Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Bite: Dangers of Porn ft. Andrew Huberman

Episode Date: September 24, 2021

Andrew Huberman explains just how serious the dangers of porn addiction actually are. Dr. Andrew Huberman is an award-winning professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford University, as well as the founder of the Huberman Lab. His lab focuses on researching brain function and brain regeneration. The lab’s goals are to discover strategies for halting and reversing vision loss in blinding diseases, and understand how visual perceptions and autonomic arousal states are integrated to impact behavioral responses. Full episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_9r2lc_6sY&t=1114s Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Magic Spoon Cereal: https://www.magicspoon.com/powerproject to automatically save $5 off a variety pack! ➢8 Sleep: Visit https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT15 for 15% off ALL LABS! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Subscribe to the Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

From what you were talking about as far as dopamine and testosterone, this made me really curious. And you're the guy who would really know about this. Now, the Internet started getting all wild. I think, Mark, you know I'm going to be going with this. The Internet started going wild around like 2005, 2006 or whatever. But I think millennials are the first generation that we could really test what would happen when young kids got their hands on internet porn, right? And it makes me curious because like it's Dopamine like these young young individuals are chasing dopamine to be perfectly blunt

I was addicted to porn from the age of 11 to 24 That was the first time I got on it I was like trying for a long time To get off of that because I noticed how was affecting me and then I was also reading some stuff on how porn affects the male brain and all this. And I was like, Oh God, this is bad.

But it took me a long time to get off of that because it was quite literally, I was addicted to that and I could see how it was negatively affecting me. Now I'm curious, do you know if there's any, like how that affects individuals, men, as far as testosterone, if there's a negative thing,

a positive thing. Cause I think I heard you talk about like, like first for people that were viewing, I think the act of sex, there's like a 10 percent increase. But I think there's like long term disadvantages to that. Correct. Absolutely. And I think this conversation is now finally starting to emerge in the scientific and academic literature. I mean, with no judgment whatsoever. Right. I again I'm not here to, it's not a moral thing.

I'm just talking about what I do is I look at things through the lens of biology, and in particular through neuroscience, but some other fields as well. We have to take a step back, and now knowing what we know about testosterone and dopamine and all these things, and ask, you know, what is pornography doing to the brain? Well, first of all, it's triggering the release

of dopamine and in the short term testosterone by the observation of sex, not actually engaging in human contact. So think about the young brain being significantly more plastic and willing to rewire than the adult brain. Absolutely. There's no question about it. It's hyperplastic. Yeah. And of course it can wire rewire again.

But you think about somebody who engages in a lot of porn watching, right? Watching porn. And that person is getting dopamine and testosterone increases by observing sex and not actually by engaging in human contact. OK, so that's concerning. Right. And there and obviously that people vary. But that should come as no surprise that a lot of these people have trouble with romantic interactions when they do happen. Right. Because they their brain isn't conditioned to respond to those, right? And there's variation there, I'm sure. And these are private matters, so there aren't good data

because there aren't laboratory experiments that you could do on this sort of thing. Someone will probably do those experiments eventually. But also dopamine-seeking is what triggers the increase in testosterone. But as we just talked about it with repeated dopamine seeking or triggering of dopamine release, it starts getting diminished, diminished, diminished. So pretty soon that behavior is not causing the release of testosterone. Now people are just doing it compulsively to try and get some little droplet of dopamine out of their out of their brain. out of their brain. I personally think that porn and the availability of porn is a real detriment to the developing brain, especially to the developing brain.

Now, it sounds like you rescued the behavior. Yeah. And it takes some discipline, right, I imagine. And it's one of those things that it's also anxiety-less compared to dating and relationships where people are vulnerable on both sides and have to negotiate things like, you know, consent and timing and, you know, and communication and all the things that are really hard to do but are essential to do.

That's key. So I think pornography is a serious issue. And because of the way that it taps into these very primitive systems, it's as serious in my mind as some of the other drugs of abuse, like the opioid crisis. And we talked about cell phones. You ever notice that when you get on a phone

and you're scrolling Instagram, it's like a lot of fun. Like this stuff is cool. You're seeing people. And then sometimes you're on there and like, this doesn't feel good, but I'm doing it anyway. I'm just doing it. That's exactly how people talk about their drug use.

That's exactly how people talk about alcohol use. That's exactly how people talk about gambling. You imagine this high, but the high doesn't show up. And that's, you're dopamine depleted. You need to take some time away from it and then come back and then you can enjoy it again. Now with pornography, it's a slippery slope, right? There's also a whole aspect with pornography, it's a slippery slope, right? There's also a whole aspect of

pornography, which is that if people are pursuing pornography and they're not pursuing relationships, there is the potential that they reach their twenties and thirties and they are truly dysfunctional in terms of it. Look, every species has two major goals, protect the young and make more of itself. You you know whether or not you decide to have children or not is it is a personal issue i personally don't have children i may someday but every species protects its young the maternal aggression is amazing right a mother protecting its young there's nothing like it in the animal kingdom actually that's not triggered by testosterone that's triggered by estrogen which is. But the parents of every species try and protect the young.

And they try and make more young. This is every species is driven to do that. And you think about what porn and masturbation, these things really are. I'm not calling them sinful. What I'm saying is they are potentially addictive, especially with the availability of pornography. So, you know, beware, you know, just everyone's different and people have to have to be careful about these circuitries. You really need to protect them. They are they're super valuable.

And so I would say in keeping with our theme of what are the other things to do to support testosterone would be don't engage. I would avoid pornography. Frankly, I really would. I would, you know, maybe everyone's got their threshold for what's too much for some people that might be, the number might be zero versus other people. It might be something different. Then it's going to vary. Yeah.

It would be different maybe using your imagination versus, uh, seeing images or like, you know, is there a difference if you know any of this know is there a difference which if you know any of this is a difference between video versus you know old school way of like having magazines and things like that well it's because it's like more fantasy and maybe i don't know maybe you thinking it through about this thing is different than you just watching or even remembering past experiences yeah so we can speculate there a bit. You know, a picture is worth a thousand words and a movie is worth a billion pictures.

When it comes to that, the impact that it has on your nervous system, that's a bar, you know, exactly. And so, you know, I'm,

I think it's fair to say that whatever problems exist in society today, almost certainly existed a hundred years ago, but in a different form. Okay. We always think, oh, you know, stress was only there for the saber tooth tiger. Now there are no tigers. And we got this thing that's really unfortunate called stress. Look, let's imagine this was a hundred years ago. Spouses still cheated. People still died.

You had, you know, physical challenges. There was a question of, you know, all that stuff is baked into us at a deep level, right? None of those circuits have changed. It's just the circumstances that trigger them change. So I think that 100 years ago, it wasn't cell phones. But you can bet that there were forms of pornography. They were probably more cloistered away. They weren't, you know, as out there.

In certain parts of the world, it's still very, very cloistered away, despite the internet. So I think that what's healthy in this domain has never really been defined. This is one of the challenges. We know what an eating disorder is, but what's healthy eating? Where do you draw the line? I think given this general theme that relationships are healthy, friendships are healthy, romantic relationships are healthy, and anything that inhibits the pursuit and functioning of healthy relationships is where you have to start saying, wait a second, is this behavior getting in the way? We've all heard that to get optimal sleep, you should cool your room down to 68 to 69 degrees. But that's not all you need to do.

And that's why we partnered partnered with Eight Sleep Mattresses. Now, they have the Pod Pro and the Pod Pro Cover. And the amazing technology of this mattress allows you to cool the mattress down to 55 degrees or to have it as warm as 110 degrees. But the great thing is that the temperature changes through the night based off your actual body temperature to make sure that you get the most restful sleep possible. You fall asleep 32% faster and you move around 40% less when you're actually asleep. It's amazing. And Andrew, how can people get it? Yeah, this is amazing technology that actually changes its temperature based off of your

sleep cycle. There's no other technology like it anywhere else. To take advantage of this, head over to 8sleep.com slash power project. That's E-I-G-H-T sleep.com slash power project. That's E I G H T sleep.com slash power project. And you guys will receive $150 off this amazing technology links to them down in the description below. Let's get back to this video. So look, it's, it's unlikely to be an all or none. Um, I think, uh, and I don't know what the line is, but we just have to be careful. Anytime we are overwhelmed with powerful images of increasing intensity, that's where you start getting into the dopamine depletion.

That's where you start getting into the hormone depletion that we're talking about here. So this is also true of violence. A lot of people, they're like excited about watching zombie apocalypse violence, plus all of that violent sex and everything getting poured into the same film. Well, they made horror movies, you know, 50 years ago, they were a little bit different.

The question is how strong were we driving the system? And if anyone out there is feeling underwhelmed and kind of like life is no good, et cetera, chances are your dopamine system has been pushed too hard. I'll give one quick anecdote. I have a friend. He's got a kid.

He's 21. He graduated high school. He went to community college for a little bit, decide not to do that anymore. Then he stopped working. He stopped exercising. He's really fit. He's got like his genetics are like the SEMA's. He's kind of like, he's just got this incredible physique and all that doesn't do anything. It doesn't work. Doesn't do anything. He's a failure to launch as we call it. And they were analyzing, does he have ADHD? Does he this? And he heard Anna talk about dopamine depletion.

And he called me and he said, I'm going to do one month, no video games, no phone, no nothing. He's 25 days in and he's running again. He's lifting again. He's heading back to work again.

And this was somebody who thought he had ADHD. Now there are people with ADHD out there, but what happened was he was dopamine depleted. So he couldn't concentrate. He didn't care about anything. And so the phone and just living in this constant stream of movies that are really stimulating on YouTube and everything else. I mean,

you'd have to be, I mean, we're on YouTube right now and I use YouTube for my podcast and everything, but you have to know when to shut that valve. And here's what I tell myself, shut that valve so that I can continue to enjoy it. Right. It's like gorging yourself with Tomahawk steaks. They're delicious, but unless you've been fasting all day, you're not going to eat nine of them. Right. What's your record, Mark? I think I've done two, two, but yeah, nine would be, that would be a feat. Yeah. Two, but they were the size of, you know, the table. But no, so you have, if you want to continue to enjoy things and pursue things, you have

to know when to slam the gate shut. And I think that no one told us that we needed to do that. That's the challenge. And so just like with training, you get out past 75 minutes, 90 minutes. If you're natural, you're going to start seeing a depletion in testosterone. Get out of the gym, go eat, go recover, go relax. This is true for ice baths too. In Anna's book, she talks about ice baths.

The data, I have the data, this is really weird, but I have the data. This is a study that was done at the University of Prague, published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology. 250% increase in dopamine and norepinephrine from a three hour ice bath a three minute ice bath sorry don't do three hours you'll die i think the record is like an hour um sorry when uh 250 increasing dopamine okay but you're not going to stay in there for two days you're not going to try and best whims record. So, and if you keep doing ice every day, you will get less and less dopamine from it.

So understand what you're doing. It's like your pre-workout one scoop. The first time you feel like you can jump over a building two scoops the next time. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty soon you're taking four scoops of that four espressos and you're kind of sitting in the parking lot texting on your phone. Well, what's

going on well you're dopamine depleted so don't dopamine deplete and then you won't deplete your ability to go increase testosterone so competition effort short intense workout shortish intense workouts sleep and then you do have to nourish i know people are really into fasting i was going to say under eating can crush you. Oh, totally. I mean, we've gotten hit hard by doing bodybuilding shows. Just crushed. Everything just crushed.

You don't give a shit about anything. Yeah. Right. Right. So, you know, the body is informing the mind whether or not there's abundance. And the brain and the body like to coordinate all the good stuff that testosterone does, like the desire to mate, the desire to work when there's abundance's abundance when you're depleted it's like bank account is drained and your body and brain are smart it's saying you cannot go spend because you don't have any savings