Huberman Lab - AMA #10: Benefits of Nature & “Grounding," Hearing Loss Research & Avoiding Altitude Sickness
Episode Date: August 30, 2023Welcome to a preview of the 10th Ask Me Anything (AMA) episode, part of Huberman Lab Premium. The Huberman Lab Premium subscription was launched for two main reasons. First, it was launched in order t...o raise support for the standard Huberman Lab podcast channel — which will continue to come out every Monday at zero-cost. Second, it was launched as a means to raise funds for important scientific research. A significant portion of proceeds from the Huberman Lab Premium subscription will fund human research (not animal models) selected by Dr. Huberman, with a dollar-for-dollar match from the Tiny Foundation. Subscribe to Huberman Lab Premium at https://hubermanlab.com/premium. Timestamps (00:00:00) Introduction (00:01:42) Scientifically-Supported Benefits of Nature (00:24:12) Huberman Lab Premium In the full AMA episode, we discuss: New Research for Those With Sudden Hearing Loss Science-Backed Methods for Altitude Sickness Prevention & Enhanced Acclimatization Title Card Photo Credit: Mike Blabac Disclaimer
Transcript
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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.
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ado, let's get to answering your questions.
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.
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 Hubertman 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 HubertmanLab.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.
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 night time sleep.
Viewing morning sunlight also has profoundly positive effects on metabolism. Now those effects on
metabolism could be the direct effect of viewing sunlight or more
likely, they are the indirect consequence of getting better sleep at night.
So getting sunlight in your eyes early in the day and ideally in the evening or late afternoon
before the sun sets is a very well-supported protocol that we know is beneficial for numerous
aspects of mental health, physical health, and performance.
And of course, sunlight and getting sunlight in one's eyes does require that you get outside.
You simply will not derive the same benefits from viewing sunlight if you try and do it through a window or windshield.
Or if you look at a picture of a sun on a screen, forget it.
You are not going to set your circadian rhythm. You're not going to derive all the positive effects of sunlight
by trying to get it from screens or from looking at pictures of suns or something of that sort.
Now, if you are somebody that, for whatever reason, seasonality, where you live on the planet,
work schedule, etc. who cannot get sunlight in your eyes early in the day on a consistent basis,
well, then you might consider purchasing a so-called sad lamp, which is for seasonal effective disorder,
which is very bright light,
that you can look at in the morning
for usually about five to 10 minutes.
People will put it on their counter
while they make their morning coffee, eat their breakfast.
And that has also been shown to improve mood,
focus, and alertness, and set one circadian rhythm,
but it is not nearly as effective
as getting sunlight in your eyes.
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?
Actually, this is quite interesting.
There is 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, etc.
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 Hubertman Lab podcast in the not-too-distant
future.
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 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.
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 in doors.
And then the asker of this question also, quite correctly, asked about things like calming
sounds, watching wildlife, green colors, etc.
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 a hypothesis, 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 question that, well, 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. In order to
perform a study that's very well controlled,
meaning where you can isolate individual variables,
like sunlight, like the sorts of color contrast
that one sees in a natural scene, outdoors,
in a forest or near a river.
In order to address whether or not the calming sounds
or the presence of squirrels running through your environment
or the relevant factors, it becomes incredibly difficult
to try and isolate individual variables.
Meaning as soon as you bring people into the laboratory, yes, you have more control over
which variables, as they're called, you present them, right, by bringing them into a room
that essentially has no art on the walls and then having them look at a picture of a
sun or looking at sunlight or listening to soothing sounds or looking at a picture of
a forest, of course, you're controlling the individual variables.
However, there is a sort of gestalt, meaning a collective picture of being in nature that
brings together lots of different elements, right?
The element of surprise, for instance, the other day I was out for a Sunday hike and that
morning I saw squirrel running across my path and it was interesting because the squirrel
had a pine cone in its mouth, it had been chewed down to the cob, and the squirrel was probably only about seven or eight inches long, and the pine cone was probably about nine or ten inches long,
the cob of the pine cone that is, and the interesting thing is that the squirrel was carrying it long ways from the tip of the
of the cob, and so I delighted in the fact that this little squirrel was working so hard to carry this object through the woods,
and this object was literally
longer than its own body length and it looks so dedicated and it's running across the
path in order to do whatever it would with that pine cone cob.
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 contrasts 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 and 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 a 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.
So while of course the Hubertman 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 desert, 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 circadian rhythm by viewing sunlight early in the day, all of the other features
circadian rhythm by viewing sunlight early in the day. All of the other features of getting out into nature,
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 forests
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, experience enhanced mental and physical health that brought on a practice of people who could not get
out of doors into forests, bringing plants into their home environment, which I think all
of us would agree look nice.
They often will add pleasant odors to the air and perhaps they do actually shift our mental
and physical health in significant ways.
I suppose it depends on how much you like plants, how much you pay attention to them, and
of course, how many plants there are.
But, and I think this is a really important but to emphasize, while 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 arrived.
Now, I'm sure there are 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.
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.
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 and particular shoes that have rubber soles
may block some of this electron exchange with the surface of the earth. There have 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 to cardio
or other forms of physical benefit by elevating your heart rate or perhaps you could even do
your resistance training out of doors on other days.
Now, I also try to get out of doors other days of the week, but oftentimes I'm by way
of weather or by way of other commitments forced to be indoors on planes here at the podcast
studio where certainly I'm indoors, but I try to get out of doors,
at least a few minutes each day for a morning stroll, looking at sunlight, et cetera.
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. 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. It's one that frankly, the scientific method is not
and to be honest, I don't think ever will 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 short of this is get out into nature as often as you safely can. If
you can exercise out of doors even better,
if you wanna make it social, great,
if you don't wanna make it social, fine,
it's your life, it's up to you.
But there certainly is value in getting out into nature.
It's also just beautiful from a visual perspective,
from an auditory perspective.
And I myself try and take at least a few trips each year.
None of these are particularly expensive trips
where I try and get out hiking, camping, the weekly walks in nature are an absolute must for me. If I miss one because of weather
conditions or travel, I make it a point to try and get into nature more during the following
week or whenever I can. And frankly, I don't have a scientific explanation for why nature is
also 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 sartone and 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.
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