now,
once those three questions have been answered assuming that somebody is able to spend about $100 or more on supplements per month, then my recommendation is that they not focus on any specific supplements.
Directed towards sleep or toward Focus or hormone augmentation. But rather that they focus on buffering and enhancing their foundational nutrition adaptogens
probiotics prebiotics and digestive enzymes
because of the simple fact that if they do that, they're going to raise the tide on all the
biological and organ systems that are going to lead to enhanced mental health, physical health, and performance, including sleep.
So this is one reason why of people say well if I can only take one supplement, what should I take? I say well what's your budget?
They say they can meet that hundred dollar threshold per month, then my recommendation would be athletic greens or
something like it
or that they invest the time and energy to go find the various
combinations of vitamins and minerals
and probiotics and prebiotics and adaptogens and so forth in individual components that they can then take in combination in order to meet their foundational needs. But most people are not interested in doing all that homework and legwork to figure out exactly
what that's dosages are. That's one reason why?
Indeed, I have taken athletic greens since 2012. I like it, it makes me feel better. I have more energy, I sleep better. My digestion is certainly better and it supports the gut microbiome. I do that for that
reason. But again, I want to emphasize that there are other great sources of all the relevant things within
those foundational formulas that athletic greens contains. So it's
certainly not the only route
to covering your foundational Health needs. There are other ways to do that. Now, if somebody has a budget lower than a hundred dollars per month to spend on foundational supplementation,
Oh
well, then there's a couple of discussions to be had. Now if the amount of money that they have to devote to
foundational supplementation
is 0, of course, respect that. And then it becomes a discussion about what sorts of foods and
patterns of food intake are going to best support their mental health, physical, health, and performance.
Now if somebody has somewhere between zero dollars and fifty
dollars to spend on supplementation for sake of this thing, we're calling foundational
Health per month. Well, then a different
Gauri of supplement discussion arises and we'll have that in a
moment, but to sort of close the conversation on foundational supplementation again, that means many different things. It's vitamins and minerals, sometimes that's one vitamin and mineral supplement. It means digestive enzymes that could be its own supplement or in combination with vitamins and minerals. It means often not always adaptogens
things like ashwagandha different plant based and mushroom based formulations that can buffer stress.
And provide other brain and body support,
and it often, although not always. But should I believe include the probiotics and prebiotics or anything that supports healthy, gut microbiome. Once again I think a broad spectrum supplement that has many many ingredients of high-quality that covers all these bases is going to be the
best route to
ensuring foundational. Supplementation is covered and I do think that should be the starting place for any and all.
Supplementation regimens. I'll say that. Once again I think covering your foundational needs in the realm of vitamins minerals. Probiotics, digestive enzymes and adaptogens is going to give you the most benefit
by cost and the most benefit
across the board in terms of brain and body systems. That's going to allow you to feel better
overall, sleep better overall focus better overall and support all the different systems in
your brain and body that are going.
Allow you to be at
your best. While, of course, also paying careful attention to your nutrition because you simply cannot abandon nutrition. Again, Better Living Through Chemistry, still requires Better
Living. So now that we've had that discussion about foundational supplementation, and again, highlighting the fact that that's the one category of supplementation. Where multi ingredient formulations? Make the most sense. I'd like to now shift our attention to single-ingredient formulation supplements that are
designed
Achieve specific endpoints. And
here again rather than focus on specific ingredients and supplements to achieve specific in points because
we've done that already and episodes related to sleep and focus etcetera,
I'd like to take a step back and focus on the larger theme of today's episode which is how to think about supplementation
in a rational cost-effective and biologically effective way for each of these categories and the
three categories that I'm going to cover our
Sleep hormone support and cognitive
enhancement and focus cognitive enhancement, and focus being the final third category.
Let's talk about sleep and the rational approach to thinking about
supplementation for sleep.
As I mentioned earlier, in this episode and on many previous episodes of this podcast, sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical, health, and performance. You might be somebody who can do an all-nighter and feel okay, the next day, or maybe even great butt.
Most everybody, once they start to have minimal sleep for one or two nights in the form of broken sleep, poor sleep, not enough sleep or sleeping at the wrong time of
night, there is such a thing or day.
They start to suffer, their mood starts to suffer their
cognitive Clarity, and performance starts to suffer
their mental. Health can suffer severely and physical
performance. Definitely suffers hormone suffer, everything suffers,
conversely. When people are sleeping. Well,
that is deeply end enough 80% of the Knights of their life, mental health, physical,
health, and performance, all flourish. And
I think most people start to be almost amazed at how well, they're doing in various
domains of life that previously, they might have struggled with. So sleep is fundamental, that's, that's established.
When thinking about supplementation for sleep, we need to ask ourselves a
number of important questions. First of all, you should ask yourself how well that is How Deeply
Watch you sleeping per night, assuming you're somebody who can
fall asleep. Easily stay sleep through the night, wake up feeling relatively rested. Maybe a little groggy and then can move about your day with plenty of energy and focus. You're not falling asleep in
class or at work or
behind the wheel or, as a passenger on public transportation. Well, then you're probably getting enough sleep, and by the way, it's perfectly normal
to require anywhere, from a 10 minute to a 90 minute nap in the afternoon for some people, if you're not a
napper, no big deal, it's
known that.
That naps can disrupt nighttime
sleep. But provided that there early enough in the day if you take a nap and you
are still able to fall asleep at night, then naps are fine for you. If you're someone who doesn't like naps because you wake up groggy or grumpy, which often
happens just certain people. Then don't nap,
you certainly do not need to know. But
if you're feeling energetic throughout the day, chances are you're getting enough sleep at night, but there are people, of course, who are struggling with sleep. Either falling
asleep, staying asleep, or they're not feeling alert enough during the day, or all of the
Above and then it makes sense to step back and take a look at what supplementation can provide. If you are one of those people who is not sleeping enough or well enough at night, that you
are suffering during the day in whatever, way mild to severe. There are two questions you should ask yourself. First of all, are you ingesting caffeine after 2:00 p.m.? If the answer is, yes, you want to limit or eliminate caffeine after 2:00 p.m. maybe even push it back to noon or earlier. I know that can be excruciating for some folks, but it can really
I help with your ability to fall and stay asleep at
night. Second thing is most people would do well to avoid food within the two hours prior to bedtime.
But of course you don't want to be so hungry that you can't fall asleep. All right. So those are the nutrition and behavioral tools that everyone needs to consider.
If you are not ingesting caffeine 2 p.m. or onwards and you are not eating
excessively immediately prior to bedtime or within the two hours prior to
bedtime and you're not hungry when you go to sleep. Well then there are certain supplements.
Can support your sleep. And we've talked about these in the perfect sleep episode, and in the episode, with our guest expert, Matt Walker from University of California,
Berkeley and in the master, your sleep episode and we have a toolkit for sleep. You can
access zero cost by going to ruin live.com and go into the menu, go to the newsletter and you can find that toolkit. You can sign up for other free tool kits like it. But
the point here is not to go systematically through each of the supplements that
is beneficial or has been shown to be beneficial for
sleep. But rather to address specific aspects of
sleep that can suffer and why and
how certain patterns of supplementation can support or alleviate those pain points. If
for instance, you're somebody who falls asleep, just fine but wakes up in the middle of the night
around 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. or any time
for that matter and has trouble falling back asleep. There are two categories of supplements that you might want to consider the first is myo-inositol, typically taken as 900 milligrams of
myo-inositol
myo-inositol, can help shorten, the amount of time that it
To fall, back asleep. If you wake up in the middle of the
night myo-inositol has other beneficial uses as well for mood at cetera. If you'd like to see many of the different effects that have been explored in the scientific literature for
myo-inositol, you can go to examine.com, it's an excellent site, not just for inositol, but for
all supplements for that matter talks
about the human effect Matrix that is the different effects of different supplement compounds on different aspects of hormone, brain, and body Health. Where the evidence is strong, where the evidence is weak.
Week has links to studies and so on again, it's examined.com. Amazing website, wonderful website, provided such a rich resource for me. And for many, many other people,
other people who wake up in the middle of the night, wake up because their dreams are very
intense, or they were having dreams
that were so vivid that suddenly they were jolted from their dreams, those people would do well, to avoid
certain supplements. So, in a moment, I'll talk about the value of a supplement called
theanine for falling asleep.
But theanine, which typically is taken in dosages anywhere
from 100 mg to 400 milligrams, depending on body weight and experience. And what you find to be most effective for you minimally effective for you? Well,
the Indian can be great for many people, but for people who have excessively vivid dreams, those excessively vivid dreams can lead to immediate waking. And
sometimes a little bit of anxiety upon waking in the middle of the night. So some people who wake up in the middle of the night, so jolted
mentally and physically out of sleep because of their intense dreams would do, well to
avoid Fenian supplementation talked about this a
bit before, but
it's something that I think a lot of nighttime middle of the night wakers, might be familiar with and would want to take into consideration. Now,
for those of you that are not waking up in the middle of the night or not, having excessively vivid dreams, but are having trouble falling asleep to supplements. In particular, have been shown to be effective for shortening.
Transition time to sleep, in allowing, people
to ease into sleep, more readily. And those are magnesium 3 and 8, which is interchangeable with magnesium bisque glycinate magnesium bisque, licen, 8 and magnesium. 3 & 8, both have transporter systems, that allow them to readily cross, the blood-brain barrier, and they lead to a mild form of drowsiness mild in the sense that it's
not going to prevent you from operating. A motor vehicle or kind of any conditions under emergency that might arise in the middle of the night.
Or if they did a riser in the mill night, you'd still be able to function. So it's not like a sleeping pill, but people who
take those off and
find that their transition time into sleep, as much faster in their sleep is also much deeper. Incidentally, those supplements are also thought to be useful for cognitive support and neuroprotection. Although there's less data on that,
okay? So that's for falling asleep. That's one category, either magnesium,
magnesium, three and eight orbis glycinate would be interchangeable for assisting, the transition time in to
sleep. And then,
The other supplement is apigenin API G enin apigenin, which is a derivative chamomile. I've talked about this,
in various podcast before
also acts as a bit of a anxiety lowering compound, which is essential prior to sleep for people to
essentially turn off their thinking, or to be able to reduce the amount of ruminating, and problem solving and future anticipation that they're doing, which is a requirement for
falling asleep. So what's the rational approach to supplementing in a way that
allows you to fall asleep more quickly and stay
Sleep. Well, would you immediately
take magnesium, 38 and apigenin together? Well, that depends if you have the budget and you just simply want to fall asleep quicker and you don't care, which of those two ingredients is going to be more effective for you. Well, then you could try one for instance, magnesium, 3 and 8, and try
it for perhaps a week and see how that affects your latency to sleep time. That is how quickly fall asleep or you could try apigenin in the
first week or you could combine them both or you could try magnesium three night for a week then switch to only apigenin for
And evaluate. Which one works better for you. If
neither works for you, I do recommend trying the combination together again. This is
just the way that any scientist would design an experiment to try and understand, which variables that is, which
ingredients are most effective for the result that you want as opposed to just lumping them together. And taking them that
said, a lot of people want excellent sleep, so badly that they just say, okay, I'm
just going to take magnesium three and a time, and take up
a Jen. And I'm going to take theanine if my dreams are too Vivid or
I'm waking up in the middle of the night from excessively
vivid dreams. I'll drop the thinning and many people actually
derive great benefit from that approach. But because today, we're
talking about the most
rational cost-effective and biologically effective approach to supplementation. If
you're not sleeping, as well as you would like to. Or if you want to explore what
sleeping, even more deeply
might do for your mental health, physical health, and performance. Well then it makes sense to think about the various supplements for falling asleep versus remaining asleep.
What to include, what not to include and to do that systematically. And again, I think one week's time of taking something provided, it doesn't induce any negative
effects, right? If something induces a negative effect, I recommend ceasing taking it immediately, but if something does not produce any negative effects,
then I think you want to try a single ingredient formulation
for about a week while. Not
varying, anything else, not changing anything else in
your overall Protocols of nutrition or supplementation. It's impossible to convey.
Clamp everything perfectly
from week to week, but don't change anything else dramatically and just add that supplement for a given week, see how it
benefits your sleep. Maybe add in a second second supplement. If
you like, or rather Swap and try a different
supplement for a week and then see what works best and see if the combination works even better.
Now, I acknowledge that what I just described is exceedingly basic, but it's something that I don't think most people do. Most people, either decide. They have the budget and the interest in just improving their
Across the board and they don't care what
ingredient is providing the maximum
benefit or they simply try something and decide oh well it didn't work for me and so I'm not going to try anything else. Supplements
don't work for me or magnesium doesn't work for me or you know I woke up in the middle of
the night from vivid dreams and that's because they're taking
more of a shotgun approach without teasing out the different variables. In fact, if there's an overriding theme of
today's conversation, it's really about learning how to isolate
variables in the realm of supplementation. Because once you do
that,
and once you start to develop that Intuition or or sensitivity of sorts to how different ingredients impact you, it is an enormously powerful stance to have because you're going to keep your costs limited. You're also going to find the things that work particularly poorly for you. And more importantly, the things that work particularly well for you toward your goals. Any discussion about supplementation for sleep. I feel has to include a discussion about melatonin. I've talked about melatonin before on.
Is podcast, mine and others. And I will say once again, I am not a fan of melatonin, for a couple of reasons. Melatonin is a hormone known to induce sleepiness, but not keep us asleep. So, oftentimes people will take melatonin fall, deeply sleep, and then wake up and have trouble falling
back asleep. The other reason is that melatonin supplements? Almost always include levels of
melatonin or amount of melatonin that far far exceed. The normal biological levels are so called endogenous levels of melatonin that we would normally
we produce. And yes, it's true. That, as we age, we produce less melatonin,
but melatonin is a hormone, also impacts other hormone systems,
particularly the reproductive hormone access to saw her own estrogen etcetera, which is not to say that if you've been taking melatonin for some period of time that you've disrupted your fertility, or those hormone axis, but it's possible that you've disrupted them somewhat. And it's very clear that melatonin can impact, not just sleep, but other systems in the brain and body, it
can be useful for
Jet lag, and for
occasional use, but they're also. I want to
voice a message of caution.
There have been studies, exploring the dosages of melatonin contained in various supplements. And whether or not what's
listed on the bottle matches, what's
actually contained in those formulations and despite those formulations coming from quite reliable, quote, unquote,
or thought to be reliable
sources. It was found that the supplements contain anywhere from 15% of
What's thought
to be or is told to be in those supplements, or
many times more melatonin than is listed on the bottle? So, the dosage in does not seem to be consistent with
what's often listed on the bottle and this is even true within some of the, more reputable Brands. So that's a real concern.
So we need to highlight melatonin as perhaps something that's only used occasionally.
If you want to talk about dosages for melatonin use for jet lag, Etc. Go to examine.com. There's some excellent
References to studies, they're just put melatonin into the search function. It'll tell you everything you need to know about melatonin but now you know my stance on
melatonin, one question I often get about
supplementation for sleep. Is it, does it create a dependency? That's an excellent question to ask.
I think most people worry about even fear relying on something. So heavily that if they did
not have it for whatever reason that they couldn't sleep
in my experience, there is no
problem falling and staying asleep.
Leap in the absence of a supplement for sleep.
Even if you've been taking that supplement for
Sleep, consistently 7 days, a week for months and months, maybe even years on end. I confess that I
occasionally fall
asleep, having not taken my pre-sleep supplements. And I happen to take magnesium, three and eight theanine and apigenin. I also taken off, since all it greatly, enhances my
sleep and there have been nights when I fall asleep,
not having taken any of those things. And I've slept fine.
That said
If I were to explore multiple nights
of trying to sleep without that supplementation, I find that my sleep is not as good. I'm still able to fall asleep, but the depth of my sleep, and the duration of my sleep is not as good as when I'm supplementing. So, I think
that's refreshing news, at least to me that there isn't a dependence on these supplements in order
to be able to fall asleep. It's not the same sort of dependence that people experience from things like sleeping pills that said,
any compound, any compound
Sound can create a placebo type effect where we think we need something
in order to achieve a certain effect. We had a guest on this
podcast some time ago. Dr. Ali Chrome, who's a professor at Stanford? And
works on these mindset affects belief effects, and Placebo effects. And
Placebo effects can be very real. And in some sense, dovetail with
any conversation about
dependency, meaning, if you are somebody who loves your sleep supplements and sleeps, great with
them,
And one night you discover you don't have them or you can't access them.
For whatever reason that can create a little bit of an anxiety around the idea that o in the in their absence, you're not going to be able to sleep and that's a sort of a placebo effect in Reverse. If you
will because what it suggests
is that there's a emotional or a
cognitive association with taking these things that allows you to sleep. Well,
I would highly recommend that people explore this issue of dependency and Placebo effects for sleep.
It's on their own and under conditions in which
there's nothing pressing the next day. That is you don't have a big presentation, Etc.
So, what I recommend is that every two weeks or so maybe every month or so take one night off completely, from all your sleep supplements or leave out
one sleep supplement, try to understand to what extent, you might have established a dependency
either real or Placebo based on the
Sleep supplements. And again, I suggest doing this on perhaps a Friday night so that, you know, it's a weekend
Next day. So you don't have to work if
perhaps you don't sleep. Well I think what you'll find is what most people find and that's in the absence of taking your supplement, stack for Sleep one night, you're still going to sleep just fine
now. Does that mean that these supplements are not actually working under normal conditions, where you're taking them each
night, know what this means is that many of these things magnesium's in particular can build up in the
body and brain in a way that can be beneficial and
And what probably explains the fact that you can
still sleep. If you miss a night of taking them, is
that the neural circuits that are involved in turning off thinking or not thinking and in falling asleep, those neural circuits undergo what's called plasticity? In other words if you get better at
falling and staying asleep over
time, even if you got better at that through the Assistance or with the assistance of
some supplement or combination of
supplements, well then those circuits are still going to function just fine
even in the absence of not taking those
Elements just once we'll get back into this conversation a little bit later when we talk about cognitive enhancement and focus. So same story there, where indeed, there are things that people can take in stimulant foreman and non-stimulant form that can enhance cognitive ability and focus, but that does not mean that you become so dependent on those that you can't focus
unless you take them. This has been shown multiple times
over. So again, to answer the question, is there a dependency established by taking supplements for sleep?
Keep the short answer is no with the caveat that Placebo effects and belief effects
are always going to be at play whether or not you're talking about supplementation, prescription drugs or even behavioral protocols for that matter. I'd like to take a brief break and
acknowledge our sponsor athletic greens. Athletic greens is an all-in-one vitamin mineral, probiotic drink that also contains digestive enzymes and adaptogens. I started taking athletic Greens Way back in
2012. So that's 10 years now of taking athletic greens every single day. So I'm delighted that they're sponsoring this.
Podcast, the reason I started taking out lettuce greens, and the reason I still take athletic greens is that it covers, all of my foundational nutritional needs so whether or not I'm
eating well or enough or not. I'm sure that I'm covering all of my needs for vitamins, minerals, probiotics, adaptogens to combat stress and the digestive enzymes really
helped my digestion. I just feel much better when I'm drinking athletic
greens. If you'd like to try out, let it greens. You can go to athletic greens.com huberman and for the month of January, they have a special offer with it'll give you 10 free travel.
Evil packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3 K to vitamin D3 and
K2 are vital for immune function,
metabolic function Hormone Health but also calcium regulation and heart health. Again, that's athletic greens.com huberman to claim their special offer in the month of January of 10, free travel packs. Plus a year supply of vitamin D3 K to the next category of supplementation that I'd like to talk about, is hormone support improving or so-called optimizing. Your hormones is a critical aspect of
Until health physical, health and performance.
We've done multiple episodes about hormones, including testosterone and estrogen
for both men and women and for people of different ages. Also had episodes on
thyroid hormone growth hormone and so on, you can find
all those that you were in lab.com and tracked, you can go to the huberman labs.com website,
there's a search function where you can just put in a keyword and it will take you
to all the episodes and specific time points where that topic happens to be
covered. Now, Hormone Health is such an important topic to discuss in the
context of supplementation because indeed there are compounds that are non prescription based. So I'll supplements that can improve hormone function again. Anytime we are discussing a particular aspect of mental health, physical, health, or performance. We need to start with a mention of the few behavioral tools and nutrition based tools, or at least some top Contour coverage of those. In a way that frames up the discussion about supplementation appropriately. So in the context of
Of hormone support and augmentation and optimization. If you are not getting adequate calories, from high-quality sources,
Hormones, like testosterone and estrogen will suffer. This is one of the reasons
why women will stop having their
periods if they're not ingesting enough
calories. This is one of the reasons why testosterone levels will drop if people are not ingesting enough calories. In
fact, on the episode with
expert guest and medical doctor Peter, a TIA, he described how sex
hormone-binding globulin. This is a protein that's present in males and females that binds to testosterone and other hormones and prevent it from being in its
Free form, which is the more active form. Well, insulin,
which, of course, is going to increase after the ingestion of
carbohydrates. In particular, insulin actually inhibits or reduces sex hormone-binding
globulin. This means is that for you intermittent
fasters or people that are ingesting. Very few carbohydrates who are very low blood glucose
or perhaps are taking things like
metformin or berberine which is a supplement based
approach to reducing blood
glucose. Well, your sex hormone-binding globulin.
Is going to increase dramatically conversely. If you are eating
enough calories in the form of foods that allow your insulin to be a bit
higher. Not excessively High, we
hope but it a bit higher. Well, then
sex hormone-binding globulin will go down and free testosterone will go up.
So the discussion about hormones support and augmentation has to include some nod toward, or understanding the fact that nutrition and the way that nutrition impacts hormones and the way that hormones such as insulin impact other hormones such as free testosterone.
And
that all has to be acknowledged. That is not the
topic of today's discussion, but it's important that I remind everybody that nutrition matters
for General hormone status. It's also important to remember that behaviors matter, for hormone status,
getting morning, sunlight, increases cortisol levels. Cortisol levels are very important to have elevated early in the day for focus and alertness and for immune function and to make sure that cortisol levels are low at night and thereby
Levels of growth hormone
and testosterone which is secreted. Mainly
in the early morning can be elevated at night and in the early morning.
So getting Morning Sun like getting strenuous exercise in the form of both cardiovascular exercise but also relatively
short, meaning an hour or less bouts of intense resistance training, a few times per week. Can also dramatically alter hormone profiles, in fact, in the episode that we did with dr. Duncan French. Again, you find that episode of human lab.com? He
described.
A very strenuous but still brief to day a week protocol of using resistance training specifically to
increase testosterone and free testosterone and growth hormone and so on
so nutrition matters, exercise matters. When it comes to increasing supporting or augmenting different hormones and that's just the
discussion about testosterone, free testosterone, and estrogen.
There's also the vast
discussion about thyroid hormone Etc. Again, we've covered all those topics and previous
episodes, but
Once those behavioral tools are in place, once you're doing the right things and you're avoiding the wrong, things
doing the right things to support your
hormones and avoiding the things that diminish hormones in the
ways that can be detrimental. Once your
nutrition is in place to support your hormones, then it makes sense to turn and consider what supplements can
support hormones.
But I do believe that you want to get your behaviors and your
nutrition. Correct before you start thinking about supplementation for hormones.
again I'll repeat that get your nutrition and your behaviors, correct
for sake of hormones and for other health purposes before you start thinking
about supplementation for hormones and certainly before you start thing about prescription based approaches to improving hormones,
Once all of those other elements are in place the supplements that make sense in terms of augmenting hormones, come in two forms. One, our broadband support for multiple hormones and then the others are supplements that are designed to increase. Or in
some cases, decrease specific hormones are hormone pathway. So let's consider each of those in tandem there are certain supplements things like Sheila G, for instance, something from ayurvedic.
Which may mainly has
the active ingredient fulvic
acid, which is known to, for instance, increase things like FSH follicle
stimulating hormone
which in women is going to increase
certain aspects of egg growth. Hence the name follicle
stimulating hormone. It's going to stimulate certain aspects of fertility its Pro for tile.
And in males can make for more sperm production or more
motile sperm. FSH is also going to indirectly in
increase testosterone in males. It's known to increase libido in both males and females. So things, like Sheila G can indeed augment multiple hormones and support multiple hormone systems, generally in the direction of pro fertility, Pro libido and
increasing estrogen, and
testosterone. Now, there are other supplements such as ashwagandha, that also fall into this
category of affecting multiple hormones.
Ashwagandha is a very potent supplement in terms of
Using cortisol levels, it has also been shown to increase testosterone levels, but probably in directly and that's because cortisol and testosterone sort of
exist on a seesaw in terms of Pathways, they're on separate Pathways,
but those Pathways interact
enough. That when cortisol is lowered in general, testosterone tends to increase. Now,
it is important that was certain hormones like ashwagandha that you don't take them for more than two weeks at a time at high dosages. If you want to know more of the specifics around
ashwagandha and how long to take it how to cycle it it.
Etc,
please
see our episode on Master stress.
Please also
see the examine.com website and put in ashwagandha. It will get into some of that description. But
Sheila, G, ashwagandha, and things, for instance, like L-Carnitine a supplement that we often discuss
in terms of fertility because it can indeed improve sperm hurt, motility and quality and egg quality. So it's a pro for tile
compound, but it also impacts of various mitochondrial pathway, so it's having
a more indirect effect on hormones, there are many other
Compounds present and available supplements that are purported to be
prohormone
support in particular for testosterone, estrogen fertility, and libido. There is a description, for instance, of things like
maca. Root maca, root can increase libido. It's bound to be particularly effective in women, but in men as well. And in all people who are suffering from lowered libido due to intake of
ssris, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors for whatever reason.
Accessorize are used to treat OCD. They're used to treat depression any number of
different things. Maca root
can be in many instances effective in. Increasing libido.
It does that. However, through augmentation of dopamine related Pathways and some of the hormone Pathways Upstream of
testosterone and estrogen, the
reports that Maca increases
testosterone are somewhat scant and a little bit weak, to
be honest. So it's having these indirect effects that may impact
testosterone Downstream. So, again, I put
makka Al
Side ashwagandha alongside Sheila G as supplements that are impacting, multiple hormone
Pathways toward increased libido, increased fertility, increased testosterone or estrogen, likely through indirect Pathways. Okay. Now,
with all that said, like to provide some examples of supplements that work, more directly on specific hormone,
Pathways aimed at achieving more specific goals such as elevated testosterone or elevated free testosterone.
Or elevated growth hormone for that matter and elevated thyroid
hormone. I'd like to talk about growth hormone first because it's actually a pretty short discussion. First of all, the best way to augment growth hormone is to get quality deep sleep, especially the sleep that occurs in the first three or four hours of
the night. Is when growth hormone is released and
it's going to be beneficial to avoid caloric intake in the two hours. Preceding sleep. Again, don't go to bed, so hungry that you wake up
an hour or an hour and a half later or you have trouble
falling asleep.
But avoiding food intake in the two hours prior to sleep and certainly avoiding
alcohol. And cannabis is going to facilitate growth hormone release in the first hours of sleep,
many people use intermittent fasting or even longer periods of fasting to increase growth hormone. One of the interesting things I learned from an expert guest. Dr. Kyle, Gillette. Who's a medical doctor on this podcast is that indeed, while
lengthy or fast, or intermittent fasting can
increase growth hormone levels vary substantially,
it has indirect effects on the genetic Pathways and The
receptors for growth hormone that actually are
detrimental for the function of growth hormone. So avoiding food for the two hours prior to
bedtime, is a good idea. If you avoid food for longer, that's just going to assist even more, certainly isn't going to hurt in terms of growth hormone release.
But extended fast, specifically for the purpose of increasing
growth hormone are not really logical. When you look at the broader effects of extended fast,
That is not to say that extended
fasting is not appropriate for some people. It can
be in certain instances or that intermittent, fasted,
so-called time restricted feeding is not beneficial for some people, it can be
here. I'm only
referring to the effects or in this case, the lack of effects of intermittent fasting time restricted feeding on growth hormone specifically. Now, in terms of supplements
to increase growth hormone, there are very few supplements that have been shown to augment. This pathway. There is some idea that Arginine supplementation.
Prior to bedtime, can further Elevate levels of growth hormone, especially when fasted that literature is rather weak to be honest, I encourage you
to go to examine.com. If you want to peruse, those particular studies
really the things that increase growth hormone very potent, Lee fall outside, the realm
of supplementation, they
include exercise again, look at the Dunkin friendship, a sewed,
or in the college. Let episode on optimizing hormones in males in particular, but this also pertains to females that avoiding
Food, two hours prior to bedtime really can boost growth hormone significantly in sleep beyond what it
would be otherwise, but it's really only once you get into the realm of prescription
compounds, things like
peptides like Sur mer, Ellen,
which increase
igf-1 and growth hormone
things like growth hormone Itself by prescription only. If, and only if it's prescribed by a doctor, of
course, and is safe for you. That's when you start getting into really significant increases in growth hormone, not a lot of supplements out there
to increase growth hormone, potently.
Now it's a
different story. When you start thinking about and talking about
testosterone and free testosterone and luteinizing,
hormone luteinizing hormone is released from the pituitary, which is this gland not far from the roof of your mouth and it's nearby neighbor. The hypothalamus is a collection of neurons that sits above the roof of your mouth and talks to the pituitary talks to it, through neural connections and hormone base connections. There is a hormone called GnRH, gonadotropin-releasing hormone that is released from the hypothalamus.
Was into the pituitary, it stimulates the release of luteinizing hormone
or LH which then travels in the
bloodstream to impact multiple tissues in the
body. But mainly the ovary
and females, and the testes, and males to stimulate
estrogen production and testosterone production.
There are supplements that can potently increase GnRH and or luteinizing hormone, and then indirectly,
increase testosterone and estrogen, and I was like to remind people testosterone and estrogen are present in both males and females
Okay, and both are important for things like libido muscle growth and so on, a lot of people think that, oh, and males, you know, having very high testosterone and low estrogen is actually ideal, it's actually not ideal. If you want to keep your libido, anything that lowers your estrogen too far is going to reduce your libido. You don't want to ask your into high but you also do not want it too low
so supplements that can tickle this
pathway or actually can act as a bit more of a directed hammer on this luteinizing hormone pathway.
May also impact
GnRH are things like Fado Gia aggressiveness. This is an herb that I've talked about before on the podcast that when taken at dosages of 600 milligrams per day, many people not
all report.
Elevated levels of libido elevated sperm production, elevated testosterone in some cases elevated estrogen, a bunch of hormones, Downstream
of luteinizing hormone. Now, are you going to be a Fado G? Aggress disrespect.
Ponder or a non-responder, there's simply no way to know except by trying it. If
you are going to go down this route, there are two very important considerations. First of all, there's a fairly extensive literature on the fact that Fado G aggress TSK in beat toxic to testicular cells, and perhaps other cells when taken at very high dosages. So, obeying, the particular dosages of Fado
geographus, that are recommended on various
product labels, and cycling Fado geographus.
Be important. Some people need to cycle it eight
weeks on two weeks off. Other people opted for 12 weeks on a month off.
I know a few people who have taken it continuously with no issues, but I
do want to suggest caution. When taking the doji aggressiveness, the cautionary notes are stay within the recommended dosage ranges. You can go lower but certainly don't go higher. And I think it is wise to cycle every eight weeks
or so, to come off it for two
weeks, and then going back.
On, if that's your choice, if you feel it, benefited you or taking it for 12 week periods of time and then cycling off for a full month before repeating again,
the best way to know whether or not Fado Gia or any of these other supplements
is impacting your hormone levels in the direction that you want, and not impacting your hormone levels or other aspects of your biology in ways that you
don't want is from a blood test. There is simply no better tool to evaluate whether or not
these supplements are working to support your
hormones in the way.
You want and not causing issues except to take a blood test. This podcast has inside tracker as a sponsor that can do in home. Blood tests and give you blood panels. There
are other sources of blood tests that are quite good as well. Of course, n in the first episode of the
human Lab podcast that I did with dr. Kyle Gillette again, a medical doctor expert in hormones, diabetes, and various other aspects of medicine,
he described, and it is time-stamped how to stand the best probability of getting your insurance?
Us to cover
a blood test, how to talk to your doctor about getting a hormone panel and so on. So, I'll refer you to that episode for that, but blood
tests are going to be very important. I recommend taking them before adding in any supplement, increase hormones of any kind or decrease hormones of any kind for that matter.
And then again after about 4 to 8 weeks of taking that particular supplement in order to evaluate whether or not it worked and whether or not it had any negative effects that you would like to avoid.
I also want to
Fine. People of the dosage conversation that we had earlier, just because there's a recommended dosage of for doji
aggressive, say, 600 milligrams per day. First of all, that is not an invitation to take twice as much and expect twice the positive effects. That is not a good approach. Especially with something like Fado G aggressiveness which can at high dosages be toxic,
but it's also important to perhaps consider taking a lower dosage and seeing
how that affects your hormones.
That approach requires a bit more patience, I know.
Do most people are thing. I want the effect, and I want it now, but I think it's very important when thinking about exercise or nutrition, or supplementation to really play the long game to think about what's going to work for you, in the
immediate end in the long term and to ease into any kind of supplement regimen, for instance, by taking one thing at a time.
Varying One supplement out in One supplement in, starting at minimal effective, dose and build
up your protocols over a year or several years, it
really can be beneficial. I can say, for myself, I started exploring the
Mint space and taking different supplements, and different combination
and alone, evaluating, which one's
worked and did not work for me somewhere. Absolutely. Dreadful for me, I have tons of stories about supplement fail. Some of which were just kind of innocuous the meaning. They were a waste of money which isn't an Oculus but at least it wasn't detrimental to my
health other supplements which fortunately don't exist on the market anymore.
I think actually we're quite dangerous and I feel lucky that I did not experience even greater negative effects from them, other
supplements have been
Tremendously useful for me and for other people for things, like sleep and hormone support focus and so on.
So for doji, aggressive is a good example of a supplement that is known to have potent
effects, but you need to approach it with the
appropriate, I would say, respect for the fact that the
dosage range is in, which it works, have to be kept pretty narrow without causing issues.
It does increase luteinizing hormone, and
thereby testosterone. And
Jen. So if you're somebody who's already excessively high in one or the other, it's going to be very hard to just direct it to only testosterone or only estrogen.
Now, the topic of today's episode is not about Fado, he aggresses per se, I highlight it because it is one of the more potent supplements for sake of hormone augmentation. But it's still fairly broad band. It's a little more specific than something like Sheila G, but it's still
fairly broad band in terms of hitting multiple
endpoint hormones
testosterone and
Origin and maybe some other hormones as
well. There are other supplements in particular, tone, got a lie, which is known to, for instance, increase libido, whether or not it does that by way, of augmenting, dopamine related Pathways or testosterone pathway still isn't clear. It is known to increase free testosterone by reducing, sex hormone-binding globulin. Tonga, Ali can be beneficial both for men and for women.
In dosages, anywhere from 200 mg to 600 milligrams per day. So there I would say scale,
according to body size, although start with the minimum amount and find the minimal effective dose for you again, blood work is going to be the most effective way to determine what's
working or not
working at the level of objective
numbers, but subjective experience matters
to. You know, if you take it at 400 milligrams for four weeks and you don't notice any effect, you might tried it. 600 milligrams but not higher and if you still don't see an effect,
well then doesn't appear to have worked for you. Other people experience, dramatic effects from things like Fado Gia and Tonga Ali. Why would that be the case? Well,
if you look to the scientific literature, what you find is that the studies that report the biggest effects of any supplement, usually start with a population that somehow diminished or back on its heels in one particular Dimension. So, for instance, people that are hypo gonna do that are not making enough
testosterone or free testosterone. In fact, their levels are very very low. There's
subclinical.
Off range in terms of the charts
below the normal. Well, those people when they take supplements, like Tonga, a leafage, attend to experience greater effects because they're
starting from a lower level than people who perhaps are close to the optimal levels achieved through either age, genetics exercise nutrition or some combination of those.
So, that's an important thing to think about these are called floor effects, and ceiling effects ceiling effects are, for instance, if an individual already has very high testosterone and free testosterone, and
They take a supplement to increase it further, they might
not see any increase, whereas somebody who sits more in the middle
to low range, stands to experience a much
greater increase. In
fact, one individual I know who took Tonga
Ali. Admittedly on my
recommendation, his testosterone was initially very low and he was having a number of different symptoms. He did blood
work, he, that's how he knew it was low and he then took
Tonga Ali and for dodea in
combination because he decided he just wanted results, he didn't care which
What which thing was going to give them the results and he experienced big increases in
testosterone, this would be not free but total testosterone of the experience as much as 600 nanograms per deciliter, increase from where he was before, which is very dramatic, was a near tripling of where his testosterone has started off to where he ended up. I don't know if he's ever done the experiment of removing Fado gr tongue got to find out which one it was and this is why many people just take them in combination. And if you have the budget for it and you are interested in just finding what works but not isolating.
Seeing what works at the level of single ingredients, that would be the approach I recommend. However, again, I think most people do well, to figure out, which specific ingredients are going to work best for them by isolating the variables. The way I've described repeatedly throughout this episode
to my knowledge tone, golly does not need to be cycled. Meaning you don't have to take periods of time off from it. I should note that the
effects of Tonga. Ali can take a little bit longer to experience. So perhaps blood work should be done 8 to 12 weeks after initiating, the Tonga Ali protocol, as
opposed to earlier,
Your and it does seem to have sort of cumulative
effects on libido and that points to the likelihood that it's having some impact on neural Pathways as opposed to hormone Pathways hormone Pathways can be slow. But in general, neural pathways are the ones that are going to explain slow
Rising shifts in any kind of physical, or mental aspect
that then remain stable over time. So, the
exact effects of Tonga Ali, and we're meeting where they arise in the brain and body aren't
known. I will provide a link to a really beautiful review,
article that covers the literature on tongkat Ali. This came out fairly recently. And that I've reviewed with a number of other MDS and medical or medicine related
podcasters. It's a really nice review. I'll provide a link to that gives a survey of
tongue. Golly, what people are discovering what they're finding what they're not finding and so forth.
As a final note on supplements for hormone augmentation and supplementation. I want to make it brief mention of something specifically related to female Health, which is
Course the menstrual cycle and across the menstrual
cycle, different hormones are present at
different levels. Follicle-stimulating hormone is very high during the so-called follicular phase, right? And then you have your luteal phase.
We have an entire episode coming up about female hormones, and Hormone Health that will cover this. We
also have covered a little bit of this in the other episodes on
testosterone and estrogen, but the point I'd like to make now is that for women, they should fully expect that certain supplements, not all, but certain supplements because of the way they impact
Act different hormones would have different effects, maybe
even opposite effects at different phases of the menstrual cycle. And for that reason, I believe it is especially important to have
tight control over dosage and individual ingredients
in your supplement regimen. So for instance, if you're somebody who take Sheila
Jean, I know many women who take Sheila G or Tonga
Ali, for instance or Makkah and you find that it really serves you. Well that is it provides the mental and physical benefits that you want and enjoy.
At certain phases of your menstrual cycle but at other phases of your menstrual
cycle, it feels like too much or it actually can start to give you negative
mental or physical effects. Well, then obviously, having control over those specific ingredients is going to be extremely important so that you can titrate the dosage or increase. The dosage. As the case may be or cease taking
those things entirely at certain phases of your menstrual cycle.
That's not to say that some women can't just continuously take
these supplements throughout their menstrual cycle. Some
can but
Some find that that makes them very
uncomfortable or that they would do well to alter different ingredients at different phases of their cycle. So
again, this speaks to the critical importance of single-ingredient control dosage control and the ability to cease taking individual or multiple ingredients according to the
backdrop of your health generally. And obviously, the menstrual cycle is a profound shift in the hormone and thus the entire bottle, biological and psychological milieu that exist in the
body. And of course, there's the issue of birth control.
Whether or not people are taking hormone base birth control, certain forms of hormone Bates, birth control. And women involve
tonically elevating, that means consistently elevating estrogen. That's certainly going to
reduce the fluctuations and thus, the probability that certain hormones, and hormones Pathways will change across the menstrual cycle, but not eliminate it altogether.
Also there's the key issue of
fertility in both males and females,
one important note, even though this is not an episode about fertility, we're going to have one soon but the important point
About fertility, is that there are supplements, not just Sheila G but there are supplements and supplement protocols such as L carnitine and particular injectable L-Carnitine, which does require a prescription at least in the US. But also orally ingested.
L-Carnitine, that can improve sperm,
health, and motility, and egg health, and motility I mentioned that earlier, but if couples are trying to conceive, it is important that if you're going to take something that is a supplement, directed toward sperm and or egg
Health that
you
So consider how that interfaces with some of the other hormone based compounds that is prescription drugs
that you may be taking. This is true for people who are doing IVF in vitro fertilization or not
again. That entire discussion will be handled in our episode on fertility and on female hormone health
and we already did the episode with dr. Carl, Gillette on male hormone Health
optimization. The next category of supplementation that I'd like to address is supplements related to cognitive enhancement and focus. And here there are a number of very useful.
He's that one could take. I'd like to divide this conversation into two general categories of supplements to
address cognitive enhancement and focus
the first category are supplements that increase energy by way of stimulant properties. So the most obvious of these
is caffeine,
caffeine is, of course, a molecule that can increase levels of alertness. It also can increase levels of focus provided that dosages
are in the appropriate
range. The
Range in most cases is going to be 1, 2, 3 milligrams, per kilogram of body, weight taken, 30 minutes. Or so before any kind
of mental or physical Endeavor, we did an entire episode about caffeine where you can learn lots of facts about caffeine how best to utilize caffeine and indeed, I'll just give you a few of
those. Now it turns out that if you're a regular caffeine user you can still derive, the cognitive enhancing
and focus enhancing effects of caffeine. If you ingest caffeine every day, but
But
if you were to take two days off from caffeine completely,
and right now, I hear all the caffeine addicts out there just kind of
cringing at the idea and then take caffeine in the 30 minutes prior to some, especially important event
physical, or mental event, where you really need to focus and be able to sustain that Focus for long periods of time.
It would have an even greater effect than it normally would. But since most people are taking caffeine and a kind of ongoing regular way, I just want to emphasize that it's still has Pro cognitive.
And pro Focus effects even if it's taken every day, or even multiple times per day, again, a cautionary note, don't drink caffeine too late in the day pass to p.m. it can really start to impede your sleep at night. Even if you can fall asleep at night, the architecture of that sleep is not going to be great. If you're ingesting caffeine in the preceding eight to ten and even 12 hours and that actually raises another
tangential but still important point. So I'm going to make it
and then get back to supplements which is
the best cognitive
enhancer that you will ever take.
Is a really good night's sleep of sufficient
duration. Okay. So sleep is going to be
the Bedrock of your ability to focus and remember things. In fact, it's during sleep, that neural connections, remodel so cold, neuroplasticity. It's actually not when you trigger learning but it's when you consolidate and reinforce learning and a number of other things that relate to cognitive enhancement and focus.
The other thing of course is that you're going to need to have sufficient levels of nutrition. So you don't want to
Overly hungry or it's going to be hard to focus. Nor do you want to be overloaded
with calories or a volume of food, or have your blood glucose to be so high that it's going to make you sleepy. There's a reason why when discussing stress and the so-called autonomic nervous system that the phrase rest and digest comes into
play, rest and
digest as the name, implies relates to the fact that when we have a lot of
food in our gut,
it tends to make us sleepy. In other words, it's hard for
us to focus and it's hard for
us to maintain cognitive attention, and remember things, Etc.
So there are bunch of Behavioral
tools. For enhancing Focus did entire episode on enhancing focus. It does touch on supplementation. Again, you can find links to that in all formats at huberman. Lab.com, we also have a newsletter related to this topic. Also at huberman labs.com at zero cost
with all of that said. And in particular, the
Highlight about sleep being the best way to enhance your cognitive
abilities and focus. Any time we're having a discussion about supplements for
In cognitive ability and focus. A
major category of those supplements is going to fall into the stimulant category and that's going to include most often
caffeine although there are other sources of stimulants not going to touch on those for the moment. Just talk about caffeine when people hear caffeine they think oh well I can
just drink coffee and indeed that's a great source of caffeine so as yerba mate I would caution people to if you're going to use your mate for whatever, purpose caffeine or
otherwise that you avoid the smoked.
Ian's of yerba
mate. They are carcinogenic. That is the smoked versions or carcinogenic and and to consume the non smoked varieties. Instead, the
important thing to understand about
caffeine is that while it can be ingested in the form
of a drink or an energy drink tea or coffee, it can also be ingested
as a pure supplement that is there are caffeine supplements and I know a number of people including a very very prominent podcaster whose name I won't mention.
Who drinks herbal tea, but takes a 100 to 300
mg tablet of caffeine with the herbal teas. So, in that case it is no longer herbal tea, it is caffeinated, herbal tea.
When you take caffeine in pill form, it tends to have a much more potent and
long-lasting effect than when you take caffeine in the form of coffee or tea, it's actually a world apart in terms of its effects. And if you haven't experienced this before,
it might be something that you want to explore. It might not be something you want to explore in particular. If you're somebody who experiences anxiety or panic attacks, be very careful with your intake of caffeine. Again, see the episode of of human love podcasts. All about caffeine for more on that
but it is the case that even a hundred milligrams of caffeine in tablet form, I suppose it could be in
capsule form as well but in its pure form
leads to much greater enhancement of alertness and focus then does off.
And the comparable amount or even twice, the amount of
caffeine contained in coffee or tea. Now,
why would that be has a lot to do with the other things that are in
coffee and tea? So
here I'm not encouraging people to
become reliant on caffeine capsules or on caffeine tablets. But if you want to increase alertness and focus caffeine is a potent way to do that, it works the other category of stimulant that can work. In terms of enhancing
alertness and focus are going to
Oobi things that increase
adrenaline in some other way, or epinephrine, as it's also called adrenaline epinephrine. Same thing in some other way that are going
to touch into or augment, the
so-called adrenergic and adrenaline systems, and there are things
like, yohimbine and different forms of yohimbine like Alpha yohimbine. There are multiple
forms of these things. Now, I would go to examine.com to explore the
different forms of you. Him buying about 1020 years ago. Yohimbine was
Primarily as a pro libido and pro erectile agent. Turns out. It has very low efficacy for both of those things but there are certain forms of your him bind that act as stimulants that are effective and are
separate from those claims and Pathways
one particular form is called Alpha yohimbine, it, sometimes goes by the name, real wolf seen, and that's
spelled are a yeo-wol science&u Mets,
Alpha yohimbine, and it's used
As a stimulant
often to also promote fat loss and alertness,
have to say that it's a very potent and somewhat precarious supplement. Some people experience a lot of anxiety on it, that could also be because they tend to take
it on either an empty stomach or in combination with sub caloric
diets. It's a it's sort of getting out on the edge of things that for some people can
work not so well for other people, they might actually find it to be a very effective
stimulant in general in terms of supplements.
Approaches to increase, cognitive function and focus caffeine either in coffee, or tea form, or in
tablet or capsule form. But it lower dosages than you would find in coffee. And tea,
I think is actually a reasonable way to explore the stimulant based approaches
to enhancing cognitive function and focus.
I mentioned all that not because I think that you probably already didn't know,
that caffeine can enhance alertness and focus. Most people already know that and I acknowledge that
but rather
As a contrast point for the other supplement, based approach for
increasing cognitive function and focus, which
is to increase certain neurotransmitter Pathways that are
not
stimulant based. So, for instance, Alpha GPC, which is essentially a choline
donor acts in the pathways related to the neuromodulator, acetylcholine and can
enhance Focus. So it dosages of anywhere from 300 to 600, mg people experience. Heightened levels of focus
For sake of mental
work or physical work.
The half-life of alpha GPC is about four to six hours. So
it's relatively short lasting.
Although you wouldn't necessarily want to take it right before bed. I don't
recommend that it is not a stimulant it tends to enhance focus by augmenting acetylcholine and
acetylcholine Pathways specifically. Now it does
create a little bit of an increase in alertness so some people actually perceive it, subjectively as an increase in overall stimulation.
But it's different than a
caffeine type stimulant. So for instance, 300 milligrams to 600 milligrams of alpha GPC taken, a loan will allow people to be
more focused but doesn't tend to make
people feel jittery or over stimulated.
Similarly 500 mg to 1,000 milligrams or somewhere in between of
something like l-tyrosine which is an amino acid, precursor to
dopamine a different neuromodulator taken alone or
in conjunction with again, I believe in separate.
These things out by product. But suppose you could take Alpha GPC and l-tyrosine together if you had already tried them separately and aside, they worked well for you. Then you decide to combine
them. What people tend to experience is that, the cholinergic stimulation from
alpha GPC and the
dopaminergic stimulation from l-tyrosine or simply l-tyrosine alone or Alpha GPC alone leads to increased levels of focus without the kind of overall feelings of stimulant based
alertness, that one would experience with
Caffeine
and indeed or I should say, of
course, there are products out there. And there are people out there that combine all three of these things together, caffeine Alpha, GPC and l-tyrosine. And while I'm not suggesting, that's a good or a bad thing, I would suggest that
any time you start to explore the cognitive enhancing
effects. And the folks enhancing effects of any supplement that you
asked, which ones are stimulant. So, for
instance, caffeine and Alpha you him
being which ones tend to tap more into neural.
Later systems like Alpha GPC and l-tyrosine and to
separate those out conceptually because whereas things like Alpha your him binding caffeine will mostly serve the role of increasing levels of alertness but not tightening your focus. Things like Alpha GPC and l-tyrosine tend to serve the role of less elevation and alertness but more tightening of focus. And this of course
is why people often stack these and take them in combination. So I
think it's a very important distinction that most people.
Aren't aware of and I'm not here to tell you that the stimulant based approach or
the neuromodulator based approach is better or worse. They are simply different from one another
although I will say that I think it is important to explore them
separately. If indeed you're going to explore any of them before you would start to combine them in a single formula. Again, individual ingredients are going to be the way to go in terms of figuring out what's best for
you. If anything, some people may find that even the slightest bit
of caffeine or even the slightest bit,
Of alpha GPC or l-tyrosine just places them into a
state of mind and or body. That's just uncomfortable and
not compatible with the kind of work that they want to do. Whereas other people, there's
myself regularly rely on taking 300
mg of alpha GPC, it turns out more than that kind of
doesn't work for me or
tends to send my mind down a pathway that I don't like to be in for sake of cognitive work,
but I will routinely take 300
mg of Alpha Chi.
PC prior to some cognitive work or prior to a workout. I do often combine that with some caffeine, not in capsule or pill form, but rather in the form of a cup of
coffee or yerba mate. And it turns out that for me just by way of example, l-tyrosine is something
that works. Very powerfully to elevate my level of focus but that I tend to crash pretty hard afterward and so I tend to are away from l-tyrosine but some people tolerate it really well and actually really liked it. I rely on something else. For dopamine augmentation, which is phenol a flaming.
Which is a little bit more short-lasting. Again, I arrived at these, protocols
for myself by mixing and matching, but mostly by trying
individual ingredients alone, before combining them into any sort of cocktail before taking them before a workout, or before a cognitive work bout. And I suggest that you explore them in the same way because that's going to deliver you to the best possible protocols for you which only you
can determine. And then of course there's the category of supplements that can support cognitive function and focus.
But that also touch on other General functions related to brain and body Health,
such as metabolic Health, mood
Etc. And the one that comes to mind, here
are the omega-3 fatty acids? I've talked a lot about omega-3 fatty acids that are available in the form of foods.
So for instance, fatty ocean fish
on there, certain plant-based sources for these as well, certain algae's and things of that sort touched on this in the episodes on
depression that I've done. But this topic mainly comes up around the issue of fish oil.
Fish oil, capsules and liquid. And this is a discussion, I think is worth having early on in the episode. We talked about foundational nutrition and supplements, that include a bunch
of different ingredients. We touched
on the idea that some people might have the budget to take one such product or any number of different
products that combine all those
ingredients, I should say that for those that are interested in taking a supplement, but have a lower budget than would allow for taking one of those
General categories.
Of supplements, we talked about earlier, for foundational nutrition. That combines everything vitamins, minerals, probiotics, prebiotics abkhazians, digestive enzymes.
I do think that there's a category of supplements that can greatly enhance, the probability of offsetting depression and maybe even improve mood directly or indirectly. There's evidence for what I'm about to tell you within the scientific literature. And, or offset the amount of antidepressant medication that people need to take. That's also been demonstrated and improve metabolic function. Cardiovascular function
And also
enhance our ability to do
focused work and here, I'm referring to the so-called omega-3 essential fatty acids in particular, the omega-3
form of the essential fatty acids. There's now a lot of data showing that ingesting 123 grams of EPA in particular.
In the form of either fish oil capsules or liquid can be beneficial
for a number of different aspects of brain and body health and can
enhance
focus and cognitive ability. This is especially true in developing brains and there's actually an extensive data out of a laboratory at University of California, Santa Barbara talking about how
mothers who supplement
Omega-3s in particular, the epa's, although they also need to get the
DHS that
leads to Greater brain weights.
And health of Offspring. This is something, we will definitely explore in a future episode. Likely with an expert guest who's doing that work in that laboratory at UC Santa Barbara.
The point here is that if somebody has a limited budget to purchase supplements and cannot afford a foundational supplement in the store that we talked about earlier, athletic greens or similar, but they do have a budget that would allow them to purchase a high-quality
omega-3
fatty acid, fish oil, that would end to ingest it.
Quantity. Sufficient enough to get above that one gram of EPA per day. Again, this is really important. If you look at the product labels, you'll often see, you know, 1500 or 1600 milligrams of essential fatty acids, but the key is you get above that one gram of EPA
per day threshold, and as high, as 3 grams per day, we had a guest on this podcast, dr. Rhonda, Patrick, who takes anywhere from, I believe
three to four maybe even
more grams of EPA per day for a variety.
Variety of reasons, including some of the reasons we're discussing now,
before we move on to discussing some of the more Global
themes related to developing a rational supplementation
protocol, I do want to touch on this vast category of supplementation that includes food based or
food mimic type supplements. So this would be for instance, whey proteins or milk proteins or egg proteins or plant proteins?
That's a discussion that in and of itself deserves an entire episode. If you want to understand which types of
And source of proteins are going to be the
most bioavailable, the best, for
protein synthesis for
recovery from exercise building muscle
Etc. I'd like to refer you to a segment within the episode I did with dr. Lane Norton, where he talks about total protein needs per day. It's about one gram per pound of body weight per day for most people, although there's some
variation depending on activity
Etc. And the quality of sourcing of those various proteins is extremely
important. And that of course
Leads to a discussion about the quality and type of protein that would be present in a supplement, like a whey protein supplement or casein, which is a milk protein based supplement.
That discussion is segmented and time-stamped in the episode. I did with them, you can find it
huberman. Lab.com, the
actually pointed to some interesting data on potato protein as perhaps being a great
plant-based substitute for those that don't want to take away based protein but the fact that way based proteins can be very useful for getting 2 and above a protein.
I sold for
all sorts of reasons not just
for muscle building, although it's
great for that. But for other purposes as
well. And that's, but one category of food based or food, mimic type supplements.
There are for instance,
branched-chain amino acids. There are for instance, green tea supplements. There is a huge landscape of this far, too much for us to get into in any kind
of reasonable
detail, but I do want to acknowledge that those all exist.
The key thing to understand is that while they can serve a great role in providing replacement for meals that
you perhaps couldn't have consumed otherwise
and while they often are
very convenient because you can drink as opposed to eat your calories,
I think that most people would agree that getting some significant fraction of your nutrition from Whole Foods is going to be useful for a variety of reasons in particular, the fiber
that comes along with it, the bulk of the food that tends to make us feel
sated.
And, of course, the
fact that a lot of vitamins and minerals and other things that are contained within Foods, as well as
essential fatty
acids in foods, like animal-based proteins are not going to be present in most, if not all of those kind of food, mimic type powders and replacements for food. Another point is this question about age related effects. So, for instance, should kids be taking supplements? Well, I mentioned earlier that there's some evidence that making sure that kids are getting enough omega-3 fatty acids.
To be beneficial. They certainly could get those from food based sources, just look up
online food based sources of omega-3 fatty acids in epa's, in you'll see list there,
some people choose to supplement on top of
that, in particular in kids that are developing very quickly,
regardless of whether or not, they're
consuming enough epa's from
food, some
parents choose to supplement. On top of that, I am personally
not a fan of children taking melatonin for the reason that melatonin is already chronically elevated in kids. And there's a
A growing body of
literature that melatonin supplementation and kids can be
potentially harmful. I don't want to
create alarm among those who have already been taking it or giving it to their kids or that, gave it to their kids in the past.
But I do think that melatonin, in particular should be
approached with a lot of caution, especially for kids.
And then, of course, there's the issue of whether or not all these other supplements that we've discussed whether or not kids can take them safely. And again, it's highly individual. I would say that for the supplements that relate to
Hormone, augmentation and support, unless your physician a board-certified MD specifically, recommends
them, I would strongly suggest avoiding intake of those things until at least after puberty and probably in to the late teens and early 20s, because the body and brain are still developing and hormone systems are still active. Even though puberty may happen between ages, you know, 11 and 14 or even 15 puberty can be a long-lasting event with a long taper and
Tail on it. So you want to be cautious about augmenting hormones, in young people through the use of supplementation, unless a physician is working very closely with you or rather you with them.
And then in ages of say, 22 years old, 24 and older. I don't see any reason why people who are
in their 50s or 60s would have
any different protocols than people in their 30s and 40s, except perhaps in the
domain of cognitive enhancement where it might make sense. Again, might provided it can be done safely and
With the consult of a physician, it might be beneficial for people who are approaching their later years to consider increasing
dosages or the variety of things and approaches that they take for cognitive
enhancement because age-related cognitive decline
is a reality. There is no person that
escapes that the question is whether or not the slope of that
decline is very steep or very shallow and of course this is an opportunity for me, to raise the point that I made much earlier. And then I'll make over and over again because
it really is the most
important Point too.
Today's discussion which is that
behaviors. Both exercise sleep,
making sure that your relationship to light getting sufficient sunlight early in the day and throughout the
day, if you can and limiting your viewing of bright
artificial light in the late evening and especially between the hours of 10 p.m. and
4 a.m. things of that sort, all the do's and don'ts. And of
course, cardiovascular exercise and resistance training exercise and maybe even
flexibility training exercise
topics, we've covered extensively on
Is podcast and for which we will soon have a special series airing with dr. Andy Galpin that gets into a lot of detail and protocol development that you can all employ,
all of that needs to be done at every age. Certainly passed puberty in
order to maximize cognitive function in order to maximize cardiovascular function in order to
maximize focus. And every aspect
that we really all stand to and want to enhance when we think about supplementation.
So again get your sleep right. Do that by getting your
relationship to light, right? Get your exercise right Quality Social connection right and then of course, there's that landscape of nutrition that we talked about extensively earlier and for which we have other episodes that really dive deep
including that episode or I was should say in
particular that episode with dr. Lane Norton where we really took a full survey of the landscape of nutrition. Everything from protein needs vitamins, minerals, fiber microbiome. It's a deep deep discussion with a lot of actionable. Takeaways, if you're curious about
Nutrition. And in particular if you're a vegan or vegetarian or a carnivore based, but
even for the more common
omnivores such as myself, I found that to be an incredible Learning Journey. Thanks to dr. Lane Norton just so much useful knowledge in that episode. If you want to learn more about nutrition
the behavioral tools the nutritional tools are really going to serve as the
primary two layers upon which your supplementation, Protocols are going to
rest. And again I want to emphasize that your supplementation protocol.
B0 supplements. It could include no supplements whatsoever and that would be perfectly fine provided that you're sleeping as well as you want to and need to be able to
focus and work as well as you want to and need to you're able to perform physically as well as you want to need to. And you feel that your hormones and related functions are where you want them.
However, for most people who are doing most everything, right?
They want to explore how
they can make things like their sleep, their focus, their hormone function, even better. And that's where supplementation makes a lot of sense. And when I say makes a
lot of sense, I mean, it makes a lot of sense to explore in a rational and regimented way there, a couple of big themes that we've talked about a few times during today's podcast that I'd like
to reiterate now because they are so crucial to developing a rational, supplementation protocol, the most important of, which is, unless we're talking about foundational nutritional support, that is coverage of vitamins.
Rolls digestive enzymes, probiotics, prebiotics, and adaptogens, we should really be focusing on single ingredient formulations,
foundational supplements, that include all those things. I just listed off all combined in One supplement are fine. I simply don't see any other
practical or reasonable way to get each. And every one of those
things through single-ingredient formulations, however, when you want to start thinking about and
actually practically exploring things like supplementation for sleep or Hormone Health or
cognitive function.
And the single-ingredient
formulations are going to give you the most power and control. They're going to make sure that you can find the minimal effective doses, that you can rule out things that are not effective for you, or that may be detrimental for you in whatever fashion. And it's not
just about cost Effectiveness. It's also about arriving at small kits or cocktails of supplements that you can really manage and work
with that, you're not dependent on, but that you really feel can augment the various
Specs of your health that are important to you. So that's really what today's episode is about, even though we had coverage of specific supplements and their functions in these different domains of mental and physical health, and
performance, today's episode was really geared toward giving you resources and a framework. To think about how to approach
supplementation, how to navigate sticking points, and pain points and supplementation,
how to get the most out of your supplementation, regimen without spending, an excessive amount of money. And if you don't have finances,
To allow for a lot of exploration of supplements, how to narrow in on the most effective supplements, the most quickly and derive, all the benefits that you can from them.
And as a final point that is redundant with a few of the themes we talked about today. But that I don't think I ever really explicitly stated is that while the word supplement makes it sound like these compounds are
something just to add on
top of or compensate for deficiencies in
nutrition or other areas of your life.
Of them are actually quite potent compounds. These are potent non-prescription molecules that really can move the needle in terms of your ability to think more clearly sleep better support your hormone function. But as always, they are just one element within an ecosystem
of other factors such as your behaviors which includes do's and don'ts such as your nutrition. Maybe
even such as prescription drugs, that you
also might happen to be taking or hoping.
To be taking less of or removing completely. Again that has to be done in discussion with
Physicians if you're going to do it at all. But the real Point here is that what we call supplements are actually a powerful gear within a
larger system aimed at each and every one of us customizing tools for our mental, physical, health, and performance.
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