#708: Dr. Andrew Huberman — A Neurobiologist on Optimizing Sleep, Enhancing Performance, Reducing Anxiety, Increasing Testosterone, and Using the Body to Control the Mind (Repost)

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4:19 A cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal empty scale. Hello, boys and girls, ladies and gents, this is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, where it is my job to interview world class performers from all different disciplines to tease out the habits, routines, influences, life lessons, and so on that you can apply to your own lives. My guest today is Andrew. Huberman. That's H-U-B-E-R-M-A-N-P-H-D. You can find him on Twitter and Instagram at Huberman Lab. Andrew 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 neuroplasticity.

5:07 Andrew is a McKnight Foundation and Pew Foundation Fellow and recipient of the 2017 Cogan, that's C O G A N award for his discoveries in the study of vision. Work from the Huberman Laboratory at Stanford Medicine has been consistently published in top journals, including Nature, Science, and Cell. Andrew is the host of the Huberman Lab Podcast, which he launched in January of this year. 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. As mentioned, you can find him on Instagram and Twitter at Huberman Lab. You can find him. On the web at Huberman Lab.com. Andrew, many people have been trying to matchmake for five or six years, and finally, here we are. Welcome to the show.

5:52 Oh, thanks so much for having me here. Yes, we've Cross path, near misses for a long time. Yeah, it's great to finally sit down and chat. I thought I would start right in your wheelhouse. And use a headline to

6:05 Introduce. The subject of vision. Scientific American interviewed you not long ago, and they titled the piece, quote, Vision and Breathing Maybe the Secrets to Surviving 2020, end quote. So breathing. I think for a lot of folks might seem self evident.

6:20 stop that, you have a lot of problems on your hands. Or if you do it incorrectly, we can we can certainly dive into that. Later on. Vision, I think. will jump out is perhaps odd to a lot of folks. Why vision? Why is vision?

6:35 Perhaps a secret or a key to surviving twenty twenty or any year for that matter. Yeah, so the vision And our visual system is perhaps the strongest Lever by which we can shift our state of mind and body. And that

6:51 Might at first come as a surprise because thing that we have to see colours and motion and recognized faces, et cetera. But The two little goodies in the front of our skull, our eyes.

7:04 are actually part of our central nervous system. A lot of People don't realize this, but your neural retina, the little light sensing piece of the eyes Enough. Back of the eye kinda lines it like a pie crust.

7:17 Are actually two pieces of Your brain. That were deliberately. squeezed out during early development. So they're the only two pieces of your brain that are outside the cranial vault. As we say.

7:28 And those little pieces of brain have an enormous impact on the state of The rest of your brain. So it's fair to say that What you see and how you view the world literally.

7:40 has an incredible impact on your state of mind. Respiration, breathing also on your state of mind and body. But the reason is the following. Our visual system is not just for Seeing objects shapes and colors, etcetera.

7:56 Our eyes have two functions. So much in the same way that our ears are responsible for hearing, but also there's a balance mechanism in there. Our eyes are responsible for detecting shapes and colors, et cetera, but also Whether or not to be more alert or more relaxed. And the most fundamental way that our eyes do that is communicating time of day.

8:18 The presence or absence of sunlight? to our central circadian clock and then this central circuiting clock, which is really just an aggregation of neurons, communicates to the rest of the brain and body Whether or not For instance, metabolism should be higher, metabolism should be low, whether or not we should feel like moving or feel like lying down and not moving at all.

8:35 But There are a number of ways in which the visual system works on fast time scales. to adjust our inner state. And one of them. Most simple ways that it does that.

8:46 is one that normally happens when we're stressed or relaxed, but We don't recognize it. So for instance, if we are very relaxed. Our pupils change or the shape of our lens changes such that We actually have dilated vision. We see the entire environment we're in, so called panoramic vision.

9:03 When we are stressed. Or we are excited about something, the pupils dilate, the shape of our lens changes, literally the optics of our eye changes. And the information about the outside world that's delivered to our the rest of our brain and body changes. The aperture of our experience, our entire experience shrinks. We get so called

9:23 So to straw you Of the world we're looking through soda straws essentially when we are alert or stressed. And We've experienced this, but we don't normally notice it happening. So much like breathing.

9:36 Our Experience of life, whether or not we're alert or stressed, excited or calm. Changes our patterns of breathing, we're all accustomed to that. you know, our breathing speeding up, we're holding our breath if in anticipation But

9:48 As well our Interstate drives changes in our visual system, the aperture of whether or not we see the big picture or We have a very contracted view of the world. But both those things. Breathing and vision also run in reverse.

10:02 Meaning If we change our pattern of breathing, we change our inner state. If our state changes, our breathing changes. So it's reciprocal. It's bi directional. Likewise with vision. When we are excited.

10:13 Or stress. The aperture of our visual window shrinks. We get that soda straw view of the world. When we are relaxed, the aperture of our vision expands. But as well it runs in both directions. If we expand.

10:28 our visual field or just it it's very easy actually. You can do it no matter where you are right now. If you just Try and expand your visual field not by looking around or moving your head or eyes, but by Trying to see yourself in the environment that you're in. So you literally dilate your view so you could see the ceiling and the floor and the walls if you're inside. Or if you're outdoors seeing as big an aperture of your Visual.

10:49 field or your your visual environment as possible. So you're directing your attention to even though you might remain looking straight ahead, you're just directing your attention to as wide a peripheral view horizontally and vertically as possible. Is that what you mean? That's right, exactly. So essentially if you keep your head and eyes mostly stationary, you don't have to be, you know, rigid about rock. Steady but

11:11 If you look forward and you expand your field of view so you kind of relax your eyes So that you can see as much of your environment around you as possible to the point where you can see yourself in that environment. What you do is you are turning off the attention and believe it or not, the stress mechanisms that drive your internal state towards stress.

11:31 This is why when you go to a a vista or you view a horizon, it's very relaxing. Because you naturally go into panoramic vision. When you are indoors, you're looking at your phone, you're looking at a computer or a camera or something of that sort. Or you're talking to somebody or an intense conversation.

11:47 You d may not notice it, but your entire visual field shrinks. to a much smaller aperture. And that drives an increase in alertness in internal states. And we sometimes call that stress if it's a negative experience. If it's a positive experience, we might call that

12:02 love or obsession or fascination. But The important thing to realize is that both vision and breathing Have a profound and very rapid effect on our internal state of mind and body. And it runs in both directions.

12:16 Our internal state. That could be triggered by a text message or hearing something that somebody says drives changes in our breathing and our vision. But our breathing and our vision can also drive changes in our internal state. And so that article in Scientific American was a discussion about how we can Leverage the visual system and the respiration, the breathing system.

12:35 In order to take control over our internal state. Because It's not just that twenty twenty was stressful. It's that our internal state determines everything. It d doesn't just determine if we feel

12:47 Like we're having a hard time falling asleep, or we're having a hard time focusing, for instance. It also Determines how we batch time, how we analyze where we are in the world in terms of our lifespan. A good example of this would be when we are very stressed. We fine slice time.

13:03 This is why when people are in a car accident or something, they might report that things were in slow motion. They're actually your frame rate increases. Whereas when you're very relaxed. Your frame rate slows down. And when we are relaxed, we get so called perspective. We are able to say, Well, this too shall pass or

13:22 I can place this stressful event in a context. So one thing that's just fundamental to how our nervous system works is that we are constantly Placing our experience, both our immediate and past. experience as well as our anticipation of the future into some sort of larger context. And our visual system, literally how we are viewing the world at that moment.

13:42 Dictates. How we create perspective. in terms of states of mind. Sounds a little bit abstract, but it's actually it boils right down to optics of the eye and very concrete things like how you move your eyes and how you view the world. This is is super fascinating to me because I've

13:58 Thought a lot about breathing. And how On one hand. Breathing is a function of the autonomous nervous systems when you're asleep, you don't have to consciously inhale and exhale, but simultaneously it's this almost API into your autonomic nervous system because while you're awake, you can

14:19 control and direct and modify your breathing for that directionality. But I've never thought about it from the from the visual perspective. And just a quick Bit of trivia. that is out of left field, but nonetheless came to me that people might find interesting is that the dilation, right? This hyper dilation of pupils. is I don't know how much it is associated with arousal or sexual arousal, but for those who have ever heard the word Belladonna.

14:49 is a plant. The reason it's called Belladonna, beautiful woman in Italian, is that it used to be Turned into a tincture. And it it is a psychotropic and it is also very dangerous, so I don't recommend people consume it. But many, many Years ago, hundreds of years ago, women in certain parts of Europe would create a tincture and put it into their eyes to hyperdilate. Your pupils because it was thought to be very, very attractive and beautiful woman.

15:15 Could you speak to How One can think about using their visual Apparatus.

15:24 Or stimulating or not stimulating their eyes their visual system for, say, sleep. If one wants to optimize for sleep, what are some considerations? And it could be that It could be

15:38 other inputs, but I'd just be curious to know how this fits into sleep for you personally. Has Perhaps the

15:48 strongest effect on our levels of alertness and our capacity to fall asleep and get a good night's sleep. And This is because at the fundamental layer of our biology Every cell in our body needs information about time of day. It's no coincidence that

16:06 We have a collection of neurons over the roof of our mouth, the so called supercosmatic nucleus. That's our central circadian clock. It informs every cell in our body about time of day. But it is deep in our brain. It has no access to light. So there are A collection of neurons in the eye, the so called Melanops and ganglion cells or sometimes call intrinsically sensitive.

16:27 photosensitive ganglien cells. These are just neurons in the back of your eye. Remembering course that the eye is actually part of the brain that's outside the skull. And Those neurons. Communicate.

16:39 to the central clock. When it's daytime and when it's night. So the simple behavior. that I do believe everybody should adopt, including many blind people. We've talked about why that is.

16:50 Is to View ideally sunlight. For Two to ten minutes every morning upon waking. So when you get up in the morning

16:58 You really want to get bright light. into your eyes because it does two things. First of all Yeah. Triggers

17:06 The timed release of cortisol, a healthy Level of cortisol. into your system which acts as a wake up signal and will promote wakefulness and the ability to focus throughout the day. It also starts a timer. For the onset of melatonin.

17:21 This sleepy Melatonin is inhibited by light. So by viewing light first thing in the day. You set in motion these two timers, one for wakefulness that starts immediately, and one for sleepiness that starts later.

17:37 The key thing here is that People are hearing a lot nowadays about avoiding blue light. Blue light is so terrible. Well it turns out that blue light is exactly the wavelength of light that triggers activation of these cells, and that's exactly what you want early in the day. So people generally will say, Well Maybe I should just look at my computer or my phone first thing in the day. Well

17:56 It turns out that these cell are Very Hard to activate early in the day and very easy to activate at night. So it's kinda like the biology is encouraging us, if you will to take on the right behaviors, which are to get outside, even if there's cloud cover, there's a lot more light energy, a lot more photons coming through.

18:14 Cloud cover. than you're going to get off your phone or a computer. And early in the day Two to ten minutes outside without sunglasses. is going to be really beneficial. For a huge range of biological functions.

18:28 And brain state. I have made a practice I'm in the middle of nowhere in the country right now of of getting up and not necessarily doing a full workout, but just jumping rope for Literally two to five minutes. Two to ten minutes. Outside facing.

18:43 the sun, where the sun is rising. And There's certainly an effect. I mean, I am moving, so there's an effect on cortisol, and as you noted, it's that cortisol gets this ridiculously bad rap across the board. And it's like guys, if you don't have cortisol, you're dead. So exactly. If you like having storing glycogen and breaking it down into glucose and so on. You you it's important to have some cortisol. There's a tremendous for me Mood elevating effect. of this exposure. And I'm just I really have never familiarized myself with

19:15 the mechanism by which that would be the case. And certainly if it's placebo, I'm happy to just take placebo, but do you have any explanation for why that exposure can have such a mood elevating effect? Yeah, it's definitely not placebo. That morning light exposure is going to also trigger the activation of dopamine release, you know, dopamine being this essentially feel good neuromodulator. Th the best way to conceptualize dopamine is that yes, it's part of the reward system, but it's really the molecule of motivation. And positive anticipation.

19:45 That's really What it's about. And I should mention that the cortisol is going to be released in a pulse. Once every twenty four hours, no matter what.

19:54 That's coming, as we call it an intrinsic rhythm. But you can time it by viewing light and Or by getting exercise early in the day. There are actually data to just kind of emphasize what happens when you don't do this. There are really nice data from my colleague David Spiegel's lab. He actually co published this with the great

20:11 Bob Sapolsky few years ago, David's our associate chair of psychiatry at Stanford. And They showed that If that cortisol pulse shows up later in the day. And especially if it's around eight or nine PM.

20:24 Then it's associated with depression. By shifting that cortisol pulse earlier in the day. You Ameliorate some of the symptoms of depression. And because of the dopamine release, you get this overall mood enhancement.

20:37 There are four things that really time our circadian biology and these mood mechanisms properly and align us for sleep. And they the most powerful time keeper as they say Zeitgeber,'cause Germans discovered this mechanism initially. So the most powerful time keeper Zeitgeber. I'm sorry, that's there it is. I knew you'd do it better than I would. Is is light. When you view light.

21:00 Light is the most powerful stimulus for your biology and central circadian clock. Then It's exercise. So it's your protocol of jumping rope facing the sun, your layering on Time keepers. You're giving more signals. to the central clock and the rest of your body about

21:16 When to be active. And you're also indirectly signaling when you will want to be asleep later. Then it's feeding. I know a lot of people fast through the early part of the day now. That's very fashionable and I do that as well. But were you to Eat early in the day.

21:31 That can also help. And then the other one is social cues. So Interacting with people early in the day or with your dog early in the day. I have a dog. I live alone with my dog. So

21:42 That's how I interact with the world socially. But those things are going to create wake up signals and your body will start to anticipate them and your brain will start to anticipate them. Such that if you miss it for a day, you're still gonna wake up and feel that alertness signal. early in the day. So this is not something that you have to do every day. But ideally you do it every day because it's like setting a clock or a watch properly. And I should mention that for people that live in areas with very dense cloud cover.

22:08 You can use light boxes and things of that sort, but irrespective of that in the morning and during the day and any time you wanna be alert, you wanna flip on as many overhead lights as possible. This is because these n cells in the eye that trigger activation and alertness of the rest of the brain and nervous system reside in the lower portion of the eye. They view the upper visual field. Now The inverse of all this is also important.

22:32 As you approach the evening or nighttime and you want to go to sleep, That is the time. to start avoiding bright lights of any color, not just blue light. And if possible, to place whatever lights are present in your environment lower in your visual field. So this would be desk lamps. Most people don't have floor lighting, dim the lights.

22:51 If you wanna wear blue blockers or do something of that sort, that's fine. But I think people have taken the blue blocker thing a little too far by wearing them all day, that's actually going to disrupt your circadian clocks. So In the evening you really want to avoid bright light of any kind. And again, it's an averaging. If you do this every once in a while, you go to the bathroom in the middle of the night or you have an emergency and things

23:11 are really bright for one night, it's not gonna screw you up. However There was a paper published in the journal Cell. A few years ago by my good friend and colleague at the National Institutes of Mental Health. His name is Samir Hattar. He's the head of the chronobiolit at the National Institutes of Mental Health. And what

23:27 Summer's lab. showed is that bright light exposure. Of any wavelength between the hours of about Eleven PM and four A.M. cause a serious disruption in the dopamine system.

23:40 Such that In subsequent days, the You have a Disruption in a lowering of mood, difficulty in learning. There's a cascade of things that happen.

23:50 In other words, we get punished for light viewing at the wrong times of their circadian cycle, and we get rewarded for light viewing at the correct times of the circadian cycle. Let's talk About the latter portion of the day. Before I get to that though, just for My understanding.

24:07 If one Say wants to target going to bed. More more accurately, feeling sleepy enough to go to bed easily with rapid onset at say ten PM. Is there a preferred time to get that exposure.

24:24 early in the day in the sense that if I'm doing my ten minutes of jumping rope facing the sun Is it best distance temporally from when I want to Go to sleep.

24:36 Yes, it's about fourteen to sixteen hours prior to when you want to sleep is the ideal time. to get that morning light exposure. And If we wanna get A little bit technical about this.

24:49 We can And I'll do my best to make it clear because there's also a way that you can Use this mechanism to shift your circadian clock to avoid jet lag and shift work. I'll just ask you, so what's your typical wake up time? Not getting up in the middle of the night and using the restroom necessarily and then going back to sleep, but when do you finally get get up and get out of bed? What what time does o is that typically?

25:09 I would say when I'm living my best life and not uh not being Marty from Back to the Future. It's usually seven o'clock, let's just say. Okay, so if seven o'clock is your average wake up time, then we can Be pretty sure that two hours Prior to your natural wake up time.

25:28 is what's called your temperature minimum. It's when your body temperature was lowest. That temperature minimum. And I should be clear, we don't need to know your actual temperature. No one needs to know their actual temperature minimum, but you can count on The fact that two hours before waking up

25:42 Your body temperature is close to or at its lowest point. And to be clear. This would be if you are waking without an alarm clock. Right, that would be if you're following natural rhythms. Correct.

25:54 So If you view light I should mention that you have to do this light viewing behavior with your eyes. That might seem obvious, but some years ago there was a paper published in the journal Science, which is one of the three Apex journals, Science Nature, Cell. And

26:10 It stated that Light presented to the back of the knee of humans could shift their circadian clocks. And that paper was retracted. By the same authors that Published the study.

26:21 There was a technical flaw. Humans Have no extra ocular photoreception. So we need to Tell the cells of the body.

26:30 What time of day it is, essentially where we are in time. By light viewing behavior with the eyes. Blind people do this a little bit differently. Some blind people actually still retain these so called melanopsin cells. People without eyes at all, maybe from a burn victim or something, they they are going to use social cues and exercise and other things. But Most everybody on the planet does this through light viewing behavior.

26:53 So when I say get light, what I mean is get light in your eyes. obviously never so bright that it's gonna damage your eyes. You'll know if a light's too bright Because you'll want to close your eyelids. That's a simple rule of thumb. But

27:05 The key thing here is that If you view light In particular bright light. in the hour or two before that temperature minimum. So for you, Tim, that would be between you know around three AM or four AM.

27:20 It's going to have the Quality. of delaying your circadian clock. What it'll effectively do Is make you want to stay awake later. And it will make you want to sleep in later.

27:33 The following nights. However, if you view light in the hour or so immediately after that so called temperature minimum. So this for you this would be six AM or seven AM. It's going to Shift your clock in the other direction. You're going to want to go to bed a little bit earlier.

27:49 And you're gonna wanna wake up a little bit earlier the next night. Now If you hear this You're probably thinking, Well My clock is always more or less in the same place. How come it doesn't jump around? I wake up, I view light. How come I'm not going to bed earlier and earlier every night and waking up earlier and earlier? The reason is

28:06 There's a second time of day, which is in the evening as the sun sets. Where your circadian clock is also vulnerable again to these shifts. And typically, because most of us are viewing light in the late afternoon. All of us are naturally having our clock shifted so that we want to get up earlier and go to bed earlier the next night. And morning. But

28:25 We're also Delaying our clock a little bit in the afternoon. Now we can make this all very simple. The simple thing to do is within thirty minutes of waking up, get bright light exposure in your eyes. And not from a phone or from a screen because it won't be sufficiently bright. Get it from sunlight, and if you can't get it from sunlight,

28:42 You can use one of these light pads. I don't use one of these expensive wake up clocks or something like that. I bought an LED drawing pad. Like a trace table. Like the artist cheat mechanism. It actually says on it, I forget the company, but it says nine hundred and thirty luck. You can find these very inexpensively online. And that's gonna work great. I just set it at my desk in the morning if it's very overcast and I'll work.

29:04 Now it is important to get outside. Because Even though your windows Or the windshield of your car. Is optically clear.

29:13 It filters out a lot of that blue light that's important for setting your circadian clock. So two to ten minutes of light viewing early in the day. And then You can do yourself a great favor as well. Bye.

29:25 Going outside in the evening or late afternoon as the sun is approaching this what we call low solar angle. Because that will also send Another signal. That

29:37 It's evening. So there's a morning Stimulus and an evening stimulus. This only takes a few minutes each day and what's Key to understand is that the cells in the of your body, they're gonna have all these rhythms of liver function and metabolic function. Your brain is gonna have its rhythms of alertness and anxiety and sleepiness.

29:55 Providing multiple signals. So for you exercise and light in the morning. And then in the afternoon a little bit of light. Is going to tell your system. in a redundant way, but in a powerful way, these are the times to be awake, these are the times to be asleep. And then if you like, we can talk about evening behavior, but that temperature minimum is worth knowing. Because if ever you are traveling, for instance, to Europe

30:16 What you can do is in the two or three days before You can just set your alarm, wake up. Around your temperature minimum, maybe an hour before. Turn on some bright lights in your Home.

30:27 So you get bright light exposure and you will start to shift your clock. forward. That nine hour jump can be accomplished in about two days if you do this correctly. And the reverse is also true. You could shift your clock earlier if you like. And when you land in Europe If we want to get down into the weeds, when you land in Europe

30:44 You have to be Cognizant of What your clock is back home, remember your temperature minimum. It's much more important than where you are in your new environment. That temperature minimum is an anchor point. Remember light viewed in the hour or two before that temperature minimum. Will make you want to go to sleep later.

31:00 And wake up later. Light viewed after that temperature minimum. Will make you want to go to sleep earlier and wake up earlier. Let's talk about Something that is a perennial topic, and that is sleep aids.

31:14 specifically I'd love to get your opinion on various supplements or prescription medications for that matter that people might use. There's a huge list of things that people could use on the prescription side. Certainly you've got the ambians and the Trazodones and so on. Then on the supplemental side, you've got Melatonin, very, very popular.

31:36 Uh you have California poppy. I mean, there's a infinitely long list of various supplements. I would love to hear your thoughts on at least two of these. One is Melatonin.

31:49 Because of its popularity. And then the second is actually phosphatyl serine, so PS for short. And using it to Blunt. cortisol release after going to bed.

32:04 I would just be curious to know if you have any opinions on those or any others that you would advise against or advocate for or use personally. Sure. So I'll say why I'm not a fan of melatonin. When I was a Graduate student.

32:20 I worked on the melatonin system and the circadian system. And one of the most powerful effects of melatonin is to suppress puberty. The melatonin system is closely linked up with Gaba Inhibitory neurons in the hypothalamus.

32:35 effectively keeps puberty from happening. So The melatonin rhythms of young children, prepubertal children. Or not As phasic. Right, they're pretty constant.

32:46 And that's one of the reasons they don't go into puberty. There are many other reasons they don't go into puberty until certain triggers. are set. But Melatonin has strong effects.

32:56 on the sex steroid hormones, the pathways related to estrogen and testosterone. And I think it was the one experiment that I did where we took we were working on these little uh they're called Siberian hamsters, these little hamsters who In long days because They are seasonally breeding animals.

33:14 In long days these are the Siberian hamsters. have testicles well that at least for Siberian hamsters are of pretty impressive size. If however.

33:24 You inject those animals with melatonin or you put them into short days, so you increase the amount of darkness and you decrease the amount of light, remembering of course that light inhibits melatonin. Their testicles shrink to the size of a grain of rice. So I don't know if this was my male ego or something, but I saw that experiment. And I thought wow, this is powerful stuff, this melatonin stuff and it turns out in females Of the same species.

33:48 They leave estrus, they stop cycling. They don't have menstrual cycles, they have estrus cycles. And there are powerful effects of melatonin on the reproductive axis. Now humans are not seasonal breeders and We have a more robust sex steroid hormone axis than that. But Especially for children but also for adults, it just seems to me that

34:06 Melatonin. has a number of other effects. Worth considering. Enough effects that I tend to avoid it. Now I should also say that most of the concentrations of melatonin that are in supplements are

34:18 or ten to one thousand times what the endogenous internal levels would naturally be. So People taking melatonin are Seeing Dramatic effects. But

34:28 You're taking super physiological levels of Melatonin. We all kind of balk when we hear about People taking a You know, a thousand milligrams of Testosterone, Scipionate a week. Which

34:39 Unfortunately cer certain people do. But this is the equivalent of Super dosing. Sleep hormones. And these are hormones that have other issues and other roles, I should say, in the body. So that's why I veer away from melatonin. And also there are three things that I personally have found to be much more beneficial.

34:58 That seem to have very good safety margins. Of course everyone needs to check with their physician. But those three things are Magnesium three and eight. T H R

35:09 E-O-N-A-T-E Or by glycinate. Magnesium biglycinate. Magnesium three nate and magnesium biglycinate. are able to be transported across the blood brain barrier more readily than other forms of magnesium. I know you know a lot about this topic, Tim, so correct me anywhere I might misspeak. But like for instance

35:27 Magnesium citrate is a great laxative. that will remind you that it's a it's a great laxative. But it's not great at inducing sleep. Magnesium three and eight are magnesium biglycinate, so two hundred to four hundred milligrams. About thirty minutes before sleep.

35:44 Is a powerful sleep aid. People with heart issues. Might not want to take it or might want to check with their doctor. But I take a cocktail of magnesium three and eight. And then two other things. One is very commonly known, which is theanine, T H E A N I N E, two hundred to four hundred milligrams of theanine.

36:01 can create a kind of a hypnotic state, help you fall asleep. Basically falling asleep requires turning off your thoughts. And The only people that should really avoid theanine I think

36:12 People who suffer from sleepwalking or night terrors. It can create very vivid dreams. And then the third thing Is apigenin. A P I G E N I N

36:23 Which is a derivative of chamomile, but it acts as a chloride channel agonist. So it essentially help shut down the forebrain by hyperpolarizing neurons and all this kind of stuff for the officiados, if they want to know. So that cocktail of fifty milligrams of apigenin Three hundred to four hundred milligrams of magnesium three and eight or biglycinate. And two hundred to four hundred milligrams of theanine. For me has been the best way to consistently

36:48 Fall asleep quickly and stay asleep. Most, if not the entire night, which for me is about seven, eight hours. And course I'm not a physician, I'm a scientist, everyone needs to figure out what's right for them. But many, many people who have

37:02 recommended this to you have told me That In combination with the morning light viewing. that their sleep has been completely transformed. They thought they were so called insomniacs. But they actually were just having a hard time turning off their thoughts and probably their cortisol was drifting too late in the day.

37:19 So to that cortisol point, this is fascinating and I I just Fight it. endlessly interesting that different forms of magnesium can be so target specific with respect to different tissues in the body. So

37:35 So fascinating. Uh with respect to cortisol. And needless to say, I I have used Fostilcerine before sleep. Yeah.

37:44 to help blunt cortisol release, but I do cycle I use it as needed, really if there's a lot of rumination or I've had a particularly stressful day. But do you have any thoughts On Whether or not you would ever do that personally or if you'd be too concerned about Side effects or long term side effects.

38:03 I suppose that could be a larger issue if you're just never cycling off. But do you have any thoughts on using different compounds to blunt cortisol release if you're over ruminating? And want to sort of minimize that. In this case, stress response. While you're trying to sleep. I

38:21 Have not tried PS. I use Ashwaganda from time to time if I'm in a particularly long bout of stress. relevant here is that we hear about stress, but as terrible, but of course short term stress buffers the immune system. It actually activates the spleen to release killer cells and things of that sort.

38:39 We are more robust in fighting off infection in the short term. From pulses and cortisol. But I would say we can define long term stress as if you are Having sleep disruption.

38:50 Or you're feeling it. Like you're in that wired and tired. Mode We don't really have a technical name for this. For more than two

38:58 Or three days. You're starting to enter the realm of long term stress, and that's where buffering cortisol can really help. And that's where I start to take some ashwagandha late in the day. There's good evidence it can buffer cortisol. I do cycle it, so I'm not gonna take it Every night or every day. I would probably stop after a week or so

39:16 And then just go back to my normal regimen, which doesn't include Ashwagandha, but I always have some on hand. I have to say that I certainly use and and enjoy the benefits of supplements. Many of them, in fact, but The practice that for me has

39:31 really helped reduce stress and allowed me to fall asleep more easily and control my state of mind. Late in the evening is This practice that some people call Yoga Nidra. Which literally means yoga sleep.

39:44 And that practice of taking twenty or thirty minutes a day and it doesn't have to be done every day. And lying down and doing a sort of body scan. It involves some long exhale breathing, which is very relaxing to the nervous system. And

39:59 Really allowing the mind to enter one of these pseudo sleep states. We know from work in my laboratory and work that I'm doing with David Spiegel's laboratory, as well as work from other labs. That that state of shallow nap or shallow sleep done in waking. Allows the brain to

40:16 And the person. to get better at turning off their thoughts and falling asleep in the evening. So I I use both behavioral tools And Pharmacology, which of course is really what supplementation is.

40:28 I don't have any problem with buffering cortisol. But I Wouldn't suggest That people

40:37 Suppress their cortisol. long term unless there's a real clinical need to do that. Long term being longer than two weeks. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show.

40:51 This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement. And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me. On the road. So what is AG1? AG one is a science driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out. go to drink age one dot com slash Tim. That's drink ag one. The number one, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Last time, drinkAG1.com.

41:46 Slash Tim. Check it out. You mentioned long exhales. In the context of the Yoga Nidra practice.

41:57 Is it fair to refer to that Yoganidra practice as also non sleep, deep rest, or NSDR are those separate phenomena. Yeah, so Yoganidra is one of several Admittedly, I coined the term NSDR because scientists like acronyms almost as much as the military likes acronyms. And I did it deliberately

42:21 Not to rob The beautiful history and community that is Yoga Nidra and the Yoga communities of anything. But rather because many people are averse to doing anything

42:33 That has a name like Yoga Nidra. And yet it's such a powerful tool. It's a zero cost tool that has enormous effects on not just accessing sleep and calm, but Enhancing rates of neuroplasticity, something that we could talk more about. Also David Spiegel

42:49 Again, our associate chair of psychiatry at Stanford and close collaborator and friend of mine is a world expert in clinical hypnosis. We are part of a Just in in full disclosure, we both sit on the advisory board of a company called Reverie, R E V E R I. dot com Reverie is a zero cost app.

43:06 Yeah, on Android and Apple that has short hypnosis protocols anywhere from Ten minutes to fifteen minutes. Hypnosis And Yoga Nidra.

43:17 Both fall under the umbrella of NSDR, non sleep depressed, and these are protocols that People can use to deliberately access states of deep rest for sake of Again, falling asleep more easily, reducing stress, but also for enhancing rates of learning of neuroplasticity. And

43:34 Because these are zero cost tools, I and because they're grounded in excellent peer reviewed research. I feel comfortable mentioning them. And What you find is that If people who are not familiar with

43:46 Meditation or mindfulness or Maybe they're not from West LA or the Bay Area. Um if they hear Yoga Nidra, they think magic carpets and they think and they hear hypnosis and they think that somebody's gonna control their brain. NSDR is my attempt. to create a a more friendly language. Which is because all of these things are really just the same thing. They really involve two things. One

44:08 Self directing a state of calm. That's something that we never learn how to do unless we have a need to do it. We suffer some trauma, we have chronic stress. We start taking a mindfulness class. We self inducing a state of calm through respiration and vision. is the hallmark of Yoganidra and Hypnosis.

44:24 And frankly, of all meditative practices. Our thoughts follow our vision and breathing, and I can explain why that is in a moment. In addition. These NSDR type practices Involved not just self direct and calm.

44:38 But they also involve directing our focus. To something. We generally have a hard time falling asleep because we think we have to turn off our thoughtly like a switch. But the transition to sleep involves allowing our thoughts to become fragmented. And then we become relaxed and then the brain enters this state where space and time are very fluid and not under our conscious control.

44:59 And those are things that we can teach ourselves. So Yoga Nidra scripts are found all over YouTube, there's some great apps out there. The zero cost ones that I use are Any of the stuff by Comedy K A M

45:13 I N I decide D E S A I I like her voice very much. Some people like my sister loves Liam Gillen's voice, another zero cost Yoga Nidra tool. Liam Gillen. Double L G I L L E N You have to find a voice that you like.

45:28 The Reverie app is David's voice. He has a very hypnotic voice. And there are scripts in there for Smoking cessation. Stress and anxiety, sleep, etc.

45:39 These I really want to emphasize, in addition to being zero cost, are very powerful tools if done regularly. There are two papers that were published in the last two years from Cell Reports and Cell Press Journal, excellent journal, showing that A twenty minute Non sleep deep rest protocol. After a bout of intense focus or intense

45:59 Attempt to learn anything skill learning or cognitive learning. Accelerates plasticity by about fifty percent. So you are learning faster, much faster. And retention of that information. Last much longer.

46:12 And that's because these are sleep like states. And we know that neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to change in response to experience, is triggered. Bye. high focus. By deliberate periods of very high focus. But the actual rewiring of neurons.

46:26 the formation of new synapses and the reordering of the circuitry that leads to that skill or that Cognitive ability. Becoming reflexive. That happens in states of deep rest. And non sleep deep rest N S D R whether it's hypnosis or yoga needra or a shallow nap of about twenty, thirty minutes.

46:45 Those things will all accelerate learning. Let's hop around just a little bit. Yoga Nidra first on the NSDR study that you mentioned and the increase in plasticity, which I'm assuming was measured by retention, recall, et cetera. But perhaps it wasn't. If you could send

47:03 afterwards a link to that study. I'll put it in the show notes for listeners who who might be interested. We've touched on breathing. In a few different capacities. I have a term in front of me. That seems kind of self explanatory, but I don't know.

47:19 Вот форми таке фізіологікал сайз. contrasted with other breathing methods for stress reduction. Could you define what that is? Yeah, a few years ago When my laboratory got interested in studying stress in humans.

47:35 We asked ourselves what are the patterns of breathing that Allow for the most rapid Reduction in stress levels. And more importantly. What are the patterns of breathing that can be done in real time?

47:46 So that people can adjust their stress while they're still engaging in life. Right. Breathwork classes, running off to Esselin for a weekend is a magical experience, but life demands pressing on you, that's typically when you feel stress. So it is still true that vacation, long meditation retreats, and massages or a nice drink. If you're of drinking age.

48:05 Still work, but they're slow and they take you offline. The physiological psi is a pattern of breathing that was actually discovered by physiologists in the thirties. And that was essentially rediscovered. by Professor Jack Feldman at UCLA, a world expert in the neurobiology of respiration. And by my colleague Mark Krasno at Stanford.

48:24 Who studies lung function? The physiological side is a pattern of breathing that we all engage in. In deep sleep when levels of carbon dioxide in our bloodstream get too high. We or our dogs, you can see your dog do this, will do a double inhale followed by an extended exhale. Children or or adults for that matter that are sobbing and lose their breath.

48:48 So to speak. will also do a double inhale exhale. That's the spontaneous Execution of what we call the physiological sigh. The reason it works so well to relax us. Is because it offloads of carbon dioxide all at once.

49:02 And the way it works is the following. Our lungs are not just two big bags of air. We have all these little millions of sacks of air that if we were to lay them out flat, they would be as As big as about a tennis court or so. The volume of air, therefore, and the volume of carbon dioxide that we can offload

49:19 is tremendously high, except that We get stressed as carbon dioxide builds up on our bloodstream and is kind of a double whammy, these little sacks deflate. Now when we do a double inhale So I'll do this now twice through my nose, or you could do this, or you could do it through your mouth, but it works best through the nose. It's inhale.

49:37 And then you sneak a little bit more air in at the very end. When you do that, you reinflate those little sacks. And when you exhale Then you discard all the carbon dioxide at once.

49:50 So the simple way to describe this protocol is that Unless you are underwater. You do a double inhale. Followed by an extended exhale. And you offload the maximum amount of carbon dioxide. And we found in our laboratory

50:04 And other laboratories have found That Just one Two or three of those physiological size brings your level of stress. down very, very fast.

50:15 And it's a tool that, you know, you can use any time. I do hope that people will kind of watch other people. Or dogs as they start to relax or go down to sleep, you'll see this pattern of breathing, but again, it can be consciously driven. The other thing about breathing and the reason why exhales are so vital Is the following.

50:32 I know there's a lot of interest nowadays in heart rate variability. Well Most people don't realize this, but your breathing is actually driving heart rate variability. So when you inhale This dome shaped muscle beneath your lungs, your diaphragm actually moves down because the lungs expand, it moves down.

50:50 When you do that You create more space in The thoracic cavity. And you actually the heart gets a little bigger, it actually expands. As a consequence, blood flows more slowly through that larger volume.

51:02 And the brain s quickly down to the heart to speed the heart up. The short, simple version of this is inhales speed the heart up. When you exhale, the opposite is true. That dome shaped muscle, the diaphragm moves up. The space in your thoracic cavity gets a little bit smaller, the heart gets a little bit smaller.

51:22 moves more quickly that small volume and the brain sends a signal to the heart to slow the heart down. Physicians know this as respiratory sinus arrhythmia. But this is the basis of what we call HR V heart rate variability. And the simple way to remember this is any time you emphasize exhales In other words, making them longer.

51:41 Then your inhales. You are slowing the heart rate down, you're calming your system. Anytime you emphasize inhales, you make them more vigorous or longer than your exhales, you're speeding up your heart. I'd like to come back to hypnosis for a second. I've never been hypnotized nor well, maybe I have self hypnotized and just not realized that's what I was doing. What characterizes

52:05 hypnosis or how would we define that and Do the states induced By hypnosis have any shared characteristics with some of the states induced by Any psychedelics.

52:19 So hypnosis is a state of Calm and high focus. So context is restricted. It's like looking at something through a telephoto lens. You're eliminating the surround. So it's a state of high focus. Which normally

52:34 As we talked about earlier with the aperture, the visual system would be associated with a high degree of Excitement or stress. But hypnosis is a unique state. Because you have a high degree of focus, but you're very relaxed. And

52:48 Just to remind people that Neuroplasticity is triggered by states of high focus followed by periods of relaxation later in deep sleep or in non sleep deep rest. In hypnosis it brings both those states together. At the same time. And this is one of the reasons it's effective in

53:05 Accelerating neuroplasticity. I could probably do it right now to see if how hypnotizable you are. There's actually a test, a clinical test called the Spiegel Eye Roll Test. Spiegel's father was a hypnotist. And a psychiatrist. So these I wanna be clear, these are not stage hypnotists, these are board certified MDs and PhDs. who there's a lot of scientific research to support what we're about to talk about. So Typically when we get sleepy, when we're relaxed.

53:29 Our eyelids close and our eyes Go down and the chin goes down. The induction to hypnosis involves Doing the opposite. Looking up which

53:38 actually, believe it or not, creates a state of alertness. And then having you close your eyes. So it creates a a kind of conflict in the cranial nerves that innervate the eye and eyelid muscles. Again, the eyes and your state of mind are so intricately wired back there in the brainstem. So if you Could look up Toward the ceiling, Tim, with your eyes open.

53:58 And then Just while still maintaining upward gaze, if you could just slowly close your eyelids. Oh boy, you're really hypnotizable. So what did you see? That was uh deeply uncomfortable. Yeah, I know. It's it's a little bit uh so so for those of you listening or watching, you you sort of look up towards what you know, sometimes in yoga communities they or meditation communities they call the third eye center. You know, we don't actually have a third eye, but if we did it would probably be Someone decided it would be between our two eyes and our forehead. So by looking up your inducing alertness.

54:30 And then you're creating this conflict where where I asked you to close your eyelids. Which is What you do when you're in a state of sleepiness. And what Spiegel Both Spiegel Senior and Spiegel Junior have figured out is that it's a very good predictor of how hypnotizable people

54:47 R you can look up the spiegel eye roll test. And what I was looking for is Let's say if somebody is not very hypnotizable What'll happen is as they close their eyes, they'll have a hard time closing them slowly. They'll just kinda snap shut and their eyes will roll forward. In other words, I'll see their pupils again. What happened when I saw you is do this is that your eyelids were closing very slowly and I saw the whites of your eyes, your eyes were starting to roll back into your head.

55:11 So you would have a score of probably about a four, which is very hypnotizable. I'm about a four. Some people you'll just notice you say look up. And then slowly close your eyes and their eyes will just kinda snap shut and their eyes will roll forward right before it snaps shut. So you can do this experiment. Of sorts on people that you know. And it predicts pretty well how quickly easily you'll you will go into hypnosis. I should mention that no one will go into hypnosis if they don't want to.

55:35 But if you're interested in exploring hypnosis with the Reverie app or with a clinical hypnotist And your eyes roll back the way that yours did, Tim, then um you're home free. You're you're gonna be long and gone before Oh amazing. I could uh maybe I'll start Speaking in tongues too. It does have a good uh good associated look with it. How would you explain The utility of hypnosis. And and then I do want to hear if there are any

56:01 sort of correlates. to Some of the known effects of psychedelics. And that's a wide spectrum of class. So we could choose we could choose uh a given compound.

56:14 Uh but what what are the what are the clinical applications? Because in my Hypnosis naive mind, I think. Smoking cessation. Isn't it good for quitting smoking? Isn't it good for really just these anecdotal reports that I've read at one point or another, but what's the sort of clinical What are some of the clinical applications or practical applications of hypnosis?

56:37 Yeah, so for smoking cessation, if people do the practice, about a sixty to eighty percent success rate, depending on the study you look at. These were all blinded controlled studies. In terms of anxiety. Those are tremendously strong effects. As many as ninety percent of people are going to feel significant improvement in anxiety for pain management.

56:56 For chronic pain. There's a high degree of success. So you know, people will vary depending on how hypnotizable they are and how regular they are about the practice. But anywhere from a fifty to seventy five percent of people will experience a significant reduction in chronic pain. And if they are using pain meds, they tend to be able to take lower doses of pain medications in order to manage that pain.

57:18 So it's it's quite powerful. Now for trauma. And things of that sort. It needs to be done with a clinical hop uh I would hope board certified M D clinical hypnotist.

57:29 And there the success rates are are quite high as well. And if you want more research about this, inside the Reverie app there's a long list of resources. You could also I can send over a a good review article. That David's written. in these are again published in very fine

57:44 quality peer review journals of the New England Journal JAMA sort and things like that. Great. In terms of Similarity to psychedelics. They are quite distinct actually. So hypnosis being a state of high degree of focus and relaxation is a bit similar.

58:02 So called psychedelic. So MDMA assisted psychotherapy. Which it appears thanks to the support and work of people like you and the Maps group and the group at Hopkins in particular Matthew Johnson and I realize there are other people in that mix, but it's it I have to just say as a As a point, it's it's really exciting to see what's happening.

58:22 And the enthusiasm about safe building safe protocols that people can access. After so many years of people having to do this kind of renegade. or in unregulated environments. MDMA creates In a very atypical state.

58:37 It's a state of high dopamine release. No, typically dopamine is associated with A focus on things external to us. Dopamine being a a molecule associated with motivation and reward makes us want to do more

58:51 That brought the dopamine. Uh whether or not that's food, sex, uh online viewing of any kind, et cetera. It's not always uh bad, but online viewing. Online viewing, whatever that is. The best way to describe the effects of dopamine. Or that there's a book actually, quite good book, called The Molecule of More. And that's a great way to describe it. I wish I had written that book. I read the book and thought, I wish I'd written this book. It's because I I love the neuromodulator systems and it is the molecule of more. And actually Anyone that thinks that dopamine is about pleasure, not motivation.

59:23 Or seeking more? Consider this. This is a an anecdote I borrowed from my colleague Anna Lemke, who's in the department of psychiatry. At Stanford. The next time you eat a piece of chocolate Or you engage in a behavior that feels particularly delicious.

59:38 Notice the sensation and the thoughts in your mind. It's rarely about complete presence and desire. For Staying present, it's usually a desire for more. It's this I want more of this, please, as opposed to really bask in the experience. And I should mention that

59:56 Anna has a wonderful Book coming out in August. called dopamine nation. She was in the social dilemma. She's an addiction therapist and psychiatrist and talks a lot about the dopamine system. So dopamine makes us want more of whatever feels really good. And that tends to place us in an external focus. Serotonin, another feel good molecule, is the exact opposite. It tends to make us feel good with what we already have.

1:00:22 It tends to be the incredible feelings of of warmth that you know holding a child or a loved one Or time with your dog. I have this bulldog Costello and there's times when I just sit with him and I feel immense pleasure Just being there. I don't think I want four bulldogs. In fact I definitely don't want four bulldogs.

1:00:40 The snoring is loud enough already. But it's about experiencing the here and now. In a full and complete way. MDMA is unique because It creates huge increases. In dopamine and serotonin at the same time.

1:00:54 And we don't ordinarily see that. in natural experience. And it has this unique property of making people feel Very excited. and positive about their relationship to their internal state.

1:01:08 And so it has a kind of looping back of a mechanism that normally would place us In the viewing of the exterior, what's out there, what can I get more of, who can I interact with more of what drug can I take more of that's gonna make me feel this way. So MDMA is very unique.

1:01:24 It has certain correlates with hypnosis in that It's a very focused state. In fact, so much so that Let's just say I

1:01:32 Could imagine that if you're hearing music and you focus on that music, you can really kind of start to merge with the music, whereas if you focus on your internal state, you can merge with your internal state. And that's why I do think it's important that some of that if people are doing it in a clinical setting Be guided. Because otherwise the experience can be sort of lost on whatever is external. Other psychedelics.

1:01:53 Of the sort like psilocybin, L S D, they have a very sleep like state. They tend to be more serotinurgic in nature. And They are very similar to sleep in the sense that space and time become very fluid. Whatever top down governing mechanisms exist in the brain, so called the

1:02:10 you know, executive function. Some of that seems to be disregulated enough. So that Inside of those psychedelic states. And in certainly inside of dreams. Anything can really happen and you can

1:02:22 essentially see and appreciate novel associations that normally wouldn't occur in waking states. We should remember that the two extremes of human experience Or Stress. And or excitement, so highly contracted visual window.

1:02:38 highly contract time domain. Everything sliced very finely. What's happening next? What's gonna happen next? Think you're in the line at the airport and the person in front of you is moving slowly and you got a plane to catch. Everything constricted to right there. Both in space and time, and then sleep. Where in sleep space and time are extremely fluid. Anything can happen.

1:02:58 And you are essentially out of control mentally. It's just whatever is gonna happen is gonna happen. Psedelics That in LSD and psilocybin assisted states, you're alert.

1:03:09 So I would say that psilocybin and LSD like states are similar to hypnosis in that way. But hypnosis has a little bit more of a rigidity to it. It's set toward A particular focus like let's work on your control over stress or smoking or pain. And so I would say the three of them occupy neighboring spaces, but none of them overlap completely.

1:03:32 Yeah, I'd be so curious to see some type of multi modal Study. And perhaps they've been done, but just looking at pharmacological Interventions combined. With

1:03:44 Hypnosis, right? So if we made hypnosis The the default sort of control state. And then you had an arm that was comparing Hypnosis plus fill in the blank. Not necessarily psychedelics. Certainly I mean you could it could be an intactogen or an empathogen like

1:04:01 MDMA could be a tryptamine like Solocybin. Or it could be like a phenethylamine like mescaline. Which has very different Effects.

1:04:12 Certainly. I think you know Michael Pollan does a good job of of describing this in his new book, Your Mind on Plants, his entire section discussing the the mescaline experience, which is really in a sense an amplification of the real in high resolution, certainly dose dependent. versus transportation. a la the tryptomines like L S D or or Cell Seven. That would be very, very interesting to see.

1:04:37 It would. I and I have to say, you know, as usual, you're you're five years or more ahead of everybody else, Tim and I don't say that for sake of flattery. I mean you you have a You have a way of spotting the horizon, and I think We are so caught up. as a culture now in asking What should we do? What should we take?

1:04:54 What device should I use? I would say you've got behavioral tools. We all have to eat sooner or later. Nutrition, supplementation, prescription drugs. off label and on label, and then you got brain machine interface devices. for reading and writing to the nervous system and body, for measuring things and changing things. And we always think of those as separate bins.

1:05:12 But As you're pointing out, I think the most interesting bin is to consider Well maybe At some point a learning bout is going to be three hundred milligrams of alpha GPC and

1:05:23 a particular breathing protocol that will have a synergistic effect. I think that's where the real immediate future of beneficial brain change. Lies. And I think even the folks at Neuralink.

1:05:34 You know, a guy that came up through my lab, he's a neurosurgeon, Matt McDougall. Is that Neuralink now? And they have other excellent neuroscientists there and You can be sure that they're thinking clinical issues first. And they're thinking obviously brain machine interface and chips and robotics and things of that sort.

1:05:50 But You can bet, just given who makes up that company, uh a roster that they're probably also thinking about ways to accelerate plasticity using a combination of brain machine interface. and pharmacology. And if they're not thinking about that, they definitely should. So I think for the typical person who's not gonna plant a chip beneath their skull.

1:06:08 I think you're hitting the nail on the head, which is that we need to think about what works independently and combining those for sake of synergy. That's what's gonna get us where we need to go. Much faster. I also think Just to build on what you said and thanks for the kind words that

1:06:23 When you look at these possible synergistic combinations You could also end up and then this is not a certainty, but it's a possibility having a much more appealing Risk. Benefit.

1:06:36 Calculus. in the sense that if you can lower the required dose of a pharmacological intervention, if you can lower the exposure necessary with some type of neurofeedback or neurostim like a TMS or a TDCS or any of these other tools if you're able to lower the required doses of several things when they're used in combination and get

1:07:01 a similar or better outcome. It just has Such Incredible ramifications for the for the clinical use.

1:07:10 Let's take a step back here. So now We've covered A bunch of the research. We've covered a bunch of the Sort of tactical practical.

1:07:20 implementations of Some of the research findings. Now I want to paint a picture for people who don't. So we've already covered Costello. We have not discussed the fact that you have Looks like full sleeve tattoos.

1:07:34 On both arms. I think you outed me. Yeah, there's a you're the first. This is the first. Yep. It's true. Birthmark they're all birthmarks, of course. Kids don't start because they're like potato chips. We may get to aquascaping. That's a whole separate conversation. So we may get to that. But I wanna I wanna rewind the clock for a second because I read your bio, obviously very impressive bio. You've received numerous awards, you've produced a lot of incredible work. with your colleagues and your your lab. Let's go back to

1:08:14 What happened to you? in July of nineteen ninety four. So in July of nineteen ninety four, I was living in a little town called Isla Vista, which is near Santa Barbara. It's the home of U C Santa Barbara, University of California, Santa Barbara.

1:08:31 Just as a little bit of background, I I was not a good high school student. I had a very disrupted high school Experience. Despite growing up in a in a good area. Just a lot of Tension and and stuff.

1:08:43 At home. So I barely finished high school, but I followed a High school girlfriend off to college. Somehow I got in. At the time I wanted to be a firefighter.

1:08:52 took fire science courses at Mission College in the South Bay. And I thought I'd be a firefighter and I put that in my entrance exam and Somehow they let me in. But by the end of my freshman year of college I had terrible marks.

1:09:06 I had been thrown out of the Dormitory living for Getting in fights. Something I'm certainly not proud of. And I was

1:09:15 Basically doing nothing. That summer I was living in a s I was squatting, I was living in an empty house because a lot of the houses were empty. I figured why pay rent? You know, I Living in an empty house with with my pet Ferret. And um

1:09:29 To sort of set the context right. I think I was still grappling with a lot of Anger and resentment. And confusion based on having a rather confusing teenage years and and a lot of disruption. Fortunately I'd

1:09:43 formed a lot of friendships and formed a community in the skateboarding and punk rock culture. I was fortunate enough to get to know a lot of guys that I've gone on to do great, like my friend Carl Watson is a D of skateboarding. I I spent some time and got to know, although we weren't close friends with the great Danny Way, probably the great one of the greatest skateboarders of all time, jumped the Great Wall of China, but I wasn't A very good skateboarder.

1:10:04 I was not a musician. I knew how to do essentially nothing well. And july fourth, nineteen ninety four. I went to a barbecue with some friends. And Some guys were robbing the house.

1:10:16 That we we're having this party at. We came back from the store and we saw these guys essentially Taking a bunch of possessions out of the house. And the thing erupted into this big fight. This huge melee.

1:10:28 I definitely went in excited to fight. Yeah, I've been involved in fights before and I had a an adrenaline seeking thing. I Felt like it was justified. I'm certainly not encouraging anybody else to do this, but

1:10:40 Essentially what happened was my friends took off. My so called friends took off and I ended up in a fight with a four or five guys Kniv out, bottles. It's the sort of thing where quickly you realize that Things can go badly wrong.

1:10:54 Fortunately I stayed on two feet. And nobody got Badly hurt or killed. The police showed up.

1:11:01 And actually because of the fact that they were robbing us. They actually congratulated me. I'll never forget this is actually what made me feel worst of all is one one of the police officers said You know, like nice work or something like that. And I And I just realized Yeah.

1:11:15 I was in serious. You know, I'm nineteen, I Barely finished. I barely scraped through my first year of college. I'm living in a squat with my ferret. My girlfriend had left me.

1:11:27 I didn't do anything well. I didn't know how to do anything well. And so that Yeah. And

1:11:33 I still have this letter. I actually sat down And I wrote A letter to myself. And to my parents. Saying

1:11:41 that I was gonna turn things around. I don't know why I wrote to them because at the time I was kind of avoiding contact with them entirely. I've since formed a really good relationship with both my parents. But I decided. That day. That

1:11:54 I would use the one power that I seem to have which is to remember facts and information. And what I did was I I left Santa Barbara, I took a leave of absence, went back went to a local community college in the Bay Area. I did two quarters there. And I

1:12:11 Just started studying like a mania. First psychology, then biology. I eventu fell in love with Neuroscience and related themes of endocrinology and And the rest is sort of history in terms of eventually going to graduate school and getting a PhD and becoming a professor, tenured and all that stuff. But

1:12:28 It was one of those moments where I realized I am no longer going to be a Young Screw up, I'm gonna be a twenty year old screw up. And

1:12:39 With time pe people are gonna be less and less forgiving. And whatever had happened prior No one's gonna care. It doesn't even really matter. And if I do want people to care, and it's not like I have a need to talk about the challenges early on, but I need to get my act together. I need to do something. I need to get good at something.

1:12:57 And so I became a a kind of a maniac. Actually when I read your your book The Four Hour Work Week and the F and The Four Hour Body Which I read and loved and own, I should say. Again, not for sake of flattery, because they but they really helped me. There are a lot of useful tools in there. There were certain things that resonated. I figured out that

1:13:13 I drank a lot of coffee and took certain supplements, I could focus for many hours. And then if I worked out, I built another capacity. And if I ran, I built another capacity for endurance. And And I started to explore the crossovers between Weightlifting is one thing. It's not about building muscles or necessarily maybe it's about that. It's about really moving against a physical force in real time and really learning how to do that.

1:13:37 Endurance work is about Learning how to push through a different kind of barrier. And learning the carryover and crossover points. So I was the guy that would sit down at my desk. I move I decided to live alone in a studio apartment. And I would set a timer For several hours and I wouldn't allow myself to get up.

1:13:54 I was allowed to listen to Rancid. That's Band ever for me. On Repeat and Bob Dylan. That's all I I wouldn't even allow myself to change music. And then I would just sit there and I would read my textbooks, underline my textbooks, write my textbooks, and I just decided

1:14:10 I'm gonna get straight A marks, I'm gonna go to graduate school, I'm gonna get a PhD. I should mention there were people that came along at various times and helped me, role models, mentors, people that spotted that, but it started with A switch that flipped on July fourth, nineteen ninety four. And getting in a bad fight and

1:14:26 Here I am. Deciding to Choose a different path so I I want to Underscore

1:14:33 Or explore a few things. And I really appreciate you sharing this because I think it's very easy for people listening to Folks. With a bio like yours. To sort of assume.

1:14:46 A certain trajectory to assume that it has always come easy and that you've always, since you were two years old, known exactly which direction you were heading, which is not the case. One clarification with UC Santa Barbara, this might be an important point. It might not you did not drop out, you took a leave of absence. Is that right? Is that material to the story? Because I know in a lot of cases There are folks who are kind of painted as dropouts, but In fact, they kept their options open by taking a leave of absence.

1:15:17 Instead. So I just want to clarify. Yes, a leave of absence is a mechanism that most universities have. I think it was a design for things like family situations if somebody gets pregnant or they have a family member who's sick that allows you to leave and come back. And it's distinctly different from dropping out. Although I was pretty close to dropping out being forced to drop out.

1:15:39 For reasons related to to poor grades and poor behavior. Fortunately that didn't happen. I think it's a really important point because we hear that Bill Gates dropped out of college, Steve Jobs dropped out of college, Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of college.

1:15:53 I think Maybe it was Ryan Holliday, who I don't know, who said something like the the people who are doing poorly in college, they're the ones that should stay in college. Because It's the one environment where everything's scripted out for you, what you need to do in order to hit the next Metric of success.

1:16:09 And a leave of absence is very different. None of those people dropped out of college. They took leave of absences that policy that they could go back. If they wanted to. And it's very hard to make it back into a system of any kind, but it certainly is much harder if you completely divorce yourself from that system.

1:16:29 I am a believer in formal, rigorous coursework. I am a university professor. I know that college isn't perfect for everybody. It's might even be the wrong decision for certain people. But if you're still uncertain About What you want to do. I think If

1:16:44 It can be arranged financially and it's in the scope of things that somebody might want to do. I think learning how to sit down in a chair And force yourself to learn. And then compete with others in terms of how well you learn that information, I think is a great way to evaluate oneself. Early in life.

1:17:01 And it sets the stage right. I agree with that. If you're open to it, then certainly you can say no, or we can talk about it and then you can elect to have it. Edited out of the conversation. You mentioned tension and stuff at home.

1:17:15 Disruption. Are you open to Sharing a bit more detail. About What you mean when you say those things.

1:17:24 Sure. So I had a pretty magical childhood really. Uh my dad's a scientist. My mom wrote children's books and was a teacher. We ate dinner as a family.

1:17:34 Everybody together in the early part of my life, I I acknowledge that I Had great privilege in having that experience and Growing up where I did, good schools, good public schools, I completely acknowledge the benefits of that, especially early in life. Around thirteen, when I was thirteen.

1:17:50 My parents split up. And either because Of the time in which it happened or because They weren't equipped with the right. Tools.

1:17:59 There was a complete fracture of that picture. My dad was very much out of the picture. At that time. My mom Hit I think a series of challenges adjusting. I think it was a m what could only be described as a a major depression. I think her view of family was one in which everyone stuck together.

1:18:16 No matter what. She's From the east coast. She's from New Jersey. Like You stick together. We had an argument the other day. I don't think she wanted me selling this and like at we got on and we were like ready to scrap and we haven't had one of those in years.

1:18:30 But I just remembered Yeah. At the end of this conversation we're gonna be okay. And at the end we were we were closer. So we both have that. And I think for her, the fact that there was a complete disintegration of the picture, my sister out of the house, my dad out of the house, and me there.

1:18:44 She really hit the skids. And home became a very Empty. very quickly became a very empty and depressing place. It was really It was just really sad.

1:18:54 And I found Care and love and Community in the world of Skateboarding. This was the

1:19:02 early nineties and there was this collection of Mostly young guys at that time who would aggregate at Embarcadero Plaza, Justin Herman Plaza in San Francisco. I started going up there and hanging out at the s the it's now the famed EMB for it's kind of got a Golden era reputation now. And that's where I learned that

1:19:22 You don't have to go to school. There are a lot of guys not going to school. There was a lot of Trinking loaded. Drug use. Lot of wild behavior, but also I should say a lot of amazing skateboarding.

1:19:34 And amazing characters and personalities and fights and everything. It was true street life. And so I started staying there. I'd stay at people's houses or sometimes we'd even sleep there. And I learned a lot about

1:19:46 how people outside the Cozy suburbs of the South Bay, how they lived. I'm grateful for that because it exposed me to The fact that many of these kids

1:19:56 Had no parental oversight from any age. That they had to scrap for everything. But quickly I realized that I wasn't very good at skateboarding. I didn't have a

1:20:07 future in it and I wasn't going to school, my home life was really disrupted. And I lapsed into a pretty serious depression. I just remember And anyone who's experienced depression I I I hope this will resonate with, although I

1:20:21 I'm sorry that it exists, but there's this weird thing about depression. Which is that It changes of the world. I remember leaving Embarcadero Sometimes and looking up at the sky. Back then they had the Embarcadero Freeway.

1:20:34 And thinking The sky is so sad. Like not the sky as a third as a separate object, but that this scene of this sunset is so sad. And actually yesterday I was Thinking about this because there's this beautiful sunset where I live and I thought

1:20:49 Gosh, I haven't felt sad at the view of the natural world in so long it's And so it was clearly a shift in my internal state. And Fast forward, what happened was eventually the school picked up on the fact my high school picked up on the fact that I wasn't going.

1:21:05 They called me in at some point and I was sitting down with a school counselor. And they had this guy in the room. With me. sitting there. And pretty soon I realized that I

1:21:16 Was in a different kind of situation. And I realized they were gonna probably try and take me away because I was completely truant. I hadn't gone to school I was clearly depressed. So that's what happened. Against my will.

1:21:28 And despite an attempt to run away. I was taken to a place up the peninsula. Which was neither a juvenile hall nor a psychiatric hospital. But we were under lock and key. And I was in there with

1:21:41 kids that had dealt with everything from sexual abuse to hardcore substance abuse issues. I'll never forget this. The kids in the in the ward next door. They're crazy.

1:21:55 Because they're really young. And the adults in the ward on the other side, they're crazy. But you guys, you're not crazy. And I thought, Well, that's ridiculous because they're probably saying the same thing to the ones on the other side. But

1:22:08 I had no one to call. I called my skateboard team manager out of sympathy, not because I was any good. I'd got put on a on a wheel company and a truck company. For skateboarding and I called the guy And I said, I I don't know what to do. I'm in this place and And he I'll never forget he said Look.

1:22:25 I can barely take care of myself. And you're the most normal guy I know. And I realized at that point I'm like, I'm really alone here. So The long and short of it was I did the work. I put my trust in the counselors that were there. They seemed like good people.

1:22:40 And You know, I did the work, but it's part of an agreement for getting let back into school. Actually it's part of an agreement for being let out. I had to do weekly therapy. And I was fortunate enough that I got placed

1:22:54 Working with somebody Who Understood my particular needs, worked with adolescents. And really encouraged me.

1:23:02 To start exploring my mind. Certainly the situation I was in, but Encouraged me to start meditating. He gave me John Kabatzin's book Wherever You Go, There You Are. He saw how much physical energy I had. And he encouraged me to start running. I was always hurting myself skateboarding and he said, Well maybe running or swimming and running and swimming are amazing because

1:23:21 Unless you really do it wrong. You can go and go and go. It's just an I could burn off all that anger and and energy over time. And then I started getting into weightlifting and And the weightlifting's kind of a double edged sword, I should mention. I think it's one of those things that

1:23:34 Is great, but You know, if you exceed a certain size. it can actually make people kind of scared of you. Sort of like the tattoos thing. A lot of the like a lot of the reason why I cover up tattoos is because then people just see the see your tattoos. But I it's true. I started getting tattooed pretty young. The wrong way. Don't do it this way with India ink and a needle. This was before autoclaves. Bad. Don't do it. But I decided at that age

1:23:58 that the therapy and this one person who seemed to really care about my mental and physical well being and would spend the time was really worth investing in. And I hid it from everybody because no one did therapy then. No one talked about it. It's like late eighties, early nineties. Nobody did that. And I will confess, I don't think I've ever said this publicly, but I've found a way

1:24:20 Either through insurance or I've continued therapy with that same individual now for Thirty two years. Wow.

1:24:29 And I do. I confess I do three sessions a week of psychoanalysis. Remote or in person. And I know people have a lot of They do the other kind of eye roll, not the spiegal eye roll test, but the other kind of eye roll when you say psychoanalysis. I think an exploration of the mind is extremely powerful. It has to be done with the right person.

1:24:48 And There's only one person I know who's Done this kind of extended work. For so many years, and that's the late Oliver Sachs. Who's a kind of a hero of mine.

1:24:58 also worked with a psychoanalyst for many, many years and So Psychoanalysis. A fight on J on July fourth, nineteen ninety four, a lot of attempt To both stabilize my mind and also

1:25:11 Organized my behavior. Those things go hand in hand, of course. But also Biology. to leverage I guess you could call it biohacking, or you could call it I just call it biology. I mean When I learned, for instance, that

1:25:24 Taking a thousand milligrams per day of EPA essential fatty acids. Not just fish oil, but getting above that threshold. is as effective As antidepressants.

1:25:34 In double blind placebo controlled studies. You know, when I saw those papers, I realized Well I probably have a bit of a leaning toward depression, I'm gonna do that.

1:25:44 Now, did I do that and drop therapy? No. I do that and therapy and I train and I try and work on my sleep. It's a constant process. But biology And the information contained in books like yours and and hopefully in the information that I'm trying to put out into the world now. That stuff helps in a major way too. So it was a multi pronged support system.

1:26:04 And um many incredible mentors along the way, but I was definitely at the edge. I know you've talked about this public too. I I mean there were times when I just thought Like why continue? And I'm fortunate nowadays I feel very far from that.

1:26:18 There's a saying in the in the world of addiction An addiction treatment? Which is that no matter how far you drive, you're always the same distance from the ditch. That I would say is true of addiction. Fortunately, at least in my own experience, that is not true of depression.

1:26:33 I have vowed to never go back to a place Where Living seems to be a little bit. Meaningless. And anyone who's been close to that place, all I can say is

1:26:43 The work works. Whether or not it's therapy, biology, et cetera, you have to do it. And there are things that can accelerate that process. But it's an ongoing Battle, to be honest.

1:26:54 Well you're fighting the good fight, man. I'm certainly right in there with you. How does it feel to talk about this stuff? It's interesting. I always get a little quaky on this. I would say there are only two things that will always consistently make me cry and and those are The thought of I don't even want to talk about for too long'cause I prefer not to cry. But uh one it would be uh when my bulldog Costello goes that we're very bonded and he's close, unfortunately, so he's in his final years. And the other is when I think about

1:27:19 My mentors In particular one. Passing away. Talking about this gets me In a mode where it's uncomfortable.

1:27:27 I'm definitely uncomfortable this moment. I'm Okay to talk about it because I think these issues are important and I wholeheartedly believe that many people struggle with them. You know, I'm always conscious of protecting the people in my life who We're doing the best they could with what they had. So you know my parents are

1:27:42 Good people. That generation didn't have the tools. that I had access to and I do hope the next generation and will have access to More tools.

1:27:50 So I want to protect them. They they are You know, I'm blessed. I acknowledge my privilege. I and I don't say that for political reasons, by the way. I just want to say I acknowledge that I was born into a pretty fortunate Or very fortunate situation.

1:28:04 That provided buffers. And I only know my own experience, but I I acknowledge it as real. Thanks for sharing all that. And A mutual friend.

1:28:13 Has prompted me To ask about The Hoffman Process. Oh yeah. The Hoffman process.

1:28:20 So the Hoffman process is a personal development process. It's a full immersion week long process. I think it used to be two weeks. I don't want to give away too much about it because if one were to go, you want to have the experience for the first time. without expecting or knowing what's coming. It involves a lot of Both physical and

1:28:40 A kind of emotional purging. And what's interesting is it it's generally between twenty and forty people go You don't publicly share any of the issues that you're grappling with. There is a teacher there. That you

1:28:53 communicate with and who knows a lot about your situation. There's a lot of work that you do beforehand and paperwork, so they really know closely what your Grappling with. And you do get to know people there, but there are strict rules, no romantic relationships, no discussion of politics, no discussion of work, no discussion of sports, and you quickly find that you realize that you spend a lot of time thinking about and talking about those things in the outside world. And B That there are other ways to connect with people that are very authentic.

1:29:20 That don't involve those things. Hoffman process was one of several things for me. That was transformative. For me it was most transformative in the realm Of

1:29:32 Forgiveness. I felt Completely resolved of my challenges with you know, inability of focus, complete work, structure, et cetera. I had solved all that.

1:29:42 I I learned how to work hard, perform well. by the time I went to Hoffman, which was in my early forties. I'm forty five now. I learned how to control my physical landscape. As best as one.

1:29:54 Could or should be. I went there thinking like, why would I go here? What's the purpose in going? And yet I I realized that I harbored a lot. of resentment.

1:30:04 Mostly toward family members, but Also toward experiences and and uh and people outside my family. And I

1:30:13 I almost got kicked out of Hoffman the first day, not for misbehavior, but because I slept through the first day. I've been working so hard. They kept saying, You're trying to escape by sleeping and I'm like, I'm just tired. Like they take really good care of they take really good care of you there. I've actually never felt so nurtured. I'm not somebody who accepts nurturing very easily. Um I Like to think I'm more of a caretaker. And a more of a kind of caretaker loner type than um being taken care of. And

1:30:38 Hoffman they I felt comfortable to be taken care of in certain ways. And I discovered in doing the work that there were all these resentments. And I was able to purge those resentments. And I have to say

1:30:52 It completely erased All feelings that I was wronged by anybody. Or anything. And that's powerful.

1:31:01 And it's completely behavioral nature, there's no pharmacology there. I would say Hoffman is among the two or three things that or maybe four or five things that were really transformative for me. And there is a price point, but they do have a scholarship program that's been established thanks to the Generosity of various folks. So for people that can't afford the price point, they do have a fairly simple scholarship program where you write something out. People who are practitioners

1:31:26 you know, therapists and in the wellness community I think also get a break of some sort. I have no business relationship to Hoffman, but I've recommended that several people go. And it is powerful and it does last. In fact, the reason I decided to go to Hoffman was because Somebody

1:31:42 Actually a mutual friend of ours, Tim. Who I don't think went. Wendy Yallum. Who I know from way back when. We haven't been in touch in years. But I think she said something about Hoffman and she said she knew somebody who went, and I contacted that person, and that person Said.

1:31:57 I went to Hoffman. And Ten years later, it still has a profound positive effect on my life. And I Found it to be more useful than any other

1:32:08 Therapy or training of any kind. That's my Hoffman story and It's powerful. And for people who want to hear more about Hoffman, I talk about it at at length also with Blake Mykoski.

1:32:21 in the last conversation I had with him, so people can find that Yeah. You mentioned one of four or five things. What are some of the other things that have had a Disproportionate. Positive impact.

1:32:34 This is a broad category, but get your biology right. Start with sleep. Figure it out. Figure out how to get your sleep right because it's the fundamental layer of mental health. So get that one right.

1:32:46 Other things in the biological category are learn how to focus lear how to defocus. Learn how to flip the switch on, learn how to Flip the switch off. Get good at sleeping. Of course exercise of various kinds is gonna be good and all the other things, but there's that physical bin.

1:33:00 And those are the primary Levers there. I do think some form of Exploration whether or not it's Psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, journaling.

1:33:10 Or Some sort of internal reflection. That's somewhat unregulated. But obviously not damaging to you or anyone else. So don't punch concrete walls, but Have the ability to sit down and data dump

1:33:24 And Reflect. If you can't afford therapy. Reflect. on what you're seeing and reading and feeling.

1:33:32 Have the ability to experience What's internal? So that'll be the second one. The third one. Is

1:33:39 And I realize there's some issues around legality and things and right now everything's in transition. I was part of a clinical trial, so I can to safely say this, you know, I do think that There are certain aspects to

1:33:53 Let's just call it what it is, either plant medicine or I was part of M DMA assisted psychotherapy trial. That was extremely Valuable. There's no question. To me.

1:34:04 that that's a powerful mover. Of one's ability to feel comfortable in internal state. The way I would uh just briefly describe that experience for me is that I could feel And

1:34:15 Perfectly fine from here to here and from the belly button down. But I had this feeling always that I couldn't kind of experience things in mind and body at the same time. I know this is gonna sound really wacko to people who maybe haven't experienced this, but Somehow in that brief experience.

1:34:31 I was able to resolve that and I now experience my nervous system as a complete entity. And I do not think people should cowboy this stuff and do it on their own or try and do therapy for their friends or do this on their own. I don't think this is something that people should play around with. These are very powerful tools. You should do this with a board certified MD. Sign up for a clinical trial. Hopefully this will be done in the

1:34:54 You know, in these sorts of medical settings soon. legally and you don't have to be part of a clinical trial. But If You struggle.

1:35:03 ongoing in some way, I do think there's utility there. So that's another bin And then there's another bin which for me has been very powerful, which is Stay on the adventure. continue to have fun. It's so easy to forget to have fun.

1:35:15 when you're doing all these other things like stay in the adventure. And Don't get killed. Um doing it, but You know, really try and keep exploring. I do believe these dopamine systems

1:35:27 are positively reinforced by Novelty and exploration, we know that. And by the way. venturing into new territories and that requires getting certain things wrong. It means Going to a retreat that sucks.

1:35:40 It means taking a class that Is not that interesting. It means Finding out that, you know, a particular relationship is not right for you. But it's important to stay in a mode of adventure.

1:35:52 Because that's fundamental to the human experience and it's fundamental to these neurochemical systems as well. Couple of points I'd love to Underscore. Here so the biological piece You've discussed in other places this principle.

1:36:08 It's a quote of sorts, a maxim. that I think is really worth remembering. And I'm saying that to myself as much to anyone listening, that is you cannot control the mind with the mind. And whether or not there might be exceptions to that, I think as a general rule Using the bi directionality, as you've mentioned, uh sort of body, mind, mind, body, and you know, when in doubt working through

1:36:33 Your fuller biology. is incredibly powerful. I mean for me, like to get out of my head, I need to get into my body. There's just No. metacognitive way generally. For me to otherwise do that. Or if there is, it's just much more difficult. I've even told my girlfriend, I'm like, if I'm trying to figure out what is bothering me and I spend more than like a half hour on it, just tell me to go to the gym and lift heavy things for at least thirty minutes. That's right.

1:37:02 Best remedy in the in the world. And then I come out and I'm like, Yeah, that that bullshit's fine. It doesn't matter. And that's what was necessary. On the adventure side. Actually before I get to the adventure side, just a quick note. on Costello because I think a lot about my dog Molly and mortality and it's just it's like so easy.

1:37:23 To get sad. And how old is she? She's seven, but she's had some health issues. She's had two spinal surgeries. And if you haven't looked into the Canine

1:37:35 research with Rapamycin. I would look into that. It's very, very compelling. So that might be Thank you. I'll do that. I listened to your podcast with Peter Atia and uh lot of discussion about Rap MySen, I I'll definitely check it out. Yeah, it's it's worth checking out. There's also a separate episode with David Sabatini of MIT, who is a genius and uh it's sort of MTOR wizard. Uh who's that family. His he has a brother.

1:38:06 Bernardo Sabatini who's a Famous neurobiologist at Harvard. Who I know quite well. And their dad There's another Sabatini. Who was at NYU Med. So those sabbatinis. They're kinda like the Cornbergs. Cornberg discovered RNA.

1:38:18 His son discovered the structure of RNA. They both got no bells, and I think their brother is an immunologist, something like that. So if your last if you're thinking about changing your last name, Sabatini or Kornberg is a good one to to select. They come from the secretariat stock. The scientific gene pool. Exactly. On the adventure side, so you said don't die or don't let something kill you. Which I think is a perfect segue to As I'm reading it from a paragraph from Outside magazine.

1:38:49 Cuberman was about forty miles off the coast of Mexico and forty feet below the periwinkle surface of the ocean. What does this refer to? Oh my. Yeah. So Before I went to Hoffman. Uh I was still working out some things. The quick backstory of this is in Twenty sixteen I decided I was gonna shift a lot of my laboratory work toward humans. I understand the issues of animal research and why it's important. Uh my lab still does work on mice, because there's certain things you can only do on mice, but I I want to work on humans.

1:39:18 And I want to use virtual reality. To induce fear in the laboratory. And study stress and fear and other brain states. And

1:39:27 We realize that VR As it stood at the time was just Pretty lame. It was computer generated images, it didn't have three sixty video or sound, and so I got

1:39:37 Linked up with a guy named Michael Muller. M U L E R Who's a very very famous photographer in Hollywood mostly. Does all the Marvel stuff. He sh he shot everybody. The you just can go to his website. It's just it's kind of a

1:39:52 Just a constant scroll of iconic images. Muller and I got to be friends. And the reason I was excited about getting to know him is because a a hobby of his is that he takes photos of great white sharks. Underwater, he brings these giant strobe lights underwater.

1:40:07 And Muller is you know, you hear about the character of the Wolverine, Hugh Jackman, right? Muller is a wolverine. He's kinda hunched over and he's the nicest guy in the world, but It was like It was immediate friendship.

1:40:21 But he loves adventure. He's got He's got a family, kids, everything, but he loves adventure and he said This is my best Muller personation. He's like, Bro, you gotta come down to Guadalupe, the sharks are there. I was like, Well, what are we gonna do? And he's like, Well, we'll just film them with three sixty cameras. So in twenty

1:40:37 Sixteen we went down there. And we filmed Great White Sharks as a stimulus for this fear laboratory that we were building. And Muller and a couple other guys, these expert great white shark divers, would leave the cage. You lower the cage about forty feet below, and they leave the cage to come back in. So called cage exiting.

1:40:57 Definitely illegal to do. We got permits from the Mexican government'cause this was for a scientific study. I would have loved to see that permitting process. Anyway, continue. That was something else. So we we we got the footage, brought it back, built this thing up, and then what happened was in the subsequent year, the technology for VR really improved. So we decided we were gonna go back.

1:41:18 And I decided for whatever reason that I was gonna cage exit also. I actually learned how to scuba dive for the first trip, but I had stayed in the cage. And so the second trip we went out there And I brought a good friend of mine who's actually a mutual friend through Blake Mykowski, Pat Dossett, he's a former former SEAL team guy.

1:41:37 I brought Brian McKenzie. Because Brian learned. Brian McKenzie learned how to scuba dive in a lake. In Oregon and his first Ocean dive was cage exit with great whites.

1:41:48 Now of course the guy has unscared tattooed on his knuckles. I know he was Uh featured in in a number of your your books. So it was Brian, Pat, me and some other guys, we went out there with the intention of getting better footage. To create a very realistic VR experience of great white sharks. So what happened was on the first day I decided I'm not gonna cage exit today.

1:42:09 Let Pat go. He's the SEAL team guy. He'll do it. He did it, of course, masterfully the first time, went a few meters beyond everybody,'cause Those guys aren't competitive or anything. Anyway, it all worked out. But the first day I was in the cage So I went down, I've been in the cage before, and you're breathing off a hookah line, which is up to the the surface. You're not on scuba. And the reason you don't bring scuba is because you don't want to take up too much space in the cage. So the other divers, Muller and a couple other guys, had left the cage.

1:42:35 And I was there just watching the sharks and really enjoying it. I'd been down there the previous year, and these great white sharks, their girth is in incredible. And they come at you. And like a Volkswagen and they'll stop right in front of you and hover. They'll eyeball you and then disappear into the darkness, so to s it's really amazing. And I realized as I was down there, I'm like I'm alone in the cage this time. I've never been alone in the cage. We had a lot of sharks that day, so I was moving around and swiveling around a lot.

1:43:02 And then all of a sudden I had no air. Nothing. Just Nothing coming through the mouthpiece.

1:43:09 And I looked up and The Hookahline got all BOA constrictored up. So I popped up to it thinking, Oh, I'll just untangle this thing and it's like hard as concrete. It's like

1:43:19 Good. So I took another suck of air. And nothing. And I look down there's safety tanks in the two corners. So I spit out the mouthpiece, I drop down in the safety tanks, open'em up. And the needle doesn't move. They're empty.

1:43:32 This is like The biggest Nightmare. And it's interesting we were talking about Costello. I had One thought at that moment, a totally inefficient use of mental space.

1:43:43 But the one thought was I'm going to go home. Alive, I'm going to see Costello. He just popped into my head. So this stuff really does happen, apparently. So

1:43:55 Nothing off the safeties. Thanks. So I decided I gotta get out of here. When there's sharks everywhere. But I've got to get to the surface and you're just

1:44:04 Desperate for air. So I pop up to the top of the tank and I've got a weight vest on and I've got to take that weight vest off if I want to get up to the surface. Now the sharks actually don't eat you when you're outside the cage. If you're swimming toward them. They actually if you loom on them, they steer away. That's the way that these cage exit divers. are able to avoid getting eaten. Or if you're ocean Ramsey, you just kind of understand them and you swim next to them. But I was genuinely frightened and stressed. And so

1:44:31 I thought okay, I'm gonna shoot for the surface. I could see the silhouette of the boat. I'm gonna shoot for the surface. I'll either get eaten or I'll drown, but And Certain I'll drown if I stay here. And then what happened was One of the diversity.

1:44:44 His name's Brock. Saw me. and started kicking back toward me and he's carrying this big vacuum cleaner size The R Thing.

1:44:53 And That felt like an eternity. You know he's coming. Back to me, back to me, slowly, slowly. Now I'm just hoping if I pass out, I want to fall into the cage. If I float, I want to make sure I float up. But it was a good twenty or thirty more seconds, which doesn't sound like very long, but it's not like I got to do it. It was an eternity.

1:45:10 So he made it back, we did the share error thing. But then we had a whole other problem, which was that We're sharing air, those guys are out there. We're now on one tank. And the safeties are empty. So now there's a chance that we both might have to shoot for the surface.

1:45:25 So fortunately everybody made it back in time and we got up. to the surface. But I will Never forget that experience.

1:45:33 I do feel like I'm on borrowed time. And I did feel quite traumatized by it. And I will say that that night I did one thing and the next day I did something else was

1:45:44 That night I I was able to sleep, I did Yoga Nidra. And I was able to calm my mind and my nerves. And the next day Because I

1:45:53 I understand a bit about the relationship between trauma and exposure. I did go back down the very next day. And I cage exited. And some people might think that's foolish. I certainly didn't do it to be tough or to seem like I'm tough. I did it because

1:46:08 Facing the trauma. Is The best way to do it. To Purged the trauma. We know this.

1:46:14 And Caj exiting for me allowed me, I believe, to report the experience. I feel nothing in my body, no tension, no stress, no. quaking or anything related to that. So I do think it's been completely purged. I wanna dig into What I read as

1:46:30 A definition of fear. From you. And just to hear more about Your fascination. with fear and where it comes from. So here here's what I have.

1:46:40 And You can fact check this, please. Quote Fear. It's the anxiety that you feel when you don't know what behavior can remove a feeling of helplessness in the face of a threat. Yeah. Does that sound right to you? You can't have стрес в авзії.

1:46:58 You can't have trauma without stress. But you can have Stress or anxiety without trauma. I think that the key variables are Anxiety is a state of heightened alertness.

1:47:10 It's contracting of the visual field, quickening of the heart rate, breathing, all the kind of standard stuff that we hear of sympathetic nervous system activation. But The mental component Time is being sliced very finely. So you're constantly anticipating and evaluating your environment.

1:47:25 And your internal state. Because oftentimes people are aware of their so called interoception. They're keenly aware of the How nervous they are or upset they are. And

1:47:36 This Element of uncertainty of being unable to predict. When it's going to pass. And this creates a kind of meta stress. It's sort of like when people have trouble sleeping. Then they create this kind of meta anxiety and insomnia that now they're stressed about not sleeping. And so then it makes it even harder to sleep. The same thing with stress. The more we stress, the more we want the stress to pass.

1:47:57 And I think that resolving The uncertainty. element is powerful and I think it starts By taking control of the mind

1:48:07 Through The route of the body. When our mind is not Stable. Whatever that means, but we're not able to control our mental state.

1:48:15 where it's not where we'd like it to be. We need to look to the powers of respiration, of vision. of movement, of weight training, of running. To reorient the mind. I think it is futile to try and Rescue thinking with thinking. That's not to say that thinking and an exploration of the mind like with psychoanalysis or journaling is not powerful.

1:48:35 But for Restabilizing our system. These brain states of mind and body, I think the body is the more powerful Entry point. And have you always been

1:48:45 Fascinated by fear? Or why why did that become a focal point? Probably because I was the Kid that was last to drop in on the ramp. Probably because

1:48:56 I have lived and existed with a fair amount of fear. This seems to have gotten Better over the years. For instance, I can remember skateboarding home, there's this bike path that used to connect the school that I went to the back of some houses and I would push back.

1:49:12 Through there at night and I would start to imagine that Terrible things were gonna happen to me. I think that fear was a was a strong default. And I can't assign that to any earlier experience.

1:49:23 I think I just had a lot of baseline anxiety and fear and so resolving that and figuring out tools that people could use that I could use. Also, Things. Really fast.

1:49:36 Has been a a major A major effort of my life, including my laboratory. I'd like to, if it's okay with you, shift gears a little bit and just pepper you with a bunch of random Questions. That have absolutely no continuity with anything we just talked about.

1:49:49 Sure thing. All right, because I just I have this sort of scratch pad full of these various things that I wanna ask about Often without a whole lot of context just from from various reading and so on. So Turmeric's effects on DHT. Could you elaborate on this? So DHT dihydrotostosterone, I'm guessing. What should we know about DHT and turmeric's effects on DHT? And I ask in part because it's something that I use all the time in cooking. There's seems to be some research to suggest that products like Theracumin, I believe it's called, is the brand name. uh might attenuate some risk related to, say, neurodegenerative disease or Alzheimer's. So I'd I'd love to know

1:50:33 More about this. Yeah, so briefly Endocronology lesson on testosterone DHC testosterone is No. Androgen, of course, that's responsible for muscle growth, deepening the voice, aggression, sex drive, et cetera.

1:50:46 But D H T. Dihydro testosterone is made from testosterone. an enzyme called five alphabet ductase. DHT is the more powerful androgen, anywhere from three hundred to six hundred times the affinity for the androgen receptor. D H T is the

1:51:01 And it's affinity for the androgen receptor. Not so incidentally is the basis of Nandron DECA. known in gym circles actually a a female runner. That was a good pick for the Fifteen hundred.

1:51:13 Just got a four year ban. Oops. Or a Nandron positive test. She claims. And her coach claims that it came from A burrito.

1:51:23 Containing pork with Nangelone. I actually would love somebody to go expl uh we're gonna see more of this in the years to come. I'd like somebody to actually analyze meat for Clembuterol and Nandron to just see 'Cause I the I and I'm not happy that this happened or it's it's a sad situation, but we could fairly say that There's been a dark shadow cast by a burrito. over the Olympic uh qualifications. Um when all the sprinters were diagnosed as narcoleptics. You remember that with Oh really? Yeah, they were all on medafinol and various stimulants, and so they had these scripts from their doctors and letters saying they were all narcoleptic. Just amazing the Venn diagram.

1:52:01 To get them quick out the blocks. That's where the race is won. Hear that gun and get out the blocks. That's so Nandralone is DECA. The the reason people take it. Uh whether or not she took it or not, I don't know. But w the reason people take it is because DHT as the more powerful androgen with this higher affinity. is the one that's mainly responsible for Libido and many of the cognitive effects.

1:52:23 of testosterone. One of the more powerful effects of testosterone is that because of The fact that there are Androgen receptors in the amygdala. That

1:52:33 It has a fear suppressing component to it. And D H T Testosterone, but really D H T. has a property of making effort feel good. That's probably the main psychological effect of testosterone, aside from its effects on

1:52:49 on libido and the body periphery. So Some people are very DHT sensitive. If you're somebody, for instance, that takes creatine and Experiences hair loss.

1:53:01 Very quickly. You're probably DHT sensitive. That's because creatine increases DHT. DHT will promote hair loss on the scalp like my hairline's retreating quite nicely and now because of DHT receptors here. And it promotes beard growth. So it has the these Inverse effects on the face and on the scalp. But

1:53:18 Tumoric is a fairly potent D H T Antagonist. Now, whether or not it does that by occupation of the androgen receptor or some other mechanism, I don't know. People will vary in their sensitivity. I am very sensitive to turmeric. If I take turmeric, my DHT levels plummet. And I'm not taking Nandralon.

1:53:37 Nor am I eating pork burritos. But The The sensitivity will vary and you can kind of predict that sensitivity by how you react to creatine. If you're somebody that takes low doses of creatine, which um many people do, and experience hair loss, chances are when you take turmeric, you're gonna see a reduction in DHT.

1:53:56 means that your five alpha reductase system andor this interaction between turmeric and the androgen receptor. are for whatever reason more sensitive than you. Some people Take turmeric and feel perfectly fine. I noticed a an immediate blunting of all the good stuff, let's say, that DHT and testosterone do.

1:54:15 when I take even a minimum of turmeric. Now that doesn't mean I can't have a little bit of turmeric in a drink, like a juice drink or something. But dosing turmeric is not something that I do or that I recommend for for people. Now women do make a little bit of DHT It might be a whole different story with them, but I I think for men, you you probably just want to do the experiment. It's quickly reversible if you stop taking turmeric, so you could evaluate this. Some people will be fine. You could do a blood test, you could do it subjectively.

1:54:40 Is uh phanastride propicia that is often used for mitigating hair loss. That is, I think it's a five alpha. Reductase inhibitor. Would that also have the effect of decreasing DHT levels. I wanna say there are anecdotal reports and

1:54:59 People please do your own homework. Go to PubMed and do some research, but I want to say that least among strength athletes that I've heard anecdotal reports of propia use correlating to decreases in strength gains. For male athletes. Yeah, absolutely. And

1:55:17 It certainly can reduce DHT levels. Certainly f more for those that are sensitive to it. Just to underscore how powerful DHT is, we have what are called primary and secondary sex characteristics. Secondary sex characteristics are like body hair, deepening the voice, et cetera. But the primary characteristics like the presence of a penis or not. And this is independent of gender. This is just biological sex. It's encoded by the Y chromosome. That's entirely controlled by DHT during development.

1:55:44 And Masculinization of the brain is a separate pathway. But There's this phenomenon that I think is in the Dominican Republic, a genetic disruption in some of these pathways and they're the people can look this up, the so called Hueva Dosis.

1:55:57 This is a famous story in endocrinology of children that it look female at birth by genitalia and then because of a surge in DHT later. They literally sprout a penis at about and testicles descend at about age twelve. With it awesome. Wow.

1:56:13 And there's a whole story there. It it actually was part of the story that helped neuro endocrinologists and developmental biologists understand. the role of five alpha reductase in testosterone's conversion to DHD. Fascinating biology there. much too much to go into now in detail, but you be people can look it up online. DHT is powerful in development. And it's powerful throughout the lifespan. So you you want to keep levels of DHT appropriately high.

1:56:40 But don't take Nandron if you're sprinting in the Olympics. So that's not the way to get your uh Nandralone is not the way to get your DHT. Yeah. Yeah. Even if you do get it through Through anabolic piggies. It's just like there's so many more cost effective ways to make pig grow. Deca durablin injections is probably not high on the list. They need natty menus, right? They need menus that are Like uh if you're Olympic athlete, please just prepare your own food.

1:57:06 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So so many directions to go here. It makes me wonder also if Anyone has looked at turmeric or curcumin or whatever the actual compound is responsible for this DHT inhibition whether it's via five alpha reductase or otherwise on pregnancy. And birth gender.

1:57:27 I'm wondering if that would have any effect if D H T is suppressed. In a woman who is pregnant, if that would have any effect. On Earth gender. Yeah, that's a topic that I don't think the experiment's ever been done, but my postdoc advisor, Ben Barris,

1:57:41 was transgendered. And it's an interesting story. Briefly, he was an identical twin. He from a very early age he felt entirely uncomfortable with In a female body. He knew he wanted to be male from a very young age, long before puberty.

1:57:58 His sister. who I've I've interacted with as well, is perfectly happy. Being a woman enjoys being a woman. And they're identical twins. And their m mother was actually treated with an androgenic drug during pregnancy. Ben unfortunately passed away of pancreatic cancer a few years ago.

1:58:14 He's an incredibly accomplished neuroscientist and physician. His name is Barris, B A R E S. There are a number of uh obituaries. I I wrote one for Nature that you know. describes his his life and his transition. And some of the biology. But

1:58:28 None the less, then And I spent about a year before he died. I w recorded a lot of conversations with Ben that I haven't released yet talking about what it was like to be a girl, what it was like to be a woman, what it was like to be a man later in life. Just as I he's a close friend of mine, I want to understand that And he

1:58:47 Described that This was an immediate Affect. As soon as he knew there was a difference between boys and girls, he knew that he was in the wrong body. He he likened it too.

1:58:57 If you woke up tomorrow and you were in a gorilla's body That's how uncomfortable it was. Knowing That's how he described it. And he thought that perhaps

1:59:06 You know, this early entergenic drug treatment might have shaped his brain differently. Than his sister somehow. Uh. raises so many so many interesting questions about You know, phytoestrogens or sort of these xenoestrogens and

1:59:22 the environmental inputs. That could affect that entire Biochemical cocktail. to different different outputs. Testosterone. So we've talked a little bit about DHT. There's a Goldilocks range.

1:59:35 Depending on your gender and your objectives for testosterone. Are there any particular supplements that you use to I hesitate to use this word because it's so goal dependent, but optimize your testosterone or DHT. Levels.

1:59:52 Or reduce sex hormone binding globulin or whatever. If you're sort of toying with your Androgens. How do you like to do it? Optimizing and or understanding testosterone I think is i is vital for

2:00:05 Uh men and women. Because it's so powerful. Obviously get your sleep right. That's an important one and you do that through so that's an indirect effect. Stress. Keep stress. Chronic stress to a minimum, that's an indirect effect.

2:00:17 Train hard but not too long, that's an indirect effect, mostly. In the supplementation space. There are two things that have worked very well for me and that I've recommended to a number of people. That

2:00:29 have worked well for them. And those two things are Tongat Ali. Which At four hundred milligrams per day. Is

2:00:38 Thought to reduce sex hormone binding globulin, because if for those that don't know, testosterone can exist in a freer bound form. People hear binding globulins and they bind up testosterone and prevent free testosterone, they think this is terrible, but actually albumin and sex hormone binding globulin. are wonderful because they ensure that whatever testosterone you make will be delivered to your tissues over a long period of time. And different tissues need different amounts of testosterone.

2:01:02 And so You don't wanna plummet sex hormone binding globulin, but Tonga Ali Either through Reducing sex hormone binding globulin. Or through direct effects.

2:01:12 On Increasing androgen release. Will increase your testosterone. Now the the way to explore this and I'm not saying anyone should do this. You definitely want to work with your physician. But the way to explore this is four hundred milligrams

2:01:27 per day taken once per day early in the day because it can have a little bit of a stimulant effect. Make you more alert. That works well. It does need to be taken chronically. It tends to work better as you get into the second and third month of use. And I don't see any reason to cycle it. Unless somehow something's

2:01:44 You know, spikes on your Yeah. The other supplement that is quite useful. Is Fadoja agrestus.

2:01:53 Foggio agrestis is one of these. Plant alkaloids. that I think it's uh comes from a Nigerian shrub. I might have that wrong, but But you aggressis.

2:02:03 acts as a lutinizing hormone mimic. So it actually stimulates the testes to produce more testosterone. So it's like H C. It's like a It's a bit like H C, but it for whatever reason it doesn't seem to increase estrogen. Yeah. Which is unique because H C G will increase estrogen. Now just anecdotally.

2:02:24 I started using those in combination. So it's four hundred milligrams of Tonga Ali. I have no relationship to the company, so I can mention where I get it from, although I hope they don't sell out as a co they will sell out as a consequence. A solar Um makes a good Version of this. Sometimes these things are packaged in with other things, but solar has a pure form.

2:02:42 And then Fidoja aggressus. I think it's herbal elixirs makes a a Fidogio aggrestus. And some people make the mistake of taking far too much Fiduja agrestis. I think on the bottom they recommend three two to three times a day, one four hundred twenty five milligram capsule. I I believe is more than sufficient. And anecdotally for me what this did is it

2:03:03 It increased My total testosterone by about two hundred points. So I fell kind of in the middle of the range. I was neither high nor low. I was at about six hundred. Hovering somewhere around six hundred. These two supplements consistently bring it up into the high sevens or low eights.

2:03:19 Which is In the direction that I want it to go. Do you think for Doge Agrestis, if it is Lutinizing Hormone. similar, meaning it's a mimic of sorts. Do you think that would have any

2:03:35 Because it probably would have a sort of down regulating effect on endogenous production of LH. Well, what's interesting is uh when I've done my blood work twice a year, at least for me it did not downregulate LH. Which is nice because things like H C G definitely would downregulate LH. People who take a testosterone, sypionate, uh you know, T so called TRT.

2:03:56 Or similar, we'll see a down regulation in lutinizing hormone. So for Doja and Tonga Ali I I mentioned because there's sort of an intermediate between Doing nothing. With respect to supplements.

2:04:08 Or taking things that don't really work. There are a lot of those out there. Or taking the full plunge into T R T And I I'll just mention if I if I may about TRT. There's a lot of interest and excitement in TRT. They now even c have what's called

2:04:22 Sports TRT, which is Not And just for people who who don't have the contact, if uh I'm not sure if you if you already kind of named it out, but testosterone replacement therapy TRT. So what's what's sports TRT? Is this like med med spa type stuff? Yeah, so um

2:04:41 People are probably wondering, Wait, you're a neurobiologist, why do you know so much about this stuff? Well I have the good fortune of doing work with various high performing communities and there's just a lot of discussion Around Hormone and neural augmentation. And so I'm not making recommendations. I what I generally do with those communities and what I'm doing now is

2:05:00 Point people to the fact that there there are things that lie somewhere between doing nothing And going the f the prescription drug route. Eating pork burritos. Yeah, exactly.

2:05:10 Exactly. In the realm of T R T, testosterone replacement therapy, the typical dosages That people use are A hundred and sixty to two hundred milligrams a week. But the way it's administered doesn't

2:05:23 match the biology. I think this is a serious problem that needs to be dealt with. Typically if you get a prescription, you'll go in, they'll give you one injection of anywhere from one hundred and sixty to two hundred milligrams. And then you go back two weeks later and you get another injection. The testes normally Make anywhere from about five to ten milligrams of testosterone a day.

2:05:41 So if you're taking Hundred and sixty milligrams of testosterone on one day. You're going to set an Motion, all sorts of cascades of aromatization into estrogen, conversion into DHT that You might feel terrible then great four days later and then so so two weeks later.

2:05:59 The way people are doing this now more intelligently is to Do their injections at home. Either into subcutaneously or into muscle and every third or fourth day to take a low dose of maybe forty milligrams. And to dose it more evenly.

2:06:13 Because these long lasting forms like Sypionate do release over time. But sports TRT is this intermediate that's been created on the internet. Where people are neither doing testosterone replacement therapy to get levels up to normal or high normal. Nor are they doing what

2:06:29 the gym rats call blasting. They're not taking three, four, or five hundred. They're taking Two hundred a week. Or Three hundred a week and The amount of Self directed pharmacology that's happening out there is

2:06:42 Pretty incredible. And uh look, I don't pass judgment. Everybody it's your life to live, but y There are a lot of horror stories too. You can really mess yourself up by Getting androgen levels too high.

2:06:54 I'm a fan of Gently and moving. into the supplementation. space for this, seeing how it works, doing a blood test. And then if people want to do TRT over time, that's certainly they're right. That's not my place to judge and you need to you need a prescription anyway.

2:07:08 Yeah to talk to a doctor. Yeah, and just a a couple of Additional thoughts on all of this stuff. Well first the lower dose higher frequency regimen. Can also be applied to to many things, right? Growth hormone would be another

2:07:22 example from the same sort of portfolio of interventions slash augmentations that a lot of folks would use. And Separately, I would say, and please please feel free to correct me or fact check on this, but whether you're eating pork burritos, injecting yourself With Anabolics of different types.

2:07:43 Or eating deer, antler, velvet, or whatever the latest fad is that people claim increases testosterone, if you dramatically increase your testosterone levels If you are not taking an anti aromatase, you are also going to increase your estrogen levels, even though it depends on the anabolic, obviously, and Androone is very different from different types of testosterone and so on. Which you know, some are more anabolic, some are more androgenic. But

2:08:10 If you suddenly wallop yourself with much higher levels of testosterone, you are also going to a portion of that will be converted to estrogen. And so it's just something to be aware of, right? You it's it's very hard to get a Biological free lunch. Uh. And if you're if you're feeding yourself a bunch of stuff.

2:08:28 And Your testes like the Siberian what were they? Albino rats. Siberian hamsters. Yeah, Siberian hamsters. If your if your balls go from whatever your comfortable ball diameter is down to like Raisins. you may require postcycle therapy, PCT, various drugs to

2:08:49 successfully Off ramp. from these types of interventions. Unless, like some powerlifters, you're just going to be loaded all year round, three sixty five, twenty four seven, which uh is obviously your your choice if if you want to do something like that. But Yeah, good idea to get medical medical supervision for all these. Definitely. And and along those lines, I should just mention well I will say that Fedogia tends to have the opposite effect on the testicles. It actually will cause a fairly not pronounced, but a a uh increases testicle size.

2:09:20 That's a pretty strong effect or or media effect of a Fiducia. The other Thing is that right now there's a lot of excitement about peptides. People are like, Oh the the so called secretagogs. It sounds like synagogue, but it's secretagogue. Whereas these are Like not not taking growth hormone, but taking peptides that promote growth hormone release and then people are taking, you know, gastric peptide this and here's the deal.

2:09:43 Things that make us Feel More vital. Like testosterone, DHT, growth hormone. Generally.

2:09:51 Will shorten your life. I know that's a bit of a controversial statement, but w but if you step back and you just just ask yourself What is the most vital Energetic phase of your life. It's puberty.

2:10:03 When all these hormones are really Hi. And Puberty is the most rapid period of aging that any of us go through. I was talking about this recently with a longevity researcher and I

2:10:13 And it's kind of interesting that All the longevity. The attempts at at increasing lifespan are like Starving yourself, which is catabolic. Reducing blood sugar, which is catabolic.

2:10:24 And that's on the opposite side of all these things like testosterone, which is anabolic. Insulin which is anabolic, growth hormone, which is anabolic. And so Annibalism sounds like a great Thing. Although it does sound remarkably similar to cannibalism, but growth and vitality, libido, strength, et cetera, that all

2:10:42 Sounds wonderful and in its proper form and context is wonderful, but The reason why I think we see people Dying early who do a lot of growth hormone and testosterone is because they've effectively created a third and fourth round of puberty. You're accelerating aging.

2:10:58 And so I think vitality and longevity always have to be Balanced. With one another. Totally. And We could go for hours just on this one topic. One other

2:11:09 Cautionary note. Well two actually. Number one. Unless you're type one diabetic, don't inject insulin. There are athletes who do this, but you can very easily kill yourself. The second is If you're taking a lot of Growth agents.

2:11:23 Some of them are not selective to skeletal muscle tissue. And you may, as a male, end up looking like you're in your second trimester from enlarged organs. And guess what? When you get off of those drugs, your organs don't automatically resume their smaller size. Uh this is also why certain baseball players and so on have gone up multiple helmet sizes. It's not from porcaritas. Those effects are durable. You can't just hit undo on those things. So very very good points. Pays to be cautious. All right.

2:11:56 Cognitive enhancement or cognitive boosting supplements, much like The testosterone. playing field. There's a clown car full of ridiculous propositions there are, of course, then

2:12:11 The prescription and medical route where there are certain things that'll help. Some things like nicotine can be tremendously effective, but come with some possible downsides associated. Do you have any particular thoughts on cognitive enhancement or or how you think about that specifically on the pharmacological supplement side. I know there are many other things that we could also talk about. Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned uh many other things. I won't list them out again, but I I do believe that The most powerful nootropic and cognitive support is going to come from quality sleep and

2:12:46 Yeah, hundred percent. Agreed. Uh yeah, so that's Night and day. On the pharmacologic side, I I think Alpha G P C

2:12:54 has real effects that are supported by quality peer reviewed studies, including some Studies looking at offsetting age related cognitive decline. So Generally it comes in capsule form of three hundred milligrams or so.

2:13:08 I think taken. Occasionally. Or more than occasionally, provided it's fairly early in the day, it does increase focus without increasing the kind of sympathetic arm of the nervous system make in other words without increasing arousal and alertness too much. So I do think Alpha GPC is a useful

2:13:26 Supplement and I use it from time to time. If I've slept well, I don't take it. If I really want to Push a workout hard or a work session, a writing session, or data analysis session hard.

2:13:40 I'll take three hundred milligrams of that. And drink a couple of espresso or drink some mate and some water. Stay hydrated. Hydration is a big one for cognitive function and it's one that people often overlook. But The simple rule is that This is what I call the Galpen equation,'cause Andy Galpin, who's a great exercise physiologist, came up with this for physical work, but it turns out to work for cognitive work too, which is that

2:14:01 Basically your body weight in pounds divided by thirty. Will give you the number of ounces of water that you should drink. About every twenty minutes. when exercising or doing mental work. Might seem like a lot. There might be an extra trip to the bathroom or two.

2:14:17 But it's worth it. Dehydration is a subtle But very pernicious creep. Where you start having a hard time focusing your eyes, you You just feel like you want to go to sleep. That hydr is real.

2:14:30 So drink plenty of fluids, especially if you're ingesting caffeine, which of course is a diuretic. My f personal Favorite vehicle for caffeine remains Yerba Mate. I just

2:14:42 Absolutely. adore the effects of your romate. I'm not saying it's for everyone, but you have the caffeine and uh I might be getting the pronunciation off. You also have I believe theophiline, which you would find in in green tea and theobromine. Which uh you would also find it's a dark chocolate. Side note trivia for folks, Theobromine from Theo as in Theosophy, Theobroma, Food of the Gods. So that's kinda fun. But Yeah, but the pharmacokinetics of those are all different. So unlike coffee, which I I have a love hate relationship with because I metabolize it so quickly that I get this

2:15:19 this sort of Snickers bar sugar high of caffeine for a very short time, twenty or thirty minutes, and then my baseline of sort of subjective perceived energy is lower than when I started. So what happens then? I become a crackhead who drinks, you know, eight cups of coffee a day. Not so with Yerba Mate, especially when you're kind of titrating it in in the way that they would consume it in a place like Argentina or uh Uruguay where you're just kinda sipping it. Slowly. It's great stuff.

2:15:48 I found a brand that And I I don't have any relation to them, but I found one that I particularly like. It's call has a weird name, but it's Anna Park. It's an organic. I don't know who Anna is or her park, or maybe her name is Anna Park, but it's nice. It has the right amount of that tobacco flavor, but it's not Burnt to the point of feeling kind of overwhelming.

2:16:08 The other thing about caffeine that's kind of Most people would benefit from waiting ninety Minutes to two hours after waking to ingest their caffeine. The way caffeine interacts with the adenosine receptor.

2:16:21 You get sleepy because of time of day with that circ whole circadian clock mechanism, but also because of the buildup of adenosine in your system. That's the sleepiness factor, really. And when you wake up in the morning, if you immediately compete out Any residual adenosine. You lose the benefit of that cortisol pulse.

2:16:40 Essentially clearing out the rest of the adenosine. And so a lot of people Despite the pain of having to do this the first day or two. feel much better throughout the day. Uh less of that cracked out kind of rise and crash feeling on caffeine. If they delay their coffee or mate.

2:16:58 Or about ninety minutes to two hours after waking. Oh, that's great to know. Side note for people who may want to do some some further research and reading into caffeine. The name Roland Griffiths has come up multiple times on this podcast. He's an incredible scientist and researcher based at Johns Hopkins, who's be he is one of the most

2:17:19 I would say esteemed researchers alongside say Matt Johnson Roland has just been at it for longer with respect to psilocybin. And psychedelics so he's associated with that, but prior to psychedelics, he was one of the world's foremost experts in caffeine metabolism. And so he is he has Published

2:17:39 And uh perform studies. related to caffeine that are intensely interesting. So for people who who want to dig deeper into that, Roland is Roland Griffiths is a great resource. You know, one thing I've been wondering Because there are drugs. that you can use to counteract other drugs, right? So if you go to Bellevue.

2:17:59 And you're at the psych ER and someone comes in. Just high out of their mind on cocaine, right? There are medications they could be given to try to take them down a notch or two or three or ten.

2:18:12 Like Haladol or Not sure if that's used any longer, but there are there are many different drugs that could be used. In the case of caffeine, let's just say Someone. Named

2:18:23 Jim Barris. Just for sake of argument. is working on his laptop at a restaurant and said restaurant has excellent service, which means they also have the never ending cup of coffee. So Before he knows it, he's had five cups of coffee, even though he only ordered one coffee.

2:18:40 Is there a way to Reverse Or counteract the effects of caffeine on adenosine such that you can actually get to sleep. So if you hit the golf ball and you're like oh fuck. Looking at the half life of caffeine. There's no way I'm getting to sleep until like three in the morning. Is there any way to address that? Or is it just fate accomplis and you're

2:19:04 More or less screwed. Yeah, one direct and two indirect. is increase your glucose. You know the whole notion that you can soak it up by eating some bread. You will see a blunting of the stimulant effect.

2:19:16 Now whether or not that's also due to some I don't know increase in serotonin or something from the the carbohydrate. But Yeah, you could have uh A bagel or two or a whatever it is that you're the compatible carbohydrate. These days carbohydrates are such a complicated thing for most people. I like carbohydrates, especially late in the day. I do the

2:19:35 I either fast and go low carb, no carb during the day'cause that lets me focus. And that so meat and salad during the day are not eating for portions of the day. And then at night I eat pasta and rice and I eat very little protein, sleep like a baby. That's what works. But the other way is to take theanine. So before we were talking about theanine In reference to pre sleep. supplementation thirty or sixty minutes before sleep.

2:19:57 But uh hundred to two hundred milligrams of theanine We'll take the jitters out of a caffeine. Experience. And in fact so much so that a lot of energy drinks now are starting to include theanine. As an attempt to get you to ingest more of those energy drinks.

2:20:13 because they understand that at some point people hit threshold and they feel so wide eyed and wired that they're not going to consume more. So they they're tricking you this way and it does indeed work. The other thing is If you ever really need to sleep, I mean Again, be cautious. Do what's compatible. With your

2:20:29 physician's advice, but Gabba You know, you can buy Gabo and glycine in capsule form. So A gram of GABA, a gram of

2:20:37 Glycine in combination. That's more of a heavy Hit over the head. But if you're having a hard time getting to sleep, that can help. I don't recommend people take those chronically because GABA, of course, is a neurotransmitter. And I don't believe really in taking things that are very close to the actual thing that you're trying to manipulate.

2:20:56 For instance, I'm not a fan of Taking El Dopa. Why would I do that? I don't have Parkinson's. But People will take Mecuna Purines, which is this you know, essentially ninety nine percent L Dopa, and you'll get really, really elevated, but then you'll really crash for a day or two. So

2:21:11 I think that Pulling on the marionette strings a little bit from a distance is better. than taking the specific compound that you're trying to replace, unless there's a clinical need, of course. One more topic. And uh since we're at about

2:21:26 Two hours and thirty we'll we'll wrap up in just a little bit. But The Vegas nerve. What is the vagus nerve? What is the latest and greatest? Why is it of interest?

2:21:37 Yeah. is a nerve network. It's many nerves. It could even be thought of as its own major branch of the peripheral nervous system. It comes out of the brain, basically, and connects to all the organs of the body. Can influence our digestion.

2:21:55 Our heart rate Our breathing We talked earlier about HR V heart rate variability. The vagus is a important component to the slowing down of the heart rate when we exhale. It's a a very important pathway and it's bi directional. So the organs of the body that I just mentioned, the lungs, the gut, the heart, et cetera, the spleen, they also send nerve connections back to the brain.

2:22:16 And There's been a lot of interest in the Vegas. as a purely calming system. And that's simply not true. The medical textbooks call it Appropriately cranial nerve ten.

2:22:27 It's in the parasympathetic arm of the nervous system, which suggests that it's all calming, but actually it's not. It has branches of it that are kind of stimulating as well. So in the You hear, Oh, you know, you should do this thing of rubbing in front of your ears. It that's a branch of the Vegas, it calms you down or

2:22:45 Stimulate the vagus to calm down. Now in neuroscience laboratories And even in some human neurosurgery laboratories, the way that you get people more alert, in fact a form of depression treatment, is to stimulate the vagus and it makes people more alert and more positive and excited. So vagal stimulation can easily cause Increases in alertness. How do they s do the stimulation?

2:23:07 This is a beautiful story. A colleague of mine, perhaps in at least to my mind, the most impressive neurobiologist I know, a guy by the name of Carl Dyseroth, he invented discovered and invented channel rhodopsins, which are these from algae essentially that are light sensitive clone the genes, you can put those genes into neurons, you have to do this by viral injection, and then you have a little Blue light diode that will allow you to stimulate just those neurons locally.

2:23:30 Carl's a psychiatrist, a bioengineer, and a neurobiologist operating at the very highest level. Actually, there's a book that he just published. that I'm listening to now that is It's just can only be described as beautiful. It's a description of the landscape of psychiatry and his attempts to build tools that are better than drugs to manipulate the nervous system. It's called projections. And it's a beautiful read. You'll learn a ton of neuroscience.

2:23:55 Carl is well on his way to win every big prize in science. He's got all of them right now except The last one. And uh I'm not on the committee that votes for those, but he's remarkable. Also has five children happily married. I mean he's like one of these. His wife is a phenomenal scientist and physician. These people are It's one of the reasons I like being at Stanford is because the the mean is so very high, but Carl shifts the mean like he's that dot way out there. In any event.

2:24:21 Carl, there's a beautiful article. That I can reference Send you the link to in the New Yorker. Where Carl is sitting there talking with his patient And she has suicidal depression.

2:24:32 And she's describing her Lack of desire to live. And then he cranks up the intensity on this stimulation of the vagus. And in real time. She starts describing how

2:24:43 She actually would be interested in applying for a couple of jobs this year. This is happening in the order of seconds. By stimulation of the Vegas. What is the machine? What is it actually uh how does it connect to her? That one is an implanted electrical stimulation device that's placed probably on there are many branches of the vagus and so on a branch that isn't gonna impact breathing.

2:25:03 Sometimes people have challenges with swallowing. So there are problems with doing that. Carl a big Yeah. is to create very small light diodes. that can stimulate nerves without the need to inject viruses and things of that sort.

2:25:17 So that's wild. I think at a time not too far from now. Thanks work and the work of other bioengineers. we are going to be able to stimulate, for instance, just the serotonin neurons in the Rafe that lead to active coping.

2:25:30 This is a well known phenomenon. Whereas when you take Prozac or Zoloft or one of these other drugs, it will stimulate those neurons, but will also stimulate the serotonin receptors. on the spinal neurons that control the sexual response and that's why they have sexual side effects. So

2:25:45 More precision Is coming. So as it relates to Vegas. The other way in which the Vegas is stimulating Is something that we do quite often. We have neurons in our gut.

2:25:56 That we all hear about the gut brain axis. And people say what's your second brain, but very seldom does anyone actually describe how the second brain actually impacts the other brain. And the simple way to put this is We have these neurons that live in the mucosal lining of our gut. And those neurons sense three things.

2:26:12 They sense fatty acids. So they like fat. They sense amino acids, they love that umami flavor and they love amino acids because that's vital to protein repair metabolism, etc. Protein synthesis, excuse me. And they like sugar. And when you eat

2:26:27 Something. That has fatty acids, amino acids, or sugar. These neurons. Send a signal. They're part of the vagus nerve, up to a little cluster of neurons in your neck called the nodos ganglia, N O D O S E

2:26:41 And the nodos ganglia then stimulates your deep brain centers to release dopamine. And the amazing thing about this, these are data from a guy named Diego Borges at Duke University. The amazing thing about the system Is that Even if you numb the mouth.

2:26:56 Even if you just gavage a person or an animal and put these substances into the stomach You will seek more of these foods. And so you're actually seeking sugar, amino acids, and fat. More than when you ingest those foods independent of how they taste. And so this has a whole set of implications for

2:27:14 Hidden sugars and The fact that so many of the food we eat we just find ourselves eating more of them we think This doesn't even taste I don't even know why I'm eating this. It's because these neurons in your gut are stimulating dopamine release and as we talked about before Dopamine. Isn't

2:27:29 A molecule of pleasure, it's a molecule of making you want to do whatever led to dopamine release. Yeah. Molecule of more. The molecule more. So the Vegas is multifaceted.

2:27:40 And We will soon hopefully subdivide it into some more meaningful pathways. I don't like to knock on anyone else's work, but I do think that most of what you read out there About the Vegas and what it does.

2:27:53 And various theories about it are partial truths to total nonsense. But they are partial truths to total nonsense that were grounded in the biology as we understood it at the time, and just a lot more has been understood in the last Ten years or so. So no disrespect to those people, but it's time for a revision. Maybe two or three more questions, then we'll we'll go.

2:28:13 Get some food. Uh something along those lines. The first is What books have you gifted the most to other people? Or are there any books that come to mind that you've gifted often? Two other people. I love poetry and

2:28:29 It's almost cliche now to say this because so many people like his work, but I think David White's work is just beautiful and is a is a wonderful kind of entry point to to poetry. I'm also a big Wendelberry fan. has written a lot about farming and the natural world and I've never met him.

2:28:46 But I'm a huge Wendellberry fan I'll sometimes give Wendell Berry books as gifts. The book that I I think is perhaps at least to me the most beautiful book of all. is longitude.

2:28:57 by Dava Sobol about the history of Um the discovery of time keeping at ocean, which is not a trivial problem to solve. And it's just a beautiful story of how Scientists.

2:29:10 Or in this case a particular scientist. Merg the quest for A technology with a scientific Problem. With adventure.

2:29:19 And uh going out on boats and you know, risking one's life for the sake of science is something that Resonates with me a bit. It's a beautiful short book. And it's very accessible to anybody, whether or not you have a background in science or not. And she's an absolutely wonderful writer. And so that's the one I gift most often.

2:29:36 D is there a particular David White But Or starting point that you might recommend? You know, I own several of his books, but I confess that I I Forgetting the titles now.

2:29:48 You know what's interesting about David White? Is that His poetry is best consumed by listening to him read it. Because he does this thing of repeating things twice and his cadence is so impressive and So I would

2:30:01 Even though I I loath to kinda push people toward online, do buy his books, but uh I would suggest Just going online and listening to a YouTube video or watching a YouTube video of David reading One of his poems. He's on to something. The thing about poetry that's so fascinating to me is the same reason why I love Anything sung by Bob Dylan or Joe Strummer.

2:30:22 Is that The words don't necessarily make sense in the pure cognitive landscape. They're tapping into some sort of deeper layer of the nervous system that defies the normal structure of sentences and thoughts. And so I think they good poets are accessing the subconscious.

2:30:38 And it has nothing to do with rhyming. It has to do with accessing some layer of neurobiology that we just don't have a name for. Andrew This question is sometimes a a complete dead end and I'll take the blame for that if it is, but just to just to go fishing and see what we catch here. If you

2:30:55 Could put anything on A gigantic billboard. Metaphorically speaking, to get a message out, a quote. An image, a word. Could be anything. A quote from someone else.

2:31:07 Anything at all. Two billions of people. What might you put on that Billboard. Well, assuming this is a big billboard, I could probably squeeze two things on there, but I would diminish the impact of either one. So

2:31:19 It's so simple. But it's the most use at least has been the most useful thing in life to me, which is credit goes to the oracle. Which is know thyself. If there's one thing that's a really useful pursuit is to Take a really good stock of what you've come into the world with.

2:31:37 And where you happen to be at present. Get really honest about that with yourself. And in doing that it illuminates the Path to filling in the gaps and improving oneself. And knowing thyself is a dynamic process.

2:31:51 And um the answers to knowing thyself and what that is will change over time. But That is the question that I think Everybody as soon as we are able to should be asking ourselves and Constantly updating.

2:32:03 Know thyself. What was second pick? You can put it on the other side of the billboard. Yeah. Far weaker as the um one, I think, but Use the body to control the mind.

2:32:14 I really worry About this current state of the world where people are so unable to regulate their autonomic nervous system. They're stressed, they're angry, they're pissed. And and look, I suffer from this too. Someone's Sometimes I comment on Whatever. I I'm mostly on Instagram but sometimes on Twitter and I notice

2:32:31 All this anger and stuff and you start getting pulled into it from time to time. I I regulate my behavior. I don't respond. We're all subject to this, but almost all Harm. Омос о

2:32:43 Self harm. And unfortunate things in life are the consequence of a poorly regulated autonomic nervous system. We say the wrong thing, we we do the wrong thing, we're impulsive. Et cetera. And I think Controlling the autonomic nervous system. Is simple.

2:32:59 In one sense. And challenging in the other. Simple in the sense that the tools exist. I do believe that respiration and vision are are the two Ways to control the autonomy nervous system in real time, the best ones. And

2:33:13 At the same time it's it's very hard to do. So we have to remind ourselves, that's why I'd want to put it on the billboard. That When your mind isn't where you want it to be. Use your body. To control your mind.

2:33:25 I love that. Gonna use that. on a long hike with the pooch a little later today. And we'll also include for everybody listening. Show notes.

2:33:36 with links to various resources. all the resources that we've discussed. So the Yoganidra, the various types of breath work. I'll also add a name which is Lealagos. Dr. Lea Lagos has done a lot of really good work looking at resonance training using breath work for improving HR V, although improved HR V is really just a proxy all of these other desirable

2:34:02 outputs and effects. in the world and and in life. So we'll include all of that in the show notes. Andrew, we've covered a lot of ground. Is there anything else that you would like to Mention Or say

2:34:15 or point people to and your request to the audience, anything at all that you'd like to Add before we Wrap up for today. We mentioned some of the things at the beginning. You know, I teach neuroscience on Instagram at Huberman Lab. Those are resources. Brie snippets, anywhere from one to three minutes about

2:34:32 Neuroscience exciting papers I see A lot of tools. Be wonderful if people want to check out the podcast. And we cover a lot of topics, not just neuroscience, and we batch those By month.

2:34:42 So that we do four or five episodes in one thing like hormones and then move on to something else. And I suppose one request would be We have the saying in a laboratory, it's certainly not unique to laboratories. Which is watch one do one Teach one.

2:34:56 And what would be most gratifying for me would be If people find tools that they find useful and they that they learn about them. That's the watch one part, that they do them, they apply them in their own life and modify them if you like. And then I think the way The world works best, at least in my view, is when people go on to teach those tools and

2:35:15 Attribution isn't required. I didn't as I always say, you know, I wasn't consulted at the design phase. And I don't know anyone else that was either. So, you know, mother nature and deserves and biology deserve credit for all this. And so if people would like to learn Practice and teach. I like to think that

2:35:31 The world can improve by virtue of sharing of tools. I love it. I dig it, man. And There are a number of places people can follow you and should check you out. As you mentioned, the Huberman Lab podcast. humanlab.com and

2:35:46 Huberman Lab at Huberman Lab on Instagram and Twitter. This has been so fun. And I really appreciate all the time. It's been a real pleasure spending time with you, Andrew, and I look forward to many more conversations I have a feeling that people will want a round two. So until then. Thanks and thanks to everyone for tuning in.

2:36:09 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 Fi Bold 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 kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, 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.

2:37:13 Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by Eat Sleep. Temperature is one of the main causes of poor sleep, and heat is my personal nemesis. I've suffered for decades tossing and turning, throwing blankets off, pulling the back on, putting one leg on top, and repeating all of that ad nauseum. But now I am falling asleep in record time.

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