SmartLess - "Andrew Huberman"

Episode Date: February 9, 2026

What’s up, Doc: it’s the one-and-only Andrew Huberman. Gila monsters, flabby-brain, bed vs. battle, the art of winking, and a multitude of other pearls of wisdom await. Prepare to be glutathione��d to your headphones… on an all-new SmartLess. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of SmartLess ad-free and a whole week early. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey. Hey, Sean, I do want to get into this. I know we got to do a cold open for the show, but I'm flying in New York today. So I got to... Why are you going? Why are you coming here? Why are you coming in here?

I got to go take care of some stuff. And I just don't... I mean, I'm not trying to be vague about it. But, no, I just got to do some stuff. I got to go to New York. I got to go... I got to come evict you from your apartment. Okay?

Are you happy? Welcome to Smartless. Jason, you're still coughing. I'm still coughing. I'm still coughing. You guys both got it, right? Yeah, I'm doing a little better. But you're still, you've got it in the lungs?

Everybody's working for the weekend. See, I have enough energy to do that. I know I can get, Sean. I knew I could live. Everybody's working for the weekend. Hey, band, right now, J.B., who's saying that? You want a piece of my heart? Yeah, that's not.

He had a headband. Tiger bomb. Fucking close. White tiger. Tiger bomb. Sort of. Tiger's milk. No.

Tiger's milk? No. Wasn't it lover boy? Yes, lover boy. That's what I said. That's weird. By the way, by the way, by the way, honestly, and I don't want to get too philosophical because it's the new year and stuff like that.

But it is, there is something to it. Everybody is working for the week. God. You know? I'll tell you what, we just went through the holidays here, listener. You sure did. And every day seemed like a Saturday.

And I was really excited about that. I loved it. But I feel like my brain got real labby. Yeah. Like I don't know. Now I'm like afraid to go outside. I feel like I'll have culture shock if I like run into somebody that's like a serious person. Somebody last night I was talking to,

J.B., you and I were texting a little bit during the last weekend of football. We're dating this when we're recording this, but we're talking about football and stuff, and I was talking to our old buddy, Eli. Is that right? Oh, I do miss Eli. I love Eli. Sweet Eli.

And he was saying, the holidays are over. Like, tonight's the last night. Like, it was the last football game of the regular season. Like, it was the last weekend after the thing. And the year starts. And honestly, I gotta say, I'm really happy about that. I had, we were all sick over the holiday. from starting Christmas Day,

had the thing, J.B., that you've had. Sean, which you now have. I think Jason gave it to me, yeah. Yeah, that big Thanksgiving trichis that we labeled it, right? Just as we were leaning in, we said, let's call this a tricist. And then you guys got it. A turduccott. It was a turduckeet kiss.

So I'm just, I'm like, at this point after we spent, which was nice, again, we felt very fortunate we got to just be at home with the family with all my kids and we had sort of 10 days kind of sequestered on the East Coast, but I'm looking forward to emerging from this. Yeah, a little bit from this. Yeah, I know. And here we are. We're starting right back.

We're at work now. 9.30, Monday of morning. We're a little out of practice, right? I know. I'm really nervous about today's episode, you guys. Nobody's done, and we haven't covered the weather or the traffic yet. I think there's a sig alert on the 210. How do you stretch out for a podcast?

podcast. Jason, you're going to arrive in about 10 more minutes. I can tell. Jason's got his, he's wearing a hoodie, and he's got the hoodie up, and he's got his headphones on the outside of his hoodie. He's still trying to stay cozy like I'm making fires still. Wait, yeah, tell me, but what do you mean, Jay, when you said that? Because I think the same thing when I, I was thinking about you about, like, you were like, I love being cozy, watching movies, and not going anywhere. I'm kind of the same way. And then I know what you mean like, oh shoot, this has to end and like the world starts again. Sean, you're really on the fence between the,

well, I got a couple things. A, there's that. Because you say you like to cozy and do nothing. But the truth is, you also like to just rifle things off a checklist. Absolutely. You never stop. That's right. I don't want to think about it.

Because if I don't, I know, we talk about this a million times. If I don't check it off or respond or something, then it lingers in my head. I'm like, I gotta do that. And I just don't want to think about it. I know. So there's that. What's your email inbox look like?

Is it clean or is it closed? Always zero. If it's not zero, I panic. Yeah. Me too. Empty. Except for the only things that are in there means I need. All the emails are in there, but there's just no new messages.

Yeah, I need, if it's still in my inbox, I need to respond to it. That's right. That's how I feel. But you don't delete all the emails you got. No, but they've been read. But that's when, I'm amazed when I see people, I'm amazed when I see somebody's phone, and the messages of the emails are like 2,300. That's the side of.

That's a sign of... I don't know how to sink my accounts, yes. No, no, no, no, no. You need to go and get an assessment if that's happening. Or an assistant. A deep... A deep... No, not an assistant.

Or that. That sort of betrays a deeper. Like, you need a lot of assistance at this point, and we're going to send somebody over to the house. The other thing is, J.B., I want to know. Yeah. Over the holiday. How much wood did you go through?

Kind of wood, chuck-tuck. And Sean, that question is going to go for you, but it's going to be on a different subject. Go ahead. J.B., how much wood did you get through? Consistent with Sean's answer, I think I went through two loads. Wow. Very nice.

Way to lend that. What did they say? I said you show up in about 10 minutes. It only took like four. He's back. He is back, you guys. 2026, look out. All right.

Well, speaking of brain mushyness, this is perfect. My guest today is a fellow podcaster, but that's about where the overlap ends. You can't even make your own writing sound natural. You wrote it and you make it sound like it's red. It's insane. Oh, I'll read the whole thing right in front of you. He's got a PhD in neuroscience.

He's a tenured professor at Stanford School of Medicine in neurobiology and ophthalmology and by courtesy, psychiatry and behavioral sciences. His work's been featured in Time, BBC. scientific American, basically every publication that makes me feel dumb. His podcast is one of the most downloaded in the world. It's the cold plunging, dopamine optimizing, sunstaring, science genius, Andrew Huberman. Great.

Finally. Good morning and happy New Year. Good morning. Happy New Year. How are you? Doing great. Yeah. How's your brain fog today? Are you flabby from the holiday?

Yeah, I spent this holiday like I've spent so many holidays working. In the past, it used to be grants, and now it was doing book edits. But I'm very familiar with this what you called flabby brain thing that happens after about four days away from, I don't know if it's the grind or the work, but it's a normal thing, and you snap right back. Yeah. Yeah. Being sick doesn't help.

I took some notes here as I was sitting there in the backdrop. This thing that's been going around is rough. It's no joke. I'll just say there are a couple of things. that are supported by the peer-reviewed literature that can really help accelerate moving through something like what you all know with. I had it too a couple months ago.

Three things. It turns out that the old practice of hot baths is actually quite good. You don't want to make it scalding, obviously, but you get into a just tolerably hot bath. Oh, I'm writing this down. And it turns out it mobilizes some features of the immune system in ways that can help you get over your sickness.

Well, just because you sweat it out. Is that what it... No, dummy. Just let him finish. You're activating some of the mobilization of some of the cells and scavenge for whatever it is that you're dealing with. This is particularly useful at the beginning. Your immune system has two different phases.

There's a kind of an innate phase where it's like any foreign invader gets kind of the same inflammation response. That's good. That's the kind of like, oh, you know, I'm feeling a little like under. I'm a little extra tired. That's the time, ideally in the hour or two before bed, you take a nice hot bath or hot shower and then just get into bed.

And, you know, if you do that for a couple days in a row, you may be able to defend it off. If not, once you have it, keeping that practice up, provided you don't have a really high fever, is really useful. And, you know, I know I'm always talking about the morning sunlight. Please say smoking cigarettes.

Just set your circadian row. No, but we can talk about nicotine if you want. A lot to say about nicotine. But getting some what we call long wavelength light, So some sunlight or I'm not here to say red light therapy, but getting some sunlight, this is very well supported by the literature because again, it's helpful for your mitochondrial function

for your immune system. In Arctic countries, not so much Arctic, but in Scandinavia, in Russia, they actually put babies bundled up out in the cold in the morning to mobilize these things. Yeah, we throw them outside. Here we don't do that. Here that'll get you child protection services.

No, but up in Canada. Oh, it'll be fine. We'll toss her outside for sure. And there are a couple other things we can talk about, but in Inakis. Wait a second. Now, listen, Andrew, nice to meet you, first of all. Yeah, it's so great you're here. I wanted you on for so long.

Okay, shut up. Can I call you Huberman? You can call me whatever you want. Okay. How about Doc? Because I refer to you as Huberman as if I know you all the time because I've seen clips of yours online for years and stuff. And so I like a lot of the stuff you talk about.

First of all, you lost Jason when you said Bath because he's thinking about his own. juices. He hates marinating in juices. I don't understand the concept of it. A lot of men don't like baths. I hate it. A lot of men like baths, a lot of men don't. It's just the math is wrong. Sona would be fine. Sona would be fine.

Okay. So Sona, so interestingly, interestingly enough, and by the way, not that interesting. When I was starting to get this flu, I looked it up, I consulted, I did my own research, as they say, meaning I have Google. A lot of people like to talk about research and what they mean is that they use the internet. like a bunch of fucking dummies.

And it told me because I've been a proponent of sauna and cold plungeers always. For more than 10 years. Early days. And they said to me, the internet they said, don't expose myself if I have the flu that they were worried about because they said that your body's already working hard enough. They were saying don't do the coal plunger. Don't do the hot.

Don't do either, because they were saying, because I'd have to fight hard enough. So this was the first time when I was sick that I did not use the heat and or the cold to try to combat it. And it ended up being harsher. And now that I'm hearing you, I wish I had, because historically I've always just gone in

and I saw in early days when I start to feel that thing in my throat or whatever, and usually I'm able to stave it off. So you're saying... Yeah, you know that the cold, deliberate cold exposure, right? showers, cold plunges, this kind of thing. It is a stressor. Counter to what you hear out there, it does not raise cortisol, but it is a stressor. Your adrenaline spikes when you get in the cold, which is part of the reason you do it. And then when you get out, you get that long tail of dopamine and epinephrinellane adrenaline that makes you feel much better and more alert, etc.

That's fine under healthy conditions. I would say if you're battling something or you feel like you're coming down with something, use heat, sauna, hot shower, hot bath, whatever it is that works for you. But I would drop the cold as you're getting into something because it's a very potent stressor. The thing about heat is if it's too hot, it can also be a stressor. I mean, when you're healthy, using the sauna as a way to get your heart rate up

and kind of push it in there a little bit is good. By the way, useful tip, if you put a towel over your head or you'll notice that Russian banyas, they wear those little hot. I have a sauna hat. Yeah, it insulates your brain from the heat so you can stay in longer.

The impulse to get out is a brain thing. not unless it's very, very hot, a burn thing. And then, of course, if men want to conceive children in the next 90 days, because of the 90 days from metagenesis cycle, if you're going into the sauna, you need to put a cold packet you're growing outside your shorts, guys. If you don't want children, also don't use this as a surefire way

to avoid having children. It's, you know, many accidents. You've got to stick your nuts and ice, eh? Like, you're saying that the sauna will, will cut your sperm count? Absolutely. Heat and sperm, not a good combo, which is why we're getting to anatomy here, which is why the scrotum can extend and contract closer to the body.

It's to maintain the optimal temperature for spermatogenesis. How about that? Yeah. And so if you go in a sauna or a hot baths quite a bit in the 90 days prior to trying to conceive, you're going to limit the number of highly mobile sperm. That said, I'm sure many children have, been conceived in saunas and hot baths and in hot conditions.

But this is on average, right? No comment. No comment. God, I would have had tons of kids by now. Now, let's get back to what you were saying, Dr. about, please expand on nicotine as one of our co-hosts here, choose his Nicorette gum. Sure. Is that... It's not...

Are you looking for freebies? I do a Zinn gum combo. Okay, I have a lot to say about this. Before I do that, just very quickly... there's there first of all i want to put a full disclaimer i have no financial relationship to what i'm about to describe in any way there's a beautiful study published and it's on pub med i can send you guys the link if you want and i learned about this from an er doc out here in los angeles who need to keep himself healthy during the winter season endacetyl cysteine also called knack is a glutathione precursor

there's a beautiful study showing that when they people signed up for a study where they would where they were deliberately exposed to people who had flu. And they either got NAC two or three times a day at about 600 to 900 milligrams per day or not. But sorry, just describe what NAC is because you said that long word. I don't know what that is. And acetyl cysteine, it's a precursor to something called glutathione, which is used in a bunch of different cellular processes. Normally, I think you don't need this, right? You don't need elevate glutathione.

I know it's all the rage now to get glutathione drips and that sort of thing. I have a more conventional opinion about all that. But if you feel like you're coming down with something or you're going to be exposed to things. Or Jason, you mentioned that you're heading off to New York. You've got work to do. You need you to recover more quickly. The data on avoiding getting sick by taking 600 to 900 milligrams of an acetyl cysteine two or three times a day, when you're sick getting sick or trying to avoid getting sick is quite robust. In fact, there's a huge difference in the number of people all exposed to the same virus that flu virus in this case that did not contract the virus.

Some still did. It's in the high 20s, but had they not taken it, the control group was somewhere close to 80%. It's pretty impressive. And obviously check with your doctor, this kind of thing. But that's the one thing,

you know, we hear about zinc, echinacea, all this stuff. It's the one thing that the peer-reviewed research actually shows can help stave off fluid. Is there any downside for taking it constantly? Some people will take a little bit each day. It is a little bit of what's called a mucalytic,

so it will make your nose run just a little bit more. It's actually used to treat cystic fibrosis at very high doses, which is a build-up of fluid in the lungs. So it's a well-known eucalytic. So it's going to help you drain out more as well. But no, there's really no downside. He wants to drain out.

He, all he heard was drain out, and he's so excited. If I'm losing water weight, I'm happy. I have a feeling that's related to our previous discussion. Wait a second, wait a second. We're not going to, an hour is not going to be enough time with urine, Sean. We have so many. You will put so many boxes. I dream.

But I want to know if our friend is, I want to know if our friend is safe, cheering on the Zen. Because there's been so much, and I want to set it up by saying, there's been so much about nicotine is good for you. People are now saying it's great, all this sort of stuff. And so I want to hear once and fro what your take is on nicotine and the various delivery systems. Great.

Nicotine is a very interesting stimulant. It is a stimulant. Sure. But it's perhaps the only stimulant. that also relaxes you at the same time. Thank you, Andrew, for coming on the podcast. So that's a very unique property, right? It gives you that alert but focused,

kind of puts you in the groove that is so alluring to humans, so much so, and I'm going to avoid going into a history about nicotine, but let's just say for hundreds of years, but in particular in the last hundred years, humans have figured out ways to get nicotine into their brain. And we know that smoking, vaping, dipping, and snuffing, all cause cancer, and I did put vaping in there. Vaping is perhaps safer than smoking,

but still causes lung damage, the contaminants, et cetera. Vaping is bad. I'm just going to say. The science isn't back yet on the burning of the metal and all that kind of stuff. And I will say anecdotally, when I tried to use one of the vaping products, I'm not going to say which one, it increased my blood pressure,

it increased my anxiety tenfold, and I went back off it. Yeah, I'll take a hard stance. Obviously, smoking, we now know. Still cool. No one dips or snuffs, really, or people dip, but they don't. My grandfather used to snuff. He used to put a little bit on his...

Yeah, mine too. Yeah, he used to powder. Literally putting tobacco up the nostrils. I can't even imagine. Okay. Well, okay, so here's the deal. We went from smoking, dipping, vaping, and snuffing. Then we moved to what they used to call electronic cigarettes, vaping.

And then now oral nicotine is the main mode of delivery. Nicotine itself is not carcinoma. This is very important. It doesn't cause cancer, right? It's a stimulant that relaxes you, as I mentioned. It does raise blood pressure and it increases vasoconstriction. Vesa constriction is just a clamping off of the little capillaries and vessels, in particular in the periphery, you know, in the fingers, in other extremities, and in the brain. And, you know, strokes and other things like that are cutting off of blood supply to small regions of the brain. So if your blood pressure is already high, not a good idea.

If your blood pressure is naturally low and you're doing other things, for instance, sauna, to vasodilate once a day or several times a week at minimum, or a hot bath if you're traveling or a hot shower, taking some effort, especially before bed to make sure that your capillaries are dilated, not taking nicotine too late in the day. There is a space where I can say, I can now safely say what I'm about to say, which is there is evidence

let me do this backwards. People with Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, if they take nicotine, don't seem to get better. However, there is decent evidence in animals and humans that nicotine, not delivered by vaping, dipping, dipping, smoking, or snuggling, right? Can be protective against Parkinson's and Alzheimer's because it offset seems to protect neurons against degeneration, which is the hallmark feature of Parkinson's. and Alzheimer's. That said, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to feel very comfortable saying what I just said on the, but some people are going to say, wait a second, I don't want people starting to take nicotine to avoid getting Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. The blood pressure effect, the mild anxiety effect for certain people is significant. And here's the biggie. And then I'll just kind of

peel back and hear what you guys have to say about this. The biggie is that it is highly, nicotine delivered in any form is highly, highly habit forming. What? Do we call it? call it addicting. Addicting is, you know, continued use despite harm to sell for others. I call addiction a progressive narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure. By those two definitions, it's hard to call nicotine addicting. And yet, I know many people that start with one pack of Zinn a day, one gum, one four milligram gum, pretty soon it's two, pretty soon it's four, pretty soon it's a canister every three, four days. So if it's not addicting, it's highly habit forming. So that's, you know,

I'll occasionally take a piece of Nicorette. Yeah. Yeah, sure. But I don't do it very often. I won't do it more than once every couple of weeks because I love the potent effect. The problem is... Just to get through the day or something, you mean? No, if I'm doing a particularly long session of writing or a particularly long podcast.

But here's the thing. If you take a stimulant of any kind, caffeine, nicotine, any stimulant of any kind regularly, pretty soon you need it just to get to baseline. Right. I mean, most of us drink 90% of the adult population of the world drinks caffeine every single day, just to feel at their normal levels of alertness. And the reason there's so few studies on caffeine that are really solid is because no one wants to go through the wood. You'd have to go into caffeine withdrawal for two weeks to be able to stuff.

That's why I don't drink. That's why I don't drink caffeine. You seem to have a lot of energy. I don't think you need caffeine. Whereas I need caffeine. Like you seem very alert like you're white, like you have an alertness to you. Well, first of all, I just want to say, again, it's not like you start. You were like early on, you're like,

I'm not going to drink coffee because I don't want to be my baseline to have to be. No, no, not that. No, that's not why. But I didn't want to drink coffee in high school and stuff when people were drinking. Because I saw what people went through when they're like, don't bother me. I haven't in my coffee. Like, I don't want to be that person that I can't talk to you until I've had caffeine.

You know, or I'm angry until I'm not woken up until I have caffeine. So I recognized that. And I never wanted to be that person. So then I never drank coffee. I've had soda, but I don't really drink soda anymore. And so, yeah, that's it. I mean, that's the reason I avoided cannabis. I don't have anything.

You know, I think cannabis has, for some people, it can activate psychosis, high THC. For some people, they seem to be able to take it and not really have too much trouble with it. The people I knew growing up, growing up, excuse me, who used a lot of cannabis. Yeah. When they didn't have access to their cannabis, they were pretty difficult to be with. Oh, really? to be with, they had this kind of, they were irritable, yeah. And we will be right back.

And now back to the show. I've always said that there's nobody grumpier than a stoner who's not stoned. They're always the grumpiest people. And there's a real, you can really draw a pretty firm line there. And there's, we're saying, J.B., that people who like to eventually use. J.B. just took a pee break, I think. Canvas. And when they're not, when they're not using it, can be prone to being grumbly.

How do you think it easy, man? He just wanted to grab some nicotine and some cannabis. You're saying when people who use cannabis, they get grumpy when they're not using it? Yeah. When they don't have access to it. Like, because I was saying, Jay, I was saying I don't drink caffeine because I don't want to be like a grumpy person

until I reach my base, you know? I might be a tough person to gauge on that because I think my set sort of default idle is, I wouldn't say grumpy, but is, you know, I'm the guy who sits at the back of the room and doesn't do a lot of talking, but I'll throw a bomb every once in a while. That's right, and then leaves.

You know, but does that make me, I don't know, I got to work on my personal. You don't, you don't fit the bill of what I was thinking of. I was thinking about chronic weed smokers. Yeah, chronic weed smokers. You know, yeah, no,

no, that's not. Cannabis is definitely here to stay. It's kind of amazing how much the reality is changing me, is people

sold everywhere. There are some real issues. I think the big one that's very overlooked is that everyone talks about, oh, you know,

the weed is so much stronger now than it used to be. It's true. THC levels are much higher. But here's the thing. I had a researcher on my show who specializes in cannabis research.

And he said, when people take edibles, that's when they tend to go through the, quote, not overdose, like a lethal overdose, but they take, it's very hard to gauge the kind of plane of high

when people take edibles if they don't take them regularly. That's what lands people in the ER with the psychotic episode. Yeah, me too. And people who are prone to psychosis definitely need to avoid high THC. A lot of the madness you see out there is that. When you're eating it, it's hard to know how much is too much. Yeah, dude.

Because like I might be hungry and the cookies look good. That's the problem, dude. A big brownies. Yeah, I've OD'd on THC a couple, not ODED, but I've taken too much. THC a couple of times, and it was just like, I was lying on the bed one time. I took so much, and I was like rocking, and I'm like,

Scotty, Scotty. And he's like, it's okay, it's going to be okay. And I go, God, it's been like three or four hours. He goes, it's literally been two minutes. I was like freaking out. I slept in my eyes open the whole night. It was awful. It was not sleep, by the way.

I was not sleep. Yeah, well, people who take cannabis to sleep of any kind, at any amount, they're getting no REM sleep, no rapid eye movements. Oh, that's interesting. So everyone that comes off cannabis gets a – they talk about how incredible their dreams are, how vivid their dreams are. You get a REM rebound. REM is when you consolidate memories.

Rem is when you learn the most – you consolidate what you learned. REM is essential. Just a little tip outside of cannabis. For anyone that wants to increase the amount of REM sleep they get, there's a wonderful trick, which is you'll have to adjust the thermostat if you don't have a way to adjust the temperature of your bed. But either way, increase the temperature in your sleeping environment in the last hours of sleep. So you want the room cold to fall asleep and stay deeply asleep. But toward morning, even if you have to heat up the room as you get toward morning, and your REM sleep will increase fairly significant.

I won't do it. I won't do it. You won't do it. And would you say that your REM sleep is really good? I mean, it's okay. So maybe you should do it. No, but I mean, like, what wakes me out is when it's too hot. Are you saying, Doctor, that if I'm dreaming a lot and I'm kind of remembering a bit of my dreams, does that mean I'm getting REM?

Yes. especially if the dreams are vivid dreams. We tend to get more REM toward the end of the night and more deep sleep at the beginning of the night. The way to get the brief description of this is that at the beginning of the night, you go into a deep, slow wave sleep that's more about bodily repair.

The dreams are kind of unusual. They don't really have a lot of emotional content. The way to maximize the amount of deep sleep, in addition to not drinking caffeine too close to bed, et cetera, all that, is to try and get to bed at more or less the regular time plus or minus 45 minutes. We're all human, right? Because you're going to capture that deep sleep, and then the wave passes.

The way to maximize your REM sleep is to basically make sure you sleep long enough. Okay, so some people need six, some people need eight hours, whatever it is for you to feel refreshed. Yeah. But that last part of the night, if you can increase the temperature now, Sean, it sounds like you have a high core body temperature. That's great. That reflects a high metabolism. Oh, he's hot. He's all wonderful things.

So you might just need to keep the room a little bit cooler than most. This is all relative. Yeah, yeah, God. Listen, I just say, you're just making me think, so last night this dream, this is not a joke. I was just thinking about it just came to me. I had a sick dream last night. I was in the back of a truck.

This is totally true with a bunch of dudes. And we're all wearing, I'm not making this up. We're all wearing gilly suits, right? Like those, like a onesies? You know, like snipers wear when they go, when they're like, you know, trying to camouflage themselves. And the rest of our crew went off. And then this one guy goes, you and me.

And we jumped off and we went in, and then we put up a bunch of branches so nobody knew which way we went. We went off from our regular crew. And we went off on this path, and we saw this, I'm not kidding, I'm just, and we saw this hill, and we saw this shadow of it. And he's like, those are the Russians.

And they were up on this hill. And we were going to go and try to outflank these, this sort of like spetsnots group over on this other hill. It was sick. I'm just, it was. So vivid. End of story? Shit, hang on, let him speak.

Well, there's actually what we say in science, a mechanistic weave here that's, so get this. One of the things that happens during REM sleep is your acetycholine levels are high. Nicotine, believe it or not, is called nicotine because it binds to the nicotinic acetycholine receptors.

People who take nicotine, and I'm not suggesting people go out and start taking nicotine. And I have no financial relationship to any company that makes nicotine whatsoever. Yeah. that when you boost your acetylcholine levels by taking nicotine, activation of that system with nicotine, it actually will increase.

You turn into a sniper? No, you'll, well, in your case, yes, but you will increase the amount of REM that you get a little bit that night when you sleep. How about that? But Will, there's one thing I really have to give you. Yeah. Because, and actually for all the men out there and on this podcast, but it will offset some of the vaso constriction and blood pressure increase of your nicotine. But I had a guy in my podcast who was a colleague of mine at Stanford,

Mike Eisenberg. He's our head of male sexual health and hormone clinic at Stanford. He's an MD PhD, his, the top-notch doctor in urology and this area, okay? He's a serious scientist and clinician. Every man, his words, every male, 40 years or older, should be taking low dose, meaning 2.5 to 5 milligrams of tadalophil each evening to lower their blood pressure, dilate their capillaries, at higher dose. is this is known as Cialis, right, used for erectile dysfunction. However, this drug to Dalafil was initially developed

to treat blood pressure and for, excuse me, to dilate the small capillaries of the brain and body in order to encourage prostate health and then to encourage brain health. And there's a lot of evidence as to why this is a good thing. It's very inexpensive. It costs pennies now because it's generic for people out there. You do need a prescription.

But my colleague, Mike Eisenberg, He didn't tell me to say this, but when we're talking about vaso-constricters, high blood pressure, stress, stroke, some of the leading causes of death. Every male in particular because of the prostate, women should talk to their doctors whether or not this is applicable to women.

But it will help offset some of that blood pressure and vasic restriction increase. That's amazing. Now, listen, every single day, I know you talk about supplements too. I wanted to bring this up to you because this is what I take, and it has the word nicotine in it.

I take metformin and then I take nicotinamide, is that I'm saying? varitrol. Okay, so you're taking nicotinamide. I take it every day for like three years. Yeah, which is in the NAD pathway. Okay, so let's break these into metforminous to lower blood sugar. How long does you have to live? Just say it.

I mean, you guys look great. I can do like an age-guess thing, but everyone here looks like they're in their late 30s, early 40s. That's right. Oh, it's great. Likewise. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, I just turned 50. I feel really good. We're all mid-50s. We're all over 55. Wow.

But can play, I don't know, what kind of We can play from these mid-30s, late 30s. I don't know if it's a Romicon. Can even go boyish, like, you know what I mean? By the way, I loved your McCulley Culkin episode. I listened to that. I was like, this guy is so grounded. I can't even imagine being famous from that young of an age, you know.

And I mean, and he's like, he's hyper-famous. And he just seems so, so grounded. I'm sure he's gone through the wickets to get there. But I was very impressed at the person. He's talking about and how groundies about everything from Legos to parenting to acting. Yeah. It was awesome. It was great.

Yeah. Yeah, great. That came up because you were talking about child actors or something. I think I still frame him in Home Alone. Yeah. So supplements. To be very clear, I know I often get kind of put into that supplement cold plunge category. Look, get great sleep, sunlight.

I'm all about sleep, sunlight. If you drink alcohol, limit it, offset it with good behaviors, cardio resistance training. I mean, I've been doing that stuff. since I was in my teens, and I'm really committed to the behaviors come first. There is a place for some people for supplements. Metformin lowers blood glucose, blood sugar.

So you can have more cheesecake, yeah. I mean, it seems to work for some people, especially you tend to run high blood sugar levels. Very high. Some people will know the kind of a poor man's version of this is actually a tree bark extract called burbering, which accomplishes the same thing. I'm writing it down.

I mentioned that. Because, but then you would want to stop taking metformin and you'd obviously want to talk to your doctor. The other thing you're taking, nicotinamide, nicotinamide rabicide is in the NAD pathway. Okay, NAD got a lot of attention a few years back as a potential longevity thing. We all make NAD and levels of it drop off with age. There is no direct evidence yet in humans that increasing NAD either by taking what's called NR, which is what you're taking, or NMN, can extend lifespan. However, it does seem to increase energy, and NR in particular, what you're taking, seems to, there's some good human studies that it can reduce inflammation in the body.

Oh, nice. And I'll say also, again, no financial relationship to any NAD, NR, etc. Likewise. I take sublingual NMN in the morning to increase energy. And I do take NMN. Oh, got it. You could either take NR or NMN. Here's the interesting thing about increasing NAD. I notice, this just anecdotally, but so do other family members, et cetera. When I take NMN or NR, my hair grows very, very fast, my nails grow very thick. Yeah, me too. It definitely is doing something for growth of those cells.

Yeah. For me. For me too, yeah. There's been no clinical trials on this. I would just continue with what you're doing if you feel good and you have a good doctor that you're working with. Yeah. And how do you feel?

Do you wake up feeling pretty good? Finally, thank you for asking. I feel great. I feel terrific. No, I feel, I could, we need to do like a side comp, you know, Zoom or whatever. Well, Sean, can we get into it. It will cost you. Can we get into it a little bit?

Because we touched on it. And you do feel good. And you generally, there's very good observation. Sean does tend to have a lot of energy in a release room. But, and I give you a lot of shit about it because I do love you. And it's funny, but it's also, I do worry about your sleep. I know. And Sean has.

My sleep and also sugar. Well, sugar. and there might be a correlation, and I'm sure there is. But, Sean, and correct me if I'm wrong, you'll go to sleep at a relatively decent hour, and you'll often wake up, and this has been for years in the middle of the night. That's right.

And then you're up, and you send emails, and you text, and you do stuff, you make phone calls, and you're up. And then that might be three, four in the morning. Correct. And you'll be up to like seven. Correct. And then you'll go back to sleep for like two hours. Or hour, two hours, yeah.

Hour, two hours. And I'll sleep really hard. And you'll sleep, what you think is really hard because you're exhausted. But there's, and this isn't just sort of once a week. This is, that is the rule more than the exception. That is correct. That is how you get your rest.

Yeah. Is that bad? Because I read one, like, you know, I read a long time ago, a doctor said, you know, we should all sleep like babies. Like if you're tired, lay down. If you're not, get up. I, many nights do exactly the same thing, Sean. And I would.

Call me back. Okay, great. Yeah. We'll work side by you. side. You know, a couple of things. I mean, some people, there's a theory that some people have this sleep architecture just naturally.

That theory has been kicked around back and forth. Here's the thing. Because I sleep worse if I fight it. Don't fight it. One of the worst things you can do, this is very important for everybody listening. One of the worst things you can do is stay in bed trying to sleep for more than half an hour. Yeah. Your brain is a prediction and sort of.

a paired association machine, which is nerd speak for you will start to associate your bed with a battle with sleep. You do not want that. Get up and get out of bed. If it takes you more than 30 minutes to try and get back to sleep, get up and get out of bed, go do something. It is a good idea, however, to have a more or less normal to bedtime that's right for you. Like safe hygiene, yeah. Well, and we know that some people do great going to bed late and some people go to bed earlier. Oftentimes people who wake up at three or four in the morning or two or three or four in the morning can't get back to sleep but are still tired and the need to go back to sleep. I'm raising my hand here as one of these people. Sometimes getting to bed a little bit earlier than you happen to be

getting to sleep can help, meaning getting into bed around 9, 9.30 falling asleep at 10. And then it just may be that you're not getting enough of that early deep sleep that your body craves because it's very easy to push through tiredness. It's hard. We can't make ourselves sleep. But I have some great tools to help you fall back asleep if you want them. But my first question is, what time do you go to sleep?

About 11 o'clock, between 11 and 12. I'm always almost like sleeping by 12, 15. Okay, so you're falling asleep quickly. So we could go through a lot of diagnostic aspects. And you're watching television generally up to that point. No, right. Yeah, and looking at your phone. Like last night we started watching the Godfather part too.

to put that sub type of one because I couldn't hear. Anyway. Yeah. So, such a great movie. Okay, I'm going to give a general theme for everybody because some people are early risers and late night owls. But before you get it, because this might be a part of it, and maybe you can answer to this too,

because I actually said it to my 17-year-old last night. Again, I had heard, read whatever, because we're all experts these days, that going to bed earlier, getting those early, those first hours before, midnight and the importance of those hours versus post midnight, et cetera. Can you factor that into it too? Yeah, and it changes across the lifespan.

So teens often need more sleep. For social reasons, they're going to push later sometimes, and we just have to live with that. And like, no healthy kid wants to go to bed at 9 o'clock. Right, right. You know, it's just, you know, so I think it's important to eventually, by time you hit your 30s, to figure out kind of what, when would you go to sleep if the rest of the world didn't exist?

when would you wake up? And what's your natural rhythm? And it may be that this is just your natural rhythm, Sean. Yeah, that's what, yeah. It could be. It is true that you can create lighting environments that are best for sleep and wakefulness. And it's very simple. I'll just make this very, very simple.

You want very bright mornings and you want dim dark nights. In fact, there's a beautiful study out of the UK that showed with more than 80,000 human subjects that just making your days brighter, working near a window. Obviously, I'm big on getting sunlight in your eyes first thing in the morning. But if you can't do that, bright lights inside. Getting outside as much as you can

during the morning, especially, before 10 a.m., whatever you can get, even if you're taking the kids to school, et cetera. And then dimming the lights in the evening. I'm not saying everyone has to go to a red light environment and look like a biohagger, dimming the lights, bringing the lights down, dimming your screens.

That in combination, that in combination, greatly offsets depression, anxiety, symptoms of OCD, mania, so much so that even if people are in dark environments during the day, if they make their nighttime environment truly dark, they benefit. And there's a whole story about cortisol behind this, but for time's sake, I won't get into it. But this is a very real thing, and a modern life has completely inverted this. Our days are too dim and our nights are too bright.

So just try and adjust things a little bit in each direction. I don't understand how people can sleep with. with blacked-out curtains. Like, if I wake up and it's, you know, and it's bright outside. You feel like you're trapped underground? Yeah, exactly. Or like in a drug, you know, three-day drug excursion. But so I have to sleep with, right?

That's good. To sleep with the curtains open. So light comes in in the morning, right? It's great. I think everyone should invest because it's very inexpensive in a very, in a comfortable eye mask. You know, or these soft eye masks that Velcro in the backs, you can adjust it, you know, not one that's just like,

And it lets your eyes, and that lets your eyes move. Yeah, let them breathe a bit. And then, you know, you may try this for me one night, Sean. Get a hold of some earplugs that are those, they're like wax. There's like a firm wax that you put on the outside of ears. You don't jam on the smartphone. You may be waking up because there's noises in your environment that you're not aware of. And just see if, no, no, he's, you're convinced.

The noises are coming from inside of house. You know, I'm thinking this is you. I'm thinking. I'm thinking. Scotty. Fuck. No, I sleep with a fan on because it's sort of block out all noise.

And I think you're doing great. Yeah, my biggest fan. And if you can afford to get back to sleep a little bit, that you said you sleep really hard late in the morning, that's REM. You're dropping back. Sean, have you thought about propofall? By the way, I get it.

It's a steady drip. I get it. Hey, dog. What got you into medicine? Why you have a parent that was in it? Yes, at Stanford. Did you have a fascination with health when you were a kid or both? Okay, well, I'm a researcher, not a clinician.

So I profess a lot of things. I'm not going to, I want to be clear about that. But my dad's a theoretical physicist. So I was exposed to a lot of science. So none of it's been proven. Good, good. She asked for what it's worth. I like that.

The internet would say, we don't know anything. I mean, it's kind of scary what's happening now with kind of like calling all fact into my question. So here's the deal. My dad is an academic. He came here from Argentina, first generation immigrant, and to study physics. And I grew up in the South Bay Area

at a time before, the personal computer, et cetera. But I was surrounded by science and technology as a kid. And always loved biology. Always loved fish. I've got my fish tanks. I've always been fascinated by animal behavior, human behavior. So, and then in high school,

I went to a quite good public high school. I, you know, I, for reasons related to, you know, teenage rebellion and home environment, I rebelled against all of that and got really into the skateboarding punk rock scene in the Bay Area and have a lot of friends who went on to start skateboard companies. And I got, we could talk stories about that at some time. I was actually, Tony Hawk's dad took me to his house when I was a kid, so I got to sleep in Tony's room.

No, Tony wasn't there. People always asked Tony was there. And I got exposed to a lot of action sports and music culture and really loved that. But it wasn't until college that I circled back to science and biology. I realized I need to get good at something. I wasn't very good at skateboarding. I wasn't going to be an athlete or a musician or anything like that. You look like you could be an athlete, though.

Well, I've always worked out. I've always done skateboarding, soccer, swimming, running, lifting. I enjoy sports, but I wasn't very good. I wasn't bad, but I wasn't very good. And so I had the good sense, fortunately, and some input to go, you know, what do I really love and what could I get good at? And I love learning and I love teaching. I love learning and I love teaching.

That's just kind of like who I am. I can't help myself. And so I got really into psychology and biology. At that time, they called it biosecology. There was no field of neuroscience. And I started working in a laboratory. And I got super serious about school. So did my undergraduate, my master's, my PhD, my PhD, did.

did a postdoc at Stanford, and eventually was hired back to Stanford as a tenured faculty member. Running a lab and doing experiments with my hands is pure joy for me. I don't do it these days because of the podcast, but I still teach at Stanford. I still have my position there. And nothing makes me happier than learning information that I think people can make use of and telling them.

And not telling them what to do, but just going, hey, you might want to check this out. Or you know, you're not sleeping well. Or, hey, maybe your sleep is just fine. And I feel like there's been very little opportunity out there in formal education to teach scientists and physicians, clinicians, how to communicate with the general world. And it's usually like they have to market their book or they're talking about their thing.

I love actually talking about other people's science. I hardly ever talk about the science from my lab, but we've published lots of papers and have fun doing that. We could talk about that. But I just love learning and teaching. And so like I said, I'm 50 and I'm just like in bliss. The podcast lets me teach very broadly. Stanford's been super supportive.

I still teach the students there. And I guess it was faded through my dad. My mom's a writer. My dad's obviously a scientist. But I feel like the only downside of getting old for me is, er, is that I'm excited about what science and medicine are going to discover. And I just want to learn about it. It's not even so much that I can use it.

I'm not thinking about eternal life or anything. It's like think about how much we've learned in the last 10 years about gene editing, immunotherapies, for cancer. I'll make a hard stance here, and I'm not doing this for any political reasons. Like, I mean, whether or not you were, like, pro or anti or skeptical about vaccines during the pandemic,

these MRNA technologies are incredible. Yeah. For cancer, let's just leave. Let's just, you can edit this out if you need to, but let's leave COVID aside. Let's get into chem trails after this, but go ahead. No, no, but these, you know, I went on Bill Maher and talked about this, and I take a lot of heat for this,

because I'm sort of at the interface between the standard academic, medical community and the kind of wellness, I hate the word, but biohacker community. And they're really like at loggerheads. But the truth is, there are pearls of wisdom all over the place. But science and medicine are the bedrock of everything I described. It's, you know, the only reason we even know what glutathione is or that light and temperature impacts sleep cycles. And I mean, it's so important.

And I'm like, I'm on a mission to teach what I think is the best of science and medicine. as I can see it, so that people can make it useful to themselves and understand that one of the reasons, that we are where we are these days is because of science, and I just love it. We'll be right back.

And back to the show. There's so much noise out there, and there's so many people out there now professing, like a lot of people learned about that they should sleep with their room at 68 degrees because they heard Tom Brady say that in an interview, right? So, like, everybody's getting these little bits and pieces and they're going,

I heard that you should be, I just did it myself. Everything's a trend. I heard you should get the sleep before midnight. I heard that you should get this. The vaccines, I heard this. And there are so many people out there who are speaking about in this space, whether it's wellness or medicine,

or whatever they're calling themselves. And you even, I forget the term you use this, sort of the, what did you say? Sort of the cold plunge. Oh, the biohacking. The biohacking coal plunge crew. Everybody's a fucking expert. There's all these fucking people.

And there's a little bit of fatigue because part of me is like, God, it feels like I want to put everybody in the same baths. They're all anti-vax, fucking chem trail, fucking nobody, don't trust the government, don't trust anything. And there's just so much of that out there that it's like, what the fuck do?

What is real anymore, dude? Yeah, exactly. So what I like to do is take a step back and think, okay, you know, why do people end up in these bins, right? Like, not how did we get here, but kind of like where are people showing up? to the table. And I think that I said a lot in favor of science and medicine. I'm now going to say as an

insider, what I also know, which is that the field of science and medicine has done a mediocre job of explaining why, the why behind things. They tell people what to do, but people like to understand the why. People are deeply rational at some level until they're not, right? And so I think that something I really believe in is that how people come to learn information. strongly impacts whether and how they use that information. One of the reasons I do longer-form podcasts where I explain mechanism, okay, is because I do think that if you understand that bright light, cold water, exercise in caffeine will spike your cortisol in the morning.

And guess what? You want your cortisol high early in the day. And dim light, lack of caffeine, cooler temperatures will lower your cortisol in the evening and help you sleep. Once you understand that you want that seesaw, tilt it high in the morning, high cortisol, you want this. I don't care if you're male, female, pregnant, young, old, whatever, and low cortisol in the evening, lower your heart rate,

do some long exhale breathing, et cetera. Once you understand there's a mechanism behind it, then when somebody says, cold plunge is great, and you say, yeah, but early day makes more sense than later day. Or how about, you know, bright light early in the day? Makes sense. You need your cortisol, high cortisol sets away front of energy for the day. You want it low later in the day.

Once people start to understand a little bit of mechanism about dopamine, about cortisol, about sleep, then all the stuff coming at them, they can filter it through a rational filter. Wait, does this make sense based on the bulk of what we know? Now, when it comes to things like vaccines and prescription medication, let's take a slightly less barbed wire version of this, but that's very timely, which is all this stuff about the GLP ones, right? People are saying, oh, you know, so many people are on GLP ones. What is that? It's very interesting.

The weight loss. weight loss. Oh, like Ozmpic or whatever. Very, very interesting peptide that we knew about from GILA monsters. You know it was discovered in GILA monsters, these reptiles that only need to eat once every year or so. A smart biologist said, how come they don't get hungry all year long? Turns out they have very high levels of GLP1 circulating, isolated the peptide.

We now, GLP1s, is perhaps the first really effective treatment for obesity and diabetes. Amazing. And it's also turning out to be very effective that we need more data, but for people who have what they now call alcohol use disorder can really reduce cravings for alcohols and sugar. So what happened was the medical community came out. I know, that's what they call alcoholism now. Wow.

Yeah, everything's a, yeah, it's a pseudonym. Hi, my name's Will and I'm an alcohol use disorder. It's interesting. The only people who have no trouble with the word alcoholic, I have a lot of friends. I go to meetings like they are like alcoholics, right? Former alcohol. They go part of, right, but everyone. Yeah, anyway.

Here's what's really, I think, so vital for us to understand is that, you know, if you look at the GLP-1s, they're very effective at lowering body weight. They are high cost because they're still not generic versions of them out there. The wellness biohacking community was very disparaging of this. Like, oh, this is just a shortcut. This is bad for you. There were some side effects. And indeed, you have to be careful with these things.

I'm not taking them, but I know people that do and they can be taken safely. but the moment that the GLP ones hit the compounding pharmacy market and it was inexpensive, it was suddenly like the wellness biohacking community was like, oh, okay, this is great. This is just like a supplement, no problem. So people are just too entrenched in the camp they're in. I like to think, Will, I don't know, you tell me,

I like to think that there is a league of reasonable people out there that represents the majority of people that are not so polarized. They're not talking about chemtrails and now I'm going to get hate from the chemtrail people. I don't believe in chemtrails. What is it a chem trail? I have no idea what that is part of it, though. There are people that think that the government is using chemicals from airplanes across the sky to reflect sunlight.

Block the sun to reduce the effects of global warming, etc. Or it depends on the day. Oh, yeah, yeah. There were plans to put a mirror in space not that long ago to reflect sunlight in the other direction. And they try to conflate it with cloud seating, which has been done since the 50s. That's crazy. Kim Jones. Mirrors in space is something I've been a proponent of for a long time.

That's true, by the way it is true. That's the way you look and look back into time, effectively. He went, we had Neil deGrasse Tyson and Jason had a very robust conversation with Neil. About time travel. About time travel using mirrors. It has to do with the speed of light and stuff like that, Doc. You wouldn't understand. No, but my father would.

In theory. So the important thing, here's what I'm hoping. We're 2026. Here's what I'm hoping. What are you most excited about 2020? Because there are so many useful tools that don't involve taking anything, supplement or drug, that are very useful. There are also very useful prescription drugs out there that have helped save lives. And I think people are coming to that clarity now.

And there are also some over-the-counter supplement things that can help that are not as extreme as either. But I think that we are finally seeing a blending between the silos of these extremes of conspiracy theory versus unless there's a double-blind placebo-controlled study, there's no way I'm going to do it type people. Yeah, yeah. And I think Los Angeles, to be fair, I've lived at West of Interstate 5 my entire life, northern South California, the middle of the state. Los Angeles is the place where this stuff got blended together. Yeah. And because people here are experimental, okay?

They're experimental. They like to try things and see what we're. works and things get marketed and get put out there. There are no bad suggestions, you know, especially after midnight. Right, right, right. Back to Jason's original question. So your dad was, I'm kidding. I know.

I do want to do, I was thinking, you mean. We talk about my dad. He's still active as an 82-year-old scientist, and he's physically well. I love that. Yeah, I love that. He's still super strong. He doesn't look like that dude who's trying to biohack his age, right? Oh, not at all.

No, no, no. He's quite virile and robust. Okay. Would you agree that our generation, like us for ding-dongs, have a good shot of living to be 100, that this generation... Easy. Easy. Oh, really?

100, yes. So I think 120 is probably the genetic limit, natural genetic limit on age. I think... At this point. At this point. Look, I posted something yesterday that I just found online of a confirmed 90-year-old guy, not on any hormone augmentation. Oh, I just saw that.

20 full... 20 push-ups. And real push-ups. And the best part is in front of his kids and grandkids. He's got his family there, takes his glasses off, gets down on the floor. And he does 10 full, like chest to the floor, full-range push-ups, stops midway, teases his son about doing partial reps, and then goes back and does the remaining 10 and then stands up.

And basically, guys, guys, 90 years old, it's so clear that because, to answer your question, Jason, by drinking a little bit less, focusing on sleep a little bit more, working on limiting our stress a bit or a lot more, doing things that really bring us meaning. This is huge. We know this from all the Blue Zone stuff, but from everything else. Social connection,

like really trying to put the phone away and drop in with people. And really, it's such a critical... Sean. It's wonderful. It's also biological, right? It's bi psychological, how it benefits us. Plus, you know, nutrition's gotten better. I think that it's harder.

The problem is it's expensive to access good food, right? but nutrition's gotten better than it was in the 90s. We're no longer messing around with trans fats. Not everyone's smoking. If you're using nicotine, hopefully you're using it. The nerds are smoking. I know a lot of nerds, I'll tell you. I know a Nobel Prize winning neuroscientist.

Everyone in my community knows who he is. And the first time I met him about 15 years ago, he chewed no fewer than five pieces of Nicorette during our meeting. And I said, why do you do it? He said, it's protective against Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. And he said, but you don't want to smoke because he'll give you cancer. So that's an anecdote. But, you know.

I want to think a photo that you and me, we're going to go out, we're going to get a cheese, we're going to go get a big Mac and smoke a SIG, and we're going to post it online just to fuck with people's brains. All right. Just to cause it. Let's just do it. Fair enough. New science out.

You know what I mean? Just to mess with everything. Wait, to be clear. I'll eat a cheeseburger. Yeah. I eat meat, cheese, fish, eggs. I mean, I eat fruits and vegetables. You know, I eat like a human.

I eat like an adult. The thing to do is eat like an adult. Don't slurp your food, don't drink your food. Sean, what'd you have for breakfast today? Be honest, go. I haven't had anything except for all. What's coming up? What's coming up?

I'll probably have a... Be honest? Cinnamon roll? There's a cinnamon roll in there. There's also a chocolate chip cookie and also there's... Oh, my. Yeah, but I'll probably have a yogurt. That's why you take the Metsorman.

What did you have yesterday morning when I called you and you were on the way? You were in the car with Sean. I did really good. I had carrots and cucumbers dipped in ranch. No, yesterday when you drove... Oh, I went to Portillo's, yeah. Yeah. I drove to Pergills in Boina Park.

There's one in Boena Park. Oh, I was going to say in Chicago. So sugar is your thing, huh, Sean? Yeah, that's too bad. Anyway, listen, Andrew, we only have a couple minutes left, because we're taking way too long. And I just want to know, just as fast as you can, because I don't want to keep you, is my mom died of Alzheimer's,

and I like talking about it just to learn more about, like, what causes it and how to prevent it. And I took the, is it APO1, APO4 gene or whatever? I don't have the gene. It doesn't mean I can't get it, but I'm less likely to get it because I'm not right predetermined through genes. But what, you know, I mean, anytime a report comes out that we're three to five years away from a cure

or we're three to five years away from something positive about conquering this horrible, horrible disease, I don't know if you've been around it, but it's just awful to see somebody go through it. Is that the pharmaceutical companies like making sure we don't come up with the case? cure? Like, what are the realistic, you know, feelings about the future of cure for it? Yeah, well, first of all, I'm really sorry. It's devastating. I don't think people can

understand until they see someone who's alive but deteriorating. Yeah, yeah. It's awful. It's awful. The pharmaceutical companies are absolutely working very, very hard to try and solve this problem. As are many labs, I'll just put in a plug funded by U.S. taxpayers. I have to say my lab was funded by NIH for many years. This is the thrust of discovery, not just in the United States, but all over the world. I'm working hard behind the scenes to try and make sure that funding is maintained. Those discoveries get turned over to companies,

pharma companies, which test drugs on animals and then humans. So it is happening, yes. They're not trying to keep us sick. Those theories need to go. Also, think about the finance, if it was just purely financial incentive, the person that comes up with that treatment for Al's conference or a cure. Like, it's like, okay.

What can we do? Obviously, blood sugar management seems to be one important piece. It used to be, people were starting to talk about, quote unquote, type three diabetes, not a real thing. Some people do seem to benefit from a ketogenic diet for offsetting some age-related dementia, but not everybody. But it has to be truly ketogenic, and it's hard to stay on a ketogenic diet. Okay.

Some people, rare, not everybody, but managing your bloodshed, It does seem that the effects of exercise and quality sleep and avoiding environmental toxins, and I can talk about that in a moment, are significant toward offsetting age-related dementia. People with these gene repeats are at higher risk. I'm great to hear that you don't have these repeats. But everyone should be trying to optimize, I hate the word optimize, trying to optimize it on a daily basis, I should say, in real-life context, get the best sleep they can. And it's so clear that resistance training, doing some form, for women and men,

this is like a whole new world now, right? He used to tell women that you need resistance training. They'd be like, I don't want to be too big, this kind of thing. Resistance training for strength in particular. So if you can get strong without getting bigger by training with very, you know, safe. Yeah. These are the things.

Low weights, tons of reps. Yeah. Or, okay, I would go the other direction, but in any case, to maintain strength. I don't know. It's not sufficient to just walk and garden and do yoga. I'm sorry. I know there's some yogis.

I agree. It's not sufficient. Yeah, you need weight. You need weight. And so maintaining, maintaining healthy blood sugar. Wait, which goes back to, do you lift, bro? I mean, honestly, that's just... Well, now it's do you lift girl?

Because I'll tell you, I have a female training partner, and she's a beast. But she's not big. She's just super strong. Women, and, you know, I have a mom in her 80s. I'm trying to tell her, like, listen, you need to lift heavy for you objects. You need to do this. People, when they stop moving... I know it sounds like the usual advice,

but when they stop moving, sedentary. Feedback to the, well, there's feedback to the brain that may help kickstart some of that neurodegeneration. That said, there are some genetic predispositions. Nowadays we're all much better off because we all know that don't do. The environmental toxin thing is interesting.

There was the data that living next to a golf course that put people more at risk for Parkinson's. These are correlative things. We are now discovering, okay, this goes, was in the opposite direction, Will, where people were, you know, all this like round-up stuff and, you know, cancer-causing agent. It turns out that was a real thing. Oh, yeah.

You know, so we have a friend who's, yeah. Limiting exposure to environmental toxins to the extent that you can is going to be good, but you don't need to be hyper-paranoid about these things. So I believe there will be a solution. I just think, like, your time is your time. Like, you know, eat right exercise. Yeah, eat right exercise. Do good things.

Oh, we could have saved an hour. And stay and stay socially engaged. You know, my big push for 2026, I know we're out of time, and forgive me, I like to fire hose this stuff. People have useful things. I know they come here to hear you guys, not the guests. No, are you kidding? This is fascinating.

Well, is we, like any technology humans build, it takes about 10, 15 years before we go, oh my goodness, we really screwed up. And we're now realizing that with, here's the thing, people will live. listen to things for a long time, but they like to view things now in rapid succession. And when you put your phone away, it's going to feel a little boring for a bit. Good.

Your brain, it's like a palate cleanser between life events. Putting your phone away, it'll feel like you'll feel restless, you'll feel bored. Engaging with people socially or even with your thoughts, getting back to that a bit. I have a lockbox for my phone that it's locked in there for portions of the day. And it's rough, right? You're like online, all these movies, all this stimulation is very exciting. Listening to podcast is great. Audio, long-form stuff is great.

This is my push, people. Put your phone away for a short while and drop in with people. And yes, it's going to feel boring for a bit. But then that's where from the health-promoting and kind of life-enriching stuff, that's where the good stuff is. I completely agree. And again, I see it, you know, because we, you know, Jason and I both have teenagers. We see with the kids on the phones, et cetera.

And I see it with my own kids. I've mentioned this many time my big regret was giving my kids phones too early. But then I see it in myself. And if you guys, if you can, and this, again, this is just an observation. I started noticing in public places where I just sort of try to clock people on their phone, not just randomly, but especially people going in, like let's say going into an elevator or going to a restaurant, they order a coffee. I was in New York last week.

And I watched people when they had, they make an order, and then they have a minute where they got to wait. and everybody, just out of habit, pulled out of their phone. And sometimes they do it out of insecurity because they don't want to look like they got nothing to do. Right. So they want to look like they're doing something. Otherwise, they feel exposed

and they feel too vulnerable in that moment to just stand there and be present. Check it out. It's really fascinating. If you start watching people in stores, in restaurants, or whatever way... I'll do it on an elevator, will. Of course.

If I have an elevator and I'm with somebody and I'm just, I'll pull up my phone because I'm... What am I going to say? By the way, and the other... guy does it too. It's super entertaining. People don't know how to engage with. You know, it's fun.

It's to not pull it out on an elevator and just stare at someone. Yeah. The whole time. When everybody's looking out towards the door, you just stand looking inwards. And then wait until they look at you and then just raise your eye about it's like, what? I'm not on my phone. It's weird, isn't it? And also bring back the art of winking.

You know, start winking at people. Slow wink. We'll really upset someone. Real nice. Andrew, we're winking at you. Thank you. coming today. Honestly,

I know. This is so great. Like, I could listen to you for hours and a half. And so I just, I'm a huge fan and I love. Thank you for starting a year off just right. Well, thanks, guys.

I want to say, and I know I'd speak for many, many people. I'm a huge fan. Oh, please. What you guys, I know everyone's always jocking you guys, but here's the deal. From a very young age in many of your cases, but still now you really enrich the world

with really entertaining and really like stimulating thought-provoking stuff. And I think, you know, long-form podcast, movies, TV, that stuff I actually think can enrich us in a real way. And so that's not what I'm referring to when I talk about the phone stuff, and I think we all know. So I just want to say thank you. It's an honor and pleasure to be here,

and I'm a big admirer of the work you do. Thank you, all right. Thanks, dude. Thank you, man. Thank you, buddy. Thank you, pal. Keep fighting the good fight. Thank you so much.

I love you. Yeah, you have to come back and have so many more questions. Anytime. Please. Thanks, Andrew. All right. Thank you, Andrew. See it.

Cheers, guys. He's one of those guys that he kind of said it, that he breaks down all that information so you can digest it in a way, you know, that we can understand it. And like, how does the person know all that? Yeah, it is great. That's something that didn't, yeah, that didn't exist.

Well, I mean, what, like WebMD and stuff like that? It started to, like, you could just go there and start asking a bunch of questions. You didn't need to, like, make a doctor's appointment and stuff. And now, like, chat, GPT, we'll kind of break it down a little bit more for you. But these podcasts or even like TikTok or Instagram, you get these little bite-sized pieces of information.

But as he said, you do have to kind of like thin out what is just the entertainment crap? Right. And what's science-based stuff? Yeah. And like what's conspiracy shit? And that's what I was saying. Like there's so many people out there.

At least he's a guy who's, you know, a professor at Stanford. So you have to try to like, I'm going to try to lean towards the people who have a little more sort of academic credentials. Yeah. I mean, science is still science, and the other stuff is sort of, I guess, has always been there, but it never had, as we've talked before, it never had the platform, the amplification, the microphone that it does today. And so it does seem like, well, what do you know? Like now, like, you know, you never know what's real.

No, it's just that the noise just got noisier. The science is still there and still valid. He just have to self-edit this new level of volume for nonsense and put it back down to its right size. Yeah, I mean, like, and all of the stuff that he does at Stanford and, like, he's into ophthalmology, psychiatry. You couldn't even, Sean, you know what I was going to, okay, you know what I was going to say, Sean? Just because you have that, no, hang on.

I think that, Sean, this is what I wanted to get to because you've had a few and I can feel you building up because you couldn't even get through your own setup. No, that's okay. But I want to say, as I heard you, as I heard him talking to you and you were talking about your sleep, and I was thinking like the different things,

the light, the sound, the thing, the bedtime. And maybe all you really need for a good night's sleep is just a good, old-fashioned, Lala. Bye. Bye. It's going to do. I was going to do neurobiose science.

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