#660: Dr. Andrew Huberman — The Foundations of Physical and Mental Performance, Core Supplements, Sexual Health and Fertility, Sleep Optimization, Psychedelics, and More

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No sea. A cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal and those galaxy. Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris for a rare in-person podcast. I know that's become the norm. On YouTube and elsewhere, but this is a rare occasion and I am thrilled to have Andrew Huberman here. With me.

So great to have you here in person, Andrew. So Andrew Huberman, who is this Andrew Huberman? Dr. Huberman, PhD on Twitter at Huberman Lab, is a neuroscientist and tenured professor in the department of neurobiology at Stanford University School of Medicine. He has made numerous important contributions to the fields of brain development, brain function, and neural plasticity. Work from the Huberman Laboratory at Stanford Medicine has been consistently published in top journals Including nature. science and sell. For those who don't know, that's like having a sweep at the Oscars.

But back to the bio. Andrew is the host of the podcast Humberman Lab, which is often ranked as one of the top five podcasts in the world by both Apple and Spotify. The show aims to help viewers and listeners improve their health with science and science based tools. New episodes air every Monday on YouTube and all podcast platforms. You can find all things Andrew at Huberman Lab dot com. On YouTube. That is Huberman Lab. Instagram, Huberman Lab, and also on Twitter, as mentioned at Huberman Lab.

Andrew. Nice to see ya. Great to see you. So happy to be here. I

Wanna say I grew up listening to your podcast, although I think I was in my thirties when I started listening. So for me, I'm really tickled to be here because So much of how I ran my laboratory when I First became a professor. was based on principles from the four hour work week.

Work weeks were like hundred hour work weeks. Actually lived in my laboratory with my dog. My students and postdocs can attest to that, but I incorporated a ton of the principals. I was Following

four hour body slow carb diet. I was training I had my cheat days. And on and on and on. So for me it this is kind of being transported.

Forward and back in time. I can't say enough positive things about You and your podcast and what you've done. And as you know, this is not just because I'm sitting here in front of you. 'Cause I text you all the time. In fact, I will say this. I have

A notebook. The date's back. Over a decade. Where At the time I was

Pretty lonely. It's just me and my dog eventually The great girlfriend at the time came along. But I was running my lab. And there's a lot of social buffers between Professors and students.

Understandably. Unnecessarily. And so I was pretty lonely and I thought, like, who are my friends gonna be? I was in a new town, didn't know many people. And I have this list, and I read the list the other day. I'll send you a photo. And the list

Was of About five or six people that I really admired. And who's Principles and work I was trying to incorporate into Every aspect of my life. At the top of the list is a guy named Tim Armstrong, lead singer for Rancid, who I've recently become friends with.

That's another Amazing story. Joe Strummer. Who unfortunately I never met the great Joe Strummer. Which explains my attire.

Yeah always wear a button down black shirt in his adulthood. So that decided to do that at some point and much more rel related to your name. Because a four hour work week and your podcast, which eventually came along. Rick Rubin. Two.

I've had the You know the great blessing of having on my podcast and learning from And then Oliver Sachs, who unfortunately passed away.

Before uh I ever had the chance to meet him. But anyway, I had to tell you that that you were already my friend before You knew who I was. And I did that because I would look at that list and think, Okay, who do I want to try and embody in terms of Ways about going through life and

Trying to do things right in my professional and personal life. So that was my short list, and I'm very proud of that short list. I still have it. I sent Tim the the list the other day. And he was like, No way, man, this is pretty wild. I'm like, You think it's wild for you? This imagine how wild this is for me. So anyway, to set the context. Yeah, well I appreciate that, man. And I've been incredibly impressed not just with your research and academic bona fights and what you've accomplished there, which is a lot in and of itself. And of course we've spoken before.

But the incredible focus and force with which You have Just Blown the barn doors off. with the podcast, which is really a service to people. So I'm happy to have you here.

Thrilled to be spending time in person. after Covid and recording remotely. So we have A ton to dive into

And hopefully I will not be the the hero with clay feet. It's all downhill from here as far as what I can do in the conversation. But I thought we could begin with perhaps revisiting in some respects Our last conversation, not to rehash it, but to simply ask the question. Since we last spoke, which was A while ago, I guess it was about maybe two years ago. What have you changed your mind on?

And what have you doubled down on? If you have answers to both of those. I'll start with what I've doubled down on. I've doubled down on The idea which

Perhaps I stated last time we spoke and perhaps not. But I certainly Believe. That Our state

In time. Is strongly dictated by Our state of mind and body. In the hours and

Days prior to that. Yeah. On the one hand, people are gonna hear that and say, Well duh. If you're sleep deprived, you're gonna feel like garbage. And if you're well rested, you'll feel great. That's kind of

The top contour of it. But When one looks at the neuroscience, for instance, of sleep. You start to realize that, you know, the amount of rapid eye movement sleep that you're gonna get in any Ninety minute bout of sleep.

Because your sleep is broken up into these ninety minute segments, more or less. Is strongly dictated by But Ratio slow wave sleep. Okay. Deep sleep and s

Rapid eye movement sleep that you had in the previous ninety minute bout. And then when you start to look at the research in terms of Weaking states. You start to find that your ability to be focused Say for about a work in the morning or the afternoon.

Or creative brainstorm session or I don't know, to maybe drill into some personal issue that you're dealing with during therapy or just on a walk or while journaling. Is not a square wave function. You know, none of us should sit

Yeah, I don't expect ourselves to just drop into that state. Much of our ability to move into that state effectively, whatever effective means. Whatever the target. Or goal of that.

Moments and hours. And so When I zoom out from that, what I've doubled down on is this idea that

There are uh just a core set of foundational things that we have to re up every twenty four hours. Yeah, I think thanks to the the incredibly hard work. Uh Doctor Matt Walker at Berkeley. The sleep diplomat on Twitter.

Right. It's such a great name'cause it's so appropriate. I mean A decade ago or so You know it was like I'll sleep when I'm dead. That was the dominant mentality out there. And yeah, sleep's great, but you know, getting stuff done is more important. I mean, Matt has really impressed on everybody that our mental health, our physical health, and our ability to perform is so strongly dependent.

our ability to get quality sleep. Maybe not every night of our life. I I mean we have to be realistic, but that sleep is vital. So uh you know Mm hat tip is insufficient. But So sleep is critical.

But sleep is just one of about I would say five things that really set the Buoyancy. Or the foundation upon which our nervous system is able to accomplish these transitions that I'm talking about at all. And

Those five things. R Sleep. In the absence of quality sleep over Two or three days.

You're just gonna fall to pieces. In the presence of quality sufficient sleepover. You're gonna function in an amazing Level.

There's a gain of function and a loss of function there. It's not just if you sleep poorly, you function less well. You sleep better, you function much better. So Sleep, I would say, is at the top of the list. Nutrients.

You know, and there are you can think macronutrients and so you carnivores are only eating meat and your vegans are only eating plants and your Omnivores, which is I think probably ninety percent of the world is eating a combination of those, but You know quality. Nutrients I think When I look at all of the the nutrition literature and arguments out there

It seems that everyone can agree on one thing, which is that Probably eighty percent or more of our nutrition should come from unprocessed or minimally processed sources. Minimally processed food. Require some cooking, but That survive on the shelf as opposed to Packaged food foods or highly palatable foods. So you've got sleep nutrients.

But then we should also put in micronutrients. And this is where maybe we'll get into a discussion about supplementation. I think that there's supplementation or supplements is a bit of a misnomer because it implies vitamin supplements and people say well can't you get all that from food? Or that Whey protein, isn't that just food? Wouldn't you be better off with a chicken breast? Okay, well, then when you talk about convenience and the you know absorption, okay, but then there's this huge category of things.

You know, ranging from the kind of esoterically named things like Ashwaganda and Sheila Ji and Tongali and Fadogia aggressive, right? I mean it sounds exactly all the herbal stuff, right? You're not gonna get that from food. Yeah, the so should we call them supplements at all? So let's just say the second thing is nutrients, and that includes macronutrients and that includes micronutrients as well. So those two things.

Then the third would be Movement. And this has also been an enormous transition in the last, I think, just five years, which is Not just for people interested in bodybuilding or powerlifting or for competitive athletes. But now it seems everybody

Including the elderly. Understand that You need a combination of cardiovascular exercises. And you need resistance training, whether or not it's with body weight or weights or machines, et cetera.

That you need both. I mean uh not a week goes by without seeing an article in one of the major publications out there. Standard media. Let's call it traditional media. We'll be nice to them. Traditional media that highlights some studies showing that you know resistance training in elderly people can offset Alzheimer's or

As our friend Peter Atia has pointed out so many times that Many of the end of life creating at injuries are Due to people older people stepping down the eccentric movements. Okay, so So you need movement. That's the third category.

Fourth. I will argue and I like to think that maybe I've helped this movement, if you want to call it that. is light. In particular sunlight in the early part and throughout the middle of the day.

And trying to minimize the amount of artificial light that you're exposed to. in the evening and late night hours, most of the time,'cause you have to live life. Just fundamental. I think the last category. That's important is

social connection, AK relationships. Let's just call it relationships, because that can include relationship to self. So those things Set up. The core foundation and I think

Think about them as just as a list. Another is to think about them in terms of a schedule basis and That's how I've really doubled down is I realize that every twenty four hours, I need to invest something into each one of those things. So I think that ten years ago or five years ago, or even two years ago, I used to think, okay, like what's the work out split? Or

How am I going to eat? For the next couple of months, you know, what am I trying to optimize for? Is it muscle, is it fat loss, is it just maintaining Is it energy, is it focus? That's all fine and good. But

Sleep. Nutrients exercise light. relationships. Those really establish The foundation of

What I consider to be All of the elements that create our ability to move as seamlessly as possible between the states that we happen to be in and the states we desire to be in. And when I

Zoom out and I think about what are the major struggles that I and it seems most everyone deals with. It's like how to get more focused. Okay, so we can talk about What do you take? What's the supplement, you know, but you have to say, Well, how are you sleeping? Have you done any exercise? You really Always

Find yourself where I find myself. taking ten steps back and then moving through the sequence of five things before you can even begin to talk about whether or not taking Three or six hundred milligrams of alf. GPC and how often to do that and does it work and yes it works, et cetera. But Those things really set the foundation. And so I like to

Think of those five things every single day. You have to re up on sleep every twenty four hours, or try to. You have to re up on movement every twenty four hours. You can go a day or so. Immobile, but You better move the next day. Right.

And ideally you're moving seven days a week. Doesn't necessarily mean trained to failure and running marathon seven days a week. You can goggins your life where you can not. For those of you don't know, I'm referring to David Goggins there, by the way.

Who seems to never stop moving, although I just learned meditates two hours every night. Every night and I'm inclined to believe when he says that that he indeed does that. You need nutrients even if they come from stored sources, even if you're gonna fast. You're gonna fast for a day or two? Okay, fine. I've done that, I know you've done that.

I would put hydration under nutrients too. So you can Drive nutrients from stored fat protein, et cetera, glycogen. Light is gonna you're gonna need that every twenty four hours.

You're going to need sunlight, even if through cloud cover. And you're going to want to avoid Right artificial lights at night. Not every night, but most nights of your life. And then that relationships one is the one that maybe we can go into in a little bit more depth at some point, but It requires focus, it requires attention.

Every Twenty four hours. Now that doesn't necessarily mean you have to see friends, talk to friends, text friends. Every twenty four hours some people are far more introverted. Than others.

But then you're working on your relationship to yourself. In that solo time and hopefully when you're spending time with others as well, that has Some internal repercussions. So If I've doubled down on anything, it's the understanding that There is no

So called optimization. There is No real interest, at least from me. In trying to

layer in other things unless I'm paying attention to each and every one of those things every Twenty four hours. You have to re up. on each and every one of those five things every twenty four hours. And if you don't You can get by for a day or two.

But pretty soon you're gonna hit that wall where you won't be able to do any of the things that most people are Actually seeking to do. And the last thing I'll say about that is You know, I think people hear a list of those five things they think, gosh, okay, well, that must be nice for you.

Andrew and Tim, you know, you wake up, you look at sunlight, you guys don't have kids, you don't have to worry about kids running around, you don't have to, you know, you can exercise. There are ways of layering in the protocols that Reup as I'm referring to it. These are the Five things every twenty four hours. That

Also include other People in your life. Kids. Pats. Et cetera.

Exercise certainly can include that as well. But I would argue that there is no showing up properly. for yourself and for the other people in your life unless these things are being Handled.

And it's not about becoming soft and cushy. It's about becoming quite resilient and effective. It seems so simple. But as our friend Paul Conti said to me recently, he said, You know After all the analysis and pouring through things and the complicated notions of the subconscious, he's a psychiatrist after all.

You know, in the end, really great mental health is about simple practices. Like First principles of self care. To which I raised my hand and said, Well, what is a first principle of self care? I'm a biologist after all. And he said, Uh huh. It's basically the things that we were just talking about.

is those five things. And so I I'm doubling down, I'm tripling down on those. As essential. To the point where nothing else really happens. For very long. Unless those five things are tended to.

Question. Of the Five. Let's just say if you had to pick one That you're

Neglecting may be a strong word. But under weighting that you are now waiting differently. What would it be? And What have you done? What have you added or changed or subtracted?

I'll have to pick two. Let's do let's do both end. Yeah. The two are movement. really changed the way that I Train and exercise to some extent. And actually

my whole philosophy on what's possible in terms of training And how to incorporate it into a weak Really works. To build strength and endurance and feel really good.

In One's body. All the time. And then the other one is relationships. Which

probably reflects my place in life. You know, where I'm forty seven now. I've Chosen to delay having a family. But

That's a primary focus, but also Having Done a lot of personal work. T. My mid forties.

Yeah, I thought I I was quote unquote there. And then realizing that um It's a trapdoor. It's a trapdoor. Um and then realizing that They're I guess uh here again I'll I'll use uh language of that Paul uh uses which is

Is that there were some unresolved core conflicts. This idea of core conflicts is is really I think the most Appropriate way to Put. The important

psychological stuff that people need to work through. Everyone has them. Many people have trauma, not everyone has trauma. But as defined as an event that

fundamentally changes the way that your nervous system works such that You function less well. in some or many domains of life. Again, I robbed that. definition from Paul Conti and I'm far less eloquent than he is in delivering it. But Realizing that there's still some core conflicts that

I needed to resolve. And I've been I'm going whole hog on that and it's been interesting to say the least. So let's start with perhaps the easier one. Movement.

What have you Implement it. What have you embraced or cut back on in the movement category? And I'm very interested in this personally because I have really Taken this as one of a few of those five.

to focus on myself. In the last I would say year. I've done a lot of training, let's just say in the last ten years, but I've not done a lot of competition, and I miss Developing athleticism. And if I take

As an assumption that we've largely evolved. to move through space. Yeah. And navigate.

Ski touring is just one example. F Putting on skins. These are actually they used to be actual animal skins. Now they're synthetic. But you put on skins on the bottom of skis and you effectively Nordic track your way. Up the mountain.

with switchbacks and then you take them off, you do transition, you ski down, you rinse and repeat. But the Experience of being If you choose your environments. In a location where you get lots of sunlight.

In the morning and early afternoon. Symmetrical exercise movement where you're not too heavily weighting one side or the other. There's there are benefits to asymmetrical. Types of exercise. But I have found this to just be absolutely I don't think it's an overstatement to say revolutionary for my physical and mental well being.

And you also get in this particular case for me A degree of hip extension that I really just do not get. In my day to day existence. Otherwise.

So I'm putting that out there just as an example and an explanation for why I wanna dig a little bit deeper on the movement side. So what have you ended up Yeah. Well, first of all, let me just say that your statement about movement being so fundamental to who we are as a species. The Nobel Prize winning physiologist is really what he was. Sherrington said that

The final common path of the entire nervous system is movement. Which I Sometimes think about Because We often think that our emotions somehow uh

Impact the world. But they really don't. Except insofar as we say things or do things. The other way to put this uh is that evolutionary Biologists will say, you know, there is no fossil record for The brain.

It's only what people actually did with the internal architecture of their brain. It all boils down to movement or vision, I would say, because I'm a vision scientist. But when you look Cubic. millimeter by cubic millimeter through the brain. If you take The circuits devoted to movement and the circuits devoted to vision, you've got about seventy five percent of the human brain.

So that's that's a lot. The rest is important too, of course. Movement wise. Okay, so we did a guest series. This was a six episode guest series with Dr. Andy Galpin, who's a professor of kinesiology. Cal State Fullerton. And his laboratory does everything from muscle biopsy all the way up to working with competitive athletes, you know.

So they'll do deadlifts or boxing or whatever it is or students running on treadmills, huge range of subjects and then they'll Stab out some muscle in a little bit Cork a muscle and

You've had this done, right? This was in the four hour body. Yeah, I did I did a muscle biopsy. And videotaped the entire process in the sports science institute of South Africa. Yeah, Tim Tartar is what I called it when it came out. So good. Turns out my muscle enzymes are uh If it's possible to be below some type of Graph representing Homer Simpson.

Like citrate synthe and these various elements that would be very helpful for endurance, which I seem to lack. But you're you're built for Explosiveness. I'm built for very short duration explosiveness. Which is ironic when you consider that I'm embracing ski touring because I am I'm not like Killian Journet or any of these folks who would be very well built for such a thing. But we make a good team because I've never we'd make a good team because I've never had a muscle biopsy, but I assure you that When I start running distance I can progress very fast.

I'm not particularly strong. I'm not particularly weak, but I'm just not particularly strong in it. Very little explosiveness, very little hops, which is why Skateboarding wasn't the right sport for me, despite my deep desire. It it just didn't happen. But In terms of What I learned from Andy.

couple of key principles fell out of the and keep in mind these are peer reviewed studies from his laboratory and many other laboratories, of which he's an expert. And I went deep into this literature with him. For that series. Concurrent training, meaning getting better at distance and getting stronger.

is absolutely possible. I did not think that was possible. You know I'm a bad of the late Charles Paulin and Others who said, you know, you want to build muscle, build muscle. You wanna you know wanna be a runner, be a runner. And I think At the extremes that's true.

But the data really point to the fact that you can train for many things concurrently. I took a step back from everything I learned from Andy. Over the last few years. In that series.

And Re sculpted my Training program so that on any one given day I'm training for something. Very specific. With the understanding that one can make progress in a lot of different domains of fitness.

In fact. The way that Andy puts it I think is better. He says, Techniques and methods are many, but they're only a few set of core adaptations that your body can make. So you're really just trying to create adaptations. Whether or not you do it with a kettlebell or a bar or a dumbbell or a hammer strength machine doesn't really matter. You're trying to create certain adaptations by using Certain loads moving things at different speeds.

But that is also true of endurance and running. So what I figured out was That there's an optimal training schedule for me. That allows me to target one specific thing each day. What are some of those specific things?

Yeah. Endurance, strength, hypertrophy. VO two Max. Heat and cold tolerance. We can talk about where that is. And also

I should mention. Each one of those days and I can spell this out very simply for you. Each one of those days is Also designed to indirectly support one of the other

adaptations I'm trying to accomplish. So let me explain in short. form and if you want more detail, I can give you more detail. Might be Training week starts on Sunday because Sunday sits

leftmost on the calendar. Sunday I Make it up. Focused effort to move as much as possible ideally outdoors. I'm thinking Endurance.

I Essentially you want to be like a mule. I'm just thinking, be like a mule. I actually have this shirt. That's gonna be that's gonna be in the headline of this episode. Yeah, exactly. I actually have this shirt that I sometimes like to wear on those days. It's not a black button down shirt, but it has a picture of a sloth and it's crossing its three sloth fingers like Wolverine. And I get that's like what I'm trying to embody. I'm trying to embody the sloth. So what I'll do on that day is because sometimes it's a social day.

with other people in my life. If I'm on my own, I'll throw on a eight or ten pound weight vest. They have these thinner ones now that aren't these mirror vests that You know, don't look like you're uh in law enforcement or uh you're trying to Pretend you're in the SEAL teams, which I I'm not and never was. But they have these thinner ones that sit a bit more flush. I forget the brand name now, but I don't have any relationship to them. I'll get it for you, but I really like this one.

And I'll head out for a Probably a seventy five minute to a ninety minute. Slow jog. With some hills and I'll try and nasal breathe the whole time. I'll often listen to a podcast or a book. Sometimes I'll just let my mind drift. That's if I'm on my own.

If I'm with other people, what I will do is I'll fill up a backpack with a bunch of heavy stuff. Usually some water in there too. And drink it as I go. And I'll do three or four or five hours of just hiking. And just trying to be outside as much as possible.

The Specific goal of that day is endurance. Just keep going and and what I notice is because of the other things I do in the previous days that Ten or twenty minutes.

Which I That come at the start really suck. Like I either want to go faster or like these little aches and things. But what's amazing is somewhere in that twenty five, thirty minute. Period.

you start to feel really good. You actually start to adapt to it. Right then. You can go, Okay, this is about the heart rate I'll use. This is about the breathing rate. So this is what is happening at that point. Yeah. Physiologically. Yeah. Or neurologically or both. Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned neurologically. I think physiologically they're the standard things that happen during exercise. You're getting warmer. Yeah, so joints are More fluid. Your cardiovascular system.

Is Able to fuel the relevant muscles, but not You're not shuttling too much fuel to specific muscle groups, et cetera, because of course I could be stressed when I start that. I could be relaxed, I could be tired, depending on how well slept the night before. But neurologically, what happens is

Really important. And we know this from data. What you're starting to do is you're starting to incorporate what are called central pattern generators. Central pattern generators are what allow you to engage in a repeated movement without voluntary attention to it. Very different than you know, squatting or front squatting or doing curls or something where you're trying to focus on each up.

It's like the autopilot button appears on your steering wheel after thirty minutes. That's right. And at that point your mind can really attend to other things. And Of course as your body warms up you're also Able to achieve

Much more. output. So you you actually are getting Better and more efficient. As y you progress. Now that that's weird. Most exercise doesn't work. It is weird, but as a uh intrepid pseudo endurance athlete who's at least really embraced this ski touring. I mean I did I've done a lot of it in the last six weeks.

The first thirty To forty five minutes. Are generally terrible for everybody. And then you click into a rhythm and you feel like you've accessed an extra set of batteries.

Yeah. It's neural. And I think Andy would agree it's neural. You're engaging the proper amount of what are called upper motor you have upper motor neurons and what lower motor neurons lower motor neurons reside in the ventral spinal cord. They're the ones that degenerate in ALS. They're the ones that

Fortunately, most people don't degenerate and Cause contractions of the muscle fibers. they are directed by upper motor neurons, which are the ones in your brain that allow you to generate voluntary movement. However the upper motor neurons and the lower motor neurons are happy to engage in a

Central pattern generator. Type circuit. If you carry out something repetitively for long enough. So as you were able to

take your mind off of the the voluntary parts of the movement, it just becomes Easier. And What you end up finding is that your system becomes very, very good at doing, you know, for me it's small steps or you know, or jogging. I'm not going excruciingly slow, but For some people it seemed really slow.

But That run or that long waited hike. Accomplishes the endurance piece. Yeah.

Checks off the box of the zone two cardio requirement. Not all of it for the week, but a lot of it. And for the lay folks out there, zone two would be you could have a conversation, but you really don't want to. That's right. As Peter might describe it. Yeah. And Peter's big on doing Long Sunday rucks he throws on a rucksack. 'Cause he's tougher than me. Well, you're doing the same thing. You're just filling it full of water and other heavy. I have a feeling his rock sack is heavier than mine. P Peter is I've trained with beer. Peter Peter likes to push himself. These Sunday long slow jogs or hikes Are really for my mind as much as they are for.

my body and I and I'm convinced that they also carry over to My ability to endure boring stuff during the week, but also it you just my ability to work longer. For longer bouts. Okay, so that's Sunday.

Also gets me outside a lot. And oftentimes on Monday, because of the constraints of the work week. I'm not going to be able to be outside as much as I would like. So you get a lot of sun and movement on Sunday. You feel pretty terrific on Monday. Let's just kind of yearmark what we Or go back to that earmark earlier, which is that the state that we're in on Monday has a lot to do with what we did on Sunday.

So I'm trying to optimize for Monday in some ways too. But it's really about endurance. Then Monday Is The goal for me is to train my legs. Just Get a leg workout on Monday. First of all, I just like the way that sounds to myself, like leg workout on Monday, but it also sets up the work week really nicely.

Here's why. I'm gonna train my legs. the way that's always worked best for me for training, which is a warm up and then two to three, maybe four hard sets. Kind of Mike Mence or It's not with four straps and all of that, but

What we're talking about is warming up. And then Doing hard sets that are heavier or more repetitions than the last time. And just so I'm clear, are we talking about multiple sets of the same exercise, single sets of four different exercises? What are we talking about?

We're talking about Two to four sets, but usually Two to three. Of two exercises per Muscle group.

I'll explain what that is in a moment. I should mention that the reason for training legs is that Everyone should train legs. Yeah, large muscle groups. I'm trying to maintain some lower body strength or build Lower body strength.

And explosiveness. The data that I see on longevity And just simply ability to perform different sports and to just feel strong throughout the body. Strongly rooted in the legs.

So don't skip leg day. Legs and hips. Yeah, exactly. Feed the wolves. It's kind of funny how glutes have become the new biceps. You know, like this is like what I heard, like glutes are the new biceps. Growing up this was not the case. You know, it was like uh nineties, everyone was like these like wafy you know, I grew up with uh I went to a school of like waify hacky sacker dudes with like the flowy hair. I wasn't one of those. All the girls like those guys, a bunch of skateboarders, you know, the skinny skateboarders. And it was that kind of waif era, you know. I don't know what's what it is now. It doesn't matter, but train your legs, folks. Having strong legs. Or learn a hacky sack. Exactly for Hacky Zack. I'm sure that's a great skill for the mind for other reasons. So the nineties. The nineties are coming back popular in and above. Yeah, you see the youngsters with the Nirvana shirts. That's it's all coming around. Amazing. What was old is once new again. Exactly. Those are good years. So good years, bad clothes so

Monday is really about getting that leg workout in to make my whole body strong. And what exercises do you perform? So it's it's walk in Oftentimes I'll do calf work. Because unlike you. I need work there. Oh, I need calf work. I need calf work. That was the weak link in the chain for all the winter sports I've been doing for the last six weeks. Yeah, I I definitely do a lot of cab work. Actually, so I'll just walk through it. I'm really big on tip raises. I start I warm up with tidb raises. Training the Tibbraises meaning like uh the Tibbialis interior. Yeah like dorsiflexion, raising your toes towards your knee. Yeah, you be em so this is a huge addition

My program I'm a huge fan of Ben Patrick and he's overtoes guy. As he calls himself on Instagram. I started doing Tib work about two years ago, seriously doing Tib work. So Tibus raises you can do this also leaning against a wall.

At an angle. with your back against the wall and your feet out in front of you with your heels on the ground and touching your toes to the ground and then lifting them up for repetitions of twenty five to thirty. Or if you can have a tibialis. Tibber's machine as they're called. That's great.

I warm up with Tibwork why? Training Might Tibbs. As they're called.

has Tibs of the device as well. Uh definitely. makes the calf work more effective. Never could grow.

Calves are getting my calves strong. Gotten them you know, substantially bigger and stronger by training Tibbs. But more importantly, perhaps Helps posture, got rid of my right side sciatica. I always had this right side. kind of leaning in pain.

I'm gonna get teased for saying this. For me, anyway, I can run like a beast now. No knee pain, no back pain, no shoulder pain. I can just run and run and run. And so the training your tips turns out to be key. And it turns out it has everything to do with the We'll avoid jargon here. Bring your toe closer to the kneecap as you generate your stride. Not having the floppy feet. So if you lay down at your night and your toes are just kind of flopping towards the end of the bed. Your tips are weak. A lot of people with knee issues have weak tips. Well, hold on hold on. So if you're in the bed, you got your sheets and blankets on top and your feet are flopping forward. Are you sleeping like a GI Joe figure with your

Toes pulled up to your knees. No. No. I just mean that if your toes are in a state of kind of like flaccid relaxation, if your if your feet are flacid, flacid toes not good. Red light. A lot of people who run are smacking their feet against the ground. You know, Ben cued people to this Tibwork, okay work is great for the calves, it's great for the knee, it's great for the hip. That's all very clear. And I think just a lot of people have overtrained their Calves.

And not balance it out with tip work. It would be like doing a lot of bicep work and not a lot of tricep work. Or a lot of quad work, a lot of not a lot of hamstring work. So you have to work both sides of the The limb. And I think our friend Kelly Starrett would agree. Tib work has changed everything for me posturally. I have no pain any longer.

Kelly Starrett. People should look'em up. Because He is a large man. Very his quadzilla. He's two thirty, maybe.

Former high level. Competitive kayaker. Think he celebrated his fortieth birthday by doing a standing back flip, running an ultra and something else. And

He's a really good skier. I just want to say it really upsets me that he has no discernible physices. It's very irritating. And a nice guy. Yeah, and a nice guy. And a nice guy. Uh um yeah, he's very, very strong. Six hundred pound deadlift. Yeah, he's a he's a easy unit to be so tip work. So I start with Tib raises, so it's gonna be a couple of warm ups, maybe a twelve rep warm up, an eight rep warm up. And then I'll do you know three sets. Per Tibet.

of anywhere from six to ten reps. Okay. Andy Galpin told me in the literature supports, people like Brad Schoenfield and others have shown that For hypertrophy for muscle growth.

Six to thirty reps. Anywhere in there can get you. hypertrophy if you go to failure and if you go hard. I personally like to keep my Workouts.

resistance workouts an hour or less. So I make sure that I like to train in the More or less the five to ten repetition range for strength and for hypertrophy. And I'm kind of going for a mix of both. So I train Tibbs, then I do sled or standing calf raises. Same thing, two to four sets.

Five to eight, maybe ten repetitions. Are these sets to failure? These are sets to failure. And Long ago I had gift of learning from the great Mike Mencer and these are sets to failure. Like I can't budge.

Another micro inch. But I'm not quaking and I'm not breaking form. I'm trying to keep everything nice and taut and rigid because I just I can't afford an injury. this point, not because I'm a competitive feet. No flaccid feet. Yeah. I'm telling the Tib work is a game changer.

And knees over toes guy Ben Patrick is the one who's been Teaching people that yes, everyone can dunk. Most everyone can dunk. He does like dunks into back bends and all this stuff and Largely.

hinges on tip work and quality posterior chain work like things like Nordic curls. So I'm training calves. That takes about ten, fifteen minutes total. I try and move relatively quickly through that. So two to three minutes rest, maybe four if I'm going for a heavy set. Then I'm weaker in the hamstrings than I am in my quads. So I do Two warm ups and then two to four working sets of

Lying like curls. Very standard stuff. Line leg curls meaning on a machine. Yeah, on a machine. Not like reverse. Yeah. Like a like a Nautilus machine. Not seated. Doesn't work for me. Just lying like curls. And not the Hoist machines that move with you to make it easier. No. And maybe the occasional force strap if somebody's there.

To help me. Then I go do Two to four sets, but typically three of glute ham raises. Which is an incredible exercise. The equipment isn't in every gym, but I'm doing three or four sets of glue ham raises.

going slow and you know, this is basically like if you were gonna do a deadlift. Everyone knows what a deadlift is, but now take the ground and rotate it ninety degrees and make it the wall. That's what a glute hammerase really is. It allows you to do a deadlift. But then at the top, do a leg curl. So if you think about it that way, like you just tilted the the ground, you just rotated it counterclockwise nine degrees. We'll get we'll get a link to YouTube video, folks. Exactly. Glue hambraises are great lower back, so entire posterior chain. So then I'm done with calves and hamstrings and then I'll do

Two or three sets of leg extensions. So maybe a warm up and then two or three sets of working leg extensions, which for whatever reasons are incredibly painful. I hate them. But they work to isolate the quads and then two or th Three sets of working hack squats after a warm up.

Hack squats. Heavy. Heavy, heavy, heavy. And then I'm done. I'm out.

Monday's done. Now this is again Going back to the kind of overall theme, the idea. Why hack squats specifically. versus other forms of squats. Back squats for me, I always got like a internal hip pain. I had every squat coach in the world tell me how to do it better, even tell me I was doing it right, and then I end up with the same thing.

And I don't really care if I can squat X amount of weight. I'm doing it for strength. You're not doing it for powerlifting competition. Doing it for strength and aesthetics. Sthetics just because of some balance. I'm not trying to get huge legs, but I mean I'm Six one two twenty, I sit like more or less right there all the time.

My body fat goes up and now I might gain five pounds or lose five pounds. But like I'm kinda hovering around there. I don't have any interest in being much larger or much more I want to keep my strength, maybe build some as I get older. And So hack squats allow me to put a lot of weight on there and keep my Nice right angle between the hip and my back.

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Q describe for folks just in in case they're gonna go searching for this what is the visual of a hack squad. Hack squat, you're sitting back, your back is against a sled. You're holding the handles up near your ears. forty five degree or ideally if you can find it a thirty degree.

platform. below you. So you are It's Not a leg press, it's a hack squat. Now for people that don't have access to these and unfortunately a lot of gyms don't have them anymore.

Or just don't keep them around for whatever reason. Weighted sissy squats as they're sometimes called can work where you're holding on to a plate and you're Squatting down while holding. Perceptively hard to do if you do it under control and with good technique. And if you're doing your tip work, you've got to be right way to stretch your quads in ski boots, too. If you're going up in Yeah. Well, recently our podcast team took a little ski trip. I was snowboarding and I was

It's been a long time since I've been on a snowboard, but You start to feel how many of these movements translate, as you point out. And I Should say that the Sissy squats.

You know, a lot of people think you can't bring your knee out over your toe. And this is what Ben Patrick has really been trying to impress on people. Look at Skateboarders. Land. Their knees go out over their toes. A foot beyond their toes. Look at

Parkour gymnasts, Olympic weightlifters. This whole like knee can't pass the toe thing is just silly. So You can feel very comfortable and very strong at the bottom. of a one of these sissy squats or hack squats that way. You know, and so the whole purpose of that Monday workout is it's like the opposite of what I'm doing on Sunday. It's get stronger.

maintain s some size, but really get stronger in the legs. And just for people listening who are like For fuck's sake, it's gonna take us six hours to get to Saturday. Part of the reason that I want to dig into this day specifically is because it's so neglected. Mm-hmm. People do not

With a focus on their legs. But the direct and collateral benefits are so numerous that I want to just drill into this. When you look at the literature on cognitive Improvements from resistance training.

It's not from biceps curls. It's not from bench presses. I suppose it could be from things like dips, which are sort of like a upper body squat of sorts especially if they're weighted or with rings or something. But Training the legs is key. And so

As I said before, there are two goals. One is to get the legs stronger. The other is that I'm trying to create A systemic anabolic effect on the body. I was just about to say if you want to lose body fat also, the systemic sort of endocrine slash anabolic effect. from doing this lower body exercise. It's real work. It's significant. It's real work. And

Resting long between the sets, especially the the hamstring and quad work, you know, f four or five minutes. So you start to feel lazy, but you're going all out, you're breathing really hard during After the set. You know, sometimes you feel like you're pass out. I haven't puked from a leg workout yet, which people tell me means I haven't really trained hard. I just say that I just don't have a weak stomach like the rest of them. As Kelly Starr would say, it's like twenty rep squats work just great and you'll puke into a bucket, but you're not gonna be able to do much else for the next week.

If you do them really intensely. Yeah. I mean it's gonna hurt your ass every time you sit on a toilet seat. So you're not gonna be doing a whole lot of basketball very well. Yeah. You know, I I want strong legs. I want a strong body. I want a body that can accomplish endurance and I want the cognitive effects.

So you get that. Systemic anabolic effect. There's another sort of practical reason for doing this on Monday, which is Sometimes I might not train again until Thursday.

And if you trained your legs properly. You can know that you You initiated a number of good processes in your brain and body for made it down payment for the week. You made it down payment. Also, if you think about the neural circuits involved in genering the kinds of movements I just described for the Monday workout, they're fundamentally different than the kinds of movements required for and neural circuits required for generating movement. So the Sunday long workout, they're both legs, you're running on your legs or walking on your legs, of course, but Very, very different. Different muscle fiber types, different

Motor neurons and different range of motion too. Different range of motion. And different mindset required. And keep in mind the entire legwork out takes. Ten minutes of warm up and about fifty five zero minutes of of training. Tuesday is very different. Oh, and by the way, Monday is a is a very heavy workday for me typically. We launch podcasts. I do all my own social media. So I'm I post the assets. I really like doing that, respond to comments.

Dealing with grants, dealing with papers, dealing with So Monday's heavy work day. So getting the legwork out done early on Monday is really key for me. These days I don't Ever really do resistance training? Past.

eleven AM and ideally earlier in the day. And we won't go into whether or not it's fasted or fed or other because I'll I cover that. I have a toolkit where I list out some of that and how different processes layer together and I can Link to that. I would also say If people are like, but wait, I can't start until I know if it's fast or nonfasted, or if I should be swinging a dead cat over my head on Tuesday or Wednesday night's like Just

Get get started. You got plenty to get started. Yeah, I do it fasted, but I drink caffeine first and water. And listen, I usually eat a bit more on the weekend. This is great. Sunday night. Your putting in your fuel sources for your Monday workout. There are all sorts of ways this layers together. For me that's like pizza is the I do love pizza. No cheat days anymore for me, however. I haven't done one in a while. I'm actually thinking of going back on Four Hour Body. Just try it and do it. I said cookies I'll make a very

Embarrassing. Admission which is I am going to be going back on to strict Slow carb. Okay. And so I had these incredible cookies last night. We're not gonna spend a lot of time on this because we do need to get to today. But it was sort of my last hurrah. Four.

Locking down the fort. So yes. I'm getting back on. Let me know. I'll start I'll start with Lots of stories about cheat days. My ex girlfriend I used to do the cheat days together and it At one point because I'll blame myself. We were in Couples therapy.

They were asking like so describe a week for yourself. And she's like, Well and then on Sunday we're eating like eight croissants and then we're doing the this therapist was looking at excuse me I'm like spinning your laughing so hard trying not to laugh. Like what in the world is this? You know, but we had a good time with it. Um she was one of these mutants that could just eat anything, drink anything, and feel fine the next day and you know never never the time. Yeah. So the Tuesday is is very different. Tuesday I don't want to call it a recovery day. But Tuesday I'm doing something really different. First of all, my legs need recovery.

So what I'll do is substantial amounts of deliberate heat exposure and deliberate cold exposure. Yes, I do cold showers in the morning first thing nowadays. Yes, it is A bad idea.

To do Cold water immersion after hypertrophy training. So just for the record. You don't want to get into an ice bath. after hypertrophy training in the six hours after hypertrophy training'cause it can blunt the hypertrophy.

It blocks the inflammation, which is exactly what you want. to trigger the adaptation of hypertrophy. But Tuesday is really about getting the maximum effect of heat exposure and cold exposure. And when I've

Done multiple episodes on each one of those. I learned about deliberate cold exposure from you, so thank you. Tim. I do a protocol which is pretty intense designed to Amplify growth hormone. Stimulate a bunch of mood.

Positive mood promoting Hormones that last not just days but weeks, say the literature. And just get better at it. So I'll do twenty minutes of sauna. Hot sauna. What does hot make? I'm up to like two sixty now. Okay. Two sixty. But I worked up to that. You know, you can check out the Banya. I'll give a plug to these folks. There's SPY eighty eight on Wall Street in in um in New York. They're amazing.

They are incredible. They have a hot question. Very hot. And Archimedes Banya in San Francisco is fantastic. A couple of notes about that one. It's clothing optional. I wear my swim trunks. But um how you gonna show off those glutes? You're working so hard on but it but it is so just know what you're getting into. It's co ed and clothing optional. And it is in Hunters Point Bayview, which is a rough neighborhood. It's a rough neighborhood. Yeah, I wouldn't go for a job. Yeah. Don't leave anything in your car, but don't do that anywhere in San Francisco now. So Twinet in the sauna. Very hot.

Three to five minutes in the cold plunge up to the neck. Back into the sauna for twenty minutes. Back into the cold plunge for three to five minutes. Back into the sauna for twenty minutes. back into the cold plunge for three to five minutes.

It's work. But It's amazing. In the sense that you recover very well from the leg day. You

Generate all the hormone neurotransmitter type of adaptations that one wants. And you get very, very good at tolerating heat and cold. And I should mention during these times, if there isn't someone else there, I'm listening to books. I'm thinking is it I'm putting this work and time to use.

So there's multiple things going on there. Then Wednesday. I do one of two things. I'm either going to do a shorter duration Then Sunday cardiovascular training workout. So I might do

I'm thinking about five minutes of warm up and then about twenty five to thirty minutes of usually running for me. Where I'm just tr trying to get out and Cover as much distance as I can at a fast clip. But steady. So I'm not sprint stop, sprint stop.

That's typically what I'll do on Wednesday, although if my legs are still a little bit sore. That's when I'll train and hear the bodybuilders are just gonna go, Oh, they're gonna scoff. I train what I call torso. What do I do? I try to get

Pushing through the chest and shoulders. I'm trying to pull for the back. Already got my lower back with the glute ham raises. So What I tend to do is

Overhead shoulder presses. After a warm up. Two to three sets, working sets or maybe four. I like ring dips and dips these days. Those are hard for me, but I

Two or three work sets of those. So Chest shoulders. And I'm gonna upset some people here, but I don't

tend to train back every week. I do it every other week because just I have some genetic abnormality where those grow really easily and I can throw proportions off really quickly, but I might do three or four sets of chins. Sort of max rep chins slow. With slow eccentric movements, the lowering as well. Now slow eccentric Four seconds, ten seconds, what are we talking about? Yeah, for

Usually about Four five seconds. And then slowly pulling up, contracting whatever muscle group. So all of the movements are done. Trying to move as much weight as possible as quickly as possible. on the concentric phase and then lowering it.

Anywhere from two to four seconds, got loading it like a spring and then trying to explode. I want strength, I want explosiveness, and some hypertrophy sneaks in because I'm working in that. five to eight rep range. So that's what I call torso because it's chest shoulders. Back. Every other week I'll throw in those chins.

And I think everyone has a muscle group like this where If they train it just grows like a weed. But I wanna keep proportions, right? strength proportions as well.

And I do train my neck that day as well. I know you wrestled. I can tell very easily looking at somebody. whether or not they need network or not.

If your neck comes down right where your jaw is, you don't need to do a lot of neck work. You don't look like a head placed on top of a little neck. Your neck is actually you know, layered Hamilton's neck is out to the the lobes of his ears, genuinely. Right. Anyway, great board too. He trains his neck quite light, broke his neck surfing and Years ago. So

Having a strong neck, why is that so important? Well It's important because you want a strong spine, and it's the upper portion of your spine. The other thing that I noticed that it does is it completely changes my psychology. to train my neck.

I just naturally stand more upright. I find it easier to look people in the eye. It's not hard for me to look people directly in the eye when I speak to them, but I find I just have like my posture and presence is just better. in a chair or standing when I train my neck. And I think it's because my head isn't Let's just use the word again. It's not flaccid falling of the chin towards the chest. That word just freaks everybody out. You don't want flacid feet, you don't want a flaccid neck.

So network is very important. How do you work your network? Yeah. I actually recently bought I've been thinking about it for decades. I bought a four way neck machine. And it's actually I got it. Wait, you got the full or we next. I was gonna get like a hammer or one of these giant contraptions. I actually bought And look, do your own work, folks, because you can hurt yourself on these things if you get too aggressive too quickly. I bought a four way deck machine on Amazon for three hundred fifty bucks. I was like, you know what, let me try this before spending like

Five grand. Works great. Yeah. Yeah, nothing fancy, but it's not. You have great proportions. I mean w why do I say this it's not just about aesthetics, it's about In general, balanced proportions are synonymous with balanced strength.

Which is synonymous with not getting injured. You know, one of the things that looks ridiculous and frankly is ridiculous to see these guys with Big delts, wide shoulders, you know, long clavicles. And Their head is placed on this little sticks. Well, and they look especially ridiculous. There's no other word for it in street clothes. It looks mutant.

And not in the good sense. So strong neck is great. Strong neck has helped me also avoid injuries in a number of sports, it's life insurance if you do anything any kind of martial art. Or

You drive a car, you know, been rear ending a car and felt fine, you know, a little bit of neck soreness, but train the upper spine and lower spine. So I do some neck work at the end, and the way I do it is. Take a plate. Wrap it in a towel, so you know in with an imprint of the weight number on your forehead and I usually lie on my side.

And I'll do it somewhere in the 10 to 15 repetition range. Oh, you should do one light warm up and then three work sets. How do you hold it on your head? You just rest it there. Also works your oblique somewhat. I'll do it. So you're on a you're on a bench or on the bench. Yeah. On a stair. You have to be careful, you know, especially getting into and out of the movement. That's how you often get injured. And then I'll lie on my stomach, and this is probably the most important one. And I'll put the plate behind my head again wrapped in a towel.

And do head raises. You're trying to get your head sitting on top of your shoulders as it's supposed to. 'Cause everyone now is kind of bent over in this kind of C shape. And no one's nerdy enough, except my good friend Brian McKenzie, who cares enough about his posture. Shout out to Brian's amazing work and breath work and human performs he when he texts he uses his phone up near his eyes I've seen that. So good. No one else does that, Brian. Um so the the neck work comes at the end, but is absolutely critical. And whenever I don't do it for a week or two out of laziness or

Or just Some other reason. I start getting postural things you start noticing elsewhere in your body. I I find and this could just be I don't think it's placebo'cause it's not something that I expect, or maybe it is now, but not initially. Fewer headaches.

Just better circulation. Yeah. And better mobility also, especially if you're spending a lot of time in front of a computer. My rotation even though I'm not actively training with resistance the rotational aspect, left, right, turning your head.

the uh mobility of the neck, sort of in all dimensions of the movement of the head seems to improve as well for me. And for folks just one option I want to throw out there. If you train with someone or can train with someone, manual resistance. With a towel or just like pressure on the head. And doing it really slowly, like super slow style, kind of like ten seconds, ten seconds. is very effective also.

I can't overstate the importance of neck training. Now for women Who often don't want The aesthetic of a larger neck. Just use it. I would say lighter weights or or hand based resistance, you still want that strength and balance.

Some women might want a big neck, but in general The two things that can and you've done s you put some of this in the fore. Just putting it out there, ladies. Um one thing that in terms of aesthetics, w the two things that I think can really Throw off the Most commonly desired

female aesthetic by women from what they tell me'cause I trained with. number of women is excessive trap work, upper trap work,'cause rounded shoulders and then larger neck. Some people might want that. But in general

That tends to be avoided. Fruit. Guys, I think I'm not going to be able to The network is It's so essential.

And for women it it's essential for a strength and protection of the joints reason. I will also say this, and anyone who wants to challenge me on this will do it accordingly. It actually increases Your confidence. And the reason is When you're upright. you embody a different stance. I'm a big believer that the physical stances we embody have everything to do with the psychological stances we embody and vice versa.

It's not just about standing up straight, being able to Stand up straight. Look. People in the eye is it's Something that is assisted by actually having a head that

That isn't flopping forward all the time. So this is a a real thing. From a number of standpoints. If for whatever reason I do the cardio workout that I mentioned, the twenty five or thirty minutes of running.

That's what I do, but some people could might do it on the assault bike or something like that, or or cycling or row or on the Wednesday, then I'll do that. Weight workout I just described torso on Thursday. Or I'll swap them. So there's some flexibility built into the week, travel, et cetera. By the way the cardiovascular workouts can be done in the morning or the evening.

But I always prefer to do them in the morning and just get it done with. Then Friday is a really important day because Friday is the day that I do a short workout, usually only about three minutes of warm up and about twelve minutes of training. And The goal is to get my heart rate as high as I possibly can. I learned this from Andy Galpin.

Just increasing VO two max, getting those really fast choice sh muscle fibers, my favorite Way to do this. Is I'll get on the assault bike. The ones with the handles with the fan. which is not designed you cool, it's designed to create resistance, folks. And do twenty second on sprint, 10 second rest, 20 second on, 10 second rest. Tabata. Tabata type thing for six to eight rounds.

And then what I like to do is take a band and tie it to something. Like a chin up bar or something, and I'll squat down and jump. I'll do it. as high jumping as I possibly can, but actually control the E centric. I'm holding the band as I come down.

And so learned from Peter Atia, I've learned from Andy Galpin that our ability to jump and land. is strongly correlated with physical longevity. Or you could do broad jump. So you could do a bunch of broad jumps, you could do some hit work out.

And then I'm just showered and out the door to go do my work. Or to work. So it's a really short workout. And then Saturday Is the fun one. Because I'm still Enjoy this. I'll go into the gym in the morning. Usually it's mid morning.

And I'll do small muscle groups. Biceps. Triceps. Rear delts.

I'll do another Tib and calf workout a little bit lighter than the one on leg day'cause leg day's coming in two days and the next day I'm doing that long hike. So That day is really to round out the smaller muscle groups that need work. And I have short torso long arms and so torso muscles grow very easily for me, get stronger easily, long arms, but you know, they require a little bit more work. So I like to do a dedicated day for that. Same way, warm up.

Plus two to four work sets of two to three exercises. I always include dips at some point during the week. Bench tips, tricep extensions with cables, basic stuff, preacher curls. So very basic stuff. But

I just want to backtrack one step because I failed to say that Friday the idea is to get that VO two max up. But guess what? It's also designed to indirectly hit the legs. We hit legs on Monday. And they've recovered, we now know that protein synthesis maximizes after these training workouts. at about forty eight hours and then starts to taper off. Now you read that, you hear that a lot, especially on social media, and people think you have to hit a muscle group every 48 hours. But no, you hold on to the protein synthesis you generated for another couple of days. So that Friday sprint on the bike workout or sprint on a field workout and jumping.

Is indirectly targeting the quads. And Calves and hamstrings. And so you're keeping them online. So when you hear all this.

You might think, gosh, that's a lot of working out, but we're really talking about is a long hike. With friends or family on Sunday. Or by oneself. Ninety minutes to three hours. You're

Talking about an hour workout on Monday morning. Talking about sitting in the sauna and cold on Tuesday. You're talking about Running for twenty or thirty minutes on

Wednesday. Talking about doing some dips in overhead presses. Maybe some chins. A little bit of neck work. On Thursday.

You're talking about doing a twelve minute workout on Friday. And you're talking about going to the gym for an hour, hour and fifteen minutes. more casual kind of I don't want to call it what it is, but you could call it a vanity workout. I t I call it that to Joe Rogan and he was like, That's ridiculous. Bicep is key muscle group and I was like And he's like, Well, you know, when you're grappling and you're about to choke somebody out, you know I was like, Okay, well, that's you. But he's absolutely right. You know, if you ever fixed uh yeah, actually I I chip my tooth really hard once by

I was trying to fix something with a wrench and you're you're pulling with your bicep and your arm toward you and completely broke loose and you know, chip my tooth. But Keep your head out of the way. The um good thing you turn your neck. Yeah. This is mostly a falsy, the this one front tooth. Um I could have knocked myself out. But the but you know, there's a lot of things that you know bicep is good for, forearm strength is good for. So Joe is absolutely right. But I think that when you look at all of that, it's not that much time in the gym. You can do all All of that at home. There are ways to do the leg workout even at home or in natural terra for the hikes and things. That's the the schedule.

And if you Think about that schedule each day you're accomplishing is like endurance. Leg strength. Cold and heat adaptation and all the neural stuff that goes with that. Torso to keep the torso strong.

But Here again we can say the torso work is indirectly hitting biceps and triceps. Then being able to run a couple of miles is a good skill. And what you find is that if you trained your legs properly and you give them enough rest and the Cold.

And heat really helped too. You are so strong on that twenty or thirty minute run. Your tips are strong, you know, you've no floppy feet, no back pain. You're running with with vigor. And you go, Wow, like This is great. And so what I've noticed in the last

Twenty months or so is that. I continue to get stronger and better in each of these areas. And supposedly that's not supposed to happen. I'm forty seven. Atia the other day said, You know, you and I were both far more physically robust when we were in our teens. I was like, speak for yourself. I was getting injured all the time.

My body hurt. I was unhappy. Then again, I was skateboarding then, so I was slamming a lot, but I find that This routine has really helped me.

Because I think It takes into account slower recovery. That is just me. My nervous system doesn't recover that quickly. And

It also embraces the fact that our nervous system and muscoskeletal system Can Train for different adaptations. Simultaneously across the week. Now the one cap on everything that's vital

And again here a hat tip to Charles Polquin is if you start Training for longer than sixty minutes with resistance training. cortisol levels go up, you start feeling lousy, you're not sleeping well, you can't s or you find you can't sleep enough.

And you don't recover. So keeping the re the workouts relatively short has really helped. And then the final thing is that I'm a scientist slash, I guess now podcaster. And I'm not interested in being a competitive athlete, so I don't want to spend all my time training.

I really want to be able to get the most out of my training routine to feel much better than I would otherwise when I'm doing Cognitive work. And I'm a big believer that this workout schedule

Captures most, if not all, of the neural circuits that Perhaps the one thing missing from it is there isn't anything in there that's really about dynamic movement in multiple planes. I'm not doing jujitsu. I sometimes play badminton, you know, and so I think badminton's fun. I'll do an hour of play type. stuff, non competitive, low stakes stuff. I'm a big fan of the book Play It Away. I think I learned about that book from your podcast. Yeah. Charlie Charlie Hawn. Yeah.

You know, having an hour a week where you're not trying to get fitter, you're not trying to burn calories or accomplish any adaptation. You're just trying to play and enjoy Your ability to engage in low stakes, maybe competitive, but generally low stakes type movement where you're very focused. Which is w how I define play. That's also great.

But that's not Really exercise. That's Wait. Yeah. Yeah, there's a difference between Sometimes. Recreation.

and exercise. If we're talking about provoking adaptations. So I just want to underscore a few things. One is you talked about nervous system or you know central nervous system C and S recovery, which is I just wanna Make note of that because I think a lot of folks Think in terms of muscular recovery, but not nervous system. Recovery.

And depending on what you're doing, I mean certainly that's very important. Question on a few things that I just took notes on So Ben Patrick, knees over toes. Might need to Yeah, he's trying to I have questions about

Tibor. But before I get to that, maybe you can answer the question that I have. You mentioned Nordic curls. In passing. the hell are Nordic curls. Yeah. Nordics are a a great semi substitute for the glute ham rays.

Glute hem raise allows you to fix your feet. And then Put your head down towards the floor. and go up into a back raise and then into what's effectively a hamstring curl. It hits the whole posterior chain.

And the lower back. Nordic curls. Or when um you either brace your heels underneath a heavy piece of equipment. Or you use a lifting belt and strap yourself to a bench, or someone strong enough or heavy enough. Hold your ankles down and you're lowering down. And you're touching

your hands to the floor and coming back up or You can do the Ben Patrick, Ben Bruno. Ben Bruno is another excellent Instagram trainer and professional trainer. He trains Justin Timberlake and a bunch of other kind of famous not kind of famous people. Justin Timberlake's not kind of famous. He's famous. And he can do the cookie challenge, which is to put a cookie in your mouth and dip it in milk without putting your hands to the floor. He's he's not it's interesting, Ben is it deceptively strong because

He's not that large. But he's very, very strong. Ben Bruno trained you as his few break dancers. You wanna see some strong people who are deceptive. Yeah. The yeah, B boys, B girls. So Nordic curls are great. There, there are now machines that or an apparatus that you can buy where you can fix your heels under something. Do Nordic curls even a portable one for when you travel. Oh no. That goes under the door. Ben Patrick, AK knees over toes guy. He has a system called A T G training. I confess I didn't subscribe to A T G'cause I'm I've got what I need now. But

A bunch of those Portable. Que. type things are available through him. And I think he's really

change the way that I think about how the whole body moves and works. He insists that he can get me dunking a basketball. Which Who knows, maybe that should be the challenge before our next conversation our next conversation. So Nordic curls, I unbeknownst to me, and because there's some other term for this particular exercise, but I have a piece of Sornex equipment that actually is sits in my garage and is for this exact exercise. Great.

If I had to pick just three exercise I will never just pick three, but if I had to pick three exercises to do and I could only do those. It would be Glute ham rays slash Nordic curl, something for the posterior chain. It would be Ring dips.

'Cause then I could throw in some leg razors too or something like that. I could just make it multi compound movement. And I would Sprint. Like if that's the only thing I could do. That's what I would do.

Put me in a small prison cell. Knocking wood buttons that doesn't happen. That's what I asked for. Scientists slash podcaster slash inmate. Hopefully not. Listen, I uh we talked last time. I've I've been behind locked doors before. It's not an experience I want to recreate. No. So on the tip work side, this may be a question for Ben or someone more qualified, but one of the challenges That I've had. For decades. Shin splints.

And my dorsal flexion is actually seemingly From a strength perspective. Pretty decent. Ankle mobility also pretty decent, although the left ankle's been broken so many times that it's it's a little crunchy. But

I have done training with this fellow named Jersey Gregorick, who's uh holds multiple world records in Olympic weightlifting or he held. Also deceptively strong. Incredibly strong. I met him and his wife, right? She's in yellow. She also has world records in Olympic weightlifting. And just to give you an idea, folks, he's gotta be in his I wanna see probably sixty seven, sixty eight now, and he can do a full Barbell snatch as to heals while on top of an Indo board, which are those balance boards on top of a cylinder. Very dangerous. And I don't recommend trying to replicate that, but he's quite a physical specimen. So the point of all of that is that my ankle mobility is pretty good. My dorsiflexion strength seems pretty good, but I always feel like the front of my shins are about to explode. Someone could just

Pop them like a balloon with a pen. And I've not figured out a way to Address this. Yeah. I vote Tibwork. I used to have terrible shin splints and also pain in my shins just from skateboarding, taking so many shinners, as they're called. From doing a little bit of tie boxing when I was in High school and college and

And thinking I was being smart by conditioning my shins with Coke bottles, like I heard they did it over in Thailand. Just made a mess of my shins. The Tib raises have changed everything. Also given me I used to think I had flat feet. But I have flat feet. That's a my source of my problem and I d do all this toe strengthening, foot strengthening stuff. All these people in the yoga community in San Francisco were like, Oh, I'm gonna train your feet. Turned out I don't have flat feet. It turns out that the tip my Tibs were weak. And so the foot wasn't so resting in the right position.

So For me. It's been a game changer. Also, you don't need any specialized equipment. There is that movement of Resting your shoulders against a wall.

You're in a plank, you're making your your body rigid, your heels are on the ground about a foot out in front of you, and then you're touching your toes down. to the floor and then back up. And you're just doing that while you're on the phone. You do twenty five or thirty repetitions of that. Your Tibbs. So it's as if you're basically a statue, right? You can't articulate any of your joints minus your ankles. Right. And you're just standing, what, like a foot and a half, two feet away, and then kind of shoulders against the shoulders then at least the wall getting your shoulders to the wall, but you're kinda you're leaning like a book against a Right. Bookend. Right. And then moving your toes. All right. Yeah. I'm in. Yeah.

Yeah,'cause I I am also in the Apparently. I I think this is possible, the lying to mys about the flat feet part. Yeah. I was convinced I had flat feet. You want to hear something really wild that has nothing to do with fitness, but has everything to do with metabolism and the obesity crisis? Wild metabolism and obesity and tell me.

There's a Very important paper published from the University of Houston. This last year where They had people sitting. Or

A couple hours. And every Two or three seconds, they would keep their toe on the ground and they would do what was effectively a seated calf raise. Think about the The jumpy kid in class or when you've had too much coffee. Yeah. Okay. They're doing it slowly and they're measuring the contraction of the soleus. Right. The longer, flatter muscle of the calf underneath the gas truck.

Yeah. Turns out that muscle is very unique. It does not use the same fuel sources as other muscles in the same way. It's not so much a glycogen dependent muscle.

It is designed of course to carry you very long distances or No, it's an endurance muscle. They had people do this while seated for a couple of hours a day. And they looked at Glucose uptake.

And they looked at overall Insulin management. And there was a Significant and meaningful improvement. In

Insulin sensitivity. Now this is not about caloric burn. This is about essentially doing exercise while seated. Now I put out some stuff about this on social media and people understandably laugh, like, Oh, that's ridiculous. First of all, they call it a solace pushup.

in the study, you're like, that's a C to cat phrase, but most people don't know what a C to cat phrase is. So you know, gym rats, you know, you're only laughing to yourselves. Um I throw that myself in the night. I mean you know it's true most of the internet. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But What's very interesting is this is something that a lot of people can do. Who are Trying to improve their metabolic

status. Окурс це що екерсі. But As the paper describes, it's no surprise why this works. You know, were we quote unquote designed. to walk around more or move more during the day. I don't know. I wasn't consulting at the design phase, but we were definitely moving around a lot more.

Than we probably are now. But it's very interesting that this muscle small it's only one percent of the body's total musculature. Can account for Well over Fifteen percent, well over it depends on the person, but at least fifteen percent of your total

Energy expenditure. during the day. That's insane. So if you're on a plane, like this thing of bouncing your knee or doing this thing again is actually a meaningful, it's not a replacement for exercise, but in terms of its metabolic impact. is meaningful. And I I find that really interesting and perhaps of all the things that we'll discuss today. If you're unwilling to try that, then you know, then your bar for entry is just way too high. Right. Exactly. So have a few extra cups of coffee, folks. Exactly bounce those knees. Exactly. And don't get on kids about bouncing their knees in class. Teachers. I was one such kid. All right. We've covered

A bunch of exercise. And number of things as fundamental pillars that you've doubled down on. Anything that you've changed your mind on. Okay, well one of them was the fact that

I always believed That we couldn't that I had flat feet. I also believed that we couldn't obtain multiple exercise adaptations at once. We can't. Because I track my numbers. I'm not super neurotic, but I keep a you know handwritten training journal or at the end of the day I'll I generally can remember what I did in the gym and didn't do. We're on a run. And I'm Improving over time. So that's great. I I thought I would If he had hit.

My peakability and I was it was all downhill from here, but I Feel much better. How do you track if you track like the Tabata, for instance, are you looking at wattage, are you looking at anything or is it more subjective? We're all I tend to add another round or two. I just do a little bit more work or go a little bit harder. I tend to like to do things pretty subjectively when it comes to exercise. Like I

By calendar We'll say for instance Like for legs, it'll say. Tib calf him. quad and I'll put level anywhere from level one to level 10. Level 10 would be the workout with like four straps and drops. That's just all out. I rarely, if ever, do those.

But typically I'm trying to make that work out at least a level 7.5 to nine. And Generally the shorter workouts are the harder ones. Occasionally just because of schedules or I'm not feeling great. I'll do that Wednesday run and it'll end up being a

You know. fifteen minute jog or something and I'll just say level five lame. Or something like that. Like I didn't you know, or something like that. You know, and then push a little bit harder the next day. So I'm I'm kind of my own coach. I'm sort of observing myself rather than getting really deep into the metrics, but I'm always trying to put more weight on the bar or go slower with the repetition. Or at a set.

Or a rep or two. Or all three. So let's hone in on Sleep my perennial. Favorite and the bane of my

well being depending on the quality. But Last we spoke. I remember you spoke about I think it was magnesium three and eight. Hapogenin and there may have been one or two other lucky charms in there. Right. Theanine.

Are those still the holy trinity for your sleep, or do you have other things that you've added, things you've subtracted? What is your current cocktail with the Understanding. That As much as people want to fix everything with silver bullets. Light exposure.

in the morning, exercise, all these are contributors. to good good quality sleep. I still use the same sleep stack, so it's magnesium three and eight. Spell T H R E A. E O N A T

And apogenin'. And I've added Every once in a while I'll take nine hundred milligrams of myoinositol. My own acetol has it. Rich literature associated. Mayo is in muscle?

Why why my own? Yeah, it must be. It must be. So it's amino acid. It can be a neurotransmitter mimetic. Yeah. Extensive literature on inositol for improving insulin sensitivity. There's also something called D chyro inositol, which is

important for female fertility. We can talk about that. But what I've added in the nine hundred milligrams of myo and acitole for is I do sometimes like many people wake up at Three in the morning. To use the restroom.

And Although there's a simple solution to that that I just recently learned that really works and I'll share it in a moment. Catheter. No. Yeah, it helps me fall back asleep after that. And I am tracking my sleep'cause I sleep on an eight sleep.

And that has good sleep tracking. What Atia has taught me that A lot of the wristbands and rings for tracking sleep, while they can be quite good and are quite good. Whoops and auras being the two most popular ones.

they can get movement wrong because of movement of limbs, whereas the eight sleep seems to really capture Slow wave sleep. Rapid eye movement sleep ratios really well. Yeah, I use both Aceep and Aura at the moment. Yeah, so the um the myonocitole it

has helped quite a bit with that going back to sleep thing. One way to uh not wake up to urinate so much in the middle of the night. I learned from a colleague is It turns out that it's not just how much fluid you drink. Which dictates whether or not you need to urinate,'cause that's sort of a duh. It's also how quickly you ingest that fluid. If you gulp fluid down.

It actually because of the way fluid is absorbed, it actually In the kidney. The way filtration occurs in the kidney, the way it signals to the bladder is that it makes you have to go to the bathroom fairly urgently. So if you have your Final beverage of the day, sip it. Don't call it.

Yeah. For morning hydration, the opposite is true. You actually want to gulp down quite a lot of liquid in the morning. You can absorb quite a lot of liquid in the morning. There's a uh I'm reading this really nerdy review. In nature has these wonderful review series on circadian rhythms and the kidney. Your kidney is not the same organ first thing in the morning as it is at night. So

This is what um circadian biologists have been shouting for a long time. Every organ is this way. But You wanna hydrate pretty heavily first thing in the morning. And then over the day you can titrate. off that liquid. So I'm gonna ask you to pick some favorite children here. You got uh the magnesium three and eight. L theanine. Mm-hmm.

Epigenin which Am I understanding correctly that is effectively Chamomile. T on steroids. High concentration chamomile extract. All right, got it. And then the myo. Inostatol. Myoenostatol. All right. Nine hundred milligrams. Which turns out to be it's a big pill, but turns out to be pretty low dose for

Insulin sensitivity they give and for Depression they give people up to five grams of myo inositol a day. But it's a Mild sedative, so I don't know how people get away with that. I'll take the four the four of those. I will occasionally be so tired of Trazodone before I work out. Yeah. Occasionally I'm so tired that I'll I'll wake up with the pills in my hand or on the nightstand. So I don't think I'm dependent on them in any way. The question is if you could only choose two of those.

Oh, easy. Mag3A and apigenate. Okay. Got it. Yeah. Theonine is not gonna be good for people that have very Robust dreams or nightmares.

'Cause it will increase the How vivid your dreams are. So night walkers, night terrors. That kind of thing. Um for those of you that have Sleepwalking um nightwalkers. Sleepwalking square. Sorry. And I didn't mean to interrupt you. This is something I I'm working on is

My colleague at at Stanford Carol Dweck told me that it's a sign of enthusiasm for the conversation. Oh yeah. No, I so I apologize. Oh, are you kidding? This is uh I mean, I'm not gonna throw stones in my glass house here. I interrupt constantly. But you were talking about the kidneys. You're saying not the same organ in the morning as it is at night. This is what circadian biologists have been screwing from the rooftops and No. That's coming home to roost in these papers that you're reading, or uh maybe it's a meta analysis, I don't know. And you're saying Sipping water at night, or just slower intake, gulping in the morning.

And I I threw your train of thought off the rails. All good. I mean, basically you want to look at the first half of your day very differently than the second half of your day. Morning. Part of your day. You want sunlight. Or bright artificial light.

why it increases cortisol 50% above baseline. You want cortisol high early in the day and you want it low, low, low later in the day. Not because it disrupts sleep, but because it's Late shift of cortisols associated with depression. Screws up your immune system to have it late shifted. Beautiful work from Bob Sapolsk and David Spiegel at Stanford School of Medicine have shown that.

So Hydration. Caffeine. Sunlight. Movement.

Bright light if you can't get sunlight early in the day. Th you really want what are called the catecholamines, which are dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine and You want cortisol, which is a glucose. Corticoid. Elevated in the early part of the day. That's what's going to give you energy, focus, alertness, all that great stuff throughout the day. And then you want to

No. Recent data have shown that If you want to improve your rapid eye movement sleep, why would you want to do that? Well, rapid eye movement sleep is when you get the unpacking of emotions from previous day memories. Yeah. This is your read or listen to the R Usual friend, Matt Walker. Right. I mean, how do you get more rapid eye movement sleep?

high intensity interval training early part of the day or cycling appears to Greatly improved. different stages of sleep as well, compared to running. Although running will be exactly I don't know. I think it has to do with the central pattern generator.

high intensity interval training, I mean you're peddling on the bike or you're sprinting, so it's repetitive, but it's not repetitive for long enough. You're engaging certain brain circuits. And it's going to deplete different neurotransmitter systems. It's gonna engage the endorphin system rather than the just maybe it's I I wonder if it's also a study bias in the sense that it's so much easier. To get

your slaves, aka like undergrads or grad students or whoever recruit in a university setting to sit on a bike. So if you have a hundred studies with bikes and you have five studies with running that maybe it's sort of a selection bias in some respect because there's just such a higher volume of studies. I don't know. I don't know. I love Bicycling.

when I can be upright, you know, think your Dutch bicycle, you know, moving through a city, seeing things optic flow, seeing which we know shuts down the amygdala to some extent suppresses activity. The amygdala is beautiful, you see things, you see people How anyone in the world could want to be hunched over in a partial C position and And pedaling as one is on a road bike. I have zero minus one interest in doing that. It sounds horrible. And then I heard it gives you all these like prostate issues and it can give them Erectile dysfunction, like you know,'cause from the pain they now put grooves in the seats because you know, I I just think like why would anyone be a cyclist? This is terrible. No, hunched over like a seat. And I realize that that you know, I have many friends who are triathlones and cyclists, so I realize there's really an allure there.

moving fast through space feels really good. But also the danger of cars and like Yeah, so cycl riding a bicycle recreationally to me makes sense. as does, you know, walking or running or skateboarding or whatever. But to me, cycling hunched over like that just seems like a dreadful form of of exercise. But that's just me.

to the sublime perhaps. We mentioned a couple of supplements and I don't want to fixate on that, but I follow my own curiosity here. And there's a list here. So on the omegas Because we discussed Omega three fatty acids.

E P A D H A. And I increased my intake. I'm so curious to know because I do observe seemingly a very consistent improvement in mood and sleep.

However, I've tried multiple brands. And I've tried to do the homework and look at the various like certificates of analysis to make sure that I'm not, you know, eating rancid garbage. I end up getting mild nausea after like a week of I suppose higher intake maybe if I'm taking might be getting the amount off, but maybe two grams total, something like that.

In liquid or capsule form? In capsule form. With food or without food. That's a great question. I probably wasn't even paying attention. Although I tend to take Fat with food. So probably with food. Or maybe just before food. I'd be curious to know anyone on the internet if you're listening to this, if you've if you've experienced anything similar, because I see the benefits, and then let's just call it five to seven days in, I just get this like low grade

Nausea, almost like emotion sickness. And then I stop. For a wash out period and then I'm fine. And I'm like, God, this is the fish oil. A bummer. Yeah. Yeah. There's some I mean obviously some great high quality fish oils out there for liquid the Carlson's brands, the ones that that are lemon flavor to make them less fishy.

is gonna be the most cost effective way to get fish oil. has to be refrigerated after opening, but that's definitely the most cost effective way in here. We do have a, you know, supplement affiliate for the podcast, but that's just that it's not them, but that's just the truth. What is your dosage target for Omega threes or EPA specifically? Minimum one gram per day of EPA. Okay. Minimum. Sometimes more. Do you take it in one dose or split doses? I take it it ends up being three

Capsules. With My big meal of the day, which tends to be a midday meal. And

Then I take I w do take a tablespoon of the Carlson's Well. And people uh gasp when I say this, but I actually like it on my oatmeal with salt. Oh it tastes good. I you know, I when I've spent time stir it in like Iceland and Scandinavia, like I've had These little shots of like cod liver oil and so on. I can do that, but on top of the oatmeal. No, I'm telling you it's really good. Oh and I hate sardines.

I despise sardines. I despise anything smoked flavor. I'm really boring. And I Absolutely loathe anchovies, like fishy oil smell. Yeah, I can't like eating fish. Still like star. I like sushi, that's about it. But even there I'm boring. I don't even like the

I'm a good person to go to sushi with because you get all the eel, all the ooni. I just want the yellow tail and the uh And the lead, the least defensive fish available. At least I'm not ordering chicken teryyaki. And just

So people are hearing it from you and not from me. Not to say it's even the same thing. What are the primary benefits that you observe or that are supported by literature either or with the intake of, say, one gram minimum of EPA per day. Mood antidepressant effects. Absolutely clear. And there're so many clinical trials supporting that. People can get away with taking lower doses of antidepressants or even coming off antidepressants. Of course, always check with your psychiatrist before you do that by increasing

They're Omega three intake above one gram per day, even as high as three grams per day. Okay, so question for you. I remember last time we spoke, we chatted a bit about Ability for the gut, let's just say some people refer to it as the second brain to sense the intake

Uh Sugar. Fat. And a handful of other things. What is the mechanism of action by which

The EPA is affecting Mood. Is that known? Or is I think so. It's probably two pronged. One The EPA Is a

Fundamental. structural lipid or neuronal membranes and for the neurons in particular that release neuromodulators such as serotonin and dopamine.

Um Neuropod cells in the gut. They're called. Sense. As you point out, sugar

Essential fatty acids and amino essential amino acids. And signal via the Vegas. to the dopamine centers of the brain. So your gut is subconsciously signaling to your brain what kinds of nutrients are coming into your system. And when you have

A lot of flavorful food. And or high caloric food. But it's not high in nutrients. It sets that system totally out of whack because there's an increase in dopamine for sure. From the taste of the food.

That's not matched by that. subconscious parallel signal. By the way, this is not Woo biology. This is coming from the laboratories of Diego Borges at

Duke University School of Medicine. Charles Zucker, who's a Howard who's Medical investigator at Columbia University has done this for sugar sensing. And a number of other laboratories. We've shown that this pathway from the subconscious signaling from the vagus to the dopamine centers of the brain are driving an an appetite.

However. When these neurons, these neuropod cells in the gut are quote unquote satisfied. They're seeing the The nutrients they want to see.

They signal to the brain. Dopamine release. Within the brain. But they also are signaling satiety. And that's really what you want. So in many ways we are a

Essential amino acid, essential fatty acid foraging machine. It just also so happens. That at least in the short term, sugar will trigger the same pathway. This is also why people who Increasing.

Intake of Omega threes. Get above that one gram per day of EPAs. Or who take small amounts of L glutamine. Reduce their sugar cravings.

You're activating the same neurons giving the alternative stimulus. So the L glutamine is vis vis vis the the neuropods. Likely. Yeah, that hasn't been directly established, but it's long been known that increasing intake of certain essential amino acids. Can reduce Craving for the

Sweet. And whenever people say, How do I kill my sweet craving? Well It's not a conventional approach, but you could take You know, you could get a quality uh branch chain amino acid or essential amino acid powder.

non caloric sweetener or something and fruity taste and mix it in there. People will find, Oh yeah, I don't actually crave chocolate the same way. Or I mean, in my opinion, a little bit of dark chocolate is wonderful every once in a while. So I don't want to give the impression that you're not never supposed to have sugar, but there are people who very much feel a slave to their sugar Cravings. So giving these neurons the alternative stimulus Really helps and you're getting

Effectively the same dopamine release. N this makes sense evolutionarily, why we would crave essential fatty acids and essential amino acids. This is also why you know, I guess the meat eaters won't relate. The non meat eaters won't relate, but

A really great stake is very satisfying. Despite the fact it has no glucose, essentially. There are people who are feel quite good, whether or not they're healthy or not is a We could talk about but who feel quite good.

Just eating steak. No, I'm not One of those people. But if you had to pick up food. that would keep you feeling good and would repair the tissues of your body and would give you enough

That to keep going and Protein synthesis, et cetera, if you had to feed your children, you would give them a steak, you would not give them a sweet potato. And if you look at the amount of food that one eats when given As much meat as they want. Fatty meat in particular. not gross fatty meat, but high quality fatty meat versus

carbohydrates. I mean you just look at You're quite satisfied after a certain amount of protein intake. So I'm not pushing people towards a carnivore diet. I don't follow a carnivore diet, but I do think that Our nervous system.

From the gut to the brain. Is a Is a sensing and foraging system. that subconsciously and lets our brain know, Uhhuh, I've got enough of what I need.

And now I can stop eating if I want to. So we're gonna leapfrog. From Delicious fish. I think the move for me might be to go to Just pure liquid refrigerated.

Try that. I mean who the who the hell knows. But just to just to try something, even if the expiration date looks fine, maybe I just got a couple of bad batches, who knows? Or maybe it's the capsules themselves. I mean there's there's so many things go into these capsule formulas and then there's shelf life and all of that. Gut health overall if It's hard. For most people to do what they need to for their gut.

In addition to all the things to avoid. Like too frequent use of antibiotics and things of that sort. It's pretty clear that one serving of fermented foods a day is not gonna be enough. That you need three or four

Servings of Low sugar fermented food, so Nato for people that can stomach it. You know, sauerkraut kimchi, you know, a good Bulgarian yogurt. I like these really sour Bulgarian yogurt. They're so good. Bulgarian yogurt. Oh, there's this amazing Bulgarian yogurt. You have to try this stuff. It is so good. Except they don't have the full fat one in particular comes in. What makes the Bulgarian yogurt so magical? to remember the name of this brand. We'll put it in the show. It's so good. Um but I don't want people to I have they run out because they only put two or three of these in every Whole Foods. And I'm I'm buying those two or three. So the of the full fat ones. But it's hard for most people to get that much. Low sugar fermented food per day.

And so most people just don't do it. And then high dose probiotics are very expensive, need to be refrigerated. So that's why I think the AG won't checks off a number of boxes there. But if people can in ingest low sugar fermented food, that's gonna serve them really, really well. So so say the data from Justin Sonnenberg's lab and Chris Garter's lab. Enjoy your kilo a day of Nato. Tell me how that goes. It's so slimy. It's so wicked. I mean, that is there are two things that I've yeah, I've lived in Japan and was there as an exchange student, so and

There are two at least well, let's see, three food items that Japanese people find hilarious. To watch foreigners try to eat. Not though is definitely number one. It's just like spider web, cobweb. Stink. It's so

gnarly. I can eat it, but it's not my favorite, even to this day. Ume boche and other types of like pickled super super salty plums and so on. That's another one. And then I would say Uni also. Before especially before it was really making the rounds in the US, like the first time a foreigner would go over and just get like the Seagull Poo on top of the

Sushi Rice so hardcore. Uni is what I'm talking about. Just consistency wise. Very very similar. It just feels like it's uh it's like a tongue. Yeah, it's not my it's not my favorite. Uh I but people but people love it. Some people some people do, and people are told that it's an aphrodisiac. And that's why and so they're the best way to sell anything. That's the way best way to sell anything. That's right.

So I wanted to ask you because I have a couple of notes here. Fidocia agrestis if I'm pronouncing that correctly. But the one I wanna ask you about first is actually if I'm getting the pronunciation. Correctly. Rodiola Rosea? Yeah, Rodiola Rose. All right. Impressive supplement. So please tell me more about this because I have heard

in my conversations with athletes over the years of people using this for various endurance purposes. Altitude acclamation. So rhodiola rosea is a really interesting compound because it falls into this category of what people call adaptogens. But normally when you hear adaptogens, first of all, that's a very vague term. Doesn't actually mean anything.

Specific. It means a An ability to adapt generally or specifically. No one's really pinpointed what that means. But typically the adaptogens are going to reduce cortisol. So for instance, Ashwagandha is a very potent suppressor of cortisol.

There's some evidence it can indirectly in Since those are in the same synthesis pathway. Ashwagan is an adapter.

Ashwagandha. Because it lowers cortisol. Should probably be taking late day, not early day, because you want cortisol high. Ashwaganda. As a cortisol suppressing adaptogen probably also should not be taken in high amounts, not low amounts, but in high amounts, meaning you know, four to six hundred milligrams.

prior to exercise because the whole goal of exercise is to trigger the adaptation through A spike in cortisol. Rodiola rosea is a very interesting compound because it's an adaptogen. In that it greatly reduces perceived effort and allows for greater power output and endurance output, as you pointed out a moment ago.

But it does not do that by suppressing cortisol. So Two hundred milligrams of Rodiella Rosea. prior to say a resistance training workout, or even on one of your these uh skis you will notice you have More vigor, you can just go longer.

And your perceived effort is much lower. And it's kind of striking. What is it doing? This is interesting. It's kind of striking how After the workout. You don't feel as depleted.

Perhaps the main reason I started taking it is I found I could train harder. But then I suffered quite a lot from a post exercise dip in energy, especially if I ate big meal. I no longer experience that if I take Rodeola Rosea. Thirty to sixty minutes before work out. The effects of it last about four hours. So what's happening during that workout? It's

clearly having an effect on the central nervous system. By reducing the total amount of adrenaline that's released. Or the Efficacy of adrenaline, epinephrine. during high intensity effort.

or long duration effort. So what this effectively means is you're In principle. Effort. Without the same amount of

energy depleting neurochemicals. I mean epinephrine, norepinephrine j help you generate energy. But there's always a trough afterwards. Always. And so if you can generate the same amount of physical output in the absence of X amount of adrenaline or or norpinephrine.

Then you're Essentially better off. It also seems to catalyze recovery better. I would not take it more Often than just before.

Training. However, because There's our A few studies showing that the effects of it can kind of taper off if you're taking it all day, every day. Now would that be true for say Ashwagandha, let's just say someone's taking it before sleep, would they want to cycle off of that?

How would you think about cycling? If recommended. Yeah. So low dose of ashwagandha, you know, twenty five, fifty milligrams a day taken continuously, no problem. I actually think A G one has low dose of ashwagandha in it. But when people are taking ashwagandha to offset high stress of mental or physical stuff. Or both. For a period in life, I'd say after about two weeks, you want at least two weeks off.

You really don't want to suppress cortisol chronically unless there's some clinical reason for that. Rodeo or Rosea. Is probably the best addition to my Physical performance. Stack.

That I've added in a long time. And it's really striking. I mean I think So much so that people could try it. And it really does seem to work the first time and every time. For me?

If it doesn't work for you the first time, if you you know, all other things being equal. You got a decent night's sleep, you're doing everything the same way you normally would. And you take Rodeo Rose and you don't really notice much of an effect. You might try and increase the dose slightly and give it another go. And what was the dosage range? Two hundred milligrams. Two hundred milligrams.

And I found that to be really striking. Now I'm not gonna take that before like a long Sunday jog. Or a hike. Is that I mean I might, but chances are I'm not gonna I'm gonna do it before a leg workout. I'm gonna do it before a hit workout. I'm gonna I'm mainly doing it to

Make sure that I can Train really hard and then go do other things really hard too. You know, I again as a not a competitive athlete. I loath the experience of training really hard and then

feeling like I gave everything to that training session. And therefore I don't have much energy or focus to give to the other thing. Yeah. And I think most people are like that. Are you still taking the Tonkatali and the Fido Grestis? And for those who are not familiar, because I think we may have made mention of this in our last conversation, but just in brief, what do these two things do? Yeah, Tongat Ali is an Indonesian ginseng. There's a Malaysian version too, but you want the Indonesian one if you want to pursue these effects, which are

It's known to decrease sex hormone binding globulin, which frees testosterone. Which is important in both men and women. It turns out in women There's more testosterone circulating in a healthy woman. post puberty woman than there is estrogen. Peter Tia taught me this. If you normalize for

Nanograms per deciliter. Women have more testosterone than Estherine. Healthy women do. Um so testosterone is associated with libido ability and desire to generate effort.

mood, et cetera, in men and women. Probably the best way to describe testosterone's effects. Or It makes effort feel good. Tonga Ali frees up more testosterone, so it

Mild. libido enhancer for some, more extreme for others. Increases energy. We'll increase feelings of well being and Typically the dosages are

Four hundred milligrams a day. In Single dose or divide d doses with or without food. Taken early in the day, before noon or two PM because it can increase energy. You don't want to disrupt your sleep.

There are a number of good sources of it. We can provide links to a couple of those sources. And Fidoja grassis is a Nigerian shrub. It's taken from a Nigerian shrub and it stimulates the release of lutinizing hormone. Which Is

Going to And In women will stimulate Anything that comes from

downstream of lutinizing hormone in the ovary. Typically estrogen. maybe even testosterone to some extent. And in men, it will increase testosterone output from the testes by way of increasing glutenizing hormone, maybe subtle increase in estrogen as well. This is important. Men here. That

something increases estrogen and they go, Oh, I don't want that. Well keep in mind that if you flatline your estrogen, so if men are taking anastrazole or crushing their estrogen, their libido is gonna be zero. Their Cognitive ability will be diminished. Estrogen is important in both men and women. So cardiovrotective, isn't it? Cardiovrotective. The endothelial cells. We think of our blood vessels and our arteries.

And capillaries as tubes, but they're really tubes. Imagine silly putty kind of rolled out, Play Doh made into little flat Sheet and then rolled up. To comprise those tubes. So it's many many endothelial cells that make up those tubes. And the flexibility of those tubes is very important. Obviously, you don't want them rigid. You need them to expand and contract as needed. And estrogen is important for for some of that signaling leading to that. malleability of the endothelial cells.

It's typically taken in dosages of three hundred to six hundred milligrams per day. With or without food. Doesn't seem to matter if it's early day, late day. There's some evidence that in rats it can be Toxic to the testicular tissue, but that's in very, very high concentrations. It's interesting, the the number of studies on humans for both Tonga Ali and Fadoja have greatly expanded since our last conversation. And especially for Tonga Ali, there's quite good support. Safety margins are good within the dosage ranges that we've talked about. I've heard of people taking up to a gram a day of Tonga Ali. That just makes me cringe. I think taking herbal compounds in very high concentrations, it's gonna be risky no matter what. Because

These things can trigger immune responses, so it Four hundred milligrams of Tonga Ali, six hundred, three hundred, six hundred milligrams of Fadoja taken daily should be fine. I don't cycle them and never have. Some people cycle the Fedogia because they're afraid. Why don't I cycle them? Yeah, because they'll just keep working. Well, I mean Louis Simmons could have said that about alcoholics too. Yeah. So a couple of reasons. I do blood work twice a year. Liver enzymes are included there. We can talk about fertility perhaps uh it if you want today. Um, the last year because of my age and the fact that I don't have children yet, but I'm

Cognizant of the fact that I do want them at some point. I got really down the Rabbit hole. Interesting figure of speech. You know, sperm analysis including everything from DNA fragmentation to how to increase

sperm numbers and motility and quality and Egg quality. I got really you're a gambling man. If you're making your swimmers world class, but you don't want kids. Well um Right. Um it's all about readiness, I suppose. Um What what is it that in the SEL teams they say? Like you you fall not to the level of your You do not rise to the level of your hopes, but fall to the level of your preparation. That's actually a quote from Archilochis, who is a Greek poet and I believe philosopher also, but yes, also widely used in the special forces teams. So I've been Monitoring sperm parameters, freezing sperm.

I might want to do IVF someday with somebody, you know, this kind of thing. Or conceived naturally, but And because yeah, we're talking about And I've talked a lot about tools, supplements, et cetera, as it relates to vitality and fertility.

I think there is a way to optimize for both of those things. So I don't cycle them because I haven't felt a need to or seen a need to. Some people choose to just take a week off from Fridoji every once in a while or go five days on, two days off. Yeah, people should do what makes them comfortable. You'll notice an effect of Fadoja. Males will notice an effect of Fedogia. It actually will increase testicular size. Somewhat and

Density? That's just because of the increase uh the LH lutinizing hormone is just gonna stimulate avocado pits. But it will do a number of things related to increasing lutinizing hormone. Similar although not to the same extent as something like taking H C human choreonic. If you were to inject yourself with H C G

You would probably cycle at some point. Or maybe not. I don't know. You tell me. Um Yeah, I I've done experiments with H C G. I think you have too. I have to yeah. I mean it definitely will increase sperm volume. And significantly, yeah. Yeah, significantly. I mean HTG is essentially lutinizing hormone. You know, there's actually a movement within the testosterone augmentation world now.

We don't want to go too far down this. But So called TRT replacement therapy. A lot of people are interested in what I call T A T, which is augmentation therapy. So I think it's there's safe. That's a rebrand. You know, we were talking before the Patagonian toothfish goes to Chilean seabass and taking roids goes to test augmentation therapy. Yeah, I mean I think every w male should be aware that taking exogenous testosterone, like testosterone, siponate, or otherwise is going to suppress your

endogenous testosterone. However There are people that want to do that. I think w one of the goals For most people. is to neither be out of range, you know, there are a lot of people who don't want to be bodybuilders and take so called

Steroids, but obviously even estrogen's a steroid. Yeah, sure, sure. And cortisol is a corticostero. So but to be high end of normal range. Right, high end of normal. So if the range is three hundred nanograms deciliter all the way up to twelve hundred or nine hundred in some countries, it depends. You know, being somewhere between, you know, six hundred and and nine hundred, I think it's gonna be preferable for most people. And Tonga Ali and Fadoja Gressis, I think represent a good place to start if you don't want to pursue these other more aggressive Well Tel Cut Ali is particularly interesting to me because I

Almost always have Very high range. Total testosterone. But my free testosterone is low and my sex hormone binding globulin is high. Which itself is not necessarily a bad thing. The nine hundred milligrams of myo inositol can

Also Increase free testosterone indirectly through mechanisms that aren't entirely clear. There are also some other ways if people want to tickle these pathways. Sheila G, right? Fulvic acid. Which is Sheila G is a mineral pitch. It's used in Ayurvedic medicine. I thought that was the nineteen eighties uh lead vocal. It's um it uh it stimulates the release of FSH, a follicle stimulating hormone. Follicle stimul so you have LH and FSH coming out of the pituitary and

LH will stimulate testosterone production via Light excel so the testes that FSH. is going to Stimulate

Spermatogenesis. by increasing what's called androgen binding protein, which is the protein that the testosterone binds to, which then is gonna give rise to more sperm. At risk of I never want to do kind of a podcast plug on another podcast, especially not yours, but I did a four and a half hour episode on male and female fertility that Goes through. Essentially the ovulatory cycle and the spurbound genesis cycle and then All the do's and do nots for both men and women who wish to conceive either now or in the future, or who

do not wish to conceive children, but want to use fertility as a proxy for vitality, which is something that, by the way, I have to say, I have to credit you for. Years ago you said, you know, basically if you optimize for fertility, you're optimizing for vitality. So there again, I wanna just Thank you, because that's an extremely efficient but also Extremely sage way to think about. Optimizing for vitality. So it's not just about wanting to have kids, it's about maintaining all your biological systems that they're

Right tuning. Super helpful proxy. Super helpful. In this case, what do you mean by vitality? Waking up Feeling well enough to want to begin your day.

With enough energy to Complete your day. And to move back and forth along the continuum of Driven and

Relaxed. Super I mean if you think about that kind of Eliminating relationships to others as as a component for the moment. Of course it is a component, setting that aside, rather. What I just described it to me is the definition of mental health, the ability to lean into effort, but also to relax and restore your system.

And to feel good about what you're doing and being be able to move from driven to reflective when these kinds of things. So many people we know. Uh I don't want to Give a geographical They all left the Bay Area anyway. There. I just said it was a Bay Area. You know

Um successful but miserable. Uh we knew a lot of those. Or people that can't seem to get enough energy to focus and get down a path of pursuit. So you want both. That's vitality to me. And

This is getting kind of Eastern philosophy, which is more your domain than mine, and I'm always eager to learn here, but You know, when you think about qi or kind of dopamine or life energy. I mean the desire to Create things in the world.

Including Offspring. But Just to birth ideas, birth Businesses, birth.

Relationships, birth. Podcast, whatever it is, is essentially from the same place of having some idea in mind and trying to construct that. Overcoming fear. your your notions of fear setting become really relevant here, et cetera. And so vitality has a lot to do with the ability to generate effort with

At least if not a fast upward spiral, at least a slow upward spiral, and certainly not a slow downward spiral. I'll take any of the upward spiral. Right. I mean I think you know, I I'm around a lot of graduate students and postdocs and you you see how an early success Like publishing a paper early on in one's career creates an upward spiral. around the whole concept of effort. Thereafter. You see this in dating and relationships.

You see how an early failure can set people along a downward spiral. And so I think that having drive Comes from the catecholamines. It's dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine. And sure you need the serotinergic systems and the opioid system endogenous opioid systems that smooth things out. But

In the absence of that get up and go. I mean, we wouldn't be here. There's no again, I wasn't consulting the design phase, but you can be pretty sure that this is what allows any animal or human to move toward a a milestone. I'm gonna ask you Yet again, a lazy but perhaps Productive question that is

It will satisfy my own curiosity. Omegas, Tonka Ali, Fadoja Agrestus and Rodiola. Rosea. You get to pick two.

Which would you pick? Tonga Ali. And Rodiola Rosea. Okay. Yeah, especially since you drop that's that was surprising. I thought the EPA would be a shoe in. Oh I'm sorry, EPA was included there. Yes, sorry. So Omega's Tonga Ali if it's rodeo. I apologize. So then it would be Omega's and Tonga Ali.

Okay. Yeah, if I think about fundamental Kind of baseline. Supplementation. Things that are hard to get from food. But that represent

key micronutrients that really move multiple needles in the right direction. It's gonna be getting above that. One gram per day threshold of E PAs. So omega's.

It's also going to be anything that moves the hormone system toward the green zone, which is gonna be Tonga Ali. Now of course doing all the other things right. Trying to get sleep, exercise, sleep, movement, nutrient, sunlight, all that. In fact, there's a really wonderful study out of Israel that showed That if people got twenty minutes Three times a week.

of sun exposure to their skin, their face, and they remove their shirts, or if there was women that wore tank tops. And shorts for both men and women. Three times a week. significant increases in free testosterone. And this was afternoon sun, it wasn't morning sun. Increases in free testosterone and estrogen.

And significant increases in libido. Also if you chart out the Amount of free testosterone across the months. Places that aren't really far north, you're going to see significant variations in free testosterone in men and women. Yeah, toward the summer spring and summer months. So we're somewhat seasonal and and some people robustly seasonal depending on your your ancestry.

So that sunlight thing is real and and the mechanism just so that people aren't like oh get sunlight, he's just saying sunlight again is that the caratinocytes Which are a component of the skin. Signal through this For you nerds that Uh like me, the P fifty three pathway.

And impinge on Pituitary. to signal lutinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone release. It's so interesting because what we think of the as the skin, which is protecting our Organs and

you know, place to put tattoos and earrings and jewelry and stuff. Is actually an endocrine organ. The skin is a hormone producing organ, hence the vitamin D thing and everything else. Yeah, a lot of fat cells too, which a lot of people don't think about. Yeah, so definitely the Omegas and uh Tonga Ali. Rodiola Rose is great to enhance workouts. Fidogia's Definitely uh.

It's a boost on the hormone system for sure. I have a friend who is single. Now he's in a great relationship. We can't say it was because of the Fadoja, but he was taking Fodoja and he was like, I gotta stop taking this stuff. 'Cause he's he was s flying solo at that point. He was like this is just really it's really intrusive. And that was just humping the walls or what? I don't know. It just wasn't I think um I don't know if we wanna go here. You know, there's this whole online community. Well, there's this whole online community now about semen retention and things like that. He's not part of that community, but There's this idea that Well we'll just be we're adults here. I mean there's this idea that

If you look in the journals of sexual health. I'm really interested in in sexual health and y your logical health. There's a ton of interesting stuff on pelvic floor. This stuff just isn't often discussed. Masturbation for women turns out to Their r self reported um notions of well being, of mood, of immune system function, of

quote unquote, knowing their bodies and what gives them pleasure. etcetera all increase. If you look at the data in men in terms of masturbation. And here we're talking about masturbation to the point of ejaculation in men. They report lower mood, less willingness to pursue relationships. Shocker you know, they're they're home watching porn, right? So we we have to be very careful with statements like masturbation is bad or or something like that, because that's not true. It's gonna be gender.

Well we should say. Stay out of that discussion. Biological sex dependent, because that's a that's clearer ground. We'll just leave it at that. And then there is this whole notion that a l a whole generation of young males are are becoming porn addicted and masturbation addicted. But can't. look someone in the eye, ask them out on a date, or Learn how to navigate.

healthy consensual sex. Right. And they're not doing neck work, so they can't look anyone in the eye. They've got flaccid feet and they don't do neck work. Yeah. I mean, and here I'm not trying to create notions of like hyper males. We're really just talking about A radical shift in the way that sexual health has evolved over the last ten years. Because of the accessibility of hardcore pornography, its relation to the dopamine system. You know, so here I'm I'm not trying to be evangelical or anything like that. I'm just saying

These are serious neur transmitter slash hormon systems And a whole generation of males Is making themselves sated enough to not actually pursue a number of what used to be considered

Milstones toward The transition between young adulthood and true adulthood. And you know. His birth rates are low, dating is low. having less sex, you know. A few people are having a lot more sex. So this is great for the

comfortable in social interactions. Anyway, we we don't want to go down that path too far, but these are Deeply wired systems. Yeah. Do they uh To they who have much, much will be given. So so for those of you willing to date and find relationship, what hopefully leads to

healthy relationship. Fodoja. Fidoja. Thank you, Fadoja. So before we move on, I do want to ask you about uh because we were chatting a little bit before we started recording Psychedelics. And your current And developing thoughts. on that or any commentary you'd like to add. But before we get to that, since you were talking about fertility.

Understanding people can go to the the dances with wolves episode where you cover all things comprehensively. But We're talking about a number of tools in the form of these supplements for lack of a better way to phrase it, goosing the system, right? These are ways to augment certain endocrine functions.

Or the Composition. say of of free versus bounded testosterone, et cetera. Where did you end up after doing your research on environmental endocrine disruptors or

Things that we should be subtracting rather than adding. Because uh it's hard for me as someone who is, say, certainly a non specialist in reproductive health. to find the time or even maybe just the Dedication to sort the signal from the noise with all that because there's a lot of hysterics too. There's a lot of nonsense out there. Where did you land with what are important, if anything?

Two be mindful of or subtract. Mm-hmm. Four and I love the dances with wolves. Reference. This is a long movie. I love dances with wolves, so I'm not knocking it for the length.

I uh I I think people should listen to to this podcast, but uh specifically just to hone in on this. No, it I it it was designed for Individuals or couples who are thinking about These issues and also Or In particular.

For women who are interested in banking eggs. Yep. I mean oh like most women don't know that cut off after which you can't freeze eggs, you can only freeze embryos. So it in the California If you're Forty two years old.

Or younger. You can freeze eggs. Might meet someone later and decide you wanna conceive children or use a donor. After forty two. I think it's at forty two and a half.

You can only Great. embryos and freeze those. They're just not the the eggs are On average are just too aged out. Mm.

Males, if you want to be a sperm donor, you know, ideally you're You're gonna do that. Before forty five. Now there is a significant increase in Sperm donor, or you might want to do IVF someday.

Now there is a significant increase in the incidence of autism. With each Half a decade. For the father, you know, so as you go from you know, thirty to thirty five to forty. The sperm.

Age matters. But The Increases Still.

Incredibly small overall. Mm-hmm. So it's not something you can really point to and say, Oh, it's the it's the sperm. You know or it's the egg for that matter. Okay, now do's and don'ts. Um We can now easily look back to our the beginning of our discussion.

Quality sleep on a regular basis, sunlight. Keeping stress. In check. Healthy relationships, over all of that's going to support

sperm health and egg health. No question about that. It's also clear that Getting sufficient omega three fatty acids is going to support sperm health and egg health. I'll just point out that if there were one supplement That really seems to move the needle in terms of egg quality, which is a morphological but also a

A meaningful physiological metric or sperm quality, which is going to be shape motility. You don't want what are called you don't want dead sperm. There are always going to be some in a sample because of the age of the sperm, et cetera, and the way the spermatogenesis cycles go, but you want forwardly motile sperm. The other ones are called twitchers. So you know, they just twitch in place. They can actually take twitchers and force them into the egg during IVF, something called IXE. But in general the the greater number of forward motile sperm. I'm swimming them toward you. Yeah. I'm actually swimming them an angle away from Tim. Um on our first person podcast day. Exactly. Can be greatly increased. By supplementation with L carnitine.

So egg health and sperm health greatly enhanced by L carnitine. Pretty remarkable. Results there. Injectable L carnitine of about one Meg. Per day.

Now that has to be prescribed by a doctor. And that's I am. That's inter muscular. Yeah. Or oral. Capsules are available over the counter, then you have to get up to four or five grams per day. Wow. I was gonna ask. Yeah. And that can increase. T M A O and some other markers that aren't great for cardiovascular health. because of the way it's processed by the gut, but you can offset that by taking six hundred milligrams of garlic.

Because of the Allison and garlic. Okay. Smoking cigarettes, vaping cigarettes. Really good for sperm. Terrible for sperm, terrible for eggs. Smoking cannabis.

Vaping cannabis, also terrible, eggs and sperm. People don't like to hear that. Fifteen percent of women. I can't believe the statistic, but I've seen it over and over. To check my eyes. But Fifteen percent. Ingest cannabis at some point during pregnancy.

Probably not a good idea. Now a lot of people say, Oh, I smoke weed every day and got my wife pregnant. You never know how healthy your children would have been. You never you just never know. I'm not saying your children are unhealthy, but you never There are also gonna be there will always be edge cases where like I smoke crack every week and never slept for fourteen days straight. My kids are great. And you're like, Okay, just because you happen to be The one mutant. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. If you want to optimize for who can thread that needle. Exactly. Doesn't mean you're a good model. Exactly.

So alcarnitine can really help. Avoid smoking Anything. The issue of tinctures and edibles is a different subject altogether. I think the big Wow.

For me. Tip my hat to you. Which is that In twenty fifteen, I taught a class at

I was then a professor at U C San Diego. on neural circuits in health and disease and I decided to do a lecture on whether or not cell phones inhibit sperm health and or testosterone level. The data were very mixed, frankly. There were essentially two good studies in rats, each of them taking a standard smartphone, putting it under a rat's cage, and then looking at some metrics related to Testicular health, sperm, et cetera. One showed increases in testosterone, the other showed decreases. So it's it was kind of a disappointing situation. So I'd present both.

Now there is an extensive meta analysis. I can send you this for the r for the show notes if you like, an extensive meta analysis of dozens of studies. I'll add it to the next reprint of the Four Hour Body. It's a and it very convincingly shows. That Keeping the cell phone in one's pocket. So this isn't putting it to your head, this isn't putting it on the desk in front of you, but Keeping one it on and in one's pocket. And it does not matter if it's on Wi Fi or you're using seller.

decreases sperm quality, which means forward motility. Number of healthy sperm per ejaculate, et cetera, even ejaculate volume. To some extent.

And lowers testosterone overall, which is Perhaps not surprising given the known heat effects of the phone. So even though it doesn't feel hot to the touch, there are heat effects. Sperm don't like heat. In fact, the most promising male contraceptive. That's out there that's not a condom. It's like a cough that goes around the vasidefrens, which is the portal from the testes to the urethra that allows the ejaculate to leave the body.

That heats that. I mean take A sauna will It's not a great form of contraception'cause it's not sure proof, but it will reduce your total number of motels born by Seventy five percent or so.

When I go in the sauna'cause I do hope to five percent. When I do hope to conceive children someone, so I wear shorts into the sauna and I actually put a cold pack at my groin. I'm in there. It's actually kinda when the sun is really hot, it's also it makes it a little less Unpleasant. It's a little bable. But um you definitely don't want to do that on bare skin. But you know I'm chuckling too, but Heat Is part of the problem with the cell phone, but it turns out

Yes, and here people are gonna think I'm a like crazy person, but they might think that already. The EMFs That business is real. Now is it so real that it's giving us gliomas? Unclear. I'm not gonna go there, the data aren't in. But it is very clear that the radiation from phones, the EMFs, and the heat are combining.

To reduce sperm quality motility. and overall testosterone. So It's a simple thing. Turn off your phone completely. Or even better, just don't put it in your front pocket. If you have to put it in a pocket, put it in your back pocket. If you even better would be to put it in a shoulder pocket or a backpack.

And I'm a weirdo. Perhaps but I don't like keeping the phone to the my head. Too long, but that's also'cause I don't like holding the phone to my head too long. We don't know very much.

about the effects of EMFs and heat effects on the different tissues of the body, but we now know a lot about the effects of heat and EMFs. On sperm. quality and it's not a good picture for the sperm. Where does the airplane mode? fit into this equation.

If at all in terms of between on and off. I mean, does it Prevent or mitigate some of the effects? It seems to Yeah. It seems to here's what's really scary about this meta-analysis. Their conclusion is that the total amount of time spent with the phone in the pocket is not a strong determinant. That it's It's not all or none.

But that the threshold beyond which you start seeing these damaging effects. is pretty low. So again, here we're talking about a don't, not a do. And so it's pretty straightforward. You know, don't keep the phone in your front pocket. If you're concerned with sperm. And and testosterone production. Now why is sperm health and testosterone production so

Correlated and you say, Well duh, it's'cause you know, testosterone and sperm, but If you're not interested in conceiving children, you might not think this is an issue. But remember that the two types of cells, those uh Lydic cells and the Certoli cells of the Testy. combine testosterone and the androgen binding protein to give rise to sperm. So any time you're seeing a reduction in sperm,

You are Definitely. seeing that as a reflection of reduction in androgen binding protein, which means whatever testosterone you have around. Is also not having the effect on that local organ.

Um that it it should. In other words, the testes are and the ovaries are very interesting organs because they secrete hormones into the body to go have effects. But they also have effects on themselves. And It self amplify. And so this just seems like such a straightforward one to me. And you said this back in when was the four hour body published? Came out in two thousand ten. Yeah. Yeah. And I remember you and Paula Quinn and a few other people saying, like, don't keep the phone in your pocket. And I remember lecturing to about four hundred students about this.

And I would say about half just by my read, about half of the the guys in the class took the phone out of their pocket when they heard this. I think young people who aren't thinking about having children at all right now are absolutely the ones that should be most concerned. Yeah. Yeah, it is true you can Yeah, as they told us in high school it just takes one sperm.

But um you know just takes one sperm. But in order to get that one sperm in vivo. You know, not IVF, but it's sort called natural conception. There's a lot of territory that needs to be covered. There's a lot of chemical environments that need to be dealt with. You want the healthiest sperm So I would say also having gone through this process with an X to create embryos.

Even though you can say it only takes one sperm in IVF as well. You wanna stack the odds in your favor, which means you need good morphology. Good motility and you need a good count. of non crippled sperm.

Yeah, it's I mean sperm analysis is it can be a humbling thing because You know, no matter what, no one's getting one hundred percent motile, forwardly motile. Everyone meant Males and females learn a lot about their biology, what their doing well, what they're doing less well.

When going down that pathway of IVF, I think. I think for women one of the big surprises Is that It doesn't take much ingestion of alcohol. To diminish egg quality.

You know, beyond two or three drinks. Per week. You really start to see reductions in equality that are probably indirect. Through effects on diminished sleep. And changes in stress hormones.

And so you know again Some people will be more resilient to this than others. People always like to make jokes about how alcohol facilitates the uh conception process, you know. Et cetera. Um I think that In general, you know, if women are having very regular cycles Whether or not they're twenty eight days long or thirty five days long is less important perhaps and they be fairly regular.

Women in general tend to know more about their bodies and because they cycle than than men. But I if I could go back in time to my thirties, I sure would have banked sperm then. And I'm fine, you know, I'm feel good about where I've gotten my parameters, but It's really interesting as you learn this, you you just realize that Freezing sperm, freezing eggs is a great idea.

And Freezing embryos make sense if you have the appropriate pairing or situation, right? And That life gets so much easier for those wishing to conceive when You have healthy embryos.

Rose him in the bank. Anyway, for those challenged in that area, it also becomes this incredibly expensive, emotionally and financially expensive battle. Yeah, I will say, much to my surprise. That This is I mean within the last Year, I suppose.

Prior to the breakup, of course. But Going through the IVF. Or at least embryo creation process. my sperm quality because I have banked Starting.

Unfortunately not as reliably as I would have liked, but Probably starting around two thousand ten or two thousand twelve? Oh okay. Banking sperm. Sadly, there was actually a Technical issue.

at this particular location in San Francisco because they're bought by some larger conglomerate and I think a lot of the samples were lost. But the point I was gonna make is that After trying to do a deep dive. Taking copious amounts of L carnitine. adding in a few other things like Maka and a handful of of other basics.

my sperm quality is actually better, seemingly better now than it was ten years ago, which is shocking. Yeah. I mean it's again if if one is doing the right things. I do think that we can Perform physically. Probably in the domain of sexual health too. I think that's a that's a misconception. That you know, oh like you know, men peak in their eighties sexual eighteen eighties. No, thank God. At eighteen, you know, that's I've looked at testosterone levels as a function of age and the there's a wonderful uh book on this on behavioral endocrinology.

And you know there are some And in their seventies who maintain testosterone levels of Similar to men in their twenties and thirties. Highly individual. Depends a ton on.

How Much people are moving, how much sunlight they're getting. How little Alcohol and nicotine smoking. Nicotine, not nicotine the substance, but they bring it into their system.

Exposure to environmental toxins, these kinds of things. And we always think of BPAs and receipts. They are a problem. Handling receipts, not good printed receipts. But that's the major source of BPAs. No shit. So BPAs I always think all right, like cans, bottles, this, that, and the other thing. Receipts. Receipts. Why the hell are there so many BTAs and receipts? Yeah, Shana Swan, who's um done a lot of the critical work on phthalates and their influence on urgenital distance, which is a marker of

The generals and the anus are closer together. In females than in males of of all species, including humans. Salid exposure. BPAs in particular. Is progressively decreasing your general distance and

In males. Pina size. In a somewhat contradictory way. There's a study that just came out in of Stanford from Michael Eisenberg's lab, who's in a He's a urologist and endocrinologist. Show that actually.

A flaccid, here it is again, flaccid Oh no, erect penis lengths have gone up twenty six percent in the last thirty years, but testosterone and sperm counts are going down. So I you know but I I'm a really interesting study of uh tens of thousands of Yeah. Um I don't I haven't read the method section. How do they explain that? Because it makes though Kind of. Superficial sense to me because like if your swimmers

And your testosterone are just taking a nosedive. You need to get Closer to the goal. Yeah. Closer to the cervix. Cervical opening. Yeah. Those data are a little hard to explain, but they're they're very robust data. That study was just published. Yeah, he'd be an interesting. I don't know. So so the balls are getting closer to the ass, but the schlong are getting longer. Yes, apparently. Not to get too technical. No, well that's I think people will understand that like Euro general distance is not a is not a great term for most people to to digest. Or think about. But you we think about BPA, so receipts. Probably more than plastics and things of that sort. But

Also if you look at the most The people who get the greatest exposure to these phthalates. And that are impairing They endocrine system the most in males and females, it's going to be in rural areas because of pesticides. So we think, oh, people living in cities, bus exhaust, drinking, you know, uh red bull sugar free red bull from the bodegas in New York City, you know. No.

You're talking about. And airborne pesticides. Airborne. Yeah. Airborne pistols. So I thought I was I immediately went to to groundwater. Yeah, I I was over in Copenhagen to give a talk last year. I would have totally whiffed that. I would not have gone I would have gone urban. I would have thought the contaminants And Shayna Swan, who's I think can't remember if she's at Mount Sinai.

Or one of the other she's definitely at one of the the big medical schools in in New York City, so forgive me, Shana. But she's been the one, you know, really focusing on this when no one else really thought much of it and was thinking, Oh, that's crazy conspiracy stuff. And no, there's it real data funded by the NIH. So I think that You know, avoiding plastics and things like that, sure. But I think handling of receipts.

Especially because they serious endocrine disruptors and avoiding pesticides. And then Alcohol Again, not trying to, you know, rain on anybody's party here, but past two drinks a week, you know, is when you start Seeing some negative health effects in males and females. I did a long episode on this. By the way, I drink the occasional drink every once in a while I like white tequila, things and that's the thing. The number two most shared podcast in the world in twenty twenty two. I did not expect that at all. What alcohol does to your body, brain, and health.

I did not expect to have that kind of traction. I there's no agenda there. I think a lot of people think that I'm an AA or something. I have deep respect for the that community, but no, I've never had a problem with alcohol or drugs. It's never been my thing. There was no agenda whatsoever. I think that alcohol's a n toxin, you know, essentially making a toxin for your cells that's Look, it can be enjoyed.

I also think that If people are going to drink more than two drinks per week, they want to pay more attention to the other things that we talked about at the beginning. Nutrient, sunlight, exercise, sleep, et cetera. I'm not trying to Say what people

should or shouldn't do, they should just know what they're doing. Yeah. And talking about how the preceding twenty four hours leads to the current twenty four hours, which leads to the next twenty four hours. A friend of mine, I I won't give him credit'cause he probably doesn't want it, but he's he was quoting someone else, so it doesn't really matter, but he said alcohol is borrowing happiness from tomorrow. Oh yeah. And I was like, Yeah, that's a that's a good way to put it. Yeah, and I've never tried cocaine, but from what I hear, cocaine is borrowing happiness from ten minutes from now. I I spoke to a guy recently who's a who is a former cocaine addict and I said, What does it feel like? And he said, Let me just explain it this way.

By the way, this is not a direct quote. I'm I'm quoting somebody else. He said that the first time he did cocaine His experience was one of Wow, that was terrible. And when can I get more? Oh god, so that the the gestalt of the experience was a peak and then a trop that we know exists. The double one system drops below baseline.

I'm too afraid to try cocaine. And especially nowadays with the fentanyl that's laced in. Oh yeah. Um so many street drugs. I know two people They're at a Bachelor party in Mexico.

Otherwise very responsible folks, but they decide to do it a lot of people do. It's such parties and decided to do cocaine. They each did one Line. Not a copious amount. These were not Cocaine users.

Both of them immediately collapsed on the floor. One died and one ended up in a coma for a period of time fentanyl. My best friend growing up. also was given unbeknownst to him, fentanyl died of what Fell asleep, didn't wake up.

So be very careful out there, folks. Fentanyl is No joke. And there are other things as well, but Many, many, many, many, many drugs. Or

with fentanyl, including those that at face value you would think make no sense. Like ambient. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So or cocaine. I mean, why why they would cut fentanyl? Which is essentially a sedative. into a stimulant like okay makes no sense to me but and yet yeah that's what's happening. So be careful out there, folks. So to move from cocaine to maybe a a a lesser villain

I wanna revisit cannabis for just a second. So cannabis in I'm curious to know because I have experienced Incredible. There may be trade offs, but benefits with respect to onset insomnia. From low dose.

Edible. I could say cannabis, but in this case, you know, we're talking about in legal settings. Where state governments allow this. Say two point five milligrams of D H C. With C V D, it just takes too high I mean, I would have to consume just kind of a mountain of it for it to subjectively Help with that.

What are the trade offs, if any, with dosages in that range, if you're aware. Yeah, depends on who you are. So I did an episode on cannabis. I also had O mutual friend Nolan Williams, who's a One of these. Freaks of nature. He's a triple board certified psychiatrist, neurologist, neurologist at Stanford, doing Underachiever. Doing a lot on combination of psychedelics with transcranial magnetic stimulation. Talked about cannabis and I did a solo episode on cannabis, which means basically all I did was think about, read about, and talk to people about cannabis for months on end.

Here's the story with cannabis. It's as you point out, it's going to be the ratio of THC to C B D that's important. And for the real aficionados out there, and boy are they out there,'cause they let me know they are. There's also the terpenes that are gonna be the Lemon like terpenes and the other kinds of terpenes and chemicals in these Things that are also gonna matter. And then also it's gonna be smoking, vaping Edible or tincture. So

Here's the deal. Smoking or vaping anything is bad. Nicotine or cannabis. Or worse for you than edible or tincture. Let's just move that off to the side. High THC concentration cannabis.

Of which now there is almost pure THC. Cannabis available. Is dangerous for the following reason. And there I just pissed off some people, but First of all, it does have therapeutic applications for glaucoma, pain management.

Maybe even some mental health facts, ability to help people certain people focus. At low dose. But Four In particular, young males in their teens, early teens and twenties.

Who take high T H C containing cannabis. There is a Much greater. Like four X.

Increase in probability of psychotic episodes later that Don't ever reverse. In fact, When I spoke to the leading researcher on this up in Canada. She told me that

The Probability that A lot of what we see as kind of street homelessness now, what people appear to be schizophrenic, was likely triggered by high dose cannabis use. Now I'm not trying to return us to the nineteen sixties and talk about devil's weed and this kind of thing. It is clear that cannabis has therapeutic benefits, but very high potency THC cannabis can be a problem. At the dosage you described, two point five milligrams. Very unlikely to be a problem. Now psychologically speaking. Psychologically speaking. And I mean I could be on two point five I'm not, but I could be on two point five right now, and it would be

It would not be sort of perceptible dose. It's kinda like micro dose. I would feel it, but it would not be ex it would not be externally obvious. Now the pure C B D cannabis is interesting too, so called Charlotte's Web. I think is what's called mainly available in Colorado, I'm told. Um is a powerful Anti epileptic.

In fact, parents of epileptic kids move to Colorado just so they can get Charlotte's Webb. C B D cannabis. In my mind, that should be available legally everywhere. Given that it has essentially no psychoactive effects.

There are a few perhaps, but so it's really the the percentage of THC relative to CBD that's important, the age of the user, whether or not there's a predisposition to psychosis. You know, we might as well be talking about psychedelics. Might as well be talking about psychedelics and I want to just pause for a second to say A few things. Number one

I don't categorize M DMA as psychedelic, we may get to that, but just for a number of semantic and uh phenomenological like a fancy reasons, I don't classify that as a psychedelic And I would actually Categorise. high THC content cannabis as a

strong potential psychedelic, and it has become I would just say the standard, the baseline. of strength has become such A multiple Of what anyone might have been used to.

Yep, and say the nineties. It is almost beyond belief. And I do know of one direct example. This is the brother of an acquaintance. who had exactly the experience you're describing, which is

Chronic short term. But chronic use. Uh Very hype. T C concentration.

cannabis and I should say in fairness. that classical psychedelics can also Expedite the onset of Schizophrenic symptoms and those who would genetically be predisposed, so it's not limited to THC, but it is

I think Under Respected. And overused with the assumption that it's just cannabis. And that's a I think that's a mistake. It's a very it can be so powerfully psychoactive.

Yeah, it's interesting how the proponents of cannabis, which there are a lot of smart people in cannabis medicine, including a lot of MDs. Always say It's not as bad as alcohol, which to me is just A ridiculous argument. I mean, just say that something is not as bad as alcohol implies that, you know, you have to choose one or the other. I think that

Cannabis has been very beneficial for a number of adults who are through the so called critical period of brain plasticity, so older than twenty five. They need some way to quote unquote take the edge off in the evening. They'll do an edible on the weekend, this kind of thing. That is not what we're talking about. We're talking about Kids twelve, thirteen, fourteen. Taking a

You know, like a bong rip or smoking a joint or vaping. A super high potency THC containing Cannabis. And just being high out of their gourd.

and feeling like it was a really good time doing that two or three times and then And I've seen this over and over again. Their parents reach out to me often, in fact. For whatever reason. And then you hear about this person being seventeen, eighteen, there's a failure to launch component. They're a a motivated, they're claiming A DHD.

They're busy a stoner. Who relies on cannabis to relieve anxiety. And Hasn't done much else in the last Five years and or certainly has not managed to keep up with the mean.

And here I'm sympathetic, by the way, this is listening to somebody who barely finished high school. We covered that in the last podcast. So you know, for other reasons, but I do worry a lot about these super high potency compounds. I worry about super high potency anything. I mean I worry about in the realm of hormone augmentation, we're talking Fidoja Tonga Ali, not Diana Ball. You know, in the realm of augmenting mood and focus. We're comparing very high potency THC.

Containing cannabis taken in a youth. Two. Three hundred milligrams of alpha GPC. This is night and day, right? It's chemical augmentation of a completely different beast. So I think that It's clear that

No cannabis is going to be better for most people than any cannabis. Is occasionally used for an adult gonna be a Problem. Probably not. Yeah. I know. I I w will also say to add to that a few things. Number one I Um

deeply interested in the The therapeutic applications of cannabis and all of its constituent parts. I think it is uh Very undervalued.

Plant. From that perspective, and I think it is is severely underestimated in terms of Potency. Just the standard available. Particularly in in places where you can kinda get

Baker's dozen. Of any number of strains. Colorado, etc. to believe that you are using something of almost no risk as compared to psychedelics. If it contains a lot of THC is a mistake.

So I would just say Consider it on par. with some of these very strong psychedelics. Just be informed and be cautious about your use. I do think that there are probably some really significant applications to

Sleep disorders. And I will add, just for people listening, I have also tried CBN specifically, which has been recommended to me for sleep and have not found it. as effective it probably depends on the specific variety of sleep disorder, but for onset insomnia

That is a product predominantly not of spike glucose. I guess cortisol and or then glucose levels. But rather rumination. THC seems to be one of the magic keys in very low doses. But Let's take away from that.

to psychedelics. How has your Thinking. Any observations, commentary Beliefs around psychedelics. Changed over the less.

Few years. my beliefs and stance and also what I'm willing to say. has completely changed in the last twenty four months. This last week, Stanford magazine, which is a magazine of the Stanford Alumni Association. goes out to many more people than just two attended Stanford.

It's a very nice bound magazine of the kind that you would Yeah. The dentist officer, you know. On the cover. And

Inside there's a feature article about psychedelics. I could not believe it at first. But it is essentially a guide to psychedelics. It's not telling you how to do them, but it explains. What is ketamine. Now here they're broadly defining psychedelics.

Okay, so the classic psychedelics, right? So Cybon Muscle and L C Are included there. Chemical structures, how they're used, the history. Clinical trials happening now, known benefits. Considerations and risks.

For all of those drugs, plus ketamine plus MDMA. I was just shocked, I positively shocked. Because Three years ago, five years ago, certainly ten years ago, a conversation like this would have been the conversation that would have ended my career. At least as a university professor.

My understanding is that thanks to the incredible work of the group with maps. And A number of specific laboratories, Matthew Johnson's laboratory, Robin Carthart, Harris's laboratory, Roland Griffith's laboratory. And thanks to the philanthropy organized by you and others. Truly.

And also thanks to the public. education efforts of people like Michael Pollen. We are moving very quickly towards legalization of MDMA. As administered by either psychiatrists and or licensed clinical psychologists in the US.

I'm told it we'll get there, quote unquote. Why am I framing it this way? Well I'll just be very direct. In high school, I took LSD recreationally several times. Had

Not good experiences. The experiences were far too long. Eleven, fifteen hours. I might have spent My senior prom in an elevator. May or may not.

I definitely and I'm not recommending people do this. I actually strongly regret doing that at a time when my brain was plastic. I did not know what I was doing. I didn't know the sourcing. It was it was a terrible idea. Terrible idea even riskier now. Yeah. And keep in mind, folks, I was not a star student. Far from it. It took a lot of years to get my my act together. Talked about this before on Tim's podcast, Rich Rold's podcast and others. So You know. That certainly did not help. I don't recommend it.

I tried psilocybin recreationally a few times. Didn't get much out of it. As an adult I'm not shy about the fact that I Did two and now three of the

Maps appropriate. physician guided. sessions for trauma using MDMA, I've found it immensely beneficial. I'm happy to talk about how each one of those sessions was different. Again, this is with a physician. As part of a a study.

So What I know now is completely different than what I knew two years ago. Which is not just based on the legality, but in discussions with Nolan Williams, this incredibly impressive colleague of mine and friend of yours and colleague of yours, really. That

The safety profiles on things like MDMA are actually quite high. I was taught that MDMA was neurotoxic. Why was I taught that? Well, there's paper published in Science Magazine. Looking at toxicity of MDMA. Observing their toxic effects turns out.

What were they looking at? Methymphetamine. Oops. Retraction. Yeah. Retraction, except that never made the better hand. Never makes it. Okay, so Then you look at the data on psilocybin here I'm just gonna hit the high points because it's really the not It is not my work, it's the work of Matthew Johnson and of Robin Carter Harris at UCSF.

Intractable depression. People who are suicidally depressed. Nothing else works. Talk therapy doesn't work. An antidepressants don't work. TMS doesn't work. Do too high dose, so it's twenty five milligrams of psilocybin. That has to be translated for But

It's roughly like the twenty five to thirty milligram of psilocybin, synthetic psilocybin be equivalent to let's just say a Terrence McKenna heroic dose of five grams. I mean you're you're getting enough for escape velocity. Mm-hmm. Okay. In upwards of sixty percent, maybe seventy percent of These patients that take that are getting. substantial and ongoing relief. That's an amazing

result. So much so that the Big pharma has moved in and is trying to create non psychedelic psychedelics to extract the benefits of these drugs that don't induce hallucinations. Instead of raising interesting questions about whether or not the experience under psychedelics is really the trigger for the antidepressant effect.

ball of wax. And and really I'm not qualified to parse that. That's really the domain of Robin and The psychonauts and the interesting uh set of uh issues. So my stance nowadays is There is a compound out there that seems to have very high safety profiles, very, very high. So certainly for psilocybin, that under the appropriate guidance and supervision during and after

in the so called integration phase one or two dosages of this stuff. Yes, takes people through a phone of anxiety, then a phone of Deep introspection. This is also I learned essential there are two components that I learned are essential that were surprising to me. One, you have to be in the eye mask.

observing things in your external environment the whole time seems to Bypass some of the Introspective slash antidepressant effects later. That's interesting to me. It's not just about what you see, what you hear out there. It's really about going inward. this kind of trust let go. Yeah, it's also important to standardized for trials, right? You can't have people looking at all sorts of different stuff. Somebody's watching finding Nemo and another one's watching Jaws or Exactly. And then the other thing it was I learned from Robin recently

І музик сем'с тобі а клон. Now they've never teased out music, no music, but having music that starts as he described it in the distance, you know, drums and pacing or something approaching music. Then instrumentals which raise people's emotional state while they're in the IMAS. And then some transition period out. Seems to be a critical component of all this and guiding some of the

kind of funneling towards deep emotional introspection. I find this incredibly interesting. And again, I would have not felt safe talking about this a year ago, two years ago. Keep in mind that In the late sixties, early seventies, there were professors at Harvard and Stanford

Mainly. That were fired. Or at least asked to leave for having discussions like this. And now Stamford magazine itself. is printing this. And this is I also I'll use this as an opportunity to say this because I it's really about the the listeners. You know, our podcast

You run loud podcast is free. on all the channels, but we do have a premium channel. I'm not trying to solicit it here, but the premium channel is designed to We do AMAs and things of that sort, transcripts are available to those folks to raise revenue for research dollars for exciting work. And we have a donor that's very been very generous to do a match for that money and We're giving Money only to studies working on humans, not animal studies.

And two of the major areas that we're supporting Or the sort of work that Nolan's lab is doing, and Nolan in particular. to combine transcranial magnetic stimulation with psychedelics and these sorts of things. I didn't know I didn't know that about um the premium option. Yeah, that's really what the premium channel is designed for. Yeah that's great. And this is again, I'm gonna say this again, people are gonna think that I'm just here, you know, kissing up to to Tim, but I'm I'm doing that over text all the time anyway, because this is yet an another example where You got into science philanthropy early. You reached out to your connects, you were very vocal about what you felt was powerful and had worked for you and what you've been observing and

I Absolutely clear. I've said this on Twitter. I'll say it again. When we look back in five years, ten years, a hundred years. There's going to be a small subset of individuals for whom the transition of psychedelics from these like niche communities, hippie communities, carpet flyers. Yeah, devil's

Everything from devil's weed, you know. craziness to truly effective. Compounds for treating psychiatric illness. You're gonna be on that list. Roland's gonna be on that list.

Matthew's gonna be on that list. Paulin's gonna be on that list. Robin's gonna be on that list. And Nolan, I think is gonna be on that list. There's gonna be a small subset of people that were gonna go, listen, research takes money, it takes focus, it takes the bravery, and it also takes The willingness to like take something that has been looked at as just like drugs.

You know, And turn it into something that's therapeutically meaningful. So Yeah, we're just all I'm trying to do is, you know raise some dollars through the premium channel. That's what we've been doing to pump into

Research studies. I mean, you can tell I'm super excited by all this. What I see happening now. is that soon MDMA for trauma is gonna be available. Countless numbers of people out there that

Have trauma. And I don't mean just take MDMA and have a great time. I mean People developing empathy for themselves, I mean people really working through. The barbed wire stuff of their past. Much of which

They had no control over that Sets this transgenerational I mean, really, you know, you you've used the language, you know, bend the arc of history, like these compounds are going to bend the arc of history in the right direction.

And if people out there are listening and saying, Okay, well This is like Recreational stuff and it's very precarious. I do not know a single major

Let's just call them what they are. CEO or company founder. We're talking about people that kinda billionaire level that are Hyper creative. Hyper creative. And hyper functional in their life. We're not talking about mystic creatives. We're talking about people who I don't want to name names, but Every single one of them already knows this is true.

Because they've all done this stuff already. And I was kinda late to the train. 'Cause I had such a terrible experience in my high school years and saw so many friends dead, suicide, drug addicts in jail, like wrecked their lives. I had so many challenges taking myself from essentially a loser with nowhere to go to a trajectory within academia and taking good care of my body that I was like, no drugs, no drugs.

I don't even put psychedelics in the category of drugs, and here I'm lumping MDMA in there, provided it's done with A licensed physician or clinician. Who can guide this stuff. It's been immensely beneficial for me. What were your different sessions like?

To the extent that you're willing to share. The first one I can just summarise by saying was extremely somatic. Waves of intent a lot of shaking. At the beginning of the session I walked in feeling like I could think and feel things from the neck up. I could think and feel things or not think, but I could feel things from the waist down.

But that my body wasn't integrated as a system. I left that session feeling completely comfortable in my body as a whole system. And far more in tune with My emotions. far more comfortable having emotions.

Far less afraid of what emotions might do to me, whether or not they were evoked from inside or from outside. As a consequence, I felt much braver in the world. And I felt like kind of a healthy adaptive level of fearlessness because I felt like Nothing can hijack my internal emotions.

And even if they do. I'll be okay. And that was a significant The second session, very different. I expected everything as I did in the first. Never works that way.

Was one of deep, deep, deep Acceptance. Around resents that I had for people that I felt headless.

Neglected me. Or did not do what they needed to do. Or that I felt a lot of you might be able to sense a little bit of emotion here. It's it's hard because I can still sense the ways in which Thoughts about that are painful. But mostly because it seems so senseless to me now.

And yeah, I have Truly zero resent. I look for it often to just check myself to it. No resent, like complete forgiveness, which has given me tremendous relief. And then the third session was interesting.

Third session was a higher dose. I had never taken the the booster. The maps booster. Took the booster. And I lay completely still for about eight hours.

And it was very introspective. And I think I left that session. Everything I've described, by the way, I feel I've maintained years later now. the third session, which was more recent. I felt I finally understood.

And kind of sealed up what I can only describe as like boundaries. That other people can have emotions and experiences. That are truly separate. From me.

I tend to be pretty affiliative. I think that came out of an early Especially with friends, you know, and in relationships it came out of an early need to feel some sense of family where I didn't feel that As much as I would have liked for my biological family. And

There have been times when I've been unable to really Keep in touch with kind of how my life is distinct from and my emotions are distinct from other people's a little bit of too much of empathic blurring sometimes. And it felt like that was just sealed right up. And mind you, each time I went into these sessions, I was afraid of all the standard things, losing my mind, having a heart attack. Now, granted, if you have heart issues.

Tell your physician you don't want to do MDMA. It isn't an amphetamine in there. But I was afraid of all the standard stuff. Each time I felt like the window on Introspection and plasticity lasted much longer, weeks. Longer.

And each time I just felt like I got better and better at self care. Which In my mind was always a very selfish thing. I always thought self care is selfish.

You know, even working out. I used to hide working out when I'd go to conferences because I thought like no academic like goes to the gym and lifts weights. And I really like doing that, but I realized how much stronger I was. mentally when I was taking care of my physical body. But I think that things have changed now. So the third session was very meaningful for me because it I felt like it kinda sealed something up. Where I go, Okay, like I'm Good.

Like things can happen around me and I'm not gonna get pulled into it. In a way that compromises my Well being. Of course, I still have a lot in there and work to do. And Robin Cardard Harris said to me recently, he said, Well, you know, psilocybin is really the honest psychedelic because there you don't have the empathogen that's woven into the MDMA. So you're really gonna see whatever darkness still exists within you. And I thought, Oh goodness.

But you know I spoken as a true psilocybin researcher. I know. So so they hear they you know, you hear about people like is it calling to you? I'm afraid to do psilocybin for that reason. I definitely've worked hard to kind of suppress some of the dark clouds in my head. And Yeah, but the fact that I'm still a bit afraid of them is probably the reason why I should do it. It also I think means you're coming to it.

from an intellectually honest place. If someone has absolutely no concerns or misgivings about Extremely powerful. Psychedelics.

I mean, you are playing with psychological nuclear power. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Revealing the unconscious. I mean, I didn't even know what psychedelic meant, but it I mean, Robin taught me it means revealing the unconscious mind. And I still do, you know, extensive amounts of Psychotherapy and psycho. Analysis. I look at that as just like going to the gym.

I'm fortunate that my insurance can help pay for that and I'm able to pay for it. So I understand not everybody can, but I I still feel that Yeah, if we don't actually take the time to figure out what's going on in our heads, who how can we really trust that we're on the best path? Yeah, or just Representing reality to our benefit.

In a sense, right, because we're perceiving but also constructing reality. And Sometimes. If you think your glasses are scratched. Or smeared or foggy or whatever. You need to take them off and look at them.

But there are very few ways to do that with your own psyche. There are very few tools that allow you to do that. And I would recommend for folks if they are interested in and thank you for being so forthcoming with describing your experiences. Getting a a good overview. Of how

MDMA specifically Can help with, say, complex PTSD and why it has become such a focal point for many, many researchers and practitioners. I do recommend the Netflix How to change your mind. mini series that Pollen was involved with based on

The book of the same name. And specifically the MDMA episode I thought was Spectacularly well done. I need to see that still. It's very well done and includes a lot of case studies and interviews with research subjects and there's also documentary that I helped bring to

Well, outside of Israel called Trib of Compassion. This was probably four or five years ago. Which contains session footage. as well. Production value is going to be a bit lower than Netflix, so you might want to try that first.

but there are a number of forthcoming books coming that'll be focused on these topics. A lot of good stuff happening uh in terms of investigation. There are risks. There are Very non trivial risks. And That is part of the reason why. the fundamental research is important, which is why people like

I have to mention Roland because he was my gateway into so much of this, Roland Griffiths and Robin and Nolan and others are are doing very, very important work because there's the commercialization There's the development of derivatives and perhaps non psychedelic options. And I think that they hold promise in

certain conditions like cluster headaches, for instance. However. I do firmly s fall into the camp that believes there are these mechanistic Receptor level effects and many other physiological measurable effects.

that exert or impart some of the benefits that We document in trials but I am firmly in the camp that the content matters. Deeply.

Yeah, Rob and I and Nolan. And I also discussed things like eBoga, Ibogaine, twenty two hour long psychedelic journey. No Hallucinations with eyes open, close eyes, see drop into very vivid imagery of previous experiences. That doesn't interest me so much. Seems a little bit much. It's gonna be hard also to do clinical studies on that. As Robin pointed out, one of the reasons why most of the trials are being done with psilocybin or MDMA is because the sessions are four to six hours.

With some aftercare. LSD double or triple that. And of course we should point out that Street MDMA. could very well be and is often laced with fentanyl. So y the sourcing here must be through maps. I think they're the only ones that actually have the clean sourcing of MDMA.

I know people out there will be like, I know a clean source, but nowadays I think people need to be exceedingly cautious about fentanyl because it's deadly. There is an organization called Dance Safe, which I encourage people to check out, which provides Kits because I know that You can tell kids abstain. No sex. No sex. Just no sex until you're married. They're gonna have sex anyway. So I recognize people who are listening are probably going to use drugs. From uh

Unclear. sourcing or it will be a game of telephone. It will be from five different, ten different, twelve different, hundred different hands to theirs. Dance Safe has kits. I'm not recommending that you use drugs in that fashion, but People are gonna do it anyway. There are kits you can purchase which will help you to detect

Some of these contaminants. So at the very least. Do that type of due diligence. Yeah. Yeah, so you asked how, you know, how do I feel about these compounds done in the clinical setting and How was my

Stance change. Complete one eighty. Complete one eighty. I'm super curious. I'm super excited and least of all for me, I'm excited about what my experience. It was very positive all around, but I'm most excited for the you know, millions and millions maybe even billions of people out there.

Billions of people certainly have trauma. But the millions of people who are impaired in terms of daily mood and basic functioning because of depression, anxiety. I mean there are

Anorexia nervosa, the most deadly psychiatric illnesses anorexia. Of course, people with bipolar and schizophrenia, these are not good candidates because of the propensity for exacerbating psychosis or manic episodes. You know, I think We are heading into really interesting times. And a year or two ago I would have thought, this isn't gonna make it through the shoot. Something's gonna happen and the whole thing's gonna fall apart. I think it was the event that we were both at, the veteran solutions event on Coronado Island.

incredible group that you're associated with and We have common friends in from the Special operations community. Who are doing these. Eboga DMT.

Combined sessions out of country and then working with Nolan Williams to look at how the brain changes. And We saw Governor Rick Perry there. Yeah. Oh. Yeah, I interviewed Rick and Rick. Yeah. And as far as politically as Rick Diddy's the uh who stood up there and said in front of a room full of special operators that he'd been a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. And I thought, wow, if he doesn't get killed in this room, he's gonna survive forever. Um in other words

Polar extremes politically. Standing there talking about psychedelics and their value for Treatment of intractable depression, trauma. offsetting the certain amount of suicide risk in many individuals.

Talking about. I think I heard Rick Perry say the words heart medicine. I almost fell out of my chair. I mean this is super exciting. And it's super exciting because the the only way to describe it is the way that

Paul Conti. Sometimes describes things like There are certain things for Which there's A lot of work, a lot of

potential hazard, but that done properly He wasn't referring to psychedelics when he said this, but this Particular but like There's so much goodness that could come out of this. The amount of goodness that could come out of it.

Everyone. having access to great medical care therapy. And potentially psychedelic therapies. Just imagine like the magnitude of the world change. Like that's the kind of stuff that gets chills running up my spine. And you just think, Well gosh, but the scale of that problem is just too big legally, financially.

But enough has happened now that At least Some of that in terms of psychedelics could very well happen. And again to clarify what Paul Conti wasn't talking about psychedelics, he's just has this

We're doing a series with him and on mental health and occasionally he'll say something like About Yeah, certain things are just goodness. You know, and and I I love the sound of that because it sounds there's something so wholesome about it, but but so real. I mean, waking up and feeling

Good enough to pursue the basic events of the day. With some hardship, of course, from time to time. Good enough to Set a goal and fail and then try again. You know, good enough to like have a rough run through a relationship or

or a hard family life or lose all your money and go bankrupt and come back. Like that's the stuff of real life. And I think that there's so many So called deaths of despair. And then they're Ten times more. Sort of lives of despair.

out there and I think there's is the opportunity for real healing. Yeah, for lack of a better word. High leverage. Very high leverage. I'm excited to see where it goes. And I would tell people also

Don't be shy about following the money in the sense that there will be Every possible attempt to contort And change psychedelic therapies to fit into existing healthcare and I do think there's upside to that, right? Not everyone is going to be able to afford

Whatever the costs may be. to receive be spoke. Medical care. with a session that lasts eighteen hours or whatever it is, twelve hours, let's just say, in the case of the sort of upper range for some people with LSD.

However, if you see a company that's saying five M O DMT is the ticket because it's the businessman's psychedelic therapy because it lasts fifteen minutes Take a sniff test or two. first. And also just because it's fifteen minutes earth time doesn't mean your experience is fifteen minutes. So just be cautious with that. The removal of psychedelic effects also makes it much more adaptable. And plug and play with

Current Healthcare practitioners And things can be turned into Maintenance doses. So if we look at kids.

Yeah, for kids, right. So you say if you take like generic ketamine. I'm not gonna name too many names, but some of the slight molecular changes that have been made to create, say Mainten with Nasal sprays.

I do think that at least for me, and I may be old fashioned, but I do think that these compounds and relatively few sessions have the Potential to induce plasticity. Provide experiences. That have

I'm not gonna say well, in some cases curative capability. Potential. But extremely high durability. And we're talking on the order of years. So I think people should be skeptical of of companies that aim to create maintenance drugs.

from these although that could be applicable to certain populations that say may fit into exclusionary criteria because they can't take higher doses for risk of, say, psychosis. But they might be able to take. very, very low doses along the lines of, say, a microdose, which

wouldn't impart the perhaps content experiences, but could have some effects on type two A, serotonin type two A receptors. But intracellularly. Which I was just reading about. I would recommend if people want to keep up to speed with these things, the microdose from U C Berkeley.

It's fantastic. That's sort of a news bulletin summary on a weekly basis. If you want a good overview, I think how to change your mind is a great place to start. If you want to know how some psychotherapists have worked with these things, I think an oldy but a goodie, The Healing Journey by Claudio Naranjo, I think is excellent, even if you just buy it for the introduction. I think MAPS sells that. So a lot of good resources out there. Andrew, we've covered a lot of ground. And uh it's so nice to spend time together. We're gonna grab some dinner. Is there anything that you would like to add, point people to, any closing comments you'd like to make before we wrap up?

No, at one point we had Thought we might cover How to optimize a podcast and there I'm just gonna point people to the great series that you did. I think it was one or two episodes. I did an episode with Chris Hutchins.

Because he wanted to ask me a million questions about podcasting and I said, You know what? I get asked this all the time. Let's just record a podcast and then I can point people to the podcast. Perfect. Well, my whole team listened to it and talked about it and used it as kind of a checklist for whether or not we were doing things right. That was about a year ago and things are going well. So I'll just point people to that episode. Hopefully you can link to that episode'cause it's really great. We thought Yes, yes, and oops, we better be doing that. I really just want to extend my gratitude. For The work you've done in the past. I know I've mentioned it over and over and I I'm sure some listeners are probably like here he goes again.

Thank you, but I would not be podcasting were not for you and Lex Friedman, who gave me the like final nudge. And also I've just gleaned so much valuable knowledge from your books and your podcasts and learned so much from you. So again, for me It's like pure delight to be sitting here. having this conversation. I'm feel very honored and I'm really grateful to you and your team.

And I hope you'll come on the Huberman Lab podcast before long. Absolutely. I need to. Need to make a trip to So Cal. Thanks for saying all that. It really means a lot. And It has been a fucking blast to watch you just

Storm the front, man. It's really been fun to see the podcast do as well as it has done to see that Then also lead into Other types of Snowball effects like providing funding, as I just learned.

for studies vis a vis the the premium option. And Keep it up, man. I am I am certainly learning a lot and taking notes myself. You can see the notes in front of me. It may not be visible on video, but I've been taking notes through the whole conversation. As I always do when I listen to you talk, whether it's on your podcast or in person. So People can find you. Huberman Lab dot com We will link to YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, but it is Cuberman Lab on all these platforms.

And I encourage people to subscribe. Check it out. Thank you Andrew. And to everybody listening, we will have links to all sorts of things, including that light vest that we'll figure out in the show notes. uh Tim.blog slash podcast, you can just search Andrew or Huberman, H U B E R M A N and all things will pop up. So until next time, just be

A bit kinder than is necessary to other people and yourself. And pay attention to those fundamentals. Those pillars. All good things.

And as always Thanks for tuning in. Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out. every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kinda like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading books I'm reading.

albums perhaps gadgets gizmas all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends including a lot of podcast guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun again it's very short a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday. Type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash Friday. Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening.

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