Decoding the Gurus - Andrew Huberman: Forest Bathing in Negative Ions

Episode Date: September 6, 2023

We are back with a moderate-sized Decoding that focuses on Andrw Hubernman a baritone podcaster and neuroscientist at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Huberman is a broad-shouldered, big-bearded... science communicator. Extremely popular with the tech-bro optimiser set, he offers science-based 'protocols' on everything from supplement routines to whether you should avoid sunscreen(!).He's been lauded for his ability to communicate scientific topics clearly and in great depth. But has also faced criticism (including from us!) for his tendency to overhype findings from low-quality studies, promote supplements with dubious claims, avoid any positive mention of vaccines, and cheer on the efforts of his podcasting bros/heroes: Lex Fridman and Joe Rogan.In this episode, we take a look at a rather specific piece of content, just a 20-minute segment from a recent AMA on the scientific evidence for the benefits of 'grounding' and getting out into nature. We will learn all about the negative ions emanating from streams and waterfalls, the joy that can be sparked by seeing a squirrel wrestle with a nut, whether Huberman actually advocates staring into the sun, and try to solve the age-old question of what is best in life- a sushi restaurant or prancing in a forest. Also featuring: some good content recommendations (for a change!) and a review of the recent demented goings on in the gurusphere with one Jordan B. Peterson and his quest to destroy the College of Psychologists of Ontario.LinksSurfing the Discourse PodcastNullius in Verba PodcastCourt Decision on Peterson's case against the College of Psychologists of OntarioConspirituality 163: The Huberman Paradox (w/Jonathan Jarry)Oh No! With Ross & Carrie's first episode on GroundingMårtensson, B., Pettersson, A., Berglund, L., & Ekselius, L. (2015). Bright white light therapy in depression: a critical review of the evidence. Journal of Affective Disorders, 182, 1-7. Perez, V., Alexander, D. D., & Bailey, W. H. (2013). Air ions and mood outcomes: a review and meta-analysis. BMC Psychiatry, 13(1), 1-20. Wen, Y., Yan, Q., Pan, Y., Gu, X., & Liu, Y. (2019). Medical empirical research on forest bathing (Shinrin-yoku): A systematic review. Environmental health and preventive medicine, 24(1), 1-21. Critical article by Jonathan Jarry on Huberman's promotion of supplementsTime Profile of Huberman: How Podcaster Andrew Huberman Got America to Care About Science

Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus, the podcast where an anthropologist and a psychologist listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer and we try to understand what they're talking about. I'm Professor Matthew Brown. With me is Associate Professor Chris Kavanagh. Together, we are the co-hosts of this podcast. Hello, Chris. Yes. Welcome to the Coding the Guru's Lab, where we take a scientific approach to examining the psychological, the neurological, the quasi...

Oh, fuck. I feel fucked up already. I was trying to hear for a scientific presentation, you know, but I feel, Matt. Yes, but keep your eyes out for Guru's Pod branded supplements. The best place to get your vitamin D. Get your unspecified green drinks. That may give you too many doses of particular vitamins.

So this is all related to the topic of the episode today. And today, Matt, it's a special episode in a way. Sometimes we do these little mini bite-sized morsel decoding episodes about specific content, things like some short episode Sam Harris did about his meditation app. That was nine minutes. We've done Eric's monologues before. We've done a whole bunch of generally shorter content where we focus on a specific topic. And that is kind of what we're doing today. The content that we're looking at is just a 20 minute episode by Andrew Huberman. So in that respect, it is a mini decoding, but I actually think it's going to take us

a little bit of time to get through all of the clips and talk about the intricacies. So I think this is more a medium-sized episode. And because of that, Matt, it probably justifies a little bit of an introductory segment, doesn't it, wouldn't you say? Sure, sure. That's right. I don't want to make any strong claims about the length of our episodes at the outset here because it will be double or triple what we expect.

So yeah, we can do an intro. And yeah, looking at a small amount of human rights content, it's a good jumping off point, isn't it? Into, you know, a few little topics in health and wellness. There's precedent. We've done small pieces of content before and then went on to do like longer pieces of content. We likely will do that with Huberman,

but we did Sam Harris, a small piece of content, and he has cropped up in Bill Maher's episode, for example, but we're going to do a full episode on him very soon, a recent appearance he had on Chris Williamson. So you will get the full decoding. it doesn't mean that's not coming it just means this is a you know more yeah yeah that's it now matt well let's let's say before we get to the guru sphere and what some of the characters there have been up to i do want to give a positive shout out to a couple of things that I consumed and enjoyed recently.

Would you be opposed to that? I would be all for that. I think we might've consumed and enjoyed the same content, Chris. I don't think so, but there are some overlaps, but yes. So the first thing is that there is a podcast called,

I don't know how to pronounce this correctly, but it's Nullius in Verba. Nullius in Verba. It's by Daniel Lakens and Smriti Mehta. Again, apologies to both for the pronunciation of their names. But if we are an academic podcast, they are a fucking academic podcast's it's hardcore academia the episode titles are in latin i think it's latin and the the topics covered are quite academic

and scholarly in in nature but don't let that put you off. It's still entertaining. And in particular, the recent episode was about the open science movement and the kind of replication crisis and the beginnings of that. Daniel is talking about his involvement in the reproducibility project and some of the behind the scenes stuff there, but also his experience pre-replication crisis about things that were acceptable in the way that people approached handling data and whatnot. And it's just a really good episode on the kind of history of the replication crisis, the reactions to it, and the various quite impressive coordination efforts to examine the issue. So I really want to recommend it.

And Daniel agreed to come on and talk about it. And I'll try and lasso his co-host as well. So we'll see. But at least we will have Daniel on as a guest soon to talk about similar such issues. Good. Well, you're right. I to talk about similar such issues. Good. Well, you're right. I haven't listened to that content, but content that I have listened to and can recommend

and that I know you have listened to and enjoyed as well is a podcast called Surfing the Discourse by... Oh, that's a good name. It is a good name. I wonder where he came up with that from. Never mind. Never mind. I mean, no, it's by Jack Treadwell.

He's a cognitive science philosophy phd in new zealand he cites his sources liberally most of which are us which that's important appreciate it's very important he's already he's already off to a great start but now more importantly i think i can basically endorse jack because it would be a good option for people that want to get more Decoding the Gurus into their week. That's right. But we're just not producing enough content. Jack's work will scratch your itch. Let's see.

This first three episodes, he's looked at Andrew Tate's interview with Tucker Carlson. He's looked at Gad Saad on Joe Rogan. He's looked at Jordan Peterson with Russell Brand. And I've heard the first two and they're great. He's got a charming New Zealand accent and he's got a light touch. I like his style. You know, he does many of the similar things we do.

He's got his own takes though. And yeah, I think if you enjoy our podcast, you'd enjoy his. Yeah, I will say that this is our first spin-off anti-guru. The first of many. I fully endorse him. He now needs to go and have death matches with Alexandra Smarners. This is really the inevitable outcome. But before he does that, I think it's fair to say that he does a lot of the things that

we do, but slightly more efficiently. So his episodes are around about an hour long. They get pretty quick into the content and he, you know, makes the point straightforwardly in a charitable way and moves on and he's playing clips and stuff as well. So yeah, I really like it. The content is good. He's got relative expertise in some of the areas, right, because he's familiar with cognitive science and whatnot. And, yeah, just it's good. He's got a funny accent. It can all be recommended.

Well, I said to him on Reddit, if he ever finds a co-host with a Scottish accent, then we could be in serious trouble, Chris. It's true. We've got competition then. But until then, mate, we're safe on our Guru's Pod throne. And now we've endorsed you, I just have a bad feeling that the next episode will be the problem with Jewish people

or something like that. Yeah, that's something. If that happens, I know where you work and study and I will find you. Will you? Okay. Okay. Well, no, I don't. But I feel certain i found that many you could find out in new zealand there's not many people there chris it's no i just ask around

i'll find it this is true and like new zealand is very much the inferior cousin of australia scotland the inferior cousin of ireland so if you can find Scottish co-host, then that would be perfect. That'd be perfect. So I agree. Good work, Jack. And yeah, great title. Unbelievable. That's the best I like to forecast. But oh, and actually, I did want to mention this as well, Matt, because occasionally people, whenever we mention stuff about woke or social justice things, they say, what's an example of woke overreach? What do you mean? So I just want to also quickly mention Josh Zeps has a podcast, Uncomfortable Conversations.

I sometimes disagree with the kind of perspective Josh takes on things. You can hear us talk to him directly on a previous episode, and we covered interactions with Joe Rogan and his promotion of anti-vaccine stuff. But Josh recently released an episode where he had his colleague from the radio show on to talk, who accused him online of being a racist, accused him online and accused him on the podcast and various other things. And it's a heated exchange at various times. And yeah, I just would say that if you want an example of the kind of perspective that I would see

as illustrating the kind of modern inverted air quotes woke approach, go there, go listen to that podcast. I find myself largely in agreement with josh in that conversation but you might find yourself not but if you want to see an example there you go that recent episode so okay so instructive of making the distinction um yeah well that's good josh's podcast is living up to its name uncomfortable conversation right yeah and using and all the so that's why i popped into my mind that whole

oh very much so yes so that's that now matt those are good things or interesting things and the guru sphere you know we sometimes look at it, we gaze into its misty, incandescent glow and try to fathom what the fuck is going on. And there's always too much. There's too many gurus doing too many demented things to cover. So we just have to pick out the choice morsels, throw our line into the depths and just see what nibbles we get pull a couple of the strange fish and inspect them so what have you got for us uh well a reliable

nibble this week from one jordan b peterson okay there's a couple of things that he's been up to famously sane canadian psychologist yes so one of the things is that he is currently reeling against the College of Psychologists of Ontario because they sought to rebuke him, or at least in response to complaints received about his conduct, they wanted him to attend training about how to conduct yourself online. Now, that was never going to go down well, but it's fair to say Peterson took it particularly badly. He went on various rounds. He's already released podcasts about it months ago, and it is presented as Marxist education camps. He's being sentenced to have his mind wiped,

his opinion not allowed to state any opinion. And there's various intricacies that can be discussed about the validity of some of the complaints because some of it is people taking objection to tweets that he's made, which are highly political in nature. And the question is, is that something that a professional board of psychologists should really be policing?

This is how Jordan has presented all of it. But there are other stuff where it appears he's carelessly commenting on psychological issues, specifically around trans topics and that kind of thing. So in any case, he presented it as a witch hunt to destroy him. And he sued the college. He actually took them to court to say that they don't have the right to do this because it's infringing on his free speech and the judge kicked out the case and said he needs to pay the costs of the college because they're perfectly within the right to you know suggest that a member in response to a complaint goes on a training course

so yeah inevitably jordan will appeal and whatnot but that's the first thing that's happened. So he got a judgment of $25,000 Canadian dollars against him, and he was unhappy with that. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, Jordan Peterson, of course, is somebody who has a great big cancel me sticker on his back. He yearns for it. He looks for it. He loves it. You know, I've got friends online who, you know, are more in the centristy, liberal,

free speech camp. And without endorsing Jordan Peterson, they would argue that it is an infringement on free speech. I mean, I don't know about that, though. I mean, I feel like it's a college, right? Of psychologists, a registration board for a professional body. They get to choose what criteria they want amongst their professionals who are going to be registered with them.

Presumably, if somebody is tweeting like a demented loon, which, you know, that's a charitable way to describe Jordan Peterson's tweets, then, you know, they're within their rights to request that he please stop or that it might cause issues with his registration. I mean, I think it's analogous to like if you had a college of epidemiologists or surgeons or whatever, and they're out there on Twitter, tweeting demented stuff about the new world order and vaccines and so on, then, you know, if I was running that college, I wouldn't want that person in it, right? You know, if I was running that college, I wouldn't want that person in it, right? Yeah, well, so the penalty, Jordan Peterson isn't going to be a clinical psychologist. He's never going to have a practice again.

He's a multi-millionaire. He's a political pundit. That's been his career for, I don't know, probably approaching the better part of a decade now, right? Of course, yeah. Being deregistered by the Ontario Board of Psychologists has no impact on Jordan Peterson whatsoever, except to boost his grievance narrative. Yeah. And he often mentions that, you know, he has that credential. So it's actually relevant because if you're citing the credential and using it to reinforce that your opinions are more valid because of your professional status,

then again, it cuts both ways, right? Then the professional board has more concern about your opinions. And I believe Jordan Peterson had, and he said, this includes expert editorial teams, a very wide network of expert thinkers from the world of theology, psychology, politics, and business. All of them, they're working to make sure he doesn't say anything. He chooses his words very carefully. Now, if you go and look at Peterson's feed for today, you would just see an unrelenting stream of outrage, clickbait, haikus, because he's taken to writing in just like a random poetry thing. There was a period where almost all of his tweets were accompanied by images of the Joker, right? So it's just so the two things are absolutely in contrast. Peterson is not careful. He clearly does not have people monitoring, or he does.

They are people with extremely low standards. And just one example of this is that he recently got into a tiff with the journalist Mehdi Hassan, and he explained to him that Mehdi Hassan is not, what did he say? He's Caucasian. So Mehdi Hassan being somebody of Asian descent, Indian descent, and self-identifying as brown. And Peterson said that, you know, his town is the same as Jordan's. And then he went on to cite an article of 19th century racial classifications, which, you know, had Indians down as a subgroup of Caucasoid or whatever. But just like that choice to get into debate with someone over their ethnicity, and I'm presenting you, the most pale, gone white Canadian professor,

is essentially as damned as Marie Hassan. It's just a beggar's belief. Yeah, it didn't make a lot of sense, that tweet. I think I know what Jordan was trying to say, but even that was stupid. Yeah, well, I think the Council of Elders that is overseeing his tweets need to lift their game. Maybe they're just tired. You know, this is too much work for them.

It's too many of them. He had that tweet recently about the 1,100 eminent scientists, right, saying there's no climate emergency. Oh, yeah. Again, Matt, bottom of the barrel, clickbait, absolute rubbish, basically. Yeah, one of the things, Chris, that people say is that oh you know jordan peterson is very smart but you know he's becoming mentally ill or he's got these problems or whatever but it's always prefaced by this acknowledgement that they're very smart and just going by what they say and write it's not something

that like if one of my mutuals on twitter fell for like obvious propaganda clickbait like that 1100 eminent scientists say that climate change is a hoax right you don't have to be very smart to spot that something smells fishy with that and it takes literally 10 seconds to check and see that it's complete bullshit absolute bullshit so yeah yeah i just i don't know what's going on in line with what he's done before he's just become like more blatant about it but he used to always like share occasional articles about this is the coldest winter yet and say oh i've read 200 books on climate change so i know that nobody knows anything about climate and so on like he just regurgitates standard climate denialist talking points.

Yeah, and not even good ones, like clickbait ones, like ones that are just bottom of the barrel. So, yeah, whoever's overseeing his tweets need to lift their game. Michaela and Jonathan Pajot, come on, try harder, guys. He needs a bit more oversight. Otherwise, he's going to lose his registration. And the last thing that he's been up to, Matt, that I'll mention, it's not the last thing he's going to lose his registration and the last thing that he's been up to matt that i'll mention it's not the last thing he's done he does too much but he went to the republican debate the

candidates for the presidential nominees for the republican party in america and at that event he chose to wear an outfit that was fashioned from his profile picture on Twitter, which is a picture that he drew, a kind of abstract art thing that he drew as the cover of one of his books as well. But so he had a jacket made out of a picture that he drew, and then he has his signature emblazoned over various parts of it. And just somebody who complains about people being self-indulgent and prideful and all this kind of stuff and wallowing in self-pity, he's just such a walking contradiction, such an egocentric nightmare. Well, not just egocentric, Chris, but he'd be the first person to retweet angrily some picture of some young male model wearing something that isn't orthodox, proper male down-to-earth clothing as work culture gone mad. And he dresses like a peacock. But it's a peacock that is like adorning itself. And There's no metaphor I could use with a peacock

because a peacock wouldn't do it. But it's the fact that he has his own picture. It's not a picture he likes. Well, it is a picture he likes. It's his picture. It's his signature all over him. Just an absolute egomaniac. It's hard to oversteer.

So yeah, that's it. That's what Jordan's been up to, being an absolute egomaniac it's hard to oversteer so yeah that's it that's what jordan's been up to being an absolute egomaniac and tweeting like a demented teenager and that's it and in his response to the college he basically said you know he's going to make their life hell he's going to target all of the individual members and set his followers on them and you know we'll see who cancels who blah blah blah all that so yeah yeah he's loving it i mean that's the thing don't believe it that he's the victim of some kind of thing here he lives for this kind of thing this is his brand oh and he tried to raise funds for cancellation um oh that's right a cancellation. Yeah, because he really needs that.

He really needs that. Yeah, can't afford that $20,000 or whatever it was the costs were for his totally speculative and dubious suing of this council. Oh, my God. I know, I know. So that's that, Matt. Well, that's the Guru's fear. It continues to twinkle out there,

a beautiful constellation in the night sky. So let's turn to the guru of the hour, Mr. Andrew Huberman, a fellow whose star has been on the rise in recent years, but I think he's now probably the most successful science-themed podcast in the world. And on most podcast charts, I think he's up there, you know, approaching Rogan and Lex Friedman levels of success. So yeah, an influential figure. And one that I think at least some portion of our audience would have a rather positive perspective on judging from various feedback that we receive like you know when we say we're going to cover people you get responses

which are re-inch and and with huberman a lot of them are oh god let's say he's you know he i i still like him so that was that's interesting yeah so an interesting character so he's a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at stanford he is a researcher there in working in the biological sciences i see according to his google scholar page that he's got quite a few papers there a lot of citations most of them are co-authored publications there's probably just a few papers there where he is first author but yeah a common pattern that we sometimes see a bunch of people we cover but nonetheless yeah i think is more credentialed than most of the people that we would look at so legitimate credentials and i believe still affiliated with stamford and still working there i don't know if

he is teaching courses or whatnot but anyway yep he is a very established researcher and at the same time he has this health podcast which we're going to talk about yeah it's also worth mentioning he's he's he's a big manly oh yeah he's a big buff beauty dude he's like very much i mean i think his whole vibe is the kind of optimizer productivity guru kind of thing but with a very strong scientific presentation that this is about the evidence this is not about marketing you some bullshit fad it's trying to distill the most current scientific evidence, give you free pre-order calls that you can put into practice in your life or not depending on your own choices.

He is just to communicate science in an engaging way. But the point is a rigorous scientific way. He's not going by just his vibes or this kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Just a little more so, just like a 20 minute, I think just the beginning actually of one of his main podcasts, most of which is behind a paywall, but we listened to the first 20 minutes of it. Yes, this is right. So he recently released an episode that was the first 20 minutes of his AMA episodes, which he does periodically. And this particular one was called AMA number 10, Benefits of Nature and Grounding. So that's the part that is available for anybody to see, right? And it's around 20 minutes long. We'll get into

it. But one other thing, just to note, Matt, that I believe the origins of Huberman's podcast, at least in part, comes from Lex Friedman recommending that he start a podcast. He's credited Lex as being the person that pushed him. And he often online speaks glowingly about Lex, the importance of Lex to his whole podcast approach. So, you know, Lex deserves some credit for giving the world Huberman. Okay, so here's how this segment opens. Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology

and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today is an Ask Me Anything episode, or AMA. This is part of our Premium Subscriber Channel. Our Premium Subscriber Channel was started in order to provide support for this standard Huberman Lab podcast, which comes out every Monday and is available at zero cost to everybody on all standard feeds, YouTube, Apple, Spotify, and elsewhere. We also started the

premium channel as a way to generate support for exciting research being done at Stanford and elsewhere, research on human beings that leads to important discoveries that assist mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm also pleased to important discoveries that assist mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm also pleased to inform you that for every dollar the Huberman Lab Premium Channel generates for research studies, the Tiny Foundation has agreed to match that amount. So now we are able to double the total amount of funding

given to studies of mental health, physical health, and human performance. If you'd like to subscribe to the Huberman Lab Podcast Premium Channel, please go to hubermanlab.com slash premium. It is $10 a month to subscribe, or you can pay $100 all at once to get an entire 12-month subscription for a year. We also have a lifetime subscription model that is a one-time payment. And again, you can find that option at hubermanlab.com slash premium.

Yeah. So a few things there, Chris. Hey, like, well, first of all, as he describes it, it's accurate. This is a podcast which definitely presents itself as being science-based, basically using scientific knowledge in order to be healthier, be more well, be more physically fit. And like you said, optimize your life, I suppose. He does take care to mention that he's a researcher at Stanford University. Like we don't do that, do we?

Like we don't actually mention our affiliations much, probably because they're not as prestigious as Stanford. Yeah, Oxford, that little known university. Yeah, you have brought that up from time to time. But this is not really much of a ding. I just make the point, I guess, that Huberman does lean on his credentials, lean on his position at Stanford University as part of the framing for why this is a good, reliable source for science-based advice for your life.

Yeah. Well, one issue that I have, and this was brought up as well on the recent Conspiratoriality podcast, which they did about Huberman and I would recommend to look at, but Huberman's podcast is called the Huberman Lab. And his lab at Stanford is called the Huberman Lab.

But he also says in the introduction to his full podcast that this podcast is not directly affiliated to the research lab. They're two separate things, right? Because one is a podcast that takes advertising and so on, and the Huberman Lab is an academic. But they've got the same name. So when he is saying, subscribe to the hooverman lab i feel like the solution there to keep the two clearly distinguished would be just not to call them the exact same name and the reference to subscribing to the podcast helps support the science of doing research and more but again i don't know but it just it seems... So you're donating money to the...

Usually a podcast subscription is that you're supporting the podcast, right? And it's going to the podcaster and they're using it in whatever ways that they see. Is this money going to organizations set up by Huberman to do research? Or is it a non-profit or you know I feel that that model is a little bit muddled because of the academic aspect which is attached to it well it wasn't totally clear from what he said but I'm not sure to what degree or what proportion of your subscription fees to accessing the paywall content on the podcast what percentage of that goes to fund research at stanford uh i think the answer has to be zero

doesn't it well he said some amount does he said it goes to supporting research efforts into this, but it's unspecified that that's going to his lab at Stanford. It's not going to be signed in like a grant, right? No, that's the thing. I have no idea. I've just visited the humanlab.stanford.edu FAQ page, but it doesn't make it clear where that funding goes. But yeah, anyway, you know, Stanford. Science, to do more science.

Yes. Which I suspect some percentage of it must be going to it. Otherwise you couldn't say that, right? I just don't know. It sort of implies that it's maybe most of it or all of it, but. Well, the thing is you can make an online donation to the Stanford Huberman Lab at Stanford. There's a tax ID and stuff associated with it.

Is that the same thing that you donate to if you donate to the Huberman Lab podcast? The podcast. Like you said, the fact that they have exactly the same name makes it difficult. So it's hard to know. Yeah. And in both cases, you're donating to support the science.

It's just the whole point is that confusion could be avoided. It's like, it's not a huge thing, but I think it is just something that if you're an academic, you would be aware of and you want to make, I don't know, like it depends on people, but I would think you would want to make a clear division between your for-profit podcast activities and your academic research yes because a podcast like that is you know receives money from advertisers it has we could talk about the natural supplements that I think did you tell me Chris, Chris, are branded? Like Huberman Labs?

Huberman has his own brand as well as he endorses various brands of supplements. Right. So it's clearly, at least some proportion of it is clearly for profit and is not done for research purposes. So a clearer distinction between those two things might be helpful. Because obviously, but, you know, I guess it sells well, doesn't it? If you're looking for subscriptions and so on, if you give the impression that you supporting the podcast

is supporting research, then that is helpful, I suppose. Yes, indeed. So in any case, that's a general issue, I think, about the framing and the branding of the podcast, which extends from outside of this episode. This particular episode, Matt, this is the framing of this segment, or what this particular question that he's going to answer in this segment is about. The first question is about nature, in particular, about the scientifically supported benefits

of getting outdoors into nature. The person asks about the role of sunlight, the role of calming sounds, the role of observing wildlife, of observing green colors, and quote, other stuff. And in fact, I'm glad that they asked about other stuff because I get the question about the scientifically supported benefits of nature a lot. I often also get the question about grounding. For those of you that aren't familiar

with what grounding is, grounding is a practice of putting your feet on the earth directly with bare feet, oftentimes into soil or on a lawn. And it's a question that I seem to get more and more. In fact, every week for quite a long while now on social media or elsewhere, somebody asks me about the scientific support for this practice of grounding. So obviously, there's a lot of interest in what the scientific research says about getting into nature and putting one's feet on the ground, aka grounding, and so on. So Matt, can I just ask you what you would think that he will cover in his response from that frame that he has just provided?

Like, what topic is he being asked to comment on? Or, you know, does he frame that he has just provided like what topic is he being asked to comment on or you know does he say that he's going to address grounding well yeah so oh that's that's correct well done he did also point out the benefits of being in nature right because as someone pointed out to me when we i mentioned online that I was going to cover this episode, they said the person didn't actually mention grinding in their question. They say other stuff. Then Huberman goes on to say, well, this is a good opportunity for me to talk about grinding, because I'm asked a lot every week about grinding.

So he's going to talk about nature and grinding. But it's very clear right that a lot of interest around the topic of grinding the issue of grinding is going to be covered and in fact the title of the episode has grinding in it okay so grinding is going to feature quite clearly, you would say. Mm-hmm. Okay. Mm-hmm. Yes. Your Honor, may I move on? Just having established that.

So first, before that, Matt, there was one other thing. Now, you can tell me if you think I'm being too cynical here, but do you think it says anything that the audience that you've cultivated is sending you a lot of questions about grinding that you're enough that you notice that you're hearing about it repeatedly every week on social media does that say anything or would you think that's me reading into things too much yeah i mean this is something we've thought about a fair bit which is that it could be that i don't know say a tweet by someone like eric weinstein is relatively ambiguous and yeah if not obfuscatory but if all there applies to it are people talking about the government hiding secrets of atlantis and ancient aliens or whatever, then that should give you pause because it

tells you something about the audience that you've cultivated. So, you know, it's understandable. But if I was Dr. Huberman, I'd be concerned if I had cultivated an audience where I had a lot of people who were enthusiasts towards the wackier side of natural health and medicine right and i would say that if that was the case you know that understandable people in california interested in productivity hacks and stuff might be more inclined to some of the naturalistic pseudoscience kind of stuff but we should just rig up a thing anytime that that followers from California goes above a certain threshold, like a little alarm goes off.

But I would say, Matt, that if you brand yourself as this podcast is about science, this is a science podcast, right? That just my opinion, this is a personal preference. The first thing to do would be to establish the relative lack of science surrounding grinding if that's the key topic the first thing you should do is ding that up well before we get into that chris maybe we should give people just a quick introduction to what is grounding what are the supposed benefits and how does it supposedly work? Grinding is the practice of sticking your feet on the ground barefoot. Oh, I do that all the time.

Yeah. And harnessing the secret elemental and, oh, sorry, I mean transferring ions and electron transfer. So, yeah, it is essentially a naturalistic practice which claims that there are very distinctive health benefits from putting bare feet onto soil that extend beyond it just feeling nice right yeah it's yeah i've seen various descriptions of the supposed mechanism by which grounding your feet to mother earth is going to help you um one of them is based on this idea of free radicals and negative ions and so on so the earth is negatively charged

which i think has got something to do with lightning and stuff and uh in our bodies we might have a preponderance of free radicals which are positively charged particles i think so you know grounding will kind of sort that shit out. You know, you'll exchange your ions and electrons will do their thing. But I've read other explanations too. But needless to say, they are quite speculative. And I think the evidence is pretty slim, but we'll talk about that soon. Correct.

So that's grinding. We'll talk a little bit about some of the industry that surrounds grinding later. But in any case, after that introduction, Huberman doesn't immediately get the grinding. He first talks about the sun. Okay. So if I'm going to answer this question, I first have to be very direct with you. There is excellent, meaning dozens, if not hundreds, of quality peer-reviewed studies, which support the value of getting sunlight in one's eyes, in particular early in the day

to set their circadian rhythm. This is something that I've talked about extensively on the Huberman Lab podcast, and as a guest on other podcasts. It's one of the first and frankly, most important items on the toolkit for sleep, which is a zero cost toolkit that you can access by going to hubermanlab.com,

going to the menu, going to newsletter. You can see it as a PDF there. You don't have to sign up for the newsletter. You can just access that toolkit for sleep. And you'll notice that very close to the top of that list, if not top of that list, is to get sunlight in your eyes early in the day. You don't have to see the sun cross the horizon.

If you can, that's great. But if you wake up after the sun has already risen, go outside, face the sun, blink as necessary to protect your eyes, but get some sunlight into your eyes every single day or as often as you possibly can, especially on overcast days. Okay. That's an absolutely unequivocally science supported tool that will increase daytime mood focus and alertness and will improve your nighttime sleep. Viewing morning sunlight also has profoundly positive effects on metabolism. Yeah. So Chris, sunlight. I don't know the literature on this, but my vague understanding is that circadian rhythms, our internal processes are at least partly driven by external

stimuli mainly you know natural light which provides our bodies with a good guideline as to the daily 24-hour cycle and you know if you're suffering from insomnia or your biorhythms are kind of out of sync in some way then getting sunlight is probably the best way to help, you know, get your clock, internal clock ticking properly. Right? Yeah, I don't think there's a huge amount controversial about sunlight exposure being relevant for circadian rhythm regulation. And the basic concepts of having some degree of exposure to natural light for daily activities and early in the morning, likely there are benefits to that. I think from the little a little bit about you know the effects of light the general quality of studies around these topics are you know small multiple outcomes and a lot of people that are highly vested in the topic because they're promoting bright light therapy or something publishing paper so there's

a dearth of pre-registered large sample size studies with well-controlled populations but nonetheless i think the basic concept is pretty well established and his claim here isn't no isn't controversial at all but i guess what you're saying is that the emphasis that he puts on it, like, I've got to speak plainly to you. There is absolute, you know, it's almost like he's putting that into, as to create a stark contrast. Well, yeah, the framing doesn't make sense at the start because he says, if I'm going to answer this, he's just done that bit where he's talked about,

okay, I get these questions about grounding all the time and right. And okay. And then he says, if I'm going to answer this question, I need to be direct with you. And it suggests like, I'm going to tell you, you know, the hard, important truth. And then the first thing is the sun, this other thing that I recommend is really important.

And it's like, okay, but this wasn't exactly a harsh truth. It's something that almost all of his audience will agree with. And that is, you know, relatively low controversy attached to it. Some people have presented them as implying that staring into the sun is a healthy thing. I don't think that's quite fair, but I think he might be strongly emphasizing the benefits in a way that the evidence might not entirely warrant. But nonetheless, this is a thing that he is promoting. I don't think it gets on light in the morning

with harm. And it's, you know, my issue a little bit is more with the framing than the particular intervention that he recommends here. Yeah, sure. So after that, we then get to the grinding thing. Oh, no, we don't. So next, what comes up is negative ionization. Now, why am I talking about this practice that I've already talked about extensively on numerous podcasts before? Well, because the question is about nature and sunlight is a key feature of our natural environment. But the person is also asking about other features of nature, seeing green colors or blue colors or running streams for that matter.

Well, here too, we can ask, what does the scientific data really say about things like going near a waterfall or a running stream or being near an ocean? And actually, this is quite interesting. There's actually a peer-reviewed literature on negative ionization, as it's called, which is a pattern of ionization

that's present close to bodies of water and particular types of bodies of water, such as waterfalls, running streams, et cetera. There's actually a laboratory at Columbia University School of Medicine that has published fairly extensively on the health benefits of negative ionization as it relates to setting

circadian rhythm and some other aspects of mental and physical health. I intend to host the head of that laboratory on the Huberman Lab podcast in the not too distant future. Okay, so negative ions floating around there in nature, particularly around bodies of water, perhaps. Maybe sunlight helps as well. What's the deal there chris this again is something that i know nothing about yeah so one thing there matt is i want to highlight something like so you see when someone says okay there's this topic and there's a lab that has focused on this a lot i'm not going to get the head of that lab in to talk about it. This reminds me, remember we did the segment of Huberman

where he had the guy in to talk about the pheromones in tears? Oh, yeah. And there we looked at the study and at the coding academia in some depth and it was a very messy study that was making claims that the data didn't support the strength that they claimed. And also had a lot of p-values hovering around 0.05, if you remember. Now, that guy is the head of a lab which is focused on pheromones and done some studies about tears. But actually, I think having someone like that in to present the science,

the way that Huberman would frame it was, well, this is one of the leading experts of this in the field. So having them on to talk about it, it's a kind of responsible scientific thing to do. But I would actually say, you've got to be careful there. Because if you wanted to talk about power posing,

the person that you should have had on 15 years ago or whatever would have been Amy Cuddy. And she still advocates power posing, despite the various issues with that literature that have come out in the replication crisis. Right. And I think if you had her on, you would get a skewed portrayal of how strong the evidence is. So it's just that approach of there's somebody at a well-regarded university who's an expert on this topic. I'm going to bring them on and we'll discuss this issue. I would say that a critically minded science person somebody like stuart ritchie or ben goldick or anything would see the potential issue there but in hooverman seems to present it as that will give us the best most up-to-date information and you know so it would be a concern

that i have yeah yeah you're hearing from someone who is a proponent of and an enthusiast for a given hypothesis. And, you know, they absolutely exist in respectable institutions as well as out there on the internet. And I had a look into this literature because my prior would be for these kind of claims that there will be a low quality literature with some dramatic claims, some slightly higher quality study, but there will be people making claims that are much greater than the quality of evidence would allow. And you won't find things like large pre-registered studies with strong controls. That would be my prior for a lot of these kind of topics.

When I went and looked, I found a meta-analysis from 2014 by Perez, Alexander, and Bailey in BMC Psychiatry, Air Ions and Mood Outcomes, a review and meta-analysis. Now, I would say that overall, they are positively inclined towards this literature, and yet they still reach the conclusion, no consistent influence of positive or negative error ionization on anxiety, mood, relaxation, sleep, and personal comfort measures was observed. This is from an analysis of study. Negative error ionization was associated with lower depression scores, particularly at the highest exposure level.

Future research is needed to evaluate the biological plausibility of this association. Now, the way I see that is you've got a ton of outcomes. You have a observation that will rest on a couple of studies and that there are highly speculative mechanisms, but you should notice that lots of the other ones didn't pan out. So what I would want to see is exactly that, higher quality, more rigorously controlled studies

before you want to claim that the relationship actually exists. Yeah. Well, Chris, I mean, speaking of priors and heuristics, well, first of all, in doing a bit of reading for this episode, I happened upon this website, healthline.com, and learned that it is total shit. Nobody should be taking their advice from that. But it is at least helpful in providing a summary, as you said, of the wide range of claims about the beneficial effects of certain things now

this is the kind of thing that i remember back when looking at chiropractic and one thing even before you look at any of the evidence about chiropractic you should look at the purported benefits of it and it's a list a mile long supposedly it just fixes everything absolutely everything right now that should make you suspicious, right? Because generally speaking, there isn't a single silver bullet that is just going to magically fix every possible thing you might possibly have. Now, if we look at the benefits of negative ions,

according to this wonderful source of Healthline, we have, Chris, regulating sleep patterns and mood, reducing stress, boosting immune system increasing your metabolism killing or inhibiting the growth of harmful bacteria reducing serotonin to help manage anxiety lower blood pressure improve breathing where are this there's more there's more but almost all of these mentioned in this meta-analysis don't hold up right almost everything that you mentioned. The only one that they, in this meta-analysis reference, has held up is depression, right?

Reducing lower depression scores at highest exposure level. So it's even like it is the highest exposure where the strongest relationship is. Oh, sorry. I have to go on. Building strong bones, cancer prevention, a whole list of a whole bunch of different cancers it could prevent, healing skin conditions, psoriasis.

We all want a cure for psoriasis, don't we, Chris? Arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease. Like it's often you see this with complementary alternative medicines is that they always cure these sort of annoying chronic conditions that people want there to be a cure for. Now, to be clear, huberman didn't make all of those lists right no a responsible scientific assessment of this topic i think would note that people do make those litany of claims with relatively sparse evidence right and

again just to return to that review, Matt, from 2013, right, it says the quality of many studies, however, is low, and there are several important inconsistencies across studies. Differential study populations, follow-up periods, exposure outcome measurement, unmeasured confounders such as temperature. Of particular importance is the heterogeneity observed in the frequency, duration, and intensity of error ionization evaluated. That is, again, telling me this is a low quality literature. So your approach should be skeptical. Now, let's go on and see if Huberman's descriptions reflect that, because his listeners are not going to have time to do

what I did and go and look up a meta-analysis. For now, we can safely say this. There does seem to be some positive health benefits to placing oneself near bodies of water, in particular, moving bodies of water. And of course, as is always the case when there's a discovery about how the natural world can impact health, there have been some technologies developed to create negative patterns of ionization within a home environment. But as with viewing sunlight exposure and comparing it to say sad lamps, the negative ionization machines that one can purchase and put in their home environment

have been shown in a few studies to produce some positive health benefits, but those positive effects in no way reach the level of positive effects that have been shown in a few studies to produce some positive health benefits, but those positive effects in no way reach the level of positive effects that have been demonstrated in studies where people are actually spending a dedicated period of time outdoors near a moving body of water. Yeah. I mean, so I guess what you'd be saying, Chris, is that he puts a positive spin or optimistic spin on the available evidence, like very mixed findings with low quality studies, heaps of different outcomes. And there's always like a random scattering of positive outcomes with any crazy thing you might propose. And if you just focus on the positive bits and you sort of ignore all of the methodology and all the null results,

then you can say without lying that positive benefits have been shown or observed. Yeah. And I also think this framing, he is presenting that the evidence is not so strong for like the artificial stimulation, you know, via negative ionization machines and homes or whatnot so i think this is partly good because he's warning the audience to some extent that like claims that people yeah buying products that will supposedly fix this for you but i think that that presentation also gives the impression that that part is like somewhat sketchy or he doesn't say sketchy right he just says it's not really it's not as strong the effect isn't as strong yeah but the contrast is so the relationship is relatively robust when actually being out beside actual flowing bodies of water that that effect is you know yeah much more robust than these at-home treatments right yeah i mean again another

one of my heuristics and this is not digging on hubman in particular it's just whenever i approach these things as someone who's essentially a lay person knows nothing about the effects of moving bodies of water on ionization or your body or whatever is that well what's the purported mechanism here like how does being next to the moving body of water help you is it magic or what you know and no but like there's obviously heaps of benefits to going hiking and going enjoying the great outdoors and not sitting in your cubicle and hunched in front of a computer all the time obviously that's true but if there is some like actual direct effect then you have to identify the mechanism and then test it right in which case you should be going to a lab and doing a

controlled experiment like flooding some poor mice with huge amounts of ionization or moderate amounts of ionization or whatever it is and you because you have to demonstrate the mechanism right yeah yeah so in any case here's the summary of what we've covered so far provided by Huberman. So in thinking about nature, natural environments, there's strong evidence for getting sunlight in one's eyes. There is some evidence for being near moving bodies of water, perhaps. Again, I really want to highlight perhaps because of negative ionization created by those moving bodies of water. There is far less evidence for sunlight simulators or negative ionization machines used indoors.

See, the thing there, Matt, is I actually think that's pretty accurate, right? Depending on what you attach to those assessments, the evidence for sunlight being useful for regulation, that's pretty strong. Some, as he says, some evidence for benefits of being near moving water and then down, right? Perhaps because of negative ion exposure and less evidence. So the hierarchy is correct. But I think the previous discussion, you can view this as pedantic nitpicking, right? But I actually think it isn't

because the impression I would take away if I know nothing about these topics and purely relied on Huberman's summary is that there's excellent research on the benefits of looking at the sun early in the morning. There's pretty good, robust evidence for being out in nature, but the actual mechanism, we haven't quite established that, and we haven't established that we can manipulate it in home environments.

But in reality, most of these literatures, including the sunlight one, I think to a certain extent are not excellent quality research it's low quality studies with effects which are much more debatable i don't know do you think that's been unfair like because i can see people that would argue well he just said it you know he correctly characterized the information there yeah i mean at other points in his podcast he emphasizes that we're not really sure of the precise effects of this that and the other but what i do know is getting outside getting exercise being in nature is good for you so so don't worry too much about whether it's ions or this, that, and the other.

Just go and do that. So, I mean, that's the positive spin, I think. Yeah, but that wouldn't be controversial, right? I feel that this is a little bit of a two-step because if Hooperman's message is just understood as, you know, go outside and do outdoor activities, it'll improve your mood and make you feel better. That wouldn't be controversial. It's not like there's a big cohort of people saying,

don't go outside, don't spend. It's the science bit. That's the whole part that is important and why people think like what his advice is giving is more credible because it's based on science. It's not just I like being hiking in a mountain. Yeah, I think that's the issue which is that the you know it and it parallels a lot of the advice around diet and you know and how that contributes to our being and you know people are obsessed with that it's

an existential concern health and wellness right and so people demand content and they desperately want to have highly credentialed authoritative sources who are based in science to to tell them the you know 10 secrets to to living a happy well life and i think the that the problem is that the stuff that is true is boring and there's not much of it which is that eat a wide variety of different types of foods don't eat too much get regular exercise try to make sure that you sleep well go outside sometimes touch grass right like that's pretty that's kind of it and but there is a whole industry right of supplements and dieticians and health and wellness professionals with extremely baroque and complicated and highly nuanced and specific kinds of things because

they need to offer more than that otherwise why why pay a hundred dollars to subscribe to their podcast right right so in any case let's move on to huberman outlining the scientific process and how it works building up to you know where, where it, what it can and cannot answer. And then the asker of this question also quite correctly asked about things like calming sounds, watching wildlife, green colors, et cetera. And herein lies a really important point for everyone to digest. While of course, answering a question about the natural world or about health requires that we first pose a hypothesis. For those of you that aren't familiar

with what a hypothesis is, a hypothesis is a stated prediction. So it's not a question. A question would be something like, is getting out into nature good for our health? A scientific hypothesis is where one actually takes a stance. For instance, you could take the stance and make the hypothesis that getting out into nature

for 30 minutes per day, three days per week, improves mood and nighttime sleep. Okay, so that's a hypothesis that then one would go on to design an experiment to test and then evaluate the data from that experiment and compare it to the hypothesis, either validating or negating that hypothesis. That's essentially how science is done.

There's a lot more to it, but that's essentially the scientific method. And while of course the scientific method is a fabulously powerful tool, for some questions, it is a less potent tool. And the question of is getting out into nature helpful for enhancing our mental and physical health is the sort of, is getting out into nature helpful for enhancing our mental and physical health, is the sort of question that while ideally you could design a really well-controlled

study to address, it's actually quite difficult to design such a study. And here's why. That sounds fine to me. I actually totally agree with Hibman there in a sense, which is that there are a lot of questions which don't lend themselves easily to experimental work say people demonstrating the link between cigarette smoking and cancer it takes decades for the outcome to happen and it's completely impractical and unethical to get uh do an rct so when you when it comes to lifestyle factors it is just difficult to objection experimentally yes objection it's that it's difficult however the associations can be detected by doing rigorous studies that are longitudinal and trace health outcomes and smoking habits and they were so it isn't that the scientific method

is not capable of answering that question it's that specific scientific methodologies are not oh yes of experiments of course yeah yeah i mean science is not just experiments so so i always think what you're picking up on is that hooverman there is kind of conflating science equals controlled experiments look i feel i am being a bit nitpicky at this moment right but one and he is clear that this isn't all there is to science he's just speaking shorthand right and and i think overall his description of what a hypothesis is is useful because he's talking about making quantifiable predictions that you can test and see whether they hold up rather than like hugely speculative like general things which are hard to operationalize that's all fine however

my little nitpicks that i had were hypothesis does not have to be directional to be a hypothesis i think that there are ways that you could frame associations without predicting and it still be a hypothesis right no not really i think i think hypotheses have to be directed i mean you can still you can still investigate things without a directed hypothesis right exactly but that's my point but that is a it's just a non-directional hypothesis all right so you could say it's less useful, and I agree. Yeah, and I didn't. The important thing is the data and the evidence. This is true. And the other point, the thing that I would pick is the notion that, which is going to go on to elaborate on,

so I'm jumping the gun a little bit, but it's really hard to design a well-controlled study where you could examine the effect of spending time in nature versus not. I agree, there's lots of practical issues there. I don't find it that hard to imagine a study, Matt. Here's what you want. Let me give you a goal. You get a population, right?

You really want to know this question. You've got a lot of money from the tiny foundation or the Huberman lab, whatever. You take an appropriately sized population of people, you pay them for their time for a set amount of weeks or whatever the case might be, right? If you wanted to do it really properly, you know, you should house them all together and whatnot, but that might be prohibitively expensive. So let's just say you take a population of people and you randomly allocate them to do something like a daily walk in the forest versus go to the cinema versus just do what they normally do versus spend time with friends. And that's the thing that I think all of these studies tend to lack is that they're comparing spending time in nature versus not.

Or they're comparing it like with something else, which is not a task, which gives people joy and good feelings and is social, for example. Yeah, I know what you're getting at. And I think the more general issue is that there's a certain kind of research, and I've done a fair bit of it myself, which is looking at those broad behavioral interventions or things without really understanding what the push-lice mechanism is. And if you're interested in practical outcomes, just giving people practical advice, and maybe that's okay. So you could go, okay, we're going to send some people outside. The methodology you described was perfectly fine. We've done very similar things with people with gambling problems, for instance, with various types of interventions.

We do exactly this kind of research. And, you know, you may not uncover through that exactly why it is that going outside is a big – No, you definitely won't. Of course you won't. It could be the sun. It could be the grass. It could be the islands.

It could be the smell in the movie cinema. It could be the popcorn. Yeah, it could be the grass it could be the smell in the movie cinema it could be the popcorn yeah it could be the fact that you're walking around a bit more when you're off in nature right it's pretty hard to get out in the nature without walking right so it's confounded with this there's a whole bunch of things and if you really wanted to get at the mechanisms what is it specifically you know once so that could be the first stage of your research where you do that kind of and it will still be a somewhat controlled trial. It's not like you're in a lab where you control every variable. There's going to be random variability, but you know, it will tend to cancel out.

As long as it's randomly allocated and the sample is big enough, should be okay. Should be okay. That's right. At least to an order of approximation. And let's say you find a nice big effect. Great. The people that went out into the forests feeling much better. They're healthier.

They've got more vim and vigor and a spring in their step and a sparkle in their eye. Very good. All right. So that's when you might go, okay, let's figure out specifically what is the reason for this

and you do more specific experiments. Well, I have a final nit to pick. I'm with you too from that. I know you're speaking in shorthand, but you can be the Huberman Stanton. So the way he presents it is the study negates or confirm, validate your hypothesis. Not true, right? Individual studies only give you a piece of evidence in favor or against a particular hypothesis.

They do not validate or invalidate on their own, right? You need much more study. So if your study found out, what you would want is the study to be replicated by an independent group with a sufficiently powered sample. And that happened multiple times. Then you can increase your confidence that the finding is valid but the way that this is presented and the image that this gives to people is you run a study a single individual study proves or disproves a theory and then you move to the next step right what's the mechanism but that's incorrect that is not the correct image of science i know chris i know it's this kind of approach

that you know i found that there's amazing links of drinking a glass of red wine a day and eating a bar of chocolate i drank so much wine and ate so much chocolate based on those studies now look at me he's not telling the truth but i just you know again human is not the only one that does this it's a way that when you're talking in shorthand, that people often default to. But again, I think there's just like some issues there. But I think broadly speaking, the points that he's making,

that scientific evidence is not the only thing that matters, that randomized controlled trials are not the only piece of evidence that should count. And that's all unobjectionable. But the other points, they niggle at me, Matt. Broadly speaking, I don't have major issues with what Hüttemann said in this particular material. But I suppose I do get the feeling that he's just got that optimistic sheen to the evaluation

of the research. And I guess what he was implying there is that there are some things that just can't really be investigated with science. You could take it to mean that, right, in which case you could go on. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He definitely is. Yeah, which is not an implication I think people should take. I mean, if I take him to mean, and I think he does imply this elsewhere,

that, look look i'm pretty sure that getting out into nature is good for you my suggestion for you to live a healthy life is to go do that i'm not precisely sure of the mechanism but that for your purposes you don't need to worry yourselves about ionization or whatever then if he's saying that then i think that's good right and he does say that and that's not the bit I or I think any other people that are critical of him have. If the debate is, should people go outside and enjoy nature and that it might make them feel better? I don't think you have any issue there.

The issue comes with the science part. And okay, so here's a longer extension of that part about, you know, why the scientific approach is limited when addressing these kinds of questions. So something like that obviously stuck in my memory. It delighted me. And at the very same time, there were a number of other things happening besides the presence of that novel wildlife experience. There was the sound of a stream. there's the sunlight, there's the color contrast everywhere. I'm breathing fresh air because I was far away from any cars or any civilization, in fact.

And so here's what we know. There are dozens, if not hundreds of studies that show that if people get out of doors into nature, this could be parks, this could be near a stream, this could be an ocean, any number of different natural environments. And if they do that for anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes, three to seven days per week,

indeed there are demonstrated significant reductions in things like blood pressure, resting heart rate, improvements in sleep, improvements in mood. And so I think we can very reliably say that yes, or perhaps even absolutely yes, getting outside into nature can enhance various aspects of mental health, physical health, and thereby performance in different aspects of life.

However, when talking about the benefits of getting into nature, we are talking about hundreds, if not thousands of variables, some of which we are aware of, such as the presence of wildlife or sunlight or color contrast. And then of course, there are going to be dozens, if not hundreds, maybe even thousands of other variables

that we're not even aware of. Perhaps it's negative ionization. Most people aren't measuring the ionization of the air when they go out into nature, but perhaps it's also the presence of certain smells from the soils that are being broken down and then they're changing the oxygenation state of the air around you, the plants, etc. Again, so many variables that frankly, to try and isolate any one of those variables in the laboratory seems not just artificial, but I think that it actually would just lead to a diminished sense of just how valuable nature is. but I think that it actually would just lead to a diminished sense of just how valuable nature is. Okay. So I don't really have a problem with what he's saying there, Chris. I think he's right that it's hard to disentangle all of the little aspects of getting out into nature. I'd certainly

have a better mood if I was out tending my succulents instead of sitting here with you. Ecological, get it? Yeah, yeah, I get it. But so on the point that exposure to nature involves a whole bunch of variables, the entire smorgasbord of human sensations hitting you and trying to isolate individual causal relationships in that cacophony of sensory input, very difficult. Going to a lab and focusing on one specific element

of the natural environment and looking for an effect, even if the effect was there, maybe it's an interactive aspect, which applies with know with all the other environmental stimulus around you that you can't recreate in a lab so you don't find the effect but actually it would be there if you could do it out in the wild right all fine all good no objection okay okay i'm i know your objection is about to drop it is with it let's move on to the next no so matt the part again i admit that this is potentially a preference for the way that things are presented right it could

be an objection about freeming or that kind of thing but i think the issue here is the way that this is talked about is that perhaps the impact of these, you know, might be ionization. It might be the smells that you're receiving from the environment. It might be all these possible things. But like there, that seems to be, again, like accepting that the premise that it's going to be something about this like kind of chemical, you know, like the negative ionization or the exposure to sun rays that does something internally.

But couldn't it be just as likely, and indeed, I might say more likely, that it is just things like taking a break from work, doing something that isn't focusing on front of a screen in an office or something like that. But the exact same effect you could get from spending time with your friends at a coffee shop, right, where you don't have those features of the natural environment, the sunlight, the plants, you know, all the things, and yet you would still get a benefit. But here it's kind of presented that it is nature right the unique it's a kind of unique aspect of nature but i just i don't think that enough

is given to the potential that everything that you're saying about it being enjoyable and i enjoy being out in nature as well but i think a lot of the time that we're out in nature, we're not, you know, doing our menial job, depending on what the job is. But most people are not park rangers or that kind of thing. So that surely has to be factored in.

But the descriptions are much more towards the scientistic approach about, you know, treating electrons and ionization potentially being the mechanisms do you think i'm being unfair no i i think you have a point i mean everything could have been said is not wrong but the way it's framed can i guess encourage the interpretation that there is something ineffable out there in nature that is special. Some people might believe it's ionization. Some people might be that the healing power of the

sun's rays. You know, people have a proclivity for these kinds of explanations and it kind of leaves the door open to that rather than just saying flat out. Going out into nature involves getting some exercise taking a break being in a relaxing environment i'm totally open to the suggestion that putting ourselves in an environment that we're like evolved to be in right which is natural environments is probably my baseline assumption is that's probably more good for you than random artificial ones that we put ourselves in oh so let me suggest a counter and a thought experiment for the audience, right? To understand my objection a bit more clearly.

Take a sushi restaurant. Try to imagine all of the things that are there, right? You have all of, you have the food, sure. The delicious sushi that is being prepared and you might see, or you can order from your little pad, depending on what kind of sushi restaurant you're in, you have to make the choice, right? For you've got all these, what will you select from the menu? You've got the sensations in the environment around you, all the people there in the environment. Usually you, it depends, but like you might be at a sushi

shop with friends or family, right? The social interactions, the commentary on the food. Maybe you've had a hard day at the office and, you know, or all week, and this is a reward for you, right? All of those to model that environment in a laboratory would be very difficult, right? You wouldn't be able to do it by just giving people sushi

and sitting down at a desk and reading their enjoyment. That's true. That's a completely artificial human environment. I am certain that if you did studies looking at the mood improvement of people at sushi after they had sushi and whatnot, you would find an effect. And my counterpoint to you about the natural environment and to Huberman is that not artificial environments are constructed by us to be like comfortable and provide some stimulation, I think that we like. So a,

while the natural environment is what we evolved to appreciate, we can do better than nature in satisfying in the sometimes hyper stimulating are things that we like right so it's just i'm not saying don't go into nature go into sushi shops but i'm just saying that you could eat all of the things that he's saying could apply to somebody who wants to argue there's a unique healing power to sushi restaurants yeah right okay but just to defend human i don't know if he's saying that there's a unique healing power to going out into nature he's just saying going out to nature is good for you i don't think he's saying don't go to sushi restaurants maybe going to a sushi restaurant is just as good well yeah that's that's that's fine like i wonder i i wonder if that is

what's being claimed but we can continue on with the potential objection that I'm being unfair by making that argument. Though, again, Matt, the naturalistic fallacy is very common in these waters, I'm just saying. I know, I know. Yeah, and just to mention as well, the anecdote about the wildlife that he mentions is like encountering a squirrel

carrying a large knot or something and he finds this very charming and i appreciate that i see a turtle the way into the office i'm very interested in what that title does you know that what various animals and insects are doing is a constant source of a fascination so i appreciate that but you know that that makes me want to defend hooverman again because he's exactly right. He was mentioning the squirrel and the nut. And, you know, I went on a walk the other day with my dog and I saw an echidna. It was really cute.

It was nice. And that's what I mean by my default assumption is that being out in nature is going to be good for you, right? Because it involves not some natural essence or vibrations or whatever, but just it's an environment's an environment as he mentioned where interesting things happen it's a complex environment on many levels it's something that's appealing to human brains i think at the sushi restaurant but this actually isn't the sushi restaurant but at a place where you can get sushi there's a robot server who comes and myself and my sons are greatly

interested in this robot server and the little face that is put on his you know like his robot visage and the various like expressions that he's programmed to be i find that fascinating as well that's entirely artificial and i think i think i know what's going on here you're you're a kid that grew up on the mean streets of dub what's where you're from you know and now you live in tokyo you know you you haven't seen the natural environment you don't even know what it's like i was just out in a forest mart in a log cabin in Karuizawa, camping, cooking on a barbecue. I know nature. I caught my, well, my son and I caught fish together.

And my wife got them and then we cooked and ate them. So, yeah. All right. Okay. All right. That's pretty natural. That was Hunter Gallery, right? Just shut your mouth. I'm just saying. so yeah all right okay all right that's pretty natural that was hunter gallery right just shut your mouth yeah i'm just saying brett and heather would be very proud there are plenty of little

children scampering around here i find intriguing nothing at the start i mean that there are you know things that happen in artificial environments that are also interesting and intriguing. So, yeah, yes. You can have a lot of cats in cafes, Matt, if you want. No, I mean, I just think in general, on average, natural environments tend to be more stimulating, I think. Artificial environments tend to be impoverished, right? Like we cut down on... It depends what kind of artificial environments you're be impoverished right like we we cut down depends

what kind of artificial environments you're hanging around in i guess but that's uh so but look that's fine i'm not arguing for the primacy of artificial environments i'm just arguing against there being any magical element to nature i'm not saying yes but i'm but i'm saying that hooverman and me is not implying that there's any magical element just saying it's a compliment no we're not i was mentioning stuff like exercise like i was going on the same line as you right which is being out in nature involves a whole bunch of things yeah it involves walking involves not working not staring at a screen like even just looking at things in the distance as opposed to looking things like right up close to your nose

like a screen like a whole bunch of relatively small things and my baseline assumption is that those things will tend to be good for you so would you say climbing a real steep mountain on an extremely hot day in the australian outback is going to be better for you than climbing the same kind of wall right in a climbing center but without the burning sun on your back uh that's a very contrived example chris yeah but the issue that i want to point out is like the nature and the outdoors also has other things which can could lead to lack of enjoyment and artificial environments it can i'm not saying artificial environments are always superior they're not like i grant that there are plenty of things that you cannot replicate

in natural environments that might be uniquely appealing to us. There's clearly something to us as primates being formed of foliage and trees and whatnot, right? Because we put square pieces of grass in front of houses, right? Where we have the space to do so. So I do not dismiss that, but I'm just saying that there are things in the natural environment which also make it

more negative than a controlled artificial environment. And that that is not emphasized, usually. It's just always presented in a way that implies that the uncontrolled chaotic nature and natural environment is better. And I think it's just different. And I think that humans may find it more appealing intuitively, but it doesn't necessarily mean that there are features in that environment which make it completely having a unique effect that nothing in an artificial environment could ever come close to doing uh no you're wrong your argument goes well you know mosquitoes exist so did you like that that That's part of it. Yeah, it is part of it. I just, I just. But Huberman himself emphasizes that just like going to a park, right? Like a park is that artificial. A park is not a purely natural environment. Like it's a manufactured, manicured experience of nature.

And Huberman would say going to a park is a perfectly good option. And in fact, I think he did say so in this recording. to a park is a perfectly good option right and in fact i think he did say so in this recording so my point is you're arguing against the straw man i'm not i'm arguing against the naturalistic fallacy which i think is it affected a lot of this reasoning i think yeah i think you're applying the you know the anti-naturalist fallacy heuristic you're over applying it because like when we do studies of like just people's preference for scenes you know you show them a whole bunch of yeah they like natural they like the natural scenes right i know i'm my argument is not that people don't like natural environments as much as artificial environments i do think our

nature as social primates and the evolutionary things mean that we find these kinds of environments, more appealing, lush environments and whatnot. But I'm saying that in the particular application of talking about the health benefits of being in those environments and whatnot, that I really do think it would be hard to disentangle the actual physical benefits that you derived from repeatedly taking walks in a local park versus repeatedly going out with your friends. But isn't that literally what Huberman was saying?

There's a bunch of benefits to going outside. It could be exercise. It could be just fresh air. But it's only ever used with the natural environments that talking point is only ever used with natural environments no one talks about the uncontrolled aspects of bars and the interactions that you will have there and the unusual characters that will grasp your attention and that being a uniquely rewarding thing to do like jordan peterson does he starts crying when he talks about

being at a dive bar and hearing some band play a bad cover but you know that's the point that i mean i just want this standard applied consistently if you are going to meet this argument that's all okay let's let's let it go okay let it go'll let it go. Agree to disagree. So back to Huberman, back to Huberman. I'll let you have the last word as usual. Well, the title is Get Into Nature. So I think he's going to back you up here. So while of course, the Huberman Lab podcast is a podcast where we always center on science and science-related tools, meaning protocols that are grounded in quality peer-reviewed

studies that have been subjected to control conditions where some people are getting say the drug treatment or taking the supplement or doing a particular behavioral practice and other people are not, or doing some variant of those and dose response curves, all of that stuff. When it comes to the question of whether or not

it's valuable to get out into nature, I think it's a very straightforward yes, absolutely yes. Get out into nature as often as you can and safely can, of course. I realize some of this is weather permitting. People live in different areas. Some people are in cities, some people are in deserts, some people are near the ocean,

but getting out into nature has been shown over and over again to have numerous positive health effects. And yet, unless we're talking about sunlight exposure and isolating the variable of setting one's circadian rhythm by viewing sunlight early in the day all of the other features of getting out into nature you know it's hard to identify what specific thing is the thing that's good for you yeah which i agree with i agree with all of that i agree with this too

only you could have a problem with someone i I don't have a problem with this. This is the bit I don't have a problem with. The pure advice of get out into nature, you know, if you can, and if you find it enjoyable, it'll be more beneficial for you. Yeah, fine. And specifically, I'm not linking it to peer-reviewed research and all these claims i'm just saying i find it beneficial and good that's fine okay all right yeah my issue is when you link it to the you know the kind of scientific aspect of it

and start implying some unique negative ionization coming from rivers, right? That kind of thing. So anyway... It's just I think many people would have listened to this, as I did, and didn't hear Huberman strongly implying that it was due to the ionization of the rhythm. But I'm not saying he's strongly suggesting that.

I'm saying that there's an implication by the things that you choose to mention. And the things which Huberman emphasizes are not those aspects of just getting time off work or giving yourself a break from stress and maybe spending some time on your own if you have a whole bunch of duties it's more the scientific sounding things and that gives a particular impression which this particular audience i think that's what they want to hear right so i'm not saying he he clearly said the evidence is not strong for ionization and whatnot. And it is not really important if that's the mechanism. But I just think the framing gives a certain kind of emphasis.

And you have to remember, we'll get back to it at the end in the next couple of clips. But this is originally framed around grounding, right? It took him for a long while to get back to grounding. He foreshadowed the grounding. He's not there yet. I know, he's not there yet, but we'll get there. We'll get there at the end. Yeah, so just that's, I think it's worth keeping that broader context in mind, right?

About grinding, setting this all off. Okay, so anyway, forest bathing, Matt. Things like forest bathing. This is a term coined from some, frankly, pretty nice studies that were done in Japan, in which people placed themselves into forest-like environments for a certain period of time. There were control groups where people were not placed into those environments, and the people that did this so-called forest bathing experienced enhanced mental and physical health. You'd be a forest beaver, wouldn't you?

I would be. Look, I just think there is something good. Did I see that, framing listeners? Matt noticed the sense of derision in my tone, even though all I said was that you would be a forest beaver, wouldn't you, Matt? So, Matt, look, here, forest beaving, again, if you want the moth, go and hang out in a forest and it's probably nice.

No problem. No problem. My issue here is with the tying it to the pretty nice studies conducted in Japan. I happened to look up a meta-analysis of forest bathing study. Oh, really? Shinrin Yoku, as they're apparently known as. By Wen et al., 2017, Medical Empirical Research on Forest Bathing, a systematic review.

It's fair to say that Wen is a fan of this practice as well, Wen and colleagues. It's not a great systematic review. Nonetheless, let me just read a segment for it. The risk of bias in the papers is relatively high. Overall, in the 28 papers included in the study, the random sequence generation, the allocation concealment, and the application of blinded methods are important sources of bias. Loss of follow-up, reported adverse, and intervention measures or control measure compliance are secondary sources of bias. The forest environment is also one potential source. Compliance with intervention or control measures is also rarely mentioned in forest bathing studies, especially for forest bathing activities greater than one day. The general

implication from looking at these studies are that the majority of them are not good quality studies, right? And when they do take it down to a smaller amount of controlled studies, they report that they find beneficial effects. But again, Matt, the literature review, if you read it and you look at the stuff about quality, they've actually rated a whole bunch of these studies on a quality scale, and they've tended to place them in the higher end of the spectrum. But if you read it with a critical eye you can see that this is not a very well regulated you know this is not a super high quality literature the notion that any of these studies are pre-registered i would bet money on them not being and i also know from looking at

various studies in the hospitality psychology and this kind of thing. There's lots of studies where people are doing, you know, like, does this kind of holiday activity contribute to mental well-being more than this one? And they tend to be very small studies and have lots of outcome measures and all the usual things. So I'm just saying that my issue again here is the the kind of the veneer of like a very scientific robust thing when it's just saying going into the forest is nice yeah i i hear you but uh yeah if human is guilty here then so is the australian broadcasting corporation and so is parks victoria like like i was just looking around about forest bathing because i wasn't familiar with the term and i'm just seeing it being endorsed as as a thing and

evidence-based practice to improve the white man i mean it's not strange like isn't that why all these people that have all these concerns about bias, the pharmaceutical industries and whatever, don't they consider that like a study which found that it's not actually, there was no difference between the control group and the one that went out into the forest? Do you think that study is going to be promoted by the Natural Parks Commission? Do you think the researchers who spent time taking people out into the forest are going to like be happy with

that result i know no no big parks big parks i like natural parks too but it's obvious like what's that thing that people have been doing that like butthole sun exposure right wasn't that a thing recently yeah yeah i still yeah and everybody laughed at that and said oh there's no science like that's just absolute obviously that's crazy right but i will bet you if you conducted this study you could get a result that showed that was beneficial and people have reduced stress hormones and so on so should we all be out buttholes honey i'm up for it i'll give it a go um no i mean i guess i mean methodologically it's the same issue isn't it with evaluating any of these things like what about meditation like the supposed health benefits of meditation mindfulness literature is full of this

kind of thing as well right and again you'll find lots of reviews touting, it's been absolutely proven that the effects of mindfulness meditation is beneficial in all these ways, but you would see all the issues with those studies, right? And you know that the higher quality studies, the effect sizes tend to drop away. And when you have controls, which are just person going swimming for the day or there's even

studies showing that binge drinkers score very high on like mindfulness measures right there's some issues there so yeah i yeah i like i accept everything you're saying i still think i still still think it's good to go for a walk in a forest yeah i agree so look i still recommend it matt this is the part of Huberman where I'm on board. Like, listen, this is the bit where I would say, yes, here's another summary that he offered.

Well, most all questions about tools and protocols for enhancing health immediately lead me to say, ah, this study or that study, or yes, there's evidence or no, there isn't evidence. When it comes to questions about nature

and grounding in particular, I take the stance that this is a unique instance where we know there are just so many benefits of getting out into nature that trying to isolate any one of those variables in a quality, rigorous way within the laboratory almost seems too artificial to really justify the conclusions that arrive.

Okay. Oh, yeah, I forgot. The grinding slipped in there. So I completely sign off on this part about, you know, it's not really about the studies. I'm mentioning studies now, but I'm just saying go out in the parks. That's fine. Freem does an opinion, and I just think it's good. I just like it. that's all right but it's you know just before this segment this is when he referenced those good studies in japan about forest bathing and he's talked about the negative ionization potentially coming from moving bodies of water and now we get grounding referenced in this endorsement right and the message here is like look grinding you know do we really need to consider science as the important factor here like it's just good to get

outdoors right but why grinding is a specific claim and there is quite obvious ways to test the claims being mirrored. So... Yeah, yeah. I mean, the way I read this is that I heard Huberman, I guess, slightly dissing grounding, but in the most diplomatic way possible. I think he's aware that many of his listeners will be interested in this, a fan of this. If he were to say bluntly,

there's no reliable evidence that grounding does anything for you wake up to yourselves right then he's going to get a bunch of angry emails and maybe lose listeners maybe even sell their supplements so he puts it in the most diplomatic way possible which is to say look it it is complicated to disentangle the effects of being grounded to the earth from just being outside and enjoying nature. So I can't really comment on that. But what I am sure about is getting outside, being in nature, that is good for you.

So I read it as a very diplomatic demurral. Yeah, I read it in the same way. But I guess my issue that I take here is Huberman's a science communicator who positions himself as somebody providing protocols and evidence-based information about health. What that should also involve is telling people when the evidence isn't there, when something is being promoted by a pseudoscientific industry without strong evidence to support it. And I would draw here a parallel that Huberman's choice, which he's talked about, is during the pandemic, he wouldn't talk about COVID,

because it's not his area of expertise and it's a controversial topic. And now people there say, well, that's good. He's not stepping outside his area of expertise. But I would say that in the middle of a pandemic, when vaccines are one of the most well-supported beneficial things to protect your health from this novel virus, the decision to avoid endorsing it as somebody recognized as a science and health communicator is sending a particular message. is sending a particular message. And it's one that you want to avoid alienating your audience in preference of communicating accurate science. Because Huberman surely knows, if he can read science and read the weight of evidence,

that there was no debate. The vaccines were beneficial. That all of the hoopla around ivermectin and the negative side effects were all misrepresenting scientific evidence, right? But he never referenced it. He mentioned it in like two tweets. If you search his Twitter timeline and COVID, there's only three tweets about it. And two of them are talking about it being a controversial topic. And that to me is making a decision that is, yeah, if you want to view it in a cynical light, it's about cultivating a larger audience. If you want to see it in positive light, it's avoiding alienating an audience that you know will respond negatively to actual scientific information right but in either

case it's choosing not to present scientific facts to an audience that you know will not respond well to it yeah yeah i think that's a fair and correspondence to to draw like he is a health and wellness specialist communicator popular communic. He does frame himself as being absolutely informed by science and providing scientific perspective on things. It would be well within, if he could wrap his head around the evidence for and against grounding, then it's within his capabilities to wrap his head around the evidence around vaccines, right? If it was a more disputed issue, if it

was more controversial or whatever, then you might go, okay, well, I'm going to leave that to specialists. But actually, that would be well within his capabilities. And I think it is also accurate to say that just like he knows his audience is sympathetic to topics like grounding, and maybe I'm being uncharitable, but I think he is excessively diplomatic, shall we say, in his treatment of it to avoid alienating them. I think being, you know, the big sort of, it's maybe unfair to call him like a paleo bro person or whatever, but you know, he does, like there is this movement in the health and wellness sphere, which used to be kind of hippy dippy and then kind of more feminine sort of thing with the Gwyneth Paltrow kind of thing.

But there is this new movement which is much more, I don't know, libertarian, paleo, sceptical of governments and these mass-produced things like vaccines. And, you know, I think he would have to have an awareness that that's who his audience is. These are the people that buy these supplements for self-optimisation and so on. And I have to agree with you there.

Yeah. And Huberman of note again, very good friends with Joe Rogan and Lex Friedman, never issued a word of criticism about their coverage of like anti-vaccine, in Joe Rogan's case, overt promotion. And Lex Friedman's very open, shall we say, to presenting Brett Weinstein to talk about the controversy. And remember how much Lex despises what Anthony Fauci did to science during the pandemic. Now, people will say that's guilt by association. To me, it is more about the way that he responds to those people having clearly, if not anti-science, in Rogan's case, I think it's indisputable that he had a huge anti-vaccine

pulpit and continues to do so. In Lex's case, more ambiguous, but like certainly arguable. And Huberman never mentions anything about that when he's talking about their content, right? He's very, again, diplomatic about that and avoids those kinds of topics. And to his credit, he also avoids political topics by and large on his show. You won't hear him doing an episode on the latest controversy in the heterodox sphere he is much more health and productivity focused yeah i'm somewhat conflicted because on one hand you know i do not want to give the impression that i think people should be compelled to condemn so and so or to speak out against such and such. You know, I don't think in general people have that obligation.

But I guess, I don't know, there are limits. And when you're like a science-based health communicator and you move in those circles and you have that audience, then the omission can get stark, right? It's exactly that. audience, then the omission can get stuck, right? It's exactly that because like Joe Rogan, yes, he has a wide range of guests, but for years, he's mentioned the vaccines and the pandemic almost every week of his podcast. And, largest audience for anti-vaccine rhetoric. And I just feel if you present yourself as someone who will honestly communicate to your audience about scientific issues that will affect their health, and you have never once raised any

issue about Joe's coverage, but you've appeared on the show multiple times, and you will tweet out to thank him for some episode or something that he said. It is making a choice. It's not a neutral thing because you're essentially, unless you don't think that he's doing that, and if you don't think he's doing that, I think you don't think that he's doing that and if you don't think he's doing that i think you don't understand how to recognize anti-vaccine advocacy but i give human more credit than that i think he does know what game is being played but he doesn't want to get involved in on either side yeah i think for any influencer or independent content creator, yeah. I think all of the interests, all of the incentives lie in the other direction.

Like it's only going to hurt you to do that. Yeah, don't say anything negative about Rogan. That's right. You're going to make enemies. These people won't like you and the people in their audience won't like you. A lot of your audience likes them. So the incentives all lie in that direction. So maybe

it's uncharitable, but it does seem like that would have an influence. All right, back to grinding, Matt. Grinding part one. Now, I'm sure there's some of you out there who are aware, and if you're not, I'll tell you, there are studies that have explored this practice of so-called grounding. They've had people come into the laboratory and place their feet on soil that is contained within a box. Or there are other studies where they actually have people go out of doors and place their feet onto the grass or the ground.

And there are a bunch of theories as to how grounding could improve one's mental and physical health that aren't just about getting outside. So the theories go that this has to do with the exchange of electrons with the earth and the earth's surface in particular. There's been the argument made that shoes, in particular shoes that have rubber soles,

may block some of this electron exchange with the surface of the earth. There've been theories about the tactile, that is the touch sensation with the earth being important. Not a lot of science published in, let's just say blue ribbon journals, which is not to diminish some of the journals that these have been published in,

but just to say that, again, there are so many variables associated with a practice such as grounding that I'll simply say, yes, please do get out of doors into nature. I try every Sunday to do my zone two cardio by rucking or jogging or hiking, often with other people, if I'm trying to be social with family or others.

But the point is getting out of doors has myriad positive effects on mental health and physical health. And of course, when you're moving out of doors, you're also getting that zone two cardio or other forms of physical benefit by elevating your heart rate. So he did emphasize there at the end, the benefits of exercise, and he mentioned mental health and socializing. So yeah, exactly. It's not he's not like at least in this respect right i'm sorry to revisit our argument it's not with reference to like a magical natural force no but this in this part yes yeah in this part so um but yeah i mean one thing i'd quibble with is that like you know you don't have to be polite about the kinds of

quite dodgy journals and the big publishers here should absolutely cap stick i don't have to be polite about the kinds of quite dodgy journals. And the big publishers here should absolutely catch stick. I don't know how they get away with it. But publishers like Elsevier are meant to be reputable publishers. And yet they publish this thing called Biomedical Journal. Sounds authoritative. And they published this opinion piece called Grounding, the Universal Anti-Inflammatory Rebity.

Grounding, this is the abstract. Grounding or earthy could be the anti-inflammatory antidote for modern man. It is one of the greatest kept secrets when it comes to our health and aliveness, and only a small part of the scientific community really understands the concept. Blah, blah, blah. You know, one small established fact that conveys universal agreement is that the simple correlation that inflammation is the root cause of almost all diseases, exclamation

point. I mean, ending an abstract with an exclamation point alone. Man, Ross and Carrie, the solar podcast, they do these kind of in-depth investigations into various pseudoscience and alternative medicine and stuff claims. And they did a bunch of episodes on the topic of grounding and went to interview somebody that is the founder of a company which produces grounding products and all that kind of thing. And the amount of pseudoscientific claims is not, it's not rare to see in this area, right? And i think that's the context where huberman really doesn't in any sense

grapple with that in the way that he is grappling with it he's been extremely polite to the quality of that literature and saying you know look we don't know the science isn't you know there's been studies hard to say whether it's specifically the grounding or whether it could be something else exactly but you should be aware that if if your audience and a large part many of your audience are contacting you and asking you about grounding then they're exposed to the popular media on the topic which as you say if it contains massive amounts of pseudoscience then why not say it why not say it Like that would be the responsible thing for science. You could even say, you know, I'm making no comment about various mechanisms that have

been proposed because the evidence just isn't there one way or the other. There's not been good quality studies. However, I will note that there is a large industry that exists to promote products and this practice and i would say there is not scientific evidence that endures that and you should be wary when there is you know a kind of concerted effort and industry to promote something as a cure-all for ailments like that kind of thing it just it doesn't come up right it's more it's It's more, it's a much more, like it's a much more equivocal approach. Yeah. I mean, an interesting little wrinkle on this is that whole dichotomy between, you know,

the alternative media and the institutions and the establishment, right? Now, on one hand, we have Ono, Ross and Carey, which by any definition is independent alternative media. which by any definition is independent alternative media and then you have hooverman who is a research scientist at stanford so i don't know put that in your pipe and smoke it yeah who did the more responsible in-depth investigation into grinding go see their multi-part series and you'll see. But so here's the kind of concluding part on grounding. So the long and short of this is, yes, there's some evidence for grounding. Is it super strong evidence? No, it's not. We don't really know what it is about placing one's feet onto the earth that is producing the positive effects that were observed in those studies. And

those studies made some reasonable attempt to isolate the variables and figure out whether or not it was ion exchange with the earth or the tactile, meaning the touch sensation of having one's feet on the ground. Frankly, I don't think there's enough quality science to really draw any firm conclusions about that. However, if you like the idea of grounding,

by all means do it. In fact, if it feels good to you, I recommend getting your morning sunlight out of doors with your bare feet on the ground. Or if you're like me, you know, you put on your shoes and you take a walk most days. Although I've tried this practice of grounding and it feels pretty good, meaning it feels nice to have my feet on the earth, provided I'm on clean soil or clean lawn. Definitely don't do this at the dog park. Hookworm is a real thing, by the way, folks. So pay attention to the sorts of surfaces that you're putting your feet onto.

Yeah. Yeah. So just a very gentle equivocal. Equivocal, but it's all positively virulent, right? Is there evidence? Yes. Is it super strong? No.

So is it strong, though, either way? Yeah. It's not super strong. But I do recommend taking your shoes off and getting some sun. Yeah, and if you like grinding, kick your shoes off. So, he doesn't actually say anything bad or wrong there, but it's the valence and it's the stuff he doesn't say and it's the framing. I mean, I love going barefoot, I'll just say, by the way.

I go barefoot all the time. Like I keep saying, i'm a big advocate for going outside communing with your succulents or whatever plant it is that floats your boat i hope that people know better than i do that succulent is a type of plant because when you say communing with your succulents it's conjured up history and images but like so yeah but the point about he is saying there's not enough quality like you said there's nothing wrong right if you take that isolation i don't think there's enough quality science to really draw any firm conclusions how about shoddy science and he talks

about we don't know you know we can't draw about the mechanisms for the positive effects how about if the positive effects even exist at a real yeah like that's the bit that he doesn't imply that like maybe these studies are too low it's true i heard i heard that too which is that the way and you could just say oh it's just the choice of words but the way it was phrased was that there were positive effects but we don't know the exact mechanism necessarily. Yes. And why don't we know the exact mechanism? Let's return. But the question about whether or not nature is valuable for our mental and physical health is an easy one.

It's an absolute yes. But isolating the particular variables about nature that are most beneficial, well, that's a much tougher question. And it's one that frankly, the scientific method is not. And to be honest, I don't think ever we'll be in a position to isolate and really nail down specifically because as soon as you get specific about that question, you start to diminish the value of the study itself. So the long and short of this is get out into nature

as often as you safely can yeah but this is a bit of an aside chris but i do think he's way too like his framing of it is that it's ineffable right then maybe grounding is good for you maybe it isn't but we just can't tell but like if there really is an effect to this then you have to nominate a mechanism right for argument's sake, and there's a few mechanisms I've talked about, the most reasonable one, because some of them are completely insane, is something about ion transfers. Now, that is something that can be investigated in a laboratory, because if that's the mechanism, then it's not some gestalt of the complex tapestry of the experience. It is actually ions going into your legs and doing stuff on your

body and you should be able to do that via a controlled experiment it's actually not that hard to set up a ground sheet which has the same ionic properties as the ground and set up a control and you can blind it pretty easily too right so people won't know whether they're on the negatively charged or the positively charged one, and you could test that specific claim. So, for it to even be a proposition, it has to be a concrete testable claim. And to the extent that it is, it can be investigated. And if it can't be framed like that in a way that can actually be operationalized, then it's not a claim that lies within the remit of scientific empirical investigation it's just something you take on faith or not yeah and you know we were just talking about a broader context as well matt but the answer there right if we so i feel there's a

little bit of dancing around right because is the question is it good to get out into nature yes and i'm not claiming there claiming it's all about scientific evidence. I'm just saying it's good. Then okay, right? But this is in the context of answering about the evidence of grinding as well and saying, well, science can't really determine the benefits. And he just talked about grinding, you know, there there's some studies but if you're saying that's what the all the alternative medicine people say right is like these methods it can't

really be tested by science and the studies that are negative it's because of the negative energies of people that are just out to prove things wrong and stuff and so i feel like he's unintentionally but he's kind of providing the people that want that takeaway to be that sure the you know the evidence isn't up to this like gold triple a standards but science doesn't know everything and he's saying grounding feels good and there's been you know studies in journals which are not mainstream but yeah maybe because the results are too controversial like i feel that's the message that at least some portion of the audience will take away and it's intentional because you could easily add in the more critical thing comments about the bad quality evidence the poor studies and

the invested interests that people have in kind of promoting these practices. But he doesn't, right? And he just keeps flipping it over into the broad category of, is it good to spend time in nature? Yeah, yeah, it is, right? So it's a slippery one. Strategic ambiguity, right?

You don't want to be caught out saying stuff that's blatantly unscientific or untrue but at the same time you don't want to alienate your audience who wants to believe these things so you do that little tap dance and you know yeah so here's the conclusion matt the conclusion final concluding part of this segment and frankly i don't have a scientific explanation for why nature is oh so beneficial except for the sunlight piece and perhaps this grounding piece and the negative ionization piece. And frankly, I don't worry so much about the lack of variable isolating quality peer-reviewed studies that support the benefits of getting out into nature. I simply like getting

out into nature and into different natural environments as much as I possibly can because for whatever reason, imagine those reasons have something to do with serotonin, dopamine, hormones, oxytocin, probably a bunch of different things that are rooted in how our nervous system evolved in natural environments. Well, it just feels really good. The second part of that about it's, I don't know what the mechanism is it just feels good so i'm gonna and i'm not that interested in rigorously isolating all the individual effects that's all i i approve all of that matt but it's the bit before just the first sentence let me read it to you and frankly i don't have a scientific explanation for why nature is oh also beneficial except for the sunlight piece and perhaps this

grounding piece and the negative ionization piece right so what is he saying that grinding is potentially you know uh it's ambiguous right and all those three things that he mentioned the sunlight the grounding the negative ionization. I agree with him. The sunlight is probably an exception. But he bundles in grinding and negative ionization as, you know, in the same except. Yeah, I know. I know.

I heard that too. So it's just this is the nature of disclaimers that you can like kind of bundle them in and you can be saying one thing and then in the next sentence you you know you kind of walk it back and our friend timbo and toast did a very good episode about tim pool and he's doing a very extreme version of it where he's like saying these extreme political things and then the next sentence he kind of suggests that that's not what he's saying but he like it all goes in one direction and i'm not saying huberman is as extreme but i am saying it's a similar general technique yeah no that's that's true i think yeah like if you actually broke down what was said in this recording yeah there's there's a bunch of sort of

contradictory statements and you know and it's kind of equally balanced you know a bunch of ones going this way a bunch of ones going that way and i think it can be quite i mean the upshot of it is for the audience to be able to go away with whatever whichever one they whichever one they choose and i think that is a good trick for actually maximizing your appeal to the broadest spectrum of people so as you say he's nowhere near as toxic as tim pool obviously but people can go to tim pool and come away from it with all kinds of different things from a spectrum of completely insane batshit neo-nazi things to insane batshit neo-nazi things to skeptical ironic bloody i don't know moderate stuff perhaps um yeah like and you can't be pinned on anything you you're not really wrong or right about anything

but it's the ball about the vibe and i think people walk away from the thing not logically passing out individual sentences but actually after listening to 20 minutes or an hour of content they come away from it with a vibe and those strategic disclaimers that you mentioned chris they do nothing in terms of interfering with the general vibe that you're projecting yeah and i was having a discussion about this issue with someone on twitter who was taking they had a different read on the episode, right? But kind of much more sympathetic to Huberman. And I argued, they said, look, yeah, obviously grounding is bullshit, but he's not endorsing grounding, right?

I didn't take that away from what he's saying. And I was suggesting, I would suggest to the people listening, would you take away from this that, one, Huberman thinks grinding is obvious bullshit, but there are benefits to being in nature. Or two, alternatively, science doesn't know everything. Some things can't be studied in the lab. There are positive studies and proposed mechanisms for grinding, but we don't know yet. Maybe we can never know. Which one is more accurate summary of what huberman communicates in this content and i think it's obvious that it's closer to the second than the first yeah these things can be a bit of a choose your own adventure you can come away

from it with the message that you want well one thing map when we do Huberman later in the full-length episode... Where we do him slowly, Chris. Yeah, we'll take a piece of content where we know the literature well, and we'll see how accurately it's presented. Because one thing that people might do from this is say, well, Chris, you just went and looked for individual studies that supported your priors, right? And actually, no, I don't think the individual results of those meta-analyses matter that much, to be honest. What I think matters is that they point at the overall quality of the literature in that area. So it's the same thing that when you look at acupuncture, when you look at chiropractic studies,

you will find meta-analyses that are positive, you will find negative meta-analyses. But when you look at the quality of the studies, it's the same warning signs, multiple outcomes, low sample sizes, lack of rigorous controls, no pre-registrations, so on and so forth, right? And so I just, I think it's important for people to recognize that like any individual one study, surely it can be studies that are relatively definitive. If you do this massive trial and you,

you know, those can be very, very informative about the efficacy of a particular treatment or whatnot. But generally speaking, science is done by small incremental contributions. And so that can also lead because of things like the biases in publication and previous acceptance of p-hacking to having literatures that are skewed towards positive studies right and we know about this we've known about this for quite a time but we definitely know about it since the replication crisis so you can't just say well there's been a hundred studies showing that grinding is correct and sure lots of them are low quality but overall that means there's something to it because we know so many examples where there's been much more studies and the effect doesn't replicate when

you have better controlled studies so yeah be skeptical be skeptical that should be the default yeah maybe not as skeptical as chris but you know moderately skeptical yeah and go out in the park it's all right also go to the sushi shop. Do whatever you like. Don't let Huberman judge you. That's what I want to hear. Huberman or Matt. We need a controlled experiment to compare going to the sushi shop with going to a forest, which is better.

Yeah. A sushi shop in a forest. Now you're talking. Well, you're in Japan, so you can go to a vending machine in a forest? No, you're talking. Well, you're in Japan, so you can go to a vending machine in a forest. That is something you can't do. That is true. That is something I did do.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's been a pleasure. I think people will take some issue with this. They won't like my takes, and that's okay. I'm here to accept the slings and arrows. I know. I know.'m here to accept the slings and arrows i know i know i i need to be the villain but that that's all right all criticism directed at me is inevitably

bad faith it's tainted by jealousy it's because they're haters i know it my i know the guru played i know how to do it you want to persecute me you'll never silence me that's right you you're batman you're not the hero we want but you're the hero we damn well need fair enough i think many people would object if they he just wants to see the world burn but yeah we can't have nice things anyway wherever you fall and whether you agree with the person who's right or Matt, then that's fine. We welcome different opinions and we look forward to your feedback as we did with the Chomsky episode.

So, okay, Matt, now since this is a pretty long episode, actually, in the end, I feel we do need to do the review of reviews because my it is a you know it's a moderate decoding it's it's not a full enchilada is enchilada however you say that it's a you know yeah it's a it's a mid-size one i'll do one review of reviews and then nobody gets a shout out. Not today. I'll double them off next time. Matt's got appointments to get to. So just a review of reviews.

That's where we'll finish with. And I'm going to go with a negative one, Matt. I feel we've been luxuriating in positive feedback too long. Here's a negative one. This is from DA. Teenager level criticism do you remember the time when as a teenager you thought you were super clever and knew loads of stuff take that up a notch and listen they show that they're centered around the feeling of smugness a show

that centers around riding that sense of superiority to the point of no return all the way to the teenage that's so dumb giggles uh there you go matt yeah we are smug we are smug i have to admit that i can see how someone could come away from listening to us and go what a pair of smug gets oh we're right we're right god damn it why aren't you clapping yeah that's that's that's right so smugness is not necessarily correlated or negatively correlated with accuracy of criticism. Exactly. Otherwise, every professor in the world would be out of a job.

I even presented that riposte in a smug way. But there we go. There we go. Well, that was that, Matt. And thank you all for listening just imagine your shout outs wow how good they're going to be next time when we we get to those um this was longer than intended but you know hopefully you enjoyed me and matt arguing with each other and yeah and if you're not feeling too well if you're feeling a bit poorly uh you can get out in the

forest or you could get yourself the huberman lab hormone support bundle for only 78.95 uh you get some alpha gpc for only 44.95 get some tongkat and fada yoga 60 day supply for 64.85 and many many more wonderful good supplements endorsed as sold by theerman lab to support your hormones support cognition support optimizing for sleep from richard logan lab but also hooberman didn't want to sell those anyway it was just his audience made him like they kept asking him and he didn't want to make but you know in the end he rel So, yeah, he probably didn't know that. So there's that.

So, yes, if you're feeling a bit down, go out into the forest, be of your butthole, do whatever tickles your fancy, or hang out in artificial environments, each to their own, and we'll leave it there. All right. Bye. Bye-bye. Thank you.